Supreme Justice (25 page)

Someone knocked on Brad’s office door. When he looked up, Ginny was standing in the doorway.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Why aren’t you in the salt mine?”

Ginny sat down. Justice Moss had not hired another clerk yet, so Brad had the office to himself.

“Remember you told me that you didn’t think I’d get in trouble at the firm because I took pictures of the TA Enterprises file?” Ginny asked.

“Sure. Masterson’s dead, and that associate . . .”

“Greg McKenzie.”

“Right, McKenzie. He’s not going to open his mouth. If he wants to make partner, McKenzie will want everyone at Rankin Lusk to forget how tight he was with Masterson, so he’s not going to talk about the TA Enterprises file. I think you can forget about the CIA, hashish, and ninja assassins and go back to worrying about your billable hours.”

Ginny sighed. “I sort of miss the ninjas. They’re a lot nicer to deal with than the partners.”

She was quiet for a moment, and Brad could see that something was bothering her.

“I’m thinking of leaving Rankin Lusk,” Ginny said.

“What brought this on?”

“When you said that McKenzie would try to distance himself from Dennis Masterson and keep his mouth shut about my part in exposing the TA Enterprises file, you made a fatal error in your analysis. You assumed that Rankin Lusk is a caring, moral entity, when in fact it is a collection of sociopaths who are interested in one thing and one thing only, the bottom line. Dennis Masterson was the firm’s biggest rainmaker, and his death will cut into profits. Anyone who makes any attempt to expose a rainmaker is a villain in the eyes of the firm, even if it is clear that the rainmaker is a murdering swine. Anyway, I am being treated like a leper by almost everyone, and any support I’ve received has been whispered by people who look around nervously when they talk to me.”

Brad looked the woman he loved in the eye. “Do you want to be associated with the type of people you’ve just described, regardless of the money?”

Ginny smiled ruefully. “No. I’ve pretty much decided to quit, but we’re going to be hit pretty hard financially if I leave.”

“We will be poor but honest, like characters in a Dickens novel.”

“Oliver Twist didn’t have student loans.”

Brad smiled. “We’ll be OK, kiddo. Between Justice Moss and Justice Kineer, we have enough heavyweights on our side to get work. And this time, look for something you really want to do. Don’t just think about the money. This is your second job at a huge law firm, and they’ve both left you with a sour taste in your mouth.”

“Your term on the Court is more than halfway through. Have you given any thought to what you’d like to do?”

“I guess I do have to start thinking about next year. The government doesn’t pay that well, but the work is exciting. I’m thinking the Justice Department or a job in the Congress.”

Ginny sighed. “Now that I’ve decided to leave Rankin Lusk behind, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. And you know what else?”

“No, what?”

“I do think we’ll be OK.”

Monte Pike sat in one of the conference rooms in the district attorney’s office with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and his feet propped on a corner of the long table that dominated the room. Pike had put the
Woodruff
case on the back burner while he waited to see what the Supreme Court did. He had plenty of other cases to keep him occupied, and the four months it had taken for the Court to reverse had helped him to come at the case with fresh eyes.

Pike was reading the unanimous opinion of the Court, which held that the state-secrets privilege could not be used to keep exculpatory evidence from a defendant facing the death penalty. Pike knew that Mary Garrett was going to come at him with artillery blazing this time around, and he would be lucky if he got a conviction. He took a sip of his latte as he stared at the boxes that covered the table. They were the same boxes filled with evidence relating to Max Dietz that Garrett and Dana Cutler had gone through months ago. Bob Hunsacker had no idea what the women had been looking for. Now Pike was going to go through the boxes to see if he could figure out what had piqued Cutler’s and Garrett’s interest.

Pike finished the opinion and laid it beside his drink. He stared down the table at the boxes as if willing them to give up their secret.

“Where are you, little fella?” Pike asked the evidence. “Better tell me now and save yourself a lot of pain, ’cause you can run, but you can’t hide.”

Supreme Justice
was a lot of fun to write because it gave me an excuse to tour the United States Supreme Court as part of my research. I argued a case there in 1978, but I was in my early thirties and only in my fifth year of practice and way too nervous to ask for a tour. My thanks to the Honorable Diarmuid O’Scannlain for contacting Kathleen Arberg, the Court’s public-relations officer, who arranged for the tour and was a gracious host. But my special thanks go to Bill Suter, the clerk of the Court, who took time from his busy day to act as my tour guide and answer my questions. He was a great help in making this book as realistic as possible, and he is not responsible for anything I got wrong. I am especially grateful for his recommendation that I purchase
The Supreme Court of the United States
, by Fred J. Maroon and Suzy Maroon (Lickle Publishing Inc., 1996), whose superb photographs and text helped me describe parts of the Court that Mr. Suter could not show me and areas I’d seen but had trouble remembering accurately.

My thanks to Professor Sue Deller Ross of Georgetown Law School for introducing me to former Supreme Court clerk Rebecca Tushnet, who answered my questions about a clerk’s daily routine. Thanks also to my son-in-law Andy Rome for hooking me up with Richard Bartlett, another former clerk. I also made good use of Edward Lazarus’s descriptions of the life of a Supreme Court law clerk in his book
Closed Chambers
(Crown, 1998).

I could not have written
Supreme Justice
without help from several experts: Brian Ostrom and Dr. Karen Gunson rode to the rescue once again by answering questions about medicine and science—areas in which I am woefully ignorant. Charles Gorder, Barry Sheldahl, and Fred Weinhouse helped me develop an issue that could, theoretically, come to the Court someday. Finally, the help of ship captain Sid Lewis was invaluable.

I don’t know about other authors, but I need a good editor to take my first draft and make it into a book that can be published. Sally Kim did an excellent job cleaning up my mess. Thanks also to Maya Ziv, her assistant; Jonathan Burnham; Heather Drucker; the HarperCollins sales force and art department; and all the others at HarperCollins who have given me so much support over the years.

I can never thank Jean Naggar, Jennifer Weltz, and everyone at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency enough. I’m also grateful to my assistant, Robin Haggard, and Carolyn Lindsey for their research skills. Thanks also to Daphne Webb for her expertise in all things relating to Wisconsin.

And finally, I thank Doreen, my muse, who is always in my heart.

PHILLIP MARGOLIN
has written fourteen
New York Times
bestsellers, including his latest novels
Fugitive
and
Executive Privilege
. Each displays a unique, compelling insider’s view of criminal behavior, which comes from his long career as a criminal defense attorney who has handled thirty murder cases. Winner of the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award, Margolin lives in Portland, Oregon.

WWW.PHILLIPMARGOLIN.COM

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

SUPREME JUSTICE.
Copyright © 2010 by Phillip M. Margolin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Margolin, Phillip.
      Supreme justice : a novel of suspense / Phillip Margolin.
        p. cm.
      ISBN 978-0-06-192651-8 (Hardcover)
      ISBN 978-0-06-199181-3 (International Edition)
      1. Private investigators—Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 2. United States. Supreme Court—Fiction. 3. Judges—Selection and appointment—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 6. Political fiction. I. Title.
      PS3563.A649S87   2010
      813'.54—dc22

2010004914

EPub Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780061994777

10  11  12  13  14    
OV/RRD
    10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1