The 37th Amendment: A Novel (4 page)

He heard the woman take a deep breath. “How do you know Rob?” she asked.

“Well, uh,” Ted stammered, “We sit together at the Laker games. I’m sure sorry to hear about this.” I’m sure sorry I called, he thought.

“Thank you,” the woman said, her voice calmer, “What’s your name?” Ted introduced himself. He heard the skritch of a pen on paper at the other end of the phone. “I’ll tell Rob you called if they let me see him tomorrow,” said the woman. Her voice was starting to break again.

Ted’s curiosity overwhelmed him. “Uh, ma’am?” he began tentatively, “What did they arrest him for?”

“The murder,” she answered. “The police think he killed Maria Sanders.”

Ted didn’t hear anything she said after that. At some point he must have hung up the phone, because there was a hand waving back and forth in front of his eyes. It had green fingernails. “What happened?” Flynn asked. “You look dazed.”

Ted stared at the phone still in his hand. “You know that awful murder a couple of months ago? This guy did it.”

Flynn’s mouth dropped open. “You know the guy who murdered Maria Sanders?” she gasped, “I have to call Pearl!” Flynn raced out of the room to spill the news to her best friend.

It wasn’t possible, Ted thought. Robert Rand was a slight, almost skinny guy who did magic tricks for seven-year-olds. Then again, no one could pay for Lakers season tickets doing that. Ted shook his head. You never know about people, he thought.

Ted unzipped his jacket and typed a password on his keyboard. “Welcome, Ted Braden,” the computer screen announced silently. “Today is Friday, May 12, 2056. The time is 8:55 a.m. Today’s calendar: Project meeting, Sony Motors, 9:30 a.m., Screening Room D; Video conference with Preston Henry Associates, 9:30 a.m.; Meeting with Clete Johansson, 9:30 a.m.; Lunch with Royce, 1:00 p.m., Begonia’s; Flynn’s game, 6:30 p.m., Beachwood Park.”

Ted groaned, slipped a headset around his right ear and clicked a few keys on his keyboard. “Rocki, it’s Ted,” he said. “Is the boss in?”

“I knew you were going to call.” The assistant sounded rattled. “This is about your calendar, isn’t it? I meant to write you a note but I didn’t get to it yet. Hang on.” The line clicked over to on-hold music and Ted listened irritably to eight seconds of thin-sounding Mozart. “Sorry,” Rocki said.

“That’s okay,” Ted said patiently. “And what was the note going to say?”

“It was going to tell you that the people from Preston Henry need you in the video conference on the new campaign, hang on.” Mozart returned. “Sorry,” Rocki said. “So the Preston Henry people couldn’t do it at any other time except 9:30. So I figured you could go late to the Sony meeting since that’s just in-house.”

Ted sighed. In-house, three weeks behind schedule and facing a Tuesday deadline to produce reworked spots that normally would take a month to complete. “And who is Clete Johansson?”

“He’s a young man who is joining the agency and he needs kind of an orientation.”

“Orientation!” Ted’s voice carried over the sound walls that separated his executive workstation from a double row of cubicles nearby.

“Well, not really orientation,” Rocki pleaded, “It’s just that this is someone who’s going to be working with the really top people and...”

“And he can’t be left alone.”

“Uh, yes. Hang on.” Mozart floated through the phone line again. “Sorry.”

“What is he, the chairman’s nephew?”

“Living with his daughter.”

“Perfect. Call him up and reschedule him for 3:00.”

“I’d love to, Ted,” Rocki sighed, “But they’re going to Paris for the weekend and their flight leaves at 1:00.”

“Perfect. I don’t suppose we could have this orientation right now.”

“He couldn’t come in before 9:30.”

“Right,” Ted said.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Rocki said helplessly. “Hang on.”

“No, gotta run,” Ted said. “Thanks for trying.” He clicked the phone off and leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands wide apart and shrugging, half at the screen and half at the sky.

The quiet chime broke the silence in the office and the concentration of C. Dobson Howe. He pressed a button on the brass panel set into the top of his desk. “Yes?” he asked. His tone was polite but the power of his voice nearly shook the windows.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Howe,” the British accent of his assistant floated from unseen speakers. “But there’s a Mr. Jackson on line three and he insists that it’s an emergency.”

“That’s all right, Casey, I’ll speak to him.” Howe pressed another button on the brass panel. “This is Dobson Howe,” he boomed.

“Hello, Mr. Howe,” said a casual voice. “This is John Morley Jackson.”

“Yes, Mr. Jackson, how are you, sir?”

“Fine, thanks,” Jackson said. He sounded surprised by the polite reception. “I don’t know if you remember me,” Jackson began, “but we met at an ABA conference three years ago. You were speaking about the negative consequences of the 37th Amendment. Do you recall it?”

“Refresh my memory,” Howe said. “I do remember the conference.”

“Well, I’m the guy who came up to you afterwards and said it was your fault.”

Howe frowned. He remembered Jackson now. “Yes,” Howe said, “and as I told you then, I opposed that amendment, I campaigned against that amendment, I did everything in my power to stop that amendment from being ratified. I warned repeatedly that the repeal of the Constitution’s due process clauses would be a mistake that we would all live to regret.”

“All well and good,” Jackson said, “but it was your campaign for the Equality Amendment that opened the floodgates.”

Howe was drumming the point of a pencil against a yellow legal pad. The man wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t thought himself at least ten thousand times. “I must tell you that I reject that view,” Howe said. “The Equality Amendment was an entirely different matter. It cannot be blamed for every crackpot initiative campaign that followed it.”

“I understand,” Jackson said. “Still, if you hadn’t shown the country that it was possible to organize a successful campaign to amend the Constitution, we’d still have the U.S. Supreme Court to protect us.”

Howe’s pencil poked a hole three sheets deep into the legal pad. “We still have the Supreme Court, Mr. Jackson,” he said. “It’s the scope of judicial review, not judicial review itself, that has been cut down.”

“Same thing,” Jackson said.

“Mr. Jackson, I understood there was some type of emergency.”

“There sure is,” Jackson said. “I represent Robert Rand.”

Howe’s pencil froze in mid-thump. “Oh, no,” he said in a soft voice.

“I see you watched the news this morning.”

Howe closed his eyes. “You’re going to tell me he’s innocent,” he said.

“Case of mistaken identity, plain as day.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Howe said. The energy drained from his voice as he ran down the list. “The Public Safety Act in California, the federal Ramirez Act, the statutory limitations on habeas corpus. The 37th Amendment says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, except by the law of the land. And according to the Supreme Court, that means the intent of the legislature must be upheld wherever it can be clearly demonstrated. If Californians choose to model their criminal justice system on a slaughterhouse, the courts have no authority to stop them. There’s nothing I can do.”

“The governor will take your call. Justice Margulies will take your call.”

“Mr. Jackson,” Howe said gently, “This governor is not known for his thoughtful consideration of requests for commuted sentences, to say nothing of pardons. And there’s no need to ask the California Supreme Court for a stay of execution. Until the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the
Owens
case all executions in California are stayed.”

“You know as well as I do,” Jackson said, “where the Court is going to come down in the
Owens
case. This Court will never find that Congress has the authority to re-write California’s criminal laws.”

Howe sighed. “A man can hope,” he said.

Sergeant Thomas Blandon peered through the wire-reinforced window in the steel door at the 24-year-old girl sitting alone at the conference table. “Who is she?” he asked.

“Her name is Bara Salvacion.” Officer John Avery looked disgusted. “She was arrested an hour ago selling heroin in the parking lot of the New Greek Theater. She says she has information about the Maria Sanders murder and she wants a deal.”

“A little late, isn’t she?” Blandon laughed. Robert Rand’s arrest and identification by an eyewitness the day before had ended a three-month siege of nightly overtime and canceled vacations for the officers of the LAPD.

“That’s what I told her,” Avery said. “But she says she has information so I thought I’d better bring it to you.”

Blandon frowned. “Well, I’m not the one who’s going to make that decision,” he said. “We’ll have to take it to Whitfield.” He pulled a wireless out of a loop on his belt and keyed in a number. “This is Blandon,” he said after a moment. “We just brought in a heroin dealer who says she’s got information on the Sanders case. Yeah. Room A34. Right.” He pressed a key and replaced the wireless on his belt.

It was less than a minute later when Whitfield, nearly out of breath, joined them in front of the door. “I knew drugs were involved,” he said, with something like smug satisfaction. “Then I thought maybe I was wrong when Rand, if that’s his name, didn’t show up in the DEA’s computer, but I should have trusted my first instinct.”

Officer Avery nodded deferentially. “She says she wants a deal for information,” he said. He handed Whitfield a file folder with a report clipped to the top.

Whitfield glanced at it, smiled, and pressed two keys on the wireless that was clipped to his belt. “Lilibet, it’s Cal,” he said after a moment. “Is the chief in? No, that’s okay, don’t interrupt him. Just let him know we may have another witness in the Sanders case. I think he might want to call the mayor.” Whitfield listened for a moment, then laughed. “I know,” he said. “Well, he’ll be happy to hear about this. Right. No problem.” He pressed a button on the wireless, nodded to the officers and opened the door.

Bara Salvacion was rail thin and rather attractive. Her dark hair, long and straight, was parted in the middle and tossed back behind her shoulders. She wore a pair of tight-fitting bright blue jeans and an oversized man’s white dress shirt, fully unbuttoned to expose augmented breasts spilling over a beaded bra top. “You’re Detective Whitfield, aren’t you?” she demanded.

“I’m Detective Whitfield,” he answered, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite her.

“I saw you on television,” the girl said.

“Mm-hmm,” Whitfield nodded.

“If I help you with the Maria Sanders case, can you get me probation?”

Whitfield was leafing through the file that Avery had given him. “I don’t know,” he said. “Quite a record you’ve got here.”

“I don’t want to do no more time,” the girl said. “I can tell you how Robert Rand killed Maria Sanders, why he did it, and how he got away. Interested?”

Whitfield studied her face. Her eyes were narrowed. “Possibly,” he said.

“I want your word you’re gonna get me probation. Otherwise I’m gonna call a lawyer.”

“Call a lawyer if you want,” Whitfield said. “It’s not going to change anything.”

Bara’s gaze fell. “I don’t want to do no more time,” she repeated.

“Bara,” Whitfield said. “Tell me what you want to tell me, and I’ll do what I can do.”

“All right,” she said. She took a breath. “Robert Rand killed Maria Sanders because she stole three packages of heroin that she was supposed to deliver to him and sold it herself.”

“Mm-hmm,” Whitfield said, watching her.

“He got away in a car driven by an accomplice who was waiting for him in the parking lot.”

“Mm-hmm,” Whitfield said.

Bara was finished.

“And how do you know these things?” Whitfield asked.

A dark flush crept up Bara’s cheekbones. Her eyes were bright.

“Because I was his accomplice,” she said. “We were lovers.”

Ted entered Screening Room D at 9:55 a.m., trailed by a lanky Swede having a conversation on a wireless. A group of eleven staffers from various departments were seated around an oval table littered with papers, disks and assorted multimedia devices.

“Sorry to hold you up,” Ted said. “I’d like you all to meet Clete Johansson.” The Swede waved politely at the group but stayed back near the door and continued his conversation. Everyone around the table murmured greetings and a few waved solicitously. “So,” Ted began. He pulled up a chair and sat down at the far end of the table. “What have I missed?”

“Well,” Miller Sebring of the art department was the first to respond. “We’ve all agreed it can’t be done, and we’re looking for a way to work around that.”

“There’s no time to do anything except use a stock animation and composite it with the footage we’ve already shot,” Dorena Haggarty said glumly. “You’ll have to pick something.” She slid a multimedia player down the table in Ted’s direction.

“No time to audition announcers, either,” Peter Crandall added. “This is a disk of voices from an audition this week for a different client. We could hire three or four of them without hearing them read the copy, record them all and then pick one afterwards.”