The Fall of the House of Zeus (29 page)

“
I’m looking for the piss ant,” the judge began, making a joking reference to the dispute in Balducci’s home town over Steve Patterson’s lack of a law degree.

“Well, the piss ant ain’t here right now,” Balducci replied, laughing.

“You stirred up a wasp’s nest.”

“These sons of bitches stirred it up,” Balducci said. “All I’ve done is respond to it. There’s a lot of things I can take, and I can take all the slings and arrows, and I can take all the talking and the backbiting and all the gossiping around the courthouses. But when you haul off and start writing letters to the bar, and trying to get me in trouble with the way I practice my living and feed my children, that I take awful seriously.”

As the judge had suspected nearly three months earlier, Balducci had no further interest in pushing for a decision from him in
Jones v. Scruggs
. It was time for the judge to revive the subject.

After a bit more banter, Lackey asked if Balducci was in a position to talk confidentially. Assured that he was, the judge asked, “You think Dickie wants this thing in mediation—I mean arbitration?”

“Yes, sir. That’s his number one goal.”

“Well, I just wondered if he wanted me to take care of it somehow.”

“Yes, sir. That’d be terrific. If that’s how you sees [
sic
] it after you’ve taken a look at it.”

“I’ve got it in the bosom of the court now,” the judge said. “I don’t know him, and of course I trust you.”

“Yes, sir,” Balducci said, ever obsequious. “The only concern I think anybody had after the hearing was Johnny Jones blowing his snot bubbles and stuff. Everybody was afraid he might pull on somebody’s heart strings. But, you know, I think this is one of those where it has the added benefit of being right. If you look at the agreement, hell, I think they’re right. So all they want is for the thing to get kicked to arbitration.”

“As long as they feel comfortable with that,” Lackey said, “rather than in the court …”

“That’s what they want.”

“All right,” Lackey agreed.

“That’d be terrific, judge.”

The conversation constituted more improper talk with a judge. Still,
there was no mention of a bribe, no quid pro quo, and until that was offered, no real crime existed.

    
Lackey’s subsequent attempts to reach Balducci during the month failed. This show has got to stop, the judge thought to himself. I have been living with this thing since March and I want to bring it to a head one way or another.

To buck up Lackey’s spirits, the FBI praised him for his value to the investigation, for bringing Balducci’s overture on behalf of Scruggs to their attention. It was not the first time that Scruggs had been in the crosshairs of the FBI. They had been unable to secure an indictment against him in the Paul Minor case on the Gulf Coast, but they were prepared to try again. They encouraged Lackey to keep trying, too. It would be helpful, they said, if Lackey arranged another meeting with Balducci. And it would be decisive if money were mentioned explicitly. Otherwise, the case would go nowhere, and all of Lackey’s agony over the past six months would have been for nothing.

Suddenly Lackey grew very uncomfortable with the role he had been playing. He was, after all, a god-fearing deacon, and the thought of asking for money flew against his nature. He didn’t want to do it. And even if he did, he still privately hoped that his young friend might say that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding. Then that would be the end of it.

Lackey was ambivalent over continuing, but the FBI prevailed upon him to make one more effort. The judge called Balducci’s office in New Albany and learned he was in Washington for a couple of days. He hung up, cleared his throat, and with fresh resolve prepared to pursue him further. Speaking into the FBI’s recording device, Lackey set the stage:

“
I could not reach Mr. Balducci on his phone at his office, was advised he was in Washington, D.C., and would not be back until Thursday, which is day after tomorrow. I’m going to attempt to reach Mr. Balducci on his cell phone, and, again, I’m going to attempt to make a recorded telephone call to him from my office number. The time is approximately three minutes until five p.m. on this, the eleventh day of September.”

Instead of talking with Balducci, the judge got his cell phone’s voice mail. Even as he spun one of the last strands in his web, Lackey could not resist another joke based on the recent news that Vice-President Cheney had inadvertently wounded a hunting companion.

“Baldooch,” Lackey said, “I know you’re running around those ivory
towers. If you run into Cheney, tell him I’m going to pass on the duck hunt.”

Then the judge became more serious. “I do need to talk to you about this matter that we’re both concerned about. I’ve got something I want to run by you and see what you think about it.”

    
A week later, Lackey finally found Balducci by telephone at his New Albany office. On a wry note, he inquired, “You made it back from the ivory towers?”

“I have,” Balducci said. “I been up there tending to good government, judge.”

They joshed with each other for a moment more, then Lackey lowered his voice and asked, “Are you where you can talk?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well, I’ve got something to say to you, and it may shock you,” the judge said. He sighed audibly and continued. “I’ve been thinking about this thing with Mr. Scruggs and them, and I want to help ’em any way I can.” He drew a deep breath again. “I don’t know what my future holds. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to hang in here and do what I need to do. What I’m gonna say is what I’ve never said to anybody before. I want you to understand that because I trust you.”

Balducci, who had been punctuating each of Lackey’s sentences with “yes, sir” and “right,” underscored the expression of trust. “You can. You well should, judge. This is, as I like to say, dead man stuff.”

Lackey snorted a laugh and began to talk elliptically about his target. “I don’t know him, you know, and I don’t know what his reaction might be one way or the other.” To be sure Balducci understood, Lackey added, “When I say ‘his,’ I’m talking about Mr. Scruggs.” This introduced Scruggs’s name to the FBI recording.

“Right,” Balducci said.

“I know he is a very powerful man, and apparently extremely sharp. Sometime I’d like to meet him. But let me cut to the chase.”

“Sure,” Balducci said, who employed another idiom. “Put the corn on the ground.”

“If I help ’em, would they help me?”

“I think, no question that would happen. Yes, sir.”

“We’d have to work something out down the road,” the judge said. “But I think that’s absolutely in the cards.”

“Listen,” Balducci said, taking charge of the situation. “I’m the one that needs to handle that.”

Fumbling for words, Lackey said he did not want Steve Patterson brought into the plot. He trusted only Balducci. He implied that some action needed to be taken soon because Grady Tollison was putting pressure on him to resolve the Jones case. “Talk to your man. Whatever you need to do. Holler back at me.”

“I can tell you I know that I can get that done,” Balducci replied quickly. “I mean, you wanna just leave that to my discretion? Or do you wanna give me some kind of ideas of what I need to do?”

“I’m not talking about a mountain,” the judge said. “Just kind of help me over a little hump I’ve got.”

“I gotcha.”

“It’s my making, my hump, and I can’t blame anybody else but me.” Suggesting that he had fallen into hard financial straits, he talked wistfully of his country practice of law, the job he had given up to become a judge.

“That’s all part of the world,” said Balducci. “I understand all of that, judge. And that’s no problem.” He said he would drive over to see Lackey before the week was out.
If he could get a favorable ruling for Scruggs, whatever the cost, it might provide the binding for a stronger relationship between the Patterson-Balducci operation, in its infancy, and one of the most recognized trial lawyers in the land.

    
Listening to the conversation afterward, the federal prosecutors in Oxford felt a surge of accomplishment. This was the breakthrough they had worked toward for months. The old judge had laid down the bait, and his young friend had taken it.

The development was particularly satisfying to Tom Dawson. He had been contemptuous of Scruggs even before the investigation began. Now, with Hailman’s retirement, Dawson’s title as first assistant U.S. attorney effectively put him in charge. The sting operation had the potential to turn into the dream of any prosecutor: building an ironclad case against a famous figure.

A decade earlier, Dawson had been on the team of independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the Whitewater investigation that led to President Clinton. Dawson had been recruited from his job in Oxford to take a temporary position, and he spent eighteen months on the case. He helped edit the papers used in the impeachment, yet it was Starr and his chief deputies who got the headlines, and Dawson returned quietly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office where he had spent most of his career. Now only a year from retirement himself, Dawson saw the Scruggs case as his crowning achievement.

He had grown up in Meridian, Mississippi, where his father served at a naval air station. Law had not been in his future plans when he attended Southwestern at Memphis and graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. Dawson majored instead in chemistry, but took the law school admission test as a lark with his fraternity brother Sam Davis. They both wound up at the Ole Miss law school, and forty years later both were back in Oxford—Dawson as a federal prosecutor and Davis as dean of the law school.

Dawson’s first job had been with the Meridian law firm of Tom Bourdeaux, one of William Winter’s closest friends, and Dawson’s first brush with serious politics came in support of one of Winter’s campaigns. However, Dawson’s personal politics grew more conservative over the years. Interviewed for a place at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Nixon administration, Dawson admitted that he had probably “lost a case in every court of record in Mississippi.” His prospective employer liked that response, for he felt that good lawyers learned from losing. Dawson spent three years in Washington, specializing in white-collar crime, then came back to Mississippi in 1975 to take a job in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oxford. Other than his Whitewater assignment, he had been there ever since. He liked the camaraderie, comparing it to a legal
M.A.S.H.
unit, where humor could be found in serious business.

Dawson preferred the role of the “bad cop” in interrogations. He could look intimidating, a bit like a character from the Old West. He was bald, but retained a fringe of long hair that fell close to his neck to complement a closely sculptured beard.

Even with the Scruggs investigation at an early stage, Dawson began preparing for the showdown. He kept separate files for a possible cross-examination of Scruggs or a closing argument at a trial. In his research, he uncovered an item he intended to use. It came from remarks Scruggs had made five years earlier during a panel discussion about legal venues.
The event had been sponsored by Prudential Financial, and Scruggs delivered a lecture on his concept of “magic jurisdictions.” Describing the convergence of politics and law and how it augured against impersonal corporations, he said:

Dawson savored the opportunity to challenge Scruggs in the courtroom. As he directed the investigation with deliberate timing, he wanted to be sure that every element was put in its proper place. And useful tidbits kept coming with almost every wiretapped conversation.

    
Despite Lackey’s admonition not to talk of the situation with Steve Patterson, Balducci immediately told his partner of the judge’s suggestion of a bribe.

“How much?” Patterson asked.

Balducci said he didn’t know yet, but planned to meet with Lackey in a couple of days.

“Find out how much he wants,” Patterson instructed his partner.

Fixing the case would be worth the risk if it succeeded in currying favor with Scruggs, because Scruggs represented the font of fresh infusions of money. Lackey’s overture had come during a time of growing desperation over the future of their new law firm in New Albany. Though Balducci had spoken confidently to Lackey of the influential connections that he and Patterson had made, of the important names that had been lined up for the firm’s letterhead, of his own satisfaction in reaching this plateau in his profession, he and his partner were in financial distress.
Their money had virtually run out, squandered on private planes to impress others and payments to secure audiences with potential clients. Even the $500,000 that Scruggs had paid the two men, in $100,000 increments, over the summer for interceding with Attorney General Jim Hood was gone.

Law firms in Mississippi were oozing money. In the wake of the tobacco settlement, literally millions and millions of dollars circulated in the hands of a loose network of lawyers—so much money, in a poor state, that it was crazy. Patterson and Balducci had dreamed of cashing in on a bonanza through Scruggs, but it had not yet worked out that way. Meanwhile, the money that constituted their grubstake had seemed to vanish, and their operating funds were perilously low.

Still, the two men kept up an appearance of stability.
Showing no
signs of trouble, they flew to Washington and Jackson to make alliances with influence peddlers and lobbyists. They stayed in fine hotels and dined in expensive restaurants. They even traveled, in separate trips, overseas. If they were to share in Scruggs’s windfall, it was essential to live like Scruggs.