The Pelican Brief (2 page)

The Chief rocked quickly in his chair. The racket from outside was unnerving. This meeting had dragged on long enough. “Forget Rosenberg. Maybe he’ll die in his sleep. I’m more concerned over Jensen.”

“Jensen’s a problem,” Lewis said, flipping pages.

“I know he’s a problem,” Runyan said slowly.
“He’s an embarrassment. Now he thinks he’s a liberal. Votes like Rosenberg half the time. Next month, he’ll be a white supremacist and support segregated schools. Then he’ll fall in love with the Indians and want to give them Montana. It’s like having a retarded child.”

“He’s being treated for depression, you know.”

“I know, I know. He tells me about it. I’m his father figure. What drug?”

“Prozac.”

The Chief dug under his fingernails. “What about that aerobics instructor he was seeing? She still around?”

“Not really, Chief. I don’t think he cares for women.” Lewis was smug. He knew more. He glanced at one of his agents and confirmed this juicy little tidbit.

Runyan ignored it, didn’t want to hear it. “Is he cooperating?”

“Of course not. In many ways he’s worse than Rosenberg. He allows us to escort him to his apartment building, then makes us sit in the parking lot all night. He’s seven floors up, remember. We can’t even sit in the lobby. Might upset his neighbors, he says. So we sit in the car. There are ten ways in and out of the building, and it’s impossible to protect him. He likes to play hide-and-seek with us. He sneaks around all the time, so we never know if he’s in the building or not. At least with Rosenberg we know where he is all night. Jensen’s impossible.”

“Great. If you can’t follow him, how could an assassin?”

Lewis hadn’t thought of this. He missed the humor.
“The Director is very concerned with Justice Jensen’s safety.”

“He doesn’t receive that many threats.”

“Number six on the list, just a few less than you, your honor.”

“Oh. So I’m in fifth place.”

“Yes. Just behind Justice Manning. He’s cooperating, by the way. Fully.”

“He’s afraid of his shadow,” the Chief said, then hesitated. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Lewis ignored it. “In fact, the cooperation has been reasonably good, except for Rosenberg and Jensen. Justice Stone bitches a lot, but he listens to us.”

“He bitches at everyone, so don’t take it personally. Where do you suppose Jensen sneaks off to?”

Lewis glanced at one of his agents. “We have no idea.”

A large section of the mob suddenly came together in one unrestrained chorus, and everyone on the streets seemed to join in. The Chief could not ignore it. The windows vibrated. He stood and called an end to this meeting.

________

Justice Glenn Jensen’s office was on the second floor, away from the streets and the noise. It was a spacious room, yet the smallest of the nine. Jensen was the youngest of the nine, and he was lucky to have an office. When nominated six years earlier at the age of forty-two, he was thought to be a strict constructionist with deep conservative beliefs, much like the man who nominated him. His Senate confirmation had
been a slugfest. Before the Judiciary Committee, Jensen performed poorly. On sensitive issues he straddled the fence, and got kicked from both sides. The Republicans were embarrassed. The Democrats smelled blood. The President twisted arms until they broke, and Jensen was confirmed by one very reluctant vote.

But he made it, for life. In his six years, he had pleased no one. Hurt deeply by his confirmation hearings, he vowed to find compassion and rule with it. This had angered Republicans. They felt betrayed, especially when he discovered a latent passion for the rights of criminals. With scarce ideological strain, he quickly left the right, moved to the center, then to the left. Then, with legal scholars scratching their little goatees, Jensen would bolt back to the right and join Justice Sloan in one of his obnoxious antiwomen dissents. Jensen was not fond of women. He was neutral on prayer, skeptical of free speech, sympathetic to tax protestors, indifferent to Indians, afraid of blacks, tough on pornographers, soft on criminals, and fairly consistent in his protection of the environment. And, to the further dismay of the Republicans who shed blood to get him confirmed, Jensen had shown a troubling sympathy for the rights of homosexuals.

At his request, a nasty case called
Dumond
had been assigned to him. Ronald Dumond had lived with his male lover for eight years. They were a happy couple, totally devoted to each other, and quite content to share life’s experiences. They wanted to marry, but Ohio laws prohibited such a union. Then the lover caught AIDS, and died a horrible death. Ronald knew exactly how to bury him, but then the lover’s family
intervened and excluded Ronald from the funeral and burial. Distraught, Ronald sued the family, claiming emotional and psychological damage. The case had bounced around the lower courts for six years, and now had suddenly found itself sitting on Jensen’s desk.

At issue was the rights of “spouses” of gays.
Dumond
had become a battle cry for gay activists. The mere mention of
Dumond
had caused street fights.

And Jensen had the case. The door to his smaller office was closed. Jensen and his three clerks sat around the conference table. They had spent two hours on
Dumond,
and gone nowhere. They were tired of arguing. One clerk, a liberal from Cornell, wanted a broad pronouncement granting sweeping rights to gay partners. Jensen wanted this too, but was not ready to admit it. The other two clerks were skeptical. They knew, as did Jensen, that a majority of five would be impossible.

Talk turned to other matters.

“The Chief’s ticked off at you, Glenn,” said the clerk from Duke. They called him by his first name in chambers. “Justice” was such an awkward title.

Glenn rubbed his eyes. “What else is new?”

“One of his clerks wanted me to know that the Chief and the FBI are worried about your safety. Says you’re not cooperating, and the Chief’s rather disturbed. He wanted me to pass it along.” Everything was passed along through the clerks’ network. Everything.

“He’s supposed to be worried. That’s his job.”

“He wants to assign two more Fibbies as bodyguards, and they want access to your apartment. And
the FBI wants to drive you to and from work. And they want to restrict your travel.”

“I’ve already heard this.”

“Yeah, we know. But the Chief’s clerk said the Chief wants us to prevail upon you to cooperate with the FBI so that they can save your life.”

“I see.”

“And so we’re just prevailing upon you.”

“Thanks. Go back to the network and tell the Chief’s clerk that you not only prevailed upon me but you raised all sorts of hell with me and that I appreciated all of your prevailing and hell-raising, but it went in one ear and out the other. Tell them Glenn considers himself a big boy.”

“Sure, Glenn. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“Not in the least.”

2
________

THOMAS CALLAHAN was one of Tulane’s more popular professors, primarily because he refused to schedule classes before 11 A.M. He drank a lot, as did most of his students, and for him the first few hours of each morning were needed for sleep, then resuscitation. Nine and ten o’clock classes were abominations. He was also popular because he was cool—faded jeans, tweed jackets with well-worn elbow patches, no socks, no ties. The liberal-chic-academic look. He was forty-five, but with dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses he could pass for thirty-five, not that he gave a damn how old he looked. He shaved once a week, when it started itching; and when the weather was cool, which was seldom in New Orleans, he would grow a beard. He had a history of closeness with female students.

He was also popular because he taught constitutional law, a most unpopular course but a required one. Due to his sheer brilliance and coolness he actually made con law interesting. No one else at Tulane could do this. No one wanted to, really, so the students
fought to sit in con law under Callahan at eleven, three mornings a week.

Eighty of them sat behind six elevated rows and whispered as Callahan stood in front of his desk and cleaned his glasses. It was exactly five after eleven, still too early, he thought.

“Who understands Rosenberg’s dissent in
Nash v. New Jersey
?” All heads lowered and the room was silent. Must be a bad hangover. His eyes were red. When he started with Rosenberg it usually meant a rough lecture. No one volunteered.
Nash?
Callahan looked slowly, methodically around the room, and waited. Dead silence.

The doorknob clicked loudly and broke the tension. The door opened quickly and an attractive young female in tight washed jeans and a cotton sweater slid elegantly through it and sort of glided along the wall to the third row, where she deftly maneuvered between the crowded seats until she came to hers and sat down. The guys on the fourth row watched in admiration. The guys on the fifth row strained for a peek. For two brutal years now, one of the few pleasures of law school had been to watch as she graced the halls and rooms with her long legs and baggy sweaters. There was a fabulous body in there somewhere, they could tell. But she was not one to flaunt it. She was just one of the gang, and adhered to the law school dress code of jeans and flannel shirts and old sweaters and oversized khakis. What they wouldn’t give for a black leather miniskirt.

She flashed a quick smile at the guy seated next to her, and for a second Callahan and his
Nash
question were forgotten. Her dark red hair fell just to the
shoulders. She was that perfect little cheerleader with the perfect teeth and perfect hair that every boy fell in love with at least twice in high school. And maybe at least once in law school.

Callahan was ignoring this entry. Had she been a first-year student, and afraid of him, he might have ripped into her and screamed a few times. “You’re never late for court!” was the old standby law professors had beaten to death.

But Callahan was not in a screaming mood, and Darby Shaw was not afraid of him, and for a split second he wondered if anyone knew he was sleeping with her. Probably not. She had insisted on absolute secrecy.

“Has anyone read Rosenberg’s dissent in
Nash v. New Jersey
?” Suddenly, he had the spotlight again, and there was dead silence. A raised hand could mean constant grilling for the next thirty minutes. No volunteers. The smokers on the back row fired up their cigarettes. Most of the eighty scribbled aimlessly on legal pads. All heads were bowed. It would be too obvious and risky to flip through the casebook and find
Nash;
too late for that. Any movement might attract attention. Someone was about to be nailed.

Nash
was not in the casebook. It was one of a dozen minor cases Callahan had hurriedly mentioned a week ago, and now he was anxious to see if anyone had read it. He was famous for this. His final exam covered twelve hundred cases, a thousand of which were not in the casebook. The exam was a nightmare, but he was really a sweetheart, a soft grader, and it was a rare dumbass who flunked the course.

He did not appear to be a sweetheart at this moment.
He looked around the room. Time for a victim. “How about it, Mr. Sallinger? Can you explain Rosenberg’s dissent?”

Instantly from the fourth row, Sallinger said, “No sir.”

“I see. Might that be because you haven’t read Rosenberg’s dissent?”

“It might. Yes sir.”

Callahan glared at him. The red eyes made the arrogant scowl all the more menacing. Only Sallinger saw it though, since everyone else was glued to their legal pads. “And why not?”

“Because I try not to read dissents. Especially Rosenberg’s.”

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Sallinger had opted to fight back, but he had no ammo.

“Something against Rosenberg, Mr. Sallinger?”

Callahan revered Rosenberg. Worshiped him. Read books about the man and his opinions. Studied him. Even dined with him once.

Sallinger fidgeted nervously. “Oh no, sir. I just don’t like dissents.”

There was a bit of humor in Sallinger’s responses, but not a smile was cracked. Later, over a beer, he and his buddies would roar with laughter when it was told and retold about Sallinger and his distaste for dissents, especially Rosenberg’s. But not now.

“I see. Do you read majority opinions?”

Hesitation. Sallinger’s feeble attempt at sparring was about to cause humiliation. “Yes sir. Lots of them.”

“Great. Explain, then, if you will, the majority opinion in
Nash v. New Jersey.
”

Sallinger had never heard of
Nash
, but he would now remember it for the rest of his legal career. “I don’t think I’ve read that one.”

“So you don’t read dissents, Mr. Sallinger, and now we learn that you also neglect majorities. What do you read, Mr. Sallinger, romance novels, tabloids?”

There was some extremely light laughter from behind the fourth row, and it came from students who felt obligated to laugh but at the same time did not wish to call attention to themselves.

Sallinger, red-faced, just stared at Callahan.

“Why haven’t you read the case, Mr. Sallinger?” Callahan demanded.

“I don’t know. I, uh, just missed it, I guess.”

Callahan took it well. “I’m not surprised. I mentioned it last week. Last Wednesday, to be exact. It’ll be on the final exam. I don’t understand why you would ignore a case that you’ll see on the final.” Callahan was pacing now, slowly, in front of his desk, staring at the students. “Did anyone bother to read it?”

Silence. Callahan stared at the floor, and allowed the silence to sink in. All eyes were down, all pens and pencils frozen. Smoke billowed from the back row.

Finally, slowly, from the fourth seat on the third row, Darby Shaw lifted her hand slightly, and the class breathed a collective sigh of relief. She had saved them again. It was sort of expected of her. Number two in their class and within striking distance of number one, she could recite the facts and holdings and concurrences and dissents and majority opinions to virtually every case Callahan could spit at them. She
missed nothing. The perfect little cheerleader had graduated magna cum laude with a degree in biology, and planned to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in law, and then make a nice living suing chemical companies for trashing the environment.