The President's Assassin (20 page)

“How?”

“In a most interesting manner. One day, he just never came back to work.”

“He...what? He just quit?”

“In a manner of speaking. He accepted a position at Yale Law, teaching, I think, tort law. Calhoun learned afterward that, behind his back, Phillip had discussed partnerships with several of those large northern firms. That proved to be fruitless. Phillip’s lack of courtroom experience completely disqualified him, and he wasn’t willing to again start at the bottom. In the end, I’m sure he concluded, teaching was the only respectable escape. The pay was stingy, but with the money he had made at the firm, he could live quite comfortably.”

“And he of course blamed this on Calhoun.”

“Well, I’m sure he did.” She nodded. “Rightly so, I suppose. Though I also think Phillip would have been a miserable litigator. The man was gifted with a gloriously brilliant mind—but had no tact or charm, or even the ability to manufacture charm, the trick Calhoun so readily mastered. To be frank, both were disgustingly arrogant men, but Calhoun could hide it.”

I suggested, “But there’s more, isn’t there?”

“Between those two, there was always more, Mr. Drummond.” She sipped from her sherry and said, “Do you believe that these two very smart lawyers failed to create an agreement for what would happen in the event their firm dissolved? Both men kept all their money invested in the firm, withdrawing what was needed for their personal expenses, and left the remainder sheltered from taxes. This was another of Phillip’s brilliant ideas. Don’t you find that ironic?”

She looked at Jennie and me to be sure we understood. “So Calhoun simply decided to keep all the money.”

“And how did Phillip respond?” Jennie asked.

“In the way all lawyers respond.”

“He sued.”

“With great outrage. The matter was handled in a claims court here. Phillip represented himself, which was, I think, very naive on his part. But as I said, he had a very large ego, and I think he had always felt he could do better than Calhoun in court, if only given the chance. Of course, Calhoun tore him apart. He showed that Phillip had never taken a case to court and described him as nothing but a glorified clerk.”

I commented, “That’s why they always say lawyers should never represent themselves.”

But she wasn’t interested in my insights; she looked at Jennie and said, “Afterward, Phillip swore Calhoun had arranged to have the case handled by a judge he was friendly with. He also insisted that Calhoun had blocked him from getting access to the firm’s records, and the founding document Calhoun showed the court had been doctored to indicate Phillip was never a full partner.”

“He got nothing?” I asked.

“Oh...not nothing, Mr. Drummond. He asked for four million. He walked away with thirty thousand.”

“And about the judge being a friend of Calhoun’s—was he?”

“Well...I don’t know that they were friends, exactly. They attended the same private school together, and were members of the same country club, and the same church.” With a bemused half-smile she concluded, “I suppose they were...acquainted.”

Jennie asked, “And what was Fineberg’s response?”

“As a civil case, there was no appeal. But anyway, I think he concluded the game was rigged against him in this city. He left bitter, and we never heard from him again.”

“And the firm?”

“For about six months, Calhoun tried going it alone. But without its legal mastermind, he began to lose large cases, and—”

“And he arranged a judgeship,” I said.

“Yes, Mr. Drummond. And frankly, it better suited his natural talents and temperament. It was said that he ran the tightest courtroom in the Commonwealth. My husband worshipped law and order, as you might imagine. Felons did not get mercy before his bar.”

“I’ll bet.” In fact, it was all beginning to make sense. But we needed to move this along, and I said, “So the years passed, and eventually Calhoun was notified he was under consideration for the Supreme Court. What happened?”

Of course, Jennie and I had already figured out what happened: Phillip Fineberg got his long-awaited revenge. Still, it was important to understand who else was involved, and how. In general terms, we now had a partial understanding of how one victim was connected to Jason Barnes. We needed to advance that understanding, and we needed to establish connections to the others, to piece together how a family spat became mass murder.

After a moment, Margaret said, “About seven months ago, Calhoun was asked to visit the Justice Department, where he met with a smart young lawyer from the White House and several senior Justice people. They notified him he was on the President’s final list. It had come down to two final candidates; the President wanted a trial judge with a strict law-and-order pedigree, and Calhoun had the inside edge. They had reached the point of no return, the lawyer advised him. So he asked two questions—was there anything in Calhoun’s background they should be aware of, and was he willing to expose himself to the scrutiny involved in these matters.”

Jennie commented, “Was this notification a surprise for Calhoun?”

The sherry had gone to her head, and she giggled. “Goodness, no...he had plotted this moment for years. His father’s failure to make the court was, I think, a burden his whole life. And when Phillip was brought onto the court ten years ago, it was, for Calhoun, as though he had been electrocuted. As I said, the two men were bitterly competitive.”

I got up and took her glass, which was again empty, and went to retrieve another refill. Margaret looked exhausted and tipsy, and her speech was becoming slurred. Jennie asked her, “And what happened?”

“Apparently the White House circulated the list of candidates with the serving justices.”

“I would’ve thought that was done earlier in the process,” I commented.

“I would guess, Mr. Drummond, that it
was
done earlier.”

Of course. Fineberg probably waved off on Calhoun’s name in the early rounds, allowing him to become a finalist, allowing him to think the high court was within reach, and allowing his name to surface publicly. These two guys had long memories, and they played for keeps. The public humiliation of a federal judge is relevant only to his own jurisdiction, whereas a finalist for the Sacred Tribunal dances on the largest stage, and the fall from grace would be from an even loftier height. In fact, I wondered if it was Fineberg who found a way to introduce Barnes for consideration to the court in the first place. Margaret suggested she thought this was the case and added, “Phillip plotted his moment brilliantly. He began feeding damaging tales and insinuations about Calhoun, providing leads to the background investigators. Calhoun was recalled to Washington several times to offer his side of things.”

“What kind of things?” Jennie asked.

“That as a lawyer, Calhoun had bribed some judges. That as a city magistrate he had done a few favors for the governor—a quid pro quo arrangement—in return for which the governor would assure Calhoun’s elevation to the federal bench.”

“Was there any truth to the charges?” Jennie asked.

“I...well, Calhoun insisted to me they were all blatant fabrications.”

“But they weren’t, were they?”

“No.” She looked at Jennie. “I knew they were true. Calhoun, as I said, was very ambitious and calculating.”

“And controlling,” Jennie commented.

“Yes, and meticulous. It was not his way to leave things to chance.”

Before anyone could come up with another adjective, I asked Margaret, “When did your husband learn Fineberg was behind this?”

“He knew—at least, he suspected Phillip immediately. And that truly infuriated him. But Calhoun was nothing if not willful. He was sure he could bull and lie his way through.” She looked at us and added, “Unfortunately for Calhoun, Phillip proved smarter than him.”

“How?” I asked.

She looked at me. “How do you think, Mr. Drummond?”

I considered it. “He kept evidence from their partnership. Nothing implicating him—but something that proved Calhoun had violated the law.”

“Very good. Phillip had three canceled checks, signed by Calhoun. All for very large sums, all to judges involved in important cases Calhoun took to trial.”

Jennie gave me a funny look, then asked Mrs. Barnes, “He gave those checks to the Justice Department?”

“It was my understanding that he gave them to people in your Bureau who were performing the investigation on Calhoun’s suitability. Your Director then carried everything over to the White House.”

There was no need to ask what happened at the White House. She could only offer conjecture where we needed facts. But neither was it hard to piece together. Townsend took the disclosures to the President’s legal counsel, together they took it to Terrence Belknap, the White House Chief of Staff, who accompanied them to see the President.

They stood around in the Oval Office and stared at those canceled checks and they realized Calhoun Barnes also needed to be canceled. At some point on the merry-go-round, Merrill Benedict, the White House spokesman, probably was instructed to quash the leaked reports about Barnes being a leading candidate, and perhaps to salt the ground with a few hints about Barnes’s past, present, and maybe, about his future.

Margaret Barnes looked at me and held out her glass. I retrieved it and returned to the bar. Over my shoulder I asked her, “How did your husband learn his candidacy was in trouble?”

“He was recalled to Washington again, to meet with the Attorney General himself. Not only was Calhoun’s nomination scratched, he was told he would also be charged. A task force had been created to investigate, though the evidence was already sufficient to ask Calhoun to resign from the federal bench immediately.”

“And did he?”

“No...he...well, he was shocked and very upset. He asked to be allowed to think about it overnight, and was granted that wish.”

Jennie suggested, “He then came home and he told you about all this?” Mrs. Barnes nodded, and Jennie asked, “What did you do, Margaret?”

After a long hesitation, she said, “Well...he was, as I said, upset...crushed, actually. I...I allowed him to vent. He cried...like a little child...he kept bawling. I told him I was heartbroken for him, that this was so unfair, that Phillip was a mean and spiteful bastard.” She hesitated a moment, staring off into space. “I told him we’d get through this, and to go to bed. He...he said he wanted a nightcap, here...in the study, to think this out. I wish now...well, I wish I had talked him out of it.” She stared at Jennie. She pointed up at a beamed rafter, and then at a short stool on rollers beside the bookshelf. “Right here...in this very room.”

It was amazing, I thought, how good Jennie was at this, how falsely sensitive, and how blithely intuitive. I was aware that profilers are trained not only in developing sketches of killers but they are also masters of the art of interrogation. Yet, as in art and war, good training and practice only get you so far. Truly, Special Agent Margold was a prodigy. She placed a hand on Margaret Barnes’s shoulder and said, not all that softly, “You’re lying.”

Margaret recoiled. “I...I don’t understand what you mean?”

Jennie said, “You did not tell Calhoun it would be okay. You told Calhoun he had destroyed everything. You told him his career was over, ruined, that he had dishonored himself, and this family. And you suggested there was only one way out—only one way to short-circuit an investigation...one simple way to avoid the utter shame and disgrace that would follow. You planted the seed in his head, and you prayed he would do it. Didn’t you?”

Margaret stared at Jennie a moment, a bit surprised and a lot shocked that her pal, the good cop, had suddenly become a bad cop and was not really her pal at all. She shook her head in denial. “No...I did not...I wouldn’t—”

“In fact,” Jennie continued, more harshly, “there was one thing you didn’t tell him. You didn’t describe how Phillip learned of his bribes, or where Phillip got those canceled checks.”

Margaret Barnes was now staring into her sherry glass. Clearly Jennie Margold had penetrated a great deal further into this family’s maelstrom of hatreds and treachery than she was meant to go.

After a moment, Jennie insisted, “You told us Phillip lost his case against Calhoun because he lacked access to the firm records. But aside from that, surely Calhoun was too sly to bribe judges with traceable checks from his firm’s account. He would’ve used your private account. Copies of those checks are in the Bureau’s possession—would you like me to make a call to verify which account they were drawn from? Perhaps you’d rather have me access your phone records during that month, to see if you and Phillip were in contact?”

Margaret wasn’t going to confirm this charge, but neither did she try to deny it. Though, in fact, it didn’t matter. We needed neither her confirmation nor her disavowal, and suggesting suicide to her husband—no matter how exquisitely timed—is not even a misdemeanor, much less a crime.

She continued to stare at Jennie, and in some weird way I thought Margaret Barnes was glad that we knew the whole truth. Her husband had crippled her, destroyed her life, alienated and corrupted her child, and in the end she had turned out not to be the numbingly passive lamb she appeared.

I looked at my watch. It was after two. I said, “Mrs. Barnes, when was the last time you heard from your son?”

“Not in years.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, I do not.”

“Can you give us the names of any of Calhoun’s close friends, anybody who might know?”

“I don’t know his close friends.”

“If you hear from him, will you call?”

“Certainly.” She was lying, of course.

I looked at Jennie. “Any more questions?”

“No.”

We both stood. I asked Mrs. Barnes, “Do you need assistance getting to your bedroom?”

“No, I...I believe I will just sit here awhile.”

We bid her good night, and left her cradling her sherry in the room where her former husband stored his greatest feats, and where she stored her greatest memory.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN