The Road to Omaha (24 page)

“I
am
sorry,” repeated Devereaux as they walked out into the hotel lobby.

“It’s okay. To tell you the truth, it was a real mallet. I’ve never been hit with that one before.”

“Then the men of Boston have lost their eyesight,” said Sam brightly, but innocently, no leer in his statement.

“You
do
remind me of him.”

“I hope the resemblance isn’t too unpleasant.”

“At the moment,
mezzo-metz
.… If you’re going into an early conference, change your trousers.”

“
Oh
, no. This stressed-out legal beagle is taking a taxi home to get unwound before the next dog race.”

“I’m getting a taxi, too.”

“At least let me tip the doorman, my apology thus backed up with a couple of bucks.”

“Very lawyerlike. Maybe you
are
good.”

“Not bad. I wish you needed legal advice.”

“Sorry, Clarence Darrow, it’s in oversupply.”

Out on the pavement and the doorman attended to, Devereaux held the door of the taxi as she climbed inside. “In light of my asinine behavior, I don’t suppose you’d care to meet me again.”

“It’s not your behavior, Counselor,” answered the siren of his morning dreams as she once again opened her purse, this time removing a piece of paper—to Sam’s relief, “but I’m only here for a day or two and my court calendar is jammed.”

“Sorry about that,” said Devereaux, perplexed. And then his lady of the morning sunlight turned to the driver and gave him the address of her destination. “Christ
Almighty
!” whispered Sam in shock as he involuntarily closed the door.

Conference … Clarence Darrow … Counselor—court calendar
! The address the bitch gave was his own
house
!

Sitting anxiously forward in his chair in the Oval Office, the President of the United States was annoyed,
really
annoyed, as he gripped the telephone in his hand. “Now, come
on
, Reebock, give a little, you ca-ca-faced son of a doggie girl! The Court has to take
some
responsibility if there’s even an outside possibility that we all get our tailgates blown away by those aggressor islands in the Caribbean, to say nothing of the superpowers in Central America!”

“Mr. President,” intoned the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, his somber vocal presence marred by a nasal twang. “Our system of the rule of law in an open society requires expeditious adjudication of legal redress, the relief from injury swift and adequately compensatory. Therefore the Wopotami hearings must be made public. To coin a phrase, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’ ”

“I’ve heard that before, Reebock, you didn’t make it up.”

“Really? No doubt I was the inspiration. I’m known for that sort of thing, I’m told.”

“Yes, well, along those lines,
Mr
. Chief Justice—”

“Inspiring people, you mean?” interrupted the leader of the Supreme Court. “Do tell.”

“No, regarding things you’re known for,” corrected the President. “I’ve just had a call from Vincent Mangee … Mangaa—that fellow over at the CIA.”

“In my early days as a young prosecutor, Mr. President, he was known as Vinnie the Bam-Bam.”

“No kidding?”

“One does not kid about such sobriquets, sir.”

“I guess not. Gosh, it sounds like it could sort of deflate his degree from Oxford.”

“From
where
?”

“It’s not important, Reebock, but it’s a real coincidence that you should mention your early days as a prosecutor—”

“A very
young
prosecutor, Mr. President,” broke in the Chief Justice apprehensively.

“Yes, Vincent understands that. He even said there’s probably no relevance now—today, so many years later—but still we’ve all got to cover our backsides, because this Wopotami thing is going to set off a national debate, I mean a real zing doozer!”

“I’m afraid that’s your problem, Mr. President, or should I say the combined responsibilities of the Executive and the Legislative branches.” The Chief Justice paused, then added, stifling a giggle. “It’s in your lap, baby—
tee hee.
”

“
Reebock
, I heard that!”

“Terribly sorry, sir, an insect in my nose.… I’m merely trying to explain that we are not an activist Court. We do not make the laws, we
uphold
them in the grand tradition of strict constructionists. And as you know, several members of the Court feel strongly that the Wopotami case may be built on a firm foundation of constitutional law, although they certainly haven’t rendered any final decisions, and they better not. However, to keep the hearings closed would be construed as
interpreting
that great document like those dirty liberals do, not reflecting its true intent.”

“Golly, I know that,” said the President, drawing out his words plaintively, “and that’s what’s got Vincent upset. All your individual opinions will be studied by scholars, and newspaper editors and columnists and, well, darn it to doo-doo-ville, everybody! And you could be in trouble, Reebock.”

“
Me?… I
don’t support the goddamn thing! My correct-thinking colleagues and I will argue until we bury those
sanctimonious idiots who keep throwing that garbage of ‘collective conscience’ at us. We’ll run them out of the Court before we give in, and they know it. Good
Christ
, you think I’d give those arrow-happy aborigines a nickel’s worth of muleshit? They’re no better than the
Negroes
!”

“That’s what Vincent figured—”

“Figured what?”

“It seems that when you were a young assistant prosecutor there was a definite pattern in your indictments and the cases you tried—”

“With a record of convictions that was the envy of the office!”

“Almost exclusively black and Hispanic,” completed the President.

“Hell, yes, and I got those mothers! They were the ones committing all the crimes, you know.”

“
All
of them?”

“Let’s put it this way … the ones I wanted to go after for the good of the country. With felonies on their records, they couldn’t vote!”

“Vincent figured that, too.”

“What are you driving at, Mr. President?”

“Frankly, Vincent’s trying to protect you, protect your place in history.”

“
What
?”

“Although you’re the strictest of the strict constructionists, you’re against the Wopotamis, yet I’m told you even refuse to read the brief. Is that because they’re ‘no better than the
Negroes
’? Do you really want to go down in the books as the racist Chief Justice who’s going to vote against the purported evidence because of the color of the plaintiff’s skin in a landmark decision?”

“Who could
think
that?” asked the flustered champion of constitutional law. “My interrogations will be filled with compassion ultimately overridden by the practical realities, which I’m firmly convinced will be the Court’s finding by at least three votes. The country will understand. The hearings must be open.”

“Would that mule ca-ca stand up against the published record of your excessive convictions of darker-skinned minorities as an assistant prosecutor—especially if that record
revealed that you frequently chose the public defenders, most of whom had rarely tried a case?”

“Oh, my God …! Those records could
surface
?”

“Not if you give Vincent time to expunge them. National security concerns, of course.”

“He could
do
that?”

“He says he can manage it.”

“The time?… I don’t know what my colleagues would say if I delay the public hearings. I can’t appear to be recalcitrant, it might look … heaven forbid … suspicious.”

“Vincent understands that, too. He knows that there are several members of the Court who can’t stand your ‘apricots’—I believe it’s a pejorative term, Reebock.”

“Christ, I’m being compromised for doing the right
thing
!”

“For the wrong reasons, Mr. Chief Justice. Vincent counted on it. What shall I tell him?”

“How long does he think it would take to … shall we say, remove the misunderstood materials that could lead to erroneous conclusions?”

“To do a thorough job, he says a year—”

“The Court would
revolt
!”

“He’ll settle for a week.”

“It’s yours.”

“He’ll manage it.”

Mangecavallo leaned back in his chair and relit his Monte Cristo cigar, a temporarily satisfied man. He had seen the light when everyone else, including Hymie the Hurricane, saw only the dark clouds of confusion. So the gumballs on the Supreme Court who were maybe leaning toward the vicious Wopotami savages were whistle-clean, there had to be another way to buy some time to catch this Thunder Head phony and either blow him full of holes or mess his head up so bad he’d be happy to call the whole thing off, labeling it for what it was: a very major scam. The suspicious five or six
frutti
got them nowhere, so why not look in the other direction, say with the big banana himself? That
fascista
couldn’t possibly vote for the Wopotamis; it just wasn’t in his heart. And since it wasn’t, what kind of
rotten heart was in his bigoted chest that made him immediately turn off his big brain? Maybe someone should inquire.

Now they had an extra week, which was about all they could hope for, what with the big banana’s popularity rating among his colleagues at zip-minus. And a week should be enough, since Little Joey the Shroud had cornered the Section-Eight General Lasagna with the Wopotami feathers hanging down to his ass in Boston, where, as everyone knew, accidents happened with alarming frequency. Maybe not in the New York-L.A.-Miami league, but it wasn’t small-time, either. Mangecavallo blew three perfect smoke rings and looked at his diamond-rimmed watch. The Shroud had two minutes left in the prescribed morning’s timespan to call; the unseen telephone buzzed in the lower right-hand section of the director’s desk. He reached down, opened the drawer, and picked it up. “Yes?”

“It’s Little Joey, Vin.”

“You always gotta wait until the last second to call? I told you, I got a high-level conference at ten o’clock and you make me nervous. Suppose this phone rang when the guys in suits were here in the office?”

“So you tell ’em it’s a wrong number.”

“
Pazzo
-head, they don’t see the phone!”

“You hire blind spies, Vinnie?”

“
Basta
. What’ve you got? Quick!”

“Hoo-hay, a bundle, Bam-Bam—”

“I
told
you—”

“Sorry, Vincenzo.… Anyway, quick, I gotta room at this fancy hotel like I mentioned before.”

“No long stories, Joey. I know you got a room last night down the hall from the yarmulke, so?”

“So much
activity
, Vin! The big General Indian Chief is here with the yarmulke, only they left for a couple of hours last night. Then the chief’s soldiers came back and
they
left after talkin’ to somebody
else
inside before the chief and the yarmulke came back. Then the old Jewish guy left, leavin’ the chief with whoever it was inside, but before that there was a lot of yellin’—I mean real
stridore
—and
then
the yarmulke left and everything was
silenzio.
”

“You’re tellin’ me, Little Joey, that the nest of this terrible
cospirazione
is right down the hall from you, right?”

“
Right
, Bam-Bam!… Sorry, Vin, it comes natural, you know what I mean, from the old days?”

“
Basta
. What else, although I think we got all we need? Can you find out who the crumb was inside—maybe just a broad, huh?”

“
Hoo-hay
, Vinnie, it was no broad and I
saw
him. He’s a mental case, a real
vegetale.
”

“What are you talkin’?”

“Like always, I keep the door open an inch, maybe an inch and a half, maybe two inches—”

“
Joey
!”

“Okay, okay. I see the
gumbar
come out and he goes to the elevators, right?”

“That makes him a mental case …?”

“No, Vin, his pants do.”

“
Huh
?”

“He’s pissed all over ’em! Big wet circles down to his knees—on both sides. I mean, he’s walkin’ out in public with his pants filled with pee! If that don’t make him a mental case, you tell me what does, huh, Bam-Bam?”

“He’s all shook up, that’s what he is,” concluded the astute director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “Around this place they call it ‘operational burn-out,’ or sometimes ‘deep-cover bends,’ depending on the mission.” Mangecavallo’s console hummed; it was his secretary’s line. “I only got a couple of seconds, Little Joey. Try to find out who this creep with the pissed-up trousers is, okay?”

“I
know
, Vinnie! I went to the front desk and made like a friend of a priest who was lookin’ for him on account of some personal tragedy and described him, although I didn’t make a big thing about the pants.… I thought maybe I should get a religious collar, you know what I mean, but I figured it would take too long—”

“
Joey
!” roared Mangecavallo. “
Stop
already! Who
is
he?”

“His name is Devereaux, and I’d better spell it out for you. He’s a sharp attorney in the big yarmulke’s firm.”

“He’s a ferocious un-American traitor, that’s what he
is,” pronounced the DCI, writing out the name as the Shroud spelled it. The director’s visible phone rang again; his visitors were impatient. “Stay put with your eyes open, Little Joey. I’ll be in touch.” Mangecavallo hung up and placed his private telephone back into the drawer. He then buzzed his secretary twice, the signal to admit subordinates. As he did so, he picked up a pencil and wrote out in block letters another name below that of Devereaux.
BROOKLYN
! Enough was enough; it was time for solid professionals.

Colonel Bradley “Hoot” Gibson, pilot of the still-airborne EC-135, the “Looking Glass” for the Strategic Air Command’s global operations, shouted into his radio. “Have you idiots gone to lunch on the last quasar beyond
Jupiter
? We’ve been up here for fifty-two hours, refueled three times, and apologized in six languages, two of which weren’t even in the fucking computers! Now, what the hell’s going
on
?”