The Sleepless (2 page)

Eva had obviously heard the helicopter, too. But for some reason she seemed to be determined to ignore it. 

‘The helicopter,’ he said, lifting a finger; and she said, ‘Yes’, but that was all. Perhaps she was suddenly feeling afraid of the new life to which the helicopter would be taking them. Perhaps she was afraid of John encountering another Elizabeth – an even more glamorous and sexually exciting Elizabeth, knowing what the girls were like in Washington. Girls might be attracted to rock stars; but in Eva’s experience, they were always ten times more attracted to politicians, or industrialists, or judges – even if they were middle-aged and balding and fat. Girls didn’t care about middle-aged and balding and fat. They really didn’t. It was the aura of power that turned them on. And a Supreme Court Justice possessed not just the aura of power, but the aura of
ultimate
power. There were hundreds of rock stars, scores of eligible actors: but there were only nine Supreme Court Justices, and seven of them were over the age of sixty-five. To be perfectly crude about it, John’s appointment had made him one of the most fuckable men in America. 

John glanced at Eva and thought he could guess what the problem was. These days, he found it difficult to tell her that he loved her so much. He was always afraid of sounding hypocritical. In truth, he loved her in a very different way than he had when he first met her. But he still liked her, still depended on her, and he still found deep satisfaction in making love to her – although sometimes, when he climaxed, and the bedside lamps were still on, he caught her turning her face away from him, and staring at the wall as if in contempt? or disinterest? or maybe pain? He really didn’t know. He felt that he couldn’t get close to the core of her personality any longer. But he was willing to keep on trying. Maybe one day she would let him back in. 

She was, after all, very beautiful. She was the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Hunter Hamilton III, of Lynnfield, and she was a sleek, slim woman who reminded everybody she met of an upper-crust Julia Roberts. Ash blonde, impeccably dressed, impeccably mannered, wealthy in her own right. Yet John had always felt that their marriage had one piece missing, a jigsaw without that one last piece of wall, or sky, or a woman standing in the background without a face. And after his affair with Elizabeth, it seemed as if he kept discovering every day that there were more pieces missing. 

The roaring of the helicopter grew louder; and after a minute or two they felt it pass directly over the house, and the antique silver coffee spoons vibrated in their saucers. 

‘He’s early,’ Eva remarked. ‘It’s only a quarter to eleven.’ 

Sissy came into the morning room – their fourteen-year-old daughter, wearing a primrose-yellow suit to match mommy’s. She looked much more like her mother than her father, but her father had given her mother’s features a certain broadness and generosity, so that her beauty wasn’t quite so pinched. Her blonde hair was cut in a high-backed bob, and she wore huge handcrafted crystal-and-silver earrings from Rio Bahio on Commonwealth Avenue. She had sprayed herself more than generously with her favourite new perfume, L’Insolent, and anybody would have taken her for eighteen. 

‘My God, doesn’t that noise go right through your
brain,
’ she complained, as the helicopter hovered over the south lawn, its engine throbbing, its rotors whistling, and finally curtseyed and settled on the grass. 

John said, ‘At least we don’t have to drive.’ 

‘Do we really have to stay in Washington for three entire days?’ Sissy asked. ‘It’s going to be so
hot,
and so
boring.
’ 

‘Sissy, don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ said Eva. ‘We have parties and receptions and media conferences and all kinds of things to go to. It’s not every day of the week that a man of your father’s age is appointed a justice of the Supreme Court.’ 

‘Thank God,’ Sissy retorted. 

John stood up. ‘You want to stay home?’ he asked, with a deceptive mildness in his voice. ‘You want to stay home – go ahead, stay home. I don’t care; it’s your decision.’ 

Sissy pouted and stayed silent. She knew her father well enough to guess what was coming next. A mega-boring moralistic nag. 

‘You can stay home,’ he said. ‘But think about it. You’d hurt my feelings, for sure. You’d also hurt your mother’s feelings. But very much more than that, you’d be turning your back on one of the greatest ceremonies that this country has to offer: the swearing-in of an ordinary man to deliberate and give his opinions on matters relating to the country’s constitution – the very heart and soul of American life.’ 

Sissy said, ‘I’ll come, okay? I’ll enjoy myself, okay? I was only kidding.’ 

John put down his coffee cup, and brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve. ‘You don’t seem to realize the importance of the Supreme Court, its uniqueness.’ 

Sissy said, ‘I’ll
come,
all right?’ 

‘In the past forty years, the Supreme Court has probably had more influence on the lives of ordinary Americans than all of the legislation passed by Congress put together.’ 

‘I’ll come!’ howled Sissy, in mock desperation. ‘You don’t have to say another word! I’ll come!’ 

Newton, their butler, hurried bow-legged backwards and forwards across the neatly striped lawn with all of their luggage – six Louis Vuitton suitcases and two hatboxes. John went to the door and watched him and thought with amusement that he looked like Bill Cosby imitating Groucho Marx. The grey-and-white Sikorsky helicopter was hunched in the sunlight, its rotors drooping. The pilot, in light blue fatigues, was talking to a bespectacled young man in a badly creased linen suit, whom John recognized as Dean McAllister, a talented new assistant at the Justice Department. 

As soon as John and Eva and Sissy appeared on the porch, Dean gave the pilot a quick clap on the shoulder and came hurrying towards them. He was sandy-haired, plump, and freckled. The Attorney General habitually referred to him as Jelly-Bean McAllister’, because the pinkness of his face exactly matched the colour of watermelon-flavoured Jelly Bellies. 

‘Congratulations, sir!’ said Dean, squeezing John’s hand. ‘And congratulations to you, too, Mrs O’Brien! What a great day! I can’t tell you how pleased we are for you!’ 

‘If only the President were half so pleased,’ smiled John, wryly. 

‘Oho!’ said Dean. ‘Even the President has to recognize 24-carat excellence when it’s right in front of his nose.’ Then – to Sissy – ‘You’re going to have a real good time tonight. The Beaumonts are throwing a going-away party for Clarissa, and you’re invited, and guess who’s coming? Would you believe – dah
-dah
!
–
John Travolta?’ 

Sissy slowly wrinkled up her nose. John
Travolta?
He must be more than eighty years old by now!’ 

They all laughed. Dean said, ‘You’re invited anyway, even if there are one or two geriatrics coming along. Now – are we ready? The flight’s scheduled to take off at 11:25 hours and that should give us plenty of time if we leave pretty much now.’ 

‘Sure, we’re ready,’ said John. He turned around to Newton, who was standing behind him, dabbing his forehead with a folded handkerchief. ‘Newton, will you make sure that Jimmy gets the message about reshoeing that grey? And keep your eye on those pool-cleaners, too. The last time they clogged up all the filters.’ 

‘Very good, sir. You and Mrs O’Brien have a safe flight, now.’ 

They walked across to the helicopter. The pilot saluted them crisply and then shook their hands. ‘How do you, sir. My name’s Frank Coward. Welcome aboard.’ 

Frank was a tanned, leathery man with a cleft-tipped nose and no spare meat on him. He wore impenetrable green-lensed Ray-Bans in which John could see nothing but his own curved reflection and the white pillars of the porch behind him. There was a long white scar running down the inside of Frank’s left arm, and he wore a small enamel pin in his lapel which read ‘Semper Fi US Marines’. 

‘Shouldn’t take us more than ten minutes to get to Logan, sir,’ he added. ‘Just relax and enjoy it.’ 

He closed the helicopter’s door and hunched his way to the pilot’s seat, where he sat down, put on his red-and-white bonedome, and ran deftly through his pre-flight checks, his scarred arm raised so that he could flick switches on the overhead panels. John and Eva sat side by side, buckling themselves into their grey leather seats, while Sissy and Dean sat facing them. 

Dean said, ‘The
Post
called this afternoon, Apparently they’re interested in running a major analysis of all of your past defences and all of the work you did for Griffin Bell. Especially that schools legislation.’ 

Frank said, ‘That’s it, ladies and gentleman. Hold tight,’ and started up the two turboshafts. The helicopter’s engines throbbed and the rotors began to turn. John squeezed Eva’s hand as they gradually rose from the lawn, and almost immediately began to tilt off toward the Charles river. They saw their own rough-mown horse paddocks swivelling below them; then a slanting view of the house, with its shining ivy and its red-tiled rooftops; then the river gleaming like molten gold, so bright that it dazzled them. 

‘Logan control, this is helicopter Justice Three,’ drawled Frank. ‘Heading sixty degrees east-north-east over Riverdale, altitude one thousand feet, ETA eight minutes fifteen seconds.’ 

They flew low over Highway 1 and the shining rectangular blocks of the VA Medical Center, their shadow jumping and hopping beneath them. 

‘What do you think?’ said John. ‘About the
Post,
I mean.’ 

Dean leaned forward and said, ‘My considered opinion is that you should decline to co-operate. If they want to know why, tell them it’s your
future
deliberations with the Supreme Court that they should judge you on, not your old defences. The law may be founded on precedent, but the law moves on, and you’re going to be the man who makes it move on.’ 

John gave him a wry smile. ‘I think that’s what most of my critics are worried about.’ 

‘Well, for sure,’ Dean replied. ‘But just remember what Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes had to say about it. ‘The Constitution is nothing more nor less than what the judges say it is.” And now you’re one of those judges.’ 

‘I’m
about
to
be one of those judges,’ John corrected him. 

‘Hair-splitter,’ said Eva, and squeezed his hand even tighter. 

Sissy said, John Travolta! I can hardly wait ... not!’ 

They were flackering over the Norfolk County line when without warning the helicopter shuddered and lurched to starboard. Eva gasped and Sissy let out a little yelp. John shouted out, ‘Frank! What in hell’s happening?’ 

‘Just a touch of engine irregularity, nothing I can’t handle,’ Frank called back. For a moment, it looked as if he might be right. The helicopter continued to fly forward at high speed, although the turboshafts were whining and rumbling in a way that they hadn’t been whining and rumbling before. 

‘Don’t you think you’d better put us down?’ John shouted. 

But before Frank could answer, there was an earsplitting screech of clashing metal gears, and the helicopter dropped two or three hundred feet in a bucking, uncontrolled spiral. John felt as if his stomach had been left somewhere way up in the sky. He clutched the arm of his seat and snatched for Eva’s hand. He saw Sissy’s face right in front of him, her jaw muscles rigid with terror, and his mouth flooded with lukewarm coffee and poisonous bile. He thought he could hear Eva screaming at him, but the helicopter was shaking and roaring so loudly that it was impossible to tell for sure. 

Just when John thought they were going to hit the ground, Frank somehow managed to stabilize the helicopter’s tail, and tilt the rotors to gain a few desperate feet of height. All the same, the fuselage vibrated relentlessly, punctuated by a deep, lumpy sound, and thick brown smoke began to stream across the windows. 

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’ yelled Dean, his mouth drawn back tight as a toad’s. 

‘We’re going to crash!’ screamed Sissy. ‘Daddy, we’re going to die!’ 

John, helpless and terrified, bellowed at the back of Frank’s head, ‘Frank! Do you hear me, Frank! For Christ’s sake put her down!’ 

Eva was gripping John’s hand so tightly that her wedding ring pressed into his nerve; but he was almost glad of the pain because it told him that he was still alive; and that while he was still alive, he still had a chance of survival. 

Jolting, airsick, he tried to peer through the droplets of thin brown oil that were streaking the windows, to see where they were. He thought he recognized Jamaica Pond, and then Franklin Park. He realized that they were turning in a slow, wide circle, eastward toward the sea – Quincy Bay, most likely. He saw buildings, patches of shining water, trees, then the tawny concrete ribbon of the Southeast Expressway. The helicopter was surging up and down like a Boston whaler in a choppy surf. The roaring and grinding of the engines was so loud that, even if he survived, John didn’t think that he would ever be able to hear anything again. 

Eva clung to him, clung at his coat, clung at his arm. Sissy was gripping Dean’s arm and Dean was staring at him in total panic, a dark stain spreading across the crotch of his linen suit. John tried screaming at Frank again, but Frank was struggling for survival in a small deafening hell of his own, and didn’t have time for anything else.