“Why is that?”
“Because this whole thing, the idea of writing Perpetual Slaves, seems to have had its genesis about the time that Terry picked up with Scott. That and other things,” he says.
“What other things?”
“His interest in Arthur Ginnis, the justice that Scott clerked for. Do you know him?”
“I know of him, naturally. Never met him. Supreme Court justices and lowly trial lawyers live and operate in different legal universes,” I tell him.
“Well, Ginnis isn’t exactly the sort that I would expect to take up with Terry. I know Ginnis only slightly. I’ve met him twice. No”—he thinks for a moment—“actually, it was three times. Anyway, I was introduced to him by his wife, Margaret. She’s a lovely woman. For a while she was a client. I met her in New York at a political function. She was publishing a fascinating cookbook. The woman has a positive flair for finding an unusual niche and marketing it. The Favored Dishes of the High Court—that was the name of her book. She did a sequel and went historical on the next one, Meals from Marshall to Warren. That one didn’t do as well.
“She actually got Justice Scalia to pose for the cover on the first one, smiling with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Do you know Scalia?”
I shake my head again.
“Actually, I don’t know him either, only by reputation. But I’m told that even if you don’t agree with him politically—And I don’t,” he says. “I’m hoping for better things following the election. Still there’s one thing that everyone agrees on. Scalia, like his politics or not, is the wit on the Court. Man has an incredible sense of humor. And sharp as a knife, if you know what I mean. Margaret’s book wasn’t The South Beach Diet, but in its market it did very well.”
And it never hurts to do business, even at the fringes, with the influential, names you can drop if you’re sniffing on the trail of a lawyer for a book deal following a hot trial, for example.
“You were talking about Justice Ginnis?”
“Oh, yes. Affable man,” he says, “engaging, politically to the left of center. But his chief claim to fame is that he can swing from the middle. I’m no Court watcher, but lawyers here in town tell me that at the moment he holds the balance of power on the Court. The word is that if you want five votes on anything controversial that’s before the Court, you will have to get Mr. Justice Ginnis.”
“Maybe Scarborough was trying to woo him politically,” I say.
Bonguard shakes his head and rises from his chair. “Terry had given up on the Court long ago. He was as far out on the left wing as you can get without falling off. There were those who knew him who would say he’d already tumbled. He was living in a fantasy world of rebellion and revolution, dreaming of impeachments that would never happen. Terry was not someone that Ginnis would take to—or for that matter would want to be seen talking with.”
“But you’re saying that they did talk.”
“Do yourself a favor and talk to Trisha Scott. I have a feeling she knows more than I do.”
The meeting is over. He ushers us toward the door, chatting sociably with Sarah, about her major in college, what she wants to do when she graduates. As we pass through the door, he shakes my hand one last time and turns to head toward the stairs. Then, as if lightning has struck him in the brain, he suddenly turns back toward me.
“Could you do me one favor?” he says. “If you find the letter, the copy or the original, could you give me a call and let me know?”
“Why is that?”
“I’m curious as to what it says. Terry would never let me look at it. I might also be interested in getting a publishing deal for the contents, perhaps in book form, maybe around the context of the trial and Terry’s death. It could be a good story. Who knows, it might even help your client.”
“If I find it, I’ll give you a call.”
The code words of slavery in the Constitution may have fired Scarborough’s rhetoric and made him rich, but his book, his smoke-belching antics on the stump, and the violence that ensued had their genesis in some other, more startling and subterranean force. And unless I miss my bet, that hidden volcano is somewhere in the pages of what Bonguard is now referring to as the Jefferson Letter.
FOUR
At the airport, my trip from JFK in New York to Reagan International in D.C., I do the TSA drill to get through security. Partially disrobing, I take off my shoes and pull my belt from my pants as everyone in line does calisthenics with luggage in plastic boxes.
Harry has talked about forming a new airline and calling it Amistad Air. Harry’s idea is to cut through the marketing hype and achieve the ultimate goal of every American carrier: to stack human cargo on planes like cordwood, using historic schematics of old slave ships. According to Harry, if fuel prices continue to climb, they’ll be putting out oars and telling us all to pull.
In the midst of this chaos, Sarah and I part company, she on a flight home to San Diego while I head to D.C. I am chasing the grail, Bonguard’s musings that Scarborough’s mystery letter or at least some thread leading to it might be found in Washington.
I have placed three calls to the law offices of Barrett, Coal & Johnston on K Street in an effort to arrange a meeting with Trisha Scott, Scarborough’s former girlfriend. She has failed to return my calls, so I’m taking a shot that I can track her down before heading home, that maybe she will talk to me.
Time is running out on us. Next week Harry and I are in court on pretrial motions trying to keep evidence linking Carl Arnsberg to Scarborough’s murder away from the jury. Most of this is a long shot. Still, it is necessary, both for trial as well as for any appeal should he be convicted.
At trial it is the nature of the game to dot every i and cross every t. Anything omitted is conceded to the prosecution, lost to us forever. We are now less than a month from trial, and our theories of defense are thin. What is worse, they’re shifting, an ominous sign this late.
With physical evidence connecting Arnsberg to the scene, with no alibi, and with an apparent motive, I have been forced to consider the defenses of last resort, diminished capacity or possible insanity. These are inevitably a hard sell to any jury. Besides, I have had my client examined by experts, shrinks who know their stuff, and the tea leaves are not good. While Arnsberg claims to possess blanks in his memory immediately following the trauma of the murder scene, his story is always the same, that Scarborough’s dead body and the blood were already there when he arrived in the room. His lapses of memory all come afterward. He cannot recall touching the hammer, according to the police the murder weapon. He can’t account for how his palm print became superimposed in the victim’s blood on the floor. He does remember entering the room, for which he did not have a passkey. According to Arnsberg, the door was ajar, so that when he pushed, it opened.
According to the theory advanced by the cops, Scarborough let him in, since it is established that he ordered breakfast, only to turn his back, take a seat, and be murdered.
Without evidence of another person at the scene and some overriding motive for this phantom to have murdered Scarborough, the classic SODDI defense—“some other dude did it”—is a long shot. For this reason the lure of the missing letter and its potential value has opened the possibility, fleeting as it may be. So I pursue it.
My flight lands in D.C. midmorning. Early September, eleven-thirty, and the day is beginning to heat up. I make my way to what is known by locals as Gucci Gulch, the concrete canyon that is K Street in the nation’s capital. Here high-rise offices house some of the most powerful lawyers and deal makers on earth. Twenty years ago they reveled in publicity. Books celebrated them as the “superlawyers,” until politicians, always anxious to keep the spotlight on themselves, painted the bull’s-eye of reform on their ass. Ever since, the goal has been to remain invisible, like the mob.
Law firms with two and three hundred partners are not unusual here, sometimes with offices in Singapore, London, Beijing, and Paris. These give new
meaning to the term “global economy,” peddling power and influence around the world. Every politician running for office runs from these firms, except at milking time, when lobbyists jerking on the udders of the industries they represent fill pails with campaign dollars that are quietly shuttled down K Street by bucket brigades of congressional staff and hired consultants.
I have read that the Jefferson Monument is slowly sinking, settling into the ancient swamp that is now dubbed the Tidal Basin. This may be symbolic of the visionary who dreamed of America as an agricultural utopia and whom history has shown to have been so badly beaten by his nemesis, Hamilton, who favored a commercial and industrial nation run by money managers and corporate markets.
A major chunk of the business done from K Street is lobbying, hustling the 535 members of the Congress, the Senate with its legions of staff, and the hundreds of administrative agencies that crank out regulations governing everything from milk price supports to Social Security. It has long been known that if you want to talk, you go to Congress. If you want something done, you go to K Street.
The men who crafted the Constitution must be doing wheelies in their graves. To the eighteenth-century mind in the Age of Reason, an American government obsessed with controlling every aspect of individual existence, with its hands in every pocket up to its national armpits, would be a greater source of terror than the atom bomb. Had they known, the Bill of Rights would not have ended with ten amendments. It would be a perpetual work in progress with periodic political lynchings made part of the fabric of government.
The cab drops me in front of a smoked-glass high-rise. I pay the cabbie, and a minute later I’m in the air-conditioned lobby, leaving the oppressive humidity of Washington outside. I check the building’s directory. Barrett, Coal & Johnston takes up the top three floors of the twelve-story office building. Those entering have to clear security at a desk in order to access the elevators.
As I edge across the lobby toward the main desk, I feel the vibration at my belt. I take out my cell phone. It’s Harry. I flip it open.
“Hello.”
“Where are you?” says Harry.
“In D.C. The law office,” I tell him. From our telephone conversation last night, Harry already knows where I’m headed and why.
“Then I caught you before you found this Scott woman?”
“Yes. Why?”
“If you catch up with her, press her on Ginnis,” says Harry.
“Any particular reason?”
“I’m still digging for all the details,” says Harry, “but it’s starting to look like Ginnis could be the lead to the letter.”
“Can you give me specifics?”
“Not right now,” says Harry. “Trust me. Just see if you can find some way to get to him. But call me before you talk to him. By then I should have more information.”
“You got it,” I tell him.
“Talk to you later.” Harry hangs up.
Juggling my briefcase in one hand, I pocket my phone and hand the guard at the desk one of my business cards. I tell him I have an appointment with Trisha Scott at B, C & J. This lie gets me a phone call to reception upstairs. Four minutes later I am treated to the officious click of heels on the hard terrazzo. A woman, blond, blue-eyed, in her late twenties, dressed in a dark business suit. She collects my card from the guard and approaches.
“Mr. Madre…”
“Madriani,” I help her out.
“I understand you have an appointment with Ms. Scott?” The lilt in her voice leads me to think that she has already searched Scott’s calendar and not found my name on it.
“I called twice and left messages. I was in New York on my way back to my office in California and wanted to stop in and see her. It would only take a moment and would save us both an immense amount of time.”
“Does she know what it regards?”
“It’s a personal matter. I’m sure that if she knew the details, she would want to see me.”
This stumps her. She looks at my card again: “attorney-at-law.” If it said “salesman,” I’d be out on the street looking back through the glass by now.
“If you’ll follow me,” she says. “I’m not sure whether Ms. Scott is in.”
We head to the elevator. A minute and a half later, I’ve made it to the next level, the reception area upstairs. Here there are deep plush carpets and floor-to-ceiling windows of smoked glass with shaded views out over the city. Across the street lies Farragut Square. One block beyond lies the squat Roman temple that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building. Over the top and beyond is Lafayette Square, and in the distance behind the park is the White House. Toward the southeast the Capitol dome sprouts like a half-hatched Easter egg in the noonday sun. The executive offices of Barrett, Coal & Johnston possess an eagle’s-nest view of all the power spots in town.
“If you’ll take a seat,” she says, “I will check with Ms. Scott’s assistant.”
As the phalanx of gatekeepers grows, the mesh of their screen becomes finer. I may be wasting my time. By now Scott would surely be following the news reports of Arnsberg’s trial. If so, she will have seen my name. What I am banking on is her curiosity. A lawyer, she would know that I could subpoena her to the trial, put her on a witness list, and let her cool her heels. What is more difficult would be to get her to talk to me. If she refuses, there is little I can do, and to put her on the stand at trial and ask questions to which I do not already know the answers would be its own form of Russian roulette.
The receptionist disappears to the back behind the large ebony reception counter and the mirrored glass wall separating me from the firm’s engine room, where power is spun into gold.
Barrett, Coal & Johnston is sufficiently large that to dispense separate business cards for the many partners and associates out on the counter would require a vending machine. Instead there’s a glossy brochure that outlines the firm’s services and specialties. I pull one of these and take a look. To no one’s surprise, the firm is heavily invested in regulatory law, with a sideline in patents and appellate practice, all keyed toward business and commerce.
The firm sports two former United States senators as “of counsel,” a kind of emeritus status in which work is often not required, only the name engraved on a brass plaque on a door. The firm claims association with three former Harvard fellows, professors of law. One of these is nationally known and appears with sufficient regularity before the Supreme Court that I have heard legal pundits sometimes refer to him as “the tenth member of the Court.”
The last three pages of the brochure are taken up with fine print, the names of partners and associates. Many of these are followed by asterisks and other symbols, all keyed to honors and awards. I find Scott’s name and after it a symbol in the form of a small dagger. I check the code: “former U.S. Supreme Court clerk.” I do a quick count of these. I am beyond two dozen and counting when I’m interrupted.
“Mr. Madriani.” I turn to see a different woman. Clear hazel eyes. She holds my card in her left hand as she extends her right toward me. “Trisha Scott,” she says. “I’m told you have some personal business to discuss?”
She is blond, her hair cropped in a kind of pixie cut that gives her tall, slender body a fairy-tale elegance. Her face is angular, bearing a becoming smile. She reminds me of a taller version of Meg Ryan, a kind of bewitching look that asks questions even in silence.
“How do you do?” I take her hand, just the fingertips, and give it a gentle shake as she continues to study my card. “I’m sorry to bother you. I suspect you’re busy, but I wanted to talk with you before I headed back to the Coast.”
“Will it take long? I only have a few minutes,” she says.
“That’ll be fine.” Anything to get my foot in the door.
“How can I help you?” She wants to do it here, standing at the reception desk.
I glance over my shoulder toward the receptionist. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“My
office,” she says.
I follow her past reception and down a long corridor with offices on each side. Here the paneled mahogany walls are adorned with colonial lithographs elegantly framed and set off by small brass-covered museum lights. This is the “holy of holies,” province of former senators and senior partners, where most of the offices are double-doored with occasional cubicles carved into the elegance for minions, the obligatory personal assistant or executive secretary.
She leads me to another elevator, this one small and private. We descend one floor and exit into a rabbit warren of cubicles, clerical and other assistants in the center. Around these are arranged offices on the outside walls, where windows with views and natural light are the perks of junior partners and associates on the move, either up or out.
From the exterior appearance, these offices are not nearly as elegant as those on the level above. Still, they are large, judging by the distance between doors. Enough room to accommodate a good-size desk, filing cabinets, probably a credenza against the windows, and a view.
Halfway down the corridor, she turns to the right and enters an open office door. I follow her.
We are no sooner inside than she closes the door behind me. “San Diego,” she says, still looking at my card. “I recognize your name. You’re the lawyer representing the man who killed Terry.” Her countenance is less pleasant now.
“Carl Arnsberg. He stands accused,” I say.
“Of course. I don’t see how I can help you, but have a seat.” She offers me one of the client chairs across from her desk. The office is neat, not large, but there’s that view, what must be toward the west, as I can see a plane descending into what I assume is Dulles International in the distance.
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