Shining City

by Tom Rosenstiel

  Rena isn’t sure he has heard him right. “What?”

  “I think it best.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what’s happened. Because of Vic. Because of James Johnson. Because of everything.”

  Rena props himself up; the effort sends pain shooting up his arm and across his neck. “You are not responsible for this,” he says. It comes out with a passion that surprises him. “James Johnson is. And I am responsible for not protecting you. And the police are responsible for not catching him sooner. But you are not responsible for James Johnson.”

  Madison smiles sadly. “You are a good man, Peter.”

  “Rollie.” There is bile in Rena’s throat.

  “James Johnson is not the point, Peter. You can only control your own conduct.”

  On top of everything, now this. Rena would be angry, but he is too spent.

  “We’ve had our ups and downs, Peter. I know I may not have been the easiest nominee to have managed. But I respect what you have done.”

  Madison stands up to leave.

  “I was wrong about you,” Rena says.

  Madison turns to look back. “Thank you. Yes, you were.”

  Rena feels another wave of emotion sweeping over him.

  Fifty-six

  Saturday, June 27, 9:48 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Three days later the White House calls.

  The hospital had sent Rena home after two endless days. It would have done so after one had the White House not intervened. The media could be kept away more easily in the hospital.

  Alabama took the day off to bring him home. Reporters surrounded them at the hospital exit.

  “C’mon, guys, give the man a break,” Alabama told the scrum. “When he’s ready, he’ll say something.”

  “So you can have the exclusive and we can have nothing?” some kid from a cable channel demanded.

  Alabama gave the young producer a look, and something in it conveyed the decades, all the stories, all the evil that Alabama had covered over forty years: genocide, war, pandemics, being shot at, jailed, and beaten. Not doing paparazzi stakeouts in Washington.

  “Don’t make a goddamn fool of yourself out here, son.”

  The cable guy froze, the crowd parted, and they moved to the car where Eleanor O’Brien was waiting behind the wheel.

  Now the White House has summoned him. President Nash would like Rena and Brooks to come for a meeting. It will be Rena’s first outing.

  Brooks comes to the town house to fetch him, and O’Brien drives them to the White House. In the anteroom, the president’s secretary, Sally Swanson, tells them to go right into the Oval Office. The president is waiting.

  Nash is sitting with Attorney General Penopopoulis, Senator Burke, and Senator Stevens. Vice President Philip Moreland, a tall former governor from Tennessee whose good looks seem to have turned gaunt from attending funerals for five years, is with them.

  Nash rises and takes Rena’s hand, his one good arm, in both of his, and leans his head close to Rena’s, an intimate shug. “Peter,” the president whispers, “I put you in an impossible position. Thank you.”

  What does Nash mean?

  Brooks gets a full hug. The president looks at her sympathetically. “And you? Holding up?”

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  A door opens, and Spencer Carr enters from his adjoining office, followed by the White House counsel, George Rawls.

  “I think everyone is here. Let’s get started,” Nash says.

  Get started with what, exactly? From his one day home, Rena had deduced that the White House had once again succeeded in portraying the story of James Johnson the way it wanted. The media narrative of the last three days was unambiguous and almost unanimous.

  Johnson was a convicted felon with a long history of criminal activity; he’d engaged in a series of cold-blooded murders over two months across the country in some attempt at vengeance for his brother Robbie, himself a convicted rapist and murderer, who was killed in jail. Johnson’s killing rampage included his brother’s own defense attorney, the policeman who investigated the case, and the prosecutor. In his frenzy, Johnson considered everyone on all sides responsible for his brother’s death in prison. Roland Madison, the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court, had presided over the jury trial at which Robert Johnson had been convicted.

  Johnson had apparently then begun stalking Madison, and eventually tried to murder Madison’s daughter, Victoria, who was staying with him in Washington, D.C., during his Senate confirmation hearings. The attack was interrupted by a former federal agent working with the White House to help prepare Madison for the hearings. Johnson attacked the former agent, Hallie Jobe, and then fled, leaving both Victoria Madison and Jobe gravely hurt. Johnson was then chased down by another man working for the White House, a military veteran named Peter Rena. During the chase, Johnson shot Rena with a gun he had stolen from Jobe, and in the ensuing struggle, Johnson died as he and Rena wrestled for the weapon in the waters of the Potomac River near Georgetown.

  Judge Madison, not at the scene of the attacks, found his daughter unconscious in his apartment, along with the former federal agent sent there to protect them. Both Madison’s daughter and Jobe remain hospitalized, having both suffered head trauma. Rena, recovering from his gunshot wounds, has been released from the hospital.

  Profiles of Johnson, his criminal record, and his brutal background have run widely.

  The White House has handled Nash’s response with the usual delicacy. Every action the president takes is symbolic and to some extent a president must behave as the public expects, or at least that expectation must be taken into account if the president decides to do something unexpected. Hence a president always walks a fine line between recognizing the symbolism of his own life and never trying to appear as if he were exploiting it. Nash had visited the hospital to see Rena, Vic, and Jobe without cameras. The visits reinforced the notion that they were people to be honored, victims of a deranged murderer, were lucky to be alive, and that Rena and Jobe were heroic, but the absence of cameras made it look sincere rather than political. There was a single picture of one moment, the visit with Vic, a still photo taken by the president’s personal photographer.

  Others had visited, too, not always as sensitively, including Aggie Tucker, who seemed to want to make a show of his concern. Senator Morgan, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had visited Vic and Hallie also, the day after Rena was released but entirely privately. One young aide. No cameras. He prayed and held Jobe’s hand. No one in Washington knew of that visit.

  Belinda Cartwright had showed up, too. Flown from Utah to visit Rena. He hadn’t expected it.

  All of it reinforced an uncomfortable realization: Their little band had become briefly famous, public figures of a certain kind, which meant people had opinions about them, and expectations about how others in the Madison nomination drama should treat them. It was uncomfortable. Rena had gained more appreciation for the loss of freedom Nash, Morgan, and the others endured.

  Privately, Nash and Carr had also met with “the groups,” including Deborah Cutter, asking them to affirm their support for Madison. It had been a major push, done proactively, a sign of no White House hesitation about Madison.

  The attacks had proven to have another effect on the administration’s potential critics. Madison was now a crime victim, not the nominee of a Democratic president presumptively or at least possibly soft on crime. There was no way Josh Albin, already defensive after being accused of trying to tar Madison for his antiwar sentiments, could oppose him publicly now.

  Though Rena was sleeping when it happened, he also found out that Albin had visited him in the hospital. Sat with him for a half hour while he was sleeping. Brooks was there. She couldn’t believe it. Rena could.

  The Senate hearings were suspended. When they resumed, yesterday, the ritual excoriation of Madison by critics or deification by supporters—still for the benefit of the
culture wars and the groups that financed the parties—had, if not ceased entirely, become more restrained—an expression of constitutional responsibility rather than mock outrage that such a bizarre and dangerous character might be considered for a judgeship rather than flogging.

  One thing had not happened. So far at least, no story had appeared raising questions about the Johnson murder trial. There had been plenty of stories that discussed James Johnson’s criminal life, some mentioning his brother’s conviction and death in jail. But none had raised doubts about Robert Johnson’s guilt or the quality of the trial Madison oversaw that convicted him. Johnson’s mother had gone to ground. A family friend had told local TV stations in San Francisco she had had enough pain.

  That didn’t mean a story couldn’t still appear about Madison presiding over the conviction of a possibly innocent man. Gary Gold had even written a version of it, Brooks had heard from friends at the Tribune. Gold’s editors had refused to publish it. They weren’t interested in a speculative story that implied without hard proof that the murderous rampage of James Johnson might be somehow misguided revenge for a miscarriage of justice. But that didn’t mean the story was dead. That someone else might not put the pieces together and write it. Or that Gold would stop trying. Or not leak what he had to a blogger who could get it out there. These days virtually everything gets published somewhere eventually.

  “Thank you all for coming,” President Nash says, taking a seat in an armchair about midway in the semicircle the group formed.

  “In my experience, people find it particularly hard to lie to the president of the United States,” he says grinning. “I am counting on that today.”

  Then Nash picks up the phone and tells his secretary, “Please send him in.”

  Through one of the doors, into the Oval Office enters Rollie Madison.

  “Judge, thank you for coming. Please sit,” President Nash says.

  Madison moves to the chair where Nash has directed him.

  “What am I doing here, Mr. President?” Madison asks.

  “I want to ask you something,” Nash answers. “I would like you to tell me about the murder trial of Robert Johnson.”

  Madison’s eyes fall on Rena. Rena answers with an almost imperceptible shake of his head: I don’t know more than you do. The judge takes a breath and then, unfolding his long legs, looks at President Nash.

  Madison holds nothing back.

  He recites the facts of the Johnson murder trial, the weakness of the lawyers, the limits of the case. He describes what he saw, what he did, and how it altered his sense of judging. It had taken months for Rena to see him this open. Now Madison was sharing with strangers.

  Nash pauses with theatrical timing before asking the judge, “Did you help send an innocent man to jail?”

  It’s not the right question, Rena thinks. Madison has taught him that.

  “I don’t know,” Madison answers.

  The president nods. Apparently satisfied. Apparently finished.

  “If I may, Mr. President. I would like to say one more thing,” Madison says. Nash gives a look of interested permission.

  “Judges learn on the bench; they grow, or they should. Sometimes they become embittered or timid. But the best of them become more assertive, while also more humbled by the enormity of the process in which they are engaged. At least I have. I was more cautious back then, more uncertain, and I regret it. If you believe that what’s happened because of that trial and my conduct during it merits reconsidering my nomination, I understand. That is why I have written my letter of withdrawal. I know you will choose what you think best for the Court and the country.”

  The president, impish but cool, answers: “The longer we live, the more ironic life becomes. Most judges on the Supreme Court have never been trial judges. They have never faced any of this.”

  Madison looks back grimly, tired—not the cadaverous figure he appeared to Rena two days ago—but different from the man he met in April.

  “Thank you, Judge,” Nash says, rising. Everyone stands. The president puts a hand on Madison’s shoulder and escorts him to the door, which opens to reveal the president’s secretary, Sally Swanson, waiting outside. “Sally will take you back to Spence’s office. We’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  Nash takes off his suit jacket and sits down in his favorite spot, the corner of the sofa. “There are a lot of options here,” he begins.

  He surveys the faces in the room. “We could, I believe, end this and move on, without any stigma attached to Judge Madison. He has told me in a letter yesterday what he indicated here today, that if I prefer it, he is offering to withdraw because of the trauma to his daughter. No one would doubt him.”

  “You have his withdrawal letter in hand?” Stevens clarifies.

  “Yes.” Nash pauses to let the group absorb this and then says, “On the other hand, if we continue I believe Judge Madison would win overwhelming, possibly unanimous confirmation. He has the country’s complete sympathy, and I don’t know of a single senator at this moment who has signaled an intention now to challenge him either publicly or privately. This morning, I got a call from Furman Morgan. He gave me the courtesy of telling me that he believed there were sufficient votes to move Judge Madison’s nomination to the floor and that he was personally inclined to approve as well.”

  Nash scans the faces in the room.

  “I want to know each of your thoughts. Charlie?”

  The attorney general, Charles Penopopoulis, says in a charcoal baritone, “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. President, Judge Madison has done nothing to warrant any loss of confidence. This Robert Johnson matter was a jury trial. The determination of guilt or innocence was not Judge Madison’s to make. Nothing in the case was overturned on appeal.”

  “G?” Nash says next. G is short for “G Man,” the president’s nickname for George Rawls. An old Washington hand and top Washington litigator, Rawls has worked more closely with Rena and Brooks through this than anyone. He is also a staunch liberal.

  “I see a lot of advantages to moving in a new direction, Mr. President. Our obligation is to the American people, not Judge Madison. If you have any doubts over this matter, I don’t want to think we are papering something over. You have complete freedom now to move on.”

  “Lewis?” Nash says, turning to Senator Burke.

  Llewellyn Burke is not only the sole Republican in the room besides Rena, he is also the most pragmatic tactician Rena had ever seen, a quality that has made people from many quarters seek his counsel. That, Rena thinks, also gives Burke a good deal of latitude to change course here. If he thought it was better to switch now, Burke would not hesitate.

  “I appreciate the concern about not wanting to hide anything. This is a big choice, important to get right, a lifetime appointment,” Burke says, in his gentle, unhurried, informal way. “But there is something unusual about our court system today at the appellate level and at the highest court. Our judicial system has become hijacked by politics, often extreme politics. This is an invisible constitutional crisis. Do presidents respond by escalating these political and cultural wars by picking even more extreme judges? Or by trying to defuse and end the politicization? Maybe I am a dreamer. But I worry about the stability of the center. That is our common ground. Our spine. It’s still mine. I think these wars are divisive for our courts. I would like the polarization and politicization of judges to stop. It’s bad for our judiciary. It’s bad for our country.”

  They’re almost the same words Nash used to hire Rena in the first place.

  “And I would say this about Judge Madison: I don’t believe we are papering over anything here. What we do know is that Judge Madison did what he was supposed to do. The fact that he is worried about it now is proof of the kind of man he is, not proof that he did something wrong. I would hate to think that we would do anything to raise questions about him as well, out of political expediency or protectiveness.”

  Nash turns to Senator Stevens.
“Bill?”

  Stevens folds his hands atop his formidable stomach. If Stevens signs off on this after having been included in the decision making, the groups on the Left will be more inclined to go along. And the Stevens mafia, the huge network of his former aides who populate powerful positions in town, would send the word out to make it happen.

  “I offer no opinion other than this, Mr. President: Go with your gut. You will have my support, publicly and privately.”

  “Randi?” Nash says, turning to Rena’s partner. She and Rena are just hired hands here, not advisors. He has no responsibility to ask their opinion. But he is.

  “I’ve scrubbed this man’s background, read his opinions, spent days with him under the most stressful circumstances. I’ve learned nothing to change my view of your selection of him, sir.”

  Nash now turns to Rena and lifts his eyebrows in invitation.

  Rena’s arm suddenly aches. His mind casts back over the last few months: disliking Madison, arguing against him, regretting he hadn’t been more forceful.

  “Mr. President, when you first asked me about Roland Madison a few months ago I said I worried he was too theoretical, too remote, and that his famous legal theories might be more intellectual than real. From what you heard from Judge Madison today, it should be obvious that I was wrong.”

  Nash looks as if he expects more. There is none.

  Then Nash turns to Spencer Carr. The chief of staff usually reserves his counsel only for the president. If he ever gave it publicly and it were ignored, his power in town would evaporate. But Carr answers now.

  “I agree with the White House counsel that it’s time for a fresh start. Even if Madison is confirmed, we don’t want a story six months from now saying he let an innocent man go to jail, even if it isn’t true.”

  Carr has flipped again.

  “But he’s confirmed for life,” Nash says.

  “I’m not worried about how that affects him, Mr. President,” Carr says. “I’m worried about how that affects you.”