Al-Tounsi

by Anton Piatigorsky

  “I’m not changing my vote.” Rodney’s legs were crossed tightly, as if Killian’s brilliant plan for convincing his colleague was to kick him in the groin.

  “I don’t expect you to. I don’t play people like that. I’m here for something much bigger. I think your concurrence is magnificently eloquent—actually I found it quite moving—but I’ve got to say, Rodney, it’s also the only opinion I’ve ever read that’s actually illegal. I’m concerned for you. I think you’re in breach of your oath. Remember, the applicable words, here, are that you’re to faithfully and impartially discharge and perform—”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “—all the duties incumbent upon you as—”

  “I know the judicial oath, Killian.”

  “You’re breaking the law.”

  “I’m establishing a new doctrine to assess the validity of laws. Which is also part of our job.”

  “It’s grounds for impeachment. Think about it. Out of office in a whirl of shame and scandal.”

  “Rather dramatically put.”

  “Well, it’s the truth.” Killian sat back, tapping his bulbous nose. “Rodney, I’m beyond trying to win over your vote in this case. If your conscience is so bothered by terrorists not getting a shot at habeas, fine, do what the others do, establish some legitimate legal grounds, no matter how tenuous, and give them their blasted habeas. You don’t even have to do that work yourself. Just sign on to Gideon’s and be done with it!”

  “As I’ve told the others, I profoundly disagree with Justice Rosen’s opinion.”

  “I do, too. That’s not my point.”

  “Then I’m surprised that a man of your strict principles, Killian, would suggest anything like that.”

  “Like what? Obeying the law?” Rodney’s smile hardened, and sealed his mouth tightly. Sarcasm would never move Justice Sykes. “Do you really believe what you wrote?”

  “I do.”

  “You’re comfortable saying the law means X, but we should still rule Y?”

  “If the law does not conform with justice, the law should change, not justice.”

  Rodney gently swayed his crossed foot, swinging it back and forth, to and fro. He seemed unaffected by Killian’s impeccable reasoning. Good for him. Justice Quinn couldn’t help but admire the man’s fortitude. The law should change, not justice! Since when did Rodney Sykes become this great spokesman for justice, this modern day Oliver Wendell Holmes? It was heartwarming to see, actually, the kind of simple and direct declaration that Killian wanted to hear more of from his colleagues. It was a statement with some backbone, some moral force. But still, his concurrence was crazy, and it planted the seed for a damaging precedent that might someday be applied equally to all branches of law, beyond this Article I question of presidential power. It was like a weed, Rodney’s idea, his absurd doctrine of subversion, and if it took, unlikely as that was, it would be near impossible for subsequent justices to root it out.

  “You understand I’ll have to put a section in my dissent that addresses your concurrence, and I won’t be gentle in my wording.”

  “I would expect nothing less of you, Killian.”

  “I’ll say your logic is unfounded and illegal, and that you should to be censured, maybe worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any response?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Of course that’s nothing to do with what I think of you personally.”

  Justice Sykes nodded. “According to your bond, no more, no less.”

  Killian laughed. “Look, Rodney. I like you. I hope you know that. But that doesn’t change my legal responsibility here. I’ll tear you a second asshole and call for your impeachment.”

  “Oh, I won’t be impeached, Justice Quinn.” Rodney was so unfazed by the prospect of impeachment that he almost chuckled in response. “For a solo concurrence, unbinding? The only material consequence of my writing will be to limit any precedent for granting habeas, and narrow the grounds to this one instance in Subic Bay, which is unlikely to repeat. My concurrence here works more in your favor than if I were to join Gideon and push him into the majority. So why do you object so strenuously? You should let it be.”

  “Rodney …”

  “There is no chance I’ll be impeached. You understand? The threat does not touch me. My other votes, opinions and dissents this term are all strict and legalistic.”

  Killian considered, and nodded. “Right you are.”

  “So, Justice Quinn. Anything else?”

  Killian threw up his hands and shrugged. “Not unless you want to talk about switching on Wallace.”

  Now Rodney laughed, as Killian hoped he would. “The District of Columbia’s gun laws are perfectly frank and clear in their wording, and so I see no need to disrupt them with your constitutional claims.”

  “Now, that sounds more like the old Rodney Sykes.”

  “There is plenty of him left.”

  “Last chance? I’d love your vote.”

  “You already have your five.”

  “Six is a much prettier number than five. Rounder.” Killian stood and grimaced, and shook his leg, which had numbed in his seat and now ached from his activated sciatica. “Oh dear Lord, I am possessed.” He massaged his burning thigh. “A demon’s got me in its teeth.”

  Rodney, infallibly polite, had already moved toward the door, which he intended on opening for his guest. Killian hovered by the chair, stretching and lengthening his monster leg. Once he’d stopped shaking, he feigned remembering something.

  “Oh, hey, guess who I saw on C Street, yesterday?” It was important to remain casual—he had to sound casual. “Your son. I was there for this interview. My daughter has this friend, this longtime friend, who works nearby, and wanted some legal questions answered. You know I hate those things. But my daughter was asking, so.”

  Rodney’s hand was resting on the door knob. He didn’t look suspicious.

  “She rented a conference room over at the Capitol Hill Hotel, which was a real waste, if you ask me, but she said it’s just around the corner from her place, and she knows the owner or something. Didn’t cost her. You know that hotel?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Your son’s girlfriend lives over by C Street?”

  “I didn’t know Samuel had a girlfriend, on C Street or anywhere else.”

  “Well, maybe he made it up.” Killian winked at Rodney, and then moved to the entrance and patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, thanks for seeing me, Justice Sykes. I know this is not the usual way of doing things, but I appreciate it.”

  Rodney offered Killian that stilted, bowed-head gesture of his, and then opened the door like a valet.

  Killian paused in the threshold, eying his colleague. “I’m not the first to visit you about Al-Tounsi, am I?” He grinned openly, and wished Rodney’s temperament allowed him more leeway to joke. Still, Killian thought it smart to reemphasize the pretext for his visit.

  “No, you are not. Gideon came first, then Charles, now you. Nor do I suspect you’ll be the last.”

  There was nothing all that special about the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Reston, Virginia, which was exactly what Killian liked about it. The plain wood siding, painted white, blended seamlessly with half the neo-colonial houses in this wealthy suburb. He parked his Lincoln in the church’s massive, half-empty lot, and then marched through the modest portico into the plain sanctuary. The stained glass windows colored the sunlight and invoked God’s grace, but they had a paint-by-numbers quality, and their themes were run-of-the-mill: Annunciation, Crucifixion, Christ at home in the bosom of the Lord. Nothing elite or pretentious here, no striving for significance that hadn’t been earned. Killian rested his hand on a pine pew that looked like it could have been purchased at IKEA and assembled in this room—that is, if IKEA had had a Church, Mosque, and Synagogue department, which, come to think of it, it might. There was an older couple sitting quietly in the back who didn’t seem to recogni
ze him. Killian spied Father Elko sitting alone in a front pew, facing away, his head lowered, probably waiting for any supplicant who desired confession in this allotted two-hour period. He approached and called Elko’s name.

  “Well, hello, Killian.” The priest was reading a fat book. He closed it and pressed it against his stomach with one hand while shaking Killian’s with the other, exposing the book’s spine: War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars. Father Elko was a patriot, yet another thing to like about this priest and his unassuming church.

  Elko asked after Killian’s children, inquiring especially about Gregory’s safety in Afghanistan, and Gloria’s health. Elko’s dappled gray hair was swept back and wavy, a dashing mien for a suburban priest, and he wore a pair of modern, steel-gray glasses. His trim and muscular body looked a decade younger than his age, perfect for a religious leader in this community, as the congregation here would have always secretly suspected the moral standing of a priest fatter than his flock. Elko had once told Killian that he worked out on his cross-country skiing or elliptical machine at 5 A.M. each morning except for Virginia’s rare snow days, when he would bind himself into actual skis and take to the rolling trails of a nearby forest.

  “Have you come for confession?”

  “If you’ll hear me, Father.”

  Killian followed the priest into the confessional, and waited for the screen to slide open on the other side of the grille. He knelt, crossed himself, asked for forgiveness as a penitent. It had been several months since his last confession. And what sins had he to confess? Here we go, thought Killian Quinn.

  The good priest Elko must have heard many a wretched plea from pedophile, tax evader and wife-abuser alike, from all sorts of corporate embezzlers, political liars and cheats, and maybe even a murderer or two, because he had long since proved immune to Killian’s lustful escapades and was quite non-judgmental personally, although of course he had his limits professionally. Half the reason Killian had come today was the finality of his break with Katherine, which allowed him to confess his blissful weeks of romping in one fell swoop and mitigate his blatant, conscious sins with an honest admission that he had put that affair behind him. But even after Killian had finished relating the details of his lustful sins and received his instructions for penitence, he found himself lingering, kneeling. He felt miserable, and realized that he was trembling.

  “Is there something else?” whispered Father Elko.

  “I’m subsumed by anger, Father. I’m furious.”

  The priest asked him to elaborate, and so Killian told him about his break-up in the Capitol Hill Hotel, walking Katherine to her car, and their unfortunate collision with Rodney Sykes’s son, The Washington Post journalist. “I haven’t spoken with Katherine since, but my anger toward her hasn’t abated at all. She was hurt, and clearly wanted to get back at me. She told the guy her name, and where she works. Told this to a reporter from The Washington Post. He obviously knew what was going on between us. I don’t understand how she could have done that. I’m someone she cares for, someone she knows loves her in return. I’m stewing in anger, Father. I’m terrified that I’ll be exposed and humiliated before my wife and family and colleagues, and I have to tell you, I don’t think I deserve that. I have always been as honest as I could have possibly been given the basic deceit of my sinful weak soul and physical needs. I’ve respected my wife’s dignity, and shielded her from unnecessary scandal, and moreover, I think, if she did learn about my sins, she would in part understand them. I know Gloria, and I don’t think I’m stretching. She would be hurt, sure, but knowing me, loving me as I am, with my huge appetites, she would get it. But not if The Washington Post wrote about my affair. Not if a woman’s name and face were put to those deeds. If reporters hounded us, or parked on our lawn, or if all of Gloria’s bridge partners and the cashier at the grocery store could look at her and know. That she could never forgive, and I don’t blame her, neither would I. I don’t think I deserve that, Father.”

  Father Elko’s silhouette stirred on the other side of grille, and resettled.

  “You know what else makes me angry? What this’ll do to my work. See, I’ve been toiling for decades, Father, in a futile attempt at righting the screwy jurisprudence in this country, trying to put it on some reasonable ground. My methodology has been controversial to some, and there are vested interests railing against me—newspapers, media, the liberal elite. If this stupid affair is exposed, they’ll call me a hypocrite and a liar; they’ll use one irrelevant personal fact to undermine the whole body of my forthright and important work, destroying it, and just when I’m starting to turn the corner into the majority. I’ve got the most important cases of my career this term, dissents and opinions, but if this thing comes out now, in our tawdry climate, it’ll dwarf everything I’ve done, everything. People won’t be talking about the rightful limit of habeas corpus in wartime, or the proper meaning of the Second Amendment; instead they’ll be saying that my opinions can’t be trusted because I slept with some young woman, and that makes me furious!”

  The priest waited until he was certain Killian was done, and then answered him quietly. “Your anger is not a sin. In your situation, it makes sense to be angry. I think both you and your ex-lover have reasons to be upset, valid ones. Your pride, however, is far more troubling than either your anger or your lust.”

  Killian rocked back and forth on his ruined knees, hanging his head, listening.

  “Even those of us lacking in pride by nature are sometimes overcome with its toxicity, especially those of us astute enough to justify our actions, to understand and explain them and to limit their negative consequences. You might be right—you were always careful, and good and decent to other people, and responsible in your work, and yet you could still be afflicted with overweening pride. You are prideful to think you’ve been wronged. Our each action has consequence. The Lord sees your every thought, deed and sin. So the problem here is far larger than whether some reporter from The Washington Post has discovered your affair. You deserve everything and anything that the Lord cares to send your way, every blessing and curse, no matter how good you might be, no matter how right or righteous. In other words, you deserve nothing.”

  Father Elko gave him further instructions for the absolution of his pride, although prayer alone it seemed would not do all the work. Sick, spent, and humiliated, Killian thanked the priest, who was right about everything, and then he lumbered out of the confessional, moving as quickly as he could, hobbling toward the door, before Father Elko could emerge from the other side. The last thing Killian wanted right now was to see that priest’s face. He pushed through the metal door of the portico and barreled into the parking lot, the asphalt radiating heat, the air heavy and humid on this late evening in June. What kind of idiot was he for not considering pride, that most obvious sin, the one that took down all the heroic and nimbly overeducated men, the stock and trade of the great plays, most of which he knew backward and forward, line by line. What next for Killian Quinn? Must he grab his Swiss Army knife and gouge out his eyes like some modern-day Gloucester, Oedipus or Pozzo? Hubris, of all blasted things. Hubris! Him!

  He stood by his car, weak and ashamed, as tiny McGovern materialized by Killian’s side to recite Shakespeare’s verse, poetically, overdone, like Laurence Olivier, conscious of iamb and trochee alike, stressing key words, rolling his consonants, and sliding his silky vowels:

  “He that is proud eats up himself: pride is

  His own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.”

  It was a nasty trick of McGovern’s to use the beloved bard against him, so Killian wracked his mind for another biting quote that would put that angel in his place. But as he considered his vast and memorized stock of Shakespeare, Coyote, pitchfork and all, appeared beside his life-long foe.

  “Killian, you dumb ox, check out that sunset!”

  Rich orange and pink clouds smeared above the tall poplars and pin oaks adjacent to the church�
��s parking lot. The smog, heat and exhaust from 18-wheelers running south on I-66 had browned the edges of the sky like it was a piece of old paper. A textured air of particulate matter, carbon monoxide and sulfur compounds—the perfect medium for the sun to execute its brilliant setting. A light breeze shook the tops of the trees, a sudden drop of heat from the coming night, and a kiss of relief from the hot day. God, he loved sunsets. Loved the rain, too. The fog, and the mist. Miserable gray, chilly mornings up in New England, blinding dry scorchers when he visited his cousins down in Arizona. Weather of all kinds. Killian loved day and he loved night, and every half-dim, wishy-washy state in between.

  Coyote spoke right into his ear. “So you’re a little too proud? You’re too fat, also. Who gives a shit?”

  Killian laughed, and rested his palms on his car. He lingered in the parking lot, savoring this perfect evening until its colors waned, and then he unlocked his car, started the motor, and drove home to Gloria.

  In section II, part A, of Justice Quinn’s triumphant opinion for Wallace v. The District of Columbia, midway through his evisceration of Justice Davidson’s dissent, Killian decided to add a quick rebuke that compared Bernhard’s logic to the Red Queen’s in Through the Looking Glass. Once he had written it, he sat back, chuckling. The old man’s dissent was a poor attempt at twisting the text of the Second Amendment into declaring something other than what it plainly said—that is, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, which was exactly something the Red Queen would have done in his place. Killian had been reading the Lewis Carroll classic to his granddaughter, Ellie, a chapter or two each Saturday night, when she stayed with them. He had just gotten to the funny part where the Red Queen tells Alice to stop twiddling her fingers, and to curtsey while thinking, because that “saves time.” Ellie had listened closely as the Red Queen redefined common words like garden and hill, and said they meant something other than their obvious definitions, transforming hill into valley, and garden into wilderness, and all sorts of similar nonsense. Yes, that Red Queen was much like an adept justice in the relativistic Brennan-Davidson line, playing willy-nilly with her terms until she got the result she liked. And with her monarchical title, she had just the right upbringing and pompous self-regard to feel at home at cocktail parties thrown by Hollywood directors and hedge-fund billionaires alike. So few people in this sordid era maintained any good old-fashioned common sense when it came to words, the kind of straightforward wisdom that Alice displayed with such abundance in those Wonderland books. Ellie, giggling and snorting, had understood Carroll’s main point plainly, as any kid would, because that point was so simple and obviously right.