“Give this a gander.”
Blackstone read it. He had not seen the document before, but he immediately recognized it for what it was: Julian Hubbard’s short list of candidates to defend Lockwood before the Senate. He knew every lawyer on the list; he had bested some of them, and been bested by others, in past legal encounters.
“Opinion?” Lockwood said.
“All good men.”
“I know that, Spats. Every one of them is a Harvard or a Yale. What’s your opinion of that?”
“The first part of my opinion is that it’s only natural, since Julian drew up the list with the advice of the people he’s known all his life.”
“What’s the second part?”
“That any one of these fine lawyers, or any combination thereof, will cost the U.S. government many millions of dollars in fees and expenses in return for losing the case.”
Lockwood was slumped and tousled; he beckoned for more words.
Blackstone said, “After President Nixon fired the special prosecutor who did him in, Professor Archibald Cox of Harvard, and after the Harvard-educated attorney general who had hired Cox, Elliot Richardson, had also resigned, a local lawyer sent Nixon a message through confidential channels. It read: ‘Tell the President never again to put himself in the hands of the Harvards.’ “ Blackstone tapped Julian’s list. “Mr. President, men like these don’t give a tinker’s dam what happens to you. The way they look at the world, you were nothing to begin with, so you’ve got nothing to lose if you lose the presidency.”
Lockwood grunted. “Those are hard words.”
“I know that, sir. I chose them with care. Appoint any of these people and it’ll look good in the newspapers. The whole Ivy League will clap hands in unison—old Winthrop got the case. And when it’s over, they’ll all get together in the clubs and say, ‘Old Winthrop did his best, but the peasant—what was that fellow’s name?—did steal the sheep, so naturally they had to hang him.’ ”
“On what do you base this opinion, Counselor?”
“On a lifetime of watching these types operate.”
“I think I understand your general proposition. Anything in particular bothering you about the individuals on the list?”
“No, sir. They’re all alike; the whole point of the system that produces them is to turn out a type. There’s not a one of them who would pick you if it came to a choice between you and somebody like Horace Hubbard.”
Lockwood feigned a broad smile of amusement. “You’ve sure got it in for poor old Horace,” he said.
“Mr. President, I don’t know Horace Hubbard from Job’s off ox,” Blackstone said. “But it was poor old Horace, acting on the very instincts I’ve just described, who got you into this situation in the first place. Do you think he stole those votes to save your skin?”
“I think he may have thought so at the time.”
Blackstone laughed aloud, a single derisive un-Blackstone-like honk. “He may say just that when we lay hands on him. I’ll be surprised if he says anything else. He may even believe it. But noblesse oblige is no defense before the law.”
Lockwood sighed, closed his eyes, sighed again. A lengthy silence ensued. When he reopened his eyelids, Blackstone said, “Think of yourself, Mr. President. Think of the country. Think of the future. You can’t harm the Hubbards of this world.”
Lockwood stared at him, eyes cold, mouth stubborn, color creeping into his cheeks. Finally, holding out his hand for the return of Julian’s list, he said, “You do agree I need a lawyer? Besides you, I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ve got a candidate in mind.”
“Yes, sir. I have.”
“Can he save my ass?”
“I don’t know,” Blackstone said. “But if anybody can, he can.”
Lockwood did not ask the man’s name. He said, “Then whoever he is, have him here, in this room, at midnight tomorrow. Just the three of us.” He put on his reading glasses and peered over the rims. “Good night.”
Blackstone left him. Walking down the hall, he heard Lockwood’s voice calling his name. He turned around. The President was out of sight, evidently still in his chair. “Spats!” he called after him. “Keep up the good work.”
4
That day’s editions of The Washington Post printed the full text of the letter to Lockwood with the signatures of all one hundred thirty-seven members of Congress appended. The unnamed member of the House who had leaked the letter expressed shock and dismay that the President had angrily refused to accept delivery of this epistle from the Speaker of the House. “Our intention,” said the source, “was to let the President know our thinking without making it public. He let us know he didn’t want to listen.” Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that a second anonymous but “highly placed and knowledgeable source”—reporters’ shorthand for R. Tucker Attenborough, Jr., thought Lockwood—had told a different journalist that a resolution for impeachment was imminent.
“That little son of a bitch is trying to steal the presidency!” Lockwood said to Sam Clark over the telephone.
“You’re free to suspect anything you like but in this case you’re way off base,” Clark replied. “However, I agree that there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“There is? What?”
“You know as well as I do.”
Lockwood exploded. “Jesus H. Christ, Sam, how the hell would I know? I haven’t had an original idea, or heard one, since they locked me up in this place four years ago. Just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“All right. It’s too quiet out there, friend. Everybody’s falling all over themselves to say Archimedes Hammett is the finest Supreme Court nominee since Felix Frankfurter came down from Harvard lugging the stone tablets of the New Deal. Where’s all the hooraw that was supposed to be stirred up by nominating a man from Mars for Chief Justice?”
“Mallory’s people just haven’t got their act together yet. I took ‘em by surprise.”
“They’re over the surprise, but they’re still not saying a word,” Clark said. “It’s not natural.”
In a tone of mockery, Lockwood said, “You think there’s a plot?”
Clark was not amused. He replied, “I think you’d have to be crazy not to take that possibility into account. But if there is one, Tucker Attenborough isn’t in on it.”
Lockwood respected Sam Clark’s opinion on the way things work in Washington above that of anyone else in the world, but he was not in a mood to listen to kind words about Attenborough. He remained silent for a long moment. Then he said, “ ‘Bye, Sam,” and hung up the phone.
Julian was not privy to this conversation, nor did Lockwood mention it to him. Julian was working the telephones, calling in chips, counting heads. The coin and currency of Washington commerce were gossip and rumor. As Julian came in and out of the Oval Office that day, Lockwood listened to everything he had to report, even though he already knew or had guessed most of it as a result of experience and instinct. Little happened that had not happened before or would not happen again in this inbred community, where nearly every newcomer reminded an old hand like Lockwood of someone he used to know. Being President in his present circumstances, he thought, was like being the terminally ill patriarch of a vast clan of white trash. Every single member was engaged in a family fight over his estate. Everybody was out to screw everybody else. They all kept secrets from him. But he knew exactly what was going on out back: the cousins were just doing what they’d always done, counting their chickens before they hatched and lying on top of each other making more half-wit cousins who thought every idea they had was completely original. If you knew this you knew it all. “To hell with all of ‘em!” he said aloud to the walls of his grand but lonesome office.
At eight o’clock, Lockwood drove Julian out of the White House. “Go home!” he said in a voice of command. “Take Emily out to dinner, watch a movie. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, for tomorrow … well, you know the rest.�
��
“I should stand by.”
“Goddamnit, boy, I don’t want you here. I’ve had enough for one day. I want my supper, I want my mommy, I want some peace and quiet. Go.”
Resentfully, though he did not betray this or any other feeling, Julian went.
5
Norman Carlisle Blackstone ushered Alfonso Olmedo C. into the Lincoln sitting room on the stroke of midnight. The C. stood for Crespo, his mother’s maiden name; although he had been born in the United States, he retained the Spanish style of nomenclature prevalent in Bolivia, whence his family came. Having a final initial instead of a middle one set him off from the crowd, and, as he invariably said to pretty women and journalists, it had the added advantage of sowing confusion in the telephone company.
Lockwood was surprised by Olmedo’s costume. He was dressed in a tuxedo and ruffled shirt with a wide black tie. He wore a large diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand and a diamond-studded solid-gold Cartier watch on his left wrist. As he drew closer to shake hands, Lockwood detected cologne. Crushing his hand, the President said, “Adolphe Menjou, by God!”
Olmedo, a former Golden Gloves welterweight from the South Bronx who was still quite strong, returned the pressure on his metacarpal bones ounce for ounce and arched a quizzical eyebrow. “My appearance surprises you, Mr. President?”
“I expected a rabbi,” Lockwood said.
“Carlisle raises everyone’s expectations,” Olmedo replied with an almost undetectable Hispanic intonation in his resonant voice.
Lockwood could not quite place this man; he frowned. “Olmedo!” he said after a second or two of concentration. “Now I remember. You’re the fellow that beat Franklin Mallory in his own Supreme Court.”
“Hardly that, Mr. President. What I did was argue the case that established a woman’s future property rights in regard to an embryo fertilized in her womb and subsequently removed therefrom.”
“That’s right. He lost, you won.”
“Possibly.” Olmedo lowered his eyebrows and changed the subject. “But please forgive the way I’m dressed, Mr. President. I was the speaker at a dinner in New York, and I had no time to change before flying down.”
“No problem, Adolphe.”
Olmedo was a wiry man of average height, but he held himself in such a way that Lockwood had the impression he was looking at someone his own size. Olmedo’s skin was bronze, the eyes dark and piercing, the abundant black hair brushed straight back from a high sloping forehead. Lockwood thought, Jesus, he looks like the king of the Incas. He said, “Have we ever met before?”
“Once, at one of Carlisle’s functions, but it was only a handshake.”
“You and he are old friends?”
“We went to college and law school together.”
“Fordham. The Seven Blocks of Granite, Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, player-manager of the Gashouse Gang. You’re a Catholic?”
Olmedo looked at Lockwood with curiosity. No American had asked him such a question in years. “Of that tradition. But I don’t practice a religion.”
“That’s good; neither do I,” Lockwood said. “You think your buddy here is a pretty good lawyer?”
“I know of none better.”
“Why’s that, exactly?”
With a smile Olmedo said, “Make yourself deaf, Carlisle. The reason is a simple one, Mr. President. He has a scholarly mind that is both brilliant and perfectly honest. The former qualities are rare in a member of our profession. The last is almost unheard-of.”
“Take a chair,” Lockwood said, as if Olmedo had just passed some arcane initiation rite and earned the privilege of sitting in his presence. “I appreciate your coming down on short notice.”
Olmedo nodded, acknowledging the aptness of this remark. His time was valuable. Every American half century has its preeminent courtroom performer, its Clarence Darrow or its Melvin Belli. By common consent Olmedo now held custody of this honor. In his way he was as famous as the President of the United States, and consequently just as busy.
Lockwood continued, “If you’ve been reading the newspapers, you know I’m going to need a lawyer. I’ve never needed one before, so I don’t know exactly where this conversation is supposed to go from here.”
“Very few honest men ever need a lawyer more than once in their lives,” Olmedo said.
“Thanks for the compliment, Adolphe.”
Olmedo flinched at the nickname, but let it pass without response. He said, “Carlisle has briefed me on your case. It is a difficult one.”
“Carlisle is not my most optimistic adviser.”
“Then you would be wise to embrace him very tightly, Mr. President.”
“You agree with his assessment of the facts and prospects?”
“I agree that it is a difficult case. Most cases are. Like most other intense experiences in life, being charged with a crime out of a clear blue sky is something that cannot be understood until it is over, and sometimes not even then. The important thing is to keep your peace of mind.”
“Is that what you sell, Counselor?”
Without moving a muscle, Olmedo recoiled. “No, sir. I am not a swami. Peace of mind comes only from within. I presume your innocence… ” Lockwood started to speak; Olmedo, appropriating the gesture the President himself made so frequently, held up an imperious hand for silence. “Please! Do not disturb my peace of mind by telling me whether I am right or wrong on that score; I have a certain idea of you that is necessary to my method.”
“You don’t want to know one way or the other?”
“Why should I want to know? The jury—in this case, presumably, the United States Senate—will not take my word for it. Only the evidence will convict or acquit.”
“Do you have an opinion on which way it would go if tried today?”
“The case will not be tried today, so I cannot play that game. I have read the evidence presented by Mr. Mallory. It makes a strong case that the election was corrupted. But it’s only an argument for his own interests. It’s not the final word.”
“In the context of a trial, that’s true,” Lockwood said. “But there’s reason to wonder if I could survive even if I was acquitted. As you know, a lot of people think I should stand aside under the Twenty-fifth Amendment. What do you say to that?”
“Never. That’s what I say.”
Lockwood leaned forward. “All right. Why?”
“Because you are not disabled. There is no question of your competence, only of your legitimacy. A question, even an earthshaking question, is only a question. It’s not a judgment.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a country to run, and all this makes it pretty damn hard to get anything done. That’s one reason why Nixon resigned.”
“Yes, and he made a grievous mistake that is now coming back to haunt you,” Olmedo said.
“True,” Lockwood said. “But the fact is, he resigned the presidency because he knew he didn’t have the votes in the Senate to be acquitted. He thought of the country, of what would happen if the government was paralyzed by a trial he knew he couldn’t win.”
“A noble gesture perhaps, but nobility is not the point.”
“I understand that.”
“It is important that you do. Otherwise no lawyer can help you.”
Lockwood made a gesture that meant All right, goddamnit! but said, “Will you help me?”
For a long moment, Olmedo stared at the toes of his gleaming black evening pumps. Then he said, “Yes. I will represent you, Mr. President. But there are conditions.”
“Shoot.”
“You must see me without delay when I deem it necessary. You must have no other lawyers besides Carlisle and me.”
“Just the two of you? The House and Senate will have hundreds opposing you.”
“Let them. I will provide my own investigator, and you must instruct the government, including the intelligence service, to provide him, and me, with any information I request.”
“Inves
tigator? Is that singular?”
Blackstone and Olmedo exchanged a smile. “That is certainly the word for my associate, Mr. John L. S. McGraw. He and Attorney Blackstone and I have worked together many times before. Three is the right number.”
“It can’t be done with three.”
“Then I can’t serve you, sir. By nature I am a barrister. I argue cases. My brother in the law Mr. Blackstone is a solicitor, also by nature, and he prepares the cases. Our associate Mr. McGraw gets the goods. That’s the way we work. The objective is to concentrate on essentials. Let the other side run around in circles and build a castle of paper.”
Lockwood pondered these words. But only for a moment. “All right. You’ve got the case. What’s your fee?”
“No fee, sir.”
“No fee? Jesus Christ, Adolphe, you are a subversive.”
Olmedo smiled. “I admit it. In regard to the embryos, for example, I thought I was representing them, not their mothers. If the Supreme Court put a money value on these microscopic human beings, I reasoned, they would perhaps be safer.”
Lockwood, who loved conundrums, laughed in delight when he realized what had been said to him. Olmedo rose to his feet, smiling genially, and held out his hand. “There is one more condition, Mr. President,” he said. “I do expect a fee after all. It is this: you must not call me Adolphe, or by any other name except my own.”
6
By happenstance the whereabouts of Horace Hubbard was a topic of discussion at the dinner party at which Franklin Mallory took the first steps toward replacing Susan Grant with Zarah Christopher as the other half of his being. Early that day, Mallory had called in person to invite Ross Macalaster to dine at his Kalorama house. “Will you bring someone?” he asked.
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