Emperor of Ocean Park

by Stephen L Carter

  I close my eyes briefly. I can easily imagine the Judge using his wit so nastily, because he did it all the time.

  Wainwright isn’t finished.

  “But, Misha, most of the time, your father’s penchant for details didn’t hurt anybody that way. For instance, whenever a case came before us involving, say, an EPA standard, he would insist on reading the entire rulemaking record himself, instead of leaving it to his law clerks, as most of us would. And we’re talking rulemaking records that could run to more than twenty thousand pages. He would say, ‘If I can read Trollope I can read this.’ Or say there was a case in which one of the parties was obviously a dummy corporation, registered in, say, the Cayman Islands or Netherlands Antilles? Your father would demand that the corporation file—under seal, of course—a list of its actual owners, not just the shells within shells where they were hidden. Or a public interest group? He would require a list of donors.”

  I am, in spite of my mission, fascinated. “He could do that?”

  “Well, not by himself. It would take an order from the panel hearing the case. Since the panel had three judges, two would have to agree to the request. But it was unanimous, at least in every case I can remember. A matter of intrajudicial courtesy, I suppose.”

  “And would the corporations or whatever turn over the records?”

  “What else was there to do? Appeal to the Supreme Court? Even assuming that the Justices paid any attention to a request for a stay—which is very unlikely—and assuming they granted it—which is even more unlikely—what would a corporation really have accomplished by the appeal? I’ll tell you. It would have pissed off at least one judge, and maybe two or three. Even if the stay was granted, so the documents or whatever didn’t have to be disclosed, the corporation would still have to go back to the same panel of three judges to have the case heard. So who wants to argue in front of three judges you’ve just made very angry by appealing what seemed to them a pretty innocuous order?” He chuckles softly in delighted reminiscence. “Oh, but he was fun on the bench, your father! And such a fine judge. Such a fine judge.”

  But I know what he is really thinking, as I am: Such a waste. Such a waste. Looking at Wainwright’s sad face, I am tempted, for a moment, to ask him if he ever heard my father mention the word Excelsior, or perhaps a woman named Angela, who might have a boyfriend. I wonder if he knew my father owned a gun. Or why he would want one. I cannot quite bring myself to raise these questions, however, perhaps because I would feel too much like … well, the unnamed reporter in Citizen Kane, tracking down “Rosebud.” So I skip to the single question I am really here to ask.

  “Justice Wainwright”—I notice that, despite our long family friendship, he has not invited me to call him anything else—“this is … this isn’t easy.” He makes a magnanimous gesture. I continue. “A few minutes ago, you made a comment about … uh, money … .”

  “Let me anticipate you, Misha. You’re wondering the same thing the press wondered for a couple of years after the hearings, if there was anything other than friendship between your father and Jack Ziegler, right? The same thing all those congressional committees wanted to know. You’re asking whether I think your father did little favors on the bench for his old roommate. You’re asking, money aside, if he was a corrupt judge.”

  Now that the words have been spoken, they seem less frightening. I can handle the answer. “Yes, sir. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m wondering.”

  Justice Wainwright frowns, drums his fingers on the table. He does not so much drop his eyes as cast them toward the right-hand wall, his ego wall, where that photograph of him and the Judge on a fishing trip continues to surprise me, for one would think that a political animal like Wallace Wainwright would have removed it long ago. Then I remember how he offered my father a character reference once the hearings took their painful turn, was willing, even, to testify in person to the Judge’s honesty, no matter what the damage to his own career. My father, although grateful, turned him down flat. But my affection for Wallace Wainwright surges afresh at the recollection.

  The Justice continues to ponder. I allow the moment to spin out. His balding head at last swivels in my direction once more, and a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. “No, Misha. The answer is no. All those investigators, all those committees, all those journalists, none of them ever turned up anything. You have to remember that. They turned up nothing. Not one single thing. The reason is that there was nothing to turn up. Your father was a man of enormous integrity, Misha, as I told you. You mustn’t lose sight of that, no matter what he might have done.” I realize he is referring to his political views, his later career on the speaking circuit, not the scandal. “Please don’t think for a moment that your father was doing anything contrary to judicial ethics. Please don’t think of him as corrupt. Put that right out of your head. Your father would no more have sold his vote on a case than … than”—a pause while he searches for just the right simile, then a mischievous grin to tell me he has found it—“why, than I would,” he finishes with a self-deprecating smile, realizing, perhaps, that he has played perfectly into his own image as moderately egomaniacal.

  I am almost done. One last bit of confusion to clear up.

  “So, if my father was a man of such integrity and such intelligence”—I hesitate here: did Wainwright actually say at any point that my father was smart? I cannot recall, and, when white intellectuals speak of black ones, the question is of no small importance—“if he was so honest and so smart, then why did he bring Jack Ziegler into the courthouse? He could have met with him anywhere. At home. At a golf resort. In a parking lot. Why take the risk?”

  Wainwright’s eyes grow soft and distant, and the sad little smile returns. When at last he speaks, I at first think he is answering a different question from the one I asked, before I realize that he needs to sketch the preamble.

  “You know, Misha, I never raised the question of Jack Ziegler with your father. But he raised it with me. We had dinner together, it must have been six or eight months after he … resigned from the bench. Yes. He was, at that point, not yet the … um, angry polemicist he would soon become. He was still in despair. Confused, I think. Yes. Confused. He still could not see how things had turned around on him so swiftly. And he asked me—the only time he ever wanted my advice!—he asked me what I would have done in his place. About Jack Ziegler. I told him I did not know how I would have handled the questions. I guess I was trying to be political. Then I saw I had misunderstood him. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not the hearing. Earlier. If he was your friend. Would you have abandoned him?’ I realized he was talking about the courthouse visits. And I wondered the same thing you did. I told him that, if I felt I had to meet with a friend who was in trouble, and if there was even a whiff of scandal about the friend, I would do it someplace private. Your father nodded. He seemed very sad. But this is what he said, Misha: ‘I had no choice.’ Something like that. I asked him what he meant, why he had to bring Jack Ziegler into his chambers, but he just shook his head and went on to another subject.” A pause before he tells me the final piece of the truth. “He wasn’t himself that night, Misha. He probably didn’t know what he was saying.” Wainwright stops abruptly. I wonder whether he was about to tell me that my father had started drinking again. He folds his hands over his mouth, then opens them and smiles sadly. “Remember his greatness, Misha. That’s what I try to do.”

  Suddenly, unaccountably, I am furious. At the Judge for his cryptic note, at Uncle Mal for not taking my calls, at the late Colin Scott for harassing me, at Lynda Wyatt and Marc Hadley and Cameron Knowland and everybody else who has brought me to this moment. But, just now, I am mostly angry at Wallace Warrenton Wainwright.

  “I want to remember my father as he actually was,” I say calmly. I do not add: I just have to find out who he was first.

  Ten minutes later, I leave the building by the main entrance, descending the steep marble stairs past shivering knots of tourists waiting for a peek
inside the temple of our national oracle. Yes, Associate Justice Wallace Wainwright is an egomaniac, but it is that very ego on which I am counting. If Wainwright is willing to put my father in his own lofty company, then he surely believes what he says.

  Bottom line: the Judge did not sell his vote to Jack Ziegler and his friends.

  So what was he doing? I know what Wainwright was trying to tell me at the end, even if he could not quite say the words: he thinks the Judge brought Uncle Jack into his chambers because he wanted someone to see them together. He wanted, in short, to get caught. But, if the Justice is right, what did my father want to get caught at?

  CHAPTER 21

  A TRIP AROUND THE CIRCLE

  THE TORT-REFORM CONFERENCE is at the Washington Hilton Hotel and Towers, located on Connecticut Avenue, a few blocks north of Dupont Circle. Following my meeting with Justice Wainwright, I do not return to the hotel directly; I am searching, desperately, for distractions. Instead, I have the taxi drop me on Eye Street to see the bookseller I visited the last time I was in the city; not only does the man remember me, but he assures me that he is on the track of the Fischer pamphlet I asked about. We chat about a few other matters, then I stroll a few blocks up to L Street for a quick swing through Brooks Brothers, in an unsuccessful search for the perfect tie to wear with a yellow silk blazer that Kimmer bought me on her last trip to San Francisco—another second-place trophy to add to my collection. I buy a couple of pairs of socks, then flag down a taxi to return to the hotel to catch the late-afternoon panels.

  As the taxi driver goes around the block and heads north on Twentieth Street, I lean back and try to relax. Despite the tension in my muscles, I even manage to doze a bit, required in these tense days to grab a nap where I can.

  Then the taxi turns right onto New Hampshire Avenue, and the driver suddenly says: “None my business, sir, but you know car behind is following us?”

  Fully awake, I spin in my seat.

  “What car?”

  “Little green car. There. You see?”

  I see it. It is two or three cars behind us, some cookie-cutter American sedan.

  “How do you know it’s following us?”

  “After I pick you up, I go around block to point taxi right way.” To charge a higher fare, he means; in Washington, where there are no meters, all that matters in adding up the fare is how many fare zones the cab crosses, and drivers often choose one street rather than another to cross a zonal line. “Green car go around block also. I turn another right, he turn another right. I turn right again, he turn right again. In my country, I often see cars do this. Cars of secret police.”

  Great.

  I think fast. I am not sure who might be following me now that Scott is dead, but, being back in Washington, I cannot quite clear from my mind’s eye the photographs of what somebody did to Freeman Bishop. Conan or no Conan, arrest or no arrest, I feel a chill.

  Think!

  In about thirty seconds, my taxi will hit the nerve-blasting confusion of Dupont Circle, which only the most foolish out-of-towners and the most experienced Washington drivers ever dare, because you must change lanes rapidly and efficiently, depending on which of the many intersecting streets you plan to take, and, at the same time, steer counterclockwise around a circle rather than straight, all the while avoiding other motorists just as bewildered as you are, to say nothing of pedestrians darting from one misshapen concrete island to the next. I am still looking back at the green car. The driver is a gray smear in the window; there seems to be a passenger too, but it is hard to tell.

  Probably my cabbie is mistaken.

  But maybe he isn’t. Maybe somebody wants to see where I am headed. Barely plausible, I know, but the green car is there just the same. And, no matter who it is, I find that I don’t like it one bit.

  “When you get to Dupont Circle, get in the lane for Massachusetts Avenue.”

  “Which way?”

  “Uh, southbound, or east, whatever it is—toward the Capitol.”

  “You say Washington Hilton. On Connecticut Avenue.” We are stopped at the last traffic light before the Circle. The green sedan is now just two cars back. The passenger seat is definitely occupied.

  “How much is the fare to the Hilton?”

  He names a figure.

  I pore through my thin wallet, select a twenty-dollar bill, and, with a grimace, drop it over the seat. He understands at once that he is to keep the change.

  “Turn on Massachusetts, then take the first right, behind that gray building. The one at the corner.” I point. I know the building well, having once practiced law in a firm there, back in the days when Kimmer and I were fooling around behind her first husband’s back, pretending to keep secret what everybody knew. The driver says nothing. He is wondering, no doubt, why I am running away from the green car. As a matter of fact, I am wondering too. But I lay my plans anyway, just in case I turn out to be sane. “Keep the change,” I tell him. No response. “When you hit Massachusetts, go as fast as you can,” I continue. “Then turn onto Eighteenth, also very, very fast.” The driver’s wary eyes meet mine in the mirror. He does not like this. He associates cars that follow other cars with the police. In his country, wherever that is, the police are the bad guys. Here in America …?

  “Listen,” I say, adding another twenty from my dwindling supply of cash. “I am not a criminal, and the people in that car are not the police, okay?”

  The driver shrugs. He will not make any commitment that he cannot deny later. But he does not offer to return my money.

  The light changes, and the taxi surges forward so suddenly that I will probably be in the emergency room later tonight, being treated for whiplash. Crouching, I look back. As my driver weaves through traffic, the green car follows. I look forward. My driver is not in the Massachusetts Avenue lane! He has decided not to cooperate! I am trying to come up with another argument to offer when, without warning, the taxi bumps over the curb into the lane for Massachusetts Avenue before several startled, honking motorists. A clutch of pedestrians scurries for cover. As the green car falls farther behind, I wonder fleetingly what my driver did for a living that caused him to flee to America, bringing along such detailed knowledge of how the police of his country conduct surveillance.

  And of how to escape it.

  Probably better that I not know.

  We fly through the complicated intersection and turn hard onto Massachusetts. The green car is stuck at a light, and in the wrong lane. Its passenger door whips open, just as we swing around the corner behind the gray building.

  “Slow down for a second,” I tell the driver as soon as the green car is out of sight. I know it will catch up momentarily, the passenger, who can slide between stopped cars, even faster. I have only seconds. I slip the driver another bill, a ten: I have no more twenties.

  He is shaking his head, but he slows. I push open the door and climb, crouching, from the still-rolling car. “Now go!” I call, slamming the door.

  I do not need to tell him twice.

  As the taxi squeals around the next corner, I am already darting into the narrow alley separating the back of my former office building from an old townhouse next door, home to some private institute or other. The alley dead-ends at the building’s service entrance. Cameras of doubtful working order guard the scene. I crouch behind a drab green Dumpster just as my pursuer, now on foot, hurries by. My eyes widen, and I fight down a sudden trembling in my extremities. I wait, instinct telling me that we are not through yet. I check my watch. Three minutes pass. Four. The alley stinks of old garbage and recent urine. I notice for the first time that I have company: a homeless man, his possessions heaped around him in plastic bags, is fast asleep near the loading dock of the office building. I keep watching the street. The green car finally slithers past, moving slowly, the invisible driver probably checking hedges and doorways—and alleys. I wonder why they are not chasing the taxi. They must have seen me get out. I sink farther back into the shadows. The gree
n car is gone. I still wait. A flurry atop the Dumpster draws my attention, but it is only a mangy black cat, gnawing on something foul. I am not superstitious. At least I don’t think I am. I wait. The homeless man mutters and snores, a fibrous alcoholic sound I remember from the days when the Judge used to lock the door of his study. Ten minutes pass. More. Sure enough, the passenger from the car passes me again, having evidently walked all the way around the block. The green car reappears. The door swings open. They appear to argue. The passenger points down the street, vaguely in the direction of my hideout, then shrugs and climbs in. The car drives away. Still I wait. I remain crouched in the alley for close to half an hour before I slide out and join the stream of pedestrians. Then I sneak back in and stuff my other ten-dollar bill into the homeless man’s pocket.

  More guilt money.

  Back on the sidewalk, I cross Massachusetts Avenue and mosey into Dupont Circle, pausing at the stone chess tables, pretending to watch the games, but really craning my neck to see whether I spot the green car or its furtive passenger. I drift from one table to the next, glancing at the positions on the boards. The players are a true rainbow, a random mix of ages, races, languages. Few of them seem very strong, but, on the other hand, I am not giving their games much of my attention. A crazy old man yells at a younger woman who just defeated him. The woman, who looks about as healthy as my customers at the soup kitchen, wears a hairnet and glasses repaired at the temple with a Band-Aid. She points a quivering finger at her vanquished opponent. He slaps it aside, baring brownish teeth. The kibitzers take sides. Other games lose their audiences. The crowd around the stone table grows raucous. Lawyers with cell phones at their hips jostle with slender bicycle messengers as everybody seeks a better view of the hoped-for tussle. I lose myself inside the throng, trying to peek in every direction at once. I cannot remember when my senses have been so open, so absorbent. I am not even scared. I am exhilarated. Every color of every branch of every tree is so crisp and clear I can almost breathe its hue. I feel as though I can examine the face of every one of the hundreds of pedestrians who walk through the park every minute. Another half-hour elapses. No sign of the green car, no sign of the passenger. Forty-five minutes. Eventually, I slip away and walk north, toward the Hilton.