Shadow of Power

5

I had barely entered my hotel lobby when I felt the tickle from the vibrator on my cell phone at my belt.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Madriani.” The melodious tone of her voice was still in my brain from our meeting. “Trisha Scott here. I did as you asked. I called Justice Ginnis’s chambers. As I suspected, he’s out of town, on vacation. They didn’t tell me precisely where. They never do. Just somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“Did they say when he would be back?”

“No. But it will probably be a while. The Court doesn’t reconvene until October, and as I told you, Arthur is recovering from some surgery, so he’s on light duty. He may not be back immediately at the start of the session when they reconvene.”

“You mean a member of the Court can be absent?”

“Sure, it happens. They just have to go with eight justices until the absent member returns.”

“They can’t have someone from the circuit court sit in?”

“No. Not on the Supreme Court. It’s constitutional. No one can sit on the Supreme Court until nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Arthur would have to step down, retire before that could happen. And if you knew Arthur, you’d know that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, particularly in the current political climate.”

Scott’s talking about the current partisan division among members of the Court. Anyone who thinks that judges aren’t political should buy a bridge or two. At the rarefied level of the Supreme Court, this doubles down in spades. There are justices who are thought to call the White House for direction on one side and powerful members of the Senate on the other before rendering an opinion on hot issues before the Court. Some would say that the situation has worsened in the last twenty years. Many of these are suffering from a lack of perspective when it comes to history. They forget that FDR threatened to amend the Constitution in order to pack the Court with more members to get his way on New Deal legislation back in the thirties.

“So what you’re saying is that if I want to talk to him, I’m going to have to either wait or trek down to the Caribbean and try to find him?”

“That’s about the size of it,” she says. “But I’d like to suggest another alternative. That is, if you’re in town overnight?”

“Currently I have a flight out tomorrow afternoon. I was going to extend it, if needed, in the event you could reach the Justice.”

“Listen. How about dinner tonight?” she says. “I can show you some of the sights of the city. Also, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?”

“Over dinner,” she says.

“All right.”

“Then dinner at seven. I’ll pick you up at your hotel. In the lobby, at six-thirty.”

Before I can say anything more, she hangs up.

“I was a little abrupt this afternoon,” she apologizes.

I’m looking at Trisha Scott through dim lamplight over a white linen tablecloth in a Georgetown restaurant called 1789, her pick since she’s driving.

The unlit fireplace, partially covered by a summer-front, and the beamed ceiling give the décor a distinctive Colonial feel, though I’m told that the building is a nineteenth-century renovation, a town house with rooms carved into intimate dining areas accented by Early American antiques. Equestrian prints cover the walls. In the background there is the light hum of chatter at nearby tables.

“I’m sorry, but you caught me by surprise. I guess I’ve been too busy lately, under a lot of pressure,” she says. “I hope you can understand?”

“Sure.”

“Of course, I’m sitting here telling you about pressure. I can’t imagine the responsibility of trying a capital case.”

“You don’t do any criminal law?”

She shakes her head. “No. I get the jitters when large sums of money are involved, and then I only see it after all the fast trial guns have fired, the smoke has cleared, and everything’s up on appeal. I’m what you would call the law’s Monday-morning quarterback,” she says. “I can’t imagine what it would be like if someone’s life were on the line, doing it in front of a jury. The thing with Terry was enough for me. His death,” she says. “No doubt he wasn’t the best of people. In the end he was just someone I’d known. But the fact was, I had known him, shared meals, slept with him. I helped his family with the funeral arrangements when they came east with the body. There was only his mother and a sister, but they seemed lost. I’d met them a few times when we were dating, so I did what I could.”

“That was good of you.”

“What else could I do? I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

“Hmm?”

“This afternoon,” she says.

“Not at all. You were very polite.”

“But not very helpful.” She smiles at me.

“Well…” I offer her an expression of concession.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t tell you everything. In fact, I didn’t tell you the truth.”

“About what?”

“About the letter. There was a letter,” she says. “Mind you, I never actually saw it. But there were references to it.”

“References?”

“In an early version of the manuscript for Perpetual Slaves. He wanted me to proof it for him. We were still living together. He was the wordsmith writing books, I was the wordsmith writing briefs. I really didn’t have the time. I told him so. Terry never took no for an answer. It wasn’t in his lexicon. I think what he really wanted was to see if I would be shocked by the content of what he’d written.”

“And were you?”

She looks at me and nods. “He had strewn the thing with references to this letter. I only got a glance,” she says. “Because I didn’t actually proof it-the book, I mean. We got into a disagreement. It ultimately led to a rupture in the relationship. That’s what ended it.”

“Disagreement over what?”

“Whether he should use that kind of material in the book.”

“What kind of material?”

“I’m assuming it came from the letter you’re talking about. According to Terry, it was an indictment of everything American, hypocrisy piled on hypocrisy, all documented at the inception of the country’s founding. As I recall, Terry referred to it, in the manuscript, as ‘the infamous Jefferson Letter.’”

“Do you mind if I take notes?” I ask.

She looks at me. “You have to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That you won’t call me as a witness.”

“I can’t promise that.”

Her face is suddenly a mask of exasperation.

“How can I promise that? With Scarborough dead, you may be the only one who knows anything about the letter.”

“As I said, I never actually saw it. Whatever he told me, whatever he wrote that I might have seen, is now hearsay. I’m not a trial lawyer, but without the letter itself and some way to verify its contents it would be inadmissible. Am I wrong?”

“No. You’re right. Perhaps now you can understand why it’s so important that I find Justice Ginnis.”

Our drinks arrive. Scott picks up her tumbler, scotch and soda, and takes a sip as she looks at me over the glass. I can tell by the expression in her eyes that she’s weighing whether to say anything more. I’m worried that she may get up and walk. At the moment it’s her word against mine that she knows anything at all.

“I can’t say anything more unless I have assurances that you won’t call me as a witness,” she says.

“I won’t call you unless I absolutely have to. If I can find another source for the letter,” I tell her, “I won’t have to.”

She thinks about this.

“If you stop now, you’re my only source. I will have nowhere else to turn. If you tell me what you know, you may give me other leads, in which case there’s a good chance I may not need you.”

I’m making a sales pitch. She knows it. She considers this for a moment, the canny lawyer behind the icy tumbler. She puts the glass down. “You have to promise that you will do everything possible to keep me out of it.”

“Agreed.”

“All right.” She takes a deep breath. “As I said, I just saw references to the letter in the early manuscript. And then I only got fleeting glimpses. I never actually had a chance to look at the manuscript in detail. We never got that far.”

“But there was no reference to any Jefferson letter in Perpetual Slaves,” I say.

“No. Terry removed it all before it was published.”

“Why?”

“We’ll get to that,” she says.

“Do you know where the earlier manuscript is?” I ask.

“It was destroyed.”

“You’re sure?”

“I was there when he shredded it. Terry always shredded the earlier versions of what he wrote. He said it was because of liability if he ever got sued. He didn’t want other lawyers rummaging through his files looking for early rewrites and trying to infer what was really going through his mind when he published the final book. He said it was safer that way. Terry was more than a little paranoid, especially about his work. He saw conspiracies under every rock and behind every bush. No pun intended,” she says.

“He couldn’t have been afraid of libel or slander,” I say. “If Jefferson wrote the letter, he’s long dead. Unless they changed the law when I wasn’t looking, you can’t libel the dead.”

“It wasn’t libel or slander he was worried about.”

“What then?”

“Violence,” she says. “Terry was convinced that what he was writing had the potential to incite a race war. Mind you, I’m not sure Terry would have objected. I rather think he would have applauded the actual violence. From what I understand, when the riots erupted on his tour for the current book, he was tickled that there were people who actually sat up and took notice of what he’d written and were motivated enough to burn vehicles and break windows.”

“Riots being the highest form of flattery,” I say.

“In Terry’s mind, probably true. But the letter was another matter. According to Terry, if readers had seen the actual text of the Jefferson letter, they would have torched Washington, every monument and stick in the place. There wouldn’t have been much left anywhere in the inner city. At least that’s what he said.”

“So he didn’t want to be the cause of this?”

“Not exactly. The problem was, he couldn’t authenticate the letter. What he told me was that he possessed a photocopy, but he was certain that at some point within a few months he’d be able to get his hands on the original. Then he could authenticate it using state-of-the-art forensics. Once he did that, what he’d be publishing would be history, and you can’t blame the author for that.”

“At least he thought it through,” I say. “The consequences, I mean.”

“Actually, he didn’t. I did. It’s what we argued about,” she says. “For all his supposed legal expertise, the truth of the matter was that Terry wasn’t much of a lawyer. He allowed his passions to run away with his head. He wanted to use the material, the letter, even though all he had was a copy. When I asked him if he knew whether it was authentic, he said he didn’t care. Even if it wasn’t authentic, it accurately reflected what had occurred regarding slavery and the hypocrites who founded the country. That’s what he told me. Almost his exact words.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth. What if it spawned violence and people were killed? Terry told me that that was always the price to be paid for social progress and past injustice.

“I told him he wasn’t thinking clearly. That if he published it, the letter was likely to gain a lot of traction in the press-in newspapers and on television. I told him that people who don’t read books were likely to see the contents of the letter in the media because of its controversial nature and the fact that it had never been publicly revealed before. I told him that if it wasn’t authentic and if violence erupted, he could be responsible for anything that happened, legally responsible for inciting riots.”

“I’ll bet that put the chill into him.”

“He didn’t say much, not at first. There was a lot of silence. He hadn’t considered it. You should have seen the look on his face. He was like a child whose toy had been taken away. It was like, ‘I asked you to look and listen to what was in my book. I didn’t expect you to actually tell me there was something wrong with it.’ He kept me up all night talking, trying to figure some way to get around this. I asked him where he got the letter, that he might be able to authenticate it if he could get his hands on the original. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it, only that the source was unimpeachable and that if I knew where he’d gotten it, I wouldn’t be questioning it either. But he still wouldn’t tell me. By morning I don’t know if he was just exhausted or if reason had finally set in, but he realized he couldn’t use it-the letter, I mean-not without authentication.

“He shredded the manuscript, the only printed copy,” she continued. “I told him not to, that he might wait until he had a chance to get the original letter, but he wouldn’t listen. He was angry with me. It wasn’t the message he wanted to hear, so he wanted to shoot the messenger. He had to call the publisher and tell them he would be late delivering the book. It set him back several months. He had to do a heavy rewrite, building up the slavery language in the Constitution, using that as a stepping-off place. But I know that he was intent on using the letter for a later book.”

“He told you this?”

“More than once. It was as if he blamed me for forcing him to do the extra work. I just told him the facts. But Terry didn’t like facts when they got in the way of something he wanted to do or say. It was the beginning of the end for us, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I had come between him and his mistress.”

“His work?” I say.

“Publicity,” says Scott. “Terry needed the celebrity for validation. He had a big emotional hole inside him.”

“About the letter,” I say. “Assuming it’s authentic, you’re sure Jefferson wrote it?”

“All I know is that Terry referred to it as ‘the Jefferson letter’ or ‘the infamous Jefferson letter.’ As I said, I never saw it, and even the references in the manuscript I only got to glance at. As soon as he told me what he was doing and I told him there would be problems, Terry pulled the manuscript away from me. I never got another look at it.”

“So you don’t know the date, when the letter was written?”

She shakes her head.

“Or whom it was written to?”

“No.”

“Not much to go on,” I tell her.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Still, it’s more than I had this afternoon.” I smile at her from across the table, close up my notebook, and slip it back into the inside pocket of my coat along with the pen. “Did you mention any of this to the cops, when they talked to you?”

“They didn’t ask. I had no reason to think it might be important until you mentioned it.” She takes another sip of her drink. “There is one other thing,” she says. “It’s about Justice Ginnis. I’m certain that Terry would not have gotten the letter from Arthur.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because Arthur despised Terry. He had no use for him. He saw Terry as an opportunist, somebody who would use anybody to get ahead and dump them as soon as he got what he wanted. He warned me not to get emotionally involved. He wouldn’t have crossed the street to help Terry with anything, especially anything as controversial as Terry’s book. Believe me, as a former Supreme Court clerk-there wasn’t a member of the Court who wouldn’t lift their robes and run shrieking to put distance between themselves and anything Terry wrote.”

“You say Ginnis despised Scarborough?”

“Oh, here we go,” she says.

“Sorry. I can’t help picking up on little words.”

“Forget I ever said it.” She reaches for her purse under the table, ready to walk out.

“Don’t get angry. I’m just looking for background. I need to know who Scarborough was, the kind of man I’m dealing with as a victim.”

She wears a stern expression. Then she softens, puts her purse back down.

“I’ll tell you,” she says. “You will have no difficulty finding enemies of Terry Scarborough in this town. Just turn over any rock,” she says. “I didn’t know it when I first met him. I was young, naïve, impressionable, straight out of law school. Terry was a well-known published author, on television almost daily. I was dazzled.

“It wasn’t until later, months later, that I found out that Terry had savaged Justice Ginnis in one of his earlier books. It was the case of the century,” she said, the presidential election almost twelve years ago now, the squeaker decided by the Supreme Court.

“Terry published a book that kicked the insides out of the Court. He claimed to have sources, people privy to private conversations between the justices and those on the outside, the parties and their lawyers. The decision by the Court came down five to four; it ended the election and effectively anointed the new president. Arthur was the swing vote, and Terry excoriated him for it in public print. He called Arthur a party hack and claimed that he’d been in direct contact with lawyers for the new president before he voted on the case. It wasn’t true. It hurt Arthur, and it hurt him deeply.

“But that’s the thing about the Court-you just had to sit there and take it. They all knew that. It was the price the nine of them, and all their predecessors, paid for a lifetime appointment to an institution that’s not supposed to be political. When somebody takes a shot, they can’t go to the media and fight back. You just have to live with it, and Arthur did. It’s the reason I laughed when you said someone had told you that Terry and Arthur were friends. Justice Ginnis would have put an ocean between himself and Terry Scarborough if he could have. When I introduced Terry to him at the reception, I thought Arthur would choke. The next day Arthur took me into his office and warned me that Scarborough would try to use me to find out what was going on in chambers, to dig up dirt on cases. I told him I would never reveal anything like that.”

“Did he? Scarborough, I mean?”

She nods. “More than once. I told him I couldn’t discuss any part of my work at the Court, and I wouldn’t. I did two years clerking for Arthur. I was getting ready to leave the Court-this was about the time that Terry was finishing up the early draft of Perpetual Slaves, the one that included the stuff from the letter. By then we weren’t living together any longer. I think Arthur was relieved, for me, if not for himself.”

“It sounds like you and Justice Ginnis are very close.”

“Friends,” she says. “No, it’s more than that. Arthur has a father complex. Almost all the clerks who’ve ever worked for him have felt this. He means well.” She pauses, smiles, and looks down at the table for a moment. “And I owe him a lot. He could have fired me. I mean, he knew that Terry was a threat to the confidentiality inside the Court. I was living with him. Other members of the Court would have either fired me or found some less-important duties for me outside their chambers. Arthur didn’t do that. He warned me. I gave him assurances, and he trusted me. I can’t explain it,” she says, “but there’s a kind of almost nuclear bond that forms from all of that.”

“And Terry Scarborough?” I ask. “How did he fit into all this?”

“In the beginning I suspect he gravitated to me because I could mingle with people Terry wanted to be seen with.”

“I think you underrate yourself,” I tell her.

“Thank you. But you have to live in this political hothouse to understand it,” she says. “It may be the power center of the world, but it’s actually a very small town. Everybody knows everybody. They attend the same receptions, do the same parties, and the press hangs out. The media make mental notes of who’s talking to whom. It was important for Terry to be seen at functions socializing with members of the Court and Court staff. You see, Terry sold himself to the national media as one of the prime legal insiders, on call twenty-four hours a day to go on the air, to be quoted in the Washington Post or the New York Times. He lived to be seen and heard.”

“And of course only a fool would fail to grasp the symbiotic relationship between face time on the tube and book sales,” I tell her.

“With Terry it was more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“He liked being recognized at airports, in crowds. He craved it. Someone would come up to him and tell him that he looked familiar, and Terry would casually flip the celebrity over his shoulder like some people discard a cigarette butt. He would say, ‘You probably saw me on Larry King last night,’ and walk away. He loved it. They say that celebrity is its own narcotic. For Terry it was the drug of choice. I remember at one point he told me about the night he did his first appearance on cable news. All his friends called to tell him how they’d seen him on the tube. For Terry it was like doing lines of cocaine. He couldn’t get on the next show fast enough. He hired a PR firm with media connections. He told me he was paying them seven thousand dollars a month on his teaching salary, dipping into savings while he was writing his first book on spec. That was part of the problem with the relationship,” she says.

“In what way?”

She looks at me, suddenly realizing that maybe she’s already said too much. “Nothing. But you get the picture,” she says.

“So Ginnis was relieved when you broke it off?”

“Hmm?” I catch her musing, lost in thought.

“Your relationship with Scarborough.”

“Oh, absolutely. He told me I’d get over it, move on, find someone else. He was right. It was better for me, much healthier.”

“So where do you think I could find him?”

“Find who?”

“Ginnis.”

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying. You’re dogged. You’re awful.” She laughs. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to contact a sitting justice of the Supreme Court? I mean, unless you’re a personal friend or a family member, it’s probably easier to get through to the Oval Office. I told you, he doesn’t know a thing about Terry’s book or the letter. You’re chasing rainbows-give it up,” she says.

“I wish I could, but there’s a man sitting in a jail cell back in San Diego, and unless I can figure out who else may have had a reason to kill Scarborough, Carl Arnsberg is looking at a possible death sentence.”