Supreme Courtship

CHAPTER 7

How did it go with Mitchell?”

The President and Clenndennynn were watching television in the family quarters upstairs at the White House. Pepper’s nomination was leading the news.

“He’s going to chop off a horse’s head and have it put in your bed.”

“Good,” the President said. He was absorbed in the TV, which was playing that morning’s Oval Office announcement. “Gosh, she’s attractive.”

“Yes,” Graydon said like an old water buffalo commenting on a butterfly that had just alit on its horn. “Quite attractive.”

“She’s going to do just fine. You watch.”

“I’ll be doing more than watching. I called Felten, Risko, and Bristz,” Graydon said. (Other senators on the Judiciary Committee.) “I can’t say they were pleased, though Bristz seemed amused. I think they’re all a bit embarrassed over Cooney and Burrows.”

“Darn well should be. This town has become more toxic than a waste dump. Eighteen more months to go. I count the days.”

“You manage to make the presidency sound like a penitentiary. You’ll be the first president since Johnson not to seek reelection. You know what they’ll say.”

“I don’t care what they say.”

“I know. But you might try. This midwestern imperturbability can be overdone.”

On the TV screen, the President and Pepper were sitting side by side on the fauteuils in front of the fireplace, cameras snapping away, a boom mike hovering like a bat above them.

“Mr. President, do you watch Courtroom Six?”

“Never miss it,” the President said. “My favorite show. After Bowling with the Stars.”

“Judge Cartwright, are you qualified to sit on the Supreme Court?”

“I doubt I’m qualified to be a clerk at the Supreme Court.”

The reporters laughed.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“What I’m told.”

“Judge Cartwright, is it true you’re planning to continue with your show while the nomination process goes forward?”

“If you were in my position, would you quit your day job?”

More laughter.

Vanderdamp chuckled and slapped Graydon on the knee. “That’s my girl. You tell ’em, Pepper. Oh, this is going to be rich. Rich, Graydon.”

“Rich indeed.”

They watched. The President said on TV, “Judge Cartwright may not be a traditional Supreme Court nominee, but I believe that, given the atmosphere in this city, and perhaps in the country as a whole, she is just what these times call for. She knows the country and the country knows her. She’s a hands-on, commonsense, workaday judge. Calls them as she sees them. And I call on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate to approve her. Without delay.”

“Nice touch, that, ‘without delay,’ ” Graydon murmured. “A little final flick of the cape in the bull’s face.”

“Yes,” President Vanderdamp smiled, “I thought you’d like that.”

A WAR ROOM OF SORTS was arranged at the Retropolitan Club, a few blocks from the White House, where Graydon Clenndennynn and Hayden Cork could prepare Pepper for the hearings.

Tables had been arranged to approximate the Senate Judiciary Committee dais. A name card in front of Hayden Cork’s place indicated he had the role of Senator Mitchell. Other senators were played by various White House and Justice Department people, as well as by a few seasoned proxies Graydon brought in. He himself sat aloof, serene, off to the side wearing his most eminently gray expression, in a leather armchair that looked like it had borne the weight of establishmentarians going back to the New Deal.

Pepper arrived, took in the surroundings, and said, “I was looking for the Cartwright event. This looks more like a Nuremberg trial.”

Hayden nodded curtly and opened an enormous loose-leaf binder stamped CARTWRIGHT / CONFIDENTIAL.

“All that, about me?” Pepper said. “Didn’t think I’d been alive long enough to leave a paper trail that thick.”

“Judge Cartwright,” Hayden began in a plummy voice, “what makes you think you’re qualified to sit on the Supreme Court?”

“Never said I was. Senator.”

“Then I’m asking you now. Are you?”

“I think I’ll leave that to you distinguished-looking folks.”

“It’s a straightforward question. Just answer straightforwardly, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, Senator, all I know is my phone rang one Saturday morning. It was the President of the United States. He asked me to do this. I didn’t volunteer for the job. You ask me, I think the whole thing’s nuts.”

Hayden tapped his pencil on the table. “Is that really the tone you’re planning on striking at the hearings?”

Pepper said, “I’m just a plain old girl from Plano. What you see is what you’re going to get. You want to brighten me up, you might try silver polish.”

“Why don’t we move on,” Hayden said heavily.

“You could just skip ahead to abortion. That’s all anyone cares about anyway these days. Unless you’re busting to hear my views on Marbury v. Madison.”

“Judge-”

“Just trying to speed things along. I know how busy you folks are.”

Hayden Cork pursed his lips and flipped to another section of his briefing book.

“Is there anything in your past that might prove embarrassing to this Committee?”

Pepper did a sweep of the faces staring at her. “Depends how easy you all embarrass.”

“Judge Cartwright,” Hayden said in a despairing voice, “this is a dress rehearsal.”

“Look here, Senator. You got five thousand FBI agents out there going through my garbage and waterboarding everyone I ever talked to, starting with the ob-gyn who slapped my butt on my way out of the womb. Do you really think I’d put myself through all this if I had a whole catacomb of skeletons doing the cha-cha in my closet?”

Hayden Cork’s lips had by now turned blue. He cast an exasperated glance at Graydon, who was looking on with leonine bemusement.

“But now that you mention it,” Pepper said, “there was that Saturday night in college when I got up and danced on the table without panties. That the sort of thing you’re looking for, Corky?”

Hayden blushed. A few other senators chortled.

Hayden turned to a different section of his phone book-sized dossier.

“Your husband, Buswald Bixby?”

Pepper said, in a different tone of voice, “Why don’t you just call him Buddy. Everyone does.”

“The television producer. Of your show. And others.”

“That’s right,” Pepper said, edgily.

“His show Jumpers. Can you describe it for us?”

“You could just look it up in TV Guide. Maybe one of the seventy-two people you have on staff could do it for you.”

“Seventy-six.”

“I stand corrected. Thank you.”

“My understanding is that it’s about people who throw themselves off bridges. He produces another called… G.O. About grotesquely obese people?”

“That’s right. He’s got another one in development,” Pepper said, “called Assholes. It’s about White House staffers.”

Graydon rose and said to Pepper, “Let’s go have a cup of something.” They left the faux senators and went and sat alone in a quiet lounge that reeked of long-ago cigar smoke and wood polish.

“You’re quite good,” Graydon said.

“Thank you,” Pepper said tightly.

“That’s why I was surprised to see you fall for that so easily.”

“Whatever.”

“Come now, Judge Cartwright. Let’s not start feeling sorry for ourselves. You’re playing in the big leagues now. This isn’t Courtroom Seven.”

“Six. Look, Mr. Clenndennynn-”

“Graydon.”

“Mr. Clenndennynn, I don’t see any point in acting like I’m some lion of the federal bench who’s spent the last decade writing erudite footnotes, sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I’m just a-”

“A plain old girl from Plano. Yes, yes. But you have a point. You might as well be yourself. That’s presumably why the President asked you in the first place. Authenticity. The real America. Ah, the real America. That elusive thing…”

Pepper laughed.

“I amuse you?” Graydon asked.

“Not really. But I do get a kick out of the way you say presooomably. You’re a real aristo, aren’t you, Mr. Clenndennynn? Regular blue blood.”

“Yes,” Graydon smiled. “Very much so. So is Mr. Cork, though of a younger generation.”

“Corky?” Pepper said. “No, he’s not in your DNA league. He’s just another Ivy League needle-dick.” Pepper said, “Sorry. You went to…”

“Harvard.”

“I don’t think of you as a… that.”

“Generous of you.”

“Look, Mr. Cork made it clear as Evian water from the get-go what he thinks of me. I don’t owe him a damn thing.”

“Hayden Cork-Corky, as you call him in front of people who have been in public service longer than you’ve been alive-is the White House Chief of Staff. He has one goal in all of this. Serving the President. I wouldn’t make an enemy of him, just for the sake of satisfying your own ego. This can be a mean town, Judge. Very mean. You have no idea. You might just find yourself needing a friend or two. On the other hand,” the old man said airily, “you might just make it to the finish line. In which case, you won’t need any friends for the rest of your life. You’ll be home free.”

“You don’t sound exactly thrilled at the prospect.”

“May I speak frankly, Judge?”

“Why not?”

“I know this is a big moment in your life. But to me, it’s just another Thursday morning.”

Pepper stared at the old man, who returned her stare implacably.

“Ouch,” Pepper said. “But I appreciate the honesty.”

“Whether you make it concerns me only to the extent it affects the President.” Graydon crooked his head in the direction of the White House. “I happen to like him. I admire what’s he’s trying to do-against considerable odds. If you turn the hearings into some simulacrum of your television program, just to humiliate Mitchell and the others-which I don’t doubt you can since you are a clever girl-they won’t be able to retaliate directly if they sense that the country is with you. So they’ll take it out on him. They’re already trying to, with this idiotic Presidential Term Limit Amendment. The irony is he’s… I gather he’s let you in on the dirty little secret.”

Pepper said, “What secret?”

“Very good. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. That he’s not planning to run for reelection.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Graydon smiled. “Very good, Judge. But you can relax, because he told me that he told you. He doesn’t want to reveal it yet because the moment he does, he’s a lame duck. For the time being he needs to have people assume he will, in order to exercise what power remains to him. But Mitchell and his band of assassins can make the rest of his months in office a torment. You, meanwhile, will be safe in your new marble bunker. Impervious. It’s the ultimate job. No one can take it away from you,” he said benignly, “until you start wrapping your ears in tin foil.” His expression turned grave. “He’s handing you the keys to the kingdom, Judge Cartwright. Be grateful. We understand each other?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir?” Graydon smiled. “Well, well. I feel as though I’ve just been promoted.”

THE MURDER BOARD [5] RESUMED. Pepper kept her lip buttoned, her answers businesslike and polite. She rose to no bait. Hayden kept the questions judicial-where did she stand on original intent, judicial temperament, the role of a judge versus a legislator, prayer in school, racial profiling, should the Pledge of Allegiance contain the words “under God,” and naturally, abortion-the object, of course, being to say as little as possible in as many words as possible.

On a discreet signal from Graydon, Hayden turned to another page of his briefing tome and in a mild tone of voice said, “Judge Cartwright, your father was a Dallas police officer?”

Pepper stiffened slightly. “Yes, sir, that’s correct.”

Hayden let it hang there a moment, and then said, “Before continuing on to another profession?”

Pepper relaxed. “Correct again, Senator.”

“He’s a minister, down in Texas.”

“First Sabbath Tabernacle of Plano. Giving witness to the Word, twenty-four seven, rain or shine, hell or high water, no sin too small, no crime too dire. Yeaaaah, Jesus!”

“Sorry?”

“It’s how he begins his Sunday broadcast.”

“Ah. Yes. Growing up in that environment must have affected your own religious views?”

“Certainly, sir. But as to that, I don’t really have any religious views.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Senator, we all keep the Sabbath in our own way.”

“May I ask how you keep it?”

“In bed with a crossword puzzle, coffee, and a croissant.”

“I see.”

“I could leave out the croissant part at the hearings, if you want, if you think it sounds too French. Want me to substitute bagel? Or is that too Jewish? What about crumb cake? Crumb cake sounds American enough.”

Hayden and the other senators exchanged uneasy stares.

Hayden said, “Your lack of religious views, again, if I may, I don’t mean to… what I’m trying to get at is…”

“Let me help you out here, Senator. When I was nine years old I watched my momma get hit by lightning. Now, my daddy interpreted that as the Almighty’s punishment for playing golf on the Sabbath and built a whole church around it. I drew a different inference.”

Hayden said, “The inference being… I don’t mean to pry, but…”

“That God is a son of a bitch,” she said.

SHE SAID that?” the President said.

It was later the same day. He had just handed a wornout-looking Graydon Clenndennynn a double martini and had poured himself a frosty schooner of beer.

“Freely,” Graydon said. “Gleefully. She’s an atheist. Proud of it.”

“Oh, my,” said the President.

“From what I gather, it didn’t help that that the gaga father baptized her by holding her head underwater in front of thousands of people at that absurd church of his. Hayden did a very lawyerly job of drawing it out of her. Not that she held back, mind you. We spoke to her privately about de-emphasizing it at the hearings. But it’s an Achilles’ heel. If it comes up, Mitchell will chomp down on it like a terrier.”

“There have been Supreme Court justices who didn’t believe in God. Haven’t there?”

“Yes, but I don’t think they presented their views quite so gleefully or vividly at the confirmation hearings. My reading of her is that she wants to disqualify herself. I’m not a psychologist, but that’s my sense of it.”

“Hm,” the President said. “Well, maybe it will come off as refreshing. Santamaria practically wears his Knights of Malta feather cap to Court. She’s honest. Transparent. A breath of fresh Texas air. The people will respond. I know it.”

“Donald, according to polls, more people in this country believe in the Immaculate Conception than in evolution. I don’t know why you’re always carrying on about the so-called ‘wisdom of the American people.’ Half of the population seems to me to be demented. Belong in cages…”

“Maybe it won’t come up,” said the President.

“I wouldn’t count on that. There are five thousand reporters out there, digging. Like worms.”

The President sipped his beer. “Her father, the TV reverend. He’ll balance out the religious aspect. It’ll be fine.”

“The Reverend Roscoe,” Graydon said morosely. “Quite the trailer park we seem to have wandered into.”

“I never realized you were such a snob, Graydon,” the President said. “Actually, that’s not true. I’ve always known you were a snob. But don’t discount the Reverend Roscoe. He’s a major player down there, you know. I’ve been to one of his barbecues.”

“Really?” Graydon said. “Were the ribs to the desired consistency and flavor?”

“Darned tasty. Maybe we ought to get him up here for the hearings.”

“God, please, no. He’ll start speaking in tongues. And it would only remind everyone of the Ruby business. She seems fond of the grandfather. Former sheriff. His name is JJ, wouldn’t you know? Droopy mustache, big shiny belt buckle, soulful eyes. He’ll do. Your wise American people love that sort of thing.”