The Pelican Brief

Seven

The Chief slouched behind his desk with a loosened tie and a haggard look. Around the room, three of his brethren and a half-dozen clerks sat and talked in subdued tones. The shock and fatigue were evident. Jason Kline, Rosenberg’s senior clerk, looked especially hard-hit. He sat on a small sofa and stared blankly at the floor while Justice Archibald Manning, now the senior Justice, talked of protocol and funerals. Jensen’s mother wanted a small, private Episcopal service Friday in Providence. Rosenberg’s son, a lawyer, had delivered to Runyan a list of instructions the Justice had prepared after his second stroke in which he wanted to be cremated after a nonmilitary ceremony and his ashes dropped over the Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Though Rosenberg was Jewish, he had abandoned the religion and claimed to be agnostic. He wanted to be buried with the Indians. Runyan thought that was appropriate, but did not say so. In the outer office, six FBI agents sipped coffee and whispered nervously. There had been more threats during the day, several coming within hours of the President’s early morning address. It was dark now, almost time to escort the remaining justices home. Each had four agents as bodyguards.

Justice Andrew McDowell, at sixty-one now the youngest member of the Court, stood in the window, smoking his pipe and watching traffic. If Jensen had a friend on the Court, it was McDowell. Fletcher Coal had informed Runyan that the President would not only attend Jensen’s service but wanted to deliver a eulogy. No one in the inner office wanted the President to say a word. The Chief had asked McDowell to prepare a few words. A shy man who avoided speeches, McDowell twirled his bow tie and tried to picture his friend in the balcony with a rope around his neck. It was too awful to think about. A Justice of the Supreme Court, one of his distinguished brethren, one of the nine, hiding in such a place watching those movies and being exposed in such a ghastly manner. What a tragic embarrassment. He thought of himself standing before the crowd in the church and looking at Jensen’s mother and family, and knowing that every thought would be on the Montrose Theatre. They would ask each other in whispered voices, “Did you know he was gay?” McDowell, for one, did not know, nor did he suspect. Nor did he want to say anything at the funeral.

Justice Ben Thurow, age sixty-eight, was not as concerned about burying the dead as he was about catching the killers. He had been a federal prosecutor in Minnesota, and his theory grouped the suspects into two classes: those acting out of hatred and revenge, and those seeking to affect future decisions. He had instructed his clerks to begin the research.

Thurow was pacing around the room. “We have twenty-seven clerks and seven justices,” he said to the group but to no one in particular. “It’s obvious we won’t get much work done for the next couple of weeks, and all close decisions must wait until we have a full bench. That could take months. I suggest we put our clerks to work trying to solve the killings.”

“We’re not police,” Manning said patiently.

“Can we at least wait until after the burials before we start playing Dick Tracy?” McDowell said without turning from the window.

Thurow ignored them, as usual. “I’ll direct the research. Loan me your clerks for two weeks, and I think we can put together a short list of solid suspects.”

“The FBI is very capable, Ben,” the Chief said. “They haven’t asked for our help.”

“I’d rather not discuss the FBI,” Thurow said. “We can mope around here in official mourning for two weeks, or we can go to work and find these bastards.”

“What makes you so sure you can solve this?” Manning asked.

“I’m not sure I can, but I think it’s worth a try. Our brethren were murdered for a reason, and that reason is directly related to a case or an issue already decided or now pending before this Court. If it’s retribution, then our task is almost impossible. Hell, everybody hates us for one reason or another. But if it’s not revenge or hatred, then perhaps someone wanted a different Court for a future decision. That’s what’s intriguing. Who would kill Abe and Glenn because of how they might vote on a case this year, next year, or five years from now? I want the clerks to pull up every case now pending in the eleven circuits below.”

Justice McDowell shook his head. “Come on, Ben. That’s over five thousand cases, a small fraction of which will eventually end up here. It’s a wild-goose chase.”

Manning was equally unimpressed. “Listen, fellas. I served with Abe Rosenberg for thirty-one years, and I often thought of shooting him myself. But I loved him like a brother. His liberal ideas were accepted in the sixties and seventies, but grew old in the eighties, and are now resented in the nineties. He became a symbol for everything that’s wrong in this country. He has been killed, I believe, by one of these radical right-wing hate groups, and we can research cases till hell freezes over and not find anything. It’s retribution, Ben. Pure and simple.”

“And Glenn?” Thurow asked.

“Evidently our friend had some strange proclivities. Word must have spread, and he was an easy target for such groups. They hate homosexuals, Ben.”

Ben was still pacing, still ignoring. “They hate all of us, and if they killed out of hatred the cops’ll catch them. Maybe. But what if they killed to manipulate this Court? What if some group seized this moment of unrest and violence to eliminate two of us, and thus realign the Court? I think it’s very possible.”

The Chief cleared his throat. “And I think we’ll do nothing until after they are buried, or scattered. I’m not saying no, Ben, just wait a few days. Let the dust settle. The rest of us are still in shock.”

Thurow excused himself and left the room. His bodyguards followed him down the hall.

Justice Manning stood with his cane and addressed the Chief. “I will not make it to Providence. I hate flying, and I hate funerals. I’ll be having one myself before long, and I do not enjoy the reminder. I’ll send my sympathies to the family. When you see them, please apologize for me. I’m a very old man.” He left with a clerk.

“I think Justice Thurow has a point,” said Jason Kline. “We at least need to review the pending cases and those likely to arrive here from the lower circuits. It’s a long shot, but we may stumble across something.”

“I agree,” said the Chief. “It’s just a bit premature, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but I’d like to get started anyway.”

“No. Wait till Monday, and I’ll assign you to Thurow.”

Kline shrugged and excused himself. Two clerks followed him to Rosenberg’s office, where they sat in the darkness and sipped the last of Abe’s brandy.

In a cluttered study carrel on the fifth level of the law library, between the racks of thick, seldom-used law books, Darby Shaw scanned a printout of the Supreme Court’s docket. She had been through it twice, and though it was loaded with controversy, she found nothing that interested her. Dumond was causing riots. There was a child pornography case from New Jersey, a sodomy case from Kentucky, a dozen death penalty appeals, a dozen assorted civil rights cases, and the usual array of tax, zoning, Indian, and antitrust cases. From the computer she had pulled summaries of each, then reviewed them twice. She compiled a neat list of possible suspects, but they would be obvious to everyone. The list was now in the garbage.

Callahan was certain it was the Aryans or the Nazis or the Klan; some easily identifiable collection of domestic terrorists; some radical band of vigilantes. It had to be right-wingers; that much was obvious, he felt. Darby was not so sure. The hate groups were too obvious. They had made too many threats, thrown too many rocks, held too many parades, made too many speeches. They needed Rosenberg alive because he was such an irresistible target for their hatred. Rosenberg kept them in business. She thought it was somebody much more sinister.

He was sitting in a bar on Canal Street, drunk by now, waiting on her though she had not promised to join him. She had checked on him at lunch, and found him on the balcony upstairs, drunk and reading his book of Rosenberg opinions. He had decided to cancel con law for a week; said he might not be able to teach it anymore now that his hero was dead. She told him to sober up, and she left.

A few minutes after ten, she walked to the computer room on the fourth level of the library and sat before a monitor. The room was empty. She pecked away at the keyboard, found what she wanted, and soon the printer was spewing forth page after page of appeals pending in the eleven federal appellate courts around the country. An hour later, the printer stopped, and she now possessed a six-inch-thick summary of the eleven dockets. She hauled it back to her study carrel and placed it in the center of the cluttered desk. It was after eleven, and the fifth level was deserted. A narrow window gave an uninspiring view of a parking lot and trees below.

She kicked off her shoes again and inspected the red paint on the toes. She sipped a warm Fresca and stared blankly at the parking lot. The first assumption was easy — the killings were done by the same group for the same reasons. If not, then the search was hopeless. The second assumption was difficult — the motive was not hatred or revenge, but rather manipulation. There was a case or an issue out there on its way to the Supreme Court, and someone wanted different justices. The third assumption was a bit easier — the case or issue involved a great deal of money.

The answer would not be found in the printout sitting before her. She flipped through it until midnight, and left when the library closed.