Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  The analyst continued to whisper. “An almost invisible General and Mrs. Andrews are being hustled out into a thick corridor formed by uniformed police officers holding open, black umbrellas against the pelting sleet.”

  The protective parallel column of policemen resembled a human caterpillar as it slithered up the Capitol building steps and slipped inside.

  The cameras picked up inside the Senate, showing us the Judiciary Committee already seated befitting their ideologies, Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right. The room must have been heated to boiling by hot lights and hot tempers. I could almost feel the electricity in the large room. I peeled off my sweater and tried to get more comfortable.

  “The questioning of a Supreme Court nominee is done by seniority, alternating between the parties,” the analyst told his viewers.

  “More like watching a slow-mo tennis match,” Margaret said, talking back to the television as we resumed our places in the ugly green client chairs again. My gaze was glued firmly to the set, volume up, attention sharply focused. I wiped my sweaty palms against the napkin left over from lunch.

  “If he is confirmed, Andrews will make law in this country until he dies or retires,” the analyst continued. “We are now close to the end of the process. The decision made by this committee, whether or not to recommend a full Senate vote on General Andrews’s confirmation, may change the course of our history for the next thirty years.”

  The tuna sandwich I’d eaten earlier now rebelled in my stomach. I’d wanted the vote to be over, but I worried that a victory for Andrews would be a hellish descent into backroom politics for George and the effective end of my easy-going husband.

  His immersion in this cauldron of political soup had changed him, it seemed, at the molecular level and when he eventually emerged, I worried he’d be someone totally different, someone I didn’t know and might not want to be married to.

  I’d told none of this to Margaret, but she must have noticed when my attention wandered because she pulled me back to the present, saying, “Warwick is about to open the hearings.”

  Senator Sheldon Warwick was the powerful Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the senior senator from Florida and my brother’s boss. Warwick was also one of our neighbors. But most significantly to me at the moment, he was my husband’s local political nemesis. Warwick’s mere presence on the small screen set my teeth on edge.

  Margaret turned up the volume on the set, and we heard Warwick’s oratory. “I’d like to express my personal sympathy and the committee’s sympathy to Craig Hamilton’s family and to General Andrews, who narrowly missed being killed this morning.”

  The crowd in the gallery buzzed.

  Warwick didn’t wait for quiet to return, but raised his sonorous voice. “Before the decision was made to resume and finish the hearing today, we were informed that Craig Hamilton was wearing a bullet proof vest at the time he was shot. Fortunately, this has been standard procedure for controversial witnesses and their staff during these hearings. Mr. Hamilton’s doctor reported that he is in severe pain. He suffered two cracked ribs and serious bruising. He is, I’m happy to tell you, expected to fully recover.”

  Margaret and I said simultaneously this time, “Thank, God.”

  The gallery, too, buzzed a little louder with this news and Warwick had to wait a few minutes until he could calm them back down to a quiet roar.

  As he always does to me, Warwick sounded more than a little insincere when he asked formally, for the record, “Would you like to delay today’s questioning, General? The country would certainly understand.”

  The question was posed merely to manipulate the public’s perception, I knew. Warwick, a political animal who would stand for reelection soon, clearly wanted to be perceived as deferential to his party, the nominee and the process. Warwick was a Democrat. The President, a member of Warwick’s party, had nominated Andrews to the court. For these reasons, Warwick meticulously followed protocol and made a clear written record of everything that occurred.

  Nor would he show any disrespect toward a war hero. Warwick was a powerful man, and he hadn’t gotten where he was today by being stupid. Regardless of his personal feelings, and George had told me that Warwick didn’t approve of Andrews, Warwick had behaved perfectly during the hearings and would continue to do so, as surely as most of us behave well when we’re being watched by our bosses.

  Andrews sat ramrod straight, like six feet of tall, cool granite, prepared for another round from his own personal firing squad, prepared to dodge bullets by moving only his lips.

  “Look at that guy,” Margaret said, referring to Andrews. “He’s so stiff he could be carved on Mount Rushmore.”

  Margaret was right. Andrews appeared completely unaffected by what had happened outside this morning. His demeanor was the same straight-ahead, unflinching look I’d seen him display on newscasts during his war service as he addressed the nation with status reports. A look that’s bred into every senior military man, it was an expression designed to quell fears and coerce submission.

  “Thank you, Senator,” Andrews said, anger and passion in his voice. “I’d never allow a fool like that to interfere with the regular process of government. We must continue.”

  His tone made me cringe. There’s a reason I was never in military service myself. I’m no good at following orders and I don’t relate well to people who think they can order me around.

  I wondered again why the President had ever appointed such an inexperienced, unyielding iconoclast to the Court. I could think of at least a dozen more qualified, less controversial candidates, all more compassionate than Andrews. But no one had asked me for my advice.

  High-ranking and influential witnesses had given acrid and bitter testimony against General Andrews for the past nine days. I’d seen much of it, either as it happened, or in summary on the evening news.

  Now, General Andrews would testify, although he could not be compelled to do so. So far, that seemed like a huge mistake in judgment to me.

  Warwick recited more facts, continuing to make a crystal clear record. “The shooting incident this morning has been investigated and the shooter is in custody. The man has admitted that he tried to kill General Andrews, and he claimed to be acting alone, although his motives remain undisclosed.” Warwick stopped here and took a few seconds to stare at the General with ill-concealed distaste.

  Was Warwick’s demeanor a product of my imagination? Anyone hearing the cold words he continued to dictate into the record could certainly have missed it. He continued, “Authorities do not believe, at this time, that co-conspirators exist. All parties desired to conclude the questioning today and not to delay proceedings any further.” Again, he waited a couple of beats. Or at least, I thought he did. “At the conclusion of today’s hearings, the proper authorities will resume their investigation of the attack on Mr. Hamilton.”

  Warwick polled every member of the committee and General Andrews. “Do you desire to continue these hearings at the present time?” Each answered a formal “yes.”

  Margaret turned to me while the polling was going on. “This is pretty unusual, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It’s probably foolhardy, too. And the media will be all over this thing like white on rice.”

  “So why are they doing it, then?” After all her years as a federal employee, Margaret inexplicably still believed her government would do things that made sense.

  “No one wants this situation to drag on any longer than it already has,” I told her. Certainly, that was how I felt about it. If Warwick had polled me, I’d have voted yes, too.

  “So the hearings will finish today,” she said.

  I nodded again, saying nothing. The end was in sight. As soon as the reason for George’s involvement in these retched hearings was over, my life might return to normal. I allowed a small glimmer of hope to flicker in my heart.

  “I’ll bet I can guess what George thinks of all this,” Margaret told me, with a
grim smile.

  I simply nodded. Both of us already knew that George is a very active, influential, conservative Republican. He would disapprove of anyone the Democrats chose, regardless of their objective suitability.

  But I didn’t tell Margaret that I’d heard George’s voice raised in anger against Andrews more often in the past few weeks than I’d heard it during our seventeen years of marriage. His opposition was almost violent and completely out of character. Margaret wouldn’t have recognized him, and I barely did, myself. Until now, I’d thought I knew my husband better than he knew himself.

  The news analyst took the break created as they polled the committee to give us a whispered summary of the political climate for the benefit of anyone living in Outer Mongolia over the past few weeks.

  “The Republicans control the House of Representatives. Like a winning football team in the final minutes of the Super Bowl, they are trying to run out the clock on judicial appointments by the Democratic President Benson, whose term ends in less than a year. Republicans want to stall the process of selecting federal judges until they again control the White House and the appointment process.”

  A second analyst added, “But they didn’t foresee the retirement of their most successful judicial ally, the conservative Chief Justice. The Republicans thought they’d have the chance to pack all of the federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, with conservative judges. The Andrews appointment threw a serious monkey wrench in their plans.”

  The polling finally finished, Senator Warwick used his prerogative as chairman to complete the final questioning himself.

  “General,” Warwick said now, exaggerating his long, slow drawl, giving the word what seemed like four more minutes. “Why do you think that fellow wanted to kill you this morning?”

  The shooter had said he was trying to kill Andrews and the confession had already been widely played on television.

  “He’s a baby killer,” the man had said, as if that was all the reason anyone needed to justify retaliation by deadly force.

  Without so much as a flinch or a pause, General Andrews said, “Why do you think he wanted to kill me? He shot my secretary. I haven’t any idea why he did that. Do you?”

  The conversation in the room buzzed at louder decibels. It was unlike General Andrews to sidestep any issue. Usually he confronted everything head on, loudly and with opinionated obstinacy. His opinions, frequently stated in other forums before and since his nomination, had been getting him into trouble.

  General Andrews seemed to have opinions on everything. Highly unusual for a general in today’s military, and likely to get a Supreme Court nominee rejected. The thing the public fears most, and his opposition hopes for, is a nominee with an opinion.

  During the days of hearings on Andrews’s nomination, the general seemed to go out of his way to confirm his opinions as controversially as possible, almost in challenge. Although he kept saying “I have no personal agenda to take to the Court,” every time he was asked a direct question on a controversial issue by anyone, he didn’t hesitate to state his views.

  This alone might not have caused Andrews’s nomination to be rejected. Sandra Day O’Connor got confirmed even after she testified that she personally deplored abortion, but would not let her personal views influence her vote. Of course, she was a Republican, George said. To him, that meant you could trust her word.

  But Andrews’s views seemed so outrageous as to be absurd. In the few short weeks since his nomination, Andrews had incensed Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, men, women, children, scholars, clerics, radicals, gay and straight alike.

  While Warwick attempted to regain order in the room, Margaret asked, “Is there anybody Andrews hasn’t offended so far?”

  “I can’t imagine who that would be,” I said.

  Once he quieted the buzz of the gallery sufficiently to continue, Warwick asked a series of quick questions to which Andrews responded just as quickly.

  “General, do you still support a woman’s right to choose, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade?”

  “Why should any more unwanted children be brought into the world?”

  “And you oppose prayer in public schools?”

  “We need prayer at home, where it belongs. Church and

  State must remain firmly separated.”

  Warwick looked down at his notes, shook his head as if he was having trouble believing the next series of questions that had been prepared by the committee. Then, he asked, “Do you openly advocate that the Supreme Court should make the law, not just interpret the Constitution?”

  Margaret sputtered, “That’s outrageous!”

  Andrews replied, “This country needs help. The founding fathers died over two hundred years ago. And if they lived here now, they’d be making some changes, too.”

  Warwick waited a couple of seconds, then asked, “You are opposed to gun control, is that right, General?”

  “Why not let the drug dealers kill each other? Save us all some money.”

  These opinions, contained in Andrews’s public appearances over the years, had galvanized the conservatives against him early in the process. But he didn’t stop there.

  Paradoxically, Andrews confounded his liberal supporters when he stated far right views as well. Indeed, Andrews’s opinions seemed incapable of classification. Neither side could completely support or reject him.

  “You opposed allowing those with homosexual orientation to serve in the U.S. military?” Warwick asked.

  “We don’t need the morale problems caused by social and sexual experimentation programs in the military.”

  “And, the volunteer army, sir, you’re opposed to that as well?”

  “It’s every man’s patriotic duty to serve. I would reinstate the draft, given the chance, yes.”

  “How about allowing women to serve in combat, General?”

  “Definitely not. Women in combat put our troops in mortal danger. I would not allow it.”

  With each controversial answer, the absurdity of Andrews’s appointment was underscored. Warwick had to bang his gavel repeatedly and gestured the security officers to roam the aisles to restore order.

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  CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS

  Judge Wilhelmina Carson

  James Harper

  Suzanne Harper

  Margaret Wheaton

  Ronald Wheaton

  Armstrong Otter

  Dr. Marilee Aymes

  Gilbert Kelley

  Sandra Kelley

  Chief Ben Hathaway

  State Attorney Michael Drake

  Chief Ozgood Livingston Richardson (Oz or CJ)

  Larry Davis

  George Carson

  PROLOGUE

  Tampa, Florida

  Sunday, 3:00 a.m.

  February 18, 2001

  MIGUEL STRUGGLED TO TURN the corner at Seventh Avenue and Sixteenth Street. He grunted with effort as he pushed a heavy plastic trash barrel on wheels, piled high with garbage. The cleaning crew had been working on the streets in Tampa’s Ybor City since the parade ended and the crowd finally dispersed about one a.m. Miguel had a lot of clean up to do before the small businesses along the brick paved streets opened.

  Who would believe these rich Americans could be such pigs? Miguel thought. In his country where people were poor, maybe, but not in Florida, “land of flowers.” In his country, people weren’t tidy like they were here, he’d noticed. Tampa was a clean place. Nice. Miguel wanted to stay here, with his father’s family. He liked Tampa.

  Miguel bent his head to his task, left hand bracing the garbage towering perilously higher than the five-foot barrel should hold. He felt stretched to his limit. He couldn’t see the ground in front of the small wheels that seemed to catch on every crack in the old sidewalk.

  A beer can clattered as it hit the ground. Miguel stooped to pick it up, along with a few candy wrappers that fell
off the pile when the barrel stopped rolling. “Pigs,” he spat again, as he leaned his weight into the barrel and got it moving again.

  Watching the ground as he walked, Miguel tried to stay close to the buildings because the sidewalk sloped toward the street and he couldn’t control the trash barrel if the small wheels started downhill.

  He wasn’t in any mood for delay. He had been picking up beer cans, beads, condoms, half-eaten candy and other human trash from the old urine-stenched streets for the past three hours. Miguel was cold and tired. His eyelids felt heavy, scratchy, when he allowed them to close for a few seconds. He wanted to finish his work as quickly as possible and go home. Miguel gave the barrel a mighty shove and smiled to himself as it began to move more quickly.

  Suddenly, the left front wheel of the can struck something on the sidewalk. The force and speed of Miguel’s efforts pushed the barrel toward the building on the right. It bumped into the building and bounced back. The rebound blow caught Miguel off guard and nearly knocked him down. Several beer bottles fell to the ground with a loud crash, brown and green glass shards flying everywhere. One sharp edge caught Miguel’s cheek and he felt the burning scratch as the piece of glass sailed past.

  Wiping the blood off his face with a grimy work glove, Miguel cursed himself for not paying attention. Impatiently, he pushed the heavy barrel, trying to straighten its path again and avoid the problem in the sidewalk. He would clean up the broken glass on the way back, he thought, his anxiety mounting.

  Miguel had been on his way to the large dumpster in back of Maria’s restaurant so that he could dump the barrel and start again. His boss had yelled at him twice already. Miguel didn’t have time to fool around. This was his first week on the job and he was on probation. He couldn’t make his boss angry. He needed this job if he was to stay in this country.

  Miguel put both hands on the middle of the plastic barrel, braced himself with one foot against the building, and pushed harder.