Walters paused, as though to retrieve his aura of calm. "As part of that effort, Senator Paul Harshman asked the head of the CDC if it was 'sending money to a Dr. Lawrence Walters.' I've never met Senator Harshman. But your client made sure that the senator had heard of me, and that the CDC knew to stay away."
Walters sat back. "The SSA," he finished, "promotes fear and enforces ignorance. Imagine if we'd done that regarding polio or smallpox. The result would have been what the SSA has accomplished here: hundreds of thousands of crippled lives and needless deaths."
When the questioning was over, Sarah slipped the witness list and deposition notice into Nolan's hands. "Not great for you," she said blithely. "At least in my opinion. But that's all speculation."
FOURTEEN
When Cassie Rollins arrived on the Hill from a long weekend visiting her constituents in Maine, she remained, as she had told them, undecided on both tort reform and the gun bill. She was listening to their voices, she had assured them. In truth, the voices were a cacophony, and she felt buffeted by the SSA and Kilcannon's visit to her backyard. She did not look forward to her meeting with Fasano.
Glancing at the Capitol, Cassie stopped.
Customarily, she took a private entrance. Today, drawn by a crowd of demonstrators, she walked up the marble steps of the Senate side.
What gave her pause were the shoes.
They were carefully arranged on the steps—the empty shoes of women or children, row upon row. The demonstrators, mostly women, held signs saying "Help Our President Save Lives," and "No Immunity for Murder."
One, a pleasant, round-faced woman with grey hair, stood beside a pair of black pumps and a smaller pair of tennis shoes. Gazing at the endless rows of shoes, Cassie gently asked her, "Whose shoes are these?"
"Women and children murdered by abusers." Pausing, she glanced down at the shoes beside her. "Those were my daughter's and grandson's."
Nodding, Cassie touched the woman's arm, and then went on her way. But as she entered the Majority Leader's suite of offices, the empty shoes stayed with her.
* * *
"I saw them," Fasano acknowledged.
"Did you also see the coverage of Kilcannon with those hunters? He's getting pretty good at this."
Fasano did not respond to her directly. "The week after next," he said at length, "I'm planning to bring up tort reform. I need you to be with me."
Cassie pursed her lips in thought. "I'd like to be, Frank. But I'll admit that this one bothers me—personally, and politically."
Fasano gave her a shrewd, pragmatic look. "Is there something I can give you?"
"Yes," Cassie answered promptly. "A compromise with Kilcannon on his gun bill. A real one."
Fasano slowly shook his head. "I've gone as far as I can go. You already know that."
"I know all about the SSA," she said tiredly. "But have a care, Frank, about who's using whom. You could wind up like the boy who chose to ride the back of the tiger. Maybe you won't get eaten, but the tiger will decide where you should go."
Once more, Fasano was silent. At length, he said, "Only one of us will get eaten, Cassie. And that's you.
"I accept the deal you had with Mac Gage when he was leader. Three out of ten votes you'll cross me to please some part of your electorate. Some of those votes will be on abortion and even, on occasion, guns. In turn, I get seven votes out of ten, and a Republican senator who helps keep us in the majority, and me as leader.
"I'm not into jihads. You understand that, I hope."
"I do," Cassie said with a nod of deference. "And I appreciate it."
"Then this is where you show me." Though any movement was imperceptible, Fasano suddenly seemed closer to her, and his voice became flat and cold. "I expect both your vote on gun immunity and against Kilcannon's bill. Our party has to deliver and those votes are too damned close. If you oppose me, I can't control the SSA. I won't try. And by next November you won't be here anymore. So you'll be spared the consequences of having to deal with me."
She had run out of room, Cassie realized. In the same tone of civil deference, she thanked Fasano for his candor and promised him every consideration. But not, as of yet, her vote.
* * *
Unlike his Democratic colleagues, Leo Weller preferred, at this sensitive juncture, to keep his distance from a President who so inflamed his right-wing base. So to spare him further embarrassment, Kerry contacted the senator by phone.
"I just saw some polling data," he observed with mock solicitousness. "I've never seen an incumbent senator drop nineteen points in fourteen days. Your approval rating's in free fall, Leo."
"It's temporary," Weller said stubbornly.
"Temporary? You're dying from asbestosis. And Beltway tunnel
vision." Kerry's tone maintained the same ironic sympathy. "Believe me, I understand how this can happen. You're playing golf with the president of an asbestos company, who starts complaining about how all these bogus lawsuits will drag his company under. You, too, hate bogus lawsuits, and plaintiffs' lawyers, and your golf buddy is so committed to your common principles that he's already raised three hundred thousand for your next campaign.
"So you're glad to stick an immunity provision in Fasano's tort reform bill, and sign on as its cosponsor. The problem is that you've got constituents who are dying off from asbestosis—but not quite fast enough to keep them from voting against you." Kerry's voice became crisp. "And now they've started dying off on television. Airtime in Montana is cheap, and the victims are plentiful. They'll be dying on you from now until next November. Then it's your turn."
This, as Kerry expected, induced silence. "What do you want?" Weller asked.
"They're not my ads, Leo. Only the trial lawyers can help you. But I can suggest what a sensible man in your position would do.
"I wouldn't vote in favor of my gun bill—too risky. But before another day passes, I'd take my name off that tort reform bill and promise to vote against it." Kerry's voice hardened. "The whole bill. Then the trial lawyers will have to find some other way of getting rid of you."
Weller responded with more silence. The man might be a fool, Kerry knew, but he had his pride. He disliked being made an object lesson in such a public way—the helpless symbol of Kerry's resolve—and the humiliation which would follow such a public change in the balance of the Senate. "I'll consider it," Weller said in grudging tones.
"You do that, Leo," the President replied. "Personally, I find those ads truly painful to watch."
FIFTEEN
In a cramped windowless room in the Federal Detention Facility in Phoenix, Sarah cross-examined George Johnson.
On the long flight to Arizona, Sarah's imagination had summoned a Hells Angels prototype—bearded, fleshy, tattooed. But though the person across from her had committed three violent felonies and had spearheaded the robbery of the Lexington P-2 used to slaughter Lara's family, Johnson was slight and pale, distinguished only by close-cropped hair, darting eyes, and a twitching restlessness which kept some part of him constantly in motion. The contrast with his voice—flat, emotionless, distant—made his tics more unnerving.
Watching the prisoner, Nolan, too, looked uncomfortable. For all of his authority and arrogance, Nolan had little experience with the underside of America, and Sarah had left him to guess why she had noticed the deposition of a federal prisoner. "Why are you in custody?" Sarah asked Johnson.
Briefly, he glanced at his lawyer, a federal public defender with spiked hair, a severe face, and incongruous turquoise earrings. When the woman nodded, Sarah realized that Lara Kilcannon had been right—this man was prepared to admit his guilt. With a shrug of the shoulders, so quick that it resembled a spasm, Johnson answered, "I stole a truckload of Lexington P-2s from a gun store in Phoenix."
Nolan's eyes met Harrison Fancher's. "For what purpose?" Sarah asked.
A contemptuous smile played at the edges of Johnson's mouth. "Selling them."
"Why did you need the money?"
"For the Liberty Force. To finance our resistance."
His tone betrayed something beyond anger—a rigid adherence to an ordered view of his surroundings, peopled by his enemies. "Resistance to what?"
"Jews." His eyes bored into Sarah's, and the word held a distinct contempt. "The cabal that uses our so-called democratic government and drug and entertainment culture—all the blacks and queers and dykes and race traitors—to control our economy, castrate male authority and pollute the white Christian race. Their master plan is to force us into their polyglot world order."
And take away our tree forts, Sarah thought. But Johnson's tone of certainty chilled her—it bespoke the kind of conviction needed to blow up buildings. "Where were you arrested?"
"At a gun show, in Phoenix. The ATF busted a buyer and he turned on me."
By now Nolan's taut attention was palpable. "Why did you sell at a gun show?" Sarah asked.
Again, Johnson twitched his shoulders. "The shows get listed in that SSA magazine, and people are willing to pay a premium. Arizona and Nevada are the best. Lots of buyers, no questions."
Briefly, Sarah hesitated. "Was there a particular reason you stole P-2s?"
With an oddly fastidious gesture, Johnson examined his fingernails, so pristine and closely trimmed that she wondered where he had obtained the manicure. "The P-2's popular at gun shows, and you can't buy them in California." Pausing, he added with quiet irony. "It's not accurate enough for the resistance. But customers like its features."
"What about the customer who turned you in?"
"Don't know." His flat voice hinted at disdain for the pettiness of his customer's ambitions. "All I know is they caught him robbing a 7-Eleven."
Slowly, Sarah slid a photograph across the table. "Have you ever seen this man before?"
Gazing down, Johnson emitted a harsh laugh. "John Bowden. Some call him an American patriot."
The poison in his answer stunned Sarah into momentary silence. She rested a finger on one edge of the photograph. "Do you know where Bowden got his gun?"
Silent, Johnson glanced at his lawyer. Turning to Sarah, his eyes were veiled, and his body stiff with tension, as though fighting against his deepest instincts. In a reluctant tone between mumble and whisper, he said, "You'd have to ask Ben Gehringer. He stole the guns with me."
Sarah, too, felt tense. "To sell at gun shows?"
"Yes." Staring at Bowden's picture, Johnson seemed to contemplate the imponderable workings of fate. "I took Arizona, and he got Nevada."
* * *
By the time Nolan began his interrogation, the room felt hot and stifling, and Sarah had begun imagining the smell emanating from Johnson's body as the sour stench of fanaticism.
"You do realize," Nolan said pointedly, "that you spent this morning incriminating yourself."
"Who defines the 'crime'?" Johnson answered with disdain. "Our 'government,' this handmaiden of Jews and mongrels? I refuse to acknowledge its authority."
This seemed to spur in Nolan an answering contempt. "Have you made any arrangement with the government—however you might despise it—in exchange for your testimony today?"
"No."
Nolan stared at him. "Or discussed such an arrangement with anyone at all?"
"When you answer that," the lawyer admonished Johnson, "exclude any conversations with counsel."
The frustration seemed to issue from Nolan like heat. She could feel his suspicion harden to certainty—that a deal contrived by Kilcannon himself was eroding his client's defense. "No," Johnson answered in an undertone of defiance. "No one from the government. Only my lawyer."
But he did not look at Nolan. To Sarah, George Johnson's distaste for his turncoat customer had doubled back on himself. Faced with growing old in prison, he had turned Judas, become another nail in the coffin of the white Anglo-Saxon race. Had he led them to Gehringer? Sarah saw Nolan wonder. Then she watched Nolan realize, swiftly, that Sarah had not asked this, and thus must already know.
"Where," Nolan asked in a low voice, "is Mr. Gehringer now?"
Johnson sucked in his hollow cheeks. "I hear the government's got him," he said tonelessly, and, for Nolan, the realization of what had happened was complete.
SIXTEEN
From the start of his meeting with Chuck Hampto , Frank Fasano was caught between opposing forces.
The first, captured on the front pages of this morning's Post and Times, was Leo Weller's defection, creating the perception—which could well become reality—that Kerry Kilcannon might seize the balance of power. The second, known only to Fasano, was new pressure from the SSA to hold an early vote on tort reform.
On the telephone, Dane had sounded edgy. "When's the vote?" he had demanded to know.
"I was planning on the week after next," Fasano answered. "But Cassie's still not on board, and Leo's left us at least two votes short on gun immunity. Why bring it to the floor when you don't know if you'll win?"
"Because Kilcannon's scoring points. Back off now and it's an admission of weakness."
In tone and substance, Fasano thought, Dane sounded too simplistic, too demanding, too forgetful of the deference due Fasano himself. "There's no deadline," he answered coolly. "At least not in the Senate. Is there some problem in the lawsuit?"
The sudden thrust induced silence, confirming its accuracy. For the first time, Fasano found himself wishing that he had access to the depositions in the Costello suit. But the judge had ordered them sealed, and Dane seemed unwilling to pass on whatever the lawyers were telling him. "Look," Fasano persisted, "if there's some disaster lurking in that case, I need to know before I put our party at risk to kill it."
"If you kill it," Dane retorted, "there is no risk. If you can't get to Rollins, we will. The rest is up to you."
* * *
As a courtesy, Hampton came to Fasano's office. "It's time for a vote," Fasano told him.
With the trace of a smile, Hampton inquired, "On the President's gun bill? It's surely time to stop the killing."
The ease in Hampton's manner induced the opposite effect in Fasano—a wary suspicion that Hampton, as well as Dane, knew something Fasano did not. "To bring up tort reform," Hampton added, "you need the unanimous consent of all senators. Right now you don't even have mine."
"Quit playing games," Fasano answered testily. "You can force me to file a motion to proceed with the tort bill, and then debate the motion. But you'll lose the vote, and what will you gain in the meanwhile? A delay of maybe three days, four at most."
Hampton sipped his coffee. "Which you seem desperate to avoid. What's the problem, Frank—hearing the President's footsteps? Or is it the SSA?" Abruptly Hampton's amiable tone was replaced by one of tough practicality, all the more impressive for its quiet. "Every week brings a fresh harvest of children dead from guns. Until we vote on the President's bill, all I can do is bring their pictures to the floor. A poor substitute for action.
"Give us a vote on Kilcannon's bill. If we don't get it, I mean to propose every piece of it that the SSA doesn't like as a separate amendment to your tort reform bill, along with a few ideas of my own: universal background checks; a ban on making or selling Eagle's Claw bullets; mandatory safety locks; and a provision to close the gun-show loophole." His smile flickered. "You did see the news clips of that gun show in Las Vegas, right? They were selling AK-47s.
"I'm going to force you to cast vote after vote, and let people like Cassie Rollins decide between the SSA and commonsense measures the public wants. After ten votes or so, your caucus will look like whores for the gun lobby—at least the people who stick with you. And if you're still up for a fight, I'll throw in some more amendments which will make terrific issues in the next campaign: a raise in the minimum wage, prescription drug benefits for seniors, maybe a patient's bill of rights . . ."
"Do that," Fasano cut in, "and the Senate will be a bloodbath, with relations across the aisle so poisoned the public will end up hating us all. What about this President make
s him worth all that?"
"It's not just Kilcannon," Hampton answered easily. "You've been trying to roll us. I'll blow this place up before I'll let that happen. Your choice is this—compromise with me or start defending the Eagle's Claw, and prepare your people to pay their debts to Charles Dane with some of the worst votes they've ever cast."
Fasano fought back his disbelief. Either he had missed the steel in Chuck Hampton, or events were turning this scholarly pragmatist into someone harder and far less predictable. "Compromise?" Fasano repeated.
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