No Way To Treat a First Lady

by Christopher Buckley

Members of the media exchanged smirks. Let Shameless Baylor explain away this!

  DAG Clintick, at pains to suppress her glee, gently guided Captain Grayson through his description of this damningly conclusive piece of forensic evidence. She had prepared diligently. Did such dermal embossing ever occur naturally on humans? Not like this, Captain Grayson replied. In his wide medical experience, had the captain ever seen or heard of six capital letters naturally occurring on human flesh? No, he couldn’t think of any instances offhand. And what would the chances of six reversed Roman letters spelling the name of a Revolutionary War silversmith appearing naturally on human flesh be, say?

  Objection. The witness was being asked to indulge in the most extravagant statistical speculation.

  Sidebar.

  Overruled.

  The witness may answer the question.

  “Approximately one in fifty-seven billion.”

  Murmurmurmur.

  Objection.

  It was a long morning.

  When she finished with Captain Grayson, Sandy Clintick flashed Boyce a triumphal smirk.

  Boyce rose, walked over to the witness box, and rested his arm companionably on it, as though having a conversation with an old friend.

  “Your Honor,” he said so casually that he might have been telling the judge that his wife had called and asked him to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home, “the defense stipulates that this mark came from the spittoon.”

  Sandy Clintick froze. She and scores of Justice Department lawyers had studied every one of Boyce Baylor’s cases. In over two decades of aggressive lawyering, he had stipulated exactly twice. Even Judge Dutch, normally as impassive as one of the seventeenth-century Dutch burghers in his collection, raised an eyebrow.

  “Only a fool or scoundrel,” Boyce continued, “would stand here and waste the jury’s time trying to maintain that those letters occurred naturally—or miraculously—on President MacMann’s forehead.” He was making a speech, but let the deputy AG object while he sounded so sweetly reasonable. “The question is how they got there.”

  “Objection.”

  “Proceed with your questioning, Counsel.”

  First Boyce would demonstrate to the jury that he too thought Captain Grayson was the greatest thing to happen to the medical profession since Galen.

  He inquired gently into the number of autopsies he had performed. My, my, that is a lot. He then dismissed the notion that he thought Captain Grayson was not qualified to comment on the markings simply because he was not a forensic dermatologist. For heaven’s sake, was he not the navy’s top pathologist? At Bethesda Naval Hospital—custodians of presidential health?

  Captain Grayson could only reply as modestly as he could that, yes, his credentials did seem to be in order.

  Absolutely, absolutely.

  Sandy Clintick thought, They’re having a love fest up there. Any minute he’s going to give Grayson a back massage. What the hell is he up to?

  “Captain, in the course of your autopsy, I assume you would examine every square inch of the President’s body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every part?”

  “Objection. Asked and answered.”

  “Did you take tissue samples?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take tissue samples from the bottom of his feet?”

  “No.”

  Boyce’s face assumed a look of respectful surprise. “I’d have thought that would be routine.”

  “Objection.”

  “I’ll rephrase. Why didn’t you take tissue samples from the soles of his feet?”

  “I saw no reason to. I observed the soles of his feet.”

  “In observing them, did you see traces of soap residue?”

  “I did not observe traces of soap residue.”

  “But without taking tissue samples, can you say, with one hundred percent certainty, that there was no soap residue present?”

  Captain Grayson paused. “No, I could not say for certain.”

  Boyce did not press. Digging up a dead-and-buried U.S. president in Arlington Cemetery is a tall order, and high risk unless you were absolutely certain that his feet were slimy with soap from his last shower.

  Just in case, though, DAG Clintick was ready. She had lined up a scientist from Procter & Gamble, makers of the President’s favorite shower soap, as well as a physicist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The P&G scientist would testify that the President’s bar soap had been specifically designed to leave minimal residue—the result of an expensive lawsuit by a man who had sued the company for $100 million after slipping in the shower. The JPL physicist would demonstrate the unlikelihood—1 in 2.6 trillion—of a slip resulting in the imprint on the skull, given the spittoon’s normal position in the President’s bedroom. Sandy Clintick was not eager to glaze the jury’s eyeballs with vectors, g-forces, square roots, and formulas with eight variables, but if it came to that, she was ready.

  “Captain,” Boyce said, “what effect does death have on human flesh?”

  “When rigor mortis sets in, it hardens all the organs and tissue.”

  “Is it then accurate to say that human skin becomes more impressionable following death? In other words, if something were pressed onto it in the hours after death, would an impression be made on the skin?”

  “Objection. Captain Grayson is not here in the capacity of expert dermatologist.”

  Gotcha. Right into the trap.

  “Your Honor,” Boyce said in a tone of wounded reasonableness, “it was the prosecution who presented the captain as expert witness in these matters. I respect and esteem his credentials and accept him as more than qualified to testify on this most basic aspect of forensic medical science.”

  Several of the jurors actually nodded in agreement. Such moments made Vlonko’s heart leap.

  “Overruled. You may answer the question, Captain Grayson.”

  “As rigor mortis sets in, the skin develops pallor consequent to oxygen depletion. Relevant to Mr. Baylor’s question, there is a general loss of turgor and elasticity. So, yes, in theory, any indentation or impression would be more likely to persist after death than before.”

  Bingo.

  “So, Captain, if after the President had died, the spittoon were pressed down onto his forehead—”

  “Objection!”

  “Your Honor, I am merely asking a medical witness if a certain set of circumstances would produce a specific result.” He flashed a steely glance at the prosecution table. “And I would point out to the prosecution that I have reserved the right to recall previous witnesses.”

  It was a long and hissy sidebar. How the public yearned to hear what was being said!

  Finally Judge Dutch said, “The jury is instructed that the witness is not in a position to state what may or may not have actually taken place.”

  “Captain Grayson,” Boyce continued, “if following the President’s death, the spittoon were pressed down onto a bruised area, could that, in your considered medical opinion, have left this vivid impression of Mr. Revere’s mark? Like stamping hardening clay?”

  “Yes,” Captain Grayson said, “that could explain it. Theoretically.”

  Boyce smiled. “Thank you, sir. No further questions at this time.”

  Chapter 18

  Boyce’s cross of Captain Grayson triggered a media hurricane. The front page of the New York Post screamed:

  SHAMELESS TO GOVT:

  YOUDUNIT!

  The pixel pundits said that Boyce had just “declared war” on the United States government. Mark Fuhrman, the detective in the O. J. Simpson case, was tracked down by helicopter, shooting elk in Montana, and ferried to a television studio in Bozeman where he could comment on the similarities between the accusation that he had planted the bloody glove in Simpson’s backyard and Boyce’s allegation that the government bogeymen had embossed the President’s skull while he lay cooling.

  In fact, Boyce had gotten the inspiration for this grand canar
d not from the Simpson case, but from the JFK assassination. The harder-element conspiracy theorists back then had asserted that President Kennedy’s corpse had been altered in the ambulance on the way from Andrews Air Force Base to Bethesda Naval Hospital, to make it look as though the fatal shots had come from behind. (When any fool knew that President Kennedy had been shot from the front, back, and sideways by triangulated firing squads staged by the CIA, FBI, and Mafia.) Boyce kept the source of his inspiration to himself.

  Commentators on the legal shows tsk-tsked that DAG Clintick should have seen it coming. Greta Van Botox, host of Objection!, declared, “If you get into the ring with Shameless Baylor, you better be prepared to mud wrestle.” Alan Crudman, in his now regular guest slot on Hard Gavel, tried to downplay the damage to the government. Privately, he admitted that Boyce Baylor had taken a damaging piece of evidence and nicely jujitsued it to his advantage.

  DAG Clintick called an unusual full-scale press conference to denounce Boyce. “In all my years as a prosecutor,” she said, steam hissing from her ears, “I have never witnessed such morally and ethically disgraceful tactics as these. Today Mr. Baylor truly earned his nickname.”

  With that she turned and walked back into the courthouse, into the basement garage, and into her car and drove back to her office at the Justice Department to command 120 lawyers and investigators to crank up, overnight, a minute-by-minute, second-by-second timeline of the precise whereabouts of every FBI and Secret Service agent, household staff, medical personnel, and body handler on the morning of the President’s death.

  She knew there was no merit to Boyce’s stunning allegation, and that was why it scared her. It was so outrageous, so unbelievable, that one-third of the jury would believe it. People believe unbelievable things because it’s self-flattering to think that you are intellectually daring enough to accept what others find preposterous. It’s why people believe in UFOs, assassination conspiracies, certain religions, and the possibility that the Boston Red Sox will someday win the World Series.

  It had been a dizzying couple of weeks. The DAG called in a highly credentialed plastic surgeon who stated flatly that Boyce’s allegation was not medically possible.

  Under cross-examination, Boyce removed the plastic surgeon’s own skin. The doctor had done a lot of work for the government—transforming the faces of turncoat mobsters and defector spies who needed new identities. By the time Boyce had finished enumerating the crimes of his patients, the doctor made Beverly Hills plastic surgeons seem saintly.

  The deputy AG produced more plastic surgeons, dermatologists, skin allergists, and medical examiners to contradict Captain Grayson’s assertion. Boyce destroyed them one by one. He made their testimony sound so abstruse, so ambiguous, that no one without a Ph.D. in forensic dermatology could have made sense of it. Boyce’s first law of deconstructing scientific evidence was: Make it boring and make it annoying. Vlonko reported that four jurors were now grinding their teeth whenever Clintick stood up to grill another skin doctor. This was progress.

  It was chess. Sandy had made a bad move by having Grayson testify about the mark, and Boyce, having seized the advantage, was pressing it, forcing her to move defensively. The media were meanwhile consumed with trying to figure out whom exactly Boyce was planning to finger as the person who’d stamped Paul Revere’s name on the President’s noggin.

  Beth was increasingly consumed with something else.

  “How was your weekend with Perri?” she asked.

  “Hm?” Boyce was deep in thought. Today would be an important day in court. Babette Van Anka was taking the stand. Anticipation was high.

  What was Beth saying? “Fine. Fine,” he said.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Two arms, two legs. Mammal.”

  “She seems bright enough. For someone who showcases her boobs.”

  Boyce quietly reveled in Beth’s jealousy. What’s more, his weekend with Perri in New York had been spent fending off oddly similar questions about Beth. In the midst of a delicious session of welcome-home fellatio, Perri had looked up in midministration and asked, “What’s she really like? She seems sympathetic, for a cold-blooded murderer.” It took Boyce half an hour to get back to where he had been.

  “She speaks very well of you,” Boyce said to Beth. “She called you ‘sympathetic.’ ”

  “Why don’t you ever talk about her?”

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “Objection. Leading.”

  “I’ll rephrase. How would you describe your feelings for Ms. Pettengill?”

  “Amicable, certainly.”

  “Amorous?”

  “That would depend on your definition of amorous.”

  “The witness is directed to answer the question.” Their knees were touching.

  The motorcade was pulling up in front of the courthouse.

  “Court is adjourned.”

  “I reserve the right to recall the witness at a future time.”

  Nick Naylor nixed going in through the basement entrance. If Beth MacMann was going in the front door, so would Babette.

  Babette was not entirely enthusiastic about the idea. Her notion of arriving somewhere consisted of pulling up in a white limousine longer than most aircraft carriers, stepping out onto a red carpet escorted by twelve steroidal immensities with ear radios, then pausing along the way in to be told by a breathless interviewer from Entertainment Tonight that she looked “incredible!” and asked whether she was “excited” about her new movie or “really excited.”

  Shimmying her way through a media gauntlet mob baying at her with questions—“Babette! Babette! How many times did you and Ken do it that night?”—was not her preferred entrance.

  Nick had arranged for bodyguards who bore at least a passing resemblance to the human species. He had also quietly arranged for twenty or so (paid) “supporters” to be on hand, waving signs expressing cheery sentiments like WE LOVE YOU, BABETTE! and YOU GO, GIRL! Some specifically hailed her commitment to peace in the Middle East. One even said, SUICIDE BOMBERS FOR BABETTE! All very welcoming and reassuring. When she took the stand, she would be basking in the warm reflected glow of fan love.

  For a woman who spent enough on clothes in a year to dress the population of Liechtenstein, Babette’s appearance was decidedly minimalist. She wore—what else?—a black pantsuit, the uniform of serious modern women. Her copious bosom—nearly unique among Hollywood breasts for being actually real—was not in evidence. She looked almost flat chested.

  But it was the eyeglasses that prompted the most tittering among the press. They were half-glasses, the kind people wear to government hearings so that they look up from incriminating documents and say, “With all due respect, Senator, I draw quite a different inference from that.” Intellectual accessorizing. Babette’s glasses said, “I ruined my eyes on the footnotes of Foreign Affairs magazine.”

  Boyce studied the jury. Many of them were wide-eyed over having a certified Hollywood celebrity in their midst. If the pattern held, it would soon dawn on them that this Hollywood bigshot was here to impress them. Then they’d relax almost to the point of cockiness. It would be their one chance in life to have the upper hand with a celebrity.

  “What is your profession, Ms. Van Anka?” the deputy attorney general began.

  “I’m an activist in international affairs.”

  The correspondent from Vanity Fair was seen pressing a balled handkerchief to his mouth.

  Boyce nudged Beth beneath the table.

  “What else do you do, Ms. Van Anka?” the deputy AG asked.

  “I am, in addition, an actor, singer, and recording artist. But at this point in my life I consider myself primarily an advocate. For peace in the Middle East. And the environment.”

  A collective tubercular sound came from the press section. Eyes rolled like tumblers in slot machines. Judge Dutch glanced sternly.

  “You were an overnight gu
est in the White House on the night of September twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of last year?”

  “Yes.”

  Babette’s attorneys, Morris, Howard, and Ben, had drilled into her the absolute necessity of answering as briefly as possible. They were anxious about their client’s predilection for lengthy—indeed, interminable—statements. Taciturnity is as rare in Hollywood as fur.

  “Had you been an overnight guest in the White House on previous occasions?”

  “Yes.”

  Two one-word answers in a row. Observers marveled. Had Morris, Howard, and Ben installed a shock collar on her? “How many times?”

  “The First Family and I were friends. I stayed there numerous occasions.”

  Beth scribbled on her legal pad and slid it over to Boyce: “Friend of First Family?”

  “How many times, Ms. Van Anka?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t say or won’t say?”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Ms. Van Anka, this is the official log kept by the White House usher of overnight guests. It shows that you stayed overnight in the White House a total of fifty-six times.”

  “If that’s what it says. I’m honored.”

  “Would you say that fifty-six times is a lot?”

  “That depends on your definition of ‘a lot.’ ”

  “On how many of those occasions was your husband also an overnight guest?”

  Boyce rose, Galahad defender of the sanctity of the Grab–Van Anka marriage, to express his outrage.

  “Your Honor, setting aside for a moment the prosecution’s sneering, harassing tone, this question is utterly without relevance.”

  “Overruled.”

  After pickaxing away at Babette, the deputy AG established that Mr. Grab “had only been able to join” Babette at the White House on four occasions. Four occasions, out of fifty-six.

  “Your husband, then, was with you only seven percent of the time you were there?”

  “If that’s what it comes out to. Mr. Grab is a busy man. He’s frequently away on business.”

  “What kind of business is he in?”