“I … yes. I’m sure I … yes.”
“And you told the FBI that you fell asleep.”
“Yes. I was tired. Such an evening. So many Latin dignitaries. They’re exhausting. So talkative.”
“So you fell asleep, with the TV on?”
“Yes.”
“You fell asleep with the television on, set to the public TV channel. This was sometime after twelve-thirty A.M.?”
“Yes.”
“Your Honor, with the court’s permission, I would like to have received in evidence the TV Guide listings for the evening and early morning of September twenty-eight to twenty-nine.”
A copy of the TV Guide from that week was duly entered after a lengthy sidebar initiated by a distinctly unhappy-looking deputy attorney general.
Boyce handed the TV Guide to Babette and asked her to read the listings for the early morning of September 29 for WETA, the local public television channel.
Babette put on her intellectual glasses and read, “One A.M. to three A.M., Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
She looked up at Boyce.
No, no. Do not smile at me.
She caught herself.
A murmur went through the courtroom.
“Would you tell the court what Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is?” Boyce asked.
“It’s a film. A great film. A great American film.”
“Would you tell the court what it’s about, briefly?”
“It’s about two couples in an unhappy marriage. I mean, really-really unhappy.”
“And what takes place in the movie?”
“Oh, a lot of anger. Shouting. Throwing things. Screaming.”
“Shouting, screaming, throwing things?”
“For starters.”
“The television in the Lincoln Bedroom is fifteen feet from the bed. Would you have had the volume up so that you could hear?”
“Very up.”
“So a movie showing people arguing loudly was playing in the Lincoln Bedroom, not far from where Secret Service agent Birnam was stationed, between one A.M. and three A.M.?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Van Anka. No further questions at this time, Your Honor.”
Chapter 19
They were calling it “the Timeline of the Millennium.”
Normally in criminal trials, timelines—chronological orderings of events—are broken down into minutes. The one Boyce and his team beavered up was in hundredths of seconds. This prompted snide comments among the media that he must have located the White House residence cockpit flight recorder.
Boyce’s timeline alleged that an incompetent, vengeful FBI agent Whepson and a resentful, hearing-impaired Secret Service agent Birnam had been alone with the President’s cooling corpse for thirty-seven seconds, giving them time to emboss the President’s forehead with the Revere hallmark.
Deputy Attorney General Clintick fought like a lynx to have the timeline excluded. She was under increasing pressure following Boyce’s astonishing cross-examination of Babette Van Anka.
President Harold Farkley was getting more and more questions about the case, and they were being asked with even less than usual courtesy. One day, after announcing a historic engineering initiative to prevent the Missouri River from overflowing and drenching America’s breadbasket, and deploring racial profiling—former secretary of state Colin Powell had again been pulled over by a Virginia State Trooper and spread-eagled across the hood of his car—he was accosted in an unseemly manner by the traveling White House press corps, demanding to know if he had played an “active” role in prosecuting his well-known nemesis, Mrs. MacMann. None, none at all, he averred. His press secretary told him that Bob Woodward, Investigative Reporter of the Previous Millennium, was “making inquiries.” Harold Farkley’s mouth went dry.
Having lived all his life in the shadow of his own mediocrity, he was determined to defy his karma and win the upcoming nomination. The last thing he needed was a front-page Washington Post article (“First in a Series of Articles”) with the headline:
SEEKING TO SETTLE OLD SCORE,
FARKLEY ENCOURAGED JUSTICE DEPT.
TO PROSECUTE FIRST LADY
He instructed his press secretary to put out the word—and not quietly—that he had been “skeptical” of the evidence against Beth “all along.”
In due course, articles reflecting this new line appeared. The sources were not attributed directly, but there was enough DNA in them to alarm the attorney general. He in turn instructed his press secretary to put out the word—loudly—that he too had had “qualms” about the evidence “from the beginning” but that Deputy Attorney General Clintick had been “avid” to prosecute.
In due course those articles appeared, causing Sandy Clintick to break out in a rash. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make itch.
On Hard Gavel, Alan Crudman’s jealousy over Boyce’s masterful handling of the case had caused him to evolve into a public second-guesser for the prosecution. It was something of a career reversal for a man who had once boasted that he could have gotten Adolf Hitler acquitted.
In the middle of last night’s show, he had gotten carried away in his fever to demonstrate that Agents Whepson and Birnam could not possibly have put on latex gloves, grabbed the spittoon, embossed the presidential forehead, removed the gloves, and replaced the spittoon between 7:33:00 A.M. and 7:33:37 on September 29, while Beth was in the bathroom barfing. Crudman leapt out of his chair to reenact the scenario, lapel microphone still attached, yanking his mike out of its socket and upsetting a water glass.
Perri’s attitude toward Boyce had become openly antagonistic. Boyce had stopped coming home on weekends. She couldn’t even wheedle anything out of his team as to what was going on behind the scenes. When they did speak, she was unable to get anything out of him. He didn’t respond to her cooey little nudgings. His conversation consisted of, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Listen, gotta go.” It was all a bit … much. Hadn’t Perri nursed him back to emotional health after his disastrous fourth divorce from the socialite mountain climber—what’s more, at a time when she should have been concentrating on her own career?
With her producers, she pretended that Boyce was keeping her fed with tidbits. Meanwhile, as she discussed the case on television every night for a larger and larger audience, Perri had become consumed with what, for her, was the larger question of the Trial of the Millennium: Were Boyce and Beth doing it?
The tricky part in getting Judge Dutch to allow his timeline was that the only person who could attest to Agents Whepson and Birnam’s being alone with the corpse was—his client, and of course there was no way he would put her on the stand. One of the triumphs of the American justice system is that the guilty—that is, the accused—does not actually have to defend himself. He can just sit there while lawyers fire spitballs at the accusers and make them out to be the real villains.
“We go now,” said evening news anchorman Peter Jennings, “to our legal correspondent. Jeff, how did it go today?”
“Peter, this was another bad day for the prosecution. Mrs. MacMann’s lawyer, Boyce Baylor, introduced a timeline of the morning of the President’s death that is so minute, so detailed, that you have to wonder if this jury, or any jury, would be able to keep it all straight. It tracks the movements of eighteen people in and out of the presidential bedroom over a period of two hours. At the heart of Baylor’s argument is a critical thirty-seven-second period when, as he claims, FBI agent Jerrold Whepson and Secret Service agent Woody Birnam were alone with the President’s body. He contends that, acting out of personal animosity toward Mrs. MacMann, they stamped his forehead with the Paul Revere silver hallmark on the spittoon so that it would emerge as a murder weapon. The defense contends that the President died in the night as a result of an accidental fall. For the past three days, Baylor has hammered at Whepson and Birnam relentlessly. In the end, they did not categorically deny that they were alone with the body while Mrs. MacMann was in t
he bathroom. I have to say, whatever you think of the argument that this is all some government conspiracy, these were effective cross-examinations, especially coming after his devastating cross-examination of Babette Van Anka. In the end, the jury may conclude not that Mrs. MacMann is innocent, but that she is not, beyond a reasonable doubt, guilty. Peter?”
“I wondered if this was going to happen,” said Boyce.
Beth’s head rested on his chest. “You knew it would.”
They were in bed in a tangle of sheets. Outside, beyond two sets of doors, stood silently fuming Secret Service agents. It was a Friday night, no court tomorrow, and Boyce’s war room was quiet.
“How did you get them?” Boyce asked, feeling under the sheets for the silky-furry object. He held it aloft for inspection.
“Aren’t they hideous? I called a friend in L.A. and had her buy them. Don’t worry. She’s discreet. It’s not the sort of thing I wanted to have reported that I put on my American Express. So now the question is finally resolved.”
“Not quite. We know what you look like in crotchless mink panties now. We still don’t know what you would have looked like in them back in law school.”
“Even more ridiculous than I look in them now.”
“I can’t believe you wore them in court today. What if you’d had some medical emergency and they’d taken you to the hospital and put you on the table and you’re wearing these? What a headline!”
Beth snuggled against him. “You were really good.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself.”
“In court. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Oh. And how was I just now?”
“Mm, adequate.”
“Your bill just went up by a million dollars.”
“You were amazing. Godlike.”
“Ten percent off.”
“Just like old times.”
It was strange, making love to a once familiar partner after a quarter century. Boyce turned over metaphors in his contented mind. Was it like drinking wine long cellared and ripened? Or was it more like entering a garden in which the vines had matured into—
“The media’s saying it’s over,” Beth said.
“The media isn’t the jury. But you heard Vlonko. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier.”
“Vlonko,” said Beth. “Diviner of minds.”
“He said jurors six, seven, ten and thirteen were actually nodding when I crossed Birnam.”
“Is thirteen the—”
“Homosexual pediatric neurosurgeon of German extraction. You just don’t get more no-nonsense than that. And he was nodding.” Boyce sighed happily. “I don’t want to jinx it—the gods are watching 24/7—but I think we might have this thing nailed. I think they’re going to acquit. You never know, but I think you’re going to be okay.”
Beth reached for her cigarettes and lit one. “I want my life back after this,” she said. “Not the old life. My own.”
“You’re young.”
“Ish.”
“Sexy.”
“Ish.”
“Smart.”
“How smart was I, to get into this?”
“You were smart enough to hire a good lawyer.” Beth sat up on one elbow and turned to him. She was beaming with excitement. “Boyce, I want to take the stand.”
“Huh?”
“I want to testify.”
“Is that a cigarette or a joint you’re smoking? Are you nuts?”
“No, I want to take the stand.”
“I’m not even going to go into that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s such an insane notion that it’s not even in the realm of thinkability. This was not a particularly easy case. You may have noticed? Just because we’re ahead, don’t get crazy ideas.”
“You’ve been brilliant. I’m the first to admit that. I know you’ve worked your heart out on this. But people still think I did it. You heard what they said on TV tonight.”
“Who cares what the public thinks? Get yourself a PR guy. Whatsisname, Naylor, the one who does Babette’s PR. He could make Saddam Hussein out to be Santa Claus.”
“Thank you. That was truly sensitive.”
Change the subject, quick!
“I gotta have water. These hotel rooms. My mouth is like the Mojave.”
Boyce went in search of water. His mind was reeling. Astounding. Twenty-five years in politics turns you into a—politician. She’s barely off the hook on a murder rap and already she’s planning her comeback. What was she thinking? Well, she wasn’t thinking, just like twenty-five years ago when she married War God. The minibar. It would have water. Cool, expensive water from some spring in Finland or Wales, so pure you could wash your contact lens in it.
Boyce got back into bed with an eight-ounce bottle of water that cost $9. He snuggled up against her. Her body was less pliant and responsive than a minute ago.
“Your cross-examinations of the staff,” she said, her back to him, “made me out to be a total bitch. Lady Bethmac.”
“So what, if it helps you get off a murder rap?”
She turned to face him. “What good does it do me if I get off and everyone still thinks I did it? And that I’m the Joan Crawford of First Ladies?”
“What good does it do you if you get off? Apart from not spending the rest of your life in federal prison? Or the death penalty? That’s a hard one. I’ll have to think about that.”
“I need some kind of life after this.”
“Boy, you’re an easy one to please.”
“If I take the stand, I can show them that I not only didn’t do it, but that I’m not the First Bitch.”
“Listen to me: A jury is probably about to acquit you of murder. Trust me, that is the major goal here. It is the only goal. Look, acquittal means you didn’t do it.”
“No, it doesn’t. It just means that I got off. I’ll be the O. J. Simpson of First Ladies. What am I supposed to do, hang out on public golf courses looking for the real killers?”
“It beats working in the prison laundry for the next forty years. To say nothing of lethal injection.”
“What if I want to continue in public life? What if I want to run for public office myself? The Senate.”
Boyce stared in the semidark, a pointless dramatic gesture.
“Beth, I know this has been very stressful for you.”
“Will you please not speak to me like I’m a mental patient?”
“I won’t if you don’t act like one. Look, it’s not true what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives not having second acts. Look at Charles Manson—he’s got his own Web site. You can do whatever you want after this. My God, the product endorsements alone will be enough to—pay my bill!”
“I have no intention,” Beth said icily, “of becoming a product endorser. That’s a line of work for overweight British royals and oversexed White House interns.”
“How are you planning to pay my bill? I suppose we could work something out.” He nibbled her ear. “Take it out in trade.”
“Stop. According to a study by the American Bar Association, three-quarters of the public thinks that a defendant who doesn’t take the stand is either guilty or hiding something.”
“For once I agree with three-quarters of the American public. Do you know how many times I’ve allowed a client to testify in a criminal case? Twice. One was a seventy-eight-year-old Mafia boss in advanced stages of emphysema. I put him on the stand so the jury could listen to him wheeze. They felt so sorry for him, they let him go die at home. The second was a Catholic cardinal who’d been accused of unholy communion with an altar boy. Now it was twenty years later and the altar boy had a heroin problem, a crack cocaine problem, and a drinking problem, along with three other unpleasant diseases. So he’d decided to extort from his former parish monsignor, who was now a leading prince of the American church. In this particular case, the cardinal happened to be innocent. A rarity, I know, an actually innocent client. I should have had
him stuffed. At any rate, I put him on the stand because how often is it you have an innocent client who dresses in scarlet robes and wears a cross the size of a tire iron around his neck?”
“And?”
“They found him guilty. And you want to take the stand.”
Beth stubbed out her cigarette. “All those years with Ken, all those horrible years, I sucked it up, turned the other cheek, looked the other way, worked my ass off. I’m in my forties, I have no money, no visible means of support, other than endorsing antiques you can kill your husband with. I’m a widow—do not interrupt me, please—and everyone thinks I’m an assassin who offed a war hero with a spittoon. This is not fair. And I will not accept it. And I will not walk out of that courtroom into a life of people pointing at me in airports as some historical freak, afraid of turning on the television because Jay Leno and Letterman might be doing me in their monologues because nothing else sensational happened that day. Frankly, doing laundry in prison for forty years—or getting hooked up to the death drip—doesn’t look half-bad by comparison. If I’d wanted to get off on technicalities, I’d have hired Alan Crudman or Plato Cacheris or some other hotshot. I hired you because I need to win. Not not-lose. Win. You said I should walk in that first day and look like I’d come to accept their apology? Well, that’s how I plan to walk out, like I’ve accepted their apology and now I’m ready to accept the world’s.”
Boyce considered. “I think we should prepare a statement announcing that you plan to devote the rest of your life to searching for the real killers.”
Beth slugged him with the pillow. Hard.
“I’m beginning,” said Boyce, “to see how you got that nickname.”
Chapter 20
You might want to glance at this,” Boyce’s secretary said a few days later, handing him the Style section of The Washington Post, folded over to Lloyd Grove’s “Reliable Source” column. “Glance” was code for “Here is something that you are really not going to like.”
The relationship between First Defendant Beth MacMann and superlawyer Boyce “Shameless” Baylor may be progressing beyond the normal lawyer-client stage. The two were an item in the 1970s when they were students at Georgetown Law, before Lady Bethmac unceremoniously dumped him for the future President. But she may have left the pilot light on. Or they could just be boning up on the next day’s court proceedings, in Shameless’s $7,500-a-night suite at the Jefferson Hotel.
No Way To Treat a First Lady Page 14