“What?” he said to Beth, who was looking at him with horror.
“Remind me,” she said, “was I in class the day they taught us to suborn recovering alcoholics?”
“Uncivil Procedure 101. My favorite course.”
Beth suddenly paled.
“You okay?”
She bolted for the bathroom door. She emerged ten minutes later looking shaky.
“Didn’t mean to upset you,” Boyce said.
“I’ve been upset since the seventies.”
“Now you’re cookin’, George.” Boyce hung up.
“Great news,” he said to Beth. They were having breakfast, Boyce tucking in heartily to his usual hot oatmeal with wheat germ and mixed berries. Beth bird-nibbled at a muffin and sipped at tea. Her color was still off.
“Guess who beat up an antiwar protester in the seventies for lipping off to him and calling him a baby murderer? Sergeant Blowhard!”
“I’d have done the exact same thing.”
“This information was not easy to come by. You could be more enthusiastic about it, you know. Apparently he was tanked when he slugged the guy. That’s why he brought it up in AA. This is good. We can use this.”
“Oh, Boyce, you didn’t pour booze down some poor alcoholic’s throat to get this? I just don’t think getting recovering drunks drunk is right.”
“Don’t get ethical me with me, Spittoon Girl.”
Beth burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t seem to get a grip.”
“It’s okay,” Boyce said, helpless as any male confronted with a weeping female, “I’m not going to subpoena a recovering alcoholic.”
“You’re not?” Beth blew her nose into a stiff Jefferson Hotel napkin.
“Not because I’ve gone soft,” Boyce said. “With the mood the country’s in right now, the jury would award Blowwell damages for skinning his knuckles on an antiwar protester.”
Beth blew her nose. “Probably right.”
He patted Beth’s hand. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Let’s go now to our special legal correspondent, who is outside the courthouse. Jeff, how did it go today?”
“Peter, this was not a good day for the defense. Beth MacMann’s attorney, Boyce Baylor, filed a motion last week seeking to have Damon Blowwell examined by a court-appointed psychiatrist, in an effort to establish that Blowwell—as the motion put it—has a history of ‘vicious sociopathic behavior characterized by extreme violence.’ The basis for this is that Mr. Blowwell allegedly hit an antiwar protester back in the seventies. Baylor seized on the incident and tried to have Blowwell’s court testimony, considered highly damaging to the former First Lady, thrown out by Judge Umin.”
“And how did the judge rule today?”
“Just ten minutes ago, Judge Umin denied the motion. Morever, he did so in unusually harsh language, indicating that he is growing rapidly impatient with the defense.”
“So Mr. Blowwell’s testimony stands?”
“Yes. Further, we’ve just learned that Damon Blowwell has filed a thirty-million-dollar defamation suit against Boyce Baylor. So the atmosphere down here at the U.S. District Court is highly charged. Peter?”
Beth had taken some kind of downward turn that had Boyce at a loss. It was as if she’d lost interest in her own case. In court, she stared straight ahead, a terrible, guilty-looking eye posture—and twice had passed him urgent notes saying she needed a five-minute recess—“NOW!!” The moment they were granted, she flew toward the side door.
Naturally, these quick exits did not go unnoticed. It is difficult to go unnoticed when you are being seen live by over one billion viewers. Commentators remarked that she seemed to be under quite a lot of stress. Asked about this on the steps of the courthouse one day, Boyce was sorely tempted to say, “She’s on trial for murdering her husband. Of course she’s under ‘considerable stress,’ you pigeon-brained idiots.” Instead he remarked that the reason for her downcast countenance was that, as former First Lady of the land, it tugged at her heartstrings to see the country she so loved torn apart by this tragedy.
But as one pundit put it, the country was not being torn apart. If anything, it was rapidly approaching unanimity on the matter of her guilt.
“Boyce?”
“What?” He was in a foul mood. Judge Dutch had denied yet another motion, his case was going down in flames, and the night before on Perri’s show, Alan Crudman had declared that Boyce Baylor had made a “tragic error” in putting Beth on the stand. He knew very well Boyce had tried everything short of locking Beth in a closet to keep her from taking the stand.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
He’d been afraid of this. It had happened before. And it always happened right about now: The client would break down, just as Boyce was about to go in and give his closing argument, and blubber all over his legal pad that—sob, gasp—they were guilty. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me as I prepare to go in and tell the jury that they are about to make a terrible mistake.
He said, “Beth, you could really help me right now by—”
“I’m pregnant.”
They were in the car going to court. He could hear the courtroom rumbling from this atomic news, the media gasping with pleasure—a whole new layer of scandal!—the shocked, drawn faces of the jurors, spectators clamoring, Judge Dutch, eyeglasses fogged, gaveling, gaveling, ordering the bailiffs to clear the courtroom. He saw headlines, the evening news, heard the titter of his colleagues. He saw it in all its dire and awful vividness.
“That’s so … great,” he squeaked.
He was seized with joy. He’d never heard such good news. He’d never wanted children by any of his wives, sensing as he had that none of the marriages was likely to last. And now the only woman he had ever really loved had just announced that she was pregnant by him! Admittedly, the timing could have been better—twenty-five years later and in the middle of her trial for murdering the President of the United States. Otherwise it was wonderful news.
He detached himself from her long enough to ask, “But—you were on the pill.”
“I went off them about the time we went to trial. I was getting headaches and the doctor said to stop for a while while he monitored my estrogen. I never got around to going back on. It wasn’t as though I were likely to get pregnant, right? I thought you might have guessed. All those trips to the bathroom.”
“A lot of clients have to use the bathroom in a hurry. Nerves. I was focused on the case.”
The case!
He saw himself standing next to Beth in front of Judge Dutch. For the sentencing. Judge Dutch was wearing contacts so his glasses wouldn’t fog. Beth’s belly was huge with child. She was wearing maternity clothes. They held hands, not proper in court, strictly speaking, but they couldn’t help it. Judge Dutch’s voice kept catching in his throat. “In light of your condition, Mrs. MacMann, the United States will not avail itself of the sentence of death which would normally be imposed in such a grievous, indeed, heinous case. But because you have been found guilty of one of the most serious crimes there is—if not the most serious—it is the judgment of this court that you serve the balance of your life in prison, without possibility of parole.”
He heard the gasps, the sobs. He turned, saw the tears streaming down Beth’s cheeks as she stood there for the last time in her life wearing nonprison clothes. Saw the marshals approaching with steel manacles and leg chains. Heard Judge Dutch straining to control his own emotions as he concluded that this terrible tragedy had claimed more than the life of the President of the United States—it had forever blemished the honor of the United States and, perhaps most tragically of all, had robbed an unborn child of its mother, who would be only a person in an orange uniform on the other side of thick glass. Case closed, and may God have mercy on us all.
Down came the gavel. Beth was led away.
“No!” he cried.
“Boyce? You okay?”
> He filed motion after motion. “Loco motions,” they were dubbed by American Lawyer magazine. He moved to dismiss on the grounds that Beth’s Secret Service detail was spying on her and passing the information along to the prosecution. Judge Dutch tossed it in the judicial wastebasket. Boyce moved for a mistrial on the grounds that one of the jurors had just dozed off for five minutes during a stretch of stultifyingly dull testimony by an expert in acoustics. Into the wastebasket. He moved for a mistrial because the second cousin of juror fourteen signed a contract for a book titled Second Cousin of Juror 14: My Story. Waste-basket. Three for three.
Boyce dispatched his most unethical investigator—a former U.S. intelligence agent who had had to resign after being caught selling Stinger antiaircraft missiles to the Serbs—to Vietnam with a suitcase of hundred-dollar bills with which to bribe an entire hamlet of Mekong Delta peasants into suddenly recalling that Sergeant Damon Blowwell had wantonly massacred half its population one night—just for the heck of it. The scheme fizzled when the investigator got as far as Bangkok, where he exchanged the $100,000 for heroin and caught a flight for Amsterdam, where he exchanged the heroin for $500,000 of ecstasy, which he secreted in large wheels of Gouda bound for Atlanta. It would have been awkward for Boyce to pursue him through the courts, so he let it go, charging the $100,000 to one of his corporate clients as a week’s worth of “photocopying and messenger services.”
Judge Dutch dismissed each of Boyce’s motions with mounting choler and vexation, at one point warning him icily that if he received one more of these appalling roadblocks, he would call down upon Boyce’s head “the lesser angels of my nature.”
Boyce’s furious motion filing was to buy a few weeks for Beth to get over her morning sickness before the deputy AG got her on the stand for cross-examination. That was going to be bad enough without Beth having to be excused every five minutes to dash to the bathroom. As a rule, juries are not impressed if you have to throw up every time a difficult question is posed.
Judge Dutch was getting suspicious of Beth’s frequent calls of nature. His clerk had told Boyce that the judge was considering having her medically examined. That was to be avoided at all costs. Meanwhile, Boyce put it out to the press that Beth had been temporarily inconvenienced by a nasty “tummy bug.” In moments of daydreaming, he found himself calling his child by the nickname Tummybug.
Chapter 25
United States calls Elizabeth MacMann.”
How subtle, Boyce thought, of Clintick to drop Beth’s maiden middle name, Tyler, which Beth had always made such a point of using. It would start Beth’s cross-exam on a note of annoyance.
He slid his legal pad across the defense table toward Beth.
She’s wearing panty hose underneath
She gave him a smile that said, “I’ll be okay.”
The television commentators went into their TV golf tournament whisper.
“Elizabeth MacMann is rising … walking around the defense table … walking now toward the witness box … climbing up into the witness box … Barbara, how would you describe her outfit?”
“It’s a pantsuit, of course. Black. We know that much. We do not know who the designer is. It looks like a cross between Ann Taylor and Carolina Herrera.…”
“Judge Umin now reminding Mrs. MacMann that she is still under oath.”
“She’s made a point, generally, of wearing clothes by American designers.…”
“Sitting down, now …”
“You’ll notice she is not wearing the pearl necklace that she wore when she took the stand previously.”
“What do we read into that?”
“I’m not sure. It was given to her by her late husband. So you could read all sorts of things into it. Or not.”
“Deputy Attorney General Sandra Clintick, approaching the witness stand. What’s she wearing, Barbara?”
“We do have that information. Saks Fifth Avenue double-breasted jacket with skirt and off-white crepe de chine blouse—”
“I have to interrupt you—here we go.”
“Mrs. MacMann,” DAG Clintick began, “you testified earlier that there—I’m quoting from the transcript—may have been more than eight occasions when you violently attacked your husband. Is that correct?”
“No, it’s not. I said I might have thrown something at him. I did not characterize it as a violent attack.”
“You do not consider throwing objects at or striking people acts of violence?”
Boyce winced. It was a textbook instance of why a defendant should never take the stand.
“I would not consider, for instance, throwing your shoe at your husband in a moment of domestic stress a quote violent attack. I would consider that pretty fairly standard husband maintenance.”
There was laughter in the courtroom, though none, Vlonko pointed out later, came from the jury box.
“Would you consider throwing a heavy metal object at his skull a violent attack?”
“Objection. Conjecture.”
Overruled.
“Yes,” Beth said. “I certainly would. I’d consider it not only violent but unlawful and punishable at law.”
“As First Lady, you spoke out against domestic violence.”
“Yes, I did. On numerous occasions.”
“Do you consider that hypocritical?”
“Objection.”
Overruled.
“No, Ms. Clintick. I distinguish between marital spats and domestic violence.”
“Even when these so-called marital spats result in contusions, lacerations, bruising, and stitches?”
“My husband was a six-foot-three former naval officer and outweighed me by more than seventy pounds, Ms. Clintick. He was perfectly capable of defending himself from the likes of me.”
“Even at night, in the dark, while he slept?”
“Objection.”
Sustained.
“You’re asking hypothetical questions, Ms. Clintick,” Beth said. “I’ll answer directly: I did not hit my husband with that spittoon in the dark, as he slept.”
“Was he awake when you hit him?”
“Objection. Asked and answered.”
Overruled.
“I did not hit him.”
“Did you throw the spittoon at him?”
“Objection, Your Honor. Asked and answered. Ms. Clintick’s line of questioning constitutes harassment.”
Overruled.
“I’ve answered that question, Ms. Clintick,” Beth said tightly.
“Answer directly. Did you throw the spittoon at him?”
“I told the FBI agents that I did not.”
DAG Clintick looked over toward the jury and apparently liked what she saw.
“Mrs. MacMann, as a college student, you played softball?”
Boyce knew this one was coming. The horror, the horror …
“I did.”
“What position did you play on the team?”
“I was the pitcher.”
“So your aim would be pretty good, wouldn’t it?”
“With a softball, decades ago.”
“You pitched four no-hitters in the season your senior year.”
“The batters weren’t that good. No disrespect to Smith College intended.”
Clintick’s alma mater, as it happened.
“In your testimony, after admitting that you had violently attacked your husband on numerous occasions, when you were asked why you did that, you replied that since your husband was dead, you were not going to say. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Whom are you trying to protect, Mrs. MacMann? Your dead husband or yourself?”
“Objection.”
Overruled.
“I am trying, Ms. Clintick, to defend myself against a charge of murder. But I will not do that by dragging down a man to whom I was married for twenty-five years and”—Beth sighed somewhat—“who is considered by the country a hero.”
“Did your husband cheat on you?”<
br />
“That’s none of your business, Ms. Clintick.”
“Your Honor?”
After a sidebar, Judge Dutch instructed Beth to answer the question.
“You would have to define ‘cheat’ for me.”
“Did he sleep with other women while he was married to you?”
“I very much doubt that.”
An explosion of laughter.
“Mrs. MacMann, were you aware that your husband engaged in sex with other women?”
U.S. marshals were poised to serve subpoenas on half a dozen of Beth’s friends to whom she had confided her problems over the years. If they denied that Beth had told them about it all, they would open themselves up to charges of perjury. Beth knew this. She had nowhere to go.
“I prefer not to be aware of some things,” Beth said.
“Is the name Amber Swenson familiar to you, Mrs. MacMann?”
“Yes.”
“Rita Ferreira?”
“Yes.”
“Violet Bronson?”
“Yes.”
“Jo Anne Casardo?”
“Yes.”
“Tammy Royko?”
“Uh-hum.”
“Is that a yes, Mrs. MacMann?”
“Yes.”
“Cass Macklehose?”
“Yes.”
“Serena Whitmore?”
“Yes.”
“Objection. Your Honor, is the prosecution going to read the entire phone book?”
“With the court’s indulgence, there are only twelve more names on this list.”
Throughout the country, phones rang. The next day, the headline ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WOMEN appeared in three hundred newspapers. DAG Clintick came under heavy fire from the women’s groups. Lawsuits were threatened, none filed. Ms. Clintick’s team had done their homework diligently.
As this honor roll was called, Boyce forced his features into a blank expression. Clintick moved in for the kill.
“Is the name Babette Van Anka familiar to you?”
No Way To Treat a First Lady Page 18