Blowwell’s expression, for the first time that anyone could recall in public, took on a look of terrible pain. No one could remember ever before seeing Damon Blowwell look vulnerable. The man was crumpling.
“It was an accident, Damon,” Beth said tenderly. “There’s no need to blame yourself.”
“Objection,” said Sandy Clintick, almost reluctantly.
“Sustained. Mrs. MacMann,” said Judge Dutch, “if you have a question for the witness, ask it.”
“No further questions for the witness, Your Honor. Thank you, Mr. Blowwell.”
“Yes, ma’am. I—want to add something.”
Judge Dutch said, “Very well, Mr. Blowwell.”
“I want to apologize to Mrs. MacMann.”
Chapter 37
For the sake of what remained of the national dignity, the exhumation of President Kenneth MacMann was carried out under wraps during the hours of two and five A.M. This did not deter the TV networks from providing live coverage of the event, consisting of telephoto nightvision lenses aimed at a dark tent with soldiers standing in front of it while commentators passed the time by speculating about what was going on inside.
“For an operation like this, Tom, they would use, probably, a back-hoe, in conjunction with—there would be a backup backhoe, in the event the primary backhoe was for whatever reason unable to dig, or malfunctioned.”
“How deep is the President buried?”
“My information is that the President is between six and eight vertical feet beneath the stone plaza that was erected, the one that was placed over him after the burial.”
“So they have to go through that first, correct?”
“Yes, and that’s tough Vermont granite, of course.”
“Once they’ve gotten the casket to the surface, do they—what happens then?”
“We’re told that the casket, which is within a bronze outer casket, to prevent—that everything, the inner and outer caskets, will be loaded onto a military transport and taken to the National Institutes of Health.”
“No more Bethesda Naval autopsies.”
“No. And of course it is ironic that the NIH, where this second autopsy will be performed, under the supervision of a special master of evidence appointed by the court and six independent pathologists and toxicologists, none of them connected with the armed services, is practically right across the street from Bethesda Naval Hospital.”
“One thing I’m not clear on—why wasn’t the President embalmed?”
“It’s standard procedure in cases of murder or suspicious death, Tom, not to embalm. In case they have to exhume the body for further medical testing. If you embalm a body, that’s it as far as further toxicology testing goes.”
“Talk to us for a moment about formaldehyde.…”
“Did you watch?” Boyce said. “Honestly?”
“I was working on my concluding argument.”
“You won’t have to give one if the tox report comes out the way it should.”
“I …”
“What is it? Did he kick?”
“No. Nothing. Just a procedural point I was going to ask you about. I’ve forgotten. I’ll ask you about it when I see you. When will they know?”
“Possibly this afternoon. Toxicologists are a pain in the ass. They love to take forever. They know everything’s hanging on them, so they get to be the center of attention. Did you see the Times?”
“I’ve given up newspapers.”
“You might want to check out the front page of today’s. There’s a poll.”
“Has the procedure”—the word Beth used for exhumation—“caused my remaining four percent of supporters to hate me?”
“Quite the opposite. Your numbers are up, as you’d put it. Seventy-five percent feel the government owes you an apology. That’s quite a reversal. You should be pleased.”
Beth sighed. “Yes, that’s nice.”
“You’ve gone from being Lady Bethmac to Wronged Woman. You’re not happy?”
“My husband is on a metal table somewhere. You’re facing five years for saving me from myself. Having created the mother of all scandals, I’m about to become a mother and haven’t the slightest confidence that I won’t screw that up, too. ‘Happy’ isn’t quite the word for what I feel right now. I better get back to my concluding argument. Just in case Dr. Grayson really was gaga on morphine and hallucinating the whole thing.”
“Whatever happens, you’re going to be a brilliant mother. You’re going to be the mother of all mothers. Do you know why?”
“No idea.”
“To make up for screwing up everything else in your life. Including my life.”
“That’s pretty good motivation.”
“Folks,” CBS News anchorman Dan Rather told his viewers, looking as if he might, finally, have a fatal nosebleed on live television, “this case has got more evolutions than a species in the Galápagos. We are told that a Dr. Laftos Crogenos, chief pathologist of the team that has performed the second autopsy on the remains of President MacMann, will be making an announcement shortly. Bob, that name, Laftos Crogenos, has more vowels in it than a bowl of alphabet soup after buzzards have finished picking out all the consonants. What do we know about him?”
“Dan, Dr. Crogenos is Greek, originally. But he is a naturalized American citizen—”
“So his sympathies, naturally, would be above question?”
“There’s apparently a saying, Dan, in the pathology community, that there are no nationalities around an autopsy table.”
“Good. That’s what Americans at this point need to hear.”
“Dr. Crogenos has been for many years chairman of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Johns Hopkins medical school. He has performed over fifteen thousand autopsies and is considered to be one of the best pathologists in the world. In the words of one colleague, this man can open you up from stem to stern with his eyes closed.”
“This is no roadkill armadillo on Route 77 north of Corpus Christi he’s working on, but a former president of the United States of America.”
“There he is now. Dr. Crogenos is approaching the podium, accompanied by the five other medical examiners.…”
“How does he look to you, Bob? What can we say from his expression?”
“Dan, it can’t be easy examining the corpse of a, well, any corpse. Especially one that’s been in the ground for over a year. But this one in particular, with the whole world watching over your shoulder, as it were. It has to be tremendous pressure.”
“I’d be jumpier than a coked-up Mexican who’s just found half a cucaracha in his guacamole. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Dr. Crogenos’s statement took less than five minutes to read. As he spoke, his face was bathed in thousands of flashes. It was done with as much dignity as could be mustered. He announced that the President had been killed by a “probably accidental” overdose of sildenafil citrate. There was evidence of “moderately advanced” coronary heart disease. An estimated 300 milligrams of Viagra had put too great a strain on the heart, bringing about lethal cardiac arrhythmia. The penile epidermis showed traces of sildenafil citrate as well as ingredients commonly found in high-end brands of moisturizing cream. There was no evidence of an epidural hematoma. The bruise on his forehead, though pronounced, had not been fatal.
At this point, Dr. Crogenos looked at his colleagues and sighed. If the Republic lasted a thousand years, schoolchildren in ages hence would remember President Kenneth MacMann as vividly as, if not more vividly than, Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. His place in history was assured.
Chapter 38
Boyce’s cell phone rang.
“Hello, Counselor.”
It was Sandy Clintick.
“I won’t bother asking you how you got this number,” he said. “But it’s extremely unlisted. To what do I owe this pleasure? Are you ready to move to dismiss the indictment of my client?”
“Your former client. You’re no longer representing Mr
s. MacMann.”
“So you’re calling to apologize on behalf of the federal government, for entrapping me in the jury-tampering case?”
Sandy Clintick laughed. “No, that wasn’t on my agenda. I don’t have any involvement in that case. But,” she added, “it’s one I’d frankly love to try.”
“I’ll bet you would. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re not. You’re not as good as me, but you’re up there.”
“When the biggest narcissist in the law tells me I’m almost in his league, I feel lavishly complimented.”
“No, Alan Crudman is the biggest narcissist in the law. I’m second.”
“Shall I get to the point, or shall we continue to sniff each other?”
“By all means. Fire away.”
“I’m weighing whether to move to dismiss.”
“Oh, come on, Sandy. I can hear the mob outside your window with torches and pitchforks, chanting, ‘Justice!’ ”
“I have insulated windows.”
“I also read that you now have a U.S. marshals bodyguard. Don’t worry, after the first coupla dozen death threats, you get used to them. I get Christmas card death threats.”
“I’m thrilled to be in your league, Boyce. The reason I’m weighing whether to dismiss is there’s something still bothering me.”
“What would that be?”
“The Grayson deposition.”
“The Crogenos autopsy supports everything that he said.”
“There was something else in it that bothered me. At the end, when he asks Beth to forgive him.”
“Yes?” Boyce said cautiously.
“She did. Just like that.”
“She’s a forgiving type.”
“I don’t buy that. Her life became hell because of what he did. No one is that forgiving. Even Jesus Christ would have needed to think about it for five seconds before saying, Okay, let bygones be bygones.”
“She’s a mensch. It’s why I fell in love with her back in law school.”
“Some mensch. She dumped you for that asshole.”
“Please, you’re speaking of the dead.”
“I think I know what happened the night of September twenty-eight. And I’m pretty sure you do, too.”
“So move to dismiss.”
“I’ll weigh it.”
“Look, if it’s my ass you still want, don’t sweat it. I’m going down. Even Alan Crudman couldn’t get me off.”
“It’s some consolation, I admit.”
“Look on the bright side. After I spend five years in prison being made love to by passionate weight lifters with AIDS, they’ll disbar me. You’ll never have to face me again in a courtroom.”
“I’m feeling better and better.”
“Let it go,” Boyce said.
“I’ll weigh it.” She hung up.
Boyce considered whether to tell Beth about the call. He decided against it.
The next morning, shortly after 10:00 A.M., the deputy attorney general of the United States rose and went to the podium in Judge Umin’s courtroom. The mood was, as Dan Rather put it, “more electric than a drenched cat with its tail stuck in a socket.”
“If it please the court,” she began, “the United States respectfully moves that the court dismiss the indictment in United States versus Elizabeth MacMann, by reason of new developments that show that justice requires that.”
The courtroom exploded.
Beth sat gravely in her seat, expressionless. Boyce, watching from his hotel room, was similarly calm. His eyes bored in on Beth.
Judge Dutch said, “In view of the prosecutor’s motion to dismiss, I—”
Beth rose. “If it please the court, Your Honor, may the defendant in this case make a statement at this time?”
Oh shit, Boyce thought.
“I was about to make a ruling on the prosecution’s motion,” said Judge Dutch, as if to say, “If you will just remain seated and quiet, Mrs. MacMann, I’ll have you out of here in three minutes.”
Sandy Clintick looked at her. The entire world—some billion-plus viewers, at any rate—was looking at Beth.
“I am aware of that, Your Honor. But the defendant would like to make a statement before you rule on the motion.” She added, “So that the court may be fully informed.”
Judge Dutch sat back wearily with the air of a reasonable man surrendering to an unreasonable world, glasses beginning to fog. “Very well, Mrs. MacMann. Proceed.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. I …” She paused. “Am not sure where to begin, so I will begin with an apology. To the people of the United States. To this court. Even to my attorney, Mr. Baylor. For not telling the truth about what happened that night.”
The nosebleed that had been building for decades finally burst from Dan Rather. Mercifully, it was kept from his viewers.
Judge Dutch’s eyes disappeared for the last time behind the pea-soup fog of his glasses.
“Not last,” Beth continued, “I apologize to the United States Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Terrible accusations were laid at their doorsteps, on my behalf. I—not Mr. Baylor—bear the full moral responsibility for those accusations, and I hereby retract them.”
Beth looked down, swallowed, and continued. “I threw the historical … object at the President that night.
The spittoon.” The courtroom stirred.
“In fact, I threw it at him hard. This happened at a moment of emotional … Oh, to hell with it … excuse me, Your Honor. I was furious with him. I knew what he’d been doing. And if I had killed him, I cannot say to you here and now that I would have regretted it at the time.”
She continued, “But I was certain, somehow, that I had not killed him. And it was to that certainty that I clung throughout the investigation and”—she sighed—“subsequent events. I cannot justify that certainty. I cannot excuse the accusations that were made in my defense.”
Beth’s hand moved abruptly to her stomach. She winced.
“Mr. Baylor, genuinely believing in my innocence, defended me to the utmost of his ability. Which, in the case of Boyce Baylor, is pretty utmost. He now faces the possibility of prison and professional ruin. If my debt to the American people is exceeded by any other, it is by my debt to him. For without Mr. Baylor’s interventions, however zealous, the result of these proceedings might very well have been otherwise. Perhaps, on balance, that would have been for the best, at least for the country’s sake. At any rate, now this court knows the full truth of what happened in the White House that night. And can make such disposition,” Beth concluded, sitting down, “as it deems fitting.”
She sat down and folded her hands on her lap.
There was no murmuring. Even normally garrulous television commentators said nothing.
At length, Judge Dutch removed his glasses and cleared his throat. He looked toward the clerk of the court, then at Beth. He hesitated for several long seconds, then spoke.
“Motion is granted.”
He turned to the jury. “The jury is discharged. On behalf of the people of the United States, I would like to extend gratitude for your service in what I know have been trying circumstances.”
With that he said, “Court is adjourned,” and brought down his gavel on the Trial of the Millennium.
Epilogue
Five days before United States v. Boyce Baylor et al. was scheduled to go to trial, a trial that in the opinion of most legal observers would be a “slam dunk” for the prosecution, Boyce’s co-defendants, Felicio Andaluz and Ramon Martinez, escaped from the U.S. Detention Center in Fairfax, Virginia, during a game of basketball with other inmates. This was highly embarrassing to the government and forced a delay in the start of Boyce’s trial.
From Boyce’s point of view, it was a welcome delay, allowing him time to be with Beth when she gave birth. Her pregnancy had been the most media-covered gestation since an actress had appeared nude and immensely gibbous on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Their daughter, Ilsa Tyler Baylor, w
eighed six pounds ten ounces, exactly—a fact The Washington Post pointed out—the weight of the infamous Paul Revere silver spittoon. Chatting with reporters outside the hospital, Boyce was good-humored enough to remark that he hoped his new daughter would soon be too heavy for her mother to throw at him.
The investigation into the disappearance of Felicio and his colleague proved inconclusive. They had, simply, vanished.
One night, rocking his newborn daughter to sleep, Boyce received a telephone call. After listening to what Felicio had to say, he in turn called a reporter friend. The friend had already won two Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative reporting but was by no means averse to having a third. With the information that Boyce vouchsafed him, he went to work and in six weeks, on the eve of the start of Boyce’s rescheduled trial for conspiracy to commit jury tampering, brought out the first in a series of articles, thoroughly if somewhat anonymously sourced, stating that Felicio Andaluz was a longtime agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Furthermore, it had been the CIA that had so deftly arranged his and Mr. Martinez’s escape from the detention facility. The CIA had been most eager not to have one of its prize agents, one fairly teeming with sensitive information about its operations in Latin America, take the stand in a federal court case.
The CIA naturally had “no comment” on the articles. But in the aftermath of the trial, public opinion was sensitive to any suggestion that the government had been up to yet more covert mischief.
The Justice Department found itself assailed by the media, demanding to know why, if one branch of the government was secretly springing from jail a set of defendants in the same trial, another branch of the government should so assiduously pursue the remaining defendant.
High-level meetings were held.
At length it was announced that the government would nolle prosequi in the case of U.S. v. Baylor et al. In plain English, this means: I am not going to touch this with a ten-foot pole.
The stated justification given was that Messrs. Andaluz and Martinez had agreed to cooperate with the government and testify against Boyce Baylor. (Untrue.) In their absence, the government now felt that it had insufficient grounds to continue against him. But what about the videotape of him plotting away happily to pollute the jury? The spokesman bravely cleared his throat and said that the tape was “open to subjective interpretation.”
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