“There, you and I agree,” the judge said. “Okay. I’ll be releasing my decision on that issue pretty soon. Anything else?”
Both attorneys shook their heads.
Judge Templeton dismissed them all.
Out in the corridor, on the way to the parking lot, Blackstone started bulleting out assignments for Julia.
“First thing,” he said, “I want you to do a complete public record check on Vinnie. All her vital statistics. Birth certificate. Verification of schooling. Landlord-tenant leases for her apartment as well as her art studio. Get a criminal background check, any civil lawsuit filing with her name on it, and a credit check. We have to screen her with a fine mesh. Anything negative in her background that we don’t know about, the government will, and Henry Hartz will destroy her with it if she testifies. And, of course, there is another reason for getting all of that together.”
Blackstone was now rolling at a fast walk, and Julia was having a hard time keeping up in her high heels.
“Yes, I realize,” she said, “why else we need it. For the death-penalty phase of the case if the government gets a conviction. I’ve been accumulating some of that information already. I’ll get the rest.”
“Second,” Blackstone continued, “I want you and Jason to schedule a mock cross-examination of our client,” he said. “Set up the video camera in the office. Get Vinnie on a DVD so I can study it. I want you to really lay into her. I have a feeling that won’t be hard for you,” he said, laughing. “I need to assess how she is going to hold up at trial if we decide to have her testify in her own defense. Then I’ll schedule my own additional testimony run-throughs with her after that.”
Julia was still walking next to him and giving him a polite but restrained nod as he talked.
Then she slowed down the pace to a halt. Blackstone realized it, and he stopped and turned around in the parking lot to face her.
That’s when she spoke up.
“I told you the other day that I was going to be making a decision…about continuing on with your office.”
“It’s not my office,” he blurted out. “It’s our firm. We’re partners.”
“Funny,” she said. “It never feels that way. Well, the point is this. I will help you through this Vinnie Archmont trial. That’s the least I can do for my legal mentor. But that’s it. I’ve pretty well decided that after the trial is over, I’m leaving the firm.”
“You’re kidding.”
“How can you doubt it—that I’m serious on this?” she said in disbelief. “I’ve spelled it out for you. I’m tired of being stepped on, and walked over, and—”
“Taken for granted?”
“Yes.”
“And not given ample professional encouragement?”
“Exactly.”
“And romantically jilted?”
Julia gave an open-mouthed gasp of exasperation.
“The truth is,” Blackstone said, “you and I had a very…good thing going, at least for a while…and then something happened. And it ended. I’m not sure why.”
“You ended it,” she said. “That’s what happened. And like a fool I stayed on at the firm with you, even after the fires of romance had all died out.”
“You’re no fool, Julia. You’re bright, talented, and beautiful. All that captivated me. But then…well, anyway, that doesn’t mean we can’t continue on as partners,” Blackstone said.
Julia stopped and lowered her head as she decided to select her words carefully.
“My decision is not emotional, J.D. It is purely professional. I am giving you notice.”
Julia turned and clip-clopped in her high heels over to her car where she beeped the door open, tossed her briefcase onto the passenger seat, and climbed in the driver’s side.
CHAPTER 43
When Blackstone was back at the law firm after the court appearance in Vinnie’s case, the first thing he did was to sit down in front of the computer in his office and log onto the United States Senate Web site.
He had to check out something that had been nagging him for a while. About Senator Bo Collings’s motivations. He needed to come to a conclusion, somehow, about the Arkansas senator’s involvement in the background of Vinnie’s prosecution, where he had been like a character in a theatrical play lurking behind a thin, scrim curtain. Was Collings’s meddling in the case through his contacts with Henry Hartz simply a matter of defending his own self-interests? Or was there something much more sinister at play?
In Blackstone’s criminal practice he had learned to spend a great deal of time ruminating on the varieties and mysteries of human motivation. His psychological training came in handy. All crimes, and complicities, were committed for reasons, he had concluded. Even those that didn’t seem to fit the premeditated mold—the random, senseless acts that probably terrified the public the most—also had their reasons. Just not the typical ones.
But he had formulated a theory on the senator’s heightened interest in Vinnie’s case and in the Langley note. Now he had to determine whether there was any real data to back it up.
On the Senate Web site he typed in a few key words and did a search of pending legislation. He scrolled down a few entries. And then it was there, right in front of him on his computer screen:
Senate Resolution 217
Suddenly, Blackstone was aware of someone behind him.
He turned around. It was Jason, the paralegal, standing in the doorway of his office.
“Professor Blackstone,” he said. “I was working on the list of potential witnesses you gave me for the Vinnie Archmont case. You know, so I could help you get the subpoenas ready. But I had one really big question.”
“Yes?”
“You got a name on this list…I don’t know exactly what the deal is with this one…but Julia—uh, I mean Ms. Robins—told me there is a real serious problem with him.”
“You’re talking about Senator Collings?”
“Right. That’s the one.”
“Don’t issue his subpoena yet,” Blackstone said. “I was just working on that issue.”
Jason nodded and disappeared.
Blackstone knew what he had to do. It was a gambit with a risk. He was virtually certain he was right. But he had to test his hypothesis.
He dialed the number.
“Judiciary Committee,” the person at the other end said.
“I’m looking for Billy Baxter,” Blackstone said, with a sly smile. “I need to talk with him. This is Professor Blackstone. Tell him I’m calling with the results of his bar exam…and it doesn’t look good.”
After a few minutes Baxter picked up and announced himself in an unamused monotone. Blackstone jumped into the deep end.
“Billy, this is J.D. Blackstone calling,” he started out. “Let’s forget the bad blood, shall we? I know you are Senator Collings’s guy over there at Judiciary. You’ve obviously got future career plans. Department of Justice? Office of White House Legal Counsel? Or maybe a big law firm or lobbying shop down on K Street. Whatever it is, I really don’t think you want me on your enemies list, do you?”
“What is your point, Professor?”
“I would like to avoid serving the good senator with a subpoena for the trial of Vinnie Archmont,” Blackstone began. “Because if I do serve him—well, I recall all your threats about what would happen if I do—and we all know what ‘mutually assured destruction’ means. Thermonuclear war—I’m speaking metaphorically, of course—ruins everybody’s day. So here is what I am proposing. I need to meet with the senator right away. Just a short conversation. Off the record. Then I can refrain from bringing him into the middle of this sordid criminal trial. How about it?”
“I doubt,” Baxter said, “that the senator wants to ever see you again. For any purpose.”
“Then tell him that I want to discuss Senate Resolution 217. Tell him that.”
Then Blackstone added, “And when his office calls me back indicating that the senator will meet with me, you ne
ed to know I will only be here in the office for another hour or so.”
Less than an hour later, Blackstone received a call from Senator Collings’s scheduler.
She said that it was very fortunate that there were no votes on the floor of the Senate that day, and that the senator “had an unexpected opening in his schedule” and would like to meet with him in two hours.
“Where?” Blackstone asked.
The scheduler gave him the address. Then she added, “Very top deck.”
Very strange, Blackstone thought to himself when he pieced together the site of the meeting. But then again, he realized that this was a very strange case he was defending.
Two hours later, Blackstone drove his black Maserati cross-town to Union Station, in the heart of the government landscape of Washington. He motored up the winding ramp to the parking area and then headed up a few flights to the very top. Once there, he headed over to the far corner and parked his car. Now that it was rush hour, it was almost barren of any other cars.
He climbed out of the Maserati and surveyed the city. From there he could see, off in the distance, the Capitol dome, with its top light burning, and in another direction, the outline of the Lincoln Monument in the waning light that would soon turn to dusk.
Blackstone glanced at his watch. He was right on time. But Senator Collings wasn’t. It didn’t surprise him. Now the question was whether Collings was going to show at all.
After strolling around his car for a while, Blackstone called his office from his cell phone. No, Frieda said, there had been no messages from Senator Collings’s office regarding a change in the meeting. Then he checked his BlackBerry. No e-mails from Collings’s office.
Twenty minutes went by. He checked his cell phone one more time to make sure the ringer was on. But his ringer was on full volume. And no calls.
Five more minutes went by.
Then he heard something. The sound of a car coming up the ramp.
A large black limo appeared, slowly prowling onto the top deck. It made its way over to Blackstone and stopped.
The door swung open.
Senator Bo Collings squeezed his considerable girth out of the limo and strode directly over to Blackstone. He had stripped his coat off, and he was in his shirtsleeves.
“Over here,” Collings said, motioning to the concrete guard rail at the perimeter of the upper deck, away from Blackstone’s car.
When they positioned themselves there, Collings crossed his arms and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Nice location,” Blackstone remarked. “Very clandestine. So, does this mean you’re ‘Deep Throat’? Which would make me—let’s see—was it Woodward or Bernstein?”
“You can knock off the smart-aleck banter,” Collings snapped, “and cut to the chase. You wanted this meeting. So talk.”
“I am willing to forgo serving you with a subpoena. But I need some information.”
“I’m listening.”
“Yes or no—you tried to intervene in the Vinnie Archmont case because you didn’t want certain information hitting the newspapers—like the contents of the Horace Langley note. Correct?”
“I would never ‘intervene’ in an ongoing criminal prosecution, Professor. That wouldn’t be right. You know that.” Collings was smiling.
“You talked to Henry Hartz.”
“I talk to a lot of people.”
“You didn’t want the Langley note going public if you could help it because you had been told by Hartz—I am assuming it was him, he probably had his own expert try to decipher that note—that the ‘AP’ in the first line of the note could well have referred to Albert Pike, your Confederate hero. And if that was right, then Pike might be implicated in the Lincoln assassination because his initials had appeared in the diary pages of John Wilkes Booth. Am I getting warmer now?”
“You spin a nice story.”
“Here’s the sequel,” Blackstone said. “Senate Resolution 217, filed by several members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Asking that the statue of Albert Pike which now sits in Judiciary Square be immediately removed, on the grounds that Pike was a ‘founding member of the Ku Klux Klan.’ ”
“Those allegations are spurious,” Collings sputtered. “They come up every now and then. No one has ever proven that connection between Pike and the KKK.”
“Perhaps,” Blackstone said. “But considering your position as the head of the nonprofit foundation vested with protecting Albert Pike’s memory and reputation, you have a lot to lose if that resolution gets passed and the current administration and the Department of the Interior are pressured into removing his statue. After all, your home state of Arkansas has treated the guy like a nineteenth-century rock star for years. So, when the case of Vinnie Archmont threatened to expose the possibility that Pike might not only be a racist, but also a potential conspirator in the assassination of Lincoln—well, in this town, the fact that you’ve been Albert Pike’s biggest cheerleader would not exactly guarantee that you’d get a street named after you.”
Senator Collings glanced over at the idling limo, and then he cast his eyes over the city of Washington DC.
After a moment he turned back to Blackstone and asked a question.
“What is it that you want?”
“Let’s start with what you want,” Blackstone said. “You want to keep a lid on the fact that the ‘AP’ in the Langley note might have been Albert Pike.”
“How can you guarantee it won’t surface in the trial?”
“I don’t think Hartz intends to go into that,” Blackstone replied. “It doesn’t fit into his theory of the case. You ought to know that.”
“And you? Are you willing to jeopardize your own client’s defense by staying away from that part of the evidence?” Collings retorted, his voice dripping with cynicism.
“I don’t see any advantage to my client’s case for us to postulate about who the ‘AP’ was or wasn’t—from the standpoint of the defense, dragging Pike into the case would be a mistake. It creates too many red herrings. Too much possibility of a jury backlash.”
“But why would I be interested in keeping that out of the Vinnie Archmont trial,” Collings said, “when, after the trial is over, the evidence would eventually be made public anyway?”
“Because,” Blackstone said confidently, “the Booth diary is now missing again since Langley’s murder. And the diary was the best evidence of whether there really was an ‘AP’ mentioned by Booth. All we have now is a dead man’s note, written as he was reading the Booth diary pages—a note now buried in a prosecutor’s file. Eventually, a reporter is going to make a Freedom of Information request. Maybe the note would get released. But that would be long after Senate Resolution 217 blows over and the political heat on you cools off. And as for me, Senator, remember, the Court of Appeals didn’t give me permission to share the Langley note with the public at large.”
“But, Professor Blackstone,” Collings said with a sly grin. “You shared part of the first line of the Langley note with me right here—right now. That violates the court order, doesn’t it?”
“Not if you already knew what the first line of that note said—and I am betting that Henry Hartz, deferring to your leadership in the Senate Judiciary Committee and your position on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, had let you read the note back at the beginning of this case. Isn’t that right, Senator?”
Collings took a deep breath, then exhaled.
“You still haven’t told me what you want,” Senator Collings asked.
“I need information,” Blackstone said. There was nothing sarcastic or flippant in his voice now. Only a sense of urgency. “You know something about this case. I know you do. You need to let me in. Into what you know. Anything.”
Collings glanced at his watch. Then he announced, “Gotta go.”
The senator turned to stroll back to the limo. But after he took a few steps, he stopped and turned to face Blackstone.
“Funny thing,” Senator Collings sai
d. “About Henry Hartz’s choice of his lead investigator in the Smithsonian murder case. By all accounts it should have been FBI agent Johnson. Highly decorated federal agent. Top of his class. Most promising African-American FBI field agent in the country. Plus, the Smithsonian is a federal institution. But Hartz chose a District of Columbia detective to lead the investigation instead. Something about who was, or was not, responsible for a certain piece of evidence at the scene of the crime…a drinking glass, as I recall.”
Then, as Senator Bo Collings strode back to the limo, he paused at the open door. Over his shoulder he called back to Blackstone.
“I’m so sorry that you and I couldn’t meet, and that I didn’t have this conversation with you. Good day, Professor Blackstone.”
CHAPTER 44
The following day, Vinnie Archmont came in to the law office for her mock cross-examination. Blackstone buried himself in his own office with the door closed while it was going on.
Julia had Vinnie sequestered in the conference room for nearly six hours, interrogating her the way that Henry Hartz was likely to do at the trial. Jason ran the video camera.
When Vinnie finally emerged from the conference room at the end of the day she had a shell-shocked look on her face.
Frieda, under instructions from Blackstone, intercepted her.
“Professor Blackstone would like to meet with you for a few moments in his office.”
Then the office secretary led her back to Blackstone’s office.
Vinnie plunked down on the chair across from his desk.
“You look frazzled,” he said.
“That’s an understatement,” she said.
Then she added, “I was just thinking, coming into your office just now…how I came in and sat in this very same chair in the very beginning of all of this—when the prosecutor sent me that target letter.”
“You didn’t plan on this going this far, did you?”
“Well,” she said. “Neither did you, as I recall.”
Blackstone winced a bit.
“Point taken. Well, it is what it is,” Blackstone said. “So, let’s deal with it.”
The Rose Conspiracy Page 21