The 37th Amendment: A Novel

by Shelley, Susan

  Jordan had arrived alone in her own car and her companion had joined her at the restaurant. Now Ulrich watched as the man kissed Jordan on the cheek, closing her car door for her in a gentlemanly manner and waving to her as she drove off. He saw the man tip the valet generously and then walk away, trudging up the hill in the opposite direction of the parking lot. Ulrich handed a parking stub to the valet, who opened a metal case and rummaged through the keys inside.

  “Beautiful evening,” Ulrich said, his eyes still following the man walking up the hill.

  “Yes, sir,” said the valet. He found the keys and sprinted off toward the parked cars.

  Ulrich heard the roar of an engine that sounded like a missile launch. Moments later, a classic Corvette convertible tore down the road and streaked past him. Ulrich squinted through the cloud of dust at the license plate: 8BLEWBY.

  Thursday, July 13, 2056

  “I don’t know how they’re doing it,” Gregory Ulrich’s voice was a rumble from the speakerphone in the mayor’s office. “I don’t know how they’re doing it but I know in my gut they’re the ones.”

  Mayor Martinez was leaning forward, her elbows resting on her desk. She looked deep in thought, like a bright student confronting an unexpected exam question. District Attorney Thomas J. Huron sat on the couch, frowning petulantly. Chief of Staff Ronni Richards sat in a chair, taking notes.

  “How can we prove it?” asked the mayor. “If we confront her and she denies it, then what?”

  “Well,” said Ulrich, “I can tell you this much. She was having dinner with Ted Braden, the same Ted Braden who was a witness for the defense in the Robert Rand trial and then went on Disclosure and everywhere else campaigning for defendants’ rights. I’ve got his credit card records. He purchased a massive computer system on 20 June, just a few days before a flood of leaks started showing up in the Los Angeles Times. Maybe there’s some way he linked his system up to the courthouse. Maybe he got one of the engineers to help him.”

  “I think it’s enough,” said the D.A. “I’m ready to file charges against Jordan Rainsborough right now.”

  “And then you’ll go to court and you’ll lose,” said the mayor. “She’s better in front of a jury than you are.”

  Huron resumed his petulant frown.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” the mayor said firmly. “Gregory, I want you to let her know that we’re on to her. Do it subtly, so she thinks she’s figuring it out herself. Then we’ll watch her. Maybe she’ll panic and do something to give herself away.”

  “Got it,” said Ulrich’s voice.

  “Good work, by the way,” said the mayor.

  Flynn was spending two weeks at her mother’s, so when Ted heard the back door open, he thought it was the wind. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. Jordan Rainsborough was sitting at his kitchen table, pale as a ghost and breathing hard. Her hands and knees were grimy, as if she’d been crawling through dirt.

  “Jordan,” he said, “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you use the front door?”

  “Somebody was following me,” she said in a breathless voice.

  Ted sat down next to her. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Maybe it was your imagination.” He reached over and, with his fingers, gently brushed her disheveled dark hair away from her eyes.

  There was a scuffling sound outside the window. Jordan sat bolt upright in plain fear. “It’s just a cat,” Ted said. Jordan slumped down again. When she looked up at Ted a moment later, there were tears in her eyes. “What if they know?” she asked in a faint voice. “What if they traced all those leaks to me?” She put her head in her hands. “Fifteen years per count, that’s what.”

  Ted stood up and pulled Jordan to her feet, wrapping his arms tightly around her in a protective hug. “Not one of those leaks can be traced to you,” he said firmly. “That setup downstairs isn’t connected to anything. Nobody even knows it’s there. Now, what happened?”

  “There was a silver car,” Jordan said. “Small. I think it was a Honda. It followed me from the office. It followed me on First Street. I went down to Third Street. It followed me to Third Street. I came up Vermont to Sunset. It followed me on Vermont. It followed me on Sunset. I tried to lose him by getting on the Hollywood Freeway. I got off at Gower and came down to Hollywood Boulevard. When I turned right on Whitley I saw he was behind me again.” Jordan stopped to catch her breath. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “So I drove up to the next street above this one and parked next to somebody’s driveway. Then I pretended to go into the house but instead I went around the side and climbed down the hill to your house. I don’t think he saw me.”

  Ted didn’t say anything for a long moment. He knew there was no way to trace the leaks through the D.A.’s computer network. He wondered if the D.A. could possibly have a mole inside Dobson Howe’s office. It was unlikely, but it would mean an ironclad case against Jordan, guilty of violating the Confidentiality of Records Act more than a dozen times, at a mandatory fifteen years per count.

  Ted gripped Jordan’s shoulders and looked her square in the eye. “I think we should go,” he said. “Right now. You don’t even have to go home and pack. I’ll buy you a toothbrush.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Corvette roared east on Franklin Avenue and onto the southbound Hollywood Freeway, where the evening traffic rush was just starting to break up. The downtown skyline ahead of them looked to be stuck in a bowl of thick haze. Ted maneuvered easily around slow-moving trucks and gutless passenger cars into the left lane and onto the eastbound 10.

  “Please don’t drive so fast,” Jordan begged.

  “No silver Honda is going to follow you in this car,” Ted said.

  “What if you get pulled over for speeding?” Jordan said. “Maybe there’s a warrant out for me.”

  “Don’t be paranoid.” Ted’s voice was soothing. “The police wouldn’t come for you in a silver Honda.”

  Jordan was silent for miles.

  “All right,” Ted growled finally. He slowed down a bit as the Corvette crossed under a maze of concrete overpasses. “I still think we ought to get there as fast as we can get there.”

  “Where are we going?” Jordan asked.

  “The other side of the Nevada border,” Ted said. “Unless you can think of a safer place to wait this out.”

  Jordan pursed her lips in thought. “Nevada’s good,” she said. “They’re very uncooperative with California.”

  “That would probably be helpful,” Ted nodded.

  The July evening wasn’t cool but Jordan shivered in her lightweight suit. Ted struggled out of his leather jacket and gave it to her. Jordan draped the stiff jacket over her like a blanket, pulling it up to her chin. “Thanks,” she said. Ted nodded and groped at the dashboard to turn on the heater.

  It was nearly dark when they reached the 15 freeway and began the long drive over the mountains. The Corvette swept effortlessly around the curves of the highway and through the Cajon Pass, slowing only to evade gasping vehicles ahead of them.

  “I’m starving,” Jordan said as they approached Barstow. “Think it would be safe to stop at a mini mart for some food?”

  Ted shrugged. “I haven’t seen anybody following us,” he said. “I guess we could stop for a minute.” He pulled off the freeway at the Lenwood Road exit and followed the long ramp to a gas station. Two empty police cars were parked in front of the adjacent mini mart.

  “Oops,” Ted said. He circled around and got back on the freeway. “Let’s stop in Baker.”

  Jordan groaned a hungry sound.

  “There, there,” Ted said. “It’s not that far.”

  “How far is ‘not that far?’”

  “Sixty-five, seventy miles.”

  Jordan groaned.

  The mini mart in Baker was deserted except for a motor home fueling up at the pumps. Ted left Jordan in the car and went inside, returning five minutes later with a large brown paper bag. He dropped it gently into Jordan’s lap fro
m the passenger side of the convertible before coming around to the driver’s door. “I’d better fill up,” he said, “Let me see what they have here.”

  Jordan dug into the brown paper bag and found a half-dozen candy bars, a bag of chips, a six-pack of diet cola and, to her delight, two turkey sandwiches on French rolls. “These don’t look that bad,” she said, unwrapping one.

  Ted was studying the fuel pumps. “They don’t have what I usually get,” he said, “But this won’t hurt anything.” He drove up to a pump painted blue with a red stripe. “You can’t buy this octane level in the city,” he observed.

  “Sandwich is good,” Jordan said through the French roll.

  Ted took a credit card out of his wallet, then thought better of it, slid a bill into the currency reader and filled the tank. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Let’s get back on the road.”

  They were twenty miles past Baker when Ted saw a California Highway Patrol car lurking near Halloran Summit Road. He slowed down sharply and maintained a perfect law-abiding speed for the next mile. Nonetheless, when he glanced at his rear view mirror, the murky highway lighting clearly showed the black-and-white following him at a distance of about sixty feet.

  “Okay,” Ted said calmly. “Now we make a decision.”

  Jordan looked up from her candy bar. “What?” she asked.

  “Is that Highway Patrol officer following us,” Ted began, “to see if he can write me for speeding? Is he simply admiring this fine, classic vehicle? Or did he just enter the license plates into his computer to see if any information comes back to him?”

  Jordan snapped her head around and looked at the car, still following quietly at a distance of sixty feet.

  “We’d better go,” she said.

  Ted floored it.

  The Corvette rocketed up the steep grade with a roar that almost drowned out the first scream of the siren behind them. Cars ahead scrambled into the right lane, giving Ted an uninterrupted speedway over Halloran Summit. By the time they had traveled the short distance to Cima Road, six more police vehicles were waiting at the on-ramp to join the pursuit. Ted heard the beating rotors of a helicopter overhead, and suddenly the Corvette was blasted with a wide white spotlight as bright as the sun. Jordan slumped low in her seat and pulled Ted’s jacket up to her forehead.

  Ted easily outdistanced the vehicles chasing him as they tore through the desert and began the steep climb over the last ridge of mountains before the Nevada border. He felt relatively secure. California’s Safe Highways policy prohibited law enforcement officers from endangering the traveling public during a pursuit, so there would be no gunfire, no bumping, no abrupt roadblocks. The state that would put a man to death on the say-so of a heroin dealer had no stomach for car wrecks.

  The Corvette flew past Nipton Road. “Look,” Ted shouted to Jordan. She sat up a little and peeked out over the collar of his jacket. Straight ahead, floating in the darkness, was a horizontal stripe of bright colored lights. “The Nevada border,” he said. “Those lights are the casinos on the other side of the state line.”

  Jordan turned and looked over her shoulder at the red and blue lights chasing them. “Will we make it?” she shouted.

  “I don’t see why not,” Ted shouted back.

  It was a faster drive down the grade. With traffic pressed into the right lane by the sound of approaching sirens, Ted was two miles from the border in less than five minutes. Suddenly the sun-like spotlight above them went dark.

  “Uh-oh,” Ted said.

  “What did you say?” Jordan yelled.

  “Nothing,” Ted shouted back. He studied the road ahead. The right lane was a solid line of red tail lights, the left lane ahead of him a solid block of black. He thought he saw something glint, then it was black again.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. He extended his right arm like a railroad crossing gate in front of Jordan’s chest. “Hang on,” he shouted.

  The Corvette veered sharply left and a horrible scraping sound cut through the noise around them. Ted grabbed the wheel with both hands and grimaced as he guided the car down the shallow embankment and onto the sandy, gravel-covered median. He maneuvered uselessly to avoid the scrubby desert plants that studded the ground. Jordan gripped the inside of the car door. Ted winced at the crunching, snapping, battering sounds under the Corvette. Then, to the right, he saw it: a ten-foot-wide spike strip in the left lane, waiting for him like an open grave. “Hah!” he shouted. He drove another half-mile or so on the median, then slowed slightly to drive up the embankment and back onto the highway. There were no warning lights visible on his dashboard, and the Corvette sounded all right, except for the rattling of some pebbles kicked up by the tires. Ted pushed it to the maximum. Only the helicopter saw them drive over the Nevada border.

  “We made it!” Jordan shouted, pumping a fist triumphantly in the air. “We’re in Nevada! They can’t touch us in Nevada!”

  Ted eased up on the accelerator. Something under the car had started to make an odd noise. “Would you look in the inside pocket of that jacket,” he asked, “and grab my wireless? I want to look up a number.”

  “Not while you’re driving,” Jordan said firmly. “Do you want me to look it up for you?”

  “No, now that I think of it,” Ted muttered. “I can’t call him from my wireless. Someone could get the records.” He turned his right turn signal on and carefully, legally, changed lanes. When he reached the town of Jean, he exited the Interstate. They drove under a garish monorail track and into the parking lot of a cartoonish Old West hotel. Ted parked as far away as he could, centering the Corvette neatly over the painted line dividing two spaces. “C’mon,” he said, “Let’s find a phone.”

  Jordan slipped her feet reluctantly into her high-heeled pumps and climbed out of the convertible. “Wait,” she said, “I see a parking spot across the freeway that’s a little further away.”

  “Funny,” Ted said. He took his leather jacket from her and grabbed his wireless from the inside pocket. Then he draped the jacket over Jordan’s shoulders.

  “Thanks,” she said. They trudged across the parking lot toward the double-door entrance to the hotel.

  “Separate rooms, right?” Jordan asked.

  “We’re not staying here,” Ted said.

  “It does look horrible,” Jordan agreed.

  “It’s not that.” Ted held the door for her. “Too many security cameras. We’ve got to stay out of sight. At least until we know what’s going on.”

  “You think there might be federal charges against me?” Jordan asked nervously.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Ted said. “You’re the expert. I just think we should stay out of sight.” They found a public phone bolted to a grimy floral-papered wall near the restrooms. Ted consulted the screen of his wireless, fed a bill into the phone’s currency reader and keyed in a number. He heard a metallic ringing sound on the line.

  “James Dixon.”

  “James, how ya doing, buddy? This is Ted Braden. Hope I’m not calling too late.”

  “Ted, hey, great.” James was shouting over the sound of traffic. “No, it’s not too late. I’m just leaving the new Williamsburg and heading to the office to write the story. The official opening was tonight.”

  “Yeah? How was it?”

  “Oh, you know, they’re all the same. This one has robot cockfights. Are you in town?”

  “I’m on my way. A friend and I decided at the last minute to drive up.”

  “Great. Where ya staying?”

  “Well, to be truthful, I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh, man,” James said. “You picked a bad night to come up without a reservation. The town’s jammed. Why don’t you meet me at my office and I’ll see if I can get you in someplace.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “Hey, I owe you a favor. Got a pen? Let me give you directions to the paper.”

  Ted jotted the directions on the back of a service stat
ion receipt. “Thanks, James,” he said, “I’ll see you in about thirty minutes.” He hung up the phone and turned around.

  Jordan was gone.

  “Jordan!” he yelled. He eyed the door of the ladies’ room hesitantly. No one seemed to be in the area. He pushed the door open an inch or two. “Jordan?” he called.

  There was no answer.

  Well, this is great, Ted thought. He saw a sign with a large white arrow under the word CASINO. Sighing irritably, he followed the arrow down the carpeted corridor to a pair of glass doors. Through them he saw Jordan, elegantly out-of-place in her icy blue silk suit and matching pumps, feeding ten-dollar bills into a slot machine. He pushed the door open.

  “Cash out,” he said. “We’ve gotta go.”

  “One more,” she said, tapping a button. Suddenly a wild ringing sound blasted from the machine in front of her. Jordan let out a yelp. “I won!” she screamed. She was jumping up and down on the gaudy flat carpet. “I won!” she screamed again. “Look, look, look!”

  Ted saw a half dozen gold nuggets and three animated miners on mules pulsing on the screen. The machine was flashing like a lightning storm, but no coins were dropping.

  “How much did I win? How much did I win?” Jordan shrieked.

  “Apparently too much for the machine to pay out,” Ted said. He saw an elderly woman pushing a metal cart toward them. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

  “Not until I get my money,” Jordan said with a big smile.

  “Now,” Ted insisted. “You’re in hiding, remember? California authorities may know I’m in Nevada because they watched my car drive over the border. But they don’t have any evidence that you’re here. Maybe Nevada won’t tell them. But if you fill out federal tax forms, Washington will tell them.”

  “I’m pretty sure they won’t,” Jordan said.

  “How sure is pretty sure?”

  Jordan’s face was the picture of anguish. “Oh,” she wailed. “Let’s go.”

  James Dixon’s office was a blue-walled cubicle deep inside a two-story concrete building near downtown Las Vegas. James offered Jordan the chair opposite his desk and grabbed a chair from an adjacent cubicle for Ted.