Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  But Gage, too, was proud. He had not been bought, he told himself—he had been presented with a force which any man who wished to be President must consider. But there was no question of turning Taylor away. And so Taylor sat in his office, the image of a Washington insider, eyeing the television on which Caroline Masters’s face had appeared.

  Quite deliberately, Taylor no longer pretended to be the homespun senator from Oklahoma; his Piaget watch, Ferragamo loafers, and Savile Row suit were, Gage knew, a studied reminder of the wealth and power he represented. But the man was the same—slick black hair which gleamed under the lights, a broad face which reflected part-Indian ancestry, shrewd black eyes far better at conveying contempt than warmth—as was his private vocabulary. Even without the context of a Supreme Court nomination, Gage would have recognized “the little bastard” as Kerry Kilcannon, whom Taylor deplored as deeply as the causes Kilcannon represented.

  “What do your people say about her?” Gage asked.

  “That she’s a liberal,” Taylor answered. “The gun manufacturers have had their eye on her for a while. They think she’ll favor lawsuits every time some junkie pops a liquor store owner with a Saturday night special—”

  “Yeah,” Gage interjected mordantly, “or some sportsman mows down a kindergarten class with an AK-47. Can’t be getting in their way.”

  Taylor shot him a look. “Don’t you get squishy on me. People need to protect themselves, and the Second Amendment secures the right to own a gun. How long would you last in Kentucky if the NRA put ads on the screen accusing you of taking away their guns?”

  Gage smiled. “No chance of that, Mace. I want my constituents to be able to shoot any IRS agent who comes to collect that last hard-earned dollar.” He spread his hands. “No argument, either—guns will always be with us, and the gun-control laws never work. But we’re not going to use Masters to get Kilcannon by saying she’ll let a policeman’s widow sue gunmakers. So what else?”

  Taylor sipped from his tumbler of the Maker’s Mark whiskey Gage kept for him. “The heart of it,” he said slowly, “is campaign reform. From the looks of her opinions, the Christian Commitment tells me, she believes Chad Palmer’s bill is constitutional. It was their money that helped you get the Protection of Life Act through, and keep control of the Senate. You can’t ignore what they want, and what they don’t want is Chad Palmer, or this woman, trampling all over their First Amendment rights of advocacy.”

  Gage sat up. The Palmer bill would ban unlimited contributions to political parties, threatening the money flow and, in the process, the role Mace Taylor played in Washington. “Well,” Gage answered. “That’s a problem.”

  Taylor looked at him intently. “It surely is. Our friends in the HMOs, the NRA, the pro-life movement, and the tobacco industry would lose their right of speech, while those bloodsucking trial lawyers beat on the gun industry like a gong, and the unions and minorities turn their folks out to help the Democrats take over Congress. What are we going do about that?”

  Was this a test? Gage wondered. “Find something else,” he answered.

  “How do you mean?”

  “We’re not going to rally the public by saying she’ll choke off the cash we need to compete—that’s an insider’s argument.” He paused to reflect. “Where is she on abortion?”

  Taylor shrugged. “You’ve got to figure she’s in favor. But the Commitment doesn’t know. Still, we wind up with a black eye if we let her on the Court, and then she uses Roe to knock down any limit on abortion you manage to get through Congress. Which is probably what she’ll do.”

  “Sure,” Gage agreed. “But she’s not going to tell us that. By the time she’s in front of Palmer’s committee, Kilcannon’s people will have trained her like a seal.”

  “Then you have to slow this down, Mac. Until we find something we can beat her with.”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything. You saw that announcement today—no kids or husband, using her sister’s family as a prop. Maybe she’s a lesbian.”

  The thought filled Gage with genuine unease. Gage had been a poor, unmarried girl’s child, adopted by a loving couple, and his affection for his parents, and loyalty to his siblings, was deep; for him, preserving the family was paramount. He had based his life on this belief, from thirty years of fidelity to Sue Ann Gage—with whom he had adopted a Hispanic girl—to regular calls to each of his grown children. Now the traditional family was besieged by deviance and self-indulgence; he would not knowingly permit a lesbian to be a role model, let alone to lead the nation’s highest court. Even if politics allowed.

  “I don’t think Kilcannon would mind,” Gage answered. “The question is whether he’s that stupid.”

  “Stupid, no. That stubborn, maybe. You know how righteous these liberals can get.”

  “So can we,” Gage answered. “The difference is that two thousand years of religious tradition and human history says we’re right. Or no amount of prosperity will save us from ourselves.”

  Taking a swallow of rich bourbon, Gage saw his own image appear on the screen. Reaching for the remote control, he raised the volume.

  CNN had caught him emerging from his office. Though Masters had been a surprise, Gage was pleased at his unfazed demeanor and measured words, a public face born of much experience. “I commend the President on his promptness,” Gage said to the camera. “What the country requires from the Senate, however, is a deliberate process, most particularly in the investigation and hearings conducted by Senator Palmer and his committee.

  “We deserve a Chief Justice with a superb judicial temperament, one who strictly interprets the Constitution rather than indulging in judicial activism. I very much look forward to meeting Judge Masters, and to hearing her views …”

  “You did vote for her before, didn’t you?”

  “For the Court of Appeals.” Gage summoned a benign smile. “Certainly, Candy, I want to give the President’s nominee every consideration. But now she has a record as a judge, and the American people expect us to review that record thoroughly before making her Chief Justice.”

  Lowering the volume, Gage turned back to Taylor. “Maybe she’s lesbian. But you know the problem, Mace. For sure she’s a woman. The party’s in trouble with women. And from the look of her, this one’s no pushover.”

  Taylor gazed at the television. “That looked like you’re holding back, Mac. Letting Palmer take the limelight.”

  “Sure. Chad loves this—it’s a golden opportunity to let the country see him. He needs to remember our constituencies expect him to slow this down, dig into her life and record.

  “We’ve got friends on his committee, like Paul Harshman, who won’t like this woman at all. They’ll help pressure Palmer without my doing it directly. My job is to keep our senators uncommitted until we can give them ammunition.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Taylor replied. “Palmer and the so-called moderates may be all the votes Kilcannon needs to confirm her. And Palmer thinks campaign reform would help him beat you for the nomination.”

  Gage mentally scanned his colleagues: who was worried about reelection; who wanted a change of committee; who had a pet project that required Gage’s approval; who depended on the money Taylor represented, and Palmer threatened. “I can keep them from jumping,” he said. “At least long enough for you to find holes in her record, or in her character. The moderates have their views, but they don’t want to piss me off.”

  “Except for Palmer,” Taylor cut in. “You’ve never been able to control what he does. The fucking hero business immunizes him.”

  “And he knows that,” Gage rejoined. “When it comes to polishing his own image, he’s got the slickest act of all—the uncorrupted man. Who, we both know, wants to be President so bad he can taste it.”

  Pausing, Gage finished his drink. “Chad could fuck up here, alienate the people he needs to pass his stupid bill. He might even carry water for his buddy Kilcannon. That’s a complicated relationshi
p—there’s no telling what they’d gin up, each trying to serve their own interests.”

  “So you think Palmer helps you take this lady down, or jumps the reservation and shoots himself in the foot.”

  “Uh-huh. Either way, I win.”

  Taylor’s cold eyes and hard face became a mask of thought. “The problem,” he finally said, “is that Palmer doesn’t think like anyone else. It’s like two years being kicked in the head by Arabs made him clinically insane. To me, he’s the most dangerous man in Washington.”

  Gage shrugged. “And the most predictable. What you’re missing, and what those Arabs figured out, is that he’ll do anything to think well of himself.”

  Taylor met his gaze. “Not ‘anything,’ Mac.”

  At this, Gage felt a deep aversion. “I don’t like him any better than you do, Mace. But I’d hope never to drop that on him.”

  Taylor’s face closed. “Maybe not over this,” he answered. “But sooner or later, he’ll make us do it. If only by running for President.”

  SIXTEEN

  PUTTING DOWN the telephone, Chad Palmer returned to the living room. “Sorry,” he said to his wife and daughter. “That was Mac Gage. The Masters nomination seems to have made me the most important man in Washington.”

  This was said with wry self-deprecation. The last people he expected to impress were Allie and Kyle Palmer—especially when the two of them were huddled over a portfolio of Kyle’s fashion drawings, spread across the coffee table of the Palmers’ brick town house on Capitol Hill. But, to his surprise, Allie looked up. “What did he want, Chad—to lecture you on your party obligations?”

  Chad glanced at his daughter. Her oval face still gazed at a red dress she had drawn, and she seemed, as often, detached from him. “I’ll fill you in later,” Chad answered. “I haven’t seen the rest of Kyle’s drawings.”

  This time Kyle raised her head. “It’s fine,” she told him in a flat voice. “We can finish later.”

  The delicacy of their relationship, Chad realized, left him at a loss. Her tone suggested courtesy rather than any real interest—deliberately so, he guessed. It was the response of a girl who remembered, as her psychiatrist had told the Palmers, hearing from her schoolmates how handsome her father was, and how brave, when what she wanted was a father who paid as much attention to her as the world paid to him. His choice now was to take her offer at face value or, by insisting on his interest in her work, to risk treating her as an emotional invalid. She was, after all, twenty years old.

  Allie came to his rescue. “Go ahead, Chad. Kyle doesn’t hear much about your work these days.”

  Chad smiled. “Then why spoil a good thing?” When his daughter smiled as well, he added, “For once, Mac Gage did not explain to me how to be a good Republican. It was even worse—he pretended to take for granted that I was going to help him.”

  Allie studied him closely. “How?”

  “By delaying our committee’s confirmation hearings so that our staff, and our constituent groups, can dig up reasons to oppose Caroline Masters.”

  “Like what?” Kyle asked.

  “It could be anything—rulings which are too extreme, an ethical lapse, smoking dope in college. I remember a nominee for the District Court who’d been busted for drunk driving in two different states, Maryland and Virginia, in the same night.” Pausing, Chad shrugged. “Mac’s even developed the fantastic notion that Kerry may be trying to sneak a lesbian past us.”

  Kyle wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Why does it have to be like that?”

  “Don’t look at me, sweetheart. Personally, I could care less.”

  This time Allie smiled fractionally. “You’re not saying that in public, are you? A lot of people on the Christian right will think you’re encouraging an epidemic of homosexual conversions.”

  Chad laughed. “It’s a risk, all right. People choose to be gay because it’s such an attractive option—dislike, discrimination, and difficulty in forming families.” He eyed his daughter with mock regret. “If some nice man had told me it was a choice, I’d be leading Gay Freedom Day parades instead of being stuck with your mom and you.”

  Smiling, Kyle fell into the spirit of things. “There’s hope for you, Dad. You’re not nearly the reactionary you pretend to be.”

  The irony of this comment, Chad guessed, was, for once, innocent. But Allie sat back a little. “What are you going to do?”

  Chad shrugged. “Not exactly what Mac wants. I’m in the spotlight here—especially because I’m not a lawyer. I’ll get all the media time I could ask for. But that’s good for me only if I treat Masters fairly, which is what I’d do in any case. She isn’t who I’d choose, but Kerry’s the President, after all.”

  Allie appraised him. “You weren’t surprised, were you? Kerry must have told you before today that this was coming.”

  Once more, Chad realized how good her antennae were— Allie did not love politics, but fear of its consequences had made her alert to nuance. “He did,” Chad acknowledged. “He thinks she’ll be good on campaign reform.”

  He chose to stop there: his agreement to help protect the nominee’s secret, though Allie would deeply sympathize, would further raise her apprehension. “I know you know this,” Allie warned. “But you can’t seem too close to Kerry. It will hurt with some of the groups.”

  His daughter was watching them closely, Chad realized. He selected his words with care. “I can’t cozy up to them, either. I’m not in anyone’s pocket, and I can’t let them make it look like I am. Meet with the Christian Commitment, and they’ll pressure me by leaking that I’m on their side …” His voice trailed off. “I am,” he added, “in many respects. Although they’ve stopped being a cause and become a business— like a lot of their opponents, of course. But they’re way too hard-line, and it’s scaring off women.”

  This, Chad thought, was as close to an apology as he could ever make. Allie, silent, glanced at their daughter.

  “It’s abortion,” Kyle said simply.

  Chad felt himself tense. This time, he could not glance at Allie to solicit help; his own reflex with Kyle was avoidance. “Anyhow,” he said, “the right will be on alert, and I’ve got a divided committee—ten Republicans and eight Democrats, with at least three of Gage’s allies looking over my shoulder. Being a statesman is also my best defense.”

  “So you won’t delay the hearings,” Allie said.

  Chad shook his head. “Kerry wants them in a month. I’m inclined to give him that, at least.”

  Allie glanced at Kyle. “What about what Gage wants? To dig into the judge’s personal life.”

  Once more, Chad felt on edge—the subject had too much resonance, and he could not tell his wife what he had promised to keep private. “You know how I feel about that,” he answered. “If it’s relevant to someone’s performance in office, that’s one thing. But it’s another thing to keep running off good men and women for every personal lapse. Or there’ll be no end to it.”

  Mercifully, Kyle chose not to pursue the subject. She seemed much better, Chad reflected, than she had a few short years ago: the fluctuations in weight had diminished; the pallor of her skin was gone; she had stopped changing the color of her white-blond hair. Her eyes, so like Allie’s, were brighter and happier. Perhaps they were through the worst.

  “Anyhow,” he finished with a smile, “I’ll be on This Week Sunday morning. A great moment for America.”

  Kyle shot a wry look at her silent mother, then returned her father’s smile. “You’ll be fine, Dad. Just remember there are women watching—at least two of them.”

  SEVENTEEN

  MARY ANN TIERNEY lay crying on her bed.

  An hour before, her parents had sat on the edge of her bed. “This isn’t my home,” she had told them. “All you care about is what they think of you, and how much I’ve embarrassed you.”

  Tears sprang to her mother’s eyes. Softly, her father answered, “The Christian Commitment worries about the harm you’d
do to other girls, and to their unborn children. We’re worried about the harm to you, and to your child.”

  Though his tone was even, its plaintive note made Mary Ann quiver inside. She gazed at the man who, before this year, had been to her the face of kindness and wisdom. Miserably, she said, “I don’t want my life to be over.”

  He summoned a faint, sad smile. “This isn’t the apocalypse, Mary Ann. It’s a child.”

  His forbearance, the sense that he was talking down to her, made her more angry than threats or punishment. Suddenly she wanted to hurt them both. “You want this baby,” she said to her mother. “You don’t care what happens to me.”

  Her mother stood. “We didn’t ask you to sleep with that boy. I didn’t beg you to get pregnant …”

  “Oh, no,” Mary Ann said in a quavering voice. “You just want me to have a baby for you—no matter what’s wrong with it.”

  Her father strained to keep his voice low. “This is not a good time to talk, Mary Ann. What you’ve done has shocked and saddened us.”

  Her mother’s dark eyes seemed wounded. “What about me …?” Mary Ann asked her.

  “What about you?” her father cut in. “You’ve made two decisions in the last half year—to get pregnant, and to bring a lawsuit to kill your own child, our grandchild. And you expect us to live with them both.

  “Before, you were happy enough when you imagined Tony would come riding to your rescue—whatever you thought that meant. And it was all right if your mother and I helped care for you and the child. Then your image of perfection was shattered, and now you’re desperate to dismember the baby inside you.”