Licensed to Thrill: Volume 1

by Diane Capri

  If he was already dead, I couldn’t bring him back to life.

  Contrary to popular belief, judges know we are not gods.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tampa, Florida

  Wednesday 5:30 p.m.

  January 6, 1999

  I DRIFTED BACK TO the Sunset Bar, swallowed my gin and let the watery liquid relax me. The tension was chemically erased from my stomach and the rest of my muscles would feel it soon, too. Along with some heat. The January sun, near the horizon, no longer warmed. How much colder would the Gulf waters be this time of year? Well below comfortable body temperatures, that’s for sure. Hypothermia kills, too.

  George emerged from the kitchen, tossing words over his shoulder that I couldn’t hear. He wore his usual uniform: khaki slacks, golf shirt, and kilted cordovan loafers, sans socks. Today, the shirt was bright yellow. It set off his deep tan and dark hair like neon. Despite all the kicking and screaming about leaving Michigan, he’d become a perpetually comfortable Floridian about twenty seconds after we moved here. It’s culturally closer from Grosse Pointe to South Tampa than geography suggests.

  He spied me, came over and bestowed a kiss, which I returned more desperately, wanting to feel something solid having nothing to do with cold water, dead doctors, and missing sisters in trouble.

  Once released, he said, “Good, you’re home early. Take a quick walk through the dining room to make sure everything’s done?”

  “Just sit with me for a minute. I’m sure Peter has everything under control.”

  Peter, George’s Maître d’, could run the place with his eyes closed. A charity fund-raiser for six hundred people was no great challenge. He’d done it all before.

  “I’ve had a crush on Elizabeth Taylor since I first saw National Velvet. I want to knock her off her feet.” He wiggled eyebrows like Groucho Marx to force my smile. He’s not clairvoyant, but seventeen years of marriage have given him a sixth sense of my moods. He knows which buttons to push.

  “You act like all this is wildly important to you when you don’t really care whether they have a wonderful time or not,” I teased.

  “Every event we have here is important to me.” Then, he relented a little, “Just because I didn’t vote for our democratic senator doesn’t mean I want the Tribune’s food critic or the Times’ society pages trashing my party.”

  The Tribune or the Times find anything less than perfect? Unlikely as snowfall during a Tampa summer. George’s chefs have won the Golden Spoon Award five times and Florida Trend magazine removed his restaurant from the annual Best of Florida issue because nothing could compete.

  “Bring your drink. I’ll keep your mind off Elizabeth Taylor.” I leered, mocking him, and this time, he was the one who laughed.

  We moved to my favorite outside table. Wicker rockers invited us to kick back and enjoy the view. Sitting outside, watching either sunrise or sunset over the water, is one of the best things about living on Plant Key. I don’t care enough about the sunrise to get up for it. Now, if sunrise is the end of a perfect evening, well that’s something else.

  We sat quietly, words between us unnecessary. Maybe the best part of marriage is comfortable companionship every day. George has been the best friend I could ever have, although when we met I imagined lifetime romance and lust.

  Got that, too.

  Like most evenings, he chattered on about today’s events at the restaurant and asked what had happened in my courtroom. Both of us too keyed up to relax, albeit for different reasons.

  The sun disappeared at 5:49 p.m., one minute later than yesterday, one minute earlier than tomorrow. Normal Tampa sunset. No low clouds to create the spectacular effects we enjoyed in Michigan. No frigid January wind, either.

  George jumped up to complete his preparations. Guess after seventeen years, I can’t expect to compete with Elizabeth Taylor.

  As promised, I moved through the archway into the main dining room for a final inspection. The former ballroom comfortably held about thirty round tables. Tonight, decorated in fuchsia and white, with red and green bromeliads, bird of paradise and other tropical plants that grew in carefully cultured gardens here on Plant Key. White tablecloths; fuchsia napkins.

  Not the usual restaurant china, but Minaret’s best Herend china, Waterford crystal and sterling flatware. All came with the house when we inherited it from George’s Aunt Minnie; now set flawlessly in ten place settings per table.

  Something truly spectacular was the ice sculpture on the head table. An eagle, its wings spread, and spanning more than four feet, majestically demonstrated the strength most AIDS patients lacked. Too bad the eagle would melt before morning; it’s never cold enough to keep ice frozen in Tampa overnight. Something else to be grateful for.

  I walked the length of both dining rooms; examined the flowers and the table settings. If there were flaws in the presentation, I couldn’t find them. Nor had I expected to.

  I flashed an “OK” sign across the way; George surveyed everything personally and barely noticed my appreciation.

  Everything about our home is astonishing to me still. Often, I marvel that we actually live here. George claims we can’t be evicted, but is that true?

  George’s Aunt Minnie married into the grand old building and bequeathed it to her favorite nephew when she died. Minaret, as it’s called, was built in the 1890s to house Henry Plant’s family. Plant was constructing the Tampa Bay Hotel, now the University of Tampa, which he hoped would be a vacation Mecca for the rich and famous. He wanted to surpass his rival Henry Flagler’s magnificent Palm Beach construction.

  Henry placed Minaret to be admired like a sparkling solitaire presented on her private island.

  Originally too shallow for navigation and devoid of landmass, Hillsborough Bay was dredged to allow passage of freighters into the Port of Tampa. Henry Plant persuaded the Army Corps of Engineers to build the landmass for Plant Key at the same time they created Harbour Island and Davis Islands.

  Plant Key is marquis cut, about a mile wide by two miles long. Narrow ends face north toward Tampa and south toward the Gulf of Mexico. Key Bridge connects us to Bayshore Boulevard just north of Gandy.

  The locals, and New York society, dubbed the enterprise “Henry’s Ego,” but like everything else Plant did, his island and his home surpassed all expectations.

  Hard to fathom sometimes how much ostentatious wealth was accumulated and displayed in the days before income tax by those who were willing to live maybe just a bit outside the law.

  How lucky can one woman get? I have George, Minaret, a job I love, and I never have to wear parkas. Life is good. Damn good.

  Or it was.

  An hour ago.

  Before Carly’s bombshell.

  No time to dwell on that now. By concentrating carefully, I hoped to avoid thoughts of Dr. Michael Morgan, dead or alive, for the next eight hours. A foolish plan.

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  CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS

  Judge Wilhelmina Carson

  George Carson

  General Albert Randall Andrews (Andy)

  Deborah Andrews

  Roberta Andrews (Robbie)

  John Williamson

  Donald Andrews

  David Andrews

  Senator Sheldon Warwick

  Victoria Warwick (Tory)

  Sheldon Warwick, Jr. (Shelly)

  Olivia Holmes

  Thomas Holmes

  President Charles Benson

  Charles Benson, Jr.

  Chief Ben Hathaway

  State Attorney Michael Drake

  Chief Ozgood Livingston Richardson (Oz or CJ)

  Margaret Wheaton (secretary)

  Kate Austin

  Jason Austin

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tampa, Florida

  Thursday 8:50 a.m.

  January 20, 2000

  THE BULLET THAT KILLED General Andrews was the same one that pierced my heart, although we were thirty miles apa
rt when it happened and no blood soaked my chest. The damage was permanent, if not immediately obvious.

  The new millennium was off to a disastrous start.

  Thursday morning, two days before Andrews died, held the blessed promise of a return to normalcy. I had thrown myself back into my office routine, but I was entirely preoccupied by televised coverage of the most important national event since the war: Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee, General Albert Randall Andrews.

  Once the hearings concluded that morning, I naively assumed, my husband would magically transform into the man I had loved and somehow lost. After seventeen years of marriage, another woman would have been easier for me to deal with than George’s passionate devotion to the greater good, working to defeat the Andrews nomination.

  Seated at the battered desk in my hideously decorated chambers in Tampa’s Old Federal Courthouse, I tried to focus on the draft orders that had been prepared by my clerks and appeared on my desk with the regularity of the daily sunrise. I signed the orders, again and again, methodically moving them to my outbox on the front of my desk where my secretary would pick them up.

  Like other United States District Court judges here in the Tampa Division of the Middle District of Florida, I had a never-ending, boatload of work that threatened to bury me long before I had a chance to die a natural death. Already, the workload made me feel much older than the thirty-nine years reflected on my driver’s license.

  Regardless of what time management methods I tried, I never seemed to get ahead. I rarely glimpsed the scarred surface of the old mahogany desktop I’d inherited from the little Napoleon who’d occupied this office before me.

  I read the draft order in front of me: Marital Privilege is a legal term that means one spouse cannot be required to reveal confidential communications from the other spouse. Marital privilege was a concept that didn’t apply to me at the moment because my husband, George, and I weren’t communicating at all. For example, I had no idea where he was that morning. I knew I couldn’t reach him very easily by phone because I had already tried.

  George was consumed with General Andrews and his confirmation hearings and I was consumed with desire for the entire process to go straight to hell and leave me and my marriage alone.

  Wilhelmina Carson, I wrote, pressing the pen so hard that a hole appeared over the dotted ‘i.’ I placed the executed order on the top of the outgoing pile.

  “Not since Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1991 has there been such a public display of outrage at a President’s choice,” the television analyst said. “Since General Albert Randall Andrews, formerly Tampa’s highest ranking Army officer, was nominated to join Thomas on the bench, the country has resided in a state of outrage over his offensive political and ideological positions on a variety of issues.”

  The hyperbole brought a smile to my lips that didn’t lighten my heart. I found it hard to believe that anyone was taking the Andrews nomination seriously. Andrews was a rogue. To my mind, he was such an unsuitable candidate that he should never have been nominated in the first place.

  Andrews was more obstinately opinionated than a cable television talk show host, and twice as vocal about it. There was no way he’d ever do the one thing required by the job: remain impartial and consider each case individually as it was presented to him. Once nominated, Andrews should have been summarily rejected.

  But that’s not what happened.

  The analyst continued reading from his prepared script. “Today, the crowd outside the Capitol building here in Washington, D.C. is larger than any of the earlier days of the hearings. . . .”

  I felt sorry for the protesters. It’s not easy to have the courage of your convictions after standing outside for nine days in January ice showers.

  At the beginning of the march, the protesters had been neatly organized, with the right to lifers on the left, the gays and lesbians on the right, and the anti-military group in the center, flowing out to the back. Today, the factions mingled into a single, huddled mass.

  Icy rain soaked the homemade signs they carried. Blue magic marker ink ran off onto their heads, giving them an even more defeated look. Many huddled near fires in old barrels to catch a small slice of warmth. Even the commentator shivered as ice water dripped off his umbrella in the cold. I shivered, too, remembering how it felt to be chilled to the bone by bitter January cold only too well. It was a visceral memory that might never be baked out of me here in the Sunshine State.

  I glanced out my window and saw clear blue skies, palm trees, and two homeless men across the street wearing short-sleeved T-shirts sharing a cigarette. It so rarely rains here in January that I leave the top down on my car for weeks at a time. The contrast between my world and the world I saw on television couldn’t have been more complete. This, at least, was a fact that cheered me.

  In the nation’s capital, despite the horrid weather, the protesters had come and waited and every day their numbers had grown. They chanted, picketed, sang songs.

  I shook my head and ran my fingers through my short auburn hair, causing it to stand straight up on top. The futility of their struggle would have persuaded me to quit long before now. I admired their determination. I liked to think I’d had that once.

  When I was young and idealistic. Not anymore.

  To do what these protesters were doing, what my husband had been doing, required the kind of conviction I no longer possessed. Before I was appointed to the bench, I practiced law long enough to learn that there are always too many sides to every story. I no longer believed in solid black and pristine white, self-evident truths and indisputable wrongs.

  In politics, the question has always been “what have you done for me lately?” General Andrews was probably finding that out now. It must have been a hard lesson for a popular war hero to learn.

  For almost an hour, the television commentators had rehashed the entire course of the hearings and predictions of the outcome, which ranged from promises of complete victory to devastating loss for both sides. Whether the nominee would be confirmed was alternately feared or cheered, depending on the speaker’s point of view.

  My patience had been stretched to the breaking point by the weeks of bickering. I was sick to death of the constant analysis and conjecture. I wanted the matter to end. Confirm Andrews’s nomination or not, but just finish the damn thing.

  Just before nine o’clock, the Supreme Court nominee’s limousine pulled up to the curb. The Capitol Hill Police personnel assigned to assure his safety surrounded the car and the passenger door opened.

  I glanced up from my work to see the first man step out of the car. It was Andrews’s personal secretary, Craig Hamilton, a pleasant little man almost a foot shorter than me, whom I’d met several times over the past few years.

  As he straightened up and rose to his full height of five feet, he looked around at the crowd. For just a second, I thought I saw something like shock on his face as he faced the angry, chanting mob.

  I thought again of Andrews. Why he subjected himself and his family to this abuse was a complete mystery to me. To what kind of man was the promise of power so seductive that he would struggle against hostile strangers to achieve it?

  Hamilton reached out to accept an opened black umbrella offered by one of the officers standing to his right while I watched, waiting impatiently for the real story to start.

  When Craig Hamilton stood to the side to let Andrews, the nominee, out of the car, I glanced down at my work.

  I heard a loud, quick pop, pop, pop over the noise of the chanting crowd. I jerked my head up to see Craig Hamilton crumple to the ground. He was quickly surrounded by police officers.

  Complete chaos followed instantaneously. My stomach recoiled in horrified impotence as I grabbed the remote control to turn up the volume on the set.

  My other hand flew to the phone to call George, but just as quickly withdrew, as if the receiver was hot to the touch. George wouldn’t be answeri
ng his cell phone. He’d be on his feet, rushing to help Craig Hamilton in any way possible. I hoped George wasn’t in Washington, D.C. right now, but wherever he was, my anxiety told me, he was involved.

  The screaming drew my secretary, Margaret, into my chambers.

  “Willa, what’s wrong?” she asked as she hurried over to me.

  She put her hand on my shoulder and looked directly into my face. I realized that the screaming that drew her had been my own.

  I closed my mouth and patted her hand. I nodded to the television set. Margaret watched with me as we saw falling bodies everywhere. I heard no more shots, but they could have been fired. “Just like Jack Ruby,” Margaret whispered, referring to the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, right in front of God and everybody, on television after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

  Americans have a long history of trying to solve political problems with guns. Presidents Lincoln, King, Ford and Reagan, among others, had all been targets of assassination attempts.

  Being younger than Margaret by thirty years, my thoughts jumped to the attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. The thought that sprang, unbidden, to my mind and flew out of my mouth was, “Just like Jim Brady.”

  Like Jim Brady, Craig Hamilton was in the way between the killer and his target.

  I moved to one of the ugly green client chairs on the front side of my desk, where I’d get a better view of the small screen. Margaret continued to stand. Our gazes were glued to the television set now as the small picture divided into three sections. A commentator was featured in a small box on the top on the screen. Another small box reflected the real time events.

  On the rest of the screen, a replay camera panned the front lines of the crowd. Involuntarily, I drew a quick breath when the camera spotted a man with a gun making his way up to the curb toward the waiting limousine.

  The instant replay showed Craig Hamilton step out of the car. I watched in appalled fascination as the shooter raised his arms while holding a hunting rifle. The rifle recoiled three times as the shooter pulled off the three shots that hit Hamilton’s chest. Watching felt nothing like viewing a Hollywood movie. This was too vivid, too close to home.