by D. W. Buffa
He was impossible. He could not stand confinement, not because, like other people, he hated imprisonment; he could not tolerate the absence of an audience, the presence of reporters asking questions for all the millions out there who, he was certain, could never get enough of him.
“Why not wait,” I suggested with weary, half-closed eyes, “until you’re convicted. Then you can give any speech you want for everyone who watches your execution on television.”
He thought it quite funny. Placing his hand on my wrist, he gave me what some might have thought a politician’s meaningless assurance, but seemed to me something he thought settled in advance.
“It will never happen. It’s what you said before: I know things that no one else does. And besides, you’re not a bad lawyer. Look at it this way: you’ve never lost a case and I’ve never lost an election. The odds are in our favor.”
There was something so astonishingly, brilliantly arrogant about him that it somehow did not seem arrogant at all. It almost seemed understated, like the bragging of a modest boy, laughing at his own exaggeration. I watched him leave, marveling at the way he made the two guards think he was doing them a favor by letting them come along. When he reached the door, he turned his head just enough to wink at me. Kevin Fitzgerald could convince anyone of anything. He was sure of it, so sure he was willing to bet his life on it.
“IS THE PROSECUTION ready to call its first witness?” asked Judge Patterson. She was bending forward with a somewhat exaggerated look of anticipation, as if, like an actor on the stage, she wanted to make sure she played her part with enough emphasis for those in the back rows of the theater.
Raymond St. John was already on his feet.
“Yes, your Honor. The prosecution calls Jonathan Reece.”
With a chin that seemed to slope away into his throat, a nose too long for his face, and dark, deep-set eyes with which he viewed his enemies with hostility and his friends with suspicion, Reece raised his hand and, with what to some of those who had followed his White House career seemed like reluctance, swore to tell the truth.
“Would you state your full name for the record?”
“Jonathan Edward Reece,” he replied, shifting around on the witness chair, trying to get comfortable.
“How are you employed?”
“Assistant to the president—or, rather, I was assistant to the president.”
“Walter Bridges?”
“Yes.”
“You were with President Bridges on Air Force One on the flight from Washington to San Francisco?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell us, in your own words, what happened when the plane landed?”
“You mean when I found—”
“No, start from the beginning, if you would.”
Reece looked puzzled. He still was not sure where to start.
“I’m sorry,” apologized St. John with a friendly shrug. He glanced across to the jury box. “I should have been more specific,” he explained, and then turned again to the witness. “When the plane landed, did the president ask you to do anything?”
“Yes. He said that Fitzgerald—Senator Fitzgerald—had been asking to see him; that he was waiting on the tarmac and that I should bring him on board. He said he would see him for ten minutes in his cabin.”
“Did he tell you why Senator Fitzgerald wanted to see him? And why he wanted to see him at the airport, instead of back in Washington?”
Reece had a whiny, strident voice, every word a complaint.
“He didn’t have to; we all knew the reason—”
St. John quickly raised his hand to stop him. His manner, though friendly, was still formal. St. John, as good a prosecutor as there was, always kept a distance.
“When you say, ‘we all knew the reason,’ whom do you mean?”
“Everyone who was close to the president. Fitzgerald—Senator Fitzgerald,” he corrected himself for the second time, “had been making a lot of accusations—false accusations—about things the president had supposedly done. He was always on television, claiming that while there was not any evidence yet, it was only a matter of time; that with all the investigations going on, it was only a matter of time before evidence would be found.”
Satisfied that this answered the question, Reece sat back and waited for the next question. St. John asked again: “What was the reason—what did the president tell you was the reason—Senator Fitzgerald wanted to see him?”
“To tell him about something he said he had found, something he wanted to give the president a chance to explain. But,” he added before anyone could draw the wrong conclusion, “the president knew it was a bluff, that Fitzgerald didn’t have anything—there was nothing to have—and that what he really wanted was a private meeting he could talk about.”
St. John pretended to be confused. Without a question, just a look, he invited him to explain.
“He was always going on television, talking about how important the investigation was, and how, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, he could not talk about what he knew, which gave the impression that what he knew and could not talk about would be more damaging to the president than anyone could imagine. That’s what the president thought, what we all thought was the reason he wanted a private meeting: so he could tell everyone that he had met in private with the president and discussed things he could not yet reveal. I mean, what could sound more damaging than that?”
With a serious, thoughtful expression, St. John nodded as if this explained a great many things that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
“That was the reason, then, that the president agreed to meet with him on Air Force One, just after it landed in San Francisco, to keep the meeting short?”
“One of the reasons; there was another one. The senator would be standing there with the greeting party, just one of the public officials who are always there to welcome the president wherever the president travels. If Fitzgerald is invited up to see the president, no one is able to suggest that he confronted the president with some new, explosive evidence. It’s all too casual.”
“Let me make sure we all understand this. It’s your testimony that Senator Fitzgerald had been asking for a private meeting with the president in Washington, a private meeting in the White House?”
“Yes, but as I explained, that wasn’t going to happen.”
“If it had,” said St. John with a look of practiced outrage, “we might have had a murder in the Oval Office!”
I was on my feet before he had finished the sentence, shouting my objection. Judge Patterson waved me back to my chair and with withering contempt threatened St. John with perdition.
“Not here, counselor, not in this courtroom! You want to testify, I’ll let Mr. Antonelli call you to the witness stand and put you through whatever cross-examination he thinks proper.”
For the first time, I began almost to like her.
It was not widely known, but Raymond St. John had years earlier been a drunk, and then, to his great credit, had stopped drinking altogether. The story, which was too sad not to be true, was that he had come home one night at three in the morning, and his teenage daughter, confined for life to a wheelchair with muscular dystrophy, had been waiting for him in the living room and with one short sentence brought him to his senses. “You are a disgrace,” she told him, and the next night, instead of a bar, he went to his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like a lot of recovering alcoholics I have known, Raymond St. John had lost the capacity for extremes. There was no burst of anger, no outraged indignation; nor, on the other hand, even the smallest sign of chastened hope or sullen despair. Without emotion of any kind, he waited until Patterson finished, and when she had, turned back to the witness as if there had never been an interruption. It was easy to imagine that he started every day with a list of all the things he had to do, and easier still to imagine there had not been a day since he stopped drinking that he had failed to do even one of them.
; “Tell us what happened, after you brought Senator Fitzgerald onto Air Force One.”
Resting his elbows on the wooden arms of the witness chair, Jonathan Reece hunched forward, gazing into the middle distance, trying, as it seemed, to remember every detail.
“I came down the stairs, went across to where he was standing and told him the president had asked me to come get him, that the president could spare a few minutes. He followed me up to the plane and to the president’s cabin.”
“When you got there, to the president’s cabin, what happened then?”
“Nothing. I mean, I left him there and went back to where the rest of the staff were waiting in the mid-section of the plane.”
He had left something out. St. John reminded him what it was.
“You didn’t just leave Senator Fitzgerald at the door to the president’s cabin. Someone else was there, weren’t they?”
“Oh, yeah. Besides one of the Secret Service agents, Ellison was waiting.”
“Ellison?”
“Richard Ellison, the president’s chief of staff. He had been meeting with the president when I was sent to get Fitzgerald. He was there, at the door, when I brought him.”
“Senator Fitzgerald, the defendant, you mean?”
“Yes. Ellison was standing there, waiting to take him inside.”
“And did he take him into the president’s cabin?”
“Yes…I mean, he must have. I didn’t actually see him do it, open the door and take him inside. As soon as I had Fitzgerald there, I left, as I said before. I had to get my briefcase and a few other things. We were about to get off the plane and get in the cars waiting to take us into the city.”
“To the Mosconi Center where the president was scheduled to speak at the technology conference?”
“Correct.”
“And that is the last time you saw the senator?”
“No, I saw him a few minutes later, when the Secret Service had him in custody, when they were taking him off the plane. I didn’t know what had happened. And then everyone knew, and everyone was running all over the place. We didn’t know,” he explained, turning now for the first time to the jury. “We didn’t know if this was just the beginning, if a terrorist attack was underway, if Fitzgerald had orchestrated the whole thing: killed the president while some other friends of his, other people who hated the president and what he was trying to do—save the country from attack—were going to start killing everyone else on the plane!” he exclaimed, raking Fitzgerald, sitting next to me, with a harsh, combative stare.
“You didn’t know if this was the start of an attack—a terrorist attack, is the way I think you put it—on everyone on the plane?” I said in a calm, even voice as I rose slowly from the counsel table to begin my cross-examination. “Is that what you said?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You were afraid that Senator Fitzgerald might have ‘orchestrated’—I think that is the word you used—an attack with other people. Is that what you said?”
“That’s what I said, and I meant it.”
“You brought Senator Fitzgerald onto the plane, correct?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Yes.”
“And you did that because the president asked you to do that, correct?”
“Yes,” he replied, tight-lipped and cautious.
“Because Senator Fitzgerald, according to your testimony, had been asking for a meeting.” He started to answer, to give another one-word reply, but I talked right past him. “And because, as I believe you put it, everyone knew why he wanted a meeting with the president, the decision was made to invite him onto the plane for a brief meeting of just a few minutes. Isn’t that what you just said?”
“Yes, that’s right; that was the reason.”
“Senator Fitzgerald was there, on the tarmac, part of the group of public officials there to greet the president on his arrival. I think that’s what you said.”
I paused, as if I wanted him to be sure. He looked at me as if he could not understand why I would think it necessary.
“Yes, he was there as part of the greeting party.”
“He didn’t know he was going to be invited on the plane, did he? I mean, he had asked for meetings in Washington. He had not asked for this meeting on the plane?”
“No—I mean, yes, that’s right.”
I threw up my hands as if nothing he had said made sense. Smiling in a show of sympathy, I shook my head.
“He’s there as part of the greeting party. He doesn’t know he’s going to be invited onto the plane. And yet your first thought when you see him being led off the plane is that he had orchestrated a conspiracy—a terrorist attack!—and everyone is in danger. But then you’re used to that, aren’t you, Mr. Reece—finding a terrorist attack everywhere you look, seeing danger everywhere, except, of course, among your Russian friends! Withdraw the question!” I fairly shouted before the judge’s gavel struck. “Yes, I know, it isn’t a question I’m allowed to ask,” I added before she could open her mouth. “Tell me, Mr. Reece,” my attention suddenly, abruptly, back on him, “when you went to get Senator Fitzgerald, did you search him for a weapon?”
He looked surprised.
“No. I didn’t see any reason—”
“Did you ask anyone with the Secret Service to make sure he wasn’t armed?”
“No, as I say, I didn’t—”
“See any reason; yes, precisely. You didn’t see any reason because it never occurred to you that Kevin Fitzgerald might be an assassin. Why was that, Mr. Reece? Because he doesn’t look like one, because he is a United States senator? Why, exactly, did you not imagine the possibility that he might be a threat?”
Jonathan Reece was faced with the apparently obvious fact that the man he had let on the plane was an assassin. How had he not known to take the simple precaution of a search? He seized not on an explanation, but an excuse.
“He didn’t have a weapon, he did not have a gun; that isn’t how he killed the president.”
“But you obviously did not know that when you let him on the plane. That couldn’t possibly be the reason you didn’t have him searched—because you knew he would kill the president a different way—was it?”
“No, of course not.”
“The reason you didn’t have him searched, the reason you never thought him a threat, is because he had never made a threat against the president, or anyone else; never made so much as a threat to commit violence against another human being in his life, isn’t that so? And why, Mr. Reece, what reason can you give the jury that explains why someone like Kevin Fitzgerald, a respected member of the United States Senate, a man many expected would one day be a candidate for the presidency himself, a man who has never been accused, much less convicted, of a crime, a crime of violence or any other crime, suddenly, from out of nowhere, take it upon himself to kill Walter Bridges, unless it was the only way to stop Bridges from doing something that could not be allowed? Can you answer that, Mr. Reece? Can you tell this jury how this could possibly have ever happened?”
There was not a sound in the courtroom, not a whisper, when I finished. They sat there, the hundreds who had come to observe, the hundreds who had come to report, stunned into silence by the violence of my question.
“Why it happened?” said Reece, slowly, burning with resentment. His knuckles went white as he squeezed the arms of the witness chair to stop himself hurtling across at me. “Why it happened? Because he could not stand the fact that he and his liberal friends were losing. Because it made them all crazy that someone like Walter Bridges who had never been in politics, never run for office, never been in government, never been an insider trading favors, doing everything to stay in power, had won the presidency and doing everything he had promised the American people he was going to do! That’s why he killed him—hatred, pure and simple.”
I smiled, and moving from the side of the counsel table where I had been standing, moved closer.
“These promises you say he
made. You were there when he made them, weren’t you? One of the more prominent members of his campaign.”
“I was in the campaign…yes.”
“You were with him almost every day, you were with him on election night. Tell us, if you would, what was his reaction to the outcome?”
“What was his…? He won, what do you think his reaction was?”
“I ask the questions here, Mr. Reece, not you. Now, what was his reaction?”
He hesitated, not sure why I would suddenly ask a question that seemed to have no possible connection to anything he was there to testify about. He tried to shrug it off, a question of no importance.
“He was, of course, pleased, honored at the result.”
“That he had just lost the popular vote by a margin in the millions?”
“He won the presidency!” he fired back. “Who wouldn’t be pleased, honored, at that?”
“But he knew, didn’t he, that a majority in the country would always see him as a loser, isn’t that right, Mr. Reece? And didn’t that start to gnaw away at him, make him a little bit crazy every time someone brought it up?”
“He won the election, and by a large majority, in the electoral college.”
“Yes, we’ve heard that argument before,” I said in a scornful, dismissive voice that, as I had hoped it would, made him bristle. “He won the election because he won the electoral vote and, what had happened only once before, lost the popular vote. So, he comes into the presidency, the choice of only a minority, and his support in the country, instead of going up, keeps going down. It keeps—”
“I fail to see the relevance of this, your Honor,” objected St. John. “What difference does the president’s standing in the polls make? The question isn’t whether Walter Bridges was popular; the question, the only question, is whether the defendant committed murder.”
Evelyn Patterson turned to me.
“It’s relevant, your Honor. It goes to the inconsistency in the witness’s testimony.”