Supreme Courtship

“Who’s Aurora Fonacier?”

“Justice Haro’s housekeeper.”

Pepper stared.

“Filipino lady. Very nice person, from what I gather. Not a huge English speaker. Quiet worker. So you have to wonder what she’s doing engaging in a twenty-two-minute phone call with a Supreme Court reporter for the Washington Times.”

Pepper slumped into the hard wooden back of the booth. After a moment or two she said, “What are you going to do with this?”

“Well, ma’am, I thought I’d ask you that.”

“Who knows about this?”

“As of this moment, you and I.”

“Aren’t you required to share this?”

Agent Lodato smiled. “Yes, ma’am. However, you being a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, I thought it would be permissible to exercise initiative. They like it when we do that. Up to a point. I appreciate that it comes at what seems to be shaping up as a challenging time for everyone at the Court. So,” he slid the two pieces of paper toward Pepper, “that being the case, I thought I’d present this to Courtroom Six.” He stood. “I always liked the way Judge Cartwright handled things. To be honest, I’m not so sure about Justice Cartwright, especially after that Swayle vote…” He let out a little whistle of amazement. “But I thought I’d take a chance on her. Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

IF BLYSTER FORKMORGAN had imagined that he would be contending against the other gods of the bar in the rarified atmosphere at the summits of Olympus, he now found himself instead tramping about hip-deep in sheep turd and mud at its base. It was not exactly what Dexter Mitchell’s plangent phone call to him at four a.m. on Election Night had promised.

His client sat across from him, crossing and uncrossing his legs, nervous, sweating, pallid.

“I never explicitly told her,” Dexter jibbered, “at least I’m virtually sure I never… in so many words… Hell, I can’t remember everything I said to everyone… every promise made to every group…”

Forkmorgan stared through lidded eyes, a falcon watching a mole scrabbling across a field below.

He poured ice water into a cut crystal glass and handed it to Dexter, who took it and drank, as if more out of obedience than thirst.

“Campaigns,” Forkmorgan ventured soothingly, “are promiserich environments. The relevant question here is-did you in fact tell Ms. Alvilar that you were going to leave your wife and marry her?”

“No. No, no. No. Well… aack.” Dexter sighed. “Maybe… I don’t… in the middle of… I… Look, you say things in the middle of… It just comes… out… It doesn’t necessarily mean anything…”

To recap, then: you told your TV wife, probably during sexual intercourse in the midst of a presidential campaign, that you would divorce your actual wife in order to marry her and make her First Lady of the United States.

“Well,” Forkmorgan said, “these things happen.”

“Yes. Yes, they do. Yes,” Dexter said. “She’s, of course, Latina…”

Forkmorgan raised one eyebrow questioningly.

“Emotionally they’re, you know, all over the place. Voluble.”

Forkmorgan nodded. “They lack our Anglo-Saxon sense of reticence and decorum?”

Dexter frowned. “Something like that,” he said uncertainly. “I explained to her, I said, ‘Look, Ramona, for God’s sake… now is not the time to worry about that. Let’s take it step by step, okay?’ What am I supposed to do-a

“And how did she respond to that argument?”

“By going totally fucking bat-shit. By threatening to go public.” Dexter shook his head at the iniquity of it all. “That’s when she told me she had me on tape.”

Blyster Forkmorgan’s eyes widened. “Does she have you on tape?”

“I don’t know,” Dexter said. “I was in the middle of a campaign, for God’s sake.”

“Yes,” Forkmorgan said, “I can see your mind might have been on… other things. Well, let’s ascertain whether such a tape exists.” He made a note on a pad. “Now, as to your wife. How do things stand with her at this point?”

Dexter sighed manfully once more at the unjustness of female wiles. “Terry? Well, now she’s gone bat-shit. On the other hand, she’s not some jalapeño like Ramona. She’s bat-shit, but logical. She understands that there’s no point in grabbing the wheel of this bus and driving it off the cliff.”

“Have you told her that you are not going to divorce her in order to marry Ms. Alvilar?”

“In so many words.”

“Tell me the actual words you used.”

“I told her, ‘Don’t worry about it. We need to stick together here. Team Mitchell. Team Mitchell.’”

Forkmorgan nodded. “And did she give you reason to understand that she is in fact on Team Mitchell?”

Dexter shrugged. “Well, she was ru

“No,” Forkmorgan said. “That would appear to be more on Ms. Alvilar’s agenda.”

“I was thinking,” Dexter said, sounding suddenly the politician, “we could offer Ramona a nice ambassadorship. Somewhere warm, Spanish-speaking. She’d be a hero down there. A queen. The Hispanics loved it when she disagreed with me about mining the border…”

Forkmorgan shook his head. “No, I think we’ve made enough promises to Ms. Alvilar for the time being. Not to mention it would be illegal.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it was a perfect solution,” Dexter sniffed.

CHAPTER 29

Dear me, dear heavens, dear… dear,” Crispus said heavily after Pepper had recounted Agent Lodato’s discovery. His eyeballs flickered side to side. “Why do you bring this fifty-five-gallon drumful of squirming worms to me?”

“Who else am I going to tell?” Pepper said.

“Who else? Who else? How about your boyfriend, for one? The Chief Justice. He’s the one who called down the thunder in the first place. Why don’t you tell him? Why is this my business? Re-cu-use me.”

“I can’t tell him,” Pepper said.

“Why not?”

“He might do something about it. Something… injudicious.”

“Whereas I’m just going to rub my fevered brow and ululate?”

“Look, Crispy, help me out here. What do I do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be hitting any more SEND buttons.”

“Thank you. That’s so helpful.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Crispus frowned and drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk. “What would Hammurabi do?”

“Cut off everyone’s head, and call it a day. Is that your advice?”

“Let’s just call it option B for now.” He looked at her with what decoded for Pepper as a mixture of regret and rebuke. This made her, for the first time, think back on Mike Haro’s awkward moment in her chambers, when he’d extended a tentative invitation to come on down to his wine cellar. It came rushing in on her in one, unwelcome wave, that whatever other talents she possessed, men was not one of them. Had she not, after all, accepted a marriage proposal prompted by the launch of a TV show? She stared back at Crispus, thinking, Not you, too? He was saying something to her.

“This seems as good a time as any to ask you, was it the best possible judgment, leaping into the sleeping bag with the Chief?”

“I didn’t ‘leap’ into a sleeping bag with him. But okay. I stipulate maybe ‘judgment’ isn’t the right word, either. Look, Crispy, these things happen.”

“ ‘These things happen’ is, perhaps,” Crispus said, “the biggest intellectual and philosophical cop-out since Pontius Pilate washed his hands.”

“But practical, you have to admit.”

“Oh-urrr.”

“What was that?”

“That was a groan. They happen. Well,” he sighed, “the Rubicon appears to have been crossed. And peed into.”

“Stipulated.”

“What would the Chief be likely to do if he found out about this unfortunate information? Leaving aside your computer skills, it doesn’t appear to speak well of Brother Haro. On the other hand, he was under the understandable impression that you had petulantly instructed him to kiss your behind, which he doubtlessly viewed as poor recompense for having gone to the trouble of finding justification for your-may I say-deplorable vote in Peester.”