The 37th Amendment: A Novel (17 page)

“I felt you were owed the courtesy, Senator,” Howe said, picking up his salad fork. “I didn’t expect your support.”

“You just remember Blackstone’s fundamental rights,” the senator continued. “Governments are established to protect life, liberty and property. You have a fundamental right to personal security. You have a fundamental right to move around freely from place to place. You have a fundamental right to own and enjoy your property. What good is it to protect those rights from the King of England if you give them up to the Crips of South-Central?”

Howe frowned. “Whatever happened to the idea that it was better for ten guilty men to go free than one innocent man to suffer?” he asked.

“Everything looks different,” the senator answered, “when the ten guilty men live on your block.”

Thursday, June 15, 2056

Ted was studying the latest copy revision from the Sony legal department when the phone on his desk rang.

“Ted Braden,” he answered.

“Ted, Forrest Aldridge.”

“Forrest,” Ted said in his best charm-the-client tone. “Great to hear from you. How ‘bout those Lakers, huh?”

Five minutes of chit-chat brought Aldridge to the point. He was unhappy with his current agency and quietly looking around to move his account. Ted pounced.

“I’d like to get right on this for you,” Ted said. “How about if we discuss it over dinner tonight?”

Aldridge agreed instantly and Ted arranged to meet him at seven o’clock at Dresden in Beverly Hills. He was hanging up the phone when Rocki appeared at his desk, carrying a manila envelope.

“This is the research you wanted for O’Brien’s soup,” she said.

“Guess who that was,” Ted grinned.

“Who?”

“Forrest Aldridge.”

“Forrest Aldridge! The Steeldrift account?”

“Worldwide.”

“Oh, my God!” Rocki said. “Is he putting it up for bids?”

“Maybe not, if I can sell him tonight.”

“Oh, my God!” Rocki said again. “When are you going to meet with him?”

Ted looked at his watch. “In one hour,” he said. His wireless rang. “Ted Braden,” he answered brightly.

“Hi, Ted, it’s Jordan Rainsborough. Did I catch you at a good time?”

Ted felt a surge at the sound of her voice. “Jordan!” he said. “It’s a perfect time. How are you?”

Rocki was standing next to Ted’s desk, carefully appearing not to listen.

“Fine,” Jordan answered. Her voice sounded uncharacteristically tentative. “I was wondering, are you doing anything for dinner?”

“Tonight?” Ted asked.

“Would that be okay? I was hoping you could meet me at Ceretti’s. I really need to talk to somebody.”

“Um,” Ted said. “Sure, absolutely. What time?”

“Six-thirty? Is that too early? I’m ready to leave the office now.”

“Six-thirty it is,” Ted said. “I’ll meet you there.” He hung up the phone. Rocki raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’ll reschedule Aldridge for tomorrow,” he said.

Jordan was seated at a table at the back of the restaurant when Ted arrived. She was wearing a linen suit in a delicate shade of cool green, so pale it was almost white, her long dark hair falling freely over her shoulders in shining waves. She was staring into the distance at nothing in particular, a glass of white wine sparkling in the candlelight in front of her and a mural of a street in Rome on the wall behind her. Ted stopped for a moment just to look. He thought a photograph of her sitting there could keep Italy’s tourism business in the black for two generations.

Jordan looked up and saw him. “Hi,” she said. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem,” Ted said. He felt tongue-tied, like a teenager. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Would you care for anything to drink tonight, sir?” The waiter was poised next to the table. Ted told him to bring a bottle of whatever Jordan was drinking. The waiter disappeared again.

Jordan was fingering a fork, absently turning it over and over on the table.

“Is everything okay?” Ted asked.

Jordan nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Well, actually...” The bus boy arrived with a basket of rolls and a crock of soft butter. Jordan fell silent.

Ted was starving but didn’t want to seem insensitive. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Jordan stared into her wine glass. “Weird things have been happening at the office,” she said. “I think somebody’s been following me.”

Ted remembered the first time he saw Jordan, and how he and the sheriff’s deputies had watched her walk away from the elevator. It would be weird if somebody wasn’t following her. “Really?” he asked.

Jordan nodded. “And people have been calling me at my desk and hanging up,” she said. “As if someone wants to check to see if I’m there.”

The waiter arrived and presented the wine with an irritating flourish. When he was gone, Jordan leaned forward. “And then something strange happened on my computer this afternoon,” she said.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Ted said reassuringly. He wondered why he had said that. He had no idea if it was nothing. “What happened?” he asked.

“Well, I tried to open my private files, the ones that aren’t on the main network, the ones that contain confidential material that’s not available to anyone else on the system. And it wouldn’t let me. It said ‘Access Denied: File may be in use.’ What does that mean?”

Ted frowned. “Did you try it again later?” he asked. He reached for a roll.

“Yes,” Jordan said, “and it worked fine. Everything was normal.”

“Was anything missing?”

“I don’t think so. What does it mean?”

“Well, I’m no expert,” Ted said, “But I think it means someone was reading your files.”

Jordan knocked over her wine glass. She jumped up before the Viognier could reach the edge of the table and drip onto her lap. Two bus boys rushed over with towels. The waiter was right behind them.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” Jordan said, dabbing at the table with her napkin. A moment later the flurry of activity had ceased and Jordan was again seated, a fresh glass of wine on the table in front of her. When she looked at Ted, he saw open fear in her eyes.

“What is it, Jordan?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

Jordan pushed her glass to one side and leaned forward. “I could go to prison for fifteen years,” she said.

Ted dropped his butter knife, sending it clattering against his bread plate and off the edge of the table.

The waiter looked over. Jordan smiled pleasantly at him and waved to indicate everything was fine.

Now Ted leaned forward. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I leaked Michael Dency’s medical report to Christina Ferragamo,” she whispered. “There’s a whole task force sweeping the city to find out who did it. And somebody’s been reading my files.”

Ted stared at her in confusion. “What?” he asked finally.

Jordan put her head in her hands. “I leaked Michael Dency’s medical report. The suspect who was arrested after the second murder.” Jordan sat up again and took a deep breath. “Michael Dency had just confessed to that murder and the Maria Sanders murder,” she said quietly. “One of the police officers involved in the arrest came to see me. He had a file of papers with him, the police still do everything on paper. I asked him about the confession and it seemed like his answers were—I don’t know what it was, something just didn’t seem quite right about it.” Jordan’s face was pale. “Well, at one point the officer left to go to the bathroom and I decided to look through that folder of papers. And that’s when I saw the medical report. God, it was so clear. It was so clear what had happened. He confessed to two murders but not until the police had beaten him nearly to death. I was sick.” She swallowed hard.

“All right, Jordan, calm down,” Ted said. He reached both arms across the table and took her hands. They were warm. “How could anybody possibly trace that to you?” he asked. “Did you just make one copy of it for Christina Ferragamo?”

Jordan nodded. “I scanned it into my computer,” she said. “I put it in my confidential files folder, where it wouldn’t be accessible to the rest of the network. Then later I printed one copy for Christina, and then I deleted it from the computer.”

Ted squeezed her hands. “Well, if you deleted it, it’s not there for anyone to find on your computer, is it?”

“I don’t think so,” Jordan said. “Not unless they can read deleted files.”

“Probably not,” Ted said uncertainly. “When you sent the copy to Christina Ferragamo, did you create a cover letter?”

“I hand-wrote the cover letter,” Jordan said.

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Ted said. There was that oddly reassuring tone again, as if she were locked in a tower and he had arrived to slay the dragon guarding it. “If there really is a task force sweeping the city to find out who leaked the medical report, they may have looked at everybody’s computers. That doesn’t mean they found anything.”

Jordan’s wireless rang. She jumped in her chair.

The wireless rang a second time, then a third. Jordan took it out of her pocket and looked at it warily.

“Go ahead, answer it,” Ted said.

Jordan clicked the button. “Jordan Rainsborough,” she said in her businesslike tone.

“Ms. Rainsborough, how are you this evening?” Ted could hear the unmistakable boom of Dobson Howe all the way across the table.

“Hello, Mr. Howe,” she said, “I’m just fine, thanks. How are you?”

“Quite well, thank you. I wonder if I might impose on a moment of your time.”

“Well, certainly, Mr. Howe,” she said. “How can I be of assistance?”

Howe cleared his throat. “It’s a somewhat delicate matter,” he said, “Something I’d rather not discuss over the telephone. Perhaps we could meet tomorrow at my office.”

“I’d rather not come to your office.” Jordan’s voice sounded nervous.

“I understand,” Howe said. He suggested a Mexican restaurant about five miles from the courthouse complex. Jordan agreed, and they set the meeting for 6:00 p.m. She pressed a button on the wireless and slipped it back in her pocket.

“What was that about?” Ted asked.

“He wants to discuss a delicate matter with me.”

“Oh,” Ted said.

“I think I ought to stay on good terms with defense lawyers,” Jordan said.

The bar at Ricardo’s was crowded and noisy. A dozen television monitors were all tuned to a basketball game. Jordan glanced around the bar, did not see Howe, and walked over to a young man standing behind a brightly-painted podium.

“Excuse me,” she said. The young man looked up at Jordan and his jaw dropped. Jordan smiled at him, her eyes twinkling. He looked barely twenty years old and he was staring at her as if she were standing naked in front of him.

“Sure,” she said mischievously, “You think that, but you won’t call.”

The young man was speechless.

“I’m meeting someone here,” Jordan said. “Have you seated a Mr. Howe?”

The young man struggled to take his eyes off Jordan and look at the reservation book open in front of him. “Yes,” he said. “Right this way.”

He led her through two rooms and into a third, where Dobson Howe was seated in a corner booth, studying a menu. Howe stood up when he saw her.

“Ms. Rainsborough, thank you for coming,” he said quietly.

Jordan shook his hand. “Certainly,” she said. She slid into the booth, which was too soft and too low. Seated there across from that imposing figure, she felt seven years old.

Howe filled time with polite small talk until they had ordered dinner. Then he got down to it.

“I have it on good authority,” Howe said in a low voice, “that you are not as happy as you might be over at the D.A.’s office.”

Jordan was startled. She placed her glass of iced lemon grass tea back on the table. “What?” she asked.

“Since the Robert Rand trial,” Howe continued, “word has reached me that you have been upset, quite rightfully, with the outcomes of some of these cases.”

Jordan studied Howe’s face. Did he know about the Dency medical report? Was he blackmailing her? She considered asking him straight out who had been talking about her and thought better of it. Carefully, she picked up her glass and took a sip.

“Ms. Rainsborough,” he said kindly, “I know the difficult situation in which you find yourself. You are not alone. I am going to lead an effort to return sanity to our legal system.”

Jordan said nothing.

Howe continued. “It is my belief that a well-orchestrated campaign of public information will persuade the electorate that the 37th Amendment must be repealed. This is no longer a matter for law review articles and judicial conferences. It must reach the public. This will involve daily press briefings and an intensive schedule of media interviews.”

Jordan looked at him in disbelief. “Mr. Howe, I can’t give interviews about my employer.”

“No, no, no,” Howe said. “I will give the interviews.”

Jordan leaned back and was silent.

“I assure you,” Howe continued. “I am not asking for your public endorsement. I am not asking for your public participation in any way.” He paused. She waited. He watched her face. “I am seeking information,” he said finally.