The 37th Amendment: A Novel (20 page)

“What are you going to tell them?” the lawyer asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Howe smiled. “As long as it’s on television.”

Wednesday, July 12, 2056

Gregory Ulrich struggled to pull another piece of pizza from the aluminum pan on the table in front of him. The cheese had melted together over the slices. He picked up the triangular spatula from the tray and used the side of it to cut a slice free. The waiter appeared.

“How is everything, sir?” he asked politely.

“Fine, fine,” Ulrich said. “Great pizza.”

“Thank you, sir,” the waiter said. He disappeared again.

Ulrich’s glance fell on a table against the opposite wall of the restaurant where two people were enjoying a pepperoni pizza and an animated conversation. The woman, a beautiful brunette in her mid-thirties, was Jordan Rainsborough, an assistant district attorney. Ulrich was certain that someone in the D.A.’s office—one of the thousands of people who worked there—was the source of those leaks to the press, and he was going to find out who it was if he had to follow each and every one of them. Tonight he was following Jordan Rainsborough.

The man she was with was a little older, perhaps fifty. He didn’t look like a lawyer. He was dressed in a casual cotton shirt, deep blue and open at the collar, and casual slacks.

Ulrich ordered a cup of coffee and asked for his check, keeping one eye on Jordan’s table. Usually he waited outside restaurants, discreet and unobserved, but as he had driven up to Ceretti’s in Los Feliz, the thought of eating one more paper-wrapped hamburger behind the wheel of his car was unbearable. I’m getting too old for this, he thought.

Jordan and her companion were standing up to leave, and Ulrich reached for his wallet. Dropping some cash on the table, he waved politely to the waiter and followed the couple out the front door.

Jordan had arrived alone in her own car and her companion had joined her at the restaurant. Now Ulrich watched as the man kissed Jordan on the cheek, closing her car door for her in a gentlemanly manner and waving to her as she drove off. He saw the man tip the valet generously and then walk away, trudging up the hill in the opposite direction of the parking lot. Ulrich handed a parking stub to the valet, who opened a metal case and rummaged through the keys inside.

“Beautiful evening,” Ulrich said, his eyes still following the man walking up the hill.

“Yes, sir,” said the valet. He found the keys and sprinted off toward the parked cars.

Ulrich heard the roar of an engine that sounded like a missile launch. Moments later, a classic Corvette convertible tore down the road and streaked past him. Ulrich squinted through the cloud of dust at the license plate: 8BLEWBY.

Thursday, July 13, 2056

“I don’t know how they’re doing it,” Gregory Ulrich’s voice was a rumble from the speakerphone in the mayor’s office. “I don’t know how they’re doing it but I know in my gut they’re the ones.”

Mayor Martinez was leaning forward, her elbows resting on her desk. She looked deep in thought, like a bright student confronting an unexpected exam question. District Attorney Thomas J. Huron sat on the couch, frowning petulantly. Chief of Staff Ronni Richards sat in a chair, taking notes.

“How can we prove it?” asked the mayor. “If we confront her and she denies it, then what?”

“Well,” said Ulrich, “I can tell you this much. She was having dinner with Ted Braden, the same Ted Braden who was a witness for the defense in the Robert Rand trial and then went on
Disclosure
and everywhere else campaigning for defendants’ rights. I’ve got his credit card records. He purchased a massive computer system on 20 June, just a few days before a flood of leaks started showing up in the Los Angeles Times. Maybe there’s some way he linked his system up to the courthouse. Maybe he got one of the engineers to help him.”

“I think it’s enough,” said the D.A. “I’m ready to file charges against Jordan Rainsborough right now.”

“And then you’ll go to court and you’ll lose,” said the mayor. “She’s better in front of a jury than you are.”

Huron resumed his petulant frown.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” the mayor said firmly. “Gregory, I want you to let her know that we’re on to her. Do it subtly, so she thinks she’s figuring it out herself. Then we’ll watch her. Maybe she’ll panic and do something to give herself away.”

“Got it,” said Ulrich’s voice.

“Good work, by the way,” said the mayor.

Flynn was spending two weeks at her mother’s, so when Ted heard the back door open, he thought it was the wind. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. Jordan Rainsborough was sitting at his kitchen table, pale as a ghost and breathing hard. Her hands and knees were grimy, as if she’d been crawling through dirt.

“Jordan,” he said, “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you use the front door?”

“Somebody was following me,” she said in a breathless voice.

Ted sat down next to her. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Maybe it was your imagination.” He reached over and, with his fingers, gently brushed her disheveled dark hair away from her eyes.

There was a scuffling sound outside the window. Jordan sat bolt upright in plain fear. “It’s just a cat,” Ted said. Jordan slumped down again. When she looked up at Ted a moment later, there were tears in her eyes. “What if they know?” she asked in a faint voice. “What if they traced all those leaks to me?” She put her head in her hands. “Fifteen years per count, that’s what.”

Ted stood up and pulled Jordan to her feet, wrapping his arms tightly around her in a protective hug. “Not one of those leaks can be traced to you,” he said firmly. “That setup downstairs isn’t connected to anything. Nobody even knows it’s there. Now, what happened?”

“There was a silver car,” Jordan said. “Small. I think it was a Honda. It followed me from the office. It followed me on First Street. I went down to Third Street. It followed me to Third Street. I came up Vermont to Sunset. It followed me on Vermont. It followed me on Sunset. I tried to lose him by getting on the Hollywood Freeway. I got off at Gower and came down to Hollywood Boulevard. When I turned right on Whitley I saw he was behind me again.” Jordan stopped to catch her breath. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “So I drove up to the next street above this one and parked next to somebody’s driveway. Then I pretended to go into the house but instead I went around the side and climbed down the hill to your house. I don’t think he saw me.”

Ted didn’t say anything for a long moment. He knew there was no way to trace the leaks through the D.A.’s computer network. He wondered if the D.A. could possibly have a mole inside Dobson Howe’s office. It was unlikely, but it would mean an ironclad case against Jordan, guilty of violating the Confidentiality of Records Act more than a dozen times, at a mandatory fifteen years per count.

Ted gripped Jordan’s shoulders and looked her square in the eye. “I think we should go,” he said. “Right now. You don’t even have to go home and pack. I’ll buy you a toothbrush.”

C
HAPTER
11

T
he Corvette roared east on Franklin Avenue and onto the southbound Hollywood Freeway, where the evening traffic rush was just starting to break up. The downtown skyline ahead of them looked to be stuck in a bowl of thick haze. Ted maneuvered easily around slow-moving trucks and gutless passenger cars into the left lane and onto the eastbound 10.

“Please don’t drive so fast,” Jordan begged.

“No silver Honda is going to follow you in this car,” Ted said.

“What if you get pulled over for speeding?” Jordan said. “Maybe there’s a warrant out for me.”

“Don’t be paranoid.” Ted’s voice was soothing. “The police wouldn’t come for you in a silver Honda.”

Jordan was silent for miles.

“All right,” Ted growled finally. He slowed down a bit as the Corvette crossed under a maze of concrete overpasses. “I still think we ought to get there as fast as we can get there.”

“Where are we going?” Jordan asked.

“The other side of the Nevada border,” Ted said. “Unless you can think of a safer place to wait this out.”

Jordan pursed her lips in thought. “Nevada’s good,” she said. “They’re very uncooperative with California.”

“That would probably be helpful,” Ted nodded.

The July evening wasn’t cool but Jordan shivered in her lightweight suit. Ted struggled out of his leather jacket and gave it to her. Jordan draped the stiff jacket over her like a blanket, pulling it up to her chin. “Thanks,” she said. Ted nodded and groped at the dashboard to turn on the heater.

It was nearly dark when they reached the 15 freeway and began the long drive over the mountains. The Corvette swept effortlessly around the curves of the highway and through the Cajon Pass, slowing only to evade gasping vehicles ahead of them.

“I’m starving,” Jordan said as they approached Barstow. “Think it would be safe to stop at a mini mart for some food?”

Ted shrugged. “I haven’t seen anybody following us,” he said. “I guess we could stop for a minute.” He pulled off the freeway at the Lenwood Road exit and followed the long ramp to a gas station. Two empty police cars were parked in front of the adjacent mini mart.

“Oops,” Ted said. He circled around and got back on the freeway. “Let’s stop in Baker.”

Jordan groaned a hungry sound.

“There, there,” Ted said. “It’s not that far.”

“How far is ‘not that far?’”

“Sixty-five, seventy miles.”

Jordan groaned.

The mini mart in Baker was deserted except for a motor home fueling up at the pumps. Ted left Jordan in the car and went inside, returning five minutes later with a large brown paper bag. He dropped it gently into Jordan’s lap from the passenger side of the convertible before coming around to the driver’s door. “I’d better fill up,” he said, “Let me see what they have here.”

Jordan dug into the brown paper bag and found a half-dozen candy bars, a bag of chips, a six-pack of diet cola and, to her delight, two turkey sandwiches on French rolls. “These don’t look that bad,” she said, unwrapping one.

Ted was studying the fuel pumps. “They don’t have what I usually get,” he said, “But this won’t hurt anything.” He drove up to a pump painted blue with a red stripe. “You can’t buy this octane level in the city,” he observed.

“Sandwich is good,” Jordan said through the French roll.

Ted took a credit card out of his wallet, then thought better of it, slid a bill into the currency reader and filled the tank. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Let’s get back on the road.”

 They were twenty miles past Baker when Ted saw a California Highway Patrol car lurking near Halloran Summit Road. He slowed down sharply and maintained a perfect law-abiding speed for the next mile. Nonetheless, when he glanced at his rear view mirror, the murky highway lighting clearly showed the black-and-white following him at a distance of about sixty feet.

“Okay,” Ted said calmly. “Now we make a decision.”

Jordan looked up from her candy bar. “What?” she asked.

“Is that Highway Patrol officer following us,” Ted began, “to see if he can write me for speeding? Is he simply admiring this fine, classic vehicle? Or did he just enter the license plates into his computer to see if any information comes back to him?”

Jordan snapped her head around and looked at the car, still following quietly at a distance of sixty feet.

“We’d better go,” she said.

Ted floored it.

The Corvette rocketed up the steep grade with a roar that almost drowned out the first scream of the siren behind them. Cars ahead scrambled into the right lane, giving Ted an uninterrupted speedway over Halloran Summit. By the time they had traveled the short distance to Cima Road, six more police vehicles were waiting at the on-ramp to join the pursuit. Ted heard the beating rotors of a helicopter overhead, and suddenly the Corvette was blasted with a wide white spotlight as bright as the sun. Jordan slumped low in her seat and pulled Ted’s jacket up to her forehead.

Ted easily outdistanced the vehicles chasing him as they tore through the desert and began the steep climb over the last ridge of mountains before the Nevada border. He felt relatively secure. California’s Safe Highways policy prohibited law enforcement officers from endangering the traveling public during a pursuit, so there would be no gunfire, no bumping, no abrupt roadblocks. The state that would put a man to death on the say-so of a heroin dealer had no stomach for car wrecks.

The Corvette flew past Nipton Road. “Look,” Ted shouted to Jordan. She sat up a little and peeked out over the collar of his jacket. Straight ahead, floating in the darkness, was a horizontal stripe of bright colored lights. “The Nevada border,” he said. “Those lights are the casinos on the other side of the state line.”

Jordan turned and looked over her shoulder at the red and blue lights chasing them. “Will we make it?” she shouted.

“I don’t see why not,” Ted shouted back.

It was a faster drive down the grade. With traffic pressed into the right lane by the sound of approaching sirens, Ted was two miles from the border in less than five minutes. Suddenly the sun-like spotlight above them went dark.

“Uh-oh,” Ted said.