The 37th Amendment: A Novel (6 page)

“Where does she work?” The question came from Carl Gonzales.

Ted hesitated.

“We can easily find out,” Jordan said. “We found you.”

“RCN Data Systems,” Ted said quietly.

Gonzales’ face looked blank, as if he had expected a name he recognized. He glanced at the golf ball-shaped crystal clock on his desk. “Perhaps it would help refresh your memory to read a newspaper account of the game that night,” he said. He clicked his keyboard for what seemed a long time. Finally the printer behind his desk made a humming sound and ejected a sheet of paper. Gonzales grabbed the page and handed it to Ted.

A story from the February 22 Los Angeles Times was printed neatly in two columns. The headline read: Lakers Scale Matterhorns, 115-93. “Oh, yeah,” Ted said, “I was definitely at that game. I wouldn’t have missed a game against Anaheim.”

Jordan looked up from her notes. “You wouldn’t have?” she asked, “Or you didn’t?”

“I didn’t,” Ted answered. “I was definitely at that game.”

“And did you notice if Mr. Rand was there?”

“He would not have missed that game.”

“But do you specifically recall that he was there?”

“I would have noticed if he wasn’t.”

Jordan made a note. Gonzales tapped a few keys on his keyboard and frowned at the screen. “Turkey or tuna?” he asked Ted. “I don’t recommend the tuna.”

Ted was lost.

“Lunch,” said Gonzales. “We’re bringing in sandwiches. Turkey or tuna? They have roast beef but it doesn’t make a good first impression.”

“Turkey it is,” Ted said.

“Jordan? Turkey or tuna?”

“Pizza,” she said.

The pizza and Merritt Logan arrived in Gonzales’ office at the same time.

“How’d you get pizza?” Logan asked from outside the open door, which was blocked by an office intern and his delivery cart, “My e-mail said it was sub sandwiches today.”

Gonzales shrugged. “Jordan wanted pizza,” he said. “You know how it is.”

“Yes,” Logan said. “I’m starting to.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” Gonzales offered.

“No time,” Logan said. “Just stopped by to tell you I got your message and I’m on my way to do it right now.”

“Okay, thanks,” Gonzales said, waving him off.

“You’re welcome,” Logan snapped. He disappeared again.

Jordan had taken her jacket off to reveal an ice blue knit top that left her arms bare to the shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said to Gonzales. “I don’t want to get pizza sauce on my sleeve.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Gonzales said, “Be comfortable.”

Jordan’s jacket suddenly rang.

“You just have to think about eating,” she said, “and it makes the phone ring.” Jordan reached over to her jacket, which she had draped over the arm of the empty chair next to the window, and retrieved a thin wireless from the folds of white cashmere. “Jordan Rainsborough,” she answered crisply. “Yes.... Yes.... I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him yourself? Hold on.”

Jordan turned to face Ted and extended the wireless to him. Ted, still seated, saw only an erotic silhouette framed by a halo of light from the afternoon sun. “It’s Robert Rand’s attorney,” she said.

Ted was dimly aware that she was speaking to him. “Hmm?” he asked.

“Robert Rand’s attorney,” Jordan repeated. “He has to meet with you and wants to know if you can do it today.”

“Today?” Ted took the wireless. “Hullo?” he said cautiously.

“Mr. Braden? This is John Morley Jackson. I represent Robert Rand. How are you today, sir?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Good, good. Mr. Braden, I’d very much like to have a few minutes of your time today, perhaps as soon as you’re finished with those very nice people in the district attorney’s office.”

“Mr. Jackson, I’ve really got to be getting back to work.”

“Well, as it happens, Mr. Braden,” Jackson said, “In trying to locate you earlier today I called over to your offices and spoke to several of the upper management people there. They were quite understanding when I explained the urgent nature of the situation.”

Wonderful, Ted thought. Something new for my job description. Alibi witness.

“We’ll send a car for you,” Jackson said. “I’ll just have the driver wait out front until you’re available. To save time, we’ll be meeting in the offices of Mr. Rand’s appellate attorney, C. Dobson Howe.”

Ted was startled. He knew that name. “Okay,” he said.

“Great,” Jackson answered. “See you then.” There was a click on the line.

Ted handed the wireless back to Jordan. “I’m going to meet C. Dobson Howe,” he told her.

“Dobson Howe took this case?” Jordan exclaimed. She looked over at Gonzales. “Did you know that?”

“No,” Gonzales said, shaking his head. “Must have just happened.”

“Why would he want to get involved with something like this?” Jordan asked. “There’s no chance at all....” She stopped herself in mid-sentence.

“Maybe he’s got a new book coming out,” Gonzales shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. He would only be handling appellate issues and I think we know how that’s going to end up.”

“Well, that’s true,” Jordan agreed. “How about some pizza?”

It was nearly seven o’clock when the car brought Ted to the front entrance of the downtown building where C. Dobson Howe had his offices. The driver opened Ted’s door for him. “The office is on the 23rd floor,” he said. An LAPD officer standing outside the automatic doors nodded politely to Ted as he walked inside.

The lobby could have belonged to the most expensive hotel in any city. The floor and the walls were seamlessly tiled in creamy beige marble, softly glowing in the light from amber ceiling fixtures. A wide walkway of beige and sparkling gold carpet ran from the front doors to the back wall, where a mahogany table held an oversized arrangement of fresh flowers. To the left, leather armchairs and small sofas were grouped into conversation areas. To the right, a long wall of solid gold was actually a well-camouflaged bank of elevators. Ted pressed the etched outline of an arrow pointing up and an elevator door directly in front of him slid silently open. He rode it to the 23rd floor and stepped out into a darkened reception area.

No one was around. Ted saw a high circular desk made of dark gray granite in front of a wall of windows. To the left, a glass door leading to a long corridor had been propped open with a book. Ted took this to be an invitation.

At the end of the corridor Ted saw light coming from the last office on the right. He tapped lightly on the door. “Come in!” a voice boomed. Ted opened the door.

“Mr. Braden.” C. Dobson Howe was on his feet, crossing the room to shake Ted’s hand.

Corey Dobson Howe was close to seventy-seven years old but looked no older than sixty-five. He wore a lightweight black suit, expertly tailored to fit his big frame without a stray crease or fold, a cream-colored shirt and a cadet blue silk tie. A blue silk pocket square looked like a military decoration on his broad chest. He was taller than he appeared on television, at least six-foot-four. His hair was gray and his hairline had receded an inch or so back from his wide brown forehead, but his face was unlined and his dark eyes were clear.

“Thank you for coming,” Howe said warmly, as if Ted had volunteered to drop by. “Allow me to introduce Mr. John Morley Jackson. I believe you spoke to him on the telephone earlier.”

Jackson took a quick sip from what appeared to be Scotch and soda, set the glass down on the granite coffee table and rose to shake Ted’s hand. He was about sixty and dressed in a conservative dark blue suit, yet something about him made Ted think he played in a band on weekends. “Nice to meet you,” Jackson said. “Thanks for coming.”

“Please sit down,” Howe said. “Would you like a drink?”

This all struck Ted as very odd. However, a drink sounded like an awfully good idea. “Yes, thanks,” he said.

“Ice? Soda?”

“Just ice, thanks.”

Ted heard the clink of ice cubes hitting crystal. He sank into a leather sofa that faced a postcard view of Los Angeles at sunset.

The walls of Dobson Howe’s office were covered with photographs attesting to a long and distinguished career. There was Howe at age twenty addressing a meeting of black conservative students at Dartmouth; Howe as a middle-aged professor at Stanford; Howe shaking hands with President Rogan in the Oval Office; Howe accepting an award for his biography of James Madison. Above the desk, two wide gold frames were set apart from the other pictures. On the left was a photo of Dobson Howe, then twenty-nine years old, receiving a certificate from the leaders of Congress on the steps of the Capitol. On the right was the certificate, containing the text of what became part of the United States Constitution on the day it was ratified by the state of New York, December 1, 2008: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or gender.”

Ted stood up and walked behind the desk for a closer look. The Constitution had been amended many times but he’d never before met anyone who’d actually had a hand in it. Vaguely he remembered from school that the Equality Amendment was considered unnecessary and mean-spirited, although looking at the wording of it now he couldn’t recall why it had caused such a ferocious fight.

Howe was beside him, handing him a glass. He smiled when he saw Ted reading the Amendment. “That was before you were born, I suspect,” he said.

“Not quite,” Ted said. “But I was just trying to remember what it was about this amendment that had everyone so worked up.”

“It ended affirmative action,” Howe said.

Ted squinted.

“Racial preferences in hiring and admissions. Minority set-asides in government contracts. You’re too young to remember.”

Ted smiled. It was the youngest he’d felt in a while. “You’re right,” he said, “I don’t remember.”

“Of course, that was only a side effect,” Howe said. “Ending affirmative action was not a primary goal of the campaign for the Equality Amendment. The primary goal was to complete the unfinished work of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Ted sank back into the leather sofa and took a sip of Scotch. “I’m certainly too young to remember that,” he said.

Howe smiled. “I don’t want to bore you with history,” he said.

“No, no,” Ted said. “I’m interested. What was the Fourteenth Amendment?”

“It was passed after the Civil War in part to establish that black people who were born or naturalized in the U.S. were citizens, that they were entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. It forced the states to give everyone, former slaves included, a guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws,” Howe said.

Ted nodded. “What wasn’t complete about it?” he asked.

“It didn’t guarantee equality of civil rights,” Howe said. “It didn’t ban racial discrimination. It didn’t strike down segregation.”

Ted heard Jackson behind him at the bar, ice cubes hitting crystal. “Dobson, you ready for another one?” he asked.

“Not yet, thanks,” Howe answered.

“But there was no segregation in 2008,” Ted said.

“No,” Howe agreed. “Segregation had been made unconstitutional by a series of Supreme Court decisions, starting in 1954 with
Brown v. Board of Education
. However, it had not been made unconstitutional by a constitutional amendment.”

Ted was confused. “What’s the difference?” he asked.

“The difference,” Howe said, “is that a decision of the Supreme Court can be overturned by the decision of a future Supreme Court. And that makes every vacancy on the Court a crisis for those who live by the grace of the last ruling. A constitutional amendment, on the other hand, cannot be reversed simply because five of the nine justices think the time has arrived to reverse it.”

John Morley Jackson sat down on a leather chair next to the sofa. “Well,” he said, “Shall we get down to business?”

“By all means,” Howe said.

“Okay,” Jackson said to Ted, “This won’t take very long.”

Ted sipped his Scotch. It was excellent. “No rush,” he said.

Jackson shook his head. “Not this meeting,” he said. “This trial. It won’t take long. Jury selection is Tuesday. They’ll probably have a conviction by Thursday. He’d be dead on a gurney by Friday noon except that Congress stepped in and halted all California executions.”

“For the moment,” Howe said.

“For the moment,” Jackson nodded.

Ted looked from Howe to Jackson and back to Howe again. He was glad they were not his lawyers.

Jackson leaned back in a casual manner but his eyes studied Ted’s face. “Do you know Rob very well?” he asked.

“I don’t know him at all,” Ted said. “I sit behind him at the Laker games. He gave me his card once and I just happened to call last night because....” He stopped. It seemed like bad taste to mention the gambling debt of a guy on his way to the death chamber.

“Because you noticed he wasn’t there?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s what Emily said.” Jackson made a note. “Ms. Rand was very grateful that you called. She didn’t know where to begin finding people who might have seen Rob at that game, time being so short and all.”