The Hearing (29 page)

They hung up, and after twenty minutes the phone rang again.

“It’s Lyle Dutweiler, Gus. I have someone with me who wants to talk to you.”

In a second Gus heard the voice of the President.

“Gus? It’s Dave. How are you?”

“Fine, Dave. How’s it going?”

“I wanted to tell you personally, Gus, that I appreciate what you and Samantha are going through. I admire your courage, and
I want to say something.”

Gus waited. Silence. Then he said, “Yes?”

“We are going to win this, Gus. I want you both to know, you and Samantha, sitting in that limousine, that the country is
going to have you on the Supreme Court. We are going to find out who put that Mercedes where it is, who’s behind this, and
we’re going to get it out of there, whatever it takes. Period. That’s it.”

“I appreciate that, Dave. I’ll pass it on to Samantha.”

“May I talk to her?”

“Of course. Here she is.”

Gus handed the phone to Samantha. Taking it, she asked him, “Who is it?”

“The President.”

“The President! Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Say hello. Talk to him.”

“Hello?”

She listened.

“Yes. Yes, sir. Thank you. Me too. Yes, sir. I will. Thank you. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

Gus said, “What’d he say?”

“Wow! I spoke to the
President
. I actually spoke to the President of the United States.”

“What did he say?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember?”

“I was so excited I forgot to listen.” Then she looked at him. “Yeah. He told me to keep my chin up.”

Two hours later, Eric Taeger, watching CNN alone in his darkened office at the car center, was interrupted by a White House
messenger delivering a package. Taeger tore the package open and found Phil Rothman’s card clipped to a hot-off-the-press
copy of the early edition of the
Washington Post
. A front-page story, quoting an anonymous source at the White House, carried a three-column headline:

DAVE TO SAM: ‘CHIN UP!’

Taeger read it, grunted, and dumped it in the waste-basket.

In the limousine, Rothman was back on the phone.

“I’ve got news.”

Gus said, “I can’t stand the suspense.”

“There was never an agreement between your father and any tobacco company.”

“What the hell does that mean?” His voice was raised, angry. “Forgive me, Phil. I’m a little on edge. What is it exactly you’re
trying to tell me.”

“I just got back from another drive-around with Harrington. He looked like he’d been fighting with lions. He tried to bargain
again, would we give them a time-out, cooling-off period, would we do this, do that, and when I kept saying no, no, no, all
of a sudden he said, ‘Well, what the hell, it was all a phony anyway.’ I said, ‘Phony, whaddya mean phony?’ He said he’d just
spoken with Vicaro, who told him the whole agreement story was a hoax. The document itself is a forgery. The whole thing never
happened. Vicaro made it all up because he hates you. Nothing better to do in prison than think up schemes to hurt Gus Parham.”

“That’s a lie, Phil.”

“Right. It’s all a lie.”

“I mean, it’s a lie that the agreement never happened. My father told me about it the day before he died.”

“You’re the only one who says that, Gus. As far as Harrington and Vicaro and everyone else is concerned—including the President—the
matter’s over, ended, never happened. All a big mistake. Mistake’s been corrected. Period.”

Samantha was watching him with a troubled what’s-he-saying look.

“I’ll have to think about all this, Phil. Let me call you back in half an hour.”

“What’s to think about? It’s over. We won.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Gus put the phone down, and looked at Samantha. She gazed back, worried, but didn’t speak.

“Samantha, I don’t know what to do.”

Go along with the lie? Say the agreement never happened? He was a judge. Get on the Supreme Court with a lie? The last time
he could remember lying, he was in high school.

Gus sweated in the heat and the darkness, and he thought, I know it happened. I
know
it’s true.

He sighed. The odor filling his nostrils made his eyes water.

So far the charges against him had been lies and distortions. But this was true. Would he deny it? He’d never been a politician,
and the thought of becoming one now—a political judge, a political justice of the Supreme Court—angered him. He’d known a
corrupt state court judge once. Did a small favor for a friend, not much more than a hand
shake, and five years later he was the biggest whore in Alabama.

But what could Gus do? His father had placed the family in a position of potential enrichment if marijuana or cocaine was
decriminalized. So if he was on the Supreme Court, and the time came—
Hacker v. Colorado
, limited legalization of cannabis, the thin edge of the wedge—would he vote against it and look honorable? Or vote for it
and maybe get rich? Whatever he did, would anyone who’d heard about the agreement—Harrington, Vicaro, Chapman, Samantha, Michelle—believe
he’d ruled impartially? Would even
he
believe it? Could he trust his heart?

Would he go along with Rothman? Easy to do that. Rothman’s an attorney, White House chief counsel. He knows best. Don’t be
one of those moralistic prigs who ruin everything just to prove how principled they are.

Gus looked at Samantha. Her face was set in an expression of resolute silence. A thirteen-year-old who knows when to keep
her mouth shut. Imagine that.

“Are you reading my mind, Samantha?”

She shook her head.

What was Rothman wanting him to do, expecting him to do,
certain
he would do? Why, nothing at all. Simply refrain from laying his head on the block. Forget what his father had told him.
Forget why his father killed himself. Conceal, deceive, mislead. Which would be worse, disclosure of the agreement or concealment?
Give the victory to Vicaro and Harrington or protect the lie, let everyone believe no agreement had ever been made?

Could he do that? Live with that lie, hide it for the sake of something he thought was more important? Well—more important
than truth? More important than honor? What old-
fashioned words. His father had tried to live that lie and ended up a suicide.

Had Vicaro won? Was he going to let Vicaro win?

Maybe the senators who would vote for or against Gus’s confirmation had a right to know about his father’s agreement with
Vicaro and the tobacco company. But Phil would never agree to let Gus disclose the agreement. All the White House people,
Justice Department people,
everyone
slaving away for his confirmation would think Gus was an ungrateful, self-righteous lunatic. Was this just some kind of false
piety? All the good he knew he could do on the Supreme Court—throw that away for some nineteen-year-old agreement he hadn’t
even heard about until yesterday? Throw it way for the sake of
appearances?
That would be crazy. Of
course
it’d be crazy.

And yet …

“What do you think, Samantha?”

“I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I have to decide between something that’s a lie and something that’s wrong.”

“Can’t you just do what’s right?”

“That doesn’t seem to be one of the options.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I can understand.”

Her face was dirty and her hair matted, but her eyes glinted in the limousine’s half-light. Maybe what this needed was an
application of thirteen-year-old innocence—thirteen-year-old innocence tempered with the hard reality of murder and attempted
rape.

He said, “I have to decide whether to allow a lie, and
maybe get confirmed, or bring out the truth, and probably not get confirmed.”

She waited, expecting more.

He said, “That’s it.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah.”

“So tell the truth.”

Easy. She hadn’t even had to make a decision.

He thought about it, and then said, “Let me explain a little more, see what you think.”

“Okay.”

Looking at her—that sweat-soiled T-shirt, stringy hair. And the eyes. Intense. So
serious
.

“The agreement my father made with the tobacco company—you heard me talking about that.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you understand it?”

“I think so. If you were on this court there might be some decision you could make and because of that deal with the company
you’d get a lot of money.”

“And that’d be bad, wouldn’t it? If making money for myself influenced how I voted on a case.”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“So these senators who are going to vote for whether or not I should be on the Court, do they have a right to know about that
agreement and decide for themselves whether they think it might influence me?”

“I don’t know.”

“No opinion?”

“Well, it would be
good
if they didn’t know, because then it couldn’t make them vote against you. But if they
should
know, I’m not sure.” She hesitated. “It’s too complicated. I don’t know enough. What do you think?”

“I’m not sure either. I think maybe I know, but I don’t like what I know.”

“You know what my dad, what Larry, used to say?”

“What’s that?”

“He said if you can’t make up your mind about something, just imagine you made a certain decision and then see how you feel
about it. If it makes you feel peaceful, it was the right thing. Like imagine you tell everyone about the agreement, okay?
Everyone knows. You told them. How does that make you feel?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Yes you are. You’re smiling.”

G
us called the command truck and got Michelle on the line.

He said, “You’ve heard the news.”

“That there wasn’t an agreement.”

“There was an agreement, Michelle. My father told me about it. It’s just that for some reason Vicaro and Harrington have decided
to suppress it.”

“If it’s true, Gus—”

“It’s true. There
was
an agreement.”

“I believe you.”

“This isn’t like telling someone you feel well when you don’t. It’s not saying you’re busy for dinner when you’re not. This
is—”

“Don’t lie, Gus. If someone asks you, tell them, yes, there was an agreement.”

“And if no one asks? Because it never comes up? No one even knows enough to ask?”

He heard her sigh. He wondered how much sleep she’d had. How long would it take them to get over all this—assuming they got
out alive in the first place? Would he and Michelle and Samantha ever be normal people again?

“Gus …”

“Yes.”

“You have to tell the truth. I mean, any way it has to be done. If you have to tell people, then you have to tell people.
You’re not sitting in that car for a lie, Gus. Neither is Samantha.”

“It means losing the confirmation.”

“It doesn’t matter what it means.”

“It means letting Vicaro and Harrington win.”

“You have to tell the truth, Gus. God will do what he wants.”

“I’ll call later.”

He hung up, and Samantha said, “What’d she say? You know, what you should do?”

“She said the same as you.”

She beamed. “So that’s what you’re going to do, then.”

Twenty minutes later, Gus called Rothman.

“What’s up?”

“You’re not going to like this, Phil.”

“What is it?”

“Hear me out. Try to withhold judgment until you’ve had a chance to consider what I’ve said.”

“Just tell me. What is it?”

“The agreement my father signed with Briggs & Paulman and Vicaro’s father …”

“Yes?”

“If really happened. You know that. The agreement really exists.”

“Okay, so I know it. Now what?”

“I’m not going to lie about it.”

“Of course not. You don’t have to lie about it. I told you that. Harrington’s forgotten all about it.”

“If I know it’s true, and I know it’s important and relevant, and I conceal it, that’s a lie, Phil.”

“Oh, Gus, come on. You’ve been in that limo too long. Don’t do this to me.”

“This limo has nothing to do with it. It’s very simple. The agreement is true, I know it’s true, it’s an important, relevant
piece of information for the committee, and it ought to be part of the discovery package.”

“Discovery package? This isn’t a trial, Gus, this is a confirmation hearing. You are under no obligation to disclose anything.
The committee asks questions and you answer them. If they don’t ask, you have no obligation to disclose.”

“I have a moral obligation, Phil. If they knew about the agreement they’d ask about it for sure. I can’t capitalize on their
ignorance.”

“Gus, you’re very tired and stressed, you admit that?”

“I admit it, but that has nothing to do with what I’m saying. I’m talking about truth and responsibility. Fatigue and stress
don’t change that.”

“Gus, no one’s asking you to lie. Why do you feel so compelled to answer a question no one’s even going to ask?”

“Because if they knew enough to ask, they’d ask.”