The Rose Conspiracy (24 page)

I
've got bad news for you,” Tully said on the telephone. “And I've got some good news. Which one do you want first?”

Blackstone was back in his office, moving quickly around the room, from one part of Vinnie's file to another, with his wireless headset strapped on.

“Give me the good news,” Blackstone said. “I need it.”

“Okay, on the Senator Collings deal. He's not going to press charges against you as a result of your interaction with him outside the Senate chambers.”

“I suppose that's good news,” Blackstone said. “But not that good…I didn't think he had a leg to stand on. So give me the bad news.”

“My sources indicate this guy is really going to go to war with you if you try to subpoena him as a witness in Vinnie's criminal trial. He's already getting his legal beagles on the Judiciary staff to write up research briefs on why you can't pull him into this.”

“Is that all? I assumed as much,” Blackstone said, trying to hold back a yawn. His all-night vigil preparing for oral arguments was catching up to him.

“That, and something else,” Tully said. “If you serve him with a subpoena, then he is coming after you personally. He fully plans to complain to the DC Bar Association, seeking to revoke your license before the federal bench and your authority to practice before the Supreme Court, the whole bit. They're already gearing up the smear machine. It sounds like the guy is going to make the criminal trial his beachhead.
His Normandy invasion. He will try to destroy you, J.D., if you try to serve that subpoena on him.”

Blackstone was mulling that over.

“Don't take this personally,” he said. “But what chance is there that Collings knows you have spies in his office?”

“Oh, I always know there's a chance of that,” Tully said matter-of-factly. “But honestly, I don't think this guy knows how close I am to what's going on in his office. I don't think he has any idea he's being monitored.”

“Interesting,” Blackstone muttered.

Then he stopped in his tracks.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” he cried out, and dashed over to his computer. “I can't believe I'm such an idiot,” Blackstone muttered.

“What's going on, Chief?” Tully asked.

Blackstone began typing quickly onto his keyboard as he accessed the Web.

“I'm checking the Smithsonian's Web page,” Blackstone announced. “Hold on.”

After just a handful of clicks, he was staring at the page under the title “Board of Regents.”

“I'm still wondering why I didn't check this before,” Blackstone said impatiently as he scanned the page, moving his cursor down the listing of the members of the Board of Regents for the Smithsonian.

“The Board of Regents is the governing board for the Institution,” Blackstone said. “The head of it is the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. The other regents are the vice president, who is the president pro tempore of the Senate, along with three members of the House of Representatives, and nine other independent members.”

“So?” Tully said.

“I'm not done,” Blackstone shot back. “The Smithsonian's Board of Regents also includes three members of the U.S. Senate, who are appointed by the vice president.”

Then Blackstone scrolled down the pictures of the sitting members of the board until he landed on the photo of a familiar face.

Underneath the face in the photo was the name of one of the Senate members of the Board of Regents:

Senator Beauregard “Bo” Collings

Blackstone read out the name to Tully.

“So where do we go with that?” Tully asked.

“Not sure,” Blackstone said. “Maybe Collings is in this deeper than I thought.”

“Great. Well, let me know when you come up with some bright idea about what that means. Meanwhile, I've already got a boatload of other stuff you want me to do on this case.”

“Not so fast,” Blackstone said interrupting him. “There's one thing I do know.”

“Which is…?”

“You need to get down to Bo Collings's hometown in Arkansas,” Blackstone said. “Whatever town that is, and find out everything you can about the guy. What church he joined. What clubs he belongs to. Where he would get his hair cut. Who he visits when he's back in Arkansas during election time. You already know he's a Freemason. Who else is in his local Masonic temple.”

“I'm going to have to take on an extra detail of investigators on this case,” Tully said.

“Fine. Whatever you've got to do,” Blackstone said.

After he hung up, he realized how exhausted he was. He wondered whether he should try to connect with Vinnie.

“Why not?” he said out loud and dialed her number. She picked up right away.

“Hey, thanks for showing up this morning at oral argument,” Blackstone said. “And for the card too.”

“I wanted to be there for my guy,” she said brightly. “How'd it go?”

“I see a chance,” he said. “More than a good chance actually.”

“That you'll win the motion?”

“Right.”

“Which means,” she said, “what—that they would give you permission to show the Langley note to other people?”

“Right,” Blackstone said.

He waited. But Vinnie was quiet on the other end.

“People like, who, your experts?” she finally asked.

“Correct,” he said.

“Which just might help me out of this mess I'm in.”

“That's the plan,” Blackstone said with fatigue in his voice.

“You must be tired, darling,” Vinnie said. “Why don't you come on over to my apartment? I'll fix you a nice dinner.”

“That sounds
really nice,
” he said. “But I think I'll just head home and crash. I'm in heavy-duty need of some sleep.”

“Are you sure? You know,” Vinnie said, “if you come on over, after dinner you could just fall asleep on the couch. I'll slip your shoes off and tuck you in.”

“Yeah, well…I think I'm going to take a rain check on that.” Blackstone said. “But I'll be cashing it in some time, okay?”

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.

“Oh, probably head out into the country for an hour or two. I've got a horse stabled out there.”

“That's right. You're a champion long-distance rider, I had almost forgot…want some company?”

“I wouldn't be very good company, I'm afraid. I'm pretty much all business with my horse.”

“That puts me in the same category as your horse, then,” she said with a laugh. “You seem to be all business with me too.”

“Sorry,” he said. “But your case, and your life—they're in my hands. I'm spending the rest of tomorrow working on your case…and pretty much full-time, around the clock from now until trial.”

“Okay,” she said. “Take care of yourself, J.D. I need you so desperately. In so many ways.”

“Right,” he muttered. “Take care, Vinnie.”

After taking off his headset, he didn't bother to clean up his office. Or even stuff some of the file into his briefcase as he usually did, just to have work to do in the late watches of the night when he couldn't sleep.

He trudged past Frieda in the lobby, gave her a silent wave as he walked through the front door, and headed to his car.

CHAPTER 33

T
here was the promise, the enticing hint. But like much of J.D. Blackstone's life, it didn't unfold the way he had planned.

When he lumbered through the door of his condo exhausted, having been up for forty-eight hours, he figured that he would be able to finally get some sleep. It was early evening. But the nature of his insomnia was weirdly unpredictable.

He stripped off his clothes and dumped himself into bed. He didn't remember falling asleep. But soon he was dreaming. Marilyn, his dead wife, was there in the middle of his dream. This time she kept coming in and out of focus, as if he were looking at her through a camera lens that couldn't quite get adjusted right, that kept focusing on the depth of field in the background but not the subject. He wanted to see her face. But he couldn't capture it.

Somewhere a voice said,
Don't forget…

And then he woke up with a start.

He looked at the clock. It was a little before midnight.

And he was wide awake.

He found himself now very frustrated that he had not brought any of his file on Vinnie's case to work on. He could get dressed and drive down to the office and then fetch some work to do. But that seemed ludicrous.

He clicked on his TV, and while a news program droned on in the background he flipped through several magazines he had stockpiled with the intent of eventually perusing them.

He glanced through a philosophy magazine on postmodernism. And the journal of the American Psychological Association. After that he took in a few of the current poets in an issue of the
Southern Review.
Then a Capitol Hill political newspaper.

And then an outdoor magazine. Halfway through he noticed an announcement for a new long-distance equestrian race set in the Southwest.

Maybe I'll get Blackjack up to speed and then enter it,
he thought.

That was when he had the fleeting recognition, as he had before, that in the life he was now leading he was free to do everything, virtually without constraint, but found it difficult to muster the will to want to do anything. So he would force himself ahead in a manic, pile-driving effort to keep busy. To do whatever the task was. Never satisfied, even with victory. Never at rest.

He was now beginning to realize how, when Marilyn and Beth were alive, he would leave them often. Of course, sometimes on legal cases that required some travel. Or a few speaking engagements in connection with his professorship at the law school. But often they were his private treks into the wilds to go rock climbing up the sheer face of a mountain, or kayaking down the rapids of rivers in West Virginia, Colorado, even once in South America. That last one was with a group of experienced adventurers, but the rest were solo. Marilyn resented it and said so. She asked why he had the impulsive need to go on those one-man expeditions.

For a man who prided himself on being able to come up with breathtaking solutions for insoluble legal dilemmas and who was capable of mastering a bewildering number of different intellectual disciplines, Blackstone never could come up with a satisfactory answer for that question from his wife.

Then, after a while, they spoke less and less about it. Until finally the icy acceptance of separate lives had set in.

Blackstone had begun working on solving that a few weeks before the car accident. He figured it was just a matter of coming up with the theoretical solution and then applying it to their lives. He looked at restructuring his schedule so his time and Marilyn's could mesh better. He did the same thing with scheduling time with his daughter, Beth.
But the mechanics of it didn't easily solve the emotional heart of the matter. Marilyn was still coldly resentful. Beth had grown distant and secretive, even if she was able to maintain a friendly exterior in a kind of superficial way.

And then they both were taken away from him.

Turning off the TV a little before four in the morning, he decided to try to crawl back into bed again. But he couldn't click off his mind.

He tossed and flipped around in his bed for several more hours until finally, sometime after dawn, he fell into a deep sleep.

Blackstone had not set his alarm, and he had turned off the ringer on his phones.

When he awoke, it was one in the afternoon.

And now he was feeling mildly refreshed. He climbed out of bed, put on his gym trunks, and worked out on his Nautilus. Ordinarily he would then have raced down to the office. But just then he had the urge to drive out into the country again to give Blackjack a workout. He glanced at his watch. He still had time to put Blackjack through the paces and get back into town and work at his office into the evening. He put on his jeans and a cutoff work shirt.