Worst Case Scenario (11 page)

“No,” Michaelson said. “I didn't know that, as a matter of fact.”

They were sitting across a simple wooden table in the Artemus kitchen, mugs of steaming coffee before them.

“It's a fact. That's what they threatened me with. They were serious, too.”

“Well, it's nice to have an intuition confirmed now and then,” Michaelson said. “They didn't threaten you with something like that over shoving your way to the head of the line outside an operating room.”

“You said your question mattered because a woman died who didn't have to die,” Artemus said after a long sip of scalding coffee. “That's the way I felt about my daughter. I had a lever. If I didn't use it, she was going to die and she didn't have to die. It was just as simple as that.”

“It's the lever I'm really interested in.”

“Right.”

“But you're not going to tell me what it was.”

“Can't.”

“After all,” Michaelson said, “being court-martialed isn't the kind of thing any prudent soldier would risk twice.”

Artemus smiled without showing his teeth, amused rather than provoked by the artless gibe.

“You probably aren't going to believe it, not that I care particularly, but that's not it. Fact is, it wasn't the court-martial threat that made me cave in and retire.”

“What was it, then?” Michaelson asked.

“I just looked at what I'd done, and looked back at the way it had all happened, and I knew I'd flat gotten it wrong. I don't mean when I helped my daughter, I mean from the beginning. I step into the White House, get one look at the inside of the Oval Office, and overnight every instinct I had turned to crap. First time it had ever happened. Once I realized that, I had less confidence in myself than I'd had when I was a plebe at the Point.”

“You astound me,” Michaelson confessed. “If someone had asked me to dream up twenty possible explanations for what happened to you, that one wouldn't have been on the list.”

“It was just so different to be in the middle of it while it was happening. I mean, there on the scene, at the time, everything seemed to make perfectly good sense.”

“‘While it was happening,'” Michaelson repeated pensively.

“You know what I mean. People today tend to feel warm and fuzzy when they think back on President Reagan's foreign policy, 'cause by the time he left office, the Berlin Wall was about to come down, the Soviet Union was about to bust apart, we'd just about won the Cold War, and you figure somewhere along in there someone must've done something right. But I'll tell you what, when it was going on and no one knew for sure how any of that was going to come out, the whole thing looked just a tad dicier.”

Michaelson waited, raising his eyebrows encouragingly, giving Artemus a chance to say the obvious, to cite the two irrefutable concrete examples of the nerveracking diciness he'd just asserted: the Iran/Contra mess; and the nearly disastrous summit in Reykjavik, where President Reagan had come within a stunning, naive inch of giving away the nuclear advantage of the United States without getting anything in return.

Artemus didn't cite them. Returning to the enigmatic half-smile he'd used earlier, he simply stopped talking.

Michaelson sagged a bit in his chair. The flicker of hopeful expectation that had flared briefly inside him when Artemus began to open up guttered.

“There is one potentially useful thing you can tell me,” Michaelson said then. “One thing that won't further compound the error you feel you made, and could conceivably mitigate it.”

“What's that?” Artemus asked skeptically.

“Whom did you co-opt to get the special treatment you wanted for your daughter?”

Artemus considered the question for a moment before he showed his teeth in a malicious grin.

“Dr. Marc,” he said. “Jerry Marciniak, p-h-
fucking
-d. You get a chance, you just mitigate the
hell
out of him, far as I'm concerned.”

***

“…a totally fresh biography of Gladstone,” the eager sales rep from HarperCollins who'd come in when Marjorie was two-thirds of the way through the deposition summary in
Cucurri v. Gardner a/k/a
said. “Emphasizes his human side, if you get my drift.”

“I don't think most of my customers are terribly interested in S&M,” Marjorie said. “You might try Brentano's on that one.”

“No, really,” the rep said. “Kirkus said this biography was ‘two steps above
God Is an Englishman
.'”

“I remember reading that,” Marjorie said. “I believe that comment was intended to be disparaging.”

“My whole point,” the rep said delightedly, spreading his arms over the attaché case perched on his knees. “A heaping tablespoon of sugar to help the history go down. Not history for people who already know history, history for people who love to read. Connecticut Avenue demographics on the nose.”

Grinning, Marjorie relaxed, her sales resistance overcome by the irrefutable argument.

“Send me two copies,” she said. “I'll sell the first one to a retiring lobbyist and rely on word of mouth to sell the second.”

“You won't be sorry,” the rep promised as he opened his attaché case and made quick notations in his order book. “Hey, I have a great bookstore joke for you.”

“I hope it's a quick one,” Marjorie said. “I've spent all afternoon on a problem that has nothing to do with keeping this store profitable, and I haven't gotten anywhere with it.”

The rep snapped his case shut and stood up.

“Very quick. Salesman's racing through an airport. Realizes he forgot to bring anything to read on the flight. Passes a bookstore and notices a book on its remainders table, right inside the front door:
Secrets to Sex
. Sign underneath says ‘For Sale to Adults Only.' Sounds like it might not be too bad. Hears his flight being called. Grabs the book, throws his money at the clerk, hustles to the gate, and gets on board. Settles back for some salacious delight, opens the book, and discovers that he's bought volume nineteen of
Graham's Encyclopedic Manual of Grammar, Diction and Usage
.”

The square-faced man's wire-rimmed glasses twinkled as he waited through two seconds of anxious silence. All at once Marjorie's face was blank, her eyes seemingly fixed on a horizon somewhere well beyond the storeroom at Cavalier Books.

“Come on,” he pleaded. “It wasn't
that
bad.”

To his considerable alarm Marjorie suddenly leaped from her chair.

“It is a perfectly marvelous joke, the best joke I've heard in Washington since the last time Congress tried to define middle class,” she assured him in a delighted voice. Seizing his shoulders, she spun him effortlessly toward the door. “Now scoot. I have to think.”

As soon as she'd hustled the slightly bewildered man out the door, Marjorie hurried, laughing, back to her desk.

I've been had, she thought to herself between fits of giggles. We've all been had. There wasn't any road map in the Cucurri deposition summary. The entire thing was window dressing. Classic red herring. Bedford had simply put this imaginary name on a duplicate summary of another deposition. Her own little private joke. Like the
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
plate she'd given Davidson.

Marjorie's giggles turned into a full-throated laugh. She could see Bedford, the NSC staff veteran, chortling to herself as she thought of someone stealing her computer files, laboring feverishly over them, and then racing furiously down the false trail Bedford had deliberately created.

Because that's what the case name was. A confection that an NSC computer would have identified in thirty minutes as a tantalizing lead, and which would then have sent hordes of researchers hustling up a blind alley. As
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
and the rest of the scene in Davidson's tiny office flashed through her mind once again, Marjorie was certain of it.

“Carrie?” she called, scurrying onto the sales floor.

“Yes?” Carrie answered patiently as she simultaneously propped a telephone receiver between her ear and shoulder and rang up a sale.

“Where's our last copy of Lewis and Short?”

“Reference section, foreign language gondola, bottom shelf, toward the far end.”

Marjorie found
A Latin Dictionary
by Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short exactly where Carrie said it was. She had the bulky tome open in her hands and was eagerly reading from it even before she'd made it back to the stockroom.

Five minutes later she was back on the sales floor, hurrying toward the front door.

“I'll try to be back by five-thirty,” she told Carrie breathlessly on her way out.

Carrie took advantage of the first respite from the late-afternoon trickle of customers to find the legal pad on Marjorie's desk and satisfy her curiosity about the sudden exit. The respite lasted about ninety seconds. This proved ample.

Like all respectable practitioners of the bookseller's craft, Carrie knew that Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, also wrote mysteries under the pen name A. A. Fair. And so she had no difficulty at all in understanding Marjorie's telegraphic notes:

Currere
= To run

Curo
= I run

Cucurri
= I ran

v. = versus = contra

Gardner a/k/a = A. A. Fair

Cucurri v. Gardner a/k/a
= I ran contra A. A. Fair

= Iran/Contra Affair.

Chapter Fourteen

Michaelson reminded himself that paranoia is generally unbecoming, particularly in someone old enough to know better. Him, for example. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling.

He had gotten to Cavalier Books just after four-thirty, to be met with Carrie's announcement that Marjorie had departed in considerable haste, half an hour or so before. She hadn't actually announced her destination, but Carrie and Marjorie had talked about Sharon Bedford before today. Putting two and two together, Carrie had concluded that Marjorie was headed back to Hayes & Barthelt, the main law firm for which Sharon Bedford had freelanced. She'd given every indication of thinking she was on to something, and the notes she'd left on her desk confirmed that inference.

It was at this point that Michaelson had sensed paranoia's first seductive advances. What were the chances that Pilkington or Quentin had had him followed? Small but nontrivial, in foreign service jargon. He'd seen no sign of anything like that, but of course if the people who were doing it were good enough, he wouldn't have. If he was being followed, what were the chances that he'd led the tail to Cavalier Books? A hundred percent. So was there a genuine risk that Marjorie was being followed as well? Should he rush after her, like Don Quixote in an aging Omni?

Of course not, he realized as he relaxed a bit. If he wasn't being followed, he'd feel silly; and if he was, he'd only increase whatever risk Marjorie faced by joining her.

He settled for calling the law firm and verifying that Marjorie had indeed arrived and was now closeted with the head paralegal, Mr. Davidson. Did he wish to ring Mr. Davidson's office?

He did not. He wished the receptionist to ask Marjorie to call him before leaving. The receptionist promised that she would.

***

“If you ask me how I came up with this question,” Marjorie was telling Davidson, “I'll be too embarrassed to tell you. So please just humor me.”

“Trust me,” Davidson said. “I've been dealing with lawyers for twenty-seven years.”

“Okay. Are there such things as legal encyclopedias—attorneys' equivalents of
Britannica
or
Americana
?”

“Sure. The two most popular are
American Jurisprudence Second
and
Corpus Juris Secundum
—AmJur and CJS to the initiated.”

“Do either of those have a volume titled ‘Highways to Indians'?”

“You're right,” Davidson said, “that question is off the wall. One way to find out.”

Thumbing through compact discs in a plastic box beside his computer, he chose one and popped it into the machine. After forty-five seconds he took it out and turned back toward Marjorie.

“The answers in order are no and no,” he said.

Marjorie slumped a bit.

“I was hoping for different answers,” she confessed.

“That's often the case with people who ask me questions,” Davidson said. “Like that guy who interrupted us yesterday. I'm sure he wanted a bright-line rule for choice of law, and I had to give him a five-factor balancing test.”

“And you didn't take long to do it,” Marjorie said, brightening a bit. “You got a legal research assignment, and the first thing you did was pull out a comprehensive list of legal topics so that you could research the question on your computer.”

“Right.”

“The list put the topics in alphabetical order, didn't it?”

“Yep.”

“May I see it?”

“Sure,” Davidson said. “In the off-the-wall competition, by the way, you've just rung the bell again.”

After rummaging a bit, Davidson handed over the page. Her fingers shaking just a bit from suppressed excitement as she turned it over, Marjorie scanned down the first closely printed column on the reverse side. For her purposes, the column began provocatively:

GUARANTY

GUARDIAN AND WARD

HABEAS CORPUS

HAWKERS AND PEDDLERS

HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

HIGHWAYS

HOLIDAYS

HOMESTEAD

HOMICIDE

HOSPITALS

HUSBAND AND WIFE

ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN

IMPLIED AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONTRACTS

IMPROVEMENTS

INCEST

INDEMNITY

INDIANS

“I remember you saying that, in the old days, people used to look for the law in books instead of computer databases,” she said.

“And some still do,” Davidson said, nodding.

“If you wanted to do the assignment you did yesterday by looking in a book, where would you look?”

“I'd start with the first half of the tenth series of the West Publishing Company's
Decennial Digest
, covering the period 1986 to 1991. It's basically sixty volumes of one-paragraph case notes, organized according to the topics on that list.”

“Can you show me?” Marjorie asked.

“Nothing to it.”

Crushing his cigarette and heaving himself from his chair, Davidson led Marjorie down a hall and up a small, winding staircase to the firm's law library. He walked her to a massive set of shelves near an array of carrels and gestured grandly toward three-score massive tomes. They all said
Tenth Decennial Digest
. A subtitle added “Part 1 1986 to 1991.”

As Davidson's description had indicated, the volumes were divided by topic ranges, like an encyclopedia set. Volume 22 was “Game to Homicide.” Volume 23 was “Homicide to Infants.” “Highways to Indians” didn't appear.

Marjorie felt the acid bite of bitter disappointment, but she refused to accept the verdict. Conclusions reasoned to by implacable logic could be wrong, she felt; intuitive certainties couldn't be. At least
her
intuitive certainties.

“If there's a
Tenth Decennial Digest
, there must be a
Ninth
,” she said.

“In storage,” Davidson said. He pointed at closed cupboards just below ceiling level. “At sixty volumes a crack and three thousand pages a volume, those things eat up space, and lawyers won't cite cases more than ten years old if they don't have to. That's one of the reasons West has them on-line now.”

“Might I take a look?”

“I don't see why not. No crazier than anything else we've done in the last fifteen minutes.”

Davidson found a wheeled step stool and pulled it several shelf widths down the aisle. He offered Marjorie his hand. Kicking off her low heels, she stepped onto the small and, it seemed to her, none-too-steady platform. Trying to blot the vivid image of a broken ankle from her mind, she gritted her teeth and pried the cupboard door open.

The volumes were stacked on their sides. She had to turn her head slightly sideways and read laboriously up the third stack she could see. Volume 20: “Embezzlement to Executors and Administrators.” Volume 21: “Exemptions to Federal Civil Procedure.” Volume 22: “Federal Civil Procedure to Federal Courts.” Volume 23: “Fences to Health and Environment.” And then, on the spine of the fifth volume in the third stack, she found the precious words she was looking for:

NINTH DECENNIAL DIGEST

Part 2

1981 to 1986

HIGHWAYS TO INDIANS

Brownish-red binding dust erupted from the cupboard and mustily tickled her nose as she worked that tome out from between the books above and below it. It was about the length and width of a standard volume of the
Oxford English Dictionary
. Cradling it in the crook of her left arm, she let Davidson help her down from the step stool. She lugged the massive book over to the nearest carrel and laid it delicately on the desk.

“You may want to go over and get me volume twenty-four of the tenth digest while I'm glancing through here,” she said to Davidson.

“Why? Do you want to compare that one with this one?”

“No,” Marjorie said, looking directly at him. “But it's quite likely that anything I find in here will have gotten Sharon Bedford killed, and it occurs to me that you might not want to know about it.”

“Suppose it implicates the firm in some way,” Davidson said.

“Then it probably wouldn't be hidden in this library. But I'll promise you that if it does reflect on the firm, you'll get a heads-up before I show it to anyone else.”

“Fair enough,” Davidson said. “I'll appreciate the signal. Most important, though, you make sure whoever killed Sharon gets nailed, and I'll be happy.” He sidled away.

After a few seconds of frustrated riffling, Marjorie found what she was looking for taped to the volume's inside back cover. It was a plain white business envelope, stamped but not postmarked, and addressed to Sharon Bedford.

The hiding place struck her as perfect. The book would probably never be used. Even if “Highways to Indians” was pulled down once in a blue moon, someone could read case digests in it for two hours without spotting the envelope. And if by some wild chance someone did come across it, they'd almost certainly just drop it in the mail to Bedford or at least contact her before they opened it. Bedford would have been justly confident that she could hide the envelope in this book as long as she needed to, and retrieve it whenever she wanted it.

Marjorie tucked the envelope in her purse.

“All clear?” Davidson asked from between two shelves a second or so later.

“Yes,” Marjorie said, finding to her astonishment that she was short of breath.

When she reached the reception area a few minutes later, her belly did a nauseating little flip. She noticed two men standing in the elevator lobby just beyond the massive glass doors that marked the main entrance to the firm. She told herself firmly that there was nothing intrinsically sinister about two men waiting for an elevator outside a law firm around quitting time. Her belly flipped again.

The men were wearing dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties. As Marjorie focused her full powers of concentration on the pair, she saw that they had beady, reptilian eyes, predatory curves to the thin, bloodless lips that defined their mouths, empty faces devoid of human warmth, and generally chilling demeanors.

It was then that the receptionist favored her with Michaelson's message. Marjorie called the bookstore from a phone on a table behind the receptionist's desk and quickly reached Michaelson.

“I hope I don't sound too alarmist,” Michaelson said apologetically after he'd explained his concerns. “But I did think it possible that you'd have unwanted company by now.”

“You don't sound at all alarmist to me,” Marjorie said. “In fact, there are two rather sinister-looking males loitering in the elevator lobby.”

“There's no need to make fun of my caution, however excessive it appears,” Michaelson said.

“On the contrary, there is immense need to make fun of it, but as it happens, I'm speaking quite literally.”

“Why don't you check with the receptionist and see if she recognizes them?” Michaelson suggested.

“Yes, I think so,” Marjorie said. Taking the phone from her ear and turning toward the receptionist's back, she stage-whispered, “Excuse me, do you know who those two gentlemen standing out by the elevators are?”

“Those aren't any gentlemen,” the receptionist said scornfully over her shoulder. “They're personal-injury plaintiffs' lawyers down here from New York for depositions that just finished up.”

Marjorie put the phone back to her ear.

“You can relax,” she told Michaelson. “Our fears were perfectly plausible but ultimately unfounded.”