No Way To Treat a First Lady Page 10
“This is a key one for the defense,” a TV network correspondent whispered to his viewers like a golf commentator during a critical nineteen-foot putt. “Baylor badly wants this front and center.”
Finally Judge Dutch turned off the shusher. He told the jury that they should not assign any “undue significance” to what they were about to hear.
“Proceed, Mr. Baylor.”
“Agent Sinclair worked for you.”
“I had twenty-five agents working in that division.”
“But did he report to you?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And did it turn out that he was selling our secrets to the Chinese government?”
“Yes.”
“Hm. That’s some counterintelligence operation you had there, Agent Whepson.”
“Objection.”
“Withdrawn. Did it come as some surprise to you that one of your agents was having a fire sale of our precious national security secrets?”
“It came as a blow to everyone at the Bureau.”
“Was the Bureau criticized for lack of diligence in this matter? I understand Mr. Sinclair had been making regular visits to Las Vegas casinos, driving an Italian sports car, going on expensive golf trips.”
“There was discussion of that, yes.”
“Was anyone at the Bureau fired as a result of this calamity?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Objection. Asked and answered.”
“Withdrawn. Did the First Lady, Mrs. MacMann, make any public statements about this affair?”
“I’m not aware of any.”
Boyce took a piece of paper off the defense table. It was passed to the bailiff, who passed it to the very sulky-looking DAG, and duly admitted into the record.
“Your Honor, may I beg the court’s indulgence and read aloud just a sentence or two from this document?”
Judge Dutch nodded.
“This is from the Chicago Tribune of February twenty-seven of last year. Mrs. MacMann was in Chicago making a speech, and this is a news story about that event. There was a press conference afterwards. She took some questions. Here is what it says: ‘Mrs. MacMann said that she was “dismayed” by the recent scandal involving FBI agent Wiley Sinclair. “I think there should be some resignations on principle,” she said.’ End quote.” Boyce handed the piece of paper to Agent Whepson. “You never saw those remarks?”
“I had not seen that specific article.”
“I congratulate you on that very lawyerly response, Agent Whepson.”
“Objection. Harassing the witness.”
“Withdrawn. Were you aware of the remarks from any other source?”
“I would say it was certainly known that Mrs. MacMann had issues with the Bureau with respect to the matter.”
“And what was the Bureau’s feeling about Mrs. MacMann’s ‘issues’ with it?”
“That she was entitled to her opinion. She was naturally concerned. We all were.”
“There was no ill will toward her? No sense of ‘Who does she think she is? Why doesn’t she butt out?’ ”
“None that I’m personally aware of, no.”
Boyce took back the piece of paper.
“No further questions.” His three favorite words in all the law.
Chapter 14
It was generally conceded, even by those who remained convinced of Beth’s guilt, that the government had not had a good day in court.
Boyce’s custom after an especially good day was to hold a “press availability” on the steps of the courthouse.
He stepped out into the blinding glare of the lights, the eager smiles of the media, his number one fans and enablers. Even those who hated him loved him.
“It was a good day for the truth,” he began.
Throughout America and the world, food sprayed from mouths, TV sets were cursed at, dinner napkins hurled, channels angrily changed.
He kept his statement brief. The Secret Service, he said, had pronounced it a murder before adducing evidence that it was. The FBI, meanwhile, had it in for Beth because she had dared to criticize them for incompetence. To them, she was just a “busybody wife.”
The next day, it was reported that the head of the National Organization for Women had written a “scathing” letter to the members of the Senate Oversight Committee, demanding an investigation of the FBI for its “political persecution” of Beth. Several members of the committee bravely announced to the media that they thought this was a darned good idea. The director of the FBI, a dedicated public servant of impeccable reputation, father of three (girls), devoted husband, now found the media waiting for him on his lawn when he came home from work, demanding to know a) why he had not fired the incompetent Agent Whepson for the Sinclair affair; b) why the FBI was a hotbed of misogyny; and, for that matter, c) why he had not fired himself?
Deputy Attorney General Sandy Clintick had watched Boyce on television, thumping his chest like an alpha male gorilla. She decided that she too had better get out there on the courthouse steps and do some spinning of her own. She took a deep breath and sallied forth, head held high. She told them that she was “satisfied” with how it was going so far. Agent Whepson had been a “fine and credible” witness. Furthermore, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was above reproach. There was no vendetta against Mrs. MacMann. The government would present compelling evidence in furtherance of its case. Thank you.
Privately, Ms. Clintick was aboil with fury at the FBI for not having reassigned the case to someone other than Agent Whepson once the enormity of it had become clear. But the fact was that it had been Agent Whepson who had been on duty that morning when the call came, and once he began the investigation, that was that, it was his case. Taking it away from him only would have made the Bureau look even more suspect. Boyce Baylor was shameless, but he was also lucky.
But Beth MacMann had killed her husband with that spittoon and lied about it, and she, Sandy Clintick, was going to get her. Not because she had a grudge. President MacMann might have been the husband from hell and might even have had it coming. She wasn’t going to get Beth MacMann for that. She was going to get her because she wanted more than anything to wipe the grin off Shameless Baylor’s face and shove it up his ass.
As for Beth, she no longer suspected that Boyce was out to lose the case to punish her for pulling a Casablanca on him back at law school. On the contrary. She was now racked with guilt for what she’d done to him back then. Sitting there in court watching him eviscerate the government’s first witness against her had filled her with remorse. She kept thinking of the look on his face when she’d told him she was marrying Ken.
She and Boyce were having a quiet dinner in a private dining room at the Jefferson before Boyce went back to work to prepare tomorrow’s cross-examination of Secret Service agent Birnam.
“Boyce, I—”
That was as far as she got before bursting into tears.
“What’s the matter? Hey, it’s going fine. We’re doing fine.”
“It’s not that.” She honked into one of the Jefferson’s crisply ironed starched napkins. “Oh, Boyce, I’m so sorry.”
“Beth. It was an accident.”
She looked up from her honked-in napkin. “What was?”
Boyce leaned forward and whispered, “You didn’t mean to kill him.” He sat back. “Anyway, it’s not like he was the favorite of all my presidents.” He winked.
“What are you talking about?” Beth said, suddenly dry-eyed.
“The number two wife, the Italian, she used to throw things at me all the time. One time she threw this crystal cigar ashtray. From Steuben. Must’ve weighed five pounds. If she’d connected, I wouldn’t be here.”
“I didn’t kill Ken.”
Boyce looked at her. This woman could turn on a dime. He’d had clients like this. The guilt built up until it was overwhelming. They’d burst, then before you could hand them a Kleenex, they were over it, back in denial.
“ ‘Whatever’?”
“I’m your lawyer. I’m the last person on the planet you have to explain yourself to.”
“I was trying to say … I never told you sorry. For what I did. Back then.”
Boyce said quietly, “There’s something I never told you.”
“Tell me now.”
“When you came to my room that day?”
“Yes?”
“I was going to tell you that I was breaking our engagement.”
“What?”
“I’d fallen in love.”
Beth stared in confusion.
“There was this … guy.”
Beth stared. She didn’t know what to say.
“He awakened in me something that I didn’t know had been there.”
“You …”
“He’d been in the navy. He was so butch.”
“Dammit, Boyce. I was trying to apologize.”
“Then it turned out he was two-timing me. With this ambitious bitch.”
They kissed. First time in a quarter century. Yet it felt oddly familiar.
“Whoa,” Boyce said after what must have been five minutes. Thank God no waiter came in. The headlines! “I have to be in court tomorrow.”
Beth sighed. “So do I.”
Chapter 15
Boyce began his cross-examination of Secret Service agent Woodrow “Woody” Birnam not at his usual station right next to the witness, but from a distance. He stood at his podium by the defense table.
“Can you hear me okay, Agent Birnam?”
“Yes, sir.” Agent Birnam was in his mid-thirties and befitting his profession was in excellent physical shape.
“You have a superb record with the Secret Service.”
Agent Birnam knew better than to accept Boyce’s compliment at face value.
“You’re one of the Service’s top pistol shots, I see.”
“We’re all competent with firearms. It’s a requirement.”
“Don’t be modest, now. You’re on the competition team that’s beaten the FBI team three years running. I imagine that must be a sore point with Agent Whepson.”
Laughter. Vlonko noted which jurors joined in.
“You must shoot a great deal to maintain such a level of proficiency.”
“Objection. Agent Birnam’s marksmanship is irrelevant.”
“Your Honor, I guarantee the court that my line of questioning is more relevant than the deputy attorney general’s ceaseless objections. She’s objecting so many times that I’m beginning to worry about her blood pressure.”
“Overruled. But proceed to your point, Counsel.”
“I was, Your Honor, I was. How often do you go to the pistol range, Agent Birnam?”
“Pretty regularly.”
“Would you please define ‘regularly’ for the court.”
“Twice a week.”
“Good for you. Practice makes perfect. I see you fire a .357 magnum six-shot revolver, is that correct?”
“Yes. I also shoot nine-millimeter and occasionally .44 magnum. Also .38 caliber on occasion.”
“All these handguns, especially a .357 magnum, these are powerful guns, are they not?”
“They’re not small guns.”
“A .357 magnum produces one hundred and sixty-five decibels. Am I correct?”
“I wear ear protection.”
“I would hope so. That’s a heck of a loud sound. Have you worn ear protection every single time you have fired a handgun, Agent Birnam?”
“Objection.”
“Your Honor, I am getting to my point, if Ms. Clintick will permit.”
“It would be hard to say,” Agent Birnam said.
“Try, for the court.”
“Majority of the time, certainly. Yes.”
“Have you ever experienced ringing in your ears, loss of hearing?”
“Objection. Your Honor, this is not a doctor’s office. Agent Birnam is perfectly fit. He’s passed all his physical tests. This is pointless and harassing.”
Judge Dutch rocked twice in his great chair. “Overruled. Answer the question, Agent.”
“Nothing significant.”
Boyce lowered his voice. “No loss of hearing?”
“I’m sorry?”
Even lower: “No loss of hearing?”
“Could you repeat the question?”
Boyce raised his voice to a near shout: “Have you had loss of hearing?”
“No. Never.”
“Hm. Over the course of your lifetime, how many rounds would you say you have fired from the barrel of a handgun?”
“That would be difficult to say.”
“Try. Thousands?”
“More.”
“Tens of thousands?”
“At least.”
“Hundreds?”
“I—”
“A million?”
“I don’t have an answer to that. A lot.”
“Isn’t it true, Agent Birnam, that you can sustain significant and lasting ear damage from exposure to a single gunshot?”
“Objection. The witness is not an otolaryngologist.”
Clintick was furious. She’d been skunked and she knew it. Boyce had purposefully not filed any pretrial motions having to do with Agent Birnam’s ability to hear. He hadn’t even told Beth. He hadn’t told Beth most of his strategy, for the reason that, knowing Beth, he didn’t want to spend half the time arguing with her about how he planned to win this.
“I withdraw the question, Your Honor. Agent Birnam, you were on duty the night of the President’s passing—”
“Objection.”
“Your Honor, surely this is harassment.”
“Overruled.”
“Your post was outside the closed door to the second-floor residence, at the head of the grand staircase. According to this chart here”—Boyce pointed to the blowup of the floor plan of the residence—“that would have put you some seventy-five, eighty feet away from the closed door to the President’s bedroom—”
“Objection. The court has heard no testimony stating that the door to the President’s bedroom was closed.”
Sidebar.
“Agent Birnam, leaving aside for the time being whether the door to the President’s bedroom was closed, you would have been eighty feet away, on the other side of a door that you have said was closed. And yet you claim—”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“You state unequivocally that you heard an argument going on, so far away it might as well have been in another time zone.”
“Objection. Your Honor.”
“Mr. Baylor, I’m warning you.”
“I withdraw the figure of speech, Your Honor. Sorry. Force of habit. Agent Birnam, you say you heard this tremendous hullabaloo from nearly a hundred feet away. All the way at the other end of the residence. And what did you hear?”
“The President and Mrs. MacMann. They appeared to be arguing.”
“Over domestic or foreign policy?”
Laughter.
“Objection.”
Judge Dutch picked up his gavel and aimed the tip of it at Boyce. “That is your last warning, Counselor.”
“I ask the court’s forgiveness.”
Boyce walked toward Agent Birnam. He said in a sincere tone of voice, “Are you certain that it was the President and Mrs. MacMann that you heard?”
“Well, yes.”
“How many people were there that night in the residence?”
“Three, counting Ms. Van Anka, the guest.”
Boyce paused. He nodded, walked over toward the jury box as if deep in thought. A hush descended on the courtroom. Members of the press nudged each other. Here we go. On the other side of the country, Babette Van Anka cowered under her expensive French sheets.
“Let’s move on to another area, Agent Birnam. A year ago, the First Lady was quoted in the media to the effect that she felt there were not eno
ugh female agents in the Secret Service.…”
The evening news was loud with the sound of .357 magnums being fired and with video footage of Boyce saying to Agent Birnam, “Agent Birnam, with all the money and tremendous effort that the Secret Service devotes to keeping American presidents alive, why couldn’t you have spent ten dollars on a decent adhesive bathmat for the President’s bathroom?” followed by Ms. Clintick’s spluttering objection.
On Hard Gavel that night, Alan Crudman was drowning in false modesty.
“Perri, it’s not like me to second-guess an attorney of Boyce Baylor’s stature. But I have to say, I was amazed that he just dropped the Babette Van Anka angle today. He set up the shot and then just walked away from it. Babette Van Anka is the key to defending Beth MacMann. To try to assert that this agent had it in for the First Lady because she’d criticized the Secret Service for not having enough women agents—that just strikes me as throwing very long. Look, it’s not a secret that the President and Van Anka were—whatever word you want to use to describe them, intimate, best of friends, constant companions. There she was, on the premises the night of the President’s death, in the next bedroom down the hall. I do not know why Boyce Baylor isn’t making more of this fact.”
“Couldn’t it be,” Perri said, “that if he does make a big deal out of the fact that the President and Van Anka were lovers, that gives Beth MacMann a motive for killing him?”
“Of course it does, but that’s precisely why a jury like this”—Alan Crudman, defender of J. J. Bronco and other notably guilty defendants of color whom he had gotten off by imputing racist motives to everyone else involved, was always careful to avoid saying “predominantly black jury” when he meant to imply that predominantly black juries had entirely separate agendas and could always be counted on to acquit for tribal reasons—“would respond sympathetically to Beth MacMann.”
“Even if she had lied to cover up?”
Crudman shrugged. “Juries like this one live in the real world. Lying to law enforcement officers is just not the worst thing you could do. Plus on this jury you’ve got middle-aged women who would be predisposed to think that any philandering man who was cheating on his wife in the next bedroom would deserve anything he got. This is a low-hanging fruit. I don’t understand why Boyce Baylor doesn’t want to pick it. Every time Van Anka’s name comes up, he wants to move on. You’d think he was the one having an affair with her.”