No Way To Treat a First Lady Read online

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you will learn that there is a far, far simpler explanation for the President’s unfortunate and untimely demise than that his devoted wife of twenty-five years awoke out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night and seized a historic antique—she, a lover and respecter of antiques, you’ll hear testimony to that—crushed his skull, then went back to sleep, woke up, and cheerfully ordered breakfast in bed, with the corpse still cooling. The simple truth is …” His voice dropped.

  Reporters, jurors leaned forward in their seats.

  “Accidents happen.”

  Boyce turned directly to the jury, his back to the rest of the court and the world, as if this weighty matter were just between them.

  “Planes crash. Cars crash. People fall down stairs, slip in bathrooms. Who among us—who among you—has not felt a wet foot go out from under us—”

  Boyce pitched forward, grabbing the jury box rail.

  “—and caught ourselves in the nick of time? Has that ever happened to you?”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained.”

  But three jurors were already nodding at him. To hell with the prosecutor and the judge. This was between them!

  “Who among us, saving ourselves from snapping our necks or going down with our head on the tiles, has not felt a vast wave of relief and gratitude and thought, Whew! Thank you, Lord! That was a close one!”

  Boyce walked over to the prosecution’s table, where the deputy AG and her team sat, glaring at him. Boyce loved to end his opening statements here, in their territory, in their faces.

  “A death by happenstance, by accident, is no less tragic, perhaps, than any other kind of death. But”—withering glance at the prosecution—“it is not murder. It is not assassination. And it is no excuse—none!—to charge horrendous deeds to a woman whose only crime, if you want to call it that, was to have loved her husband too deeply, and too well.”

  He’d timed it to the minute. It was 4:43 P.M. Judge Umin had announced at the outset that he would adjourn every day at 4:45. His opening statement would marinate in the jury’s minds all night, barbecue sauce seeping into meat.

  Boyce sat down and bowed his head prayerfully, as if he had just taken Communion.

  Chapter 12

  You know what they’re going to call it, don’t you?” Beth said in the car on their way to the post-trial conference in Boyce’s hotel suite. “The ‘shit happens’ defense. You’ve staked my life on a wet bathroom floor.”

  Boyce was pumped. Oxygen was roaring to his brain, as if he’d just run five miles. Oh, the poor mortals, the nonlitigators, the timid souls who would never in their lives know this feeling, the thrill of owning a courtroom. A symphony orchestra conductor, a stage actor, a tenor, a great orator, an athlete at his or her peak—they knew something of it. But their stakes were relatively trivial: art, a home run, a moment of uplift for the paying audience. This—this was life or death! This was the Colosseum. He was floating in endorphin soup. All was well with the world. He was in a state of grace. This was going to be his greatest triumph ever, the crown in a shimmery career. He even forgot about his secret plan to lose.

  He looked at Beth, and she looked pumped, too, for the first time since this had all begun. He was seized with the urge to kiss her. No. Not yet, and anyway, not in the car with Agent Hickok up front. Boyce wondered about the agents.

  She had a large detail—a dozen. Athletes with Uzis. Were they spying on them? He wondered. They were professionals and honorable. But in a few days they were going to hate Boyce’s—and her—guts so badly, their trigger fingers would itch like bad cases of poison ivy. The temptation to fight back would be hard to resist.

  Watching the back of Hickok’s head, Boyce felt a pang of regret. It would pass. He had read that Ulysses Grant, commander of the Union Army during the Civil War, would stay in his tent during the ghastly battles lest the sight of all that ground-drenching blood soften his resolve. Boyce had learned that if you were going to win, win at whatever cost, you had to reach inside your head and flip the on/off switch on the conscience console. And look what you saved on electricity.

  His three connecting suites at the Jefferson Hotel, once owned by his idol, Edward Bennett Williams, had been transformed into a command post. One room was full of television screens and young associates monitoring the media. A section of the room had been turned into a remote TV studio so that Boyce could comment live, if need be, at a moment’s notice. Another room had been converted into a fitness and meditation center, complete with exercise machines and a boxing bag. During a trial, Boyce liked to hang upside down by his ankles and with boxing gloves beat a hundred-pound bag full of sand. Marvelous for the circulation and wind. There was a massage table, meditation mat, juicer, and oxygen tanks. When Boyce had turned forty-five he’d noticed that it was taking him eleven minutes instead of ten to do London’s Sunday Times crossword puzzle. Suspecting diminished mental capacity, he had submitted himself to a battery of neurologists and cognitive and memory experts. They’d found no slowing down but suggested that he inhale pure oxygen for ten minutes a day. He went them one better. During trials, Boyce slept with an O2 tube in his nose. At home in New York, this impeded amorous relations with Perri, who during the wakeful wee hours liked a bit of spontaneous num-nums.

  Another room, fitted with special locks and a 24/7 armed guard, was designated GZ (ground zero). This, Boyce confided to Beth, was mostly to psych out the prosecution. Since the thrust of his defense was that Beth was the victim of an insidious conspiracy, Boyce put out the word to his “friendlies” in the media that he was concerned about spying. He told them that he had the GZ “swept” for electronic bugs twice a week. He’d contemplated installing retinal scanners at the door to admit only those whose ocular profiles had been programmed, but in the end he’d balked at the cost.

  Boyce wasn’t so paranoid as to think that the government was tunneling under the Jefferson to spike his computers, but he did not want them learning about JRTRE, or “Jeeter.” This was the juror real-time response evaluator. No one outside a very small circle knew about JRTRE. It was something he’d devised with input from the excellent Vlonko. Every day in court, Vlonko and an assistant intently watched the faces and body language of the eighteen jurors. They entered their individual responses into laptop computers, which also generated a real-time transcript using voice-recognition software. Responses included FAVORABLE, UNFAVORABLE, AMUSED, ANNOYED, BORED, NODDING, ASLEEP, RESTLESS, ANGRY, INTENT, SMILE, SCOWL, LAUGH, CRY, HAPPY, AROUSED, RAPID BREATHING, HEART ATTACK, and forty-five other conditions experienced by jurors. Among them was GET ME OUT OF HERE.

  At the end of each day of the trial, Boyce had a real-time log of each juror’s apparent response to every second of the proceedings. Correlating all this raw human data with the biographical information on each juror required a team of eight analysts working through the night in shifts. But by the morning, Boyce went into court with a printout that told him which jurors he needed to concentrate on that day—and what they wanted to hear from him. Simple, really. It amused Boyce that none of his chest-thumping peers had thought of it. It did rather add to the cost of a trial, but he’d figure out a way to bill it to one of his corporate clients.

  “How’d we do?” he asked Vlonko.

  “Fucking better than expected.” Years of debriefing Russian defectors had left Vlonko, himself a naturalized Hungarian, with the tic of inserting the f-word in otherwise prosaic sentences. Apparently, the f-word relaxed Russian defectors. “Jurors two, six, seven, nine, and ten through thirteen were wetting themselves during your finish. One and five were sphinxy, but”—he hit keys on his laptop—“aha, yes, I was not incorrectly remembering: Number one is one-quarter Scottish, and five liked to play chicken on railroad tracks as a child, so they wouldn’t give us a reaction if you took out your cock and banged it on the defense table.”

  “I’m saving that for closing statements. Keep your eye on those two. How’d we do
with fourteen? Thought she looked uncomfortable when I hit the spittoon line.”

  Vlonko called up number fourteen’s biography on his screen. “Fucking straight. Father died of emphysema. She probably has the unpleasant associations with tobacco and spit.”

  “Make a note of that in tomorrow’s brief, would you?”

  Boyce cursed himself. Of course, juror fourteen’s father had died of emphysema. Idiot! How could he have forgotten?

  Frowning, one of his associates approached with a piece of paper.

  Boyce read it.

  “God-dammit!” he bellowed.

  “What?” Beth said anxiously.

  “We’re estimating that the trial will go to the jury in two hundred and eleven days. And the goddamn moon will be full in two hundred and eleven goddamn days.”

  He said to his team, “We’re going to have to stall. File some more motions.”

  “You gave me a heart attack,” Beth said. “What’s the problem? Are some of the jurors werewolves?”

  “The last time one of my juries deliberated under a full moon, do you know what happened? I lost.”

  “Is this a superstitious thing?”

  “A full moon affects moods, Beth,” he said crossly. “Gravitational forces are altered. Water is redistributed. Do you want your fate decided by twelve human beings whose water has been redistributed?”

  “I hadn’t factored that in.”

  “Well, that’s your luxury, isn’t it? I do have to factor ‘that’ in.” Boyce turned to an assistant. “Find out from Vlonko if he has data on the menstrual cycles of jurors two, eight, ten, and fourteen. Do they coincide with the lunar cycles?”

  The aide scurried off.

  Boyce said to Beth, “Would you poll during a full moon?” He scowled and stormed off to his exercise room to beat his sandbag.

  Beth said to an aide, “Is he always like this during a trial?”

  “He hates to lose.”

  Babette was alone in Hanging Gardens—that is, not counting the seven servants.

  Max had made good on his threat to decamp and was ensconced on his island off the coast of Panama, deep-sea fishing and cornering the world’s market in a mineral that was going to be on the cover of Time magazine in two weeks because of an about-to-be-released study showing that it might retard Parkinson’s disease. His huffy departure aboard his private jet from the Burbank airport had been recorded in all its glory by half a dozen telephoto lenses and splashed across the front pages under headlines like MAD MAX and MAX: I’M OUTTA HERE!

  Nick Naylor, now working more than full-time as the Grab–Van Anka PR man, had done what he could to spin Max’s abrupt departure as an “environmental excursion” during which his client “hoped to experience some of the thrilling marine life of the San Blas islands.” He left out the part about hooking the marine life and reeling it aboard so that Manolo could club it to death and serve it to him for dinner with lime juice and shaved coconut.

  Nick had been working hard of late. When not trying to spin Max to the media as successor to Jacques Cousteau, he’d been acting as an ad hoc record producer—yet another new role for him—trying to put together a music album showcasing Babette’s lifelong commitment to Middle East peace, working title “Babette Does Jerusalem.” A better title might have been “Mother of All Headaches.”

  Babette was a wreck. She hadn’t been out of bed since the visit to the deputy attorney general’s office. A nightmare. Up until then, they had been pleasant, these people. Then suddenly comes this summons—that’s right, summons—to come to Washington—the next day. Not “Oh, Ms. Van Anka, so sorry to bother you, would you mind terribly popping in at your convenience, and by the way, we love your work,” but “We will expect you in our office at ten A.M. on Tuesday.” The cheek of these people. Ken MacMann would have fired them all.

  She showed up all right, with not one, not two, but three lawyers. Of course she was there to cooperate in any way. That ice queen deputy attorney general prosecutor, without even asking if she’d like a cup of coffee, began the grilling. Do you stand by your statements to the FBI agents the morning the President was found dead? Excuse me, for this I flew three thousand miles? To be insulted? You could have asked me this over the phone. Do you stand by your statement, Ms. Van Anka? Yes. You told them you said good night to the President around twelve-thirty. If that’s what I said. That is what you said. Excuse me, am I on trial here? Silence. Morris, Howard, Ben, explain to the deputy attorney general.

  Ms. Van Anka, you told the FBI agents that you went to bed at twelve-thirty. Is this a correct statement? That’s what I said. I watched some television and fell asleep, I wake up, the President is dead and now I’m on trial. What is this, Gaslight?

  Ms. Van Anka, were you and the President on intimate terms?

  Intimate terms? Do you mean did he confide in me? Did I confide in him? Did he rely on me for input about the problem of the Middle—

  Ms. Van Anka, were you and the President intimate physically? Did you have a sexual relationship?

  What kind of question is that?

  A direct question, Ms. Van Anka.

  Who do you think you are, the National Perspirer? That’s a grossly invasive question. And you, a woman, asking it. Because I enjoyed a warm relationship with the President, you assume he was interested in my body. It’s an insult. Talk to my lawyers. Take your pick, I have three. And I can get more. We have nothing but lawyers in L.A. Next time I’ll charter a 747 and fill it with lawyers. Don’t think I wouldn’t. Money is not an issue with us.

  Ms. Van Anka, we have to ask these questions. If you testify at this trial, you will be cross-examined. You’ll be cross-examined about the statement you gave to the FBI agents that morning. Moreover, you will be cross-examined by Boyce Baylor, Mrs. MacMann’s attorney. You’ve heard of him? He will ask you these questions and many other questions. Your lawyers here know that.

  So, why do I have to testify, anyway? I didn’t see her clop him on the head with the spittoon. I’m not a witness. Why do you even need to involve me in this?

  Because, Ms. Van Anka, you were a guest in the White House the night the President died. You were one of the last people to see him alive. If we don’t put you on the stand, it would be tantamount to saying that we don’t believe the testimony that you gave to the agents. And Mr. Baylor will call you as a witness. And if there are inconsistencies, any little holes in your original statement, he will drive trucks through them, Ms. Van Anka. Eighteen-wheelers.

  I do not understand. You’ve got the murder weapon, the Secret Service man heard the shouting, you’ve got her fingerprints and the dent in his skull from the spittoon. Why do you need me? Do you have any idea what my life has become? I doubt it. Do you know what stress this has caused? This could affect my career. Let me tell you all something: This could affect the peace process in the Middle East.

  Upon Babette’s return from Washington, the city she had once ruled and now loathed, she played the part she had scripted for herself and took to her bed. She’d stormed out of the Justice Department not knowing what they were going to do with her. Another minute there, she couldn’t take. Morris, Howard, Ben, we are leaving, now. There was this consolation to being a superstar—you knew how to make an exit.

  The lawyers discussed among themselves all the way to Los Angeles on Morris’s jet while Babette watched her old movies on DVD with the sound down so she could listen to them. None of them came right out and said she was schtupping him, but it was obvious from how they talked that there was little doubt in their minds. So humiliating. Yet it was only a taste, a soupçon, of what lay ahead if she was put on the stand.

  The next day came the call from Morris, who’d just gotten off the phone with some deputy prosecutor—how many did they have, for God’s sake?—to tell her that yes, they were going to call her to testify. It would look too awkward if they didn’t. Don’t leave the country. Make yourself available. Don’t worry, everything will be fine, just tell the tr
uth.

  The truth! In the next hour, Babette ate three pints of Ben & Jerry’s Celebrity Ripple ice cream. A week in bed, not answering the phone, watching her movies, pints, quarts, gallons of ice cream. Even her silk pajama pants felt tight in the waist.

  She watched opening day. Of the billions of human beings who glued their eyeballs to television sets, few watched more intently than Babette Van Anka. Even in extremis to use the bathroom, she held on, bursting, until Judge Dutch called fifteen-minute recesses. The Clintick woman had, thank God, mentioned her only in passing. And Boyce Baylor—oo, a sharp one and no mistaking, and not so bad looking, either, no wonder Lady Bethmac had a jones for him back in law school—didn’t even mention her in his tirade against the U.S. government. What was that about? Well, all for the good. Maybe this wouldn’t be about her after all. For a second, Babette almost felt slighted. Then she decided to celebrate with just one more spoonful of Celebrity Ripple. All right, two spoonfuls.

  Chapter 13

  Having established the more than adequate credentials of FBI agent Jerry Whepson, DAG Clintick asked him to tell the court what he had observed the morning of September 29.

  “There was a great deal of activity on the grounds when myself and Agent Fitch and the members of the FBI crime scene technicians arrived,” Agent Whepson began. “The Secret Service especially were in a high state of activity. They were all over the place. A helicopter was up. Dog handlers appeared to be searching the grounds. Uniformed agents, their special response teams, were present in force.”

  “What would this level of activity suggest to you?”

  “That they were looking for someone, or some persons. At this point, all we knew was what we had been told by the Secret Service, that the President had been killed.”

  “Objection,” Boyce said. “Your Honor, it had hardly been established then or even now that the President had been ‘killed.’ ”

  This being rather at the root of the whole enchilada, Boyce’s objection caused the first sidebar conference—those cozy get-togethers at the bench between attorneys and the judge—of the Trial of the Millennium. Fifteen minutes of furious wrangling over a word. At least it gave the TV commentators time to preen. One remarked that if the trials depicted in the old Perry Mason TV dramas had been presented realistically, the show would still be running because Perry’s first case would still be going on. Another remarked that Boyce Baylor would not stop at trying to strike references to the President’s having been killed. He would insist that there was no actual proof that the President was even dead. The Trial of the Millennium was off and running, like a garden slug galloping across a wide slate patio on a warm July day.