And she smiled. “Circuitous logic? So? Isn’t that what law is all about? It’s the perfect catch-22. We didn’t invent it. We’re simply taking advantage of it.”
I was still hung up on my misgivings about this, but as much as I hated to admit it, she did seem to have a point. It was exactly the kind of clever loophole lawyers are hired to find.
“Okay,” I grumbled, not willing to verbally acknowledge her victory, and therefore struggling to move on. “So OGMM called and warned you about these preachers?”
“There’s a clerk in the outer office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who happens to be one of his most trusted assistants. He considers her like a daughter. She’s been with him since he was a brigadier general. His heart would break if he knew she was a lesbian.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“It’s the truth,” she said, smiling. “She was the one who actually typed up the memo that asked the Chief of Staff of the Army to meet with these preachers and invite them over here in the first place.”
My mind was reeling. This was a lot to take in. Finally I said, “So what do you think about these preachers?”
If I didn’t mention it before, one of the scariest things about Carlson is how incredibly fast she shifts moods. Before I could blink an eye, her smile vanished and was replaced by a snarling war mask.
“They’re the most dangerous threat we’ve faced yet.”
“Huh?” I was completely taken aback. “You’ve got to be kidding. Some bunch of overweight old southern hicks. How much damage can they do?”
I had misgivings about them, too, but the most dangerous threat we’d faced yet? Give me a break.
She leaned back in her chair and assumed this slightly superior air. “Look, Drummond, I know you find this difficult to accept, but we’re engaged in a war. It’s like the civil rights struggle of the fifties and sixties. These preachers, they’re the most potent weapon the bigots and homophobes possess. They’re the atomic weapons of the antigay side.”
I gave her a disbelieving look like I just knew she was overstating things. Because she was. Plus I knew it would piss her off. And it did.
She wagged an angry finger in my face. “Don’t you dare give me that look. I’m not exaggerating. They preach the worst kind of intolerance. They preach that homosexuals are sinful perverts, unnatural creatures, depraved seducers. They’re no different than the Catholic priests of the medieval era ordering their followers to burn witches and unbelievers at the stake. How can people listen to them? Just look how often they’ve been proven wrong – Galileo, Columbus, Scopes. Why do people believe them? If any other institution had been proven wrong on so many fundamental questions, it would be a laughingstock. It’s astonishing.”
“Katherine,” I said, in a deliberately condescending way, “you’re way too rabid on this. Like it’s some kind of no-holds-barred war. It ain’t to me. I’m a lawyer. We’ll probably lose, and if we do, I’ll just drink a beer, and maybe feel bad for a day or so, then start getting ready for the next court case.”
Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a bit, but her response was way out of proportion. It seemed I’d really whacked her unfunny bone, because she looked at me like I was the lowest thing she ever saw. Every bit of angelicism fled from her features. She actually turned this deep, dark shade of red, like there was a fire burning beneath her skin.
“Get out!” she said, coldly, controlled, but clearly on the verge of screaming.
I shrugged nervously. “Hey, don’t take it personally.”
“Get out, right now! I don’t want to see your face.”
I momentarily considered defying her, but one of the things I’ve learned in life is that when a woman’s angry at you, neither logic nor reason have a chance of prevailing. Like a vacuum sucks air from a room, a woman’s fury sucks every bit of rationality from a situation. I therefore did the only wise thing I could. I swiftly got lost.
It didn’t help that Imelda grazed me with another sizzling look when I passed by. Grumpy and the amazon stared at me, too, and they didn’t look real pleased to see me, either.
I suddenly realized something here. I was sexually stranded, isolated, alone. I was the only straight lawyer, for one thing. I was also the only male left on the defense team. Well, there was Keith, but he was in a coma (which I vaguely envied), so that left only me.
I went back to my room and turned on CNN again. I was sort of idly watching out of the corner of my eye while I relaxed on the bed and tried to think through my next step, when I caught a quick glimpse of Michael T. Barrone, one of those flashy, thirtysomething megabillionaires who’d made more money than God by being one of the early Internet pioneers. I don’t know why, because megabillionaires normally bore me to tears, but I turned up the sound.
“That’s right,” Barrone was saying to some hidden interviewer. “I did contribute the money. And I’ll keep contributing money until they tell me it’s enough.”
The interviewer’s voice said, “You’re a businessman, Mr. Barrone. And right now, this is a very unpopular cause. The Southern Religious Leaders Conference is calling for a boycott against your company. Aren’t you afraid it will harm your business?”
Barrone’s face got very steely. “The hell with my business. OGMM asked me for the money, and I’m only too damned pleased to give it to them. What’s happening here is wrong. I’ve got gay employees… Everybody does. I’m putting my money where my principles are.”
Then Michael Barrone evaporated into thin air, replaced by a shot of several hundred Americans in the cavernous lobby of what looked to me to be the Shilla Hotel, one of the swankest inns in all of Korea.
A female voice, struggling to sound dramatic, was saying, “And so, three more planeloads of gay activists arrived in Seoul today, adding to the three that landed last night, and three more are expected tomorrow, adding a new twist to what has already proven to be the most dramatic military court case in many decades. This is Sandra Milken, reporting live in Seoul.”
I fell back hard and cursed loudly. The effect was lost, because Carlson couldn’t hear me, and the cursing was directed entirely at her.
She wanted a cultural war, and by God she was going to have one. This had to be her idea, her response to all these preachers. And believe me, it was a fantastically awful idea.
You don’t import a few hundred angry, screaming American homosexuals to Korea, of all places, and expect things to work out. She was courting the worst kind of calamity and grief.
CHAPTER 15
Chief Warrant Officer Three Michael Bales could not have been more amiable or polite. He smiled so hard it was a miracle he didn’t break his face. He shook hands with holy fury and said “pleased to meet you” like he really, really meant it. He invited me into his office, offered me a seat, brought me coffee, asked me how I was doing, how I liked Korea, how I liked the accommodations at the hotel, and so on, and so on.
As performances go, it was a doozy; about what you’d expect from a professional cop who knows the way things are. See, Bales, being an experienced CID investigator, knew that he and I were on a collision course. He was the investigator who broke the case. He was the chief witness for the prosecution. He was the linchpin to every iota of evidence that pointed at my client.
He was going to end up on a witness stand where Carlson or I were going to try our best to bend him over backward and slip him the willie. We had to prove he was an incompetent bungler, the damned fool who messed up the evidence, jumped to conclusions, mishandled the witnesses, overlooked things that would exonerate my client, and just generally dicked it up.
This was inevitable. He knew it and I knew it. Any attorney representing a seemingly guilty client has no other option but to attack the credibility of the key prosecution witness.