5

I had barely entered my hotel lobby when I felt the tickle from the vibrator on my cell phone at my belt.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Madriani.” The melodious tone of her voice was still in my brain from our meeting. “Trisha Scott here. I did as you asked. I called Justice Ginnis’s chambers. As I suspected, he’s out of town, on vacation. They didn’t tell me precisely where. They never do. Just somewhere in the Caribbean.”

“Did they say when he would be back?”

“No. But it will probably be a while. The Court doesn’t reconvene until October, and as I told you, Arthur is recovering from some surgery, so he’s on light duty. He may not be back immediately at the start of the session when they reconvene.”

“You mean a member of the Court can be absent?”

“Sure, it happens. They just have to go with eight justices until the absent member returns.”

“They can’t have someone from the circuit court sit in?”

“No. Not on the Supreme Court. It’s constitutional. No one can sit on the Supreme Court until nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Arthur would have to step down, retire before that could happen. And if you knew Arthur, you’d know that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, particularly in the current political climate.”

Scott’s talking about the current partisan division among members of the Court. Anyone who thinks that judges aren’t political should buy a bridge or two. At the rarefied level of the Supreme Court, this doubles down in spades. There are justices who are thought to call the White House for direction on one side and powerful members of the Senate on the other before rendering an opinion on hot issues before the Court. Some would say that the situation has worsened in the last twenty years. Many of these are suffering from a lack of perspective when it comes to history. They forget that FDR threatened to amend the Constitution in order to pack the Court with more members to get his way on New Deal legislation back in the thirties.

“So what you’re saying is that if I want to talk to him, I’m going to have to either wait or trek down to the Caribbean and try to find him?”

“That’s about the size of it,” she says. “But I’d like to suggest another alternative. That is, if you’re in town overnight?”

“Currently I have a flight out tomorrow afternoon. I was going to extend it, if needed, in the event you could reach the Justice.”

“Listen. How about dinner tonight?” she says. “I can show you some of the sights of the city. Also, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What?”

“Over dinner,” she says.

“All right.”

“Then dinner at seven. I’ll pick you up at your hotel. In the lobby, at six-thirty.”

Before I can say anything more, she hangs up.

“I was a little abrupt this afternoon,” she apologizes.

I’m looking at Trisha Scott through dim lamplight over a white linen tablecloth in a Georgetown restaurant called 1789, her pick since she’s driving.

The unlit fireplace, partially covered by a summer-front, and the beamed ceiling give the décor a distinctive Colonial feel, though I’m told that the building is a nineteenth-century renovation, a town house with rooms carved into intimate dining areas accented by Early American antiques. Equestrian prints cover the walls. In the background there is the light hum of chatter at nearby tables.

“I’m sorry, but you caught me by surprise. I guess I’ve been too busy lately, under a lot of pressure,” she says. “I hope you can understand?”

“Sure.”

“Of course, I’m sitting here telling you about pressure. I can’t imagine the responsibility of trying a capital case.”

“You don’t do any criminal law?”

She shakes her head. “No. I get the jitters when large sums of money are involved, and then I only see it after all the fast trial guns have fired, the smoke has cleared, and everything’s up on appeal. I’m what you would call the law’s Monday-morning quarterback,” she says. “I can’t imagine what it would be like if someone’s life were on the line, doing it in front of a jury. The thing with Terry was enough for me. His death,” she says. “No doubt he wasn’t the best of people. In the end he was just someone I’d known. But the fact was, I had known him, shared meals, slept with him. I helped his family with the funeral arrangements when they came east with the body. There was only his mother and a sister, but they seemed lost. I’d met them a few times when we were dating, so I did what I could.”

“That was good of you.”

“What else could I do? I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

“Hmm?”

“This afternoon,” she says.

“Not at all. You were very polite.”

“But not very helpful.” She smiles at me.

“Well…” I offer her an expression of concession.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I didn’t tell you everything. In fact, I didn’t tell you the truth.”

“About what?”

“About the letter. There was a letter,” she says. “Mind you, I never actually saw it. But there were references to it.”

“References?”

“In an early version of the manuscript for Perpetual Slaves. He wanted me to proof it for him. We were still living together. He was the wordsmith writing books, I was the wordsmith writing briefs. I really didn’t have the time. I told him so. Terry never took no for an answer. It wasn’t in his lexicon. I think what he really wanted was to see if I would be shocked by the content of what he’d written.”

“And were you?”

She looks at me and nods. “He had strewn the thing with references to this letter. I only got a glance,” she says. “Because I didn’t actually proof it-the book, I mean. We got into a disagreement. It ultimately led to a rupture in the relationship. That’s what ended it.”

“Disagreement over what?”

“Whether he should use that kind of material in the book.”

“What kind of material?”

“I’m assuming it came from the letter you’re talking about. According to Terry, it was an indictment of everything American, hypocrisy piled on hypocrisy, all documented at the inception of the country’s founding. As I recall, Terry referred to it, in the manuscript, as ‘the infamous Jefferson Letter.’”

“Do you mind if I take notes?” I ask.

She looks at me. “You have to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That you won’t call me as a witness.”

“I can’t promise that.”

Her face is suddenly a mask of exasperation.

“How can I promise that? With Scarborough dead, you may be the only one who knows anything about the letter.”

“As I said, I never actually saw it. Whatever he told me, whatever he wrote that I might have seen, is now hearsay. I’m not a trial lawyer, but without the letter itself and some way to verify its contents it would be inadmissible. Am I wrong?”

“No. You’re right. Perhaps now you can understand why it’s so important that I find Justice Ginnis.”

Our drinks arrive. Scott picks up her tumbler, scotch and soda, and takes a sip as she looks at me over the glass. I can tell by the expression in her eyes that she’s weighing whether to say anything more. I’m worried that she may get up and walk. At the moment it’s her word against mine that she knows anything at all.

“I can’t say anything more unless I have assurances that you won’t call me as a witness,” she says.

“I won’t call you unless I absolutely have to. If I can find another source for the letter,” I tell her, “I won’t have to.”

She thinks about this.

“If you stop now, you’re my only source. I will have nowhere else to turn. If you tell me what you know, you may give me other leads, in which case there’s a good chance I may not need you.”

I’m making a sales pitch. She knows it. She considers this for a moment, the canny lawyer behind the icy tumbler. She puts the glass down. “You have to promise that you will do everything possible to keep me out of it.”