“God, please, no. He’ll start speaking in tongues. And it would only remind everyone of the Ruby business. She seems fond of the grandfather. Former sheriff. His name is JJ, wouldn’t you know? Droopy mustache, big shiny belt buckle, soulful eyes. He’ll do. Your wise American people love that sort of thing.”
CHAPTER 8
Declan Hardwether, at forty-nine years old the second youngest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the most powerful man in the country-at least so it was often put-was stuck in traffic.
The situation did not improve his mood, which had been sour anyway since his wife had announced several months ago that she was leaving him for a retired army colonel named Doreen, Doreen being the major’s first name.
One week prior to that breakfast table bombshell, Chief Justice Hardwether had cast the deciding vote to legalize gay marriage in the United States. After telling him that she was leaving, his wife, Tony (née Antoinette), told him that once their divorce was final, she and Doreen would marry.
“And I want to say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for that, Dec,” she said, without a trace of irony.
By noon she was gone, taking with her (so to speak) the large house in McLean outside Washington, two of the three expensive German cars, the very expensive vacation home in Maine, and the bank account, all of those being hers, anyway, benisons of inherited wealth. Tony’s maternal grandfather had poured most of the concrete between Chicago and Milwaukee.
As he boxed up his personal effects, Chief Justice Hardwether pondered in his study over a depleting bottle of Scotch whether he should go after her for half her dough. He was entitled to it, according to his reading of the law. He entertained pleasant fantasies: freezing her assets, having secret police throw her in jail.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that a messy divorce would only keep the (goddamn) spotlight on him. He no longer dared turn on the TV late at night for fear of hearing himself made the butt of another monologue joke by some half-wit talk show host.
Declan Hardwether looked out the car window at the Potomac River. The turbid water was flowing faster than his car was moving. His head hurt. He chided himself. Got to lay off the late-night snorts. For that matter, the midday snorts.
It was, he knew, not a good sign that he had started to carry little bottles of mouthwash. Had he really fooled Justice Plympton, Court den mother, when he explained that his sudden minty freshness of breath was the result of “a gum thing” that required frequent rinsings? To judge from the look on her face, no, he had not fooled Paige. Would she have given him a warm hug and said, “You know we love you, Dec,” because she was concerned about his gums?
The car continued its crawl across the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. With any luck, he’d miss his flight.
He was on his way to give a speech at Lutheran Law in St. Paul. It had been arranged months before Tony’s disastrous announcement. Canceling it was out of the question. Worse-he rubbed his forehead-he had agreed to do a Q &A after his speech. Meaning he had no choice but to face reporters. He had managed to limit his contacts with the press to smiling at the bastards and giving them a quick wave as he walked briskly from his front door to the car-Hi, hello, good morning, wonderful to see you, wonderful… -as they screeched at him, “Any second thoughts on gay marriage, Chief?” Har, har, har. The reporters weren’t the only ones camped on his front lawn. It had turned into a shantytown of protesters who, to judge from the signs they shook at him, had way too much free time on their hands:
HARDWETHER-REAP AS YE SOW!
CHIEF INJUSTICE HARDWETHER!
HARDWETHER: ROT IN HOMO HELL!
His cell phone vibrated. Tony. A text message. Can u be out of house by end of wk? Realtor wants to do Open House. Hope u r OK. Love T.
Not yet ten a.m. on a Wednesday, and the most powerful man in the country wanted a drink. Needed a drink. Maybe if he just drank the entire bottle of Listerine. Mouthwash had alcohol in it, didn’t it?
His cell vibrated again. A call. Mertz, his clerk, alerting him to a story in today’s Washington Times, an interview with Justice Silvio Santamaria, in which he described the Chief Justice’s vote in Fantods v. Utley (the gay marriage ruling) as “an abomination.” Mertz hesitated before reading his boss Justice Santamaria’s next comment, about how Justice Hardwether “should consider exchanging his black robe for a more appropriate color. Scarlet might be appropriate.”
Thanks, Silvio. Damn collegial of you.
The fact was that the Hardwether Court was a divided court. One-third of the justices had been appointed by conservative presidents; one-third by liberal presidents; and another third by presidents of no consistent ideology. Half the justices had proved to be disappointments to the presidents who appointed them, the conservatives voting liberal and the liberals voting conservative and the middle-of-the-roaders swerving like drunk drivers from right to left. Nine times out of ten, the Court voted 5-4.
Consistent razor-thin majorities are not a sign of a happy court-or a happy country. The Court had split 5-4 on affirmative action, right-to-life, right-to-death, gun control, capital punishment, school prayer, partial birth abortion, stem cell research, torture, free speech, border security, interstate commerce, copyright, immigration, pharmaceutical patents, even on a case involving graffiti. A Court that couldn’t agree whether there had been a violation of the First Amendment rights of a seventeen-year-old arrested for spray painting obscene slogans on a pair of Mormon missionaries was not likely to reach consensus on larger issues.
“It is at this point unclear,” the Times noted, “whether this Court could agree on the law of gravity.”
Personal tensions, long simmering, had begun to bubble to the surface. Some justices had barely addressed a word to each other in years, which made for a frosty atmosphere in conference where they all had to sit at a table and discuss cases and vote. Paige Plympton, the only justice who was on speaking terms with every other justice, did what she could to warm things up, but it was tough going. When she arranged a picnic outing for the justices and their families, two showed up. [6]
The Court was in this regard perhaps reflective of the country as a whole. The last presidential election had been decided by four electoral votes and a popular plurality of 14,000. The majorities in the House and Senate were thinner than slices of deli-cut salami. Even the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, normally not a hotbed of intramural dissent and backbiting, was now the scene of ad hominem remarks, leaks, and even shoving matches. The Yeats line about things falling apart and the center not holding was being quoted so often it had started to turn up on refrigerator magnets in airport gift shops. One pundit had suggested that the Treasury ought to stop printing the words E pluribus unum on the nation’s coinage and substitute Every man for himself. Even the occasional terrorist attack didn’t seem to bring the country together these days. Within a day or two, everyone was back to squabbling about whose fault it was and who should pay for it.
Scarlet, huh? You fat pompous Sicilian gasbag, Hardwether fumed.
Every court has its diva. Silvio Santamaria, 250 pounds, gel-slicked-back jet-black hair, former boxer, Jesuit seminarian, father of thirteen children, Knight of Malta, adviser to the Vatican on international law and even occasional guest advocatus diaboli in canonization cases. [7] What relish he brought to that task! A reproduction of Holbein’s Sir Thomas More hung in his chambers. Indeed, his written opinions often quoted from the movie A Man for All Seasons. He was brilliant, with a wit as caustic as drain cleaner; good company if you were in his camp and look out if you weren’t. Silvio Santamaria didn’t take yes for an answer. He didn’t disagree-he violently opposed. Didn’t demur-he went for your throat. Didn’t nitpick-disemboweled you and flossed his teeth with your intestines. First-timers appearing before the Court for oral argument had been known to wet their pants and even faint under his withering questions and commentary. His written dissents were of the type described by the press as “blistering” or “stinging.” He loved to write, and when he was not procreating more Santamarias or inveighing against the modern world, he wrote books. Scathing books. He’d published five while a justice. Their titles included The Road to Sodom and Supreme Arrogance: How the Court Is Ruining America-And What You Can Do to Stop It. He gave fiery-and rather good-speeches that had his audiences stomping on the floor and standing up on their chairs calling for-demanding!-a new Inquisition. On balance, Hardwether wasn’t surprised by the scarlet robe quote; it was a miracle Silvio hadn’t called for the Chief Justice to be impeached or-better-hanged, drawn, and quartered, his head impaled on a pike.
[6] The fact that the court was split was not Declan Hardwether’s fault. The Chief Justice has only one vote, like the rest. A divided Court inevitably sends a disturbing signal. But when a Court is unanimous, or nearly so, the country is likelier to go along peacefully with its rulings, no matter how controversial they might seem. Chief Justice Earl Warren famously cajoled his fellow justices into unanimity so that he could say the word “unanimously” when announcing the 1954Brown v. Board of Education ruling abolishing segregation in schools. Warren wanted the country to see that despite internal dissent, the Court had decided to stand together on this vital issue.