“Jesus, Dec. I don’t want him to die alone.”
“You’re not a hospice worker. You’re a Supreme Court justice.”
“And you’re a supreme jerk.” She pressed END and turned back to the ICU. Normally, visitors were not admitted, but apparently they made exceptions for the Supreme Court.
SHE’D BEEN BY HIS BED for a half hour, sitting, hovering, pacing. She counted the machines he was hooked up to and stopped at nine. From her conversations with the chief of cardiology, the head of the unit, and the head of the hospital, he was being well looked after, Mr. Clenndennynn. She grasped that the end was near for the old man. She pulled a rolling stool up to the bed and, finding a part of his hand that didn’t have an IV or O2 saturation sensor attached, held it.
She whispered to him, “Don’t you dare leave me alone with this mess you got me into.”
Suddenly, behind her there was a commotion and she became aware of men in suits with earpieces. She heard someone saying to her, in commanding terms, “Ma’am?” She looked up. There were several men, all large, grave-looking. One was saying to her, “Ma’am? You need to vacate the room.”
She ignored him and turned back to Clenndennynn.
“Ma’am.”
She heard her name being uttered, murmurs, then no more barking at her. A few moments later there was another commotion, louder, the room filled. She looked up and there was the President. He looked stricken and his eyes were red. Hayden Cork was there, too, looking pale and drawn. She stood. She and the President stared at each other awkwardly and then embraced. The imminence of death forces intimacy. Even Hayden Cork, who gave the impression of someone who’d gone unhugged even by his own mother, embraced her.
The President’s arrival at the hospital was duly reported. At the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Hardwether, watching on TV, muttered, “Oh, great.”
Graydon Clenndennynn died at 5:42 p.m. that afternoon. He regained consciousness briefly. He opened his eyes, took in Pepper, the President of the United States, the White House Chief of Staff, and smiled as if satisfied by this bedside concentration of eminence.
“Did we win?” he whispered. Poignant, as last words go, but in this instance, far from ideal. Pepper was trying to formulate some answer when the old man closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 32
CARTWRIGHT DEATHBED VISIT TO CLENNDENNYNN CASTS PALL OVER CASE AMID CALLS FOR RECUSAL
It was one of the milder headlines of the days following.
The burial at Arlington took on the aspect of a state occasion. In attendance were the President, the entire cabinet (minus the obligatory nonattendee in case of sneak nuclear attack), and-Declan had insisted-all nine justices of the Supreme Court.
Dexter Mitchell was in conspicuous attendance. One TV commentator whispered that it reminded him of the funeral scene in The Godfather. Would Blyster Forkmorgan approach Hayden Cork as taps was sounding to arrange “a meet on neutral turf”?
Pepper had not spoken with Declan since Graydon’s death. It would be more accurate to say that Declan had not spoken to her. Crispus acted as go-between.
With the clock ticking toward Inauguration Day, there was no time for a cease-fire between the Mitchell and Vanderdamp camps. A replacement for Graydon Clenndennynn was engaged, Philip “Flip” Soyer, a much-garlanded appellate lawyer who had once practiced law with Graydon, a former Solicitor General universally acknowledged to be a Matterhorn of probity. His only public statement was to say that he saw no need to file a new brief and would endeavor to pick up where Mr. Clenndennynn had left off.
Team Mitchell also issued bland statements, meanwhile maneuvering furiously in the dark. Graydon Clenndennynn’s body was still on its way to Gawler’s Funeral Home on Wisconsin Avenue when Blyster Forkmorgan filed a motion for delay. He did this banking on Vanderdamp’s sense of orderliness; as the days went by, the mounting chaos, anathema to his Ohio soul, might impel him to throw up his hands and resign, taking VP Schmidtz down with him in the higher interests of the nation. Forkmorgan also subpoenaed a) President Vanderdamp, b) Hayden Cork, c) Justice Pepper Cartwright, d) the Secret Service agents present at Graydon’s deathbed, and e) the entire staff of the Intensive Care Unit, with the objective of finding out-as he put it-“the full extent of the ex parte discussions pertaining to Mitchell v. Vanderdamp.” Hearing of this, President Vanderdamp said to Hayden, “Could you look up in the Constitution whether I’m allowed to order summary executions?”
At the press conference announcing these developments, Blyster Forkmorgan asserted that, regrettable as it might seem, these measures were essential, “given Justice Cartwright’s continued refusal to recuse herself in the matter of Mitchell v. Vanderdamp.” Here his straightforward object was to impute as much bias to Pepper as he could. And it worked. According to almost daily polls, 80 percent expected Justice Cartwright to vote for Vanderdamp. Mitchell’s apparatchiks seized on this and dispatched their agents to appear on various TV shows to issue strident demands for her impeachment.
Meanwhile, Forkmorgan continued, “It is critical that discovery go forward so as to ascertain the extent and substance of the inappropriate discussions that were held between defendant and judge.” The President was in no sense technically a “defendant,” but the word had a nice criminal ring to it.
Adding gasoline to the flames, an ICU nurse who’d witnessed the embraces between Pepper and the President and his Chief of Staff revealed them to a reporter. It was-Pepper, the President, and Hayden silently and separately reflected-probably a matter of time before someone got hold of Graydon’s last words, and retailed those.
THERE WAS A CHILL in the justices’ conference room air just short of visible breath-vapor.
Pepper, as the juniormost justice, closed the door and stood ready to serve coffee, if asked. Normally, Silvio delighted in making her undertake this menial office, but not today. As Pepper took her seat, she passed Declan’s, and caught a faint whiff of mintiness. Oh, dear, she thought, but then who could blame him? She could use a stiff one herself.
The CJ began with a few anodyne housekeeping notes. At length he seemed to take a deep breath and said, “I thought it might be appropriate, before we dive in, to ask if anyone had any… general comments.”
No one spoke. Most justices stared at the table, as if a good movie were playing on its surface.
“I think maybe we ought… at least…” Mo Gotbaum said slowly as if each word were being drawn up by bucket one by one from a deep well, “… discuss the matter of recusal.”
The statement hovered in the air for a moment or two. He added, in a cheery tone of voice, “I stipulate it’s an entirely personal decision. I’m not for a minute suggesting compulsion. But all things being equal it might make sense at least for us all to… discuss it as an issue… qua issue.”
“Anyone see the piece in Legal Times?” Silvio ventured.
This brought a palpably awkward silence, for they had all indeed read the article by the Dean of Fordham Law-Pepper’s own alma mater. (Oh, dear.) It was entitled “Recusal Now, or Impeachment Later?”
Pepper said, “I read it.”
“Oh?” Silvio said, uncharacteristically reticent. “Ah. Well…”
Excruciating silence. Pepper said to Declan, “Chief, may I say something?”
“Of course.”
“First,” she said, “I want to apologize to all of you. I did what I did because I felt I had to be there. As to the hugs, anyone here who’s been at a deathbed knows that just… happens. It wasn’t any celebration among plotters.”
“But this wasn’t just any deathbed,” Justice Haro sniffed.