Inside the White House the attorney general was passing a few minutes with the President’s chief of staff, William C. Dorfman, whom he detested.
Dorfman was a superb political operator, arrogant, condescending, sure of himself. An extraordinarily intelligent man, he had no patience for those with lesser gifts. The former governor of a Midwestern state, Dorfman had been a successful entrepreneur and college professor. He seemed to have a sixth sense about what argument would carry the most weight with his listeners. What Dorfman lacked, the attorney general firmly believed, was any sense of right and wrong. The political expedient of the moment always struck Dorfman as proper.
The real flaw in Dorfman’s psyche, the attorney general mused, was the way he regarded people as merely members of groups, groups to be manipulated for his own purposes. Over at Justice the attorney general referred to Dorfman as “the Weathervane.” He had some other, less complimentary epithets for the chief of staff, but these he used only in the presence of his wife, for the attorney general was an old-fashioned gentleman.
Others in Washington were less kind. Dorfman had racked up an impressive list of enemies in his two years in the White House. One of the more memorable remarks currently going around the cocktail-party circuit was one made by a senator who felt he had been double-crossed by the chief of staff: “Dorfman is a genius by birth, a liar by inclination, and a politician by choice.”
Just now as he listened to Will Dorfman, the senator’s remark crossed the attorney general’s mind.
“What happens if this guy gets acquitted?” Dorfman asked, for the second time.
“He won’t,” the attorney general, Gideon Cohen, said curtly. He always found himself speaking curtly to Dorfman.
“There’ll be a dozen retired crocks and out-of-work cleaning women on that jury, people who are such little warts they’ve never heard of Chano Aldana or the Medellín cartel, people who don’t read the papers or watch TV. The defense lawyers won’t let anyone on that jury who even knows where Colombia is. When the jurors finally figure out what the hell is going on, they’re going to be scared pissless.”
“The jury system has been around for centuries. They’ll do their duty.”
Dorfman snorted and repositioned his calendar on the desk in front of him. He glanced at the vase of fresh-cut flowers that were placed on his desk every morning, one of the White House perks, and helped himself to a handful of M&Ms in a vase within his reach. He didn’t offer any to his visitor. “You really believe that crap?”
Cohen did believe in the jury system. He knew that the quiet dignity of the courtroom, the bearing of the judge, the seriousness of the proceedings, the possible consequences to the defendant — all that had an effect on the members of the jury, most of whom, it was true, were from modest walks of life. Yet the honest citizen who felt the weight of his responsibilities was the backbone of the system. And ten-cent sophisticates like Dorfman would never understand. Cohen looked pointedly at his watch.
Dorfman sneered and hid it behind his hand. Gideon Cohen was one of those born-to-money Harvard grads who had spent his adult life waltzing to the top of a big New York law firm, a guy who gave up eight or nine hundred thou a year to suffer nobly through a tour in the cabinet. He liked to stand around at parties and cluck about the financial sacrifices with his social equals. Cohen was a royal pain in a conservative’s ass. Even worse, he was a snob. His whole attitude made it crystal clear that Dorfman couldn’t have gotten a job polishing doorknobs at Cohen’s New York firm.
When Cohen looked at his watch the third time, Dorfman rose and stepped toward the door to check with the secretary. As he passed Cohen, he farted.
Alone in the chief of staff’s plush, spacious office, Gideon Cohen let his eyes glide across the three original Winslow Homer paintings on the wall and come to rest on the Frederick Remington bronze of a bronc rider about to become airborne, also an original. More perks, gaudy ones, just in case you failed to appreciate the exalted station of the man who parked his padded rump in the padded leather chair. The art belonged to the U.S. government, Cohen knew, and the top dozen or so White House staffers were allowed to choose what they wanted to gaze upon during their tour at the master’s feet. Unfortunately the art had to go back to the museums when the voters or the President sent the apostles back to private life.
Ah, power, Cohen mused disgustedly, what a whore you are!
Behind him, he heard Dorfman call his name.
Three minutes later in the Oval Office Dorfman settled into one of the leather chairs as Cohen shook hands with the President. George Bush had on his Kennebunkport outfit this afternoon. He was leaving for Maine just as soon as he finished this meeting, which Cohen had pleaded for.
“The dope king again?” the President muttered as he dropped into a chair beside Cohen.
“Yessir. The drug cartels in Colombia are issuing death threats, as usual, and the Florida senators are in a panic.”
“I just got off the phone with the governor down there. He doesn’t want that trial in Florida, anywhere in Florida.”
“You seen this morning’s paper?”
George Bush winced. “Mergenthaler’s on his high horse again.”
Ottmar Mergenthaler’s column this morning argued that since the drug crisis was a national crisis, the trial of Chano Aldana should be moved to Washington. He also implied, snidely, that the Bush administration was secretly less than enthusiastic about the war on drugs. “I detect the golden lips of Bob Cherry,” Bush said. Cherry was the senior senator from Florida. No doubt he had been whispering his case to the columnist.
“I think we should bring Aldana here, to Washington,” Cohen said. “We can blanket the trial with FBI personnel, convict this guy, and do it without anyone getting hurt.”
Bush looked at his chief of staff. “Will?”
“Politically, it’ll look good if we do it right here in Washington in front of God and everybody. It’ll send a message to Peoria that we’re really serious about this, regardless of Mergenthaler’s columns. Stiffen some backbones in Colombia. If— and this is a damn big if — we get convictions.”
“What about that, Gid?” the President asked, his gaze shifting to the attorney general. “If this guy beats the rap, it sure as hell better happen down in Florida.”
“We can always fire the U.S. attorney down there if he blows it,” Dorfman said blandly and smiled at Cohen.
“Chano Aldana is going to be convicted,” Gideon Cohen stated forcefully. “A district jury convicted Rayful Edmonds.” Young Rayful had led a crime syndicate that distributed up to two hundred kilos of crack cocaine a week in the Washington area, an estimated thirty percent of the business. “A jury’ll convict Aldana. If it doesn’t happen, you can fire your attorney general.”
Dorfman kept his eyes on Cohen and nodded solemnly. “May have to,” he muttered. “But what will a conviction get us? When Rayful went to jail the price of crack in the District didn’t jump a dime. The stuff just kept coming in. People aren’t stupid — they see that!”
“This drug business is another tar baby,” the President said slowly, “like the damn abortion thing. It’s political dynamite. The further out front I get on this the more people expect to see tangible results. You and Bennett keep wanting me to take big risks for tiny gains, yet everyone keeps telling me the drug problem is getting worse, not better. All we’re doing is pissing on a forest fire.” He sent his eyebrows up and down. “Failure is very expensive in politics, Gid.”
“I understand, Mr. President. We’ve discussed—”