No Way to Treat a First Lady (25 page)

Felicio conferred with his guy.

"Sí, patrón.
No problem."

The FBI man pressed stop. "Want popcorn?"

"You know," Boyce said, "if I didn't know better, I'd swear that was me."

The agent in charge chuckled. "So it was you who leaked the story about the plea bargain? That's slick, Counselor. You ask the deputy AG for a meeting just so you'd have something worth leaking."

The other agents nodded approvingly. "That's good."

"You want to make a call, or watch the second reel?"

"Have you arrested the other two people in that video?" Boyce asked.

"You mean the ones you'd swear were Felicio Andaluz and Ramon Martinez, if you didn't know better? You'll probably run into them at your arraignment. They said to say
hola.
They've been very helpful. Told us all about your phone call."

Something wrong here. Felicio had been tortured by some of the best interrogators south of the border, where forcibly extracting information was as old a profession as gold mining. This too often involved removing gold (fillings). So Felicio wouldn't have warbled for these gringos. His pain threshold
began
at crushed knuckles. What was the worst these palefaces could do to him? Threaten to take away his cigarettes?

So if they knew about Boyce's call to Felicio, which they apparently did, they had to know
on their own.

Had they tapped his fish phone? That was a wiretap he could fight.

Still, what a mess. He needed to call Beth. She'd have heard by now. Mongol farmers in their yurts would have heard the news by now.

"Boyce! Is this true?"

"Did I ask you that?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'll be out of here in an hour."

"Wouldn't bet on that, Counselor."

"As soon as I post bail."

"Who was that?"

"Agent Dokins, my new best friend. I'm surrounded by my fan club here." He cupped the phone. "Yo, J. Edgar, you going to claim I'm a flight risk?"

The agents grinned.

Boyce sighed. "They're being pricks about this, naturally. Make that two hours. Beth?"

"Yes?"

"You understand what this means? Don't say anything. You didn't know anything about this, so you'll be fine. You can tell them the truth about this. You didn't know. Everything's going to be fine now. Do you understand?"

"Boyce, you're calling from FBI headquarters after being arrested for jury tampering. By what definition is this 'fine'?"

"Just tell Babcock to bring a fresh shirt, the Turnbull and Asser, with the burgundy tie. Along with the bail. I'm not going to walk out of here in the same shirt."

Boyce emerged from the J. Edgar Hoover Building four and a half hours later, looking natty and upbeat for someone facing five years plus professional extinction. They tried to route him out the side door, but he insisted on going out the way he came. More or less every television camera in North America was there to record the moment.

"I have a short statement," he said above the roar of shutters. "After that I'm going to my office to check the U.S. Constitution to see where it says that the government has the right to harass and jail lawyers in the middle of trials. It would appear that the government is so afraid of losing this case—which they never should have brought in the first place—that they'll stop at nothing. Now they have stooped so low that the backbone of the law may be permanently bent. Thank you. See you all in court."

He could tell she'd spent the better part of the morning crying.

"You ought not to cry so much. It makes you puffy."

"Why did you do this?"

"This is no time for that. What it is time for, however, is a drink."

He ordered a Bloody Mary from room service. He flumped onto the sofa and loosened his burgundy tie.

"How'd I look on TV?"

"It was an improvement on the
Today
show. At least you weren't arrested in the middle of it." Beth sat opposite him. "I won't ask if it's true."

"Thank you."

"Is it true?"

"What's true is that Judge Dutch will have no choice but to order a mistrial. Which means you get to start over. I won't be defending you this time. But whoever does will be a better attorney than I was, because they will not allow you to testify."

Beth looked pale. "You sacrificed yourself for me?"

"I can't have my child born in prison, for God's sake."

"How did they catch you?"

"Our attorney-client relationship is about to change. Maybe the less we discuss this, the better."

He looked at the phone. "I better get on the blower. Felicio's going to need a lawyer. I need a lawyer. You need a lawyer." He chuckled. "Another great day for the profession. Everyone needs a lawyer. Maybe we could get a bulk rate at one of those firms that advertise on late night TV"

"You're awfully calm about all this."

"I wonder if they give you a court-appointed attorney when you get to the Pearly Gates? I never thought of that. What a practice that would be."

Judge Dutch issued his ruling after judicious deliberation. Determined—indeed, obsessed—with not being overturned on appeal, he checked in with his old mentor on the Supreme Court, as well as with a few other solons of the bench. Then he did what judges alone can do: he ruled.

There would be no mistrial.

The result of his interrogations had produced a total of six jurors who had watched trial coverage on their hotel television sets. These would be dismissed as alternates. This left him with twelve jurors. These twelve were now isolated on a military base under twenty-four-hour guard by U.S. Army Special Forces troops. There were no television sets in their rooms. They were transported to and from U.S. District Court in a military convoy, like al-Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Some pundits declared this slightly melodramatic, but at this point Judge Dutch no longer cared what anyone—much less the media—said. His sole goal in life was to get a verdict. If the jurors had to be housed in subterranean vaults in the New Mexico desert—fine. He began to drop dark hints that he would remove the cameras from his courtroom. Instantly the media clammed up.

He read his ruling in court. The jury was not present. He avoided looking at Boyce. Then he got to the part in his ruling stating that Boyce would not be permitted to continue as counsel. He looked him straight in the eye.

"Objection. Your Honor, may I approach?"

"No."

Judge Dutch continued reading. Defense counsel had been arraigned on charges of conspiracy to tamper with a federal jury. He also faced disbarment proceedings by the Ethics Committee of the District of Columbia Bar. Pending disposition of those cases, it would be "grossly inappropriate" and morally intolerable for Mr. Baylor to remain as counsel. Though of course he was innocent until proven guilty.

He granted Mrs. MacMann a week's delay so she could arrange for new legal representation. He gave Boyce one final, disgusted look. Boyce thought he was going to pronounce sentence of death:
And may God Almighty have mercy upon your soul.

It was a glum little party they made back at the Jefferson. Chairs were drawn up in a circle. Boyce, Beth, and half a dozen of the best legal minds in the country chewed over how exactly to proceed. Beth's phone had started ringing minutes after the news of Boyce's arrest, lawyers salivating to represent her, no matter that chances of winning at this point were slim to nil. Beth MacMann was going down. On the bright side, it was possible that she and Boyce might end up doing their time in the same facility. Wouldn't that be cozy? Thank God no one yet knew she was pregnant.

Three television monitors were on with the sound off. As the lawyers talked, Boyce's eyes kept wandering to the screens. There was Perri on
Hard Gavel,
looking scrumptious. Crudman was on with her. Curious as Boyce was, he couldn't bring himself to turn up the volume. Death by hanging, lethal injection, or burning at the stake he could take, but not the condescension of Alan Crudman.

Some commentators insisted that Beth had put Boyce up to the jury tampering. Others said, No no no, this has all
his
fingerprints on it. Did he not get that terrorist Felicio Andaluz off twelve years ago for trying to blow up the U.S. embassy in Encantado? How do you think he got his nickname, anyway?

Boyce glanced at another screen.

At least 1 percent was still undecided.

The third monitor was showing old footage of a younger Boyce and Felicio during Felicio's trial. It was always strange, Boyce thought, seeing your youthful pixelgänger on TV looking back at you, thinner, hairier, inevitably wearing a wider tie. How strange and self-mocking it must be for movie stars to watch their early flicks in the winter of their lives. Felicio looked like a right-wing version of Che Guevara—revolutionary, but clean, with haircut and new shirt.

Boyce had called Linc Caplan at Skadden, Arps to ask him to take on Felicio and Ramon's defense and to send him the bills. Oh, the bills. What sweeter justice could there be for a lawyer than to find himself on the billing end of his brethren? Boyce's own income stream, that mighty green Amazon that had been flowing toward him for so many lush years, would soon be no more than a dried and cracked arroyo.

Then he saw on one of the monitors—the video of himself and Felicio and Ramon in the hotel room! As the others continued to talk, Boyce plucked the remote off the table and turned up the volume, just in time to hear himself giving Felicio the deadline for polluting the jury.

It stopped conversation in the room. As indeed, around the nation.

The FBI videotape ended and was replaced with the image of Perri. It was
she
who had shown the tape! Perfidy, thy name is Pettengill. Boyce was stunned.

Everyone in the room was staring at him.

"Isn't someone," he said, "going to say something contemptuous about the FBI leaking its evidence to the media? Or were you waiting for me to go first?"

"It's outrageous."

"Goddamit, where do they get off?"

"A new low."

"Who the fuck—pardon me, Mrs. MacMann—do those cocksuckers think they are?"

"Thank you," Boyce said. "That was collegial of you."

"Would you excuse Boyce and me for a moment?" Beth said.

When they were alone, she said, "So that's why you went to Clintick. So there would be something newsworthy on TV the next day for your friends to beam into the jury's hotel rooms?"

"We shouldn't be discussing this."

"They would have found out it was you. Sooner or later."

"By then you'd have been in the middle of a new trial."

"So I've ruined your life twice."

" 'History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second as farce.' "

"You realize our child is going to hate us."

"So do most lawyers' kids."

The nice thing about being a judge—aside from the big chair—was that they had to come to you.

Sitting in front of him in his dark and woody chambers hung with four-hundred-year-old still lifes and portraits of fish and merchants was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The director's evident nervousness was deeply satisfying to Judge Dutch.

We'll get to the broadcast of this video in a moment, the judge began. Though it's not my case and I have no jurisdiction, I'm very, very curious to know how a show called
Hard Gavel,
hosted by Baylor's former girlfriend, came into possession of it.

The director began to answer evasively. The judge held up a hand, a gesture combining serenity and absolute power. Continue in that manner, the gesture said, and by this hand thou shalt know the true meaning of woe.

What I desire to hear from you first, Judge Dutch continued, running his fingertips along the edge of the blade of a letter opener that had once belonged to Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, is the following: Your agents videotaped Boyce Baylor and those jalapeño hoodlums in a hotel conspiring to tamper with a jury. My jury.
Why, then, did you permit them to go forward and pollute the jury?
And while we're at it, why was I not informed?

The director mumbled out some boilerplate about procedure. Seeing Judge Dutch's normally placid face staring back at him like an Assyrian lion, he stopped.

We needed, he said, to catch them in the act.

Who...
needed?

The Bureau.

Judge Dutch had indulged in violent expostulation only once before, after learning that an art dealer in Amsterdam was trying to sell him a still life of a dead flounder and two lemons, allegedly by De Grootie, but in fact by one of De Grootie's pupils, Flemm Vander Flemm.

It's no small thing to alter the metabolic rate of the director of the FBI, yet Judge Dutch succeeded. He would demand a Senate investigation. For
starters.

Now, he continued, while we are on the subject of the Bureau's possibly criminal misconduct—Judge Dutch bit down on the final syllable as if it were a crisp breadstick—
how did that videotape leak?
Or was it that FBI evidence tapes had become the latest thing in reality TV?

We're looking into that. Be assured, Judge, we are looking into it.

Do. Look
deeply
into it. And inform me of your findings. Before I hear about it on television.

Yes, Your Honor.

When you're hot, you're hot. When you're not, the hotel management shows up at the door with your bill. Ten months of three suites came to—after discount—$1,845,322, including room service. With a velvety clearing of his adenoids, the manager asked that Boyce vacate "at the earliest convenience." The "media situation," he explained, had become "disruptive to the other guests."

Simultaneously, Sandy Clintick moved to have Beth placed in custody as a "flight risk."

How Beth was planning to skip the country while under the "protection" of a dozen Secret Service agents was not clear. But feelings were running so high against her and Boyce that the polls showed most Americans in favor of putting her behind at least some kind of bars. For Boyce they favored hanging, preferably before he could be tried and after lengthy torture,
peine dure et forte.
It was all a glorious excuse for a national splurge of lawyer bashing.