No Way to Treat a First Lady (13 page)

"Pretty regularly."

"Would you please define 'regularly' for the court."

"Twice a week."

"Good for you. Practice makes perfect. I see you fire a .357 magnum six-shot revolver, is that correct?"

"Yes. I also shoot nine-millimeter and occasionally .44 magnum. Also .38 caliber on occasion."

"All these handguns, especially a .357 magnum, these are powerful guns, are they not?"

"They're not small guns."

"A .357 magnum produces one hundred and sixty-five decibels. Am I correct?"

"I wear ear protection."

"I would hope so. That's a heck of a loud sound. Have you worn ear protection every single time you have fired a handgun, Agent Birnam?"

"Objection."

"Your Honor, I am
getting
to my point, if Ms. Clintick will permit."

"It would be hard to say," Agent Birnam said.

"Try, for the court."

"Majority of the time, certainly. Yes."

"Have you ever experienced ringing in your ears, loss of hearing?"

"Objection. Your Honor, this is not a doctor's office. Agent Birnam is perfectly fit. He's passed all his physical tests. This is pointless and harassing."

Judge Dutch rocked twice in his great chair. "Overruled. Answer the question, Agent."

"Nothing significant."

Boyce lowered his voice.
"No
loss of hearing?"

"I'm sorry?"

Even lower:
"No
loss of hearing?"

"Could you repeat the question?"

Boyce raised his voice to a near shout:
"Have you had loss of hearing?"

"No. Never."

"Hm. Over the course of your lifetime, how many rounds would you say you have fired from the barrel of a handgun?"

"That would be difficult to say."

"Try. Thousands?"

"More."

"Tens of thousands?"

"At least."

"Hundreds?"

"I—"

"A
million?"

"I don't have an answer to that. A lot."

"Isn't it true, Agent Birnam, that you can sustain significant and lasting ear damage from exposure to a single gunshot?"

"Objection. The witness is not an otolaryngologist."

Clintick was furious. She'd been skunked and she knew it. Boyce had purposefully not filed any pretrial motions having to do with Agent Birnam's ability to hear. He hadn't even told Beth. He hadn't told Beth most of his strategy, for the reason that, knowing Beth, he didn't want to spend half the time arguing with her about how he planned to win this.

"I withdraw the question, Your Honor. Agent Birnam, you were on duty the night of the President's passing—"

"Objection."

"Your Honor, surely this is harassment."

"Overruled."

"Your post was outside the closed door to the second-floor residence, at the head of the grand staircase. According to this chart here"—Boyce pointed to the blowup of the floor plan of the residence—"that would have put you some seventy-five, eighty feet away from the closed door to the President's bedroom—"

"Objection. The court has heard no testimony stating that the door to the President's bedroom was closed."

Sidebar.

"Agent Birnam, leaving aside for the time being whether the door to the President's bedroom was closed, you would have been eighty feet away, on the other side of a door that
you
have said was closed. And yet you claim—"

"Objection."

"Sustained."

"You
state
unequivocally that you heard an argument going on, so far away it might as well have been in another time zone."

"Objection. Your
Honor."

"Mr. Baylor, I'm warning you."

"I withdraw the figure of speech, Your Honor. Sorry. Force of habit. Agent Birnam, you say you heard this tremendous hullabaloo from nearly a hundred feet away. All the way at the other end of the residence. And what did you hear?"

"The President and Mrs. MacMann. They appeared to be arguing."

"Over domestic or foreign policy?"

Laughter.

"Objection."

Judge Dutch picked up his gavel and aimed the tip of it at Boyce. "That is your last warning, Counselor."

"I ask the court's forgiveness."

Boyce walked toward Agent Birnam. He said in a sincere tone of voice, "Are you certain that it was the President and Mrs. MacMann that you heard?"

"Well, yes."

"How many people were there that night in the residence?"

"Three, counting Ms. Van Anka, the guest."

Boyce paused. He nodded, walked over toward the jury box as if deep in thought. A hush descended on the courtroom. Members of the press nudged each other.
Here we go.
On the other side of the country, Babette Van Anka cowered under her expensive French sheets.

"Let's move on to another area, Agent Birnam. A year ago, the First Lady was quoted in the media to the effect that she felt there were not enough female agents in the Secret Service...."

The evening news was loud with the sound of .357 magnums being fired and with video footage of Boyce saying to Agent Birnam, "Agent Birnam, with all the money and tremendous effort that the Secret Service devotes to keeping American presidents alive, why couldn't you have spent ten dollars on a decent adhesive bathmat for the President's bathroom?" followed by Ms. Clintick's spluttering objection.

On
Hard Gavel
that night, Alan Crudman was drowning in false modesty.

"Perri, it's not like me to second-guess an attorney of Boyce Baylor's stature. But I have to say, I was amazed that he just dropped the Babette Van Anka angle today. He set up the shot and then just walked away from it. Babette Van Anka is the
key
to defending Beth MacMann. To try to assert that this agent had it in for the First Lady because she'd criticized the Secret Service for not having enough women agents—that just strikes me as throwing
very
long. Look, it's not a secret that the President and Van Anka were—whatever word you want to use to describe them, intimate, best of friends, constant companions. There she was, on the premises the night of the President's death, in the next bedroom down the hall. I do not know why Boyce Baylor isn't making more of this fact."

"Couldn't it be," Perri said, "that if he does make a big deal out of the fact that the President and Van Anka were lovers, that gives Beth MacMann a motive for killing him?"

"Of course it does, but that's
precisely
why a jury like this"—Alan Crudman, defender of J. J. Bronco and other notably guilty defendants of color whom he had gotten off by imputing racist motives to everyone else involved, was always careful to avoid saying "predominantly black jury" when he meant to imply that predominantly black juries had entirely separate agendas and could always be counted on to acquit for tribal reasons—"would respond sympathetically to Beth MacMann."

"Even if she had lied to cover up?"

Crudman shrugged. "Juries like this one live in the real world. Lying to law enforcement officers is just not the worst thing you could do. Plus on this jury you've got middle-aged women who would be predisposed to think that any philandering man who was cheating on his wife in the next bedroom would deserve anything he got. This is a low-hanging fruit. I
don't understand
why Boyce Baylor doesn't want to pick it. Every time Van Anka's name comes up, he wants to move on. You'd think
he
was the one having an affair with her."

Beth had promised herself that she was not going to watch the evening shows. But with her feelings toward Boyce now rekindled and glowing like fanned embers, she found herself turning on
Hard Gavel,
not for the commentating and second-guessing, but to see what her competition was wearing that night. She had developed a little paranoid theory that the closer she and Boyce got, the tighter Perri's sweaters got.

It was in the midst of checking out Perri's attire that Beth couldn't help but hear Alan Crudman going on about the free pass Boyce was giving Babette Van Anka.

Beth reproached herself for her doubts. Had a lifetime in politics made her this cynical? Or was it just a lifetime with Ken MacMann?

The first infidelity had been with one of her bridesmaids. At least he hadn't dragged her upstairs during the reception, like Sonny Corleone, and thrown her up against the wainscoting. But finding out that your husband has been having it off with one of your bridesmaids, into the bargain, an old friend from boarding school, would put a dent in any new wife's confidence. She even considered leaving Ken. And she was overwhelmed with guilt over how she'd treated Boyce. From what she heard, Boyce had taken it hard. Friends said he was going through some kind of personality change, from nice guy to quiet angry guy. One said, "I hope he doesn't end up one of those people who send mail bombs."

Ken apologized for having an affair with one of her oldest friends. He blamed it on something called post-traumatic stress disorder, the name they were starting to give to Vietnam vets who were acting wiggy. He promised not to do it again. And he was as good as his word, for almost two months. Meanwhile, he appeared to have lost interest in his new wife physically, which is demoralizing six months into a lifetime partnership. And Beth liked sex. She liked sex a
lot.
She started to fantasize about Boyce. It was all so conflicting.

Meanwhile, Ken had made it clear to her that he had a plan, and not just to screw all of her old school friends. He was going to be president, and he was going to do it quickly, whatever it took, so that he could enjoy the experience while he was still young. She wouldn't be seeing much of him.

Friends remarked how changed she was. Beth didn't laugh much anymore.

It was now after 10:30. She knew Boyce went to sleep early. She waited until 10:40. Couldn't help herself.

The voice that answered was already livid at being woken up.

"What
is
it, Beth?"

"I was just listening to"—God, how was this going to sound?—"I was just thinking. I think we need to rethink the Babette Van Anka thing."

"Do you realize," Boyce growled, "how many federal agents are listening in on this conversation? Why don't you just call up the Justice Department and tell them how you think I should defend you?"

"I'm sorry."

"So you keep saying."

"Well, it's
true.
Most men like it when you apologize to them."

"Apologize in the morning, when the G-men aren't listening in. Good night. Good night, boys. Sleep tight, you incompetent bastards."

He hung up.

Beth had to get up out of bed and pace and smoke. She'd started again, a fact that had somehow found its way into the press. To hell with it. Pacing at night without smoking was like a drum majorette parading without a baton.

Was
he trying to throw the case? She was attractive, this Perri Pettengill. Why
not
go after Babette Van Anka? What
did
Ken see in her? Never mind. And the husband. Nine miles of bad road. He gave millions to Ken's campaigns—some of it probably in bags—and those Far East associates of his, real charmers. Turned out one of them, for whom Max had wheedled an invitation to a state dinner at the White House, was connected to the Burmese general who protected the poppy business. What interesting friends. To counter the unfavorable publicity, Ken had decided to make campaign finance reform a central theme of his reelection campaign. As the wise man said, You can fool some of the people some of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on.

"Why not go after Babette Van Anka?" Boyce asked rhetorically over breakfast. He was the temperature of his coffee. Hotter, probably. "You were watching her show again."

"I couldn't sleep."

"Well, watch something else. Something wholesome. Like wrestling. Or one of those reality shows where they chain people together for a week to see if they eat each other."

"They should chain lawyers together."

"That I might watch. Everyone hates lawyers—until you need one."

"Then you really hate them."

Boyce grinned. "Two points."

"Look, I'm not trying to interfere."

"Yes, you are. No wonder you were an unpopular First Lady."

"I wasn't unpopular. I was a transitional First Lady. I was plowing the ground for the ones who'll follow."

"I'd be careful with the ground metaphors. Your husband's fertilizing the lawn at Arlington."

"Charming. Really charming." Beth sipped her coffee. "I didn't sleep."

"I didn't either. My client kept calling me."

"You won't even discuss it with me?"

"All right." Boyce dabbed his mouth with the napkin. "This once I'll discuss it with you. If I go after Babette Van Anka, which I very easily could, it would be shooting fish in a barrel. I could make her look like the whore of Babylon in sixty seconds. And what would that accomplish? One thing. It would give you a motive for killing War God. The jury would reasonably conclude, Sure, she was pissed at him for humping the girlfriend right down the hall. But killing is killing. She coulda waited till morning and divorced him. Only a scheming little putz like Alan Crudman would do something so
obvious
as go after Babette Van Anka. No. I take that back. He's not dumb. He's a putz, but he's a smart little shit. He knows perfectly well that's not the key here. He's just saying it on Perri's show because the majority of the people who watch know fuck-all about trial strategies, and he can get away with saying things like that and look smart on my time. You know something else? For all I know, he may be saying that
precisely
to make you think I'm blowing this case. Did that enter your mind? So any more
questions?"

"No further questions."

"All right. I'm glad we had this talk. Let's go kick some ass."

Sophie Williams, the upstairs maid who had pointed out to Beth that her husband was unlikely to be wanting breakfast that morning or indeed any future mornings, had been the subject of furious pretrial motions.

Two months after the fateful day, she sold her story to the
National Perspirer.
It filled four pages inside. The headline on the cover was HE LOOKED PRETTY DEAD TO ME! The subhead promised "Gripping Details of the Stormy MacMann Marriage!"