No Way to Treat a First Lady (17 page)

"I... had the impression... yes?"

Boyce nodded. "And did these forces try to accomplish that by spreading rumors that you and the President were lovers?"

Babette nodded. Her chin quivered. She looked into her lap. Then, as if on cue, she burst into tears.
"Yes,"
she sobbed.

Boyce shook his head at the iniquity of it all. "Was this personally painful to you, Ms. Van Anka?"

"You have no idea."

"How did it make you feel, as a woman, that people would say such vile, wicked things—"

"Objection. Your Honor, is defense conducting a cross-examination or a support group session?"

"Ask your question, Counsel."

"How did it make you feel, as a woman?"

"It made me feel"—Babette sniffled—"that for all our progress as a gender, that we still have a long way to go."

"Ms. Van Anka, did you in February of two years ago personally carry a confidential message from President MacMann to the Prime Minister of Israel?"

Babette's eyes widened. Over the years, she had embroidered this nothing of a story into such a heroic tapestry as to make Bayeux blush. She had told dozens of people that the President had asked her to carry a "top secret" message to the Israeli Prime Minister. In fact, the message consisted of, "Tell that bagel-biter his new press secretary has the best honkers in the Fertile Crescent." As Babette told the story, she made it sound as though the President had entrusted her with a plea not to use atomic weapons on Syria.

"Yes"—Babette nodded—"I did. But I can't—"

"Of course I won't ask you to divulge the contents of a highly classified message having to do with national security."

"Objection."

"Withdrawn. Now, Ms. Van Anka, let us turn to a subject that the prosecution seemed to find so personally distasteful...."

Okay, Babs, you 're doing great. Now we're going to play connect the dots.
His investigators had found the first dot in an interview that Babette had given to one of the women's magazines years ago, just after she had married Max.

"I'm referring to the business of the personal items, the underwear and such from that store in Los Angeles. Did you not give an interview to one of the women's magazines stating"—Boyce glanced disapprovingly at the prosecution—"freely and openly and I might add, indeed proudly, that you and Mr. Grab enjoy what one might call a full and loving intimate relationship?"

Babette wasn't entirely sure where this was going, but at this point she would have followed this man up onto an exit ramp of the 405 Freeway.

"Yes. Max and I have a wonderful relationship."

The sound of choking came from the media.

"Thank you for your candor. And did you tell this magazine that you and your husband both believe that the way to sustain a healthy, intimate relationship is to"—Boyce smiled benevolently—"keep things in the bedroom
interesting?"

"Yes." Babette blushed.

"Objection."

"Overruled." Judge Dutch, along with the billion or so people watching, was dying to see where this was going.

"And did you tell the interviewer, without embarrassment—in fact, with evident joy—that your husband enjoys it when you put on sexy underclothing?"

"I did."

"Ms. Van Anka, because of your busy schedules, you and your husband are
apart
much of the time, is that not true?"

"Yes? Yes."

"Does it make you feel close to your absent husband to wear these articles of intimate clothing?"

"Oh, yes."

"Objection."

"Withdrawn. Do you wear these items only when you are with your husband, or sometimes when you are apart?"

"I bring them with me on trips. To remind me of him. When I feel them against my skin, I feel I'm... well..."

"Thank you. I know these are terribly private matters. When you are apart from your husband, do you ever put on these articles and call him on the phone?"

Connect the dots. Come on, Babs.
Babette blushed, smiled, stared into her lap, brushed away a strand of hair. "Sometimes I put on the things so that I can
pretend
that we're together."

Boyce phrased the next question carefully, knowing that there had been no outgoing call to Max from the Lincoln Bedroom on the night of September 28-29.

"Were you planning to make such a call to your husband that night at the White House?"
Just a few more dots and you can go back to saving the Middle East and the caribou.

"Yes, I was. I... that was one of the reasons I retired early."

"But you fell asleep before you could?"

"Yes."

"You retired at twelve-thirty A.M. That would have been only nine-thirty P.M. on the West Coast."

"Right. Max wouldn't be home until later, so I was going to stay up and call him."

"You told the FBI that you got into bed with the television on."

"Yes. I turned on the television. I usually fall asleep."

Now follow me very, very closely here.

"Is there a particular show that you watch late at night?" In media interviews, Babette talked incessantly about her passion for watching public television, where you could always find something "thought-inspiring." (Like the public service announcements for Saab.) Boyce had read every one of these interviews.

"I try to watch"—Babette looked imploringly at Boyce—"you know, substantial shows."

She meant "substantive," but she was trying.

"Public television?"

"Objection! Your
Honor."

"I'll rephrase. What sort of television?"

"Public television. Talk shows. Documentaries..."

With his back to the jury, Boyce looked directly into her eyes and said very carefully,
"Did you turn on the public television channel that night in your bed?"

"I... yes. I'm sure I... yes."

"And you told the FBI that you fell asleep."

"Yes. I was tired. Such an evening. So many Latin dignitaries. They're exhausting. So talkative."

"So you fell asleep,
with the TV on?"

"Yes."

"You fell asleep with the television on, set to the public TV channel. This was sometime after twelve-thirty A.M.?"

"Yes."

"Your Honor, with the court's permission, I would like to have received in evidence the
TV Guide
listings for the evening and early morning of September twenty-eight to twenty-nine."

A copy of the
TV Guide
from that week was duly entered after a lengthy sidebar initiated by a distinctly unhappy-looking deputy attorney general.

Boyce handed the
TV Guide
to Babette and asked her to read the listings for the early morning of September 29 for WETA, the local public television channel.

Babette put on her intellectual glasses and read, "One A.M. to three A.M.,
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

She looked up at Boyce.

No, no. Do not smile at me.

She caught herself.

A murmur went through the courtroom.

"Would you tell the court what
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
is?" Boyce asked.

"It's a film. A great film. A great American film."

"Would you tell the court what it's about, briefly?"

"It's about two couples in an unhappy marriage. I mean,
really-really
unhappy."

"And what takes place in the movie?"

"Oh, a lot of anger. Shouting. Throwing things. Screaming."

"Shouting, screaming, throwing things?"

"For
starters."

"The television in the Lincoln Bedroom is fifteen feet from the bed. Would you have had the volume up so that you could hear?"

"Very up."

"So a movie showing people arguing loudly was playing in the Lincoln Bedroom, not far from where Secret Service agent Birnam was stationed, between one A.M. and three A.M.?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Ms. Van Anka. No further questions at this time, Your Honor."

They were calling it "the Timeline of the Millennium."

Normally in criminal trials, timelines—chronological orderings of events—are broken down into minutes. The one Boyce and his team beavered up was in hundredths of seconds. This prompted snide comments among the media that he must have located the White House residence cockpit flight recorder.

Boyce's timeline alleged that an incompetent, vengeful FBI agent Whepson and a resentful, hearing-impaired Secret Service agent Birnam had been alone with the President's cooling corpse for thirty-seven seconds, giving them time to emboss the President's forehead with the Revere hallmark.

Deputy Attorney General Clintick fought like a lynx to have the timeline excluded. She was under increasing pressure following Boyce's astonishing cross-examination of Babette Van Anka.

President Harold Farkley was getting more and more questions about the case, and they were being asked with even less than usual courtesy. One day, after announcing a historic engineering initiative to prevent the Missouri River from overflowing and drenching America's breadbasket, and deploring racial profiling—former secretary of state Colin Powell had again been pulled over by a Virginia State Trooper and spread-eagled across the hood of his car—he was accosted in an unseemly manner by the traveling White House press corps, demanding to know if he had played an "active" role in prosecuting his well-known nemesis, Mrs. MacMann. None, none at all, he averred. His press secretary told him that Bob Woodward, Investigative Reporter of the Previous Millennium, was "making inquiries." Harold Farkley's mouth went dry.

Having lived all his life in the shadow of his own mediocrity, he was determined to defy his karma and win the upcoming nomination. The last thing he needed was a front-page
Washington Post
article ("First in a Series of Articles") with the headline:

He instructed his press secretary to put out the word—and not quietly—that he had been "skeptical" of the evidence against Beth "all along."

In due course, articles reflecting this new line appeared. The sources were not attributed directly, but there was enough DNA in them to alarm the attorney general. He in turn instructed his press secretary to put out the word—loudly—that he too had had "qualms" about the evidence "from the beginning" but that Deputy Attorney General Clintick had been "avid" to prosecute.

In due course those articles appeared, causing Sandy Clintick to break out in a rash. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make itch.

On
Hard Gavel,
Alan Crudman's jealousy over Boyce's masterful handling of the case had caused him to evolve into a public second-guesser for the prosecution. It was something of a career reversal for a man who had once boasted that he could have gotten Adolf Hitler acquitted.

In the middle of last night's show, he had gotten carried away in his fever to demonstrate that Agents Whepson and Birnam could not possibly have put on latex gloves, grabbed the spittoon, embossed the presidential forehead, removed the gloves, and replaced the spittoon between 7:33:00 A.M. and 7:33:37 on September 29, while Beth was in the bathroom barfing. Crudman leapt out of his chair to reenact the scenario, lapel microphone still attached, yanking his mike out of its socket and upsetting a water glass.

Perri's attitude toward Boyce had become openly antagonistic. Boyce had stopped coming home on weekends. She couldn't even wheedle anything out of his team as to what was going on behind the scenes. When they did speak, she was unable to get anything out of him. He didn't respond to her cooey little nudgings. His conversation consisted of, "Uh-huh, uh-huh. Listen, gotta go." It was all a bit... much. Hadn't Perri nursed him back to emotional health after his disastrous fourth divorce from the socialite mountain climber—what's more, at a time when she should have been concentrating on her own career?

With her producers, she pretended that Boyce was keeping her fed with tidbits. Meanwhile, as she discussed the case on television every night for a larger and larger audience, Perri had become consumed with what, for her, was the larger question of the Trial of the Millennium: Were Boyce and Beth doing it?

The tricky part in getting Judge Dutch to allow his timeline was that the only person who could attest to Agents Whepson and Birnam's being alone with the corpse was—his client, and of course there was no way he would put her on the stand. One of the triumphs of the American justice system is that the guilty—that is, the accused—does not actually have to defend himself. He can just sit there while lawyers fire spitballs at the accusers and make them out to be the real villains.

"We go now," said evening news anchorman Peter Jennings, "to our legal correspondent. Jeff, how did it go today?"

"Peter, this was another
bad
day for the prosecution. Mrs. MacMann's lawyer, Boyce Baylor, introduced a timeline of the morning of the President's death that is so minute, so
detailed,
that you have to wonder if this jury, or any jury, would be able to keep it all straight. It tracks the movements of eighteen people in and out of the presidential bedroom over a period of two hours. At the heart of Baylor's argument is a critical thirty-seven-second period when, as he claims, FBI agent Jerrold Whepson and Secret Service agent Woody Birnam were alone with the President's body. He contends that, acting out of personal animosity toward Mrs. MacMann, they stamped his forehead with the Paul Revere silver hallmark on the spittoon so that it would emerge as a murder weapon. The defense contends that the President died in the night as a result of an accidental
fall.
For the past three days, Baylor has
hammered
at Whepson and Birnam
relentlessly.
In the end, they did not categorically
deny
that they were alone with the body while Mrs. MacMann was in the bathroom. I have to say, whatever you think of the argument that this is all some government conspiracy, these were
effective
cross-examinations, especially coming after his
devastating
cross-examination of Babette Van Anka. In the end, the jury may conclude not that Mrs. MacMann is
innocent,
but that she is not, beyond a reasonable doubt,
guilty.
Peter?"