No Way to Treat a First Lady (31 page)

"Maybe he was inspired."

"Let me draw your attention to the transcript...." Babette was provided with one. "Here on page seven eighty-three, line thirty-five. Your Honor, I ask that this portion of the tape be played for the court."

The sounds of Babette's gasp and the tinkling of ice cubes, followed by a short male
"Ahhh,"
were heard.

"What was happening at this point, precisely, Ms. Van Anka?"

"He... needed... he was... he was thirsty. He was having some water."

"That doesn't sound like someone drinking. It sounds like something being immersed in water."

Babette was silent.

"Ms. Van Anka?"

"What?"

"Was he drinking?"

"I said that already."

"We can call in forensic acoustic experts to advise the court to reconstruct what that sound is."

"He had a hard-on, all right? He had a hard-on and he was going back to your room—where he was worried that you might kill him, which you did. He dipped his business in the ice water to make it relax. All right?"

Judge Dutch had to gavel the courtroom back to something resembling order. Babette's entourage was warned that if they did not stop making those sounds, they would be removed.

"And did his... business relax, Ms. Van Anka?"

"What do you want from me?"

"The truth. That's all."

"No, it didn't. He had to sort of... stuff it into his trousers."

"The President was in his late fifties. It had been a very long evening at this point, entertaining a head of state, many guests, then entertaining, I guess, you, in a vigorous physical manner. The time was now after two A.M. And yet even after exhausting lovemaking," she added, "if indeed it could be called that, are you telling the court that he
still
maintained an erection?"

"A monster."

"That's unusual."

"How would you know?"

"Ms. Van Anka," said Judge Dutch, "my patience is at an end. One more comment like that and I will find you in contempt, and you will spend the weekend in detention. Is that clear?"

"Yes.
Yes,"
Babette moaned.

"Ms. Van Anka," Beth continued, "did the President have any pharmaceutical assistance that night, to your knowledge, that would have enabled him to maintain such a... heroic erection, even after sex?"

"I..."

"Yes?"

"He had some Viagra."

Murmurmurmurmurmur.

"Viagra, the prescription medicine that enables men to achieve and maintain erections. Is that what you mean?"

"Of course."

"The President took Viagra?"

"Sort of. In a way."

"How do you mean, exactly?"

"Oh, God. It's..." Babette looked over imploringly at the judge. "It's
private."

"This is a murder trial, Ms. Van Anka," said the judge. "You are legally and morally obliged to provide such evidence as you are aware of. Which you should have done the
first
time you testified."

"All right all right. The President and I had... been intimate before. And on the last several occasions he had been unable to perform. I mean, as a man." She sighed heavily. "You know what that does to a man's ego. I wanted him to be happy and fulfilled. He was the President of the United States. If a president isn't fulfilled, then the world is at risk. I didn't want him to... I didn't want to say to him, 'Here, take this.' So I ground up a few pills into powder and mixed it with some moisturizing cream and applied it to my... self. So that it would, you know, act... topically. Like ointment."

"You created a Viagra ointment and applied it to your private parts?"

"What's
private
anymore?"

"And this topical ointment, apparently, got into the President's system?"

"Hard as the Rock of Gibraltar."

Beth said, "No further questions for the witness at this time."

"So," said Beth back at Rosedale, "was it good for you, too?"

"Not bad," Boyce said. "Not bad at all. You might just make a good trial attorney in five or six years."

"We're still not off the hook. So he was hopped up on Viagra. Funny that didn't make it into the autopsy report."

"Maybe the doctors were concerned about the dignity of the orifice."

"It still leaves me waiting for him, lurking behind the door, holding the spittoon."

"Someone else was impressed with your cross-examination. In fact, deeply moved."

"Alan Crudman? O. J. Simpson? I give up."

"Captain Cary Grayson."

"How do you know that?"

"I spent the morning with him."

"You saw Grayson?"

"Oh, I saw Grayson. Captain Grayson and I bonded today."

"How'd you get in to see him?"

"Never mind. But he's ready to be deposed. And since he looks like he's about to die any second, I suggest you get on the phone to Judge Dutch right now and set it up. Right away."

Judge Dutch gave the necessary instructions. Within an hour and a half, he, Beth, Sandy Clintick, two clerks, a stenographer, court video and sound technicians, and a notary public were roaring up Wisconsin Avenue in a U.S. marshals motorcade to Bethesda Naval Hospital. This naturally attracted the attention of the media, who joined in with their own motorcades, attaching themselves serially. By the time the procession reached Bethesda Naval, the motorcade was fifty-four vehicles long—longer even than a normal presidential motorcade. It's in the
Guinness Book of World Records,
under "Longest Motorcade."

In the rush, no one thought to notify the main gate of Bethesda Naval that the mother of all motorcades was about to roar through. When the marines saw this imperial millipede approaching, flashing more lights than most airports, they assumed that it must be none other than the President of the United States, gravely wounded. They called inside with this information, causing such alarm that every trauma surgeon in the building—naturally wanting to succor their commander in chief—rushed to the emergency entrance. When the door of the lead limousine opened and out stepped the leading participants in the trial, the doctors stared at one another in disappointment and confusion.

The admiral in charge of Bethesda Naval didn't quite know whom to call. For a moment, it occurred to him to summon the marines in force. But Judge Dutch was the face of maximum authority in the land, and when the judge informed the admiral that he had official business, there was little the admiral could do but say, This way, sir.

Captain Grayson had to be wheeled into a larger room to accommodate the juridical crowd.

It was just as well that they had arrived when they did, for the captain died of his injuries that morning at 4:30 A.M., a few hours after his deposition was concluded, of causes not yet detectable by medical science.

The tape was played the next day, in court.

Beth: Captain Grayson, you performed the autopsy on President MacMann the morning of September 29. Your prior testimony to the court was that he died of an epidural hematoma resulting from blunt-force trauma to the head. Do you wish now, under oath, to retract that testimony?

Capt. Grayson: Yes, I do.

Would you then tell the court how the President's death came about?

There was no epidural hematoma. I did observe evidence for trauma. An apparent contusion, with modest ecchymosis, but no laceration. But this was not the cause of death.

What did the President die of, Captain?

He died of lethal cardiac arrhythmia.

In other words, his heart failed?

Yes. Most likely ventricular fibrillation due to a progressive fall in blood pressure, associated with an excessive dose of medication. His heart stopped.

Were you able to determine why his heart stopped?

The President had mild coronary heart disease. But this was not what killed him. Toxicology reported a high concentration in the blood of sildenafil citrate.

Is that the chemical name for the prescription drug Viagra? The one used to help men achieve and maintain erection?

Yes.

Are you then saying that the President died as a result of an overdose of Viagra? Is this possible?

In someone with coronary heart disease, Viagra in high concentrations can be fatal. The President received a lethal dose of it.

How much of it was there in his blood?

The equivalent of approximately 300 milligrams. The pills come in 50-milligram tablets. Six tablets' worth.

What conclusion, then, did you draw from these observations?

I concluded that the President had expired following or during an act of coitus.

Did you falsify the autopsy report, including the toxicology report?

Yes, I did.

Why, Captain?

The President was one of the most decorated veterans of the U.S. Navy. He served his country in war with distinction and with valor. I could not let history record that he had died in such a way.

So you blamed his death on the bruise?

Yes.

Did you intend, in so doing, to implicate the First Lady of the United States in a murder case?

No. No. I never intended that. I regret that truly. That was—no. No.

I understand, Captain.

At the time of the autopsy, I knew only that the President had been found in his bedroom. My intention was that it be blamed on an accident. A fall in the night, in the bathroom. An accident.

After the First Lady was subsequently charged with murder, why didn't you come forward?

I wanted to. But I could not make myself do it. I was still protecting my commander in chief. I was certain...

Certain of what, Captain?

I was certain that Mr. Baylor would get you off. He gets everyone off. I'm sorry, Mrs. MacMann. I'm so very sorry.

I understand, Captain.

Forgive me, Mrs. MacMann.

I do, Captain.

At this point in the videotape, Beth asks Deputy Attorney General Clintick if she wants to question the captain. Sandy Clintick is seen declining with a shake of her head.

The front page of the
New York Post
showed a picture of a weepy Babette below a headline that could not have been larger had the news been that a meteor was about to crash into the earth and end human life:

On TV, pixel pundits tripped over one another trying to respin their earlier proclamations of Beth's certain guilt.

"There was something about Van Anka's previous testimony that never sat right with me," declared Time's reporter.

"I was never comfortable with the rush to convict Beth MacMann," said
The Washington Post's
man.

Beth's phone began to ring again, now from agents and movie producers and publishers.

"Tina Brown just called. I might be able to pay your bill after all," Beth told Boyce.

Her elation was interrupted by the news that Alan Crudman had filed a motion to quash Dr. Grayson's deathbed deposition on the grounds that his medication, which included morphine, rendered it unreliable. There were precedents for such a motion, though Vlonko, still in court charting the minute-by-minute reactions of the jury, reported that Dr. Grayson's deposition had been "fucking dynamite," leaving most of the female jurors in tears. Even if Judge Dutch did throw out the Grayson deposition, the jury might still go with its emotions.

"We could still lose this thing," he said. "We're gonna have to dig him up, Beth."

"I would really, really, rather not."

The President had been buried at Arlington Cemetery as a hero, with the highest honors a nation could bestow. The caisson bearing his body had been drawn by horses across Memorial Bridge to the solemn
tum-tum
of drums, followed by the traditional riderless horse, with reversed boots in the stirrups. At the graveside there had been a twenty-one-gun salute, an overhead flyby of a squadron of navy jet fighters in "missing man" formation, the echo of "Taps." Was it good politics for his widow and her criminally indicted lover-lawyer to send in a backhoe to dig him up to see whether he had lethal levels of Viagra in his veins?

"On the other hand," Beth said, "I'm glad they didn't embalm him, in case we do need to go back in for another toxicology. I can't believe I'm talking this way about my husband. My whole life has turned into an out-of-body experience."

"Your whole life"—Boyce patted her belly—"is right here."

"Feel."

"He wants to know whether we've got his ticket on the Lisbon plane."

"Tell him Daddy's working on it."

Babette looked eerily composed as she took the witness stand. Either she was sedated or the raised stakes had concentrated her mind. She was past hysterics now and into icy defiance. She was facing criminal indictment, not only for perjury but also for assassinating the President of the United States with an overdose of erection medicine. Most legal commentators agreed, at least, that she wouldn't be charged with first-degree murder. Negligent homicide? Wrongful assassination, with an explanation? There were no precedents.

"We are," said Edgar Burton Twimm on the
Charlie Rose
television show, "navigating in muddy water, in fog, at night, without a compass."

Beth had with her a laptop computer with a wireless Internet connection. At the other end of the connection was Boyce, still barred by an angry Judge Dutch from the courtroom. He was in a hotel room not far away, watching the proceedings on television, with his own laptop, connected to a high-speed computer line. He was able to communicate with Beth in print, on the screen, in real time.

He saw Beth on the TV, preparing to stand and begin her examination. He typed,
YOU GO, GIRL.

She rose and went to the podium, bringing the unfolded laptop with her.

Boyce typed,
CONTROL THE WITNESS.

"Ms. Van Anka," Beth began in a friendly way, "you are familiar with the substance of Captain Grayson's deposition?"

"The man was out of his skull on morphine," Babette said. "He didn't know what he was saying."

Alan Crudman preened by way of indicating to all that this was his ingenious line, not Babette's.