James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

“Meg, I’m sorry. It was a war.”

“But I’m still waiting!” She twirled around, her arms outstretched. And in that one gesture, in those few seconds, I realized the complete truth of what she was saying. Our house was not the one on Dupont Circle that Meg deserved, but a small frame bungalow on the wrong side of Capitol Hill. Cracks were visible in our plaster walls. The piano had broken keys. The roof leaked.

Through soft sobs Meg continued, “I’m not a selfish woman. I admire the cases you take, really I do. I want the poor people and the colored people to be helped. But I also want something for my girls and me. Is that so wrong?”

She wasn’t wrong. Maybe I had let her down by worrying too much about my own conscience, not thinking enough about her expectations and the life she believed she was getting when she married me.

“I love you, Meg. You know I adore you.” I reached and touched her face. Her dark hair fell across my fingers. We could have been back in Harvard Yard or walking in the moonlight along the Charles.

A sudden knock, and Mazie entered the room. “’Scuse me, Mr. Ben. They’s a man at the door. Says it’s urgent.”

“Who is it, Mazie?” said Meg.

“He say his name Nate, and…” She paused, reluctant to finish the sentence.

“Is he a colored man, Mazie?” I asked.

Meg said, “Of course he is, Ben. He’s here to see you, isn’t he?”

A pause.

“Please show the man in,” I said.

RIGHT THEN AND THERE, everything changed in our lives, certainly in mine. Meg looked at me with those big eyes of hers, as much in sorrow as in anger. I reached to touch her again, but she pulled away. She shook her head as if I were a child whose behavior had disappointed her. “You know this one by name?”

“I only know one man named Nate, and that’s Nate Pryor. He was Tenth Cavalry. We rode together at San Juan Hill.”

Nate appeared at the door just in time to hear Meg say, “The hell with you, Ben.”

She walked past Nate and out of the room without so much as looking at him. Her passing set up the first decent breeze I’d felt all day.

“You can introduce us some other time,” Nate said. His voice was deep, his enunciation precise. I shook his hand warmly and clapped his shoulder.

“I don’t know what elixir you’re drinking, Nate, but you look younger than you did the day Colonel Roosevelt drove us up old San Juan Hill.”

“The only medicine I take is good old-fashioned hard work. The kind the Lord intended a man to make with his days. Maybe a little taste of ’shine once in a while, for a chaser.”

I nodded, but then I looked into his eyes. “What brings you here, Nate? What’s so urgent?”

“I’m here with a serious proposition. I wouldn’t bother you, but it’s something I believe only you can do.”

Whatever the favor he was about to ask of me, I was fast losing the desire to hear about it. A sad tale, surely – hard times, ill health, someone’s poor relative left penniless and in need of free legal assistance.

I tried to keep my voice gentle. “I’ve taken on about all the cases I can handle for a while.”

“Oh, this is not a law case .” He flashed a particularly charming smile. “Perhaps I should have mentioned that I came here today directly from the White House. This isn’t my proposition. This is a request from the president.”

I was astonished. “Roosevelt sent you here? To my home?”

“The man himself.”

THE FIRST TIME I EVER LAID eyes on Theodore Roosevelt [1] Theodore “T.R.” Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his “cowboy” persona and robust masculinity. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the first incarnation of the short-lived Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party of 1912. Before becoming President, he held offices at the city, state, and federal levels. Roosevelt’s achievements as a naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier are as much a part of his fame as any office he held as a politician. Roosevelt was 42 years old when sworn in as President of the United States in 1901, making him the youngest president ever. Roosevelt was also the first of only three sitting presidents to have won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Teddy bear is named for him, despite his contempt for being called “Teddy”. – God, how he hated the nickname “Teddy” – I was surprised by how much he resembled the cartoons and caricatures with which the papers regularly mocked him. And now, on this fine summer day in the White House, I saw that the thick spectacles pinching his nose, the wide solid waist, and the prominent potbelly had only become more pronounced since he took up residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Roosevelt jumped up from his desk and charged across the room toward me before his assistant, Jackson Hensen, could finish his introduction.

“Captain Corbett, a pleasure to see you again. It’s been too long.”

“The pleasure is entirely mine, Colonel… uhm, Mr. President.”

“No, no, no. I’ll always prefer Colonel!”

The president waved me over to a green silk sofa near his desk. I sat, trying to contain my excitement at being in the Oval Office, a room that was airy and beautifully appointed but a good deal smaller than I would have imagined.

A door to the left of the president’s desk glided open. In came a tall Negro valet bearing a tea tray, which he placed on a side table. “Shall I pour, sir?”

“Thank you, Harold, I’ll do my own pouring.”

The valet left the room. Roosevelt went to a cabinet behind his desk and took out a crystal decanter. “Except I’ll be pouring this . What’ll it be, Captain, whiskey or wine? I’m having claret myself. I never touch spirituous liquors.”

That is how I wound up sitting beside TR on the green sofa, sipping fine Kentucky bourbon from a china teacup embossed with the presidential seal.

“I presume our old friend Nate Pryor has given you some idea why I wanted to see you,” he said.

I placed my cup on the saucer. “He actually didn’t say much, to be honest. Only that it was to do with the South, some kind of mission. A problem with the colored people? Danger, perhaps.”

“I’ve been doing a little checking on you, Ben. It just so happens that the place you were born and raised is the perfect place to send you. Assuming you agree to this assignment.”

“Mississippi?”

“Specifically your hometown. Eudora, isn’t it?”

“Sir? I’m not sure I understand. Something urgent in Eudora? ”

He walked to his desk and returned with a blue leather portfolio stamped with the presidential seal in gold.

“You are aware that the crime of lynching has been increasing at an alarming rate in the South?” he said.

“I’ve read newspaper stories.”

“It’s not enough that some people have managed to reverse every forward step the Negro race has managed since the war. Now they’ve taken to mob rule. They run about killing innocent people and stringing ’em up from the nearest tree.”