Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

I return to packing, laying out shirts and underwear on the bed before loading them into my luggage.

“My prof says that Professor Scarborough was the victim of a hate crime. He says that it was a political crime and should be punished that way.”

I’m going to have to make a note to keep my daughter away from the prosecutors. She may give them ideas.

She stands there for a moment collecting her thoughts, trying to come up with a different twist on her argument. I can smell mental rubber burning.

“Fine! How long will you be away? Can you tell me that?” The edge goes out of Sarah’s voice. She realizes that she has lost this bout, though, knowing my daughter, I realize she is not giving up.

“Three days, four at most. I have business in New York. I won’t be sure until I get there. I’ll call you every day and let you know when I’ll be home. And I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

“It’s just that I thought we could spend some time together,” says Sarah. “I was hoping that maybe we could go down to Mexico for a while, maybe Puerto Vallarta, one of the beach resorts.”

“I will make it up to you. I promise. You’ll be home again in a few months, and we can go somewhere. You can pick the spot.”

“You’ll be in trial,” she says. “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.” She turns and walks away down the hall.

I stop my packing, one of my folded shirts still hanging in the air. “Tell you what!” I holler after her down the empty hall.

“What?” She is already halfway down the stairs.

“How would you like to do some shopping in New York?”

There is a nanosecond of silence, and she appears like magic back in the doorway. “You mean it?”

“Call the office, tell them to get another ticket on the flight, and book one more room at the hotel-adjoining, if they can manage it. Then get in gear and pack. We don’t have much time.”

“Sure! Won’t take me a minute.”

Seven hours in the air allow me to make up for lost time with my daughter. We talk about life on Coronado Island, how the city has changed in the time we’ve lived there. We talk about Harry. Sarah spends a good bit of the flight laughing as only young girls can. Her memories of Harry are of an aging and somewhat hapless uncle, even though she and my partner are not related by blood, marriage, or anything else. They have always been close.

We dredge up old memories, some of them painful: the early years when she was a small child in Capital City, when Nikki was alive and we were a family. To my surprise, Sarah has more vivid recollections of this period than I might have credited. It is one of those imponderables, the snippets of life that engrave themselves on the mind of a small child.

Somewhere high over the flatlands of the Midwest, above the constant drone of jet engines, our conversation turns from distant memories to what she is doing at school, and finally to my practice. Sarah has always had a knack for getting me to talk, so much so that I may have to put her on the law office’s payroll when I return home in order to maintain attorney-client confidence with Arnsberg. Sarah picks my brain on aspects of the case I should not discuss.

Strangely, the question that seems to perplex my daughter the most is how, after its repeal following the Civil War, it is possible that the old language of slavery can still be visible in the Constitution today. It is this very fact that Scarborough pounced on and exploited in his book.

Sarah is reading from a Newsweek article, a story on the author’s murder and the impending trial.

“It says here that according to Scarborough this language in the Constitution represents ‘an ongoing and perpetual stigmatizing of the African soul.’ That’s a quote from his book,” she says. Then she reads on. “‘While slavery was repealed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, the offending words that legalized the so-called peculiar institution at the origin of the nation remain in black and white as a visible legacy of America’s principal document of state to this very day.’

“I don’t understand. How can that be?” she says. “If they were repealed, why are they still there?”

I try to explain it to her. “What Scarborough discovered was a seam in the way in which the Constitution is published. Its system of publication is unique to that document.”

Fortunately for Scarborough and unfortunately for the country, removing the language of slavery from the Constitution is not something that can easily be done.

I explain to her that “this is likely to require a separate constitutional amendment altering the style of the amending process. Scarborough knew this. So he knew he wasn’t wasting his time publishing Perpetual Slaves. The book would have a long shelf life, because Congress couldn’t wave its magic wand and pass a bill to fix the problem and the president couldn’t do it by executive order.

“There is no simple procedural mechanism for this,” I tell Sarah. “The process and style for amending language in the Constitution have remained the same for more than two hundred years. It’s not like a statute or bill passed by Congress. There, the language that is repealed or amended is stricken from the codebooks and no longer appears in print after a short time following its amendment. On the other hand, words repealed from the Constitution will always remain in print as part of the document, even though they may no longer be enforced and are dead-letter law.”

Sarah thinks about this for a moment, then starts to read again.

“According to the story, it says here, ‘Now, with a spotlight cast on them for all to see, the offending words of slavery fester like some open wound, threatening to give rise to race riots unseen in the nation since the 1960s.’”

She looks at me. “Do you really think that could happen?”

“I hope not, but there’s already been violence. Mr. Scarborough and his book stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

“But wasn’t that the purpose of his book? Social justice?” she says. “According to political theory, what I’m reading now, violence is sometimes the price that has to be paid. Jefferson said-”

“I know. ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’”

“You read that?” she says.

“Many years ago.”

As it turns out, her interest is sufficiently piqued that when I set forth the following morning headed for Richard Bonguard’s office, Sarah is with me. She says she will not utter a word. She will sit in the corner like a mouse.

Sarah and I are in the back of a taxi stopped dead in traffic, the remnants of rush hour and the parking lot that is midtown Manhattan.

I warn her that Bonguard may not be friendly. He is, potentially at least, a hostile witness.

“Gee, you think, Dad?” Sarah looks at me, one eyebrow arched. “Your client did kill his cash cow.”

“Is accused of killing,” I correct her.

She ignores me. “Besides, I’ve never seen a literary agent before, so this is a first. Who knows, I may want to write a book someday. What was he like on the phone?”

“Businesslike and guarded,” I tell her. Bonguard agreed to talk with me as much out of curiosity as anything else. From our brief conversation on the phone, it was clear. He is seeking a mutual exchange of information. “I suspect he wants to know whatever it is that I know.”

“Like what?” asks Sarah.

“Mostly he wanted to know about Arnsberg-what he’s like, his background. And of course the big enchilada-why he might want to kill Scarborough.”

“Maybe he’s planning on writing a book,” says Sarah.

“Nothing would surprise me. Let’s hope that’s all it is.”