James Bell - Deadlock

The word plucked an inner chord in Millie. “My friend, the minister in California, said something like that. God weaving a pattern for the good of those who love him.”

“Ah, yes,” Bonassi said. “Romans 8:28. The reverse paranoid text.”

“Excuse me?”

Bill Bonassi’s smile was moonlit. “The Scriptures make an incredible claim that, for those who follow Christ, God arranges things so that your good is the final outcome. He is out to get you, you see, but out of love. You are a reverse paranoid if you believe this.”

Millie shook her head slightly. “Seems almost too good to be true.”

“That’s a pretty good definition of God, isn’t it?”

“The polls, I’m told, have been running 3-1 against me. And the newspapers and TV news – ”

“Forget ’em!” Bonassi said. “We have truth on our side.”

Millie flashed to the sign on Tom Riley’s desk. Vincit omnia veritas. And then, suddenly, she knew what would save the Court.

“Riley,” she blurted.

Bonassi looked at her.

“Riley is the key,” she said.

Don Markey had never interrogated a senator before. He’d questioned a few members of the House, but most of them were as witnesses or sources of information for crimes that did not involve them directly.

This was another level entirely. This time there was a strange link between the murder of Tad Levering, the senator, and Millicent Mannings Hollander.

If one accepted that this was a murder. Markey did without question, but in the interview room, with Levering’s lawyer present, that was not a done deal.

“His son was mentally disturbed,” the lawyer, a three-piece job named Sugden Bales, said. “That was obvious. And mentally disturbed people kill themselves.”

“By tying cinder blocks to their own feet?” Markey asked.

“Why not? Can you think of a better way to drown?”

“I want to know if the senator thinks that,” Markey insisted, looking at Levering. The senator was, Markey thought, the proverbial shell of a man. His whole appearance had changed. Where he had once been almost comically belligerent, he was now folding in upon himself, as if his very bones, like fallen tent stakes, had been ripped out of him.

“The senator is not going to say anything to you,” Bales said. “I am advising him not to say a word. You want to arrest him? Be my guest. You’ll look like an attention-grabbing fool, but that’s your call.”

Bales was right, Markey knew. There was not enough evidence to hold Sam Levering. Markey had watched Levering closely when he IDed his son’s body. The grief in his face couldn’t have been faked, not even by a Slick Sam.

But did he know about the killing at all? If he did, he wasn’t talking.

“Look,” Markey said to Bales. “We know the dance. We can turn off the music and move ahead to where we’ll be in a few weeks anyway. Just have the senator answer a few questions, with you standing here, and we’ll be done with it.”

“No,” Bales said. “Absolutely not.”

“Why don’t you ask your client?”

“I don’t have to ask him, I know what he – ” Bales stopped when he turned to Levering.

The senator was shaking, his head buried in his chest. Then he broke out in great sobs, deep and groaning. When he looked up at the ceiling Markey could see his eyes were bloodshot. His cheeks were streaked with wet. “Oh, God!” Levering howled at the ceiling. “Taaaad!”

It would have taken an icy heart not to feel for the guy. Markey had seen criminals and con men, faced with overwhelming evidence, crack. Most didn’t, but some did. Usually that was sorrow over being caught. But Levering was hurting to the very depths.

Bales, looking as uncomfortable as a bishop in a bar, made a pitiful attempt to pat his client on the shoulder.

“Maybe,” Markey said, “we should take a short break.”

“Maybe we should just call the whole thing off,” Bales said. “And you can just – ”

“No,” Levering said.

The two other men looked at him.

“Wait,” Bales said.

“No, I want to talk.”

“My advice is – ”

“I don’t care about your advice,” Levering said, the familiar belligerence flooding back to his voice. “I want to talk.”

“Your lawyer has advised you not to,” Markey said, even as he readied the tape recorder.

“I said I don’t care.” Levering smoothed his hair back with his hands, then used the backs of his hands to wipe his eyes. His breathing was labored.

“Sam, please,” Bales said.

“Go have a smoke, Sug,” Levering said.

“I’ll stay.”

“Get out of here!”

Sugden Bales looked as if he had been smeared with something foul. He said nothing as he snagged his Givenci briefcase and walked out the door.

“You got that thing ready?” Levering said, nodding toward the recorder.

“Yes, I do,” Markey said.

“Okay then.”

At conference it was clear that the tension had gotten to everyone. Even Ray Byrne, who normally brought a light Irish wit to the discussions, had more lines on his face than Millie could ever remember seeing.

And as the justices made their traditional handshakes around the table, eyes were averted. Especially Justice Riley’s. He did not look at Millie. His handshake was weak.

Everyone sat, making little motions with the pens and legal pads in front of them. Justice Atkins doodled, and the normally placid Arlene Praeger Weiss tapped a drumbeat with her pen. Riley and Byrne simply looked at a spot in the center of the conference table, as if waiting for an answer to magically appear.

“All right,” Millie said finally. “We all know what’s going on. We all know it’s affecting us. We also know that the country’s business has to continue, and we are a big part of that business. We must not allow anything to distract us.”

Riley cleared his throat but did not look up.

“I was named to this position,” Millie said, “to lead the Court. That is what I intend to do. We have cases before us right now that need our attention. I suggest we get down to work. Does anyone have anything they’d like to add?”

There was a short pause as the justices exchanged looks. Then Byrne spoke. “Well said, Chief. We’re with you.”

A couple of voices chimed assent. Millie thought she heard from Parsons and Velarde, and was thankful she had achieved that level of bipartisanship. Her heart ached, however, as Riley remained impassive.

She pushed the feeling downward and said, “Let’s start with United States v. Ferguson .”

When the conference broke at noon Millie asked Tom Riley to stay behind. The expressions of the other justices reflected that everyone sensed the tension between Millie and Riley.

“We can’t go on like this,” Millie said when they were alone.

Riley folded his arms and shrugged. “This is the way it is, apparently.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” She suddenly felt the eyes of John Marshall upon her. The great justice peered at them from his portrait, as if his own heart were breaking. “Tom, if you will stand with me and make a statement, along with the others, we can beat this thing back. A Court united, if not in ideology, at least in purpose. We cannot let politics infect us. If it can happen to me, it can happen to any judge, any time. Tom, will you do it?”

She had not wanted desperation to enter her voice, but it was there. And when Tom Riley did not immediately answer, the desperation lodged itself in her, choking off breath.

Finally, Riley said, “Why don’t you just resign?”

Resign? Had he really said that? Of course he had. “No.”