James Bell - Deadlock

“Levering. He’s told us quite a tale.”

Anne’s face did not cooperate. She felt her cheeks go into weird gyrations. He knew. The guy knew it all. She could see it in his eyes. And he knew she knew. It was all over, baby. She could almost hear Ambrosi’s voice telling her that.

With a swift precision honed over many years, Anne’s mind clicked and calculated in her moment of deepest crisis. Survival mode she sometimes called it. When the chips were down, you had to find the best way out.

The detective just waited, as if he knew what she was going to say.

“What kind of deal can we work out here?” she said.

Now, at last, her moment had come.

Millie walked out of her chambers, Rosalind by her side, and proceeded through the Great Hall. Bill Bonassi was waiting for them just outside the doors.

“You ready?” he asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Millie said. She clutched a card that had notes for her statement. It would be respectful, but forceful. Every politician, every citizen, would know that she would stand against the onslaught. The question was whether she could hide the whirlwind inside her. She had thought peace would come with her moment. It had not.

“Then let’s go.” Bonassi took her arm and started down the great stone steps toward the snarl of reporters below. A clump of microphones was set up on the first level, with half a dozen television cameras placed at strategic locations and angles. Behind the reporters a large crowd of the curious thrust forward, kept at bay by four uniformed D.C. police officers.

Just before her final descent, Millie paused to look back at the Court building. The same marble figures flanked the portico, and the same immortal words, Equal Justice Under Law, moved her with their majesty. When she had first seen them she thought they had come from the mind of man. Now she knew they could only have come from the God who gave mankind the very capacity to be just.

At the knot of microphones, Bill Bonassi put his hand up to silence the few shouted questions.

“We have a statement to make,” he said. Cameras flashed and snapped, like hungry piranhas.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve stood here,” Bonassi said. “It was back in 1953 I first climbed these steps to make an argument before the Court. It was a free speech case. I argued on behalf of a school teacher from Nebraska. I argued that the Constitution gives every citizen the right to think and express ideas that might offend some folks, without the fear that such expression will result in being fired. And we won.”

Millie marveled at him. His voice and carriage were magnificent, as if he had been preparing all his life for just this moment.

“Today, after so many years,” Bonassi said, “I stand upon desecrated ground. I will say no more than that. As counsel for the chief justice, whom I was proud to serve with, I will step aside and allow her to speak for herself. But I want two things made clear. The first is, the charges leveled against Chief Justice Hollander that are the basis for this indictment are false. Second, I want the word to go out loud and clear that what is happening in our legislative halls is an atrocity. It is the antithesis of the ideals this country was founded on. It has to stop. Fairness and justice, which know no party, must once again be pursued, or we can just wrap up this experiment in democracy right now.”

Bill Bonassi, standing tall and proud, took a step away from the microphones.

That was Millie’s cue. Silently, she prayed.

She looked down at her notes. She could hear the relentless clicking of the cameras.

When she looked up again she saw a girl. She was around eight years old, and was toward the back of the large crowd. How was she so visible?

And then Millie knew. She was on a man’s shoulders, looking perhaps for the first time at the great temple of justice. Feelings rushed back to Millie, fresh and alive, of the first time she was here. Feelings of sacredness, of spotlessness. The majesty of this place.

The reporters were looking at her expectantly. She was not speaking. Bill Bonassi put his hand on her arm, as if to ask if she was all right.

Millie looked into the eyes of the Old Lion. “All things for good,” she whispered to him.

Then she handed him her notes.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said into the microphones. “The proudest moment of my life was when I was named to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. To come and join men like William T. Bonassi, Thomas Riley, and all the rest, was more than a dream come true. It was as if I had gone to heaven.”

She cleared her throat; it was like moving sand. “But I know now that this institution is not heaven. It is a very human institution. That is its reality but also its glory. What we have is indeed an experiment in democracy. But it is more. It is a glorious testimony to the finest instincts in man. There have been those who have disparaged this Court, found it wanting, cast it in political terms. And yes, because we are human beings we make human decisions. No one is going to agree with every opinion that is rendered, even when the vote is 9-0. But I know in my heart that every justice whom I have been privileged to serve with – everyone who puts on those robes – has tried to do the very best that he or she can.”

The whir and click of cameras reminded Millie that what she was about to say would be memorialized for all time, and become fodder for endless analysis by pundits, students, and the politically curious. Yes, her moment had truly come. And far from feeling hesitant, she felt a boldness rush in.

“I have made a human decision,” she said. “It is one that I am entitled to make under the greatest document for human freedom ever penned. The Constitution gives every one of us the right to worship as we so choose. This past summer I decided that I would worship the God of the Bible. I have come to believe in the truth and the principles of Christianity. I will not take back that decision for any reason.”

She paused, and looked again at the little girl on top of the man’s shoulders. She was smiling.

“It has become clear, however, that my personal decision has resulted in something I never wished to see happen. I won’t pretend that the lies spread about me don’t hurt. They do. But in the end what is said about the Supreme Court itself matters more. The Court is the guardian of freedom and dignity for all citizens, and must remain above distraction.”

Millie paused for a deep breath.

“That is why I am stepping down, effective immediately, as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. And as I leave this institution, which I love, I have only these final words to say. Each time we begin a session of the Court, the marshal calls all to draw nigh and give their attention. And then he says these words, that I now adopt with all my heart: ‘God save the United States and this honorable Court.’ ”

For the first time in as many years as he could remember, Sam Levering did not crave a drink.

Watching what he once would have termed his ultimate political triumph, he only barely noticed his lack of craving.

Millicent Mannings Hollander was gone. Resigned. The strings had been pulled, by himself and others. Everything was just as it was supposed to be.

He watched it all happen on the TV in the hotel room. He barely remembered checking in, and the hangover was still gripping his temples. Normally he would have hunted a little hair of the dog. And the Oramor Hotel had a great bar.

But the bar was not the reason he was here. He wanted to be where no one could contact him.