Mike Maden - River of Gods

“Sounds like a plan, so long as you’re sure you’re invisible to her.”

“Guaranteed,” Jasmine wrote. “Trust me.”

Myers residence

Denver, Colorado

6 May

Vin Tanner was the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice to commit suicide while in office. That’s how he would always be remembered in the history books. Myers chose to remember him only as her friend.

She’d known Tanner for twenty years before she nominated him to the Supreme Court. Knew his wife and kids well. Their two skiing families vacationed together in Vail several times. Justice Tanner sent her a handwritten note when her son had been killed, and enclosed an old Polaroid of their two young boys in soccer jerseys, skinny arms draped over each other’s shoulders, gap-toothed smiles and sweaty foreheads, best friends forever.

But Myers didn’t nominate Tanner because they were friends. He was a brilliant jurist, but more important, a thoughtful and prudent political theorist. Small government, small businesses, and small farms were his Jeffersonian mantra. Her opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee hung the libertarian label on him at the televised hearing, thinking that the old canards about legalized prostitution and disbanding the FDA would scuttle his chances, but his effortless, irrefutable defense of limited constitutional government silenced his critics. His confirmation sailed through with only two dissenting votes.

Myers was certain at the time that Tanner’s appointment would be one of the highlights of her presidency. She hoped it would be the beginning of the end of the “tyranny of black robes.” She believed Tanner would cast a number of crucial swing votes that would finally begin to push back the overwhelming encroachments of federal legislation and administrative decrees that now impinged upon nearly every facet of American life. But to her chagrin, he cast the deciding vote in favor of upholding sweeping new regulations promulgated by Senator Fiero’s finance committee, regulations that would only serve to further empower the largest banks and enlarge yet again the role and opacity of the Federal Reserve.

His decision deeply troubled her. The nation had nearly seven thousand banks, but just six of them controlled sixty-seven percent of all banking assets. Those “too big to fail, too big to jail” bankers were largely responsible for the 2008 crash and the long Great Recession still ravaging the nation and much of the globe. The last thing Wall Street and the Big Banks needed was more power and more regulatory protection in the guise of banking reform. If any Supreme Court Justice could have been expected to vote against the Fiero legislation, it was Tanner. Instead, he wrote the majority opinion. As any student of the Court knows, justices have a funny habit of changing after their appointments—and disappointing their champions. Myers and Tanner would be in the footnotes, too, but for a grislier reason.

She reflected on her decision to visit Tanner two weeks prior. Myers may have resigned the presidency but she still felt responsible for his disastrous decision. She had the right to know why he made it. God knows he’d been pilloried in the media, crucified on both the left and the right for his inexplicable vote. She had known that if the media got wind of her visit, it would only make his bad situation worse. But she had needed to see him face-to-face, look him in straight in the eye.

She arrived at his Georgetown brownstone late in the cool evening, unannounced. That way she could avoid the press, and Tanner couldn’t avoid her. She knocked.

Tanner’s dark, sleepless eyes narrowed when he saw her that night. He reluctantly waved her into his study.

“I’m surprised it took you so long.” He lit a cigarette. “Where’s your Secret Service detail?”

“I discharged them. I’m no longer the president, so why should the public have to pay for them? Only pimps need an entourage like that.”

“The world’s a dangerous place, Margaret. You need to be more careful.”

“Where’s your security detail?”

“Gave them the night off.” He led them into his study. Offered her a chair. Floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves were crammed with books.

“How are Michelle and the kids?”

“They’re fine. Visiting her parents.” He took a long drag. “Kind of late for a social visit.”

“I’m just a concerned citizen calling on an old friend. You look awful, by the way.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. What’s done is done. And I don’t owe you anything.”

“I’m not a debt collector. I just wanted to know why.”

“It’s all in the majority opinion.”

“I think it’s all in your face.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He stabbed the cigarette out in a crystal ashtray full of butts.

“You’re one of the most principled men I’ve ever known, and yet you’ve obviously made a decision you regret. You regret it so much it’s tearing you up. The Vin Tanner I know would never make a decision that violated his principles, but something compelled you to do so.”

Tanner’s face blanched. “I’ll have to ask you to leave. Now.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He rose to his feet. “Yes, leave. This minute.” His shoulders slumped. “Please.”

“I’m sorry I’ve upset you.”

She left.

Three hours later, Tanner put a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Myers blamed herself, of course. The timing of Tanner’s death couldn’t have been coincidental. That meant she played a part in it. The guilt had eaten her alive since that day. But something else was wrong. Her intuition told her she was being followed. She couldn’t prove it. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she probably was under surveillance. She made herself a target the minute she knocked on Tanner’s door. Stupid.

There was a knock on her door.

“Come in.”

The service technician. He’d left twenty minutes before, after a service call. Her TV signal had been experiencing irregular glitches the last few days. She had called for service and the tech arrived today, to replace one of the circuit boards on the satellite dish.

“Forget something?”

“No, ma’am. Found this about a mile up the road.” He handed her an electronic device about the size of a tablet.

“What is it?”

“Not sure, ma’am. But it’s generating a radar signal. And it was pointed in the direction of your house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m retired Navy. I just do this job to keep from getting bored. Radar is kind of a hobby of mine. I carry a homemade rig in my truck, picks up all kinds of radar signatures, especially wide-spectrum. About a mile north of here, my rig alarmed. It wasn’t one of the police bandwidths, for sure. So I pulled over. Looked around with my handheld. Found an all-weather box strapped to a tree. Kind of unusual, to say the least. Found that inside. Just thought you should know.”

She flipped the device over. No markings. “What do you think it was doing?”

“Can’t be sure, but I’d guess it’s some kind of surveillance function. You need to run it by your people, just to be sure.”

Her security chief, Roy Fox, was scheduled to stop by after lunch. She’d ask him then.