Christopher Buckley - Supreme Courtship

“Well, how about that,” Dexter said airily. “Great publicity for the show, huh?”

“Yeah. Wonderful. So. Is this true?”

“It’s true that there’s a groundswell out there. You saw that poll in USA Today. Some folks down in DC thought, well, let’s see how deep it is. It’s just in the, you know, exploratory phase at this point.”

Buddy stared. “Dexter, give it to me straight. Are you running for president?”

“It’s a complicated process, Buddy. My gosh. First you have to file a thousand forms. Then you have to get thousands of signatures just to quality for-”

“Yeah, yeah. Just tell me: did you hire this guy Shrump-”

“Scrump.”

“Whatever, to form this Mitchell for President Committee?”

“I wouldn’t say hire. It’s more of a-”

“This has your fingerprints all over it. O.J. Simpson left fewer fingerprints at the scene than you have here.”

Dexter thought, Goddamn Bussie. Asking a political consultant to keep his yap shut… might as well ask a nymphomaniac to keep her knees together.

“I was going to discuss it with you today after we finished shooting.”

Buddy was shaking his head and pacing and muttering. “What am I running here, a finishing school for Supreme Court justices and presidents?”

“I think you’re missing the big picture here. This could be a tremendous boost for the show.”

“Really? Is that what this is about? Funny. It’s what my last star said as she was blowing her nose on her contract. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. President, I’ve already got the top contracts law firm on retainer, and I’m sure they’ll cut me a discount for two lawsuits.”

Dexter laughed. “You’re going to sue me? For running for president?”

“In a word? You bet your ass.”

An assistant director put his head in and said, “We’re ready for you, Mr. President.”

“Let’s talk about this later, shall we?” Dexter said.

“Excuse me? I’m the fucking executive producer of this fucking charade.”

“And a fucking good one,” Dexter said. “Look, Buddy. Calm down. Don’t you see? All this, everything-is a testimonial to you. To your vision. You created President Lovestorm. Sure, I play him. But you created him. The writers… okay, they did their bit, I suppose. But he’s yours. I’m yours. You should be-my God-so proud of what you’ve done. Run with me, Buddy. Together, we can accomplish so much for this country. We can do what others have only-”

“Save it for the deposition,” Buddy said, stomping out.

DEXTER’S ANNOUNCEMENT press conference three days later was heavily attended by the media, and somewhat unusual.

Normally the candidate’s family clusters around, lending moral and visual support. But since Terry Mitchell was not at present speaking to her husband, her place was taken by Ramona Alvilar, wearing a quite fetching pantsuit that looked as though it might have been painted onto her.

Off to the side stood Buddy Bixby, producer of POTUS, trying with somewhat mixed success to look enthusiastic about this grotesque development. He had spent most of the previous days with contract attorneys, election law attorneys, and public relations advisers. The contract attorneys thought he had a very good breach of contract suit; the election attorneys said that airing POTUS in the midst of a presidential campaign would violate campaign finance laws. The public relations advisers thought that suing Dexter was definitely not the way to proceed. (“What if he wins?”)

And so Buddy Bixby found himself once again betrayed by his own creation, grinding his back molars as Dexter Mitchell enunciated his Agenda for America, a lengthy manifesto the reader will be spared here, other than to note that it included a call for: a) change, b) a return to greatness, c) a brighter future for all, not just some, Americans, and d) a pledge to change the way Washington does business.

The sun did not stand still, nor did the earth tremble at these pronouncements, but the news that President Mitchell Love-storm was in the race did lead the evening news that day.

Pepper found it strange, sitting at the justices’ conference table, thinking what had happened the last time she had been in this room-preventing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from hanging himself.

She and Declan exchanged brief knowing looks as they took their places along with the seven other justices. She caught the faint grin. Declan had been looking better than he had in a while. He no longer gave off a reek of mint.

His lightness of mood was not reciprocated by the other justices. He’d barely gotten off a cheery “Good morning” before Justice Haro bitterly complained that his clerks were being harassed by the FBI about the Swayle business.

“Could we discuss it after the conference, Mike?”

“No. I’d like to talk about it now. Calling in the gestapo is-”

Justice Santamaria groaned. “Gestapo? Did you actually say gestapo?”

“Call them whatever you want,” Haro snapped. “But having them in here prowling the halls… it’s infra dig.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Santamaria scowled. “But your language is inappropriate. No. That’s not quite strong enough a word. Vile…”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Declan said. “Please. As to infra dig, let’s all agree that leaking Court decisions defines infra dignitatem. Meanwhile we can discuss it all after conference. But as we’re on the subject of the FBI, why don’t we begin with Peester? You were the first to grant cert, Mike, as I recall. So, shall we begin?”

Peester v. Spendo-Max Corp was a knotty case. Security personnel at a Spendo-Max megastore outside Reno, Nevada, had noticed a female customer dressed head to toe in a Muslim abaya acting in a “suspicious manner.” They called the Reno police, who discerned geometric-shaped bulges under her robes and deduced that she was a suicide bomber. They evacuated the store and called in the FBI, who arrived with a tactical unit, dogs, helicopters, and a robotic bomb disposal unit. They cornered her in the Bathroom Fixtures section. In due course the Muslim woman turned out to be one Dwight Robert Peester, neither female nor Muslim, but a career shoplifter. The suspicious bulges turned out to be CDs and DVDs secreted in pouches under the abaya. Mr. Peester was arrested and prosecuted but a jury acquitted him on the grounds that he had not yet exited the store and therefore had not yet technically shoplifted. A tsunami of lawyers rushed in. Mr. Peester sued Spendo-Max, the Reno Police Department, and the FBI agents on grounds of racial and religious profiling. He was asking for twenty million dollars for various psychic traumas, “plus dry cleaning costs.” The nub of the issue-so far as Pepper, scratching her head as she read the brief, could discern-was whether you in fact had to actually belong to the particular race or religion in order to be a victim of discrimination against it.

The justices went around the table in order of seniority, splitting 4-4. Once again, all eyes turned to the juniormost justice. Pepper inwardly groaned. She daydreamed that she was back on Courtroom Six. Dwight Robert Peester stood before her, wearing bright orange, in chains. Mr. Peester, it is the sentence of this court that you be taken from here to the place of execution…

“Justice Cartwright?” Declan said.

“Uh…” Pepper said.

“How do you vote?”

“I’m kind of… down the middle on this one,” she said. “He was obviously planning to boost the stuff-”

“That’s not the issue,” Haro said.

“Well, it oughta be,” Pepper said. “But there was prima facie evidence of profiling… Still…”