Fatal Conceit (39 page)

One clear sign came when, a month before the trial, Hilb's statements to the press changed from “the politics of hate” to “letting the justice system we all believe in run its course.” In the meantime, the press secretary was issuing “plausible deniability” defenses, such as noting that the president was not involved in the day-to-day running of his campaign, “having left that to his professional campaign manager.” Nor could the president, she complained to a still sympathetic late-night television host, be expected to know if his own national security adviser had been “making unilateral plans and decisions without consulting the president.”

Although the president continued to “hope for the best” with Fauhomme and Lindsey, Hilb said, he also realized that “in the zeal to do what they believed best in the interests of the American public, mistakes may have been made.” However, she was quick to reject suggestions that the president had anything to do with the events in Chechnya, or knew anything about General Allen's concerns, while also denying that he was out of touch with his own team.

“If he has a fault,” she said with a tear in her eye, “it's that he tends to view the character of those he trusts in a most favorable light. He's just too doggone loyal for his own good.”

One day the senator sent a limousine to bring Fauhomme to a small restaurant at the north end of Manhattan. The place was deserted when he walked in; only the old man was there, sitting in the back while young men in dark suits and aviator sunglasses guarded the doors.

Over steaks and cocktails, the senator said he'd wanted to see Fauhomme “so that I could personally assure you that the . . . um . . . current strain on your relationship with the president is temporary, but necessary.
If
this all blows over, you'll be welcomed back with open arms, but until then the president is, of course, expecting you to keep him out of this as much as possible.”

Angry, Fauhomme almost spilled his drink. “If? This sure the hell better blow over,” he sputtered. “I think you know that if I go down, everybody's going down.”

He'd expected the old man to back off and apologize. But instead the senator's watery eyes suddenly grew cold and hard.

“It's probably not a good idea to threaten the most powerful man in the world,” the old man hissed. “Especially for somebody who may be headed to prison, which I'm told can be a very dangerous place.”

It took a moment for Fauhomme to recover from the threat. But it was not the time to cower. “Look, you know me, I'm a team player, and if I have to fall on my sword, I'll do it,” he said earnestly,
but not meaning a word of it. He leaned forward. “I wasn't trying to threaten the president; I'm just talking about the reality if I get convicted. It won't be anything I do, but the shit will come back and hit the White House regardless. If you think nothing's getting done now, just wait to see what happens if the rats on the Hill decide to impeach him. That's what I meant by ‘We're all in this together.' ” His eyes locked on the old man's. “I can handle some of this, but the most powerful man in the world needs to get involved.”

The senator's eyes narrowed. “How do you mean?”

Back at his apartment that night, Fauhomme got drunk, boiled over, and hit the blonde around before passing out. The next morning he woke up to find she was gone, leaving nothing but a note. “You'll be sorry you hit me. I hope they fry you, asshole. BTW, you fat fuck, you're lousy in bed.”

Nursing his hangover, Fauhomme was still looking at the note when Faust called with the latest bad news. “Don't worry, we'll fight this . . . and I'm pretty sure we'll win,” she assured him.

Fauhomme was not reassured. He was feeling trapped . . . cornered like a fox by hounds . . . only this hunting dog went by the name of Roger “Butch” Karp.

“O
YEZ, OYEZ, ALL THOSE HAVING
business before Part 38, Supreme Court, New York County, draw near and ye shall be heard. The honorable Supreme Court Justice Charles Hart, Jr., presiding. Your Honor, case on trial is ready to proceed,” said Chief Court Clerk Jim Farley.

As Farley called the courtroom to order, the jurist swept in, his black robe billowing behind him as he crossed the distance between the door that led to his robing room and the dais. Glancing at the prosecution and defense tables and then the gallery, he stepped up and took his seat.

Hart was a striking-looking man in his sixties—tall, with tan, chiseled facial features and a full head of wavy blond hair and just enough white at the temples to indicate that he didn't get the color out of a box. Without any preamble or greetings, Hart left everyone standing as he glared at Celeste Faust.

“I asked that the jury not be present for a moment while we have a little discussion, Ms. Faust,” Hart said icily. “Did my eyes deceive me or did I read an article in today's
New York Times
in which you were quoted extensively about this case and yesterday's trial events?”

“Well, Your Honor . . .” the attractive young woman with the expensive haircut and tight-fitting designer clothes began to explain.

Hart didn't wait for the rest of her reply. “And have I not issued a gag order prohibiting either party making comments to the press?”

“Yes sir, but—”

“And have I not on several occasions already warned you about violating my order?”

“Your Honor, you have to understand,” Faust pleaded, a tight half-smile on her face, her eyes flicking over to the prosecution table where Karp stood patiently. “In a trial of this nature—with its political implications and the DA's overreaching indictment, which was a de facto statement to the press—we are besieged, and I mean
besieged
, with questions from the media that, unanswered, would make it appear that the United States government, and our clients, have something to hide, which they do not. So it may be that in a moment of weakness—and I might add frustrated by the questionable tactics of the district attorney—I said more than I intended when a reporter interrupted my dinner last night in a public restaurant. I do feel that my comments did not reveal any new details and that it would have been rude for me to—”

“Miss Faust, I will not caution you again,” Hart interrupted her and continued tersely. “If you persist in this conduct, I will find you in contempt. And if you believe that the district attorney is out of order, then make your objections in court, and I will rule on them. And so far, your batting average isn't very good in that regard. But am I clear about commenting to the press or any other form of media?”

Faust seemed about to reply, but then thought better of it. She ducked her chin and shook her head as if she'd been unfairly singled out but had decided to hold her tongue rather than risk the judge's unjust wrath. “Yes, Your Honor,” she said sullenly.

“Good, then let that be the end of it,” Hart said. But he wasn't done. He looked out into the gallery, where most of the seats from the second row on back were occupied by the media. “And it has been brought to my attention that some members of the Fourth
Estate have been making efforts to contact members of this jury. You know better, and if I find out who among you is attempting to jeopardize this process through such endeavors, I will have that person thrown in the Tombs until the conclusion of this trial. As it is, I am half-inclined to judge you all guilty by association and limit media access to this courtroom to one pool reporter and one television camera. The rest of you would then have to vie with the general public for seats on a first-come, first-serve basis that have up to this point been reserved for credentialed media. So police yourselves or I'll do it for you. Am I understood?”

The media reacted like a classroom full of elementary school students. Some nodded innocently, wide-eyed, as if to imply that the infraction had been committed by someone else, “not me”; others ducked their heads and pretended to be working on notebooks or checking their fingernails for dirt. Nobody wanted to get kicked out of the “Trial of the Millennium” or have to rely on a pool reporter.

“I see we have an understanding,” Hart said, then nodded at the court clerk. “If you'll be so kind as to show the jury in, Mr. Farley, we can get started.”

During the judge's scoldings, Karp kept his face expressionless. Inwardly, however, he was smiling. He'd practiced a number of times in front of Hart and considered him one of the best trial judges he'd ever had preside over one of his trials. The judge was Yale undergrad and a Yale Law School graduate. He'd worked in his family's white-shoe Wall Street law firm for a decade before accepting an appointment many years earlier to the bench of the New York State Supreme Court, which was the state's trial court. He was the sort of straightforward, unbiased, no-nonsense judge—a man known for his fairness and calming influence by attorneys on both sides of the aisle—that a trial of this nature desperately needed.

There'd been no surprises in the opening statements three days earlier. Karp had outlined the prosecution's case as minimally and
logically as possible: simply put, that Fauhomme and Lindsey had acted in concert with Ray Baum to murder General Sam Allen because he was going to blow the whistle at the congressional hearings on the events in Chechnya. “And when we have finished presenting the evidence—when you have listened to the witnesses, when you have heard and seen all the evidence admitted into this trial—you will be convinced beyond any and all doubt that for the sake of ensuring the president's re-election, and to feed their own addiction to power and to cover up what they'd done, the defendants sitting before you today were willing to sacrifice the truth, our national security, and American lives, including that of General Sam Allen. And what's more, in their conceit, they thought they could get away with it. But ladies and gentlemen of this jury . . . you . . . won't . . . let them.”

The defense had countered with an opening statement delivered by Lindsey's attorney, Bill Caulkin, a silver-haired, rheumy-eyed senior partner in a Madison Avenue law firm known for its connections to the current administration in Washington, D.C. He claimed that the prosecution's star witness, Jenna Blair, acting in concert with Connie Rae Lee and Ray Baum, had attempted to blackmail Allen over his sexual affair with Blair. “They threatened to go to his wife and the media, as they had threatened other rich and powerful men with whom Blair slept for money. You'll hear from one of those men, Ariel Shimon, from the witness stand.”

However, Caulkin continued, when Allen balked and threatened to go to the police, the trio decided he needed to die. “And so he was murdered by Baum in the little love nest the general shared frequently with the cold-blooded mistress of this sordid scheme, Jenna Blair, who morbidly watched him die on a webcam and had the nerve to record it all.”

Blair, he said, had then conspired with another of the prosecution's witnesses, “a muckraking journalist named Ariadne Stupenagel who saw a big publishing payday,” to silence Baum and place the blame on the defendants. “The plan nearly backfired when
Baum got the drop on them. And wouldn't you know it, Marlene Ciampi, the wife of the district attorney, showed up in the nick of time to shoot Mr. Baum. . . . How very convenient.”

Raising his eyebrows, the old man had started to walk toward the jurors with his hands in his pockets, but stopped and spun slowly to face Karp. “Then, blinded by the ‘politics of hate,' the district attorney pulled some questionable maneuvers to entrap my client, Mr. Lindsey, who was attempting to apprehend Ms. Blair, a security risk due to her affair with General Allen and a suspect in his murder. You will hear a number of comments made by Mr. Lindsey at the time, but we ask you to consider whether the DA has chosen to misinterpret those comments, as well as take them out of context.”

Caulkin turned his back on Karp and shrugged. “Why? Only Mr. Karp knows for sure. Just as only Mr. Karp knows why he chose to take the word of a prostitute over that of two men who have served their country, and the president, faithfully. I would put to you that the most likely answer is ‘politics.' The president of this country, elected by a majority of his fellow citizens in a fair and honest vote, does not belong to the same party as Mr. Karp. Meanwhile, Mr. Fauhomme is the man who put the president in office, and Mr. Lindsey is one of his most trusted advisers. The uncertainty of events in Chechnya—including a routine disagreement on the interpretation of those events among colleagues—became a convenient straw-man motive. But as you will see and hear, it just doesn't make sense. What does make sense is that the murder of General Sam Allen was not some crazy conspiracy straight out of a Hollywood fantasy, but a rather run-of-the-mill blackmail scheme that turned into murder when the victim threatened to go to the police.”

Caulkin smiled in a nice grandfatherly way as he walked over to the jury box and leaned on the rail. “My friends, there is an answer as to why the defendants are sitting at that table today, but it's not because they're guilty of murder. And at the conclusion of this
trial, we will ask you to tell Mr. Karp that politics has no business in the justice system. General Allen deserves better than that; we all deserve better than that. And you will take a large step toward achieving that by returning a verdict of not guilty.”

Karp sat listening impassively to Caulkin's opening statement and personal attack as if the old man was talking about someone other than himself. He knew that as the defense attorney talked, some members of the jury had glanced his way to see if he would react. Would he shake his head? Would he appear angry? Would he chuckle nervously? Instead, he made small notes on a yellow legal pad and waited, expressionless. If the defense wanted to make this about him, he could not have cared less.