Protect and Defend (16 page)

Sarah could only listen. “Certainly,” Tierney continued, “we’d like medical testimony regarding both Mary Ann and our grandson, as well as the testimony of a psychologist regarding the trauma of aborting a viable baby. Perhaps—in contrast to Ms. Dash—testimony from mothers who have taken similar pregnancies to term.” He drew a breath. “The
implications of Ms. Dash’s request are more profound than I think she knows. I expect that members of the disability community should also be heard.”

It was just as Caroline had admonished her. “On what ground?” Sarah asked.

“You’re proposing selective abortion of fetuses because, in the opinion of a mother, they have traits which are less ‘desirable’ than other children.” Pausing, Tierney shook his head in wonderment. “Where would you draw the line, Ms. Dash? Aborting babies because they’re female, and a parent—or the state—wants a male?”

Sarah faced Leary. “Your Honor,” she urged, “this is about a teenage girl with a hydrocephalic child. Not eugenics.”

Leary scowled. “You’re asking me to consider throwing the whole statute out—for everyone. And one of your grounds is disability, at least as I read your papers. If someone wants to speak for the disabled, I’ll hear them.”

“Thank you.” Tierney’s voice conveyed both gratitude and sorrow. “Also, Margaret and I may well wish to testify—both as Mary Ann’s parents and as those who, up to now, have been responsible for her moral instruction. We’re afraid of the long-term psychological damage if she contravenes her own beliefs by having an abortion.”

Sarah began to absorb the shape of what would come: litigating with Martin Tierney over the best interests of his own daughter, perhaps on television; arguing whether a law which would force a traumatic childbirth on a teenage girl was, instead, a bulwark against the rebirth of Nazi science; clashing with the Christian Commitment, whose tactics—in and out of court—might be far more harsh and devious than Martin Tierney knew; suffering the peremptory and erratic rulings of Patrick Leary—who, Sarah suspected, was more sympathetic to the Tierneys than to their daughter.

“Your Honor,” she said, “may I return to the question of the media—and television? If Mary Ann Tierney were a shoplifter, her privacy would be protected. Because she’s innocent of any crime, Mr. Rabinsky feels entitled to put her on CNN …”

“We can run a three-second delay,” Rabinsky retorted. “Beeping out her name, and blocking out her face and that of the Tierneys. It’s their circumstances, not their specific identity,
which is of the greatest public interest. Not only is this a case of unique importance, but the fact that Ms. Tierney is the daughter of pro-life activists exposes the complex nature of the issue.”

“Which is just another way,” Sarah rejoined, “of punishing Mary Ann for her parents’ decisions. But in this case the Tierneys agree with me. That should be dispositive. Why strip this girl of her privacy for invoking the right to privacy?”

“It’s certainly entitled to great weight,” Leary answered. “But opening the courtroom not only honors the First Amendment, it demystifies the legal process—especially as to something as controversial as this. Besides, that’s a hearing for injunctive relief, heard by the court itself. So there’s no question of prejudicing a jury.”

No, Sarah thought, it was even worse than that: television would inspire Leary to serve his ego and promote his own career. “Anyone who has a view on this,” Leary concluded, “can file a brief by the close of business tomorrow. But I’m inclined to grant Mr. Rabinsky’s request, as modified to protect the family’s identity.”

“Your Honor,” Sarah protested, “that’s not enough time to brief the matter. Especially with only ten days before a hearing.”

“Ms. Dash,” Leary retorted in an exasperated tone, “Ken-yon & Walker’s almost as big as the government. You’ve got at least four hundred lawyers over there. Turn them loose.

“I’ve given you the timetable you wanted. So don’t complain about it.”

It was clear that Leary’s attention span, never great, was exhausted. “All right,” he announced. “TRO denied, motion to intervene granted, media petition under consideration. No statements to the press until I say so.

“Ms. Dash’s brief is due in five days, the reply brief two days later, hearing in ten days—three days for each side’s witnesses.” He looked sharply around the table. “Anything else?”

No one spoke. “Then that’s it for now,” Leary said, and dismissed them.

Leaving, Martin and Margaret Tierney avoided Sarah. For this, at least, she was grateful; their exchange felt exhausting and too personal, what lay ahead enormous. She tried to
imagine what the night would hold for the Tierneys, parents and daughter, and whether Mary Ann could bear it.

Still shaken, Sarah went to a pay phone to prepare her.

M
ASON
T
AYLOR
put his feet up on the ottoman in Macdonald Gage’s office, studying the shine of his shoes.

“This is where you draw the line,” he said. “It’s a power play—the little bastard’s trying to blow this woman by us.”

Gage sipped his bourbon. Beneath his placid exterior he was sharply attentive—his job, and his hope of becoming President, might well depend on the forces which Mace Taylor represented. More than any man in Washington, Taylor personified the connection between money and power.

Taylor had not always inspired such awe, or such caution. A few years before he had been a second-term senator from Oklahoma with no prospects beyond that. Then the party had made him chairman of its Senate Campaign Committee and discovered his unique gift: Taylor was relentless in extracting special-interest money through promises or threats.

His approach was brutally simple—do you want a place at the table, or the doors to Congress slammed in your face? Favored donors were encouraged to help draft legislation or target bills for defeat; the less generous were banished. Bemused, Taylor’s party colleagues found themselves surprised by, then reliant on, the contributions Taylor could produce. Avid to survive, they were fearful of the organization and money the unions and trial lawyers could marshal against them; few could resist more cash flowing into their campaigns, or a suggestion from Taylor that the lobbyist for an HMO or gun manufacturer was too important to ignore. Taylor had made himself the conduit between those willing to
use money to assure their favored status and the lawmakers who needed money to keep their jobs. And neither group, they soon discovered, could do without Mace Taylor.

The process changed Taylor, as well. As a senator, he was constrained from sharing in the wealth he had created. Outside, armed with cash from corporations and interest groups, he could charge clients the price of access to senators or representatives who wanted what Taylor could provide. Mace Taylor became an investor in his clients’ enterprises, and almost as wealthy as those he served.

But this was only the beginning. With a shrewd eye, Taylor perceived the uses of the scandal culture: the competition among tabloids, cable channels, magazines, newspapers, and internal publications for that sordid private detail through which one might, by destroying a public career, rise above one’s peers. To the pragmatists who feared or needed him, Taylor added a second source of cash and power: the interest groups or wealthy zealots willing to fund investigations of politicians whose ruin they desired, or whom Taylor wished to control. Some in Congress were slow to understand this— the prior Majority Leader, resistant to Taylor’s instructions, awoke one morning to a phone call describing his sexual behavior with a sixteen-year-old prostitute. The next day he resigned; Macdonald Gage, who had known nothing of Taylor’s plans, became Majority Leader because Taylor wished it. It was a lesson Gage never forgot.

But Gage, too, was proud. He had not been bought, he told himself—he had been presented with a force which any man who wished to be President must consider. But there was no question of turning Taylor away. And so Taylor sat in his office, the image of a Washington insider, eyeing the television on which Caroline Masters’s face had appeared.

Quite deliberately, Taylor no longer pretended to be the homespun senator from Oklahoma; his Piaget watch, Ferragamo loafers, and Savile Row suit were, Gage knew, a studied reminder of the wealth and power he represented. But the man was the same—slick black hair which gleamed under the lights, a broad face which reflected part-Indian ancestry, shrewd black eyes far better at conveying contempt than warmth—as was his private vocabulary. Even without the context of a Supreme Court nomination, Gage would
have recognized “the little bastard” as Kerry Kilcannon, whom Taylor deplored as deeply as the causes Kilcannon represented.

“What do your people say about
her?
” Gage asked.

“That she’s a liberal,” Taylor answered. “The gun manufacturers have had their eye on her for a while. They think she’ll favor lawsuits every time some junkie pops a liquor store owner with a Saturday night special—”

“Yeah,” Gage interjected mordantly, “or some sportsman mows down a kindergarten class with an AK-47. Can’t be getting in
their
way.”

Taylor shot him a look. “Don’t you get squishy on me. People need to protect themselves, and the Second Amendment secures the right to own a gun. How long would you last in Kentucky if the NRA put ads on the screen accusing you of taking away their guns?”

Gage smiled. “No chance of that, Mace. I want my constituents to be able to shoot any IRS agent who comes to collect that last hard-earned dollar.” He spread his hands. “No argument, either—guns will always be with us, and the gun-control laws never work. But we’re not going to use Masters to get Kilcannon by saying she’ll let a policeman’s widow sue gunmakers. So what else?”

Taylor sipped from his tumbler of the Maker’s Mark whiskey Gage kept for him. “The heart of it,” he said slowly, “is campaign reform. From the looks of her opinions, the Christian Commitment tells me, she believes Chad Palmer’s bill is constitutional. It was
their
money that helped you get the Protection of Life Act through, and keep control of the Senate. You can’t ignore what
they
want, and what they
don’t
want is Chad Palmer, or this woman, trampling all over their First Amendment rights of advocacy.”

Gage sat up. The Palmer bill would ban unlimited contributions to political parties, threatening the money flow and, in the process, the role Mace Taylor played in Washington. “Well,” Gage answered. “That’s a problem.”

Taylor looked at him intently. “It surely is. Our friends in the HMOs, the NRA, the pro-life movement, and the tobacco industry would lose their right of speech, while those bloodsucking trial lawyers beat on the gun industry like a gong, and the unions and minorities turn their folks out to help the
Democrats take over Congress. What are we going do about that?”

Was this a test? Gage wondered. “Find something else,” he answered.

“How do you mean?”

“We’re not going to rally the public by saying she’ll choke off the cash we need to compete—that’s an insider’s argument.” He paused to reflect. “Where is she on abortion?”

Taylor shrugged. “You’ve got to figure she’s in favor. But the Commitment doesn’t know. Still, we wind up with a black eye if we let her on the Court, and then she uses
Roe
to knock down any limit on abortion you manage to get through Congress. Which is probably what she’ll do.”

“Sure,” Gage agreed. “But she’s not going to tell us that. By the time she’s in front of Palmer’s committee, Kilcannon’s people will have trained her like a seal.”

“Then you have to slow this down, Mac. Until we find something we can beat her with.”

“Such as?”

“Anything. You saw that announcement today—no kids or husband, using her sister’s family as a prop. Maybe she’s a lesbian.”

The thought filled Gage with genuine unease. Gage had been a poor, unmarried girl’s child, adopted by a loving couple, and his affection for his parents, and loyalty to his siblings, was deep; for him, preserving the family was paramount. He had based his life on this belief, from thirty years of fidelity to Sue Ann Gage—with whom he had adopted a Hispanic girl—to regular calls to each of his grown children. Now the traditional family was besieged by deviance and self-indulgence; he would not knowingly permit a lesbian to be a role model, let alone to lead the nation’s highest court. Even if politics allowed.

“I don’t think
Kilcannon
would mind,” Gage answered. “The question is whether he’s that stupid.”

“Stupid, no. That stubborn, maybe. You know how righteous these liberals can get.”

“So can we,” Gage answered. “The difference is that two thousand years of religious tradition and human history says we’re right. Or no amount of prosperity will save us from ourselves.”

Taking a swallow of rich bourbon, Gage saw his own image appear on the screen. Reaching for the remote control, he raised the volume.

CNN had caught him emerging from his office. Though Masters had been a surprise, Gage was pleased at his unfazed demeanor and measured words, a public face born of much experience. “I commend the President on his promptness,” Gage said to the camera. “What the country requires from the Senate, however, is a deliberate process, most particularly in the investigation and hearings conducted by Senator Palmer and his committee.

“We deserve a Chief Justice with a superb judicial temperament, one who strictly interprets the Constitution rather than indulging in judicial activism. I very much look forward to meeting Judge Masters, and to hearing her views …”

“You did vote for her before, didn’t you?”

“For the Court of Appeals.” Gage summoned a benign smile. “Certainly, Candy, I want to give the President’s nominee every consideration. But now she has a record as a judge, and the American people expect us to review that record thoroughly before making her Chief Justice.”

Lowering the volume, Gage turned back to Taylor. “
Maybe
she’s lesbian. But you know the problem, Mace. For sure she’s a woman. The party’s in trouble with women. And from the look of her, this one’s no pushover.”