The Emperor of Ocean Park (38 page)

“I remember,” is all I say now.

“It was a terrible thing to say, Misha, a terrible thing, and your father was furious. But, well, this Court . . . there’s been a circus atmosphere around the nominations for decades. Longer. It goes back at least to Brandeis. Maybe even to Salmon Chase, or Roger Taney. Of course you know the storms their nominations caused! Well, this is getting far afield, and I know I’m boring you. You didn’t want to know about the mood around the courthouse. You know it already. You wanted to know . . . well, about your dad around this time, right?”

“Yes. Whatever you feel you can share.”

“Mmmm.” Wainwright has unveiled a different nervous gesture. He is worrying his retreating hair with one hand, drumming the fingers of the other on the arm of the chair. Doing both at once is actually a rather impressive display of coordination, like the juggler who also dances on a ball. “I’ll tell you, Misha, your father, as I said . . . he was incandescent. But not always. Even before the scandal broke, there were times, when I would catch Oliver at an unguarded moment, when he seemed . . . strained, I suppose, is the word. Worried about something. Yes. We would meet in the judges’ elevator and he would look tense and I would ask him what was wrong. I would remind him he should be walking on air. Yes. And he would shrug and mutter about how anything can come out in these hearings. ‘Look at Fortas,’ he said one night when we went down to the garage together. ‘The man takes perfectly legal money from a foundation and they destroy him for it.’” Wainwright twists his mouth in prim distaste. “Not that the problem with Fortas was legality, of course. He took money from . . . well, a shady character.” Then he sits up straight. “I guess I see the comparison.”

I am stunned. “You’re not saying . . . my father didn’t . . .”

“Take money? Oh, no, no, nothing like that. I’m sorry, Misha, I didn’t mean to leave that impression.” Wainwright actually laughs. “Your father taking money. That’s a real joke. I know there were some nasty rumors about that, but I knew your father as well as anybody, I sat with him on, literally, hundreds of cases over the years. I would have known. We all would have known. No chance. None. What a silly idea. I am only trying to explain that your father was nervous, that he thought something would come out, something perfectly innocent that would be distorted into something completely different.”

“Did you have any idea, at the time, what that something might be?”

“No, no. How could I? Your father was—what’s the old phrase?—oh, yes, a man of transparent rectitude. An impeccable résumé, a wonderful marriage, fine children. An exemplary career. Nobody would have imagined that scandal could attach itself to such a man. Your father was a great man, Misha, no matter what happened. You have to bear his greatness in mind.”

He is trying to reassure me, I know, but I find his cockiness off-putting. On the day of the funeral, Mallory Corcoran, too, spoke of my father’s greatness, and I sensed he meant the past tense. I wonder now whether Wallace Wainwright means the same thing. For a difficult moment, it bothers me, Wainwright’s smugness. Bothers me, I know full well, because he is white and untouchable. Was the Judge this smug? Would he have been as smug had he been confirmed? Yes, I suppose he was, and, yes, I suppose he would have been, except that he would have behaved even worse. But it would have been different. And not because he is—was—my father. After all the painful centuries, there is still a gap, a gulf, a yawning chasm between the smugness of a successful white man and the smugness of a successful black man. I suppose that white folk must find the first far easier to bear. Not black folk, however. Not this one, at least.

Yet I must press on to my point. I am not here to judge Wallace Wainwright. I am here to gather information. I am here because of
the arrangements.
Because there is
little time.
Because I have to know.

(III)

“J
USTICE
W
AINWRIGHT
, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask you about what happened . . . um, after the scandal broke.”

“By all means.” He settles his hands over his knee, looking for all the world like an alert schoolboy. But his generosity seems forced, as though I am opening a wound, and perhaps I am.

“Do you remember the security logs from the hearings? How they registered all those visits from Jack Ziegler?”

He nods slowly. “I wish I didn’t. It was a sad moment.”

If it was sad for you,
I almost say,
think of how it felt for us.
Until the logs showed up, I suppose I mostly believed my father’s denials, under oath, of Jack Ziegler’s visits. I was quite ready to accept that Greg Haramoto was, whether out of bizarre mental illness or sheer perversity, a perjurer. Even after the Democrats sprung the logs, when my mother would no longer speak to us on the question, Mariah and I would sit around for hours in the evening, arguing over whether (as my sister proposed) the records might somehow have been forged.

I can say little of this to Wallace Wainwright. “Yes, it was. A very sad moment. But let me ask you a question. Do you believe my father was lying when he said he had not met Jack Ziegler at the courthouse?”

Wainwright is definitely nervous now; this is territory he would rather not cover; and it occurs to me, too late, how much he is like me, for I, too, hate to deliver unpleasant news in person. Waiting, I notice, to my surprise, a photograph I had overlooked before: Wainwright and my father, standing in a small boat, displaying the fish they have caught. That he would keep this picture hanging, in the Supreme Court yet, touches me deeply. I realize with a surge of warmth that his affection for my father is not feigned; that Wallace Wainwright never cut him off as other friends did; and that he came to the funeral because we were burying a man he admired. He will not, of his own free will, say a bad word about my father. So, even before the Justice speaks, I know roughly what he is going to say. “Misha, you have to understand, your father was in a difficult position. A difficult position. Yes. Obviously, he did not attach much attention to the courthouse visits. Forgive me. It was the first time I ever saw Oliver overwhelmed. He was not quite able to believe people were making such an issue over the matter. For him—for your father—the visits were simply acts of friendship, occasions to offer comfort to his college buddy who had gotten himself into trouble. You remember what your father used to say about friendship? Something to do with bricks . . .”

I have the words ready:
“Friendship is a promise of future loyalty, loyalty no matter what comes. Promises are the bricks of life and trust is the mortar.”

“Yes, that’s it. Bricks and mortar.” The twisted smile again, giving him the cherubic look his fans adore. “So you see the point. To your father, it was all so terribly unfair. On television, before the nation, in the scrutiny of the media, the visits looked sinister. To your father, they were innocent gestures of friendship. Innocent. Yes. I think he simply decided there was no sensible way of explaining them—that is, nothing that would make sense in that hearing room. So of course he denied the meetings. You’re a semiotician. You know what I’m trying to say. Yes. Your father did not mean that there were no meetings. He was denying the meetings as his critics were constructing them, not as he himself understood them. Had the question been, ‘And did you, out of loyalty and friendship, meet with Jack Ziegler and encourage him to keep his spirits up in his time of travail?’—something more like that—well, then, I think perhaps Oliver would have given a more acceptable answer.” He notices something in my face. “I’m sorry, Misha, I know this is not exactly the answer you wanted.”

“I just want to understand. You’re saying my father lied. When you cut away all the underbrush, that’s it, right? He lied under oath?”

Wainwright sighs. “Yes, Misha. I’m sorry. I do think your father lied.”

“So Jack Ziegler was in the courthouse on . . . well, however many occasions it was.”

“Three, I believe.” Greg Haramoto only knew of one visit. The courthouse logs told the nation about the others.

“I think that’s right. Three meetings, all after hours.”

“Yes. After hours.”

My turn to see something in his face. He drops his eyes briefly. I have no idea what could be troubling him. And then I do. “You knew,” I say softly, wonderingly.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, no. You knew. You . . . you saw them in the hallway or something. Maybe you dropped by my father’s chambers after hours, and there was Jack Ziegler. But somehow . . . somehow you knew, didn’t you? You knew my father was meeting with Jack Ziegler.”

He looks off toward the far window, as though the view of the Library of Congress down the hill will rescue him from the dilemma into which he has talked himself. “This is off the record. You’re not writing a memoir or an essay for
The Atlantic
or something like that, are you?”

“It’s off the record,” I agree. I would agree to almost anything to get him to keep talking.

“I’ll deny it if you quote me.”

“I understand.”

Wallace Wainwright sighs. “Yes, Misha, I knew,” he says to the wall. “I saw them together, as you say. Not in the hallway. In the elevator. The private elevator for judges. Late one night. It must have been, oh, ten o’clock. Maybe later. I didn’t notice the time, because I didn’t attach so much . . . so much importance to it when it happened. Anyway, you will recall that my chambers and your father’s were on the same floor. I rang for the elevator, and, when it arrived, there was your father and a man I did not recognize at first. Both of them seemed surprised to see me. In retrospect, I suppose your father thought all the other judges had left the building, so that taking the private elevator was a good way to whisk Mr. Ziegler in while minimizing the chances that anybody would see. I don’t know. Anyway, they were, as I say, quite surprised. Quite surprised. But Oliver was never caught up short. He introduced us. He described his companion as his college roommate, I believe, and at first I attached no significance to the name.”

“At first?”

“Perhaps I was a little slow that night. It hit me a couple of days later. That the man in the elevator was not just
a
Jack Ziegler—he was
the
Jack Ziegler. An accused murderer, extortionist, I don’t know what else. Right in the courthouse, with a federal judge. Which left me, to say the least, uneasy. As well as unsure what to do. Quite unsure. Perhaps I should have talked to your father directly. Perhaps I should have raised the matter with the chief judge. In the event, I did not acquit myself admirably. I said nothing to anybody. I suppose I thought your father had his reasons. After all, I respected him, I considered him a man of enormous integrity. I still do.”

“Even though he lied under oath.”

“That was a terrible, terrible mistake on his part, Misha. To be perfectly honest with you, I considered it disqualifying. Lying under oath! I told you before that I understood it, but I do not want you to think for a moment that I approved of it. Not at all. Your father was right to withdraw. It was an honorable thing to do. Or would have been, that is, if your father had only shown . . . well, some contrition. Contrition. Yes. Your father . . . I know, Misha, that this is hard for you. But the fact is that he never seemed to accept that he had done anything wrong,
either by bringing a man about to stand trial for murder into the courthouse or by lying about it under oath. Unfortunately, like a lot of defeated nominees, all your father could think about was the motives of the people who had ferreted out the visits in the first place. And now I have to apologize again. You have come seeking assurance and I have made a speech, and a painful one at that.”

“No, that’s okay. I know my father lied.” A pause. “But there is one thing I don’t understand. If you knew about Jack Ziegler from way back when it happened, why didn’t you speak to anyone about it when the issue arose during the confirmation hearings?”

He answers so quickly I know he has anticipated me. “Nobody ever asked. The FBI never came around and interviewed the other judges, you know.”

“You could have volunteered the information. You would have spared Greg Haramoto so much anguish.”

“Oh, Misha, really! One judge ratting on another. Unthinkable. It simply isn’t done. Nor is it in the spirit of the Constitution. The legislative branch passes upon the fitness of the nominees for the judiciary. It would not have been right for me, as a member of the third branch, to try to influence a confirmation hearing in any respect.”

I like Wallace Wainwright, maybe because my father did, but his cocksureness astounds me, as much in person as in his opinions, where the implication, often, is that a law must be unconstitutional because he happens not to like it.

“I appreciate that,” I say after a moment, not at all sure that I do. I wonder whether Wainwright stayed out of my father’s mess precisely to protect his own chances. I do not know whether it is unthinkable for one judge to rat on another, but it surely would not help either one of them get to the Supreme Court. “However, I need to understand something else.”

“Of course,” says Wainwright, struggling against his impatience.

“When my father . . . when he met with Jack Ziegler. That was in the evening.”

“Yes. Fairly late, as I said.”

“That wasn’t unusual, was it? For my father to be at the courthouse so late?”

“Unusual?” He smiles. “No, Misha, not at all. I worked long hours, too, but nothing like Oliver. You have to remember the kind of man your father was. The kind of judge. He was—you know the old
phrase—a demon for details. I remember one oral argument, an appeal of some kind of criminal conviction, in which the lawyer for the convicted man made the mistake of playing to your father’s vanity, quoting some dissenting opinion your father wrote in his early days on the bench. Your father asked him, ‘Counsel, do you know how many times that issue has come before this court since I wrote those words?’ The poor man didn’t know. Your father said, ‘Seventeen times. Do you know how many times the court has rejected that approach? Seventeen times. And do you know how many of those opinions I wrote?’ Oh, the wretched lawyer! He did what every first-year law student learns never to do: he guessed. He said, ‘Seventeen, Your Honor?’ Walking right into the trap, you see. Your father said, ‘None. I adhere to the views you quoted,’ and the entire courtroom bursts out laughing. But not the lawyer and not your father. He was not making a joke, he was teaching a lesson. And he couldn’t resist adding a second punch line. ‘My views don’t matter, counsel. In a federal appellate court, you have to cite the law of the circuit, not the views of the individual judges. Perhaps you remember that from law school.’”