The Last Justice (14 page)

McKenna began searching the room with no real idea what he was looking for. He found nothing in the closet or under the bed. He kicked the piles of clothes on the floor, but there was nothing hidden under them. After ransacking the dresser, he was about to give up when he finally pulled out the dresser drawers and looked inside the frame.

In the shadowy space under the bottom drawer, he thought he saw something and pulled out what looked like a small makeup bag. He unzipped it to find an authentic-looking fake mustache and tubes of makeup.

After a thorough search for other hiding places-even testing the floorboards and baseboards for a telltale creak or loose nailMcKenna came back into the living room. Pierce was sitting on a stool at the small Formica kitchen bar, looking annoyed.

"Where can we find Pratt?"

"I really don't know," Pierce said. "He's always out late. He parties and he's a gambler-plays cards."

"Do you know where he hangs out?" Kate asked.

Pierce thought for a moment. "When I first moved in, he took me to Cloud Nine on U Street. It wasn't my scene. I think he's a regular, though."

"Is there a picture of him anywhere in this place?"

Pierce put his hand on his chin, thinking. He then pointed to his laptop that sat nearby on the counter. "If you let me log on to my computer I can probably get you a picture."

McKenna nodded. Pierce typed quickly, and the Harrington & Caine Web site came up. He pulled up Pratt's bio on the site, which included a picture. McKenna looked at Kate. It was the man from the Martini Park bar: George Costanza.

U Street, Washington,

loud Nine had an understated exterior, with plain black walls and no sign-a design no doubt aimed at making patrons feel that this was an exclusive club: if you needed a sign to find it, you didn't belong. But the two muscleheads at the door and the skimpily dressed young women in a long line near the entrance made it hard to miss.

McKenna and Kate walked to the front of the line and flashed their Justice Department IDs, which prompted nervous looks from the doormen but got them inside quickly. The club was pulsing with loud dance music, flashing lights, and bodies gyrating to the pounding beat.

They made their way to the crowded bar on the right side of the club. Kate showed a bartender the picture of Pratt that Pratt's roommate had printed for them, but the man rebuffed her questions and devoted his full attention to the glass he was drying. She and McKenna then walked the place from corner to corner but didn't spot Pratt anywhere. They approached a bouncer with the picture, accompanying it with a fan of twenty-dollar bills. The money disappeared in the bouncer's fist, which then extended a finger to point at the back of the club.

"Watch the wall," he said.

Before they could ask what this meant, they saw a man open a door that blended seamlessly into the wall when it closed behind him. They stood and watched from a distance for a few moments and then began to push through the crowd closer to the hidden door.

"What do you think is going on back there-drugs?" McKenna asked.

"His roommate said he's a gambler. Maybe a backroom game," Kate replied.

"Should we go in?" McKenna asked.

"No, we don't need a scene. Let's just watch for a while."

For the next twenty minutes they watched the door until, sure enough, Douglas Pratt appeared, looking sober but downtrodden. They followed him to the bar, watching him from behind a group of young women who were pulling shot glasses from a tray held up by a waitress. Pratt stopped, pulled out his wallet, looked inside, then returned it to his back pocket. He exchanged words with a bartender, who shrugged and then turned to attend to the other customers at the bar.

They followed Pratt outside onto the street, where he lit a cigarette and began walking in the direction of the U Street-Cardozo metro station. McKenna and Kate trailed him at a comfortable distance. The street was dark, its only light from a lamp nearly two blocks away.

As they got closer to Pratt, he seemed to sense it and took a quick look over his shoulder. When he picked up his pace, McKenna called out to him. "Douglas Pratt."

Pratt slowed and turned around. "Who wants to know?" he said, cocking his shoulders back.

"We're with the Justice Department," McKenna said, walking even closer.

"Look, I'm happy to talk with you guys again about Black Wednesday, but I'm tired. Why don't you call my office and make an appointment with my-" Pratt stopped as McKenna and Kate came under the glow of the streetlamp. He glared at McKenna.

"We'd like to talk with you about the Hassan brothers," McKenna said.

Pratt's face turned to granite. "Never heard of them," he turned and continued walking down the street.

"You're a crappy liar," Kate said as she and McKenna sauntered over. McKenna put his hand on Pratt's shoulder, and the man pivoted back around aggressively.

"Get your goddamn hands off me!"

"Relax. We just need a couple minutes," Kate said.

Pratt looked up at them. They both towered over him by nearly a foot. "I don't have anything to say to you. I know my rights, so fuck off-both of you." Looking at McKenna, he added, "I don't think you want me to call the cops."

Suddenly McKenna grabbed him by the lapels and threw him against the graffitied wall of a drugstore. "I've had a very long day, Mr. Pratt. I would not push it if I were you."

Kate tugged lightly on McKenna's arm. "Jefferson . . . "

Pratt gave a nervous laugh. "Aren't you already in enough trouble Mr. Solicitor General?"

Before McKenna could respond, a black SUV jerked to a stop at the curb, and two burly men got out and rushed toward the group.

Without saying a word, one of them grabbed Kate and shoved a gun into her side. The other man swung at McKenna but he blocked the punch. Then the man's other hand arched around and something soft and heavy thudded into the side of his head.

Home ofJustice Gillian Carmichael, McLean, Virginia

yez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court!"

Gillian Carmichael jerked awake. The room was dark, and her husband lay snoring beside her. She was relieved that she had awoken, and the recurring nightmare that had afflicted her since the massacre at the high court had been cut short. The nightmare was always the same. It began with the marshal's cry that opened all public sessions of the Supreme Court. She and the other justices would enter the courtroom simultaneously, in three groups of three, through openings in the heavy velvet curtains behind the bench. In well-choreographed tradition, they would then each pull out their high-backed chairs and be seated. The courtroom was crowded and, as usual, a shade too warm. She looked out toward the entrance of the chamber, where tourists were being herded through like cattle, in three-minute blocks that allowed the public at least a glimpse of one of the three branches of government in action.

In the nightmare, the spectator seats were filled to capacity until the lights flickered. Then the courtroom chamber was suddenly empty except for a lone person sitting in the center of the public pews: the chief justice's widow, Liddy Kincaid.

Liddy just stared at Carmichael. Chief Justice Kincaid, who was seated next to Carmichael on the bench, turned to her and repeated his favorite joke, borrowed from one of his predecessors: "I spent my first five years on the court wondering how I got here. I've spent the rest of the time wondering how you all did." An instant later, his face was blown off, with blood and bits spattering across Carmichael's cheek and forehead.

Liddy Kincaid smiled and wagged her finger with a loud, taunting "Tsk, tsk, tsk."

The room then filled with its usual participants, who came and went without one of them acknowledging that Kincaid sat slumped, dead and bloody, on the bench. The aides behind the justices paid the grisly scene no mind, and the clerk and the marshal seated on either side of the long winged stretch of mahogany also ignored it, as the courtroom spectators sat upright and silent, waiting for the oral argument to begin.

Carmichael looked at her husband. Gerald had known that his wife was struggling with the trauma of Black Wednesday. She had survived only because Chief Justice Kincaid had thrown her to the floor, where she was shielded by the bench. Gerald thought that therapy or even acknowledging your fears aloud was for the weak-a manifestation of the very emotional unavailability that had pushed her into Kincaid's arms.

But having learned that Liddy Kincaid was under investigation by the commission, Carmichael could no longer pretend that her nightmare meant nothing. She decided to wake her husband. It was time they had a talk.

Northeast Washington,

hen McKenna regained consciousness, he was in a moving vehicle. His ankles and wrists were bound and his eyes and mouth taped shut. The vehicle slowed, and he could hear and feel when the road surface changed to rocks and gravel. His head was throbbing, and he had no clear idea of how long he had been riding.