The Road to Omaha (4 page)

“Very commendable, Washbloom—”

“That’s
Washburn
, sir.”

“Him, too. Let’s
skull
, men—and you, too, Miss … Miss …”

“Trueheart, Mr. President. Teresa Trueheart.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m your Chief of Staff’s personal secretary, sir.”

“And then some,” mumbled the DCI.

“
Stow
it, Vinnie.”

“My Chief of Staff …? Gosh ’n’ crackers, where
is
Arnold? I mean this is a
crisis
, a real zing doozer!”

“He has his massage every afternoon at this hour, sir,” replied Miss Trueheart brightly.

“Well, I don’t mean to criticize, but—”

“You have every
right
to criticize, Mr. President,” interrupted the wide-eyed heir apparent.

“On the other hand, Subagaloo’s been under a great deal of stress lately. The press corps call him names and he’s quite sensitive.”

“And there’s nothing that relieves stress more than a massage,” added the Vice-President. “Believe me, I know!”

“So where do we stand, gentlemen? Let’s get a fix on the compass and tighten the halyards.”

“Aye,
aye
, sir!”

“Mr. Vice-President, give us a break, huh?… The compass we’re locked into, Big Man, should better be fixed on a full moon, ’cause that’s where we’re at—looney-tune time, but nobody’s laughin’.”

“Speaking as your Secretary of Defense,
Mr. President
,” broke in an extremely short man whose pinched face barely projected above the table and whose eyes glared disapprovingly at the CIA director, “the situation’s utterly preposterous. Those idiots on the Court can’t be allowed to even consider devastating the security of the country over an obscure, long-forgotten, so-called treaty with an Indian tribe nobody’s ever
heard
of!”

“Oh, I’ve heard of the Wopotamis,” the Vice-President interrupted again. “Of course, American history wasn’t my best subject, but I remember I thought it was a funny name, like the Choppywaws. I thought they were slaughtered or died of starvation or some dumb thing.”

The brief silence was ended with Director Vincent Mangecavallo’s strained whisper as he stared at the young man who was a heartbeat away from being the nation’s Commander in Chief. “You say one more word, butter
skull, and you’re gonna be in a cement bathrobe at the bottom of the Potomac, do I make myself clear?”

“
Really
, Vincent!”

“Listen, Prez, I’m your head honcho for the whole country’s security, right? Well, let me tell you, that kid’s got the loosest mouth in the beltway. I could have him terminated with extreme prejudice for saying and doing what he didn’t even know he said or did. The hit off the record, naturally.”

“That’s not fair!”

“It’s not a fair world, son,” observed the perspiring Attorney General, turning his attention to the White House lawyer at the blackboard. “All right, Blackburn—”

“
Wash
burn—”

“If you say so.… Let’s zero in on this fiasco, and I mean zero to the max! For starters, just who the hell is the bastard, the
traitor
, who’s behind this totally unpatriotic, un-American appeal to the Court?”

“He calls himself Chief Thunder Head, Native American,” answered Washburn. “And the brief his attorney submitted is considered one of the most brilliant ever received by the judiciary, our informer tells us. They say—confidentially—that it will go down in the annals of jurisprudence as a model of legal analysis.”

“Annals, my ass!” exploded the Attorney General, once more working his soiled handkerchief across his brow. “I’ll have that legal banana peeled to his bare bones! He’s finished, eliminated. By the time the department’s through with him, he won’t get a job selling insurance in Beirut,
forget
the law! No firm’ll touch him and he won’t find a client in the meat box at Leavenworth. What’s the son of a bitch’s name?”

“
Well,
” began Washburn hesitantly, his voice squeaking briefly into a falsetto, “… there we have a temporary glitch, as it were.”

“Glitch—
what
glitch?” The nasal-toned Warren Pease, whose left eye had the unfortunate affliction of straying to the side when he was excited, pecked his head forward like a violated chicken. “Just give us the name, you idiot!”

“There isn’t any to give,” choked Washburn.

“Thank God this moron doesn’t work for the Pentagon,”
snarled the diminutive Secretary of Defense. “We’d never find half our missiles.”

“I think they’re in Teheran, Oliver,” offered the President. “Aren’t they?”

“My suggestion was
rhetorical
, sir.” The pinch-faced head of the Pentagon, seen barely above the surface of the table, shook back and forth in short lateral jabs. “Besides, that was a long time ago and
you
weren’t there and
I
wasn’t there. Remember,
sir
?”

“Yes, yes, of course I don’t.”

“Goddamn it, Blackboard, why
isn’t
there a name?”

“Legal precedent, sir, and my name is … never mind—”

“What do you mean, ‘never mind,’ you wart? I want the
name
!”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“What the hell
do
you mean?”

“
Non nomen amicus curiae,
” mumbled the bespectacled White House attorney barely above a whisper.

“What are you doin’, a Hail Mary?” asked the DCI softly, his dark Mediterranean eyes bulging in disbelief.

“It goes back to 1826, when the Court permitted a brief to be filed anonymously by a ‘friend of the Court’ on behalf of a plaintiff.”

“I’ll kill him,” mumbled the obese Attorney General, an audible flatus emerging from the seat of his chair.

“
Hold
it!” yelled the Secretary of State, his left eye swinging back and forth unchecked. “Are you telling us that this brief for the Wopotami tribe was filed by an
unnamed
attorney or attorneys?”

“Yes, sir. Chief Thunder Head sent his representative, a young brave who recently passed the state’s bar, to appear before the justices in camera and act as temporary counsel anticipating the necessity of the original anonymous counsel should the brief be held inadequate.… It wasn’t. The majority of the Court deemed it sufficient under the guidelines of
non nomen amicus curiae
.”

“So we don’t know
who
the
hell
prepared the goddamned thing?” shouted the Attorney General, his attacks of duodenal gas unrelenting.

“My wife and I call those ‘bottom burps,’ ” snickered the Vice-President quietly to his single superior.

“
We
used to call them ‘caboose whistles,’ ” replied the President, grinning conspiratorially.

“For Christ’s
sake
!” roared the Attorney General. “No, no, not
you
, sir, or the kid here—I’m referring to Mr. Backwash—”

“That’s … never mind.”

“You mean to tell us we’re not allowed to know who
wrote
this garbage, this swill that may convince five air-headed judges on the Court to affirm it as law and, not incidentally,
destroy
the operational core of our national defense?”

“Chief Thunder Head has informed the Court that in due time, after the decision has been rendered and made public and his people set free, he will make known the legal mind behind his tribe’s appeal.”

“That’s nice,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Then we’ll put the son of a bitch on the reservation with his redskin buddies and nuke the whole bunch of them off the goddamned map.”

“To do that, General, you’d have to wipe out all of Omaha, Nebraska.”

The emergency meeting in the Situation Room was over; only the President and his Secretary of State remained at the table.

“Golly, Warren,” said the chief executive. “I wanted you to stay because sometimes I don’t understand those people.”

“Well, they certainly never went to
our
school, old roomie.”

“Gosh, I guess they didn’t but that’s not what I mean. They all got so excited, shouting and cursing and everything.”

“The ill-born are prone to emotional outbursts, we both know that. They have no ingrained restraint. Do you remember when the headmaster’s wife got drunk and began singing ‘One-Ball Reilly’ at the back of the chapel? Only the scholarship boys turned around.”

“Not exactly,” said the President sheepishly. “I did, too.”

“
No
, I can’t believe it!”

“Well, I sort of peeked. I think I had the hots for her; it started in dancing class—the fox trot, actually.”

“She did that to all of us, the bitch. It’s how she got her kicks.”

“I suppose so, but back to this meeting. You don’t think anything could come of that Indian stuff, do you?”

“Of course not! Chief Justice Reebock is just up to his old tricks, trying to get you mad because he thinks you blackballed him for our Honorary Alumni Society.”

“Gee, I swear I didn’t!”

“I know you didn’t, I did. His politics are quite acceptable, but he’s a very unattractive man and wears terrible clothes. He looks positively ludicrous in a tuxedo. Also, I think he drools—not for us, old roomie. You heard what that Washboard said … he said Reebock told our mole that we ‘weren’t the only half-assed ball game in town.’ What more do you need?”

“Still, everybody got so angry, especially Vincent Manja … Manju … Mango whatever.”

“It’s the Italian in him. It goes with the bloodlines.”

“Maybe, Warren. Still, he bothers me. I’m sure Vincent was a fine naval officer, but he could also be a loose cannon … like you-know-who.”

“
Please
, Mr. President, don’t give either of us nightmares!”

“I’m just trying to prevent ’em, old roomie. Look, Warren, Vincent doesn’t get along too well with our Attorney General or the Joint Chiefs, and definitely not with the whole Defense Department, so I want you to sort of cultivate him, stay in close touch with him on this problem—be his confidential friend.”

“With a
Mangecavallo
?”

“Your office calls for it, Warty old boy. State’s got to be involved in something like this.”

“But
nothing
will
come
of it!”

“I’m sure it won’t, but think of the reactions worldwide when the Court’s arguments become public. We’re a nation of laws, not whims, and the Supreme Court doesn’t
suffer nuisance suits. You have some international spin-control in front of you, roomie.”

“But why
me
?”

“Golly gosh and zing darn, I just
told
you, Warty!”

“Why not the Vice-President? He can relay all the news to me.”

“Who?”

“The Vice-President!”

“What
is
his name, anyway?”

It was a bright midsummer’s afternoon, and Aaron Pinkus, arguably the finest attorney in Boston, Massachusetts, and certainly one of the kindest and most gentle of powerful men, climbed out of his limousine in the fashionable suburb of Weston and smiled at the uniformed chauffeur who held the door. “I told Shirley this huge car was ostentatious enough, Paddy, but that silly cap with the shiny visor on your head comes perilously close to the sin of false pride.”

“Not in old Southie, Mr. Pinkus, and we got more sins than they got votive candles in a wax factory,” said the large middle-aged driver, whose partially graying hair bespoke a once full crown of bright red. “Besides, you’ve been saying that for years now and it doesn’t do much good. Mrs. Pinkus is a very insistent woman.”

“Mrs. Pinkus’s brain has been refried too often under a beauty shop hair dryer.… I never said that, Paddy.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be, so drive down the block, perhaps around the corner, out of sight—”

“And stay in touch with you over the beeper,” completed the Irishman, grinning, obviously enjoying the subterfuge.
“If I spot Mr. Devereaux’s car, I signal you, and you can get out through the back door.”

“You know, Paddy, if our words were part of a transcript, any transcript, we’d lose the case, whatever it was.”

“Not with your office defending us, sir.”

“False pride again, my old friend. Also, criminal law is but a small part of the firm and not really outstanding.”

“Hey,
you
ain’t doing nothin’ criminal!”

“Then let’s lose the transcript.… Do I look presentable for the grande dame, Paddy?”

“Let me straighten your tie, sir, it slipped a touch down.”

“Thank you,” said Pinkus as the driver adjusted his tie. His eyes strayed to the imposing blue-gray Victorian house, fronted by a white picket fence and profuse with gleaming white trim around the windows and below the high gables. Inside was the matron of this landmark residence, the formidable Mrs. Lansing Devereaux III, mother of Samuel Devereaux, potential attorney-extraordinary and currently an enigma to his employer, one Aaron Pinkus.

“There you are, sir.” The chauffeur stepped back and nodded approvingly. “You’re a grand and splendid sight for one of the opposite sex.”

“Please, Paddy, this is not an assignation, it’s a mission of compassionate inquiry.”