Us. That this young woman had used that word was more important to Millie than Rosalind would probably ever know. Millie squeezed Rosalind’s shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Millie whispered.
5
Anne could not shake the feeling that the walls were closing in. Was it just a panic attack?
She hadn’t heard from Levering, hadn’t been able to track him down. Where was he? Off in an alcoholic stupor? It wasn’t like him to be so far removed from communication. That had to be part of it.
Then there was Ambrosi. He was going to do something, and she didn’t know what. That wasn’t like him, either. It meant something big. She’d get caught up in it, maybe that was the thing. He was going to bring her down with him.
But there was something else, worse than mere professional anxiety. It was a deep disquiet of some kind, a big black hole inside her, swirling, sucking up galaxies.
Self-analysis was not something she was into. No money in it. No time for it. She usually dealt with uneasiness through action. Planning things, twisting arms. Even shopping. But this was something worse. She knew it wasn’t going to shake loose with a few purchases from Saks.
So what was this?
It felt like something calling to her. Searching for her.
The knock on her apartment door jarred her back into the present. She was startled to see that detective, Markey, through her peephole.
“What is it?” she said through the door.
“Ms. Deveraux, open the door, please.”
It was official-speak. She had no choice. Not to open would be like an admission of guilt.
She let him in.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Deveraux, but you’ll have to come with me now,” Don Markey said.
“Whoa, whoa,” she said. “Not now. I’ve got a meeting in ten – ”
“You don’t understand. You are under arrest.”
Her skin started to climb upward. “Arrest?”
“For complicity in the murder of Tad Levering.”
“Look,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re way off base.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” he said.
“Wait a second, hold it. Can’t you explain all this?”
“You have the right to an attorney – ”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Are you waiving your right to an attorney?”
“I’m not waiving anything.”
“Then come with me and we’ll talk about things at the station.”
“Things?”
“Unless you want to talk right now, tell me the whole thing. Corroborate what the senator said.”
Anne tried to keep her face from twitching. “Senator?”
“Levering. He’s told us quite a tale.”
Anne’s face did not cooperate. She felt her cheeks go into weird gyrations. He knew. The guy knew it all. She could see it in his eyes. And he knew she knew. It was all over, baby. She could almost hear Ambrosi’s voice telling her that.
With a swift precision honed over many years, Anne’s mind clicked and calculated in her moment of deepest crisis. Survival mode she sometimes called it. When the chips were down, you had to find the best way out.
The detective just waited, as if he knew what she was going to say.
“What kind of deal can we work out here?” she said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1
Now, at last, her moment had come.
Millie walked out of her chambers, Rosalind by her side, and proceeded through the Great Hall. Bill Bonassi was waiting for them just outside the doors.
“You ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” Millie said. She clutched a card that had notes for her statement. It would be respectful, but forceful. Every politician, every citizen, would know that she would stand against the onslaught. The question was whether she could hide the whirlwind inside her. She had thought peace would come with her moment. It had not.
“Then let’s go.” Bonassi took her arm and started down the great stone steps toward the snarl of reporters below. A clump of microphones was set up on the first level, with half a dozen television cameras placed at strategic locations and angles. Behind the reporters a large crowd of the curious thrust forward, kept at bay by four uniformed D.C. police officers.
Just before her final descent, Millie paused to look back at the Court building. The same marble figures flanked the portico, and the same immortal words, Equal Justice Under Law, moved her with their majesty. When she had first seen them she thought they had come from the mind of man. Now she knew they could only have come from the God who gave mankind the very capacity to be just.
At the knot of microphones, Bill Bonassi put his hand up to silence the few shouted questions.
“We have a statement to make,” he said. Cameras flashed and snapped, like hungry piranhas.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve stood here,” Bonassi said. “It was back in 1953 I first climbed these steps to make an argument before the Court. It was a free speech case. I argued on behalf of a school teacher from Nebraska. I argued that the Constitution gives every citizen the right to think and express ideas that might offend some folks, without the fear that such expression will result in being fired. And we won.”
Millie marveled at him. His voice and carriage were magnificent, as if he had been preparing all his life for just this moment.
“Today, after so many years,” Bonassi said, “I stand upon desecrated ground. I will say no more than that. As counsel for the chief justice, whom I was proud to serve with, I will step aside and allow her to speak for herself. But I want two things made clear. The first is, the charges leveled against Chief Justice Hollander that are the basis for this indictment are false. Second, I want the word to go out loud and clear that what is happening in our legislative halls is an atrocity. It is the antithesis of the ideals this country was founded on. It has to stop. Fairness and justice, which know no party, must once again be pursued, or we can just wrap up this experiment in democracy right now.”
Bill Bonassi, standing tall and proud, took a step away from the microphones.
That was Millie’s cue. Silently, she prayed.
She looked down at her notes. She could hear the relentless clicking of the cameras.
When she looked up again she saw a girl. She was around eight years old, and was toward the back of the large crowd. How was she so visible?
And then Millie knew. She was on a man’s shoulders, looking perhaps for the first time at the great temple of justice. Feelings rushed back to Millie, fresh and alive, of the first time she was here. Feelings of sacredness, of spotlessness. The majesty of this place.
The reporters were looking at her expectantly. She was not speaking. Bill Bonassi put his hand on her arm, as if to ask if she was all right.
Millie looked into the eyes of the Old Lion. “All things for good,” she whispered to him.
Then she handed him her notes.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said into the microphones. “The proudest moment of my life was when I was named to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. To come and join men like William T. Bonassi, Thomas Riley, and all the rest, was more than a dream come true. It was as if I had gone to heaven.”
She cleared her throat; it was like moving sand. “But I know now that this institution is not heaven. It is a very human institution. That is its reality but also its glory. What we have is indeed an experiment in democracy. But it is more. It is a glorious testimony to the finest instincts in man. There have been those who have disparaged this Court, found it wanting, cast it in political terms. And yes, because we are human beings we make human decisions. No one is going to agree with every opinion that is rendered, even when the vote is 9-0. But I know in my heart that every justice whom I have been privileged to serve with – everyone who puts on those robes – has tried to do the very best that he or she can.”