The Rose Conspiracy (30 page)

Then he pulled his cell phone out and called a number.

Vinnie Archmont answered.

“Hey,” he started out. “I'm hoping to cash in my rain check. What do you say?”

“Oh that would be marvelous!” she exclaimed. “So, you're coming over for dinner?”

“If you'll have me,” he said. “Your place?”

“Sure…anytime…how about right now?”

He asked Vinnie if she could wait for a second. Then he gave her apartment address to the cab driver.

“Okay. I'll be there in about fifteen, twenty minutes, counting crosstown traffic,” he said.

“Oh, I am so looking forward to seeing you,” she said happily. “Any requests for dinner?”

“I'm not picky. Most of my meals come out of frozen boxes.”

“I think I can do better than that,” she said brightly.

Just then Blackstone could hear the call-waiting beep on his cell phone.

“Look,” he said, “I think someone is trying to call through—can you hold for a few seconds?”

“Don't worry,” Vinnie replied. “Take the call. I want to get started on dinner anyway.”

Blackstone clicked on the call. It was Julia.

“Hi, it's me,” Julia started out. “I left your office a little abruptly today…I know I told you about Senator Collings's involvement with that Albert Pike foundation.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Just thought you might want to know that Tully also gave us a copy of the foundation's charter document,” Julia continued.

“Good.”

“It says,” she continued, “that the objective of the foundation is to, and I quote, ‘Preserve and protect the name, history, and reputation of Albert Pike, statesman, philosopher, military officer, lawyer, judge, and internationally renowned scholar whose writings and insights influenced the foundations of the Scottish Rite and Freemasonry.' ”

Then Julia added, “Sorry I interrupted your call. I could hear the beep and knew you were on the line with someone else.”

“That's okay,” he said. “I was talking to Vinnie. Just setting up a dinner date with her tonight over at her place.”

There was no response from Julia on the other end of the line.

Blackstone broke the silence.

“Does it occur to you that I might really know what I'm doing here?”

“You want me to trust your judgment, is that what you're saying?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” Blackstone replied.

“I'm sorry, but I don't—not in this case. Not when I see you walking into…oh, I don't know,” she said grasping for some way to express it, “professional quicksand or something. Frankly, J.D., I don't think it's my job to try to pull you out. Which puts me in the very awkward position of trying to figure out exactly what my future is as your law partner. I don't like the feeling that I'm sitting around, waiting to watch a train wreck.”

Then she added her last thought before hanging up.

“So,” Julia said with a dismal sense of resignation in her voice, “maybe it's time to just walk away from the scene of the disaster before it happens.”

CHAPTER 41

T
hat night Vinnie made a simple meal of shrimp linguini Alfredo and a tossed salad. She said she made the sauce from scratch. Blackstone was impressed. Her apartment was a little cluttered, but bursting with color and art.

When Blackstone first entered her apartment with his left shoulder in a sling, she fluttered around him with a great deal of sympathy and asked him what had happened.

“Got injured while I was horseback riding,” was all he said.

Vinnie nagged him incessantly about it at first, asking her lawyer to fill her in with all the details about the incident. But Blackstone refused.

“I'm embarrassed enough that I have to wear this sling,” he said with a smile. “Let me suffer in peace, okay?”

After that, she finally relented. Blackstone was settled in his own mind that he was not going to share the fact that he had been shot.

Seated at the simple, glass-topped table across from Blackstone during the dinner, Vinnie was chattering excitedly and seemed to be enjoying herself.

The dinner was pleasant and relaxed. He asked her to respond to something he had read in a magazine recently, during one of his sleepless nights, about the cultural significance of the Armory Show of 1913. They chatted about that for a while.

Then Blackstone abruptly changed the subject.

“Exactly what did Horace Langley tell you,” he asked, “when you met with him on the last day of his life?”

“Same thing,” she said, picking up a stray shrimp off her plate with a fork, “that I told you before.”

“Well, humor me,” Blackstone said. “And tell me again.”

She sighed dramatically and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Okay. That Lord Dee—I think I mentioned him by name so he knew I was representing a serious principal,” she said. “That Magister Dee was willing to pay a huge amount of money for a preview of the Booth diary pages. He didn't even want to own the rights. Just an exclusive look at them before any of the experts were supposed to review the pages. And Magister only wanted them for a short period of time, then he would give them back to the Smithsonian.”

“Did you mention a ‘rental fee,' a sum of money that Lord Dee was willing to pay?”

“I said it was in the seven figures. I'm sure that's the phrase I used.”

“Who was to receive the money—the Smithsonian, or Horace Langley personally?”

Vinnie smiled at that.

“That's a little touchy.”

“So you were talking about paying Langley directly. Under the table, is that it?” Blackstone asked.

“Not in so many words.”

“But that is the essence of what you were proposing?”

“I guess so,” she said.

Blackstone thought on that for a moment.

“So, in other words,” he continued, “your discussion was about money being paid and money received. If Langley would have negotiated a figure with you or with Dee, then the plan was that no one on the Board of Regents or the administration of the Smithsonian would have to have known about it?”

“I suppose that's right,” she said.

“Obviously,” Blackstone said, boring in, “if the plan was to pay the money to the Smithsonian Institution, on the other hand, then you—or at least certainly Lord Dee—obviously understood that Langley would have had to clear that with the board, presumably, and that would have complicated the deal exponentially.”

“Sure, I guess so,” she said.

“Interesting,” he said.

“What does this do to my case?”

“It has to do with the Fifth Amendment,” Blackstone said.

Vinnie had a puzzled look on her face.

“What I mean is this,” Blackstone continued, putting down his silverware and pushing away his plate. “You have a right not to testify under the Fifth Amendment. Deciding whether an indicted defendant will waive that right and choose to testify at trial is probably one of the most important strategic steps in a criminal case.”

“Who decides?”

“You and I do, Vinnie. I counsel you. I give my very strong recommendation. But ultimately I have to abide by your decision.”

“And your recommendation is, what?”

“We'll reserve that until the very last moment,” Blackstone replied. “Sometimes even during the trial itself. We can hold back from deciding until after the prosecution has presented its case, even through your defense case. Up to the point where all of our other defense evidence had been presented. But sometime before the defense rests its case, if you are going to testify, that's the last chance…the last train out of the station.”

Vinnie was pondering what she had just been told. Then she asked another question.

“But what problem would there be in my testifying on my own behalf?”

“Several potential problems,” Blackstone replied. “When you testify, you have to do it truthfully. All of what you just told me, about your offering Langley under-the-table money to give Lord Dee a preview of the Booth diary pages, that will all come out. That is not going to make you look good in front of the jury. Beyond that, much of what you would say will corroborate the government's case against you. You will admit that Langley gave you the security door code. That you tried to get your hands on the diary. Langley refused. His private journal said that he was planning on reviewing the diary pages that same night. Did Langley tell you that?”

“He said he was working late that night…that I could come by if I wanted to…after hours…I think he may have said something about working on the Booth thing, I'm not sure.”

“So, right there,” Blackstone snapped, “you put another bullet in the prosecution's gun. The only two things you will really be able to deny are these: You would testify that you were not part of any plan to kill Langley or steal the diary, and that you didn't give the code to anyone else, correct?”

“Right. I didn't. Absolutely not,” she said adamantly.

“Do you know how you might have inadvertently let the access code get into someone else's hands?”

“I wouldn't have the faintest idea.”

Then she thought of something, and narrowed her eyes and asked Blackstone another question.

“You said there were several problems with my testifying. You explained how I might end up actually helping prove the prosecution's case. What are the other problems?”

“If you testify, but you lie, even if you get acquitted of the Smithsonian crime, the government can come after you again for criminal perjury.”

“Why do you think I would lie?” she said, pleading.

“People who face a life sentence, or the death penalty, or even just a few years in prison—they get scared,” Blackstone said, almost nonchalantly. “They think they can beat the system with a well-contrived story. Or they panic. Lots of reasons. And sometimes a defendant lies because telling the truth would require a confession—they lie because they are guilty and they know it.”

Vinnie fell silent. Blackstone could tell that his client was starting to face up to the tough terrain ahead of her at trial.

“Look,” Blackstone said, “there's also a procedural matter we need to talk about.”

She gave him a wide-eyed deer-in-the-headlights look.

“Nothing nerve-racking,” he said, trying to reassure her. “Just a pretrial conference with the trial judge. The lawyers are going to discuss some preliminary details about the trial and update the court. I need to have you there.”

“I really don't want to go.”

“Any good reason for that?”

“Nothing that you would understand, I'm afraid.”

“Try me.”

“You keep saying that I am the client and you have to do my bidding and all of that—well, here it is—I am instructing you to handle this without me. Just tell me what's discussed at the court hearing.”

“I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why you won't show up.”

“
Fear—
how about that for a reason?” she blurted out. “J.D., just think about that one for a second. I come in acting all worried and frightened and panicky…the prosecutor takes one look at me and is going to be able to read it all over my face…is that going to help my case? For the government lawyer to know I'm scared to death of this trial?”

“I can understand that,” Blackstone said. “But I have two responses. First, you are going to be required to be physically present at your trial. That's not an option. So how are you going to handle that? Second, because of that, you might as well start getting psychologically prepared. One way to do that is by going into the courtroom for the pretrial. Get used to the layout of the place, and some of the court personnel. Getting a comfort level with the exterior stuff of the environment where the trial is going to be conducted. That's a first step. Then you and I can start talking about your fears. Dealing with them directly. If you need a professional counselor to help you with that process, I can recommend someone.”