Worst Case Scenario (9 page)

“Under Indiana choice of law rules, what state's law governs the effectiveness of a written-amendments-only clause in a non-exclusive dealership contract?”

“Code-governed?”

“Assume no.”

“Got it,” Davidson said.

“I need the answer before the night help comes on at six.”

“You'll have it in forty-five minutes.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“I can see you're going to be busy,” Marjorie said. She began to gather her purse up as Davidson opened the top drawer of his desk and fumbled in it.

“Nah, gimme ten minutes,” he said. “I enjoy talking about Sharon, and I'm not going to stop just because some kid's too important to do his own grunt work. Now, where did I put the damn thing?”

Marjorie waited uncertainly as Davidson closed the drawer and laboriously pulled a Samsonite attaché case onto the desk.

“Here it is,” he said triumphantly, pulling a single sheet of white, printed, legal-sized paper from it. “Sharon gave me that,” he added, pointing to a small, oblong silver plate with black lettering that decorated the front of the attaché case's lid.

“‘
Illegitimi Non Carborundum
,'” Marjorie read as Davidson flattened the sheet beside his computer and began massaging the keyboard. “‘Don't let the bastards get you down.'”

“You know Latin, huh?” Davidson asked absently. He was now seated in profile and mostly hidden by the open attaché case as he faced his computer screen.

“
Proculdubior
,” Marjorie said. “So did Sharon, apparently.”

Concentrating on the screen, Davidson offered only a non-committal grunt in response. Several minutes passed, punctuated by intermittent commentary from Davidson, who seemed eager to keep the interruption from weighing too heavily on his guest.

“Used to be you did research in books.…Probably before the kid's time.…Tell ya, there was a time a lawyer would've cut his arm off before he had a civilian find a case for him.…Bingo. Got it. Now I'll E-mail it to the kid and see if he can get the case into his brief without someone holding his hand while he does it.”

Davidson flipped the attaché case closed and folded his hands complacently on top of it, laughing a little at his own self-satisfaction.

“Do you mean that in the last five minutes or so you found a case answering the obscure question that lawyer just asked you?”

“Yep.”

He paused for a moment, grinning ambiguously like a conjurer who's made an elephant disappear and can't decide whether to reveal the cleverness of his trick or maintain the illusion of his magic. Cleverness won.

“It's not that big a deal, actually,” he said, holding up the sheet he'd taken from his attaché case. “For ten decades or so, the West Publishing Company has divided all of American law into four hundred and twelve subjects, from Abatement and Revival to Zoning and Planning. They've divided each subject into topics and subtopics, from twelve topics for Dueling to over a thousand for subjects like Appeal and Error and Federal Civil Procedure. They've given every topic a number.”

“That sounds pretty daunting.”

“Now that we're on computers,” Davidson continued, “there's also a special code number for every subject. That's what's listed on this sheet. So you just go into the WestLaw database, ask for Indiana cases, code number 94 for Contracts, topic number 144 for Law Governing, and look at the most recent case. If it makes sense, you've answered the question.”

“It's too bad they'll never make you a partner.”

“Yeah, it is,” Davidson agreed. “But that's a decision I made more than thirty years ago. Anyway, you came here to talk about Sharon Bedford, not me, and I don't think you were finished yet.”

“I was just wondering as I thought about what you said. Just play Let's Pretend with me for a second. Say Sharon picked up some isolated bit of information in one of the depositions she was reviewing—something that meant nothing special to the lawyers and the parties. Let's say, though, that because of something else she knew, from her own background, she realized that information was actually very important. Big-league stuff. Possible?”

“Again, you say ‘possible' and again I guess anything's
possible
. I'd love for it to be true. Tell you the truth, I just don't see it. I'll tell you one thing for damn sure, though. If she did stumble on something, she made a record of it. She was absolutely the most meticulous person I've ever met. If God needs a staff clerk, He's got one now.”

“Made a record of it somewhere in a deposition summary, do you think?”

“If she did and you can find it,” Davidson said with a smile and an exasperated shrug, “you're a better man than I am. 'Cause I'll tell you something: I've looked, and I don't think it's there.”

***

“Mr. Michaelson?” the feminine voice chirped at 5:17, when Michaelson was just about to give up. “Please hold for Mr. Quentin.”

Michaelson held while he tried to decide whether this approach reflected simple insensitivity or calculated rudeness. After holding for one hundred and seventy irritating seconds, he decided that he didn't care. Then Quentin came on the line.

“Show me some tit,” were the first words out of his mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Michaelson in unfeigned bafflement.

“The tease is cute, but I don't have time for finger-fucking,” Quentin replied. “If it's falsies under the D-cups, you don't get my room key.”

“Fair enough,” said Michaelson, as something like understanding dawned. “Here goes. For twenty-five years-plus Walter Page Artemus soared through a dazzling army career. Late in the twenty-sixth, at the precise moment when he'd put his foot on the first step of the last stairway to the top, he inexplicably retired. He had ‘chief of staff' written all over his ticket, then he crashed and burned overnight.”

“Everyone in town who can read knows that.” Quentin yawned. “Everyone who cares, anyway.”

“What everyone in town doesn't know is why—and it's not because he abused his rank to get special treatment for a relative.”

“So. Tell me why.”

“Not over the phone,” Michaelson said.

“Translation: You don't know why, either.”

“That depends on how you define ‘know.' In any event, I'm confident that between the two of us we could find out for sure. And I think that's something you haven't been able to do all by yourself up to now.”

“I ask for tit and you're blowing goddamn smoke up my ass,” Quentin said. “Show me you have something besides bullshit in your sample case or this phone call is over.”

“I understand,” Michaelson said apologetically. “I've been out of the game for a while, and my reflexes are a bit rusty. Need not to know and so forth. Scott Pilkington is running on this one, and I'm supposed to talk to him.”

Michaelson winced as he finished this comment, anticipating an angry, contemptuous
click
. It didn't come. When Quentin spoke again after two seconds of suspenseful silence, he had dropped the bullying swagger from his voice, in favor of aw-shucks innocence.

“Who's Scott Pilkington?” he asked.

“Whose Scott Pilkington?” Michaelson answered, matching Quentin's tone note-for-note. “Why, your Scott Pilkington, Mr. Quentin. I didn't know anyone else owned a piece of him.”

The pause this time lasted less than one second.

“I'll have to move some things around, but I can give you twenty minutes,” Quentin snapped then. “Ten-thirty sharp tonight.”

The line went dead.

Chapter Twelve

If the secular liturgy of American politics offers anything else with the sacramental resonance of the White House at night, Michaelson reflected, he couldn't imagine what it might be. TV screens showing the West Wing bathed in light meant drama, crisis, war. Michaelson had seen it before but, he mused as the guard checked his name on a list and waved him through at 10:23 p.m., you never stop being impressed.

Quentin's office was on the second floor of the Old Executive Office Building, directly across West Executive Avenue from the White House. Though Quentin had occupied the office for over three years, it looked as if he had just moved into it and didn't expect to remain for more than a week or so. No pictures or mementos graced the spare shelves or the dark wood, government-issue desk. No plants competed for space with the newspapers, magazines, videotapes, and computer printouts covering the desk and cabinet tops. The oatmeal-colored drapes and carpet were whatever the GSA had tossed into the room. The only thing in the office that Quentin seemed to have chosen was an elaborate phone console next to his computer.

As a young woman silently ushered Michaelson into the office, Quentin stood facing the far corner, as far behind his desk as he could get. A Rorschach splotch of sweat stained the back of his powder blue shirt. With the scratch of Michaelson's chair on the floor, Quentin turned his head a fraction of an inch, showing Michaelson a silver of his face.

“All right,” he said. “Impress me.”

“Artemus never had his picture taken,” Michaelson said. “Four years in the Reagan White House, surrounded by lens-seeking flacks, and he didn't make it to a single photo-op.”

“So what?”

“If you're trying to let me know how small a blip I am on your radar screen, that's perfect,” Michaelson said. “If you're trying to make me think you really don't appreciate the significance of what I said, you're a beat too slow.”

Hands snaking into his hip pockets, Quentin swiveled around.

“I
know
what I know. What you
think
I know I could give a shit. You haven't impressed me yet, and I'm beginning to think you're bluffing.”

“The story of my life. Very well. I'll spell it out. Camera shy implies security conscious. Security conscious plus military aide in the White House equals football. General Artemus followed the president around with the briefcase holding the nuclear launch codes—known colloquially as the football. Armageddon in calfskin.”

Quentin offered a half-smile.

“Pete Fiske carried the football for Reagan,” he said in a mildly puzzled voice. “I knew that clear back when I was designing ad campaigns for dandelion killer in Marin County.”

“General Fiske carried a decoy,” Michaelson said, unruffled. “General Fiske wore a uniform, and General Fiske got his picture in the paper. If the Soviets happened to have a marksman in range when the flag dropped, General Fiske was supposed to catch the bullet and General Artemus was supposed to open his briefcase. Please note my polite restraint in omitting any observation about everyone in town knowing that.”

“Everyone in town didn't know that,” Quentin said, grinning with a hint of real warmth as he strolled back toward his desk. “How do you?”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you, so why don't we just skip it and talk about something else? Like why General Artemus started drawing his pension fifteen years early.”

“If I had that answer,” Quentin said, “I wouldn't be talking to you.”

“I know how frustrating it must be. You poke your nose into filing cabinets and peek under desk blotters every chance you get and you keep coming up empty.”

“It hasn't exactly been my only project. But it would just about be yours, wouldn't it?”

“For all practical purposes,” Michaelson conceded affably. “Of course, I'll be looking for the answer from outside the White House.”

“But from inside the establishment. That's the key. I might get my face on talk shows every Sunday morning, and everybody might know I talk to the president for at least half an hour every day, but I'll always be an outsider here. So will the president himself, for that matter. I'd have a better chance of being admitted to the Players Club in London than to that chummy little group where you've spent your adult life.”

“It's nice to feel needed.”

“That's why you're sitting here,” Quentin said. He dropped into his chair and leaned back, reaching out idly with his left hand to tap a pencil eraser on his desktop. “Listen to me. Carefully. What you want. It's within your grasp. It is literally within your grasp. Am I coming through?”

“Quite clearly.”

Quentin swiveled the chair slightly and leaned his head back, gazing at Michaelson from half-closed eyes. From the beginning of the interview his movements had seemed to Michaelson not just unnatural but elaborately choreographed, as if he'd spent ten minutes before Michaelson came in working out when to strike one pose and when to take another.

“I'm not talking about just getting a nice title to close your copybook with while a lame-duck administration plays out the string. I'm talking about an entire term. Maybe two full terms.”

Quentin's eyes snapped open and he surged forward in the chair with a fierce intensity.

“Don't laugh,” he said to Michaelson, who wasn't laughing. “I can do it. I can fucking
do
it. I can pull off a bigger win than Johnson in 'sixty-four. I can lock the party into the White House for years. And if you're the one who produces what I need to bring it off, you just name your price and I will, by God, deliver.”

“We understand each other perfectly,” Michaelson said.

“I don't just need an answer. Oliver Stone has all the answers, but he also has slightly less credibility than the Flat Earth Society. I need documentation. Hard copy. Can you get-it?”

“I'd tell you yes regardless of what the truth was and you know it,” Michaelson said. “So why bother to ask the question?”

For the first time in the conversation Quentin's face lit with an expression that didn't seem entirely rehearsed. His lips split in a broad grin, simultaneously malicious and delighted.

“You are a very dangerous man,” he said.

“Yes I am,” Michaelson said as he rose and extended his hand.

It was the first time in the last five minutes that either of them had told the complete truth.