No Way to Treat a First Lady (30 page)

Beth sighed. "I can't remember. It's been a while."

"Well,
try."

Beth thought. "Sure. Everyone does. You're thirsty after a good lay, I seem to recall."

Boyce replayed the tape in his mind. "It's not the sound of drinking. There's no gulping. There's ice tinkling and an 'ah' sound. It's the sound of something being
immersed."

"His...?"

"What a gentleman."

"We're not dealing with a gentleman. An officer, maybe, but no gentleman."

"Back when you and War God were enjoying full marital relations, was his normal postcoital behavior to get up and immerse his hot dog in the water jug?"

"Not that I can recall."

"So why's he doing it here?"

"Maybe it was sore," Beth said with a trace of jealousy. "Maybe it was chafed. From friction."

"Well, tomorrow when she's on the stand, I want you to home in on the ice water. No matter how awkward it gets. Why did the President dip his willy in your water, Ms. Van Anka? Why? Why?"

"I can hardly wait," Beth said without relish.

"Stay on that until you get an answer. Replay that part of the tape until she crumples. That's
key."

"Defense calls Babette Van Anka."

Babette took the stand dressed in a black pantsuit and Jackie O dark glasses, which she was asked to remove.

Judge Dutch directed that she be administered the oath. Babette said that she needed to confer with her attorney, Mr. Crudman. Judge Dutch waved Crudman forward. Crudman, a wee man, had to stand on his tippy-toes before the bench. Judge Dutch shook his head and then waved the unwanted counsel back to his corner.

The judge informed Babette that despite the fact that she was still under oath from her previous testimony, "a new oath is in order."

According to the ratings released afterward, Beth versus Babette was the most widely watched part of the Trial of the Millennium. Over one and a half billion human beings tuned in. Once again, airline pilots called in sick, elective surgeries were postponed. Even the launching of America's newest aircraft carrier, the
Tom Clancy,
was postponed, spurious technical reasons being alleged. No one wanted to miss
this.

Nor did Boyce, but that morning did not find him in his customary observer post, in Beth's Secret Service car in the courthouse basement, being glowered at by fuming agents in the front seat.

Bethesda Naval Hospital is a venerable, bleached-white stone presence off Wisconsin Avenue, just beyond the northern border of the District of Columbia. It is here that Marine One, the presidential helicopter, brings presidents for their annual checkups, so that their most intimate medical details can be shared with the entire world. It was after one of these visits in the late 1970s that navy doctors vouchsafed that the President of the United States was afflicted with grave hemorrhoids. The capable doctors of the United States Navy are the custodians of the health of their commanders in chief.

The people Boyce knew included those who knew about professional-quality disguise and professional-quality fake IDs. So this morning, as an estimated 178 million Americans sat glued to the television watching the two Amazons of the Trial of the Millennium have at each other, Boyce Baylor, wearing glasses, wig, and mustache and dressed in the uniform of a vice admiral in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps, strode confidently through the main gate, presented his badge to the marine guard, and proceeded on his way. He found a men's room, where in the toilet stall he removed from his briefcase a clipboard, white hospital gown, and stethoscope. He checked himself in the mirror. The most reviled man in America now looked like the most respectable. It gave him a thrill to see his new identity. Boyce saluted himself smartly, took a deep breath, and went out the door.

He'd defended enough doctors accused of gross malpractice to know his way around basic medical lingo, but just to be safe, he had crammed himself with some trauma and coma-related buzzwords like "fixed and dilated" and "Babinski reflex."

He presented himself at the nurses' station and politely but crisply asked for Dr. Grayson's room.

When the nurse, a lieutenant, looked up and saw three admiral's stars, she pointed the distinguished-looking man on his way with a respectful,
"Sir."
Boyce nodded pleasantly.

There was a marine guard outside his room, but marines are trained from day one to salute admirals so vigorously that they nearly concuss themselves.

"Sir!"

"As you were, marine," Boyce growled with what he deemed appropriate hierarchical condescension. He wondered if he should have barked, "Straighten that gig-line, Corporal!"

Dr. Grayson was sitting up at a forty-five-degree angle, with the usual tubes running in and out of him. Life-support machines hummed and clicked.

A nurse, red haired, pretty, was in attendance.

"Admiral?" she said, obviously surprised at seeing this unfamiliar face.

"As you were, Nurse. Admiral Quigley, from Cinclantnavmedcom." It sounded official, anyway. He added, "Norfolk."

The nurse's eyes widened at the augustness of the syllables.

"Yes, sir."

"CNO asked me to look in on Captain Grayson."

"Yes, sir."

"How's he's doing?"

Boyce knew from the item in the paper three days earlier that Captain Grayson had come out of his postcrash coma.

"Sir, his vitals have stabilized. The Medrol appears to have turned around the cerebral edema."

"Hm," Boyce grunted, apparently satisfied. "Usually does. How did he do on the Babinski?"

"No evidence of brain damage, sir."

Boyce leaned closer to her to whisper. She smelled lovely. "How is he doing
psychologically?"

"He appears depressed, sir."

"Um." Boyce nodded knowingly. "Would you excuse us?"

"Sir." She left. Boyce approached the bedside.

"Well, good morning, Captain," Boyce greeted him heartily. "You're looking fit for sea duty."

Captain Grayson did not answer. The only sea duty he looked ready for was burial. It wasn't the damage from the car wreck. Boyce could see that. The man might be healing, but he was still broken inside. The eyes were lifeless with pain.

"You're not watching the big trial, Captain? Mrs. MacMann is cross-examining the actress Ms. Van Anka."

Captain Grayson turned and looked at Boyce. The eyelids fluttered. The eyes studied Boyce's face carefully. They moved to the admiral stars on his epaulets, then back to Boyce's face. They narrowed suspectingly.

"You know who I am, don't you, Captain?"

A placid look came across the captain's face. It was as though, standing on the bridge of a ship after a fierce engagement, he had just received the news that the damage from a torpedo had been repaired and that the ship might now not sink after all.

"Sorry about the uniform," Boyce said. "It was the only way to get past the marines. I know how much this uniform means to you. I think I know how much President MacMann's service in the navy means to you."

Pain flickered back into the eyes.

"Shall we watch, Captain? Shall we watch the trial together?"

Captain Grayson looked stricken and, for a moment, lifeless.

Please,
Boyce thought,
don't let the machines start beeping.

Finally Captain Grayson nodded. Boyce rose and turned on the TV monitor.

"Ms. Van Anka, I'd like to draw your attention to the testimony you have already given this court and to this jury," Beth added for good measure. "Would you at this point care to modify, or change, that testimony?"

Babette looked mournfully toward her attorney. Her entourage was seated with the spectators, beaming encouragement at her, slipping her thumbs-up gestures, but at this point it would have taken an entire Hollywood Bowl full of supporters to cheer up Babette. She asked the judge if she could confer with her counsel. Judge Dutch wearily waved Crudman, Beth, and Deputy AG Clintick forward for a sidebar.

"Ms. Van Anka," Crudman said, "is willing to modify her prior testimony, which occurred at a time of severe emotional distress, on the condition that she receives total immunity from any future prosecution for perjury."

Judge Dutch leaned back in his chair. Beth and Sandy looked at each other. Of late, the deputy AG's attitude toward Beth had softened.

The judge leaned forward and whispered to Crudman, "No way in hell, Counsel."

The network correspondent translated for his viewers, "My guess is that Judge Umin will
decline
any petition from Van Anka's defense attorney to immunize her prior testimony."

Beth suppressed a smile at Crudman's humiliation as he went to the witness box to give Babette the unhappy news. He added that the judge would rue the day. He would be crushed on appeal! Meanwhile, go with plan B.

Beth now resumed her cross-examination. "Is that your voice on the tape, Ms. Van Anka? Along with the President's?"

"Sounds a bit like me. But I couldn't say."

This brought a gale-force expulsion of air from the lungs of the spectators. Judge Dutch did not gavel silence. He seemed too occupied trying to maintain his own composure.

Beth, too, was having a hard time. "I see. Any guesses as to
who
it might be?"

DAG Clintick did not object. She was looking down at her table, trying to retain her composure.

"I couldn't say," Babette said. She smiled bravely. "I have many imitators."

Crudman winced. The idiot—he'd told her, Give them nothing! Keep your answers
to the minimum!

"Imitators?" Beth said.

"I'm a well-known actress. My voice is widely known. Some people try to sound like me."

"The woman on this tape isn't you, but is trying to sound like you? Is that what you're saying?"

"I don't know
what's
going on in that tape."

"Ms. Van Anka," Beth said sympathetically, "the authenticity of that tape has been certified by a special master of evidence appointed
by
this court as having been recorded in the early morning hours of September twenty-ninth, during which time it is a documented fact, as recorded by the chief usher of the White House,
and
the Secret Service, that you were a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom, where this tape
was
recorded. Now are you telling the court, the jury, that that's
not
you?"

It was all too much. Here Babette Van Anka's training as an actor overtook her instinct for self-preservation. If she was going down, by God, it would be a going-down worthy of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford or Gloria Swanson.

"Yes, it's me! Of course it's me! I loved him! Unlike you! Who murdered him!"

Crudman bolted to his feet. "Your Honor, my client is not herself. Move to strike her remarks—"

It took several minutes to restore order. "Ms. Van Anka," Judge Dutch said sternly, "another outburst like that and I will find you in contempt of court."

"Oh," Babette moaned. "You don't
know...."

"You will answer defense counsel's questions directly, to the best of your ability. Without commentary. Is that
understood?"

"This is a perversion of justice," declared Alan Crudman. Indeed, that became the title of the first of his three books on the case.

"You are out of order, Mr. Crudman. And I have run out of warnings to you. The clerk of the court is instructed to remove Mr. Crudman."

Crudman was removed. Outside the courthouse, he told the media that he now knew what it was like to be a "Jew in Hitler's Germany" and vowed to "pursue justice all the way to the Supreme Court." The Supreme Court, one reporter pointed out, was really only a few blocks away.

Inside the courtroom, after a ten-minute recess, Judge Dutch told Babette that the rest of her cross-examination could be postponed until she had engaged other legal counsel.

Beth rose. "Your Honor, in that case I move that Ms. Van Anka be placed in custody as a flight risk. Her husband, Mr. Grab, is currently being sought by federal authorities and is at large abroad. The Attorney General's Office has indicated that they will seek an indictment of her for false testimony. It is therefore our contention that she may attempt to flee."

Murmuring. Sidebar. The judge leaned back in his chair, turned to Babette. "Ms. Van Anka, the court finds that given the circumstances, you present a flight risk. You may either continue your testimony here today, without legal counsel. Or you may continue it later. However, in the meantime, I will order that you be held at the federal detention center pending that testimony."

"Jail?"
gasped Babette.

"Detention."

"No. No, no no no no. I want to testify. Now. Right away."

"Very well. You may proceed, Mrs. MacMann."

"Ms. Van Anka," said Beth, "you admit, then, that that
is
your voice on the tape."

"Yes. I said so, didn't I?"

"So you did. I don't wish to make this any more difficult for you than I know it must be...."

"You have
no
idea. No one has
any
idea how hard this is."

"I'm sure it is," Beth said, taking a breath. "It would appear, to judge from the tape, that you and the President were engaged in..."

"Pressing the flesh," whispered a reporter.

"...in sex. Is that a fair inference?"

"We made
love.
You wouldn't know about that"

"Ms. Van Anka," said Judge Dutch, "I will not warn you again."

"What? What did I say?"

"Was the President," Beth continued, "all right?"

"He was fantastic."

"On the tape he sounds... Forgive me, I'm not sure quite how to put this, he sounds very... Let me put it this way: Did you observe him..."

"I did more than observe him, honey."

"Indeed. Was he physically all right? On the tape he sounds tired."

"Of course he was tired. He'd just been to the moon and back."

"It's a long trip." Beth nodded. "So physically, he performed, um, well?"

"I said, he was great."

"Even after a long evening? At his age?"