“Well,” Moody said, his eyes narrowing, “now that you mention it, I think I might have told him I’d been falsely accused of raping that nigger girl. Nothing ever came of it, you know. There wasn’t nothing to back up her story, just her word against mine. Even my old teacher said on the stand that she never believed I raped the girl.”
“Well, it would help if you could remember exactly when you told him that and what the circumstances were,” Cogan said. “Your story has got to be credible, you know; you’ve got to be believable. Think back and see if you can remember exactly when you told Will Lee about this black girl’s accusation.”
Moody massaged his forehead for a moment. “I got it!” he said. “It was the first time I met with him, in the Greenville jail. I’d just been arrested the day before, and the judge appointed Mr. Lee to defend me. He came to see me, and he asked me all sorts of questions about my background and where I was when that girl got murdered, and all that, and then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him, anything he should know. And that was when I told him.”
“What, exactly, did you tell him that day?”
“I told him I’d been falsely accused in high school
by this nigger girl—of course, I didn’t say ‘nigger,’ because Mr. Lee was a real liberal, you know.”
“So, he did know before the trial about this incident, and he didn’t take any steps to protect you from the testimony of this potential witness?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I remember, now; I told him about all this that first time I met him.”
Cogan was writing as fast as he could, now. “Tell me, Larry, how often are you and Charlene in touch these days?”
“We write letters now and then, although I’m not much of a letter writer. She always writes me back, though, and once in a while I call her out in California, when I can catch’er at home. She’s been trying to get me a good lawyer for an appeal, and Mr. Lee wouldn’t do it.”
“Charlene asked Will Lee to file an appeal for you?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“And he wouldn’t?”
“No, he wouldn’t, the son of a bitch,” Moody said, looking angry.
“But Charlene and Will Lee are in touch with each other?”
“Yeah, she said she talked to him on the phone.”
“Do you know if Charlene and Lee have met recently? I mean, have they gotten together? Maybe had sex? Think carefully, now.”
Moody’s eyes narrowed again. “Well, I couldn’t prove it, and Charlene didn’t exactly say that, but I kind of got the impression, you know? You want me to ask Charlene the next time I talk to her? She’ll tell me if she’s been fucking him, I know she will.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea if you ask her straight out, Larry. I mean, if she flat-out denied it, then it
would be hard to prove. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t know all the actual facts of a thing, you know?”
“If you say so, Mr. Cogan.”
Cogan tossed his legal pad into his briefcase and stood up. “Well, Larry, it’s been good to meet you.”
Moody pumped his hand. “Do you think you can get me a new trial, Mr. Cogan?”
“I can’t promise that, Larry, but I will look into it. I think it’s just possible that the people I represent might find it to be a good thing for you to have a new trial. I’ll be in touch.”
Cogan drove back toward Atlanta, excited. He had been repelled by Moody and his blatant racism, but he might get more work out of this case than he had expected, so he could stand that. He resisted the temptation to use his car phone. He’d ask for a face-to-face meeting when he got back to Atlanta.
Will and Kate were delivered to the White House by a Secret Service car and escorted by an usher to the Blue Room for cocktails. There was a larger crowd than Will had expected, and a number of them were people he had not expected. George Kiel was there, as he had predicted, but so were Howard Efton, the Speaker of the House, looking uncomfortable in a tuxedo, and Robert Mallon, the governor of Arizona, who was Efton’s chief opponent for the Republican nomination and, Will thought, the eventual vice-presidential candidate for the Republicans, on a slate with Efton.
“Well, I’ll be,” Kate murmured, looking around.
Susan Adams approached and kissed them both. “We’re so glad to see you,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve entertained at the White House since the first lady insisted on exchanging quarters with us.”
“Any news on the president’s condition?” Will asked.
“He’s as before, and the first lady thought that,
since Joe is now running the country, we should be living in the White House. Certainly, neither of us would have ever suggested it; it was presented to us as a fait accompli.”
“I think the first lady was right,” Will said. “This is where you and Joe belong.”
“Joe’s on the other side of the room, spreading joy,” Sue said. “I know he wants a private word with you before the evening’s over.”
“Of course,” Will replied. “Any time Joe likes.”
The Speaker of the House materialized at Will’s elbow. “Evening, Will,” he said, with a warmth that caught Will off guard. “Katharine, you look lovely tonight.”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Kate said. Nobody had called her Katharine since high school.
“How are you, Eft?” Will asked.
“I’m better than expected, at this stage of the campaign,” Efton replied softly, as if he didn’t want to be overheard.
“You think you’ll have a majority of delegates before the convention?” Will asked.
“Could be,” Efton replied. “Then it looks like it’ll be George Kiel and me in the general election. And you, of course; you’ll be on the ticket, won’t you?”
“Only if I’m at the top of it,” Will said, surprising himself. He took Efton’s comment as it had been intended, as a barb.
“That’s the boy,” Efton said, punching Will’s shoulder. “Never say die!”
“Sometimes the voters say it for you, Eft,” Will replied. “Excuse me, I want to talk to George.” He steered Kate in the direction of his opponent for the Democratic nomination.
Kiel greeted him, smiling broadly. “Well, Will,” he said, “I thought you’d be on the road.”
“Funny, George, I thought you would be, too.”
“Well, I guess I can afford a night off to have dinner with our acting president, but frankly,” he said, smiling, “I’m surprised you can. My people tell me we’re going to take the nomination on the first ballot by a hundred and fifty votes.”
Will managed a broad smile. “You go right on thinking that, George.” Will’s best projection was that he was sixty votes behind, but he wasn’t going to tell Kiel that. “I love an overconfident opponent.”
Kiel managed a chuckle, then turned serious. “Will, you and I need to sit down and talk about some things. How about tomorrow morning at nine, in my hideaway office on the Hill?”
Will had no intention of sitting down with Kiel until he was forced to. “I’m afraid I’m off at the crack of dawn tomorrow, George,” he said. “Maybe at the convention?”
“Well,” Kiel said, “I suppose our relative positions will be better defined by that time.”
“I guess they will,” Will agreed.
An usher came into the room, rang a gong, and announced dinner. The crowd moved into a room that had been set with four tables of eight, as a string quartet from the Marine Band played in a corner. Will and Efton were at the same table, as were George Kiel and Mallon. Will wondered if there were some subliminal message in that. Was Joe Adams trying to tell the crowd something? He looked across the room to where Joe sat, chatting earnestly with a beautiful woman to his right. Joe looked tanned and fit, Will thought.
The guests worked their way through three courses of dinner, chatting noisily. Will was grateful that he and Efton were on opposite sides of the table; he was never comfortable in the Speaker’s company, disliking
both the man and his politics. Still, he had always been scrupulously polite to the man, except in campaign speeches. Will looked around the room, noting the composition of the guest list. There were prominent members of the Senate and the House from both parties, and Will could spot no members of the press, with the exception of the long-retired Walter Cronkite, who, with his wife, sat at the Adamses’ table. They were on coffee when Joe Adams stood up and addressed the group.
“Good evening to you all,” he said. “This is the first time that Sue and I have entertained in the White House since the first lady so kindly asked us to move in, and we are very pleased to have you all as our first guests.
“What you have in common, of course, is that, after the coming election, you will all play important roles in the running of the country. Almost certainly, the eventual nominees of the two parties are here, and by extension, the next president of the United States. So what Sue and I have here is not just a very special group of guests, but a very distinguished captive audience.” There was a low chuckle from the crowd.
“You all know that I have declared my intention of withholding my endorsement of any candidate before the convention, and I believe my party can select a slate without my help, even at that time. Of course, after the conventions, I have to say that I’m leaning toward supporting the Democratic candidate.” Loud laughter.
“Although I don’t expect to take much part in active campaigning.”
“Hear, hear!” Eft Efton shouted, and the crowd laughed again.
“I didn’t say I was going to be neutral, Eft,” Adams said with a smile. More laughter.
“I asked you all here tonight,” he continued, “not to once again convey my hands-off position during the campaign, but to talk about your
hands-on
position. I hardly have to tell you that, in recent years, our political process has taken on a harsh, even bitter partisanship that has not served either the process or the country well. We have spent far too much time and energy fighting for political advantage instead of working to make this a better country. I want us all to stop it, and the current campaign is the time and place.
“Because of the position in which fate has placed me, perhaps I’m in a better position than most politicians to call for this change. During my months as acting president, I have bent over backward to govern in a bipartisan fashion, and some of you have responded to that effort, while others have been, shall we say, less enthusiastic.” Nobody laughed.
“We’re beginning the new millennium in extraordinarily good shape—a healthy economy, a lack of major military conflict and even political conflict, low unemployment, lower crime rates, and high optimism among our fellow countrymen. The last century has often been called the American Century. Well, let’s have another American Century. Let’s consolidate the gains that our fathers and grandfathers and we ourselves have fought so hard to earn, and let’s go on to make this a better, safer, more peaceful country, while maintaining our leadership role as the world’s only superpower.
“But I’m falling into clichés here, and I don’t want to do that. I want to ask every one of you to go into this election as Americans, first, and party politicians second; I want an end to personal attacks and false moralizing; I want the next president to reach out to both parties and their constituencies; I want each of you here to dedicate himself to a new bipartisanship in
this country. I believe there is more at stake right now in this country than at any time since the end of World War II, and if we can’t face the next century working together, we have a great deal to lose.
“I know that there are those among you who think that you are all right and everyone else is all wrong. I know this is true because at times I have had those same feelings myself. Doing this job has shown me that I was wrong.”
Then something happened that frightened Will. Joe Adams stood, his head down, staring at the table in front of him, saying nothing. For a moment, he thought Adams was near tears, then he realized that he had simply forgotten what he was going to say, or perhaps even where he was and who he was talking to. Sue Adams reached out and took her husband’s hand, and still he did not continue. Somebody had to do something.
Will got to his feet, applauding; so did Eft Efton, and in a moment, the crowd was standing, cheering. Sue Adams led her husband from the room. At the door, he paused, waved to the crowd, then disappeared.
The applause died, and Will’s eyes found Kate’s across the table. He could see the fear in them.
Before dawn, Will kissed a still-sleeping Kate good-bye, went downstairs, gave his bags to a Secret Service agent, and got into the car. Tim Coleman and Kitty Conroy were waiting for him, sipping coffee.
“So, how was the Adamses’ first White House party?” Kitty asked.
“Just great,” Will lied. He had lain awake last night wondering if Joe Adams’s slip was temporary or indicative of a slide into permanent senility.
“You don’t sound as if it was great,” Kitty said.
“Sorry, I’m still half-asleep.”
“Well,” Tim said, “this ought to wake you up: I had a call yesterday from Lou Regenstein.”
“The movie mogul?”
“That’s right; he’s the chairman of Centurion Studios.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met him.”
“You’ve met Vance Calder, haven’t you?”
“Yes, at a dinner party in New York a couple of years ago.”
“Well, Calder is, apparently, a big fan of yours.”
“First I’ve heard about that,” Will said.
“You must have impressed him at the dinner party.”
“We did talk a lot; I found him very bright. For a Brit, he seemed pretty well informed about American politics.”
“He was born there, but he’s been an American citizen for more than twenty years. And, in addition to being Centurion’s biggest star, he’s a major stockholder in the studio.”
“I think I knew that; I’m not sure how.”
“Anyway, both Calder and Centurion want to get behind you in a big way.”
“How big?”
“Calder and the costar of his next film want to host a fund-raiser for you in L.A. right before the convention. He’s promised to get a thousand people to his house, at a thousand dollars a head.”
“He can get a thousand people into his
house?
”