The Simple Truth

Do that for me, oh shit, do that, will you? Momma! Oh shit!”

“You have the right to an attorney,” he would calmly tell them.

And that now was John Fiske.

After a couple more court appearances downtown, Fiske left the glass and brick John Marshall Courts Building, named after the third chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Marshall’s ancestral home was still right next door, now a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of the great Virginian and American. The man would have turned over in his grave if he had known of the vile acts being debated and defended in the building that bore his name.

Fiske headed down Ninth Street toward the James River. Hot and humid the last few days, the weather patterns had angled cooler with the coming rain, and he pulled his trench coat tighter around him. As the rain started, he began to jog along the pavement, his shoes cleaving through puddles of filthy water collected in dips of asphalt and concrete.

By the time he reached his office in Shockoe Slip, his hair and coat were soaked, the water running in miniature rivulets down his back. Eschewing the elevator, he took the steps two at a time and unlocked the door to his office. It was located in a cavernous building that had once been a tobacco warehouse, its oak and pine guts having been given the new ribs of multiple office drywall. The reek of the tobacco leaves forever lingered, however. And this wasn’t the only place it could be found. Cruising on Interstate 95 south past the Philip Morris cigarette-manufacturing facility Bobby Graham had referred to, one could almost get a nicotine high without even lighting up. Fiske had often been tempted to fling a lighted match out the window as he drove by, to see if the air would simply explode.

Fiske’s office was one room with a small attached bathroom, which was important, since he slept here more often than he did at his apartment. He hung up his coat to dry, and wiped his face and hair down with a towel he grabbed off the rack in the bath. He put on a pot of coffee and watched it brew while he thought about Jerome Hicks.

If Fiske did a superb job, Jerome Hicks would spend the rest of his life behind bars instead of receiving the prick of lethal injection at the Virginia death house. Killing an eighteen-year-old black kid would not win Graham the attorney general’s job he coveted. A black-on-black, loser-on-loser murder wouldn’t even warrant a back-page story in the newspaper.

As a Richmond cop, Fiske had survived, barely, the violence of combat. It swept through neighborhood and town, swelling large, like an aneurysm, the size of a county, leaving behind the shattered ghettos, and the soaring, dollar-consumed spires of downtown, flowing over, around and through the ill-conceived barricades of suburbia. And it wasn’t just the commonwealth. Glaciers of criminal activity flowed from all the states. When they eventually met, then where would we go? Fiske wondered.

He abruptly sat down. The burn had started slowly at first; it usually did. He sensed its march from his belly up to his chest, then spreading. Finally, like lava in a trench, the sensation of impossible heat started down his arms and poured into his fingers. Fiske staggered up, locked his office door and stripped off his shirt and tie. He had a T-shirt on underneath; always wore the damn T-shirt. Through the cotton, his fingers touched the starting point of the thickened scar, after all these years still rough-edged. It began just below his navel and followed the meandering path of the surgeon’s saw in an unbroken line, until it ended at the base of his neck.

Fiske dropped to the floor and did fifty push-ups without ceasing, the heat in his chest and extremities surging and then diminishing with each repetition. A drop of sweat fell from his brow and hit the wooden floor. He thought he could see his reflection in it. At least it wasn’t blood. He followed the push-ups with an equal number of stomach crunches. The scar rippled and flexed with each bend of his body, like a serpent unwillingly grafted to his torso. He attached a quick-release bar to the doorway leading to the bathroom and struggled through a dozen pull-ups. He used to be able to do twice that many, but his strength was slowly ebbing. What lurked beneath the fused skin would eventually overtake him, kill him, but, for now, the heat faded; the physical exertion seemed to frighten it off, letting the trespasser know that somebody was still home.

He cleaned up in the bathroom and put his shirt back on. As he sipped his coffee he looked out the window. From this vantage point he could barely make out the line of the James River. The water would grow rough as the rain picked up. He and his brother had often boated down the river, or leisurely floated down it in truck-tire inner tubes on hot summer days. That had been years ago. This was as close as Fiske got to the water these days. Leisure time was over. He had no space left for it in his shortened frame of life. He enjoyed what he did, though, at least most of the time. It wasn’t the life of a Supreme Court superlawyer like his brother, but he took a certain pride in his job and how he did it. He would have no money or grand reputation when he died, but he believed he would die reasonably satisfied, reasonably fulfilled. He turned back to his work.





CHAPTER FIVE


Like a brooding hawk, Fort Jackson perched on the desolate topography of southwest Virginia, fairly equidistant from the Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia borders and in the middle of a remote scrap of coal country. There were few if any stand-alone military prisons in the United States; they were typically attached to a military facility, due both to tradition and to the constraints of defense dollars. Fort Jackson did have a military base component; however, the dominant feature of the place would always be the prison, where the most dangerous offenders in the United States Army silently counted down their lives.

There had never been an escape from Fort Jackson, and even if an inmate could manage to achieve his freedom without benefit of a court ruling, such liberty would be empty and short-lived. The surrounding countryside represented a prison of even greater menace, with jagged-faced, strip-mined mountains, treacherous roads with widowmaker drops, dense, unyielding forest laced with copperheads and rattlers. And along the polluted waterways awaited their more aggressive cousin, the water moccasin, anxious for panicked feet crashing its border. And the self-reliant local folk in the forgotten “toe” of Virginia — the human equivalent of razor wire — were well schooled with the gun and the knife, and unafraid to use either. And yet in the slope of the land, the breadth of forest, shrub and flower, the scent of unhurried wildlife and the quiet of ocean depths, there was much beauty here.

Attorney Samuel Rider passed through the fort’s main gate, received his visitor’s badge and parked his car in the visitors’ lot. He nervously walked up to the flat, stonewalled entrance of the prison, his briefcase lightly tapping against his blue-clothed leg. It took him twenty minutes to go through the screening procedure, which included producing personal identification, verifying that he was on the visitors’list, a pat-down of his person, walking through a metal detector and ending with a search of his briefcase. The guards suspiciously eyed the small transistor radio, but allowed him to keep it after confirming that it contained no contraband. He was read the standard rules of visitation and to each he gave an affirmative, audible reply that he understood. Rider knew that were he to run afoul of any of these rules, the guard’s polite facade would quickly disappear.

He looked around, unable to shake the oppression of fear, of extreme nervousness, as though the prison’s architect had managed to craft these elements into the bones of the place. Rider’s bowels clenched, and his palms were sweaty, like he was about to climb on a twenty-seat turboprop in the face of a hurricane. As a member of the military during Vietnam, Rider had never left the country, never come close to combat, to mortal danger. Damn ironic if he were to drop dead from a coronary while standing in a military prison on United States soil. He took a deep breath, mentally signaled his heart to calm down, and wondered again why he had come. Rufus Harms was in no position to make him, or anyone else, do anything. But here he was. Rider took another deep breath, clipped on his visitor’s badge and gripped the comforting handle of his briefcase, his leather amulet, as a guard escorted him to the visitors’room.

Alone for a few minutes, Rider eyed the dull brown of the walls that seemed designed to depress further those who probably already lived in the throes of near-suicidal intent. He wondered how many men called this place home, entombed by their fellow man and with excellent reason. And yet they all had mothers, even the vilest among them; some, Rider assumed, even had fathers, beyond the stain of semen on egg. And still, they ended up here. Born evil? Maybe so. Probably have a genetic test soon that’ll tell you if your preschooler is the second coming of Ted Bundy, Rider thought. But when they drop the bad news on you, then what the hell do you do?

Rider stopped his musings as Rufus Harms, towering over the two guards trailing him, entered the visitors’room. The quick image was that of the lord to his serfs, reality the reverse of that. Harms was the largest man Rider had ever personally encountered, a giant possessed of truly abnormal strength. Even now he seemed to fill up the room with his bulk. His chest was two slabs of rebarred concrete hung side by side, arms thicker than some trees. Harms wore shackles on both his hands and feet that forced him to do the “prison shuffle.” He was accomplished at it, though; the shortened strides were graceful.

He must be close to fifty, Rider thought, but actually looked a good ten years older; he noted the facial scars, the awkward twist of bone beneath Harms’s right eye. The young man Rider had represented was the owner of fine, even handsome features. Rider wondered how often Rufus had been beaten in here, what other telling evidence of abuse he carried under his clothing.

Harms sat down across from Rider at a wooden table heavily scored by thousands of nervous, desperate fingernails. He didn’t look at Rider just yet, but instead eyed the guard, who remained in the room.

Rider caught Harms’s silent meaning and said to the guard, “Private, I’m his lawyer, so you’re going to have to give us some space here.”

The reply was automatic. “This is a maximum-security prison facility and every prisoner here is classified as violent and dangerous. I’m here for your safety.”

The men here were dangerous, both prisoners and guards, and that was just the way things were, Rider knew.

“I understand that,” replied the lawyer. “I’m not asking you to abandon me, but I’d be obliged if you could stand farther away. Attorney-client privilege — you understand, don’t you?”

The guard didn’t answer, but he did move to the far end of the room, ostensibly out of earshot. Finally, Rufus Harms looked over at Rider. “You bring the radio?”

“A strange request, but one that I honored.”

“Take it out and turn it on, would you?”

Rider did so. The room was immediately filled with the mournful tunes of country-western music, the lyrics contrived, shallow in the face of the genuine misery sensed at this place, Rider thought uncomfortably.

When the lawyer looked at him questioningly, Harms glanced around the room. “Lotta ears around this place, some you can’t see, right?”

“Bugging the conversations of an attorney and his client is against the law.”

Harms moved his hands slightly, chains rattling. “Lot of things against the law, but people still do ’em. Both in and out of this place. Right?”

Rider found himself nodding. Harms was no longer a young, scared kid. He was a man. A man in control despite being unable to control one single element of his existence. Rider also observed that each of Harms’s physical movements was measured, calculated; like he was engaging in chess, reaching out slowly to touch a piece, and then drawing back with equal caution. Here, swift motion could be deadly.

The inmate leaned forward and started speaking in a tone so low that Rider had to strain to hear him above the music. “I thank you for coming. I’m surprised you did.”

“Surprised the hell out of me to hear from you. But I guess it got my curiosity up too.”

“You look good. The years have been kind to you.”

Rider had to laugh. “I lost all my hair and put on fifty pounds, but thank you anyway.”

“I won’t waste your time. I got something I want you to file in court for me.”

Rider’s astonishment was clear. “What court?”

Harms spoke in even lower tones, despite the cover of the music. “Biggest one there is. Supreme Court.”

Rider’s jaw went slack. “You got to be kidding.” The look in Harms’s eyes would not brook such a conclusion. “Okay, what exactly do you want me to file?”

With smooth increments of motion, despite the restraints of the manacles, Harms slid an envelope out of his shirt and held it up. In an instant, the guard stepped across and snatched it from his hand.

Rider protested immediately. “Private, that is a confidential attorney-client communication.”

“Let him read it, Samuel, I got nothing to hide,” Harms said evenly, eyes staring off.

The guard opened the envelope and scanned the contents of the letter. Satisfied, he returned it to Harms and resumed his post across the room.

Harms handed the envelope and letter across to Rider, who looked down at the material. When he looked back up, Harms was leaning even closer to him, and he spoke for at least ten minutes. Several times Rider’s eyes widened as Harms’s words spilled over him. Finished, the prisoner sat back and looked at him.

“You going to help me, ain’t you?”

Rider could not answer, apparently still digesting all that he had heard. If the waist chain had not prevented such a movement, Harms would have reached out and put his hand over Rider’s, not in a threatening manner, but as a tangible plea for help from a man who had experienced none for almost thirty years. “Ain’t you, Samuel?”

Finally, Rider nodded. “I’ll help you, Rufus.”

Harms rose and headed for the door.

Rider put the paper back in the envelope and tucked it and the radio away in his briefcase. The lawyer had no way of knowing that on the other side of a large mirror that hung on the wall of the visitors’room, someone had watched the entire exchange between prisoner and attorney. This person now rubbed his chin, lost in deep, troubled thought.





CHAPTER SIX


At ten A.M., the marshal of the Supreme Court, Richard Perkins, dressed in charcoal-gray tails, the traditional Supreme Court dress of lawyers from the Solicitor General’s Office as well, stood up at one end of the massive bench, behind which sat nine high-backed leather chairs of various styles and sizes, and pounded his gavel. The packed courtroom grew silent. “The Honorable, the Chief Justice, and the Associate Justices of the United States,” Perkins announced.

The long burgundy-colored curtain behind the bench parted at nine different places, and there appeared a like number of justices looking stiff and uncomfortable in their black robes, as though startled awake and discovering a crowd next to their beds. As they took their seats, Perkins continued. “Oyez, oyez, oyez. All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court.”

Perkins sat down and looked out over a courtroom with the square footage of a mansion. Its forty-four-foot ceiling made the eye look for drifting clouds. After some preliminary business and the ceremonial swearing in of new Supreme Court Bar members, the first of the day’s two morning cases would be called. On this day, a Wednesday, only two cases during the morning would be heard, afternoon sessions being held only on Monday and Tuesday. No oral arguments were held on Thursday and Friday. On it would go, three days a week every two weeks, until the end of April, approximately one hundred and fifty oral argument sessions later, the justices assuming the modern-day role of Solomon for the people of the United States.

There were impressive friezes on either side of the courtroom. On the right were figures of lawgivers of the pre-Christian era. On the left, their counterparts of the Christian period. Two armies ready to have go at each other. Perhaps to determine who had gotten it right. Moses versus Napoleon, Hammurabi against Muhammad. The law, the handing down of justice, could be damn painful — bloody, even. Right above the bench were two figures carved in marble, one depicting the majesty of the law, the other the power of government. Between the two panels was a tableau of the Ten Commandments. Swirling around the vast chamber like flocks of doves were carvings — Safeguard of the Rights of People, Genii of Wisdom and Statecraft, Defense of Human Rights — representing the role of the Court. If there ever was a stage of perfect proportion for the hearing of matters paramount, it seemed that this landscape represented it. However, topography could be deceiving.

Ramsey sat in the middle of the bench, Elizabeth Knight at the extreme right. A boom microphone was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. The moms and pops in the audience had noticeably tensed up when the justices appeared. Even their gangly, bored kids sat a little straighter. It was understandable enough even for those barely familiar with the reputation of this place. There was a discernible feeling of raw power, of important confrontations to come.

These nine black-robed justices told women when they could legally abort their fetuses; dictated to schoolchildren where they would do their learning; proclaimed what speech was obscene or not; pronounced that police could not unreasonably search and seize, or beat confessions out of people. No one elected them to their positions. They held their positions for life against virtually all challenge. And the justices operated in such levels of secrecy, in such a black hole, that it made the public personae of other venerable federal institutions seem vainglorious by comparison. They routinely confronted issues that had activist groups all over the country banging heads, bombing abortion clinics, demonstrating outside prison death houses. They judged the complex issues that would bedevil human civilization until its extinction. And they looked so calm.

The first case was called. It dealt with affirmative action in public universities — or, rather, what was left of the concept. Frank Campbell, the counsel arguing on behalf of affirmative action, barely got through his first sentence before Ramsey pounced.

The chief justice pointed out that the Fourteenth Amendment unequivocally stated that no one shall be discriminated against. Didn’t that mean affirmative action of any sort was impermissible under the Constitution?

“But there are broad wrongs that are trying to be — ”

“Why does diversity equate with equality?” Ramsey abruptly asked Campbell.

“It ensures that a broad and diverse body of students will be available to express different ideas, represent different cultures, which in turn will serve to break down the ignorance of stereotypes.”