Deadlock

We are very quiet on the Supreme Court,

but it is the quiet of a storm center.

JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

CHAPTER ONE

1

Millicent Mannings Hollander could not stop looking at evil.

She sat, along with her eight colleagues, on the raised dais facing the marble frieze over the main entrance to the United States Supreme Court. The frieze depicted the forces of evil – deceit and corruption – overcome by good: security, charity, and peace. The scene was dominated by the triumphant figure of justice, an enduring testament to the greatest virtue of the law.

As a ten-year veteran of the Court, Millie Hollander had seen that artwork hundreds of times. Why should it jump out at her now? Was it simple judicial fatigue? Though in relatively good shape at fifty-two (she liked to shoot hoops in the Supreme Court gym), every term was a challenge.

Work on the Court was a day in, day out cavalcade of cases, court petitions, emergency appeals, oral arguments, conferences, analyses, and draft opinions. The same held true even for the three hundred other employees of the Court – everyone from the private police to the cafeteria cooks – who did not don the robes.

Though she loved everything about the Court, by mid-June Millie was ready for the recess, the summer break that lasted until Labor Day.

But mere weariness wasn’t behind this perception – this sensation – of evil. She’d been tired before. No, there was a feeling of something deeper, something out there.

She blinked a couple of times and then thought it might just be the lawyer at the podium. Not that lawyers were evil (though some might be inclined to disagree with her there) but he was phrasing his argument in apocalyptic terms. “The matter is not simply what is right for this student,” he had just said, “but for all the future students who must decide if life has any meaning at all.”

Millie Hollander, in all her time as an associate justice of the Court, had rarely heard an advocate cast so wide a net. Got to admire his ambition, Millie thought, if not his grasp of the Establishment Clause.

“What business is it of the public schools to teach anything about the meaning of life?” Thomas Riley thundered at the lawyer.

Millie had to smile. How many times had she heard that voice, now eighty-four years young, plow right into the heart of an issue?

As the lawyer for the high school student stammered a reply, Millie once again found her gaze pulled, almost magnetically, to the frieze and the rendition of evil. There seemed to be something new about it, though that was absurd. Her legal mind clicked a notch and informed her that there couldn’t be anything new about artwork that had been in place nearly seventy years.

“Public schools have some sort of mandate to prepare students for life, don’t they?” Justice Byrne asked the lawyer. Raymond Byrne was the Court’s most conservative member – the polar opposite of Tom Riley – and often asked soft follow-up questions after Riley had skewered some hapless lawyer.

Millie knew it was all part of the dance. The two most extreme justices were really trying to pull the middle three swing votes – herself, Valarde, and Parsons – to their side of the fence. Millie almost always came out on Riley’s side. Thus her label as a moderate liberal in the popular press.

And on this issue, the role of religion in schools, Millie had long made her position clear – no role. Strict separation of church and state.

“… so yes, Your Honor,” the lawyer for the student said, “we must allow the free discussion of the most important issue in any student’s life, as – ”

“But, Counsel,” Millie said, “isn’t the Establishment Clause’s very purpose to prevent any governmental stance on a religious issue?”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “I believe, Your Honor, that to allow discussion is not really a ‘stance’ on a religious issue, it is a – ”

“But it’s happening on school grounds, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it – ”

“And students are compelled to be there by law, aren’t they?”

“That’s true, Your Honor, but – ”

“Then what you are arguing for is tantamount to legal coercion, is it not?”

“I don’t believe it is,” the lawyer said, his voice warbling a bit. Millie was about to tell him that the only thing that mattered was what the Constitution declared, but let it go. The man had suffered enough.

Ten minutes later, Chief Justice Pavel announced the adjournment of the Court for the last time this term. The nine justices rose to make their magisterial exit through the burgundy velvet curtains behind the bench.

Just before she did, Millie took one more look at the frieze. There was that sense again, of something from the evil side moving toward her. That was enough. She told herself to get a very serious grip.

Then she looked down from the frieze to the packed gallery, and immediately locked eyes with someone in the back row.

The eyes belonged to a United States senator, one the New York Times had recently named the most powerful politician of the last twenty-five years. And Senator Samuel T. Levering, D-Oklahoma, was giving Justice Millicent Mannings Hollander a very enthusiastic thumbs-up sign.

Not something she usually got from politicians. But she knew this was no ordinary time. In two hours she would be meeting with Levering, at his request. She also knew he was probably going to offer her the dream of a lifetime.

2

Charlene Moore closed her eyes and sang.

Oh, God, don’t let me mess up, no no. Her voice was a whisper in the elevator. Oh, God, don’t let me sweat. Oh, God, this is my one good suit! Ain’t got money for a new one, Lord. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

At least the elevator air was cool. As the elevator charged toward the thirtieth floor, Charlene wondered what would happen if she just stayed in the car, rode it back to ground level, and ran from the building.