Balance of Power

    'John Bowden was an adjudicated spousal abuser—that's a matter of public record. According to Ms. Costello's complaint, President Kilcannon asked the president of Lexington Arms, George Callister, to impose background checks at gun shows before its dealers could sell Lexington products. Callister declined. According to Ben Gehringer's deposition, Gehringer then sold the P-2 to John Bowden without a background check—Bowden having been drawn to the gun show by Lexington's ad.' Roper's left hand clenched. 'It's more than arguable that, without the ad, or with the background check, the seven people Bowden killed—including himself—might still be alive.'

    Nolan mustered a look of skepticism. 'Is that the entirety of your opinion?'

    'Not quite.' Once more, Roper glanced at Harrison Fancher. 'The SSA would have you believe that most homicides occur in the commission of a felony. Not true. Most homicides result from arguments between people who know each other, and the number of women shot to death by intimate partners is over four times greater than those killed by strangers.' Pausing, Roper spoke more quietly. 'As I said, that comes to over twelve hundred murdered women. Compared to twelve women who used guns to kill in self-defense.

    'That's one hundred murdered women for every act of self-defense. But enough of numbers, Mr. Nolan. These are people we're talking about. The sixteen-year-old Japanese exchange student killed while looking for a Halloween party because he rang the wrong doorbell. The fourteen-yearold who her father mistook for an intruder and who died saying 'I love you, Daddy.' The twenty-year-old mother who thought she heard gravel crunching in the driveway, pulled out a gun without a safety lock, and killed her eight-month-old by accident. The countless times when 'selfdefense' turns out to be what happens when you arm drunkenness and anger with a gun.

    'Triggers don't pull themselves, Mr. Nolan. But we're at far greater risk in the presence of a gun. That's why the most well armed country in the world is also the most deadly.'

    Listening, Sarah could only hope that Senator Fasano failed, and that Mary Costello's day in court would come. Then she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she saw her assistant hovering with a look which combined urgency with hesitance at interrupting.

    'Pardon us,' she said to Nolan. Turning from his annoyed expression to Janet's worried one, she knew immediately what had happened.

    'It's the phone call you were waiting for,' Janet whispered.

* * *

    Though they had not spoken since their meeting, Norman Conn blurted without preface, 'I refused to meet with their lawyer—a man named Nolan.'

    The reedy tautness in his voice confirmed Conn's stress. Sarah glanced at the closed door of her office. 'Who asked you?'

    'Our general counsel. If I don't meet with them, they're going to depose me.' His voice rose, quickening. 'They say if I stole records or gave away corporate secrets, they can sue me and take the house I've had for twenty years.'

    To Sarah, the telephone felt like a copper wire, a conductor of Conn's tension. 'I left you a message,' she said, 'referring you to a lawyer in Hartford who specializes in protecting the rights of whistleblowers . . .'

    'I was going to see him.' His voice broke. 'Now I don't know.'

    Sarah paused, suspended between pity and desperation. Bent on his own redemption, Conn had disdained to fear the loss of something as trivial as a job. But one could fear things as simple, and as profound, as the loss of the familiar. A house.

    'I'm sorry,' she said quietly. 'But if they notice your deposition, you'll be required to testify under oath.'

    'What if you tell them I'm not going to be a witness?'

    At once, Sarah was reminded of Martin Bresler. 'I could do that. But I won't.' Her voice was softer yet. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Conn. But I have a duty to my client. I suggest you ask the lawyer I mentioned about how to protect your rights. Because I'll use those documents you gave me to make sure that you don't lie.'

    This was an empty threat, Sarah knew—a self-discredited witness was useless at trial. In Conn's silence, she wondered if he knew this.

    'I understand,' he answered with a croak which, nonetheless, had a measure of dignity. The line went dead before Sarah could say more.

TWENTY-FOUR

Riven by doubts, Chad Palmer prepared to commence the debate on gun immunity.

    Senator Palmer had always thought of himself as conservative—a believer in free markets, military preparedness, and individual accountability and initiative. With others of his Senate colleagues—Cassie Rollins among them—he had watched in rising dismay as men like Paul Harshman equated 'conservative' with the unfettered gun rights and a militant social agenda fueled by fundamentalism and financed by those for whom, too often, a truly free market meant freedom from the constraints of law.

    The latter forces, Palmer knew, bought influence in either party. But while their Democratic beneficiaries adopted what Palmer thought of as a simpering hypocrisy—claiming to take large donations in self-defense— the Republicans of Harshman's stripe cast their voracity for special interest funding as a constitutional right. Thus, Chad's battle against money in politics had earned him the bitter enmity of those within his party for whom guns and money and religion were a recipe for power.

    This was why he had struck his Faustian bargain with Frank Fasano, trading gun immunity for a clear shot at campaign finance reform which Kerry Kilcannon wanted almost as much as he. But Kilcannon was President. For the senior senator from Ohio, seemingly blocked by Fasano and his supporters, reform might be his only recompense for a career paid for with his daughter's life. And so Chad went to the floor of the Senate, supported by his most ardent enemies, to oppose a friend whose own wounds Palmer felt more keenly than his allies of convenience ever could.

    It was best, Chad knew, to stick with what he truly believed.

    He stood at his lacquered desk, notes in front of him. The Senate was full. At its front were Frank Fasano and Chuck Hampton, separated by the narrow aisle which divided the two parties.

    'This pestilence of lawsuits,' he told his colleagues, 'is both symptom and disease. For many small and honest businesses, it is terminal. But for all of us it symptomizes a breakdown in our social fiber where law replaces morals, mischance becomes opportunity, and the courtroom converts neighbors into predators.

    'The Civil Justice Reform Act is an effort to restore the time when lawsuits were not a form of social insurance; when lawyers were advocates instead of opportunists; and legislators—not judges—made our laws.'

* * *

    The Senate was still, attentive. Unlike some of their colleagues, Frank Fasano reflected, Chad Palmer was most effective when he spoke from core belief—he was too free of self-delusion to be facile at dissembling. To Fasano, equally free of delusion but far more inclined to pragmatism, it was what made his Republican rival both admirable and dangerous. To be allied with him, however briefly, was a luxury to be enjoyed, and to have turned Palmer on Kilcannon a genuine work of political art.

    'We are told,' Palmer continued, 'that class actions are the last redoubt of the small investor against financial fraud. If only that were so. But most investors are lucky to recover a dime on a dollar, and only after their wealthy lawyers have pocketed a multimillion-dollar fee.' Palmer permitted himself a smile. 'For one such lawyer, the definition of a 'small investor' is the pet client who has purchased one share of stock in every company listed in the Fortune 500. Enabling his legal champion—as of yesterday—to bring twenty-six class actions in his name.