Balance of Power

    'Let there be no doubt who ultimately pays this lawyer's fees. We do—in higher prices, lost jobs, and the erosion of the principle that the purpose of a lawsuit is to gain genuine redress for an authentic wrong.'

    Palmer paused, gaze sweeping the chamber. 'But I have another concern,' he said firmly. 'That lawsuits have become a tool of our own corruption, funnelling money from litigation into our political system so that trial lawyers can wield unprecedented—and in my mind—unprincipled power.'

    Fasano glanced at Senator Hampton, who remained inscrutable. 'This debate,' Palmer continued, 'is about more than the corrosion of our justice system. At its heart, it is about the corrosion of our politics through money, and whether we have the courage to stop it.'

    At this, Hampton acknowledged Fasano with an ironic lift of his eyebrows. What about your special interests? Hampton seemed to say. But perhaps he was conveying more—his admiration of the neatness with which Palmer had moved the debate to grounds more congenial to him than to Fasano.

    Smiling with his eyes, Fasano shrugged in answer. The truth, though Hampton might not know it, was that Fasano had expected nothing less. Whatever its momentary discomforts, a Chad Palmer in character enhanced Fasano's chances of capturing Cassie Rollins. Toward the rear of the chamber, the junior senator from Maine watched Palmer with unwavering attention, heedless of the packed gallery of press and public gazing down on all of them.

* * *

    In the Oval Office, the President watched C-SPAN with Kit Pace and Clayton Slade. Kerry did not speak, nor did the others; among the one hundred senators, only Chad Palmer's opposition was too personal for comment.

    Let us turn, Palmer said, to the most vexing and contentious question presented by this bill: whether to protect gun companies from lawsuits based on the violent acts of others.

    That gun violence is a tragedy is beyond debate. And, to me as to the President, it is long past time for us to hold human life more precious than blandishments of a gun lobby whose power outstrips its decency.

    Silent, Kerry shook his head: this was the kind of bluntness, rare in politics, which endeared Chad Palmer more to average citizens than to his colleagues—except, perhaps, to Kerry himself. To see it placed in the service of Frank Fasano—and thus, perversely, the SSA—was difficult to watch.

    But, Palmer continued, as legislators we should discharge our responsibility directly—not delegate it to the courts. Let alone to trial lawyers who seek to shift our own responsibility to where it least belongs: on those who make the trigger, rather than those who pull it . . .

    'Read the depositions,' Kerry murmured to himself. But, of course, Palmer could not. No one could.

    In a just society, Palmer said, personal responsibility means just that. When parents fail to lock up loaded guns, they bear responsibility—however painful— when their child kills himself or someone else. Palmer's voice softened. Whether by accident, or by design. For, in the end, every suicide is the act of an individual, and every murder the act of a murderer.

    The quiet statement, with its echoes of his daughter's death, reechoed in Kerry's mind. As much as the President had imagined it, this speech—this moment—was worse than he had feared. He could only wonder how it felt to Palmer.

* * *

And so did Cassie Rollins.

    'How,' Palmer asked the Senate, 'can we allow sales at gun shows without a background check and then punish the gun company for the act of whoever buys it? That is an act of cowardice.'

    This, to Cassie, clearly staked out the course Chad was commending to her: to oppose the President on gun immunity, and then support Kilcannon's gun bill. But Chad's motives remained obscure, a matter of conjecture.

    'But there is a more subtle form of moral cowardice,' he continued with the same quietness of tone, 'and that is to degrade the justice system through our desire—however human—to find a remedy for sorrows which have none.' Palmer stood straighter, pausing to meet the gazes of his colleagues. 'I ask you to pass the Civil Justice Reform Act as it stands.'

    In the hush that followed, Cassie glanced across the aisle toward Vic Coletti, head bent in contemplation. Among their undecided colleagues, only Jack Slezak, two rows behind Coletti, appeared indifferent to the moment.

* * *

    Sitting, Chad Palmer felt wearier for the knowledge that had opened the way for the senator he most despised.

    'In at least one respect,' Paul Harshman told the Senate, 'I must part company with my friend and colleague from Ohio, to whom I listened with unstinting admiration. For these lawsuits are more than just misguided, nor are they merely the work of lawyers. They are the invention of instinctive totalitarians—the most deadly weapon in the arsenal arrayed by the most powerful enemies of the Second Amendment rights established by our Founding Fathers.'

    Chad closed his eyes. Washington, Jefferson—Harshman. To Paul, it must have a certain ring. But then only a fool could be so pompous; only a moral midget could envision Thomas Jefferson as the father of the Lexington P-2. 'Their aim,' Harshman continued, 'is the destruction of a legal industry, and, with it, the most basic right of all—the right to defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms.

    'We should not mince words. In the hands of a woman living alone, a semiautomatic handgun—and yes, an Eagle's Claw bullet—can deliver her from death or degradation. To paraphrase Senator Palmer, it is not the job of lawyers to calibrate her means of self-protection, approving only those guns, or those projectiles, least likely to ensure her safety.'

    He had made a deal, Chad told himself. But it did not involve listening to this. As soon as he decently could, Paul Harshman's 'friend and colleague' left the Senate chamber.

TWENTY-FIVE

Jet-lagged from taking the red-eye from San Francisco to New York, but even more tense than tired, Sarah watched Nolan interrogate Norman Conn.

    They were crammed in the small conference room of a two-person firm in Hartford, of which Conn's lawyer, Joseph Schwab, was the principal partner. Schwab was a large man, firm but gentle in manner, and his presence seemed to have a soothing effect on Conn. But this did not extend to Sarah. Schwab had deflected all of her inquiries, asserting that his client's only interest was the truth—which all the parties could hear at once. Sarah's version of the truth, though suggested by Conn's documents, was near-worthless without his help. And now the man would barely look at her.

    His own tension, though subdued, expressed itself in a certain twitchiness, a darting glance which probed his