“Violence,” she says. “Terry was convinced that what he was writing had the potential to incite a race war. Mind you, I’m not sure Terry would have objected. I rather think he would have applauded the actual violence. From what I understand, when the riots erupted on his tour for the current book, he was tickled that there were people who actually sat up and took notice of what he’d written and were motivated enough to burn vehicles and break windows.”
“Riots being the highest form of flattery,” I say.
“In Terry’s mind, probably true. But the letter was another matter. According to Terry, if readers had seen the actual text of the Jefferson letter, they would have torched Washington, every monument and stick in the place. There wouldn’t have been much left anywhere in the inner city. At least that’s what he said.”
“So he didn’t want to be the cause of this?”
“Not exactly. The problem was, he couldn’t authenticate the letter. What he told me was that he possessed a photocopy, but he was certain that at some point within a few months he’d be able to get his hands on the original. Then he could authenticate it using state-of-the-art forensics. Once he did that, what he’d be publishing would be history, and you can’t blame the author for that.”
“At least he thought it through,” I say. “The consequences, I mean.”
“Actually, he didn’t. I did. It’s what we argued about,” she says. “For all his supposed legal expertise, the truth of the matter was that Terry wasn’t much of a lawyer. He allowed his passions to run away with his head. He wanted to use the material, the letter, even though all he had was a copy. When I asked him if he knew whether it was authentic, he said he didn’t care. Even if it wasn’t authentic, it accurately reflected what had occurred regarding slavery and the hypocrites who founded the country. That’s what he told me. Almost his exact words.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth. What if it spawned violence and people were killed? Terry told me that that was always the price to be paid for social progress and past injustice.
“I told him he wasn’t thinking clearly. That if he published it, the letter was likely to gain a lot of traction in the press-in newspapers and on television. I told him that people who don’t read books were likely to see the contents of the letter in the media because of its controversial nature and the fact that it had never been publicly revealed before. I told him that if it wasn’t authentic and if violence erupted, he could be responsible for anything that happened, legally responsible for inciting riots.”
“I’ll bet that put the chill into him.”
“He didn’t say much, not at first. There was a lot of silence. He hadn’t considered it. You should have seen the look on his face. He was like a child whose toy had been taken away. It was like, ‘I asked you to look and listen to what was in my book. I didn’t expect you to actually tell me there was something wrong with it.’ He kept me up all night talking, trying to figure some way to get around this. I asked him where he got the letter, that he might be able to authenticate it if he could get his hands on the original. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it, only that the source was unimpeachable and that if I knew where he’d gotten it, I wouldn’t be questioning it either. But he still wouldn’t tell me. By morning I don’t know if he was just exhausted or if reason had finally set in, but he realized he couldn’t use it-the letter, I mean-not without authentication.
“He shredded the manuscript, the only printed copy,” she continued. “I told him not to, that he might wait until he had a chance to get the original letter, but he wouldn’t listen. He was angry with me. It wasn’t the message he wanted to hear, so he wanted to shoot the messenger. He had to call the publisher and tell them he would be late delivering the book. It set him back several months. He had to do a heavy rewrite, building up the slavery language in the Constitution, using that as a stepping-off place. But I know that he was intent on using the letter for a later book.”
“He told you this?”
“More than once. It was as if he blamed me for forcing him to do the extra work. I just told him the facts. But Terry didn’t like facts when they got in the way of something he wanted to do or say. It was the beginning of the end for us, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I had come between him and his mistress.”
“His work?” I say.
“Publicity,” says Scott. “Terry needed the celebrity for validation. He had a big emotional hole inside him.”
“About the letter,” I say. “Assuming it’s authentic, you’re sure Jefferson wrote it?”
“All I know is that Terry referred to it as ‘the Jefferson letter’ or ‘the infamous Jefferson letter.’ As I said, I never saw it, and even the references in the manuscript I only got to glance at. As soon as he told me what he was doing and I told him there would be problems, Terry pulled the manuscript away from me. I never got another look at it.”
“So you don’t know the date, when the letter was written?”
She shakes her head.
“Or whom it was written to?”
“No.”
“Not much to go on,” I tell her.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Still, it’s more than I had this afternoon.” I smile at her from across the table, close up my notebook, and slip it back into the inside pocket of my coat along with the pen. “Did you mention any of this to the cops, when they talked to you?”
“They didn’t ask. I had no reason to think it might be important until you mentioned it.” She takes another sip of her drink. “There is one other thing,” she says. “It’s about Justice Ginnis. I’m certain that Terry would not have gotten the letter from Arthur.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Arthur despised Terry. He had no use for him. He saw Terry as an opportunist, somebody who would use anybody to get ahead and dump them as soon as he got what he wanted. He warned me not to get emotionally involved. He wouldn’t have crossed the street to help Terry with anything, especially anything as controversial as Terry’s book. Believe me, as a former Supreme Court clerk-there wasn’t a member of the Court who wouldn’t lift their robes and run shrieking to put distance between themselves and anything Terry wrote.”
“You say Ginnis despised Scarborough?”
“Oh, here we go,” she says.
“Sorry. I can’t help picking up on little words.”
“Forget I ever said it.” She reaches for her purse under the table, ready to walk out.
“Don’t get angry. I’m just looking for background. I need to know who Scarborough was, the kind of man I’m dealing with as a victim.”
She wears a stern expression. Then she softens, puts her purse back down.
“I’ll tell you,” she says. “You will have no difficulty finding enemies of Terry Scarborough in this town. Just turn over any rock,” she says. “I didn’t know it when I first met him. I was young, naive, impressionable, straight out of law school. Terry was a well-known published author, on television almost daily. I was dazzled.
“It wasn’t until later, months later, that I found out that Terry had savaged Justice Ginnis in one of his earlier books. It was the case of the century,” she said, the presidential election almost twelve years ago now, the squeaker decided by the Supreme Court.
“Terry published a book that kicked the insides out of the Court. He claimed to have sources, people privy to private conversations between the justices and those on the outside, the parties and their lawyers. The decision by the Court came down five to four; it ended the election and effectively anointed the new president. Arthur was the swing vote, and Terry excoriated him for it in public print. He called Arthur a party hack and claimed that he’d been in direct contact with lawyers for the new president before he voted on the case. It wasn’t true. It hurt Arthur, and it hurt him deeply.
“But that’s the thing about the Court-you just had to sit there and take it. They all knew that. It was the price the nine of them, and all their predecessors, paid for a lifetime appointment to an institution that’s not supposed to be political. When somebody takes a shot, they can’t go to the media and fight back. You just have to live with it, and Arthur did. It’s the reason I laughed when you said someone had told you that Terry and Arthur were friends. Justice Ginnis would have put an ocean between himself and Terry Scarborough if he could have. When I introduced Terry to him at the reception, I thought Arthur would choke. The next day Arthur took me into his office and warned me that Scarborough would try to use me to find out what was going on in chambers, to dig up dirt on cases. I told
