“Lucky man! Still, somebody had to do it,” says Harry. “As I recall, after all the lawyers showed up, the two candidates were no longer willing to pitch pennies for the post.”
“Scarborough called Ginnis a party hack, and that was among the more gracious things he had to say.”
“Sour grapes,” says Harry.
“No, not sour. Poisonous,” I tell him.
Harry looks at me.
“The real cross Scarborough left Ginnis to carry was the charge that the justice had committed ethical violations. Scarborough claimed that Ginnis engaged in private, out-of-court communications, ex parte, during the case with some of the lofty lawyers representing the soon-to-be-anointed president. And Scarborough said there was a point to all this talking. Ginnis was lobbying for another judicial post, and he was doing it from a point of leverage.”
“Something higher than the Supreme Court?” says Harry.
“Chief justice!”
This draws a pair of arched eyebrows from Harry.
“According to Scarborough, Ginnis wanted to head up the Court.”
“I don’t remember that. I remember when the position came open, chief justice,” says Harry. “That was a few years ago. But I don’t remember Ginnis being mentioned as a candidate.”
“That’s the point. He wasn’t. Trisha Scott told me the charges were a lie. She may have been right. I don’t know. But it didn’t matter. When the position of chief justice fell vacant two years after the razor-sharp election, Ginnis didn’t even make the short list.”
“Maybe he was too old,” says Harry.
“No. That wasn’t it. It wasn’t in Scarborough’s book either, but it did make Newsweek, a tiny one-column article at the time. A source in the White House-unnamed, of course-said Ginnis was the president’s first pick for chief justice. The problem was, they couldn’t put him on the list because of Scarborough’s book and the charges he’d made. To nominate Ginnis would lend credence to the charges, and the administration, Ginnis’s handpicked president, didn’t want the heat. How’s that for having your career capped?”
“The top of the pyramid is always slippery,” says Harry.
“And I’ve been told that time heals all wounds. But you do have to wonder,” I say. “The two of them sitting there breaking bread.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Without the Jefferson Letter, the only evidence we have is that video. That means we don’t have a choice,” I tell him. “We’ve got to find Ginnis, track him down and serve him. Shackle and drag him if we have to, but get him here, and get him into court.”
20
Harry called Herman in Washington at the crack of dawn this morning and asked him if he had his passport with him. It seems Herman never leaves home without it. The man has been chasing leads on cases long enough to know he can never be sure where the next one will have him stepping off.
As I’m heading downtown, to Quinn’s ten o’clock court call, Herman is winging his way to Miami for a connecting flight south to Curacao.
Tuchio spends the next couple of days combing his list for witnesses to fill in some of the cracks. He calls his psychiatric witness and lays out in more detail the elements and driving mental characteristics that can detonate rage in the commission of a homicide. Among the inventory of motives the psychiatrist cites is social and political animosity, particularly the kind grounded in racial hostility. Since we haven’t put Carl’s mental state in issue, via a plea of insanity or diminished capacity, the state’s witness was not able to interview, test, or examine Carl. This is no doubt a plus for our side. There has never been a realistic hope of mounting a defense on these grounds, so exposing him to examination by a state’s expert would most likely result in a finding that Carl meets all the criteria for the commission of this kind of crime. It’s the problem with putting Carl on the stand. Tuchio would eat him for lunch, pepper him with questions about Scarborough and his book. He would turn down the lights and show Carl videos of the author in provocative interviews, and when the lights came back up, there’s no telling what might be the first words out of Carl’s mouth.
On Wednesday morning I’m climbing the courthouse steps and see a small convention of bikers, lots of leather and denim across the street. People riding Harleys today could be a clan of executives from IBM, but not these guys. I count maybe twenty of the outriders from the fabled Aryan Posse, badasses all of them.
Associates and members are estimated at close to seventy-five on the street and roughly twice that number in prisons around the country. It’s not the size of the organization but its deep roots within the Aryan prison community, where the racial divide is deep, sharp, and violent, that have the attention of authorities.
The reason they’re here this morning is Tuchio’s main attraction, his witness of the day, Charles Gross. He is one of their own. I’m guessing that the state is bringing Gross on now in order to sandwich him between other witnesses so that the rough edges don’t look so bad.
As I clear security on the courthouse main floor, I can see fifteen, maybe more, uniformed officers moving quickly toward the stairs at the back of the building. Something is happening, but I can’t tell what.
When the elevator door opens onto the corridor upstairs and I step out, I notice four of the Posse members down the hall, at the door to Quinn’s courtroom, each trying to get a ticket of admission.
After leaving thirty pounds of chain, dangling Nazi Iron Crosses, metal skulls, and other symbols of evil in a box downstairs at the security check, they still can’t get inside.
As I draw closer, I can hear why.
“Court dress code,” says the deputy. “No messages. No signs.”
They are all wearing leather vests, the uniform of the day, no shirts underneath, enough hair on their chests and in their armpits to build an entire condo complex of nests for a flock of crows. In an arc across their backs in leather, in various colors and assorted fonts are the words ARYAN POSSE.
“I been in court before. I wore this.” The one talking is six feet and well muscled, with frazzled blond hair to his shoulders, frayed and brittle enough to have been fried in a Chinese wok. He could make a good living as an extra doing Conan the Barbarian movies.
“That was then, this is now,” says the officer. “You can’t get in wearing that, not here, not today. Take it outside,” he says.
“Fuck that shit!” This comes from the Norse god who’s in the deputy’s face, in a voice loud enough so that everyone in the corridor has stopped moving, including me.
The deputies are standing in the airlock between the two sets of double doors leading to the courtroom, the outer doors are open. The inner doors look like they’re closed.
“You’re just doin’ this because of who we are. You know it, and I know it.”
His three buddies in biker boots and frayed jeans are bunched up behind him, all nodding, discrimination being a terrible thing.
“You can’t even see it if we’re sittin’ down. Hell, it’ll be up against the back of the chair.”
“Hey, I told you. I’m not gonna tell you again. No exceptions. No signs, no messages,” says the deputy. He and another officer are wedged in the door like a stone wall.
What I saw downstairs now becomes clear. By now the small army of uniforms is probably standing just on the other side of the closed door in the stairwell about ten feet behind Conan and his buddies-no doubt getting ready to play jack-in-the-box with cans of pepper spray and nightsticks if things get pushy.
The bikers move a step or so away to confer, then Odin is back in the deputy’s face. “Fine, we’ll take ’em off.”
“Excuse me?”
“Our jackets. You don’t like ’em, we’ll take ’em off.”
“Fine, take ’em off, take ’em outside, get a shirt, and come back,” says the cop.
“Where the hell are we gonna get shirts? By then all the seats’ll be taken.”
