High Crimes

Grimes brayed a laugh, his ha-ha. “I want some of whatever you’re smoking,” he said.

“Camel Lights,” she said. “I’m goddamned serious. If he refuses, I’ll subpoena him.”

“The lady’s kickin’ butt and takin’ names,” Grimes said.

“Claire, ma’am,” Embry said desperately, “General William Marks is the chief of staff of the army. He’s a four-star general. You can’t make him testify.”

“Who says? Where does it say that? I didn’t read anything like that in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

“I like it,” Grimes said. “You got balls.”

“Thank you,” Claire said, then added, “That is a compliment, right?”

22

After dinner Jackie told Claire, “You got a call from a reporter at the Washington Post. Style section, I think. They heard you’ve rented a house in D.C. and want to know why. Like it’s their fucking business.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I said I had no idea. They wanted to know if you’re doing some big-deal case here, or if you’re teaching here, or what.”

“No comment,” Claire said.

“I figured.”

“How about we go get a drink,” Grimes said.

“We’ve got booze here,” Claire said.

“I got a place I want to show you. In Southeast.”

“Can you wait till I tuck my little girl in?”

“I’ll wait in the library. File a motion or something.”

Later, Grimes drove them in his beat-up old silver Mercedes. He circled the block where the bar was three times, but no parking space opened up. Finally he saw a large open space right in front of the bar, but before he got there a Volkswagen Jetta zipped into it. Grimes pulled the Mercedes up alongside the Jetta, beeped the horn, and electrically lowered his window. “Uh, excuse me,” he shouted. “Excuse me.”

“Come on, Grimes,” Claire said. “She got there first.”

“Excuse me,” Grimes shouted again.

The woman driver leaned over, cranked down her passenger-side window, and said warily, “What do you want?”

“Hey, none of my business, but you don’t want to park there. That’s valet parking, and believe me, they tow, night and day.”

“Valet parking?” the woman said, confused. “But there’s no sign!”

“The sign’s down, but that’s not going to stop ’em. Ten minutes after you park there, your car’s going to be towed to some part of the city you ain’t never been to before and you don’t ever wanna go to again.”

“Jeez, thank you!” the woman said. She cranked the window back up and pulled out of the space and into traffic.

“Hey, Grimes,” Claire said, “forgive me. That was mighty nice of you.”

He laughed, ha-ha, as he backed into the space. “Always works,” he said.

She shook her head in disgust but couldn’t suppress a smile. “Valet parking,” she said, disapprovingly. “I like that.”

The bar was a dive, dark and dingy and reeking of spilled beer. The creaky wooden floor was sticky. The music — an old song by Parliament/Funkadelic on the jukebox — blasted. “This is it?” she said.

“Authentic, huh?”

“Funky,” she said without much enthusiasm.

Once a plastic pitcher of sudsy beer from the tap had been placed in front of them, along with two large plastic tumblers and a dish of pretzels, Grimes said, “Now, one thing I have to tell you. In the interests of honesty and full disclosure.”

“Yes?”

“You want me to be second chair, fine. But you want me to stand up and cross-examine a witness while you’re sitting there — one of the best in the biz? I don’t think so.”

She laughed. “My cross-examination skills are rusty. Anyway, what do you know about me?”

He took a long swig of beer. “After you graduated from Yale Law School, you did a pair of clerkships. Two years for Arthur Iselin in the D.C. Circuit Court, Court of Appeals. There you worked on opinions, did speeches. You did an insanity case, some bussing, some ineffective-assistance-of-counsel cases. Then you clerked for one year for Justice Marshall at the Supreme Court, where you read applications for certiorari.”

“Very impressive,” she said. “Did you do some sort of Nexis search for interviews with me?”

He took another swig. “Truth is, I read every article, every interview with you. Even before we met. I think you’re pretty cool.” He smiled, embarrassed, and hastily added, “What was Justice Marshall like? Cool guy?”

“Very,” she said. “Extremely funny. And a really nice guy, definitely the nicest guy on the court. He was the only one there who actually hung out with the clerks. One of his favorite TV shows was People’s Court, you know, that one with Judge Wapner.”

Grimes exploded with laughter. “No way.”

“True story. Now, let me ask you something. Why’d you leave the army?”

He studied his beer, took a sip. “Retired, like I said.”

“Voluntarily.”

“Hell, yeah,” he said, annoyed.

“No offense intended. I thought you were sort of forced out.”

“What did Iselin tell you?”

“Just that there was some sort of, I don’t know, scandal.”

“Oh, yeah? Scandal, is that what he said?”

“Something like that.”

He shook his head, drank again. A long silence passed.

“So, what was it, Grimes?”

“You do your twenty years as a lawyer in the army, it makes sense to take retirement. You run the numbers.”