The Road to Omaha: A Novel Read online

  “That’s not fair!”

  “It’s not a fair world, son,” observed the perspiring Attorney General, turning his attention to the White House lawyer at the blackboard. “All right, Blackburn—”

  “Washburn—”

  “If you say so.… Let’s zero in on this fiasco, and I mean zero to the max! For starters, just who the hell is the bastard, the traitor, who’s behind this totally unpatriotic, un-American appeal to the Court?”

  “He calls himself Chief Thunder Head, Native American,” answered Washburn. “And the brief his attorney submitted is considered one of the most brilliant ever received by the judiciary, our informer tells us. They say—confidentially—that it will go down in the annals of jurisprudence as a model of legal analysis.”

  “Annals, my ass!” exploded the Attorney General, once more working his soiled handkerchief across his brow. “I’ll have that legal banana peeled to his bare bones! He’s finished, eliminated. By the time the department’s through with him, he won’t get a job selling insurance in Beirut, forget the law! No firm’ll touch him and he won’t find a client in the meat box at Leavenworth. What’s the son of a bitch’s name?”

  “Well,” began Washburn hesitantly, his voice squeaking briefly into a falsetto, “… there we have a temporary glitch, as it were.”

  “Glitch—what glitch?” The nasal-toned Warren Pease, whose left eye had the unfortunate affliction of straying to the side when he was excited, pecked his head forward like a violated chicken. “Just give us the name, you idiot!”

  “There isn’t any to give,” choked Washburn.

  “Thank God this moron doesn’t work for the Pentagon,” snarled the diminutive Secretary of Defense. “We’d never find half our missiles.”

  “I think they’re in Teheran, Oliver,” offered the President. “Aren’t they?”

  “My suggestion was rhetorical, sir.” The pinch-faced head of the Pentagon, seen barely above the surface of the table, shook back and forth in short lateral jabs. “Besides, that was a long time ago and you weren’t there and I wasn’t there. Remember, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I don’t.”

  “Goddamn it, Blackboard, why isn’t there a name?”

  “Legal precedent, sir, and my name is … never mind—”

  “What do you mean, ‘never mind,’ you wart? I want the name!”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Non nomen amicus curiae,” mumbled the bespectacled White House attorney barely above a whisper.

  “What are you doin’, a Hail Mary?” asked the DCI softly, his dark Mediterranean eyes bulging in disbelief.

  “It goes back to 1826, when the Court permitted a brief to be filed anonymously by a ‘friend of the Court’ on behalf of a plaintiff.”

  “I’ll kill him,” mumbled the obese Attorney General, an audible flatus emerging from the seat of his chair.

  “Hold it!” yelled the Secretary of State, his left eye swinging back and forth unchecked. “Are you telling us that this brief for the Wopotami tribe was filed by an unnamed attorney or attorneys?”

  “Yes, sir. Chief Thunder Head sent his representative, a young brave who recently passed the state’s bar, to appear before the justices in camera and act as temporary counsel anticipating the necessity of the original anonymous counsel should the brief be held inadequate.… It wasn’t. The majority of the Court deemed it sufficient under the guidelines of non nomen amicus curiae.”

  “So we don’t know who the hell prepared the goddamned thing?” shouted the Attorney General, his attacks of duodenal gas unrelenting.

  “My wife and I call those ‘bottom burps,’ ” snickered the Vice-President quietly to his single superior.

  “We used to call them ‘caboose whistles,’ ” replied the President, grinning conspiratorially.

  “For Christ’s sake!” roared the Attorney General. “No, no, not you, sir, or the kid here—I’m referring to Mr. Backwash—”

  “That’s … never mind.”

  “You mean to tell us we’re not allowed to know who wrote this garbage, this swill that may convince five air-headed judges on the Court to affirm it as law and, not incidentally, destroy the operational core of our national defense?”

  “Chief Thunder Head has informed the Court that in due time, after the decision has been rendered and made public and his people set free, he will make known the legal mind behind his tribe’s appeal.”

  “That’s nice,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Then we’ll put the son of a bitch on the reservation with his redskin buddies and nuke the whole bunch of them off the goddamned map.”

  “To do that, General, you’d have to wipe out all of Omaha, Nebraska.”

  The emergency meeting in the Situation Room was over; only the President and his Secretary of State remained at the table.

  “Golly, Warren,” said the chief executive. “I wanted you to stay because sometimes I don’t understand those people.”

  “Well, they certainly never went to our school, old roomie.”

  “Gosh, I guess they didn’t but that’s not what I mean. They all got so excited, shouting and cursing and everything.”

  “The ill-born are prone to emotional outbursts, we both know that. They have no ingrained restraint. Do you remember when the headmaster’s wife got drunk and began singing ‘One-Ball Reilly’ at the back of the chapel? Only the scholarship boys turned around.”

  “Not exactly,” said the President sheepishly. “I did, too.”

  “No, I can’t believe it!”

  “Well, I sort of peeked. I think I had the hots for her; it started in dancing class—the fox trot, actually.”

  “She did that to all of us, the bitch. It’s how she got her kicks.”

  “I suppose so, but back to this meeting. You don’t think anything could come of that Indian stuff, do you?”

  “Of course not! Chief Justice Reebock is just up to his old tricks, trying to get you mad because he thinks you blackballed him for our Honorary Alumni Society.”

  “Gee, I swear I didn’t!”

  “I know you didn’t, I did. His politics are quite acceptable, but he’s a very unattractive man and wears terrible clothes. He looks positively ludicrous in a tuxedo. Also, I think he drools—not for us, old roomie. You heard what that Washboard said … he said Reebock told our mole that we ‘weren’t the only half-assed ball game in town.’ What more do you need?”

  “Still, everybody got so angry, especially Vincent Manja … Manju … Mango whatever.”

  “It’s the Italian in him. It goes with the bloodlines.”

  “Maybe, Warren. Still, he bothers me. I’m sure Vincent was a fine naval officer, but he could also be a loose cannon … like you-know-who.”

  “Please, Mr. President, don’t give either of us nightmares!”

  “I’m just trying to prevent ’em, old roomie. Look, Warren, Vincent doesn’t get along too well with our Attorney General or the Joint Chiefs, and definitely not with the whole Defense Department, so I want you to sort of cultivate him, stay in close touch with him on this problem—be his confidential friend.”

  “With a Mangecavallo?”

  “Your office calls for it, Warty old boy. State’s got to be involved in something like this.”

  “But nothing will come of it!”

  “I’m sure it won’t, but think of the reactions worldwide when the Court’s arguments become public. We’re a nation of laws, not whims, and the Supreme Court doesn’t suffer nuisance suits. You have some international spin-control in front of you, roomie.”

  “But why me?”

  “Golly gosh and zing darn, I just told you, Warty!”

  “Why not the Vice-President? He can relay all the news to me.”

  “Who?”

  “The Vice-President!”

  “What is his name, anyway?”

  3

  It was a bright midsummer’s afternoon
, and Aaron Pinkus, arguably the finest attorney in Boston, Massachusetts, and certainly one of the kindest and most gentle of powerful men, climbed out of his limousine in the fashionable suburb of Weston and smiled at the uniformed chauffeur who held the door. “I told Shirley this huge car was ostentatious enough, Paddy, but that silly cap with the shiny visor on your head comes perilously close to the sin of false pride.”

  “Not in old Southie, Mr. Pinkus, and we got more sins than they got votive candles in a wax factory,” said the large middle-aged driver, whose partially graying hair bespoke a once full crown of bright red. “Besides, you’ve been saying that for years now and it doesn’t do much good. Mrs. Pinkus is a very insistent woman.”

  “Mrs. Pinkus’s brain has been refried too often under a beauty shop hair dryer.… I never said that, Paddy.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be, so drive down the block, perhaps around the corner, out of sight—”

  “And stay in touch with you over the beeper,” completed the Irishman, grinning, obviously enjoying the subterfuge. “If I spot Mr. Devereaux’s car, I signal you, and you can get out through the back door.”

  “You know, Paddy, if our words were part of a transcript, any transcript, we’d lose the case, whatever it was.”

  “Not with your office defending us, sir.”

  “False pride again, my old friend. Also, criminal law is but a small part of the firm and not really outstanding.”

  “Hey, you ain’t doing nothin’ criminal!”

  “Then let’s lose the transcript.… Do I look presentable for the grande dame, Paddy?”

  “Let me straighten your tie, sir, it slipped a touch down.”

  “Thank you,” said Pinkus as the driver adjusted his tie. His eyes strayed to the imposing blue-gray Victorian house, fronted by a white picket fence and profuse with gleaming white trim around the windows and below the high gables. Inside was the matron of this landmark residence, the formidable Mrs. Lansing Devereaux III, mother of Samuel Devereaux, potential attorney-extraordinary and currently an enigma to his employer, one Aaron Pinkus.

  “There you are, sir.” The chauffeur stepped back and nodded approvingly. “You’re a grand and splendid sight for one of the opposite sex.”

  “Please, Paddy, this is not an assignation, it’s a mission of compassionate inquiry.”

  “Yeah, I know, boss. Sam’s been kind of off the wall every now and again.”

  “You’ve noticed then?”

  “Hell, you’ve had me pick him up at Logan Airport a dozen times or more this year. As I say, every now and again he seemed a little squirrelly, and it wasn’t just the boyo booze. He’s troubled, Mr. Pinkus. The lad’s got a trouble in his head.”

  “And that head contains a brilliant legal mind, Paddy. Let’s see if we can find out what the trouble is.”

  “Good luck, sir. I’ll be out of sight but in sight, if you know what I mean. And when you hear my beep, get the hell out of there.”

  “Why do I feel like a bony, overage Jewish Casanova who couldn’t scale a trellis if a horde of pit bulls was snapping at my rear end?” Pinkus understood that he asked the question of himself, as his driver had raced around the hood of the limousine so as to climb inside and vanish—in sight but out of sight.

  Aaron had met Eleanor Devereaux only twice over the years since he had known her son. The first time was the day Samuel came to work for the firm several weeks after his graduation from Harvard Law School, and then, Aaron suspected, it was because his mother wanted to look over her son’s workaday environs as she might inspect the counselors and the facilities of a summer camp. The second and only other time was at the welcome-home party the Pinkuses gave for Sam upon his return from the army, said homecoming one of the strangest in the chronicles of military separation. It took place over five months past the day that Lieutenant Devereaux was to arrive in Boston as an honorably discharged civilian. Five months unaccounted for.

  Five months, mused Aaron, as he started toward the gate in the white picket fence, nearly half a year that Sam would not talk about—would not discuss except to say he was not permitted to discuss it, implying some type of top-secret government operation. Well, Pinkus had thought at the time, he certainly could not ask Lieutenant Devereaux to violate a sworn oath, but he was curious, both personally as a friend and professionally in terms of international legal negotiations, and he did have a few connections in Washington.

  So he telephoned the President on the private White House line that rang in the upstairs living quarters and explained his conundrum to the chief executive.

  “You think he may have been involved in a covert operation, Aaron?” the President had asked.

  “Speaking frankly, I wouldn’t think he’s at all the type.”

  “Sometimes they go for that, Pinky. You know, rotten casting turns out the best casting. Also speaking frankly, a lot of these lousy long-haired, dirty-minded directors stink up the big screen with that kind of thing. I hear they wanted Myrna to use the S word a couple of years ago, can you believe it?”

  “It’s difficult, Mr. President. But I know you’re busy—”

  “Heck no, Pinky. Mommy and I are just watching Wheel of Fortune. You know, she beats me a lot, but I don’t care. I’m President and she’s not.”

  “Very understanding. Could you just possibly make a few inquiries for me on this matter?”

  “Oh, sure. I wrote it down. Devereaux—D-e-v-a-r-o, right?”

  “That will do, sir.”

  Twenty minutes later the President had called him back. “Oh, wow, Pinky! I think you stepped into it!”

  “Into what, Mr. President?”

  “My people tell me that ‘outside of China’—those were the words—whatever this Devereaux did had ‘absolutely nothing to do with the United States government’—those, too, were the exact words, I wrote them down. Then when I pressed them, they told me I didn’t ‘want to know’—”

  “Yes, of course, the exact words. It’s called deniability, Mr. President.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around, isn’t there?”

  Aaron paused on the path and looked up at the grand old house, thinking about Sam Devereaux and the rather odd, even touching way he had grown up in this gracefully restored relic from a far more graceful era. In truth, considered the vaunted attorney, the sparkling restoration had not always been in evidence; for years there had been the aura of neat but shabby gentility about the place rather than the current facade of spanking new paint and a manicured front law. These days, care was lavished continuously, no expense spared—spared, that was, ever since Sam had returned to civilian life after a five-month disappearing act. As a matter of course, Pinkus always studied the personal and academic histories of each potential employee of his firm so as to avoid heartbreak or a mistake. Young Devereaux’s résumé had caught his eye as well as his curiosity, and he had frequently driven by the old house in Weston, wondering what secrets were held within its Victorian walls.

  The father, Lansing Devereaux III, had been a scion of the Boston Brahmin elite on a par with the Cabots and the Lodges, but with one glaring aberration. He was a bold risktaker in the world of high finance, far more capable of losing money than hoarding it. He had been a good man, if somewhat wild and tempestuous, a hard worker who had opened doors of opportunity for many, but for himself saw too few initiatives come to fruition. While watching a stock market report on television, he had died of a stroke when Sam was a boy of nine, leaving his widow and his son a fine name, a grand residence, and insufficient insurance to maintain the lifestyle to which they were accustomed and the appearance of which Eleanor refused to abandon.

  As a result, Samuel Lansing Devereaux became that contradiction among the wealthy, a scholarship boy who waited on tables at Phillips Andover. While his classmates attended proms, he tended a snack bar at those proms; and when his increasingly distant acquaintances in the social set entered regattas on
the Cape, he worked on the roads they traveled leading to Dennis and Hyannis. He also worked on his studies, like a young man possessed, fully understanding that academia was the only route back to the affluent world of the ancestral Devereauxes. Besides, he was sick of being merely an observer of the good life instead of a participant.

  More generous scholarships followed at Harvard and its Law School, his expense monies supplemented quite nicely by a heavy schedule of tutoring his brother and sister classmates, the preponderance of whom were the latter as there were frequently bonuses having nothing to do with finance. There followed an auspicious beginning at Aaron Pinkus Associates, menacingly interrupted by the United States Army, which, in the era of massive Pentagon expansion, desperately needed all the lawyers it could dredge up to forestall wholesale indictments of its procurement personnel on bases at home and abroad. The fascist military computers unearthed a long-forgotten deferment granted one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, and the armed services gained a handsome, if pathetic, soldier, but one with a superb legal brain, which they used and obviously abused.

  What had happened to him? questioned Pinkus in the silence of his mind. What horrible events had taken place years ago that had come back to haunt him now? To warp and, at times, to short-circuit that extraordinary mind, a mind that cut through legalistic abstractions and made common sense out of the most abstruse constitutional interpretations, so that judges and juries alike were in awe of his erudition and his deeply penetrating analyses.

  Something had happened, concluded Aaron, approaching the huge front door, replete with antique beveled panes of glass in the upper panel. Also, where did Sam ever get the money to restore the damn house to begin with? Pinkus was, indeed, generous with his outstanding and, in truth, his favorite employee, but not to the extent that he could pour a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars into the renovation of the family residence. Where had the cash come from? Drugs? Laundering money? Insider trading? Selling illegal armaments abroad? None made sense where Sam Devereaux was concerned. He’d be a total bust at any of those endeavors; he was a klutz where subterfuge was concerned. He was—God in heaven be praised—a truly honest man in a world of worms. This judgment, however, did not explain the apparently inexplicable—the money. Several years ago, when Aaron had casually mentioned the fine improvements made on the house, which he drove by frequently on his way home, Samuel had, with equal casualness, offered that a well-to-do Devereaux relative had passed away and left his mother a very decent bequest.