The Hearing Page 30
As she walked away, he glanced at the TV over the cash register. The screen showed an ambulance and police cars with flashing red lights. He hated TV, rarely watched it, and was glad the sound was off. He had other things to think about. For the past six weeks he’d been practicing every day with a professional chamber orchestra. His hotel contract was up at the end of the month, and the orchestra had asked him to join them on a world tour. It was his first opportunity in years to return full time to the serious music that had once been his life.
He loosened his tie and watched the ambulance pull up to a hospital emergency entrance. The picture shifted to another camera, a close-up of the ambulance’s back door. Someone jostled the cameraman, and the image shook. The ambulance doors swung open. Cameramen and reporters pushed and shoved. A gurney with an IV bottle swept past. A face, eyes closed, flashed across the screen.
Larry leaped to the cash register. “Turn it up!”
The bartender, ringing up a sale, spun toward him.
“Turn it up! Turn it up!”
Men in white coats blocked the camera at a door marked emergency.
The bartender picked up a remote, touched a button.
“… since collapsing in the hearing room, but we cannot be certain at this moment exactly what—Robert do you have something for us? Let’s go to Robert Allman at the Senate hearing room.”
The picture remained the same, but the voice changed.
“Yes, John, we’ve just been told that the moment Samantha was asked if she had killed a man, the paramedics were already positioned outside a side door of the hearing room. Whether this means that there was some expectation of her reaction, we can’t—”
Larry was out the door, headed for his room and a telephone.
In the hospital they gave her an injection, took blood and urine samples.
She slept.
At 7:30 that night the phone by the bed rang and Gus picked it up.
“Judge Parham?”
“Yes.”
“This is Fred Knight at Blossom, sir.” Knight and a small security detail were camping out in the rubble of Blossom, which had lost half its roof and most of the front wall. “We have a phone call for you from Larry Young in London. I wasn’t sure you’d want to take it right now, but he’s very insistent. Should I patch it over, or—”
“Yes, definitely. I’ll take it.”
“Just a second, please.”
“Hello?”
“Larry? This is Gus.”
“What’s happening? How is Samantha? What’s going on?”
He was talking fast, distressed, angry. Gus glanced at Michelle.
“Samantha’s fine, Larry. We—”
“I saw her on TV, in an ambulance. It said something about she killed a man. I told Carl, but I didn’t think you guys would give it to people to ask her on TV. What’s happening? Why isn’t—”
“Larry, calm down. Let me explain. I thought Phil Rothman had been talking to you.”
“What happened?”
“She was testifying at the hearing and someone asked her if she had killed someone. She—”
“Why did they ask her that? How did they know? Who told them? What—”
“Larry, let me finish. The chairman of the committee asked her if she had killed a man and—well, obviously it was very upsetting. She fainted. People thought that for her welfare, to be sure she was okay, she ought to go to the hospital and get checked. So that’s where she is, and she’s sleeping and all the tests say she’s fine.”
A long pause. Gus could hear Larry breathing.
“Larry—”
“I want to talk to Samantha.”
“She’s asleep. She’s been sedated. I don’t think the doctors would want us to wake her up.”
“No, I don’t want you to do that. Don’t wake her.”
“Michelle’s here. Do you want to talk to Michelle?”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to talk to Samantha. When will Samantha be awake?”
“I don’t know. Probably not before the morning.”
Gus could almost hear the turmoil in Larry’s brain. He said, “What are you going to do? Are you coming over?”
“I don’t know. I have to think. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to talk to her. I’ll call back.”
He hung up.
Michelle said, “What did he say?”
Gus told her. “He’s very upset. Maybe he’ll call back. If not, I’ll call him, see what—I don’t know. See what his plans are.”
Gus and Michelle stayed with Samantha overnight, and through Tuesday and Tuesday night, resting on cots beside the bed. Tuesday morning, the day after Samantha’s testimony, the Judiciary Committee voted 9-5 to confirm Gus’s nomination.
At seven o’clock Wednesday morning Samantha awoke. In a few hours the full Senate would vote. There had been no further word from Larry.
Michelle said, “How’d you sleep?”
“Wow. I feel really strange.” Heavily sedated, she had done almost nothing but sleep since Monday night.
Michelle sat on the edge of Samantha’s bed and held her hand.
Samantha glanced around, her eyes watery and dazed.
“Where are we, anyway?”
“We’re in the hospital,” Gus said, standing by the bed, “but you’re okay.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember.”
She looked at Gus, her eyes clearing. “Did they vote yet?”
“The Senate votes today.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter. They don’t even have to vote now, right?”
Gus said, “Oh, they’ll vote. And we’ll win.”
Samantha looked at Michelle.
“I want to go home.”
“We’ll leave soon, honey. They just want you to rest.”
“I’ve been resting. I just woke up.”
The phone rang.
Gus picked it up.
He glanced uneasily at Michelle, then at Samantha.
“Samantha, it’s Larry.”
She beamed and reached for the phone. Then she pulled her hand back.
“What can I tell him?”
Michelle said, “Tell him the truth.”
Gus gave her the phone, and he and Michelle left the room.
Twenty minutes later, when they cracked the door and looked in, she was off the phone. Her eyes were red and tears streaked her cheeks.
Michelle said, “What happened, honey?”
“Nothing. He said he’s worried about me, how am I, how long will I be in the hospital. He asked me if I still like it here being with you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I loved it with you. I do love it with you.”
She wiped her eyes and didn’t speak. Michelle said, “How is he?”
“Oh, great. He’s really excited. He’s got a new job. He’s going to stop playing in bars and nightclubs.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“He’s playing with a chamber orchestra. They’re going on a tour around the world. It’s like a new life.”
Michelle glanced at Gus. “What did you say?”
“I said I thought it was great.”
“Will he be coming here?”
“He said if I wanted he’d come and get me. But how can he do that? He’s in this orchestra and they’re going around the world. I don’t want him to get me. I want to stay here.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said Doreen got the name of his hotel from a reporter. She called him and said she wanted us both back, me and him, and if he agreed, the court would have to give me back to them.”
Michelle’s eyes filled with anger.
“She told him she had a deal with a newspaper and to write a book and maybe a movie, but it’d look better if we were all back together, so if he came back she’d give him some of the money.”
Michelle’s mouth was open.
Gus said, “What did Larry tell her?”
&
nbsp; “He told her to forget it, she wasn’t going to get me or him. He said what did I want to do. If I wanted, he’d find some way to take care of me, someplace I could stay and go to school while he was on tour, or he could quit the or chestra, not travel all the time, change jobs. But I know he can’t do that. And anyway …”
They waited. After a minute, Michelle said, “And anyway?”
“And anyway, I don’t want—I just want to stay here.”
An hour later breakfast arrived. When she had finished eating, Samantha said, “When are they going to vote?”
Gus said, “Mr. Rothman will call us.”
Someone had put a TV at the nurses’ station. Gus could hear it faintly. Rothman had urged him to watch the vote at the White House. “The President will be there. Watch it with him. Or I’ll come to the hospital and watch it there with you and Michelle.”
Gus didn’t want to watch it with anyone, didn’t want any White House people hanging around the hospital.
“Just call me, Phil. Tell me how it all comes out.”
Phil didn’t have to. Gus heard a cheer from the hallway. He glanced at Michelle. She said, “Go see.”
By the time he got there, it was all but over. The Vice President looked down at a paper, looked up, leaned into his microphone, and said, “Yeas, fifty-six. Nays, forty-four. The nomination of Augustus Parham of Alabama to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is hereby confirmed.”
Nurses, doctors, orderlies turned toward Gus, smiling and laughing, and began to applaud.
He said, “Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking such good care of Samantha.”
He walked back toward the room. Something, perhaps the doctors and nurses, the medical surroundings, drew him suddenly into a distant memory. He was driving past the clinic on Bakersfield Boulevard, caught in the violence of a demonstration and despairing at the loss of his child. If someone had told him then that the day would come, in this life, when he would be with that child, he would not have believed it. And yet here he was, with Samantha. He felt a sudden warmth, gripped the hand rail along the wall, and closed his eyes. His body filled with an intense, luxurious heat, the heat of the love of a Father for his Son. He wanted it never to stop. It was a joy so overwhelmingly intense that—
“Judge Parham? Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes. It was a young nurse, pretty, grinning.
“Yes, thank you, I’m fine.”
“You’re red.”
“Really?”
“You look sunburned.”
“I’m fine.”
He knew what it was like to have lost a child, and to have that child handed back. And he knew that it was not just the child who had been restored. For the first time in thirteen years, Gus felt forgiven, cleansed, and free.
“Yes, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Well, anyway, congratulations.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks.”
He felt hands on his back, turned, and saw Michelle and Samantha. For two minutes the three of them stood there, hugging, eyes closed, an island in the stream of doctors and nurses hurrying past them in the hall.
From the bestselling author of The Underground Empire, Panic in Needle Park, and Report to the Commissioner comes a novel as electrifying and timely as today’s national headlines, a story of ambitious scope, high suspense, and heartrending poignancy.
THE HEARING
Judge Gus Parham is Alabama’s favorite son, a man with a soaring career and a perfect marriage. To sweeten perfection, he has just been nominated to the United States Supreme Court by his old friend, the nation’s President. But Gus has an enemy no man has ever successfully crossed: Ernesto Vicaro, an organized crime leader who, thanks to Gus’s courage and resolve, is an inmate of America’s prison system.
Gus’s political opponents uncover a daughter from a pregnancy Gus thought his wife, then his fiancée, had aborted twelve years before. The existence of Samantha, a lovely young girl with a troubled past, unleashes a media feeding frenzy that rocks his nomination. Gus has to handle a vacillating White House, unmerciful members of Congress, and a beautiful lobbyist whose agenda of compassion is fueled by a calculated ruthlessness. Then, beset by forces from both the left and the right, Gus and his wife, Michelle, are plunged into a world of blackmail, suicide, and terror.
Now the nominee must make the most difficult decision of his life. Faced with two choices—to embrace a lie or do something he knows is desperately, unalterably wrong—he will make an astonishing decision.
The story of a courageous man torn between family loyalty and the passion to serve his country in the highest way, THE HEARING is a scathing indictment of the political system as well as a white-knuckle thriller. And it is something more. The crowning achievement of one of America’s premier fiction voices, it is a story of redemption—and the power of love.
JAMES MILLS is an award-winning journalist and author of eight novels, including two New York Times bestsellers, Report to the Commissioner, a novel, and The Underground Empire, a study of international narcotics trafficking. Two of his books have become major motion pictures, his work has been anthologized in journalism and law school texts, and he has testified as an expert witness before a congressional panel on international crime.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF JAMES MILLS
“A disturbing book that is part of the literature of our times.”
—San Francisco Chronicle on Panic in Needle Park
“The best police story I have ever read.”
—Chicago Tribune on Report to the Commissioner
“Mills probably understands crime better than anyone else in the country.”
—Chicago Tribune on On the Edge
“The mind boggles! Extraordinary and consciousness-raising.”
—New York Times on The Underground Empire
“A thriller-horror story … a winning combination.”
—UPI on The Power
“Nifty … chilling … a convincing tale that’ll knock your socks off.”
—Los Angeles Times on Haywire