No Way to Treat a First Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

sledgehammer. Harold Farkley heard a voice pronouncing the awful words: "We find the defendant not guilty."
     

Chapter 4
    Normally Boyce would have flown down to Washington on his private jet, a sporty Falconetta 55 with enough range to get him to Paris for dinner. But since he would soon be impaneling a Washington, D.C., jury whose primary source of news came from television, he not only took the commercial shuttle flight, but also carried his own garment bag and briefcase. His office had called the media ahead to let them know what flight he'd be on. They were waiting for him as he stepped off the ramp, with enough light to illuminate twenty Hollywood premieres.
    "Boyce!"
    "Mr. Baylor!"
    "Are you—"
    "Will you seek—"
    "Possible to—"
    "Yo, Shameless, over here!"
    Boyce stood in the basting glare, trying not to blink—or melt—with an appropriately grave look and waited for the insect whir and hammer click of cameras to subside. He was used to media, God knows, but this was a turnout. There must be over a hundred.
    He gave a curt nod to indicate that the orchestra should stop tuning their instruments. The conductor was ready. The symphony was about to begin. And he had brought them a little something. He always kept them well fed.
    "I'm here," he said, "to help an old friend. With respect to the charges, I have this to say. I personally admire and respect the attorney general. So I regret all the more that he decided, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, to sacrifice an innocent widow on the altar of his own burning ambition."
    The attorney general of the United States, watching in his office at the Justice Department, said to his deputy, "That asshole. That goddamn asshole."
    "Looks like war," his deputy said.
    "Finally," Boyce said, "I would ask all Americans to remember something in the days ahead. Yes, the country has lost a president. But a beloved First Lady has lost her husband."
    Beth, watching from her new temporary headquarters in Cleveland Park, a few miles from the airport, muttered aloud to her TV screen, " 'Beloved'?"
    "That's really all I have to say at this time. Thank you." He always said this before proceeding to take questions.
    "Boyce! Were you and Beth MacMann lovers?"
    "Jesus Christ," said Perri Pettengill's senior producer, "those two? Used to do it?"
    "Um-hum." Perri nodded, continuing to watch.
    "That's perfect."
    "They were in law school together. She screwed him over."
    "So why's he helping her?"
    Perri looked at him. "Harry, it's the Trial of the Millennium. Of course he's going to represent her."
    "You gotta get him on the show tonight. We gotta have him."
    Boyce had told Perri he wouldn't do her show, at least for a while. "It wouldn't look right." In retaliation she told him fine, no sex. They compromised: sex and monster leaks.
    "Let's save him for something big," Perri parried.
    "It's all big," Harry said. "You've got a mass of hot air over Washington, a cold legal front coming down from New York, and media from all over the world converging. It's The Perfect Storm all over again. 'Perfect Storm'! We could use that."
    "Yes, Harry. That's good. Use it."
    "I'll Chyron it."
    Boyce had been ready for the question. He paused to give the impression that it had taken him by surprise. "The First Lady and I were at law school together. It was a long time ago." He added with nice faux self-deprecation, "You'd know it was a long time ago to look at me, maybe. Not the First Lady."
    Through the plate-glass window in the airport terminal where Boyce was standing, he could see in the distance the towers of Georgetown University. A quarter century ago, he and his fellow third-year law student Beth Tyler had one night found themselves in the auditorium for their first moot court. They were so nervous they shook, and this was in the days before beta-blockers.
    A rumor had been going around for days that the presiding judge would be a Bigfoot. When that day the door opened and out walked