Read Online Shadow of Power by Steve Martini - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Martini
Ads: Link
The edge goes out of Sarah’s voice. She realizes that she has lost this bout, though, knowing my daughter, I realize she is not giving up.
“Three days, four at most. I have business in New York. I won’t be sure until I get there. I’ll call you every day and let you know when I’ll be home. And I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“It’s just that I thought we could spend some time together,” says Sarah. “I was hoping that maybe we could go down to Mexico for a while, maybe Puerto Vallarta, one of the beach resorts.”
“I will make it up to you. I promise. You’ll be home again in a few months, and we can go somewhere. You can pick the spot.”
“You’ll be in trial,” she says. “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.” She turns and walks away down the hall.
I stop my packing, one of my folded shirts still hanging in the air. “Tell you what!” I holler after her down the empty hall.
“What?” She is already halfway down the stairs.
“How would you like to do some shopping in New York?”
There is a nanosecond of silence, and she appears like magic back in the doorway. “You mean it?”
“Call the office, tell them to get another ticket on the flight, and book one more room at the hotel—adjoining, if they can manage it. Then get in gear and pack. We don’t have much time.”
“Sure! Won’t take me a minute.”
THREE
S even hours in the air allow me to make up for lost time with my daughter. We talk about life on Coronado Island, how the city has changed in the time we’ve lived there. We talk about Harry. Sarah spends a good bit of the flight laughing as only young girls can. Her memories of Harry are of an aging and somewhat hapless uncle, even though she and my partner are not related by blood, marriage, or anything else. They have always been close.
We dredge up old memories, some of them painful: the early years when she was a small child in Capital City, when Nikki was alive and we were a family. To my surprise, Sarah has more vivid recollections of this period than I might have credited. It is one of those imponderables, the snippets of life that engrave themselves on the mind of a small child.
Somewhere high over the flatlands of the Midwest, above the constant drone of jet engines, our conversation turns from distant memories to what she is doing at school, and finally to my practice. Sarah has always had a knack for getting me to talk, so much so that I may have to put her on the law office’s payroll when I return home in order to maintain attorney-client confidence with Arnsberg. Sarah picks my brain on aspects of the case I should not discuss.
Strangely, the question that seems to perplex my daughter the most is how, after its repeal following the Civil War, it is possible that the old language of slavery can still be visible in the Constitution today. It is this very fact that Scarborough pounced on and exploited in his book.
Sarah is reading from a Newsweek article, a story on the author’s murder and the impending trial.
“It says here that according to Scarborough this language in the Constitution represents ‘an ongoing and perpetual stigmatizing of the African soul.’ That’s a quote from his book,” she says. Then she reads on. “‘While slavery was repealed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, the offending words that legalized the so-called peculiar institution at the origin of the nation remain in black and white as a visible legacy of America’s principal document of state to this very day.’
“I don’t understand. How can that be?” she says. “If they were repealed, why are they still there?”
I try to explain it to her. “What Scarborough discovered was a seam in the way in which the Constitution is published. Its system of publication is unique to that document.”
Fortunately for Scarborough and unfortunately for the country, removing the language of slavery from the Constitution is not something that can easily be
“Three days, four at most. I have business in New York. I won’t be sure until I get there. I’ll call you every day and let you know when I’ll be home. And I’ll get back as soon as I can.”
“It’s just that I thought we could spend some time together,” says Sarah. “I was hoping that maybe we could go down to Mexico for a while, maybe Puerto Vallarta, one of the beach resorts.”
“I will make it up to you. I promise. You’ll be home again in a few months, and we can go somewhere. You can pick the spot.”
“You’ll be in trial,” she says. “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.” She turns and walks away down the hall.
I stop my packing, one of my folded shirts still hanging in the air. “Tell you what!” I holler after her down the empty hall.
“What?” She is already halfway down the stairs.
“How would you like to do some shopping in New York?”
There is a nanosecond of silence, and she appears like magic back in the doorway. “You mean it?”
“Call the office, tell them to get another ticket on the flight, and book one more room at the hotel—adjoining, if they can manage it. Then get in gear and pack. We don’t have much time.”
“Sure! Won’t take me a minute.”
THREE
S even hours in the air allow me to make up for lost time with my daughter. We talk about life on Coronado Island, how the city has changed in the time we’ve lived there. We talk about Harry. Sarah spends a good bit of the flight laughing as only young girls can. Her memories of Harry are of an aging and somewhat hapless uncle, even though she and my partner are not related by blood, marriage, or anything else. They have always been close.
We dredge up old memories, some of them painful: the early years when she was a small child in Capital City, when Nikki was alive and we were a family. To my surprise, Sarah has more vivid recollections of this period than I might have credited. It is one of those imponderables, the snippets of life that engrave themselves on the mind of a small child.
Somewhere high over the flatlands of the Midwest, above the constant drone of jet engines, our conversation turns from distant memories to what she is doing at school, and finally to my practice. Sarah has always had a knack for getting me to talk, so much so that I may have to put her on the law office’s payroll when I return home in order to maintain attorney-client confidence with Arnsberg. Sarah picks my brain on aspects of the case I should not discuss.
Strangely, the question that seems to perplex my daughter the most is how, after its repeal following the Civil War, it is possible that the old language of slavery can still be visible in the Constitution today. It is this very fact that Scarborough pounced on and exploited in his book.
Sarah is reading from a Newsweek article, a story on the author’s murder and the impending trial.
“It says here that according to Scarborough this language in the Constitution represents ‘an ongoing and perpetual stigmatizing of the African soul.’ That’s a quote from his book,” she says. Then she reads on. “‘While slavery was repealed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment, the offending words that legalized the so-called peculiar institution at the origin of the nation remain in black and white as a visible legacy of America’s principal document of state to this very day.’
“I don’t understand. How can that be?” she says. “If they were repealed, why are they still there?”
I try to explain it to her. “What Scarborough discovered was a seam in the way in which the Constitution is published. Its system of publication is unique to that document.”
Fortunately for Scarborough and unfortunately for the country, removing the language of slavery from the Constitution is not something that can easily be
Similar Books
