Read Online The Hearing by James Mills - Free Book Online Page A

to be.
    She had just arrived in her office overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, three blocks from the White House, and was snapping open
     the lid of her Gucci attaché case, a gift from her late husband.
    It was 7:15 A.M.
    The fax machine clicked on.
    Glancing at the cover sheet creeping from the machine, she took papers from her attaché case, closed the lid and placed the
     case on the floor behind her desk.
    She pressed a button on her phone. “Laura?”
    “Good morning.”
    “Just wanted to know if you were here. Can you give me about ten minutes and then come in with the messages?”
    “Right. Hang on. Warren just walked in.”
    “Oh, not
him
again.”
    Warren Gier had worked his way through Yale Law asa part-time private investigator, and for the past four years had made a good living moving from one senator’s payroll to
     the next, concealed behind various staff titles, as nasty little jobs arose that required a political predator to prowl the
     Washington underbrush, alert to legal snares but unencumbered by weighty moral restraints. Happily friendless, he’d been proud
     to learn that his enemies called him “the Ferret.”
    Helen said, “Hold him a second.”
    “Love to.”
    Employed at the moment by Eric Taeger, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Warren was never out of touch with Helen
     and the activist group leaders clustered under her Freedom Federation umbrella.
    She glanced over at the pages still creeping from the fax machine and saw the familiar heading of the American Bar Association.
     The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated White House nominees for judicial appointments. The head of the
     rating committee was a close working friend of Helen’s. She picked up the fax.
    The White House gave the ABA the names of potential nominees for screening before the nominations were publicized. The ABA
     routinely passed the names to Helen’s Freedom Federation. Helen then shared the names with other activists groups. If the
     groups disapproved of the nominee, their opposition, voiced to the ABA screening committee, some of whose members shared the
     political goals of the Freedom Federation, could kill the nomination on the spot.
    The fax said the White House was requesting a qualification rating on a Federal District Court judge named Augustus Parham,
     sitting in the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery.
Augustus
Parham? Sounded like some seventy-year-old redneck coot.
    Warren walked in. “Sorry for interrupting.”
    “No you’re not. You ever hear of Augustus Parham?”
    “Why I’m here. The President’s gonna nominate him for the SC.”
    Warren only had time for abbreviations. You had to keep up.
    “I won’t ask you how you know that.”
    Dark-haired, perpetually tanned, a good listener, Warren was a charmer, and Washington was loaded with lonely female staffers.
     He made it his business to woo the most vulnerable, feeding them dinners and kindness, periodically harvesting their office
     secrets as a shepherd shears sheep. Information was power, and power was money, excitement, and fun. No one in Washington
     understood that better than Warren.
    Helen said, “Who is he?”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “Warren, if I admit you know more than I do, will you tell me?”
    “Five years ago, locked up some Colombian dope dealer, the media went crazy for him.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    That
Augustus Parham. Certainly. Gus Parham. How could she forget? She’d seen him on the
Today
show. Looked like they’d had to tie him to the chair, unhappy to be wasting his time but gracious about it. Guts but nice.
     Good looking. Like her first husband. They always ended with tire tracks up their backs, or blown to bits in cafés. She wondered
     what his wife would be like. Even had a brief fantasy, before a commercial dumped her back in reality. Gus Parham. Supreme
     Court. My, my.
    She said, “So what do you think?”
    Warren shook his head. “Bad