High Crimes

He dabbed at his mouth with a white linen napkin. “If, theoretically, I were to change my story, they’d charge me with lying under oath to the CID.”

So that was it. “They can’t,” she said. “You have no criminal liability in the military anymore, now that you’re discharged.”

“Says who?”

“The Supreme Court,” Grimes said. “Decades ago. You want to be the first guy who comes clean. You don’t want to be the last guy holding out, telling the lie.”

“And if I don’t?” He was exploring his options now, looking for wiggle room.

“Simple,” Claire said. “If you perjure yourself, you can be tried in federal district court for perjury. Under 18 U.S.C., you can get five years in prison. And when you get out, say goodbye to all those lucrative government contracts. They dry up right away.”

“Look,” Abbott said, exasperated. “You want a witness, I’m not your guy. I didn’t see him shoot — I was on the other side of that fucking shit-hole village manning the radio.”

“Yet you testified you saw him shoot.”

“Are you really that fucking naïve, or are you just pretending to be?” he snapped.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Are we off the record here?”

“If you insist.”

“Well, I do insist. This is off the record. Don’t tell me you don’t know how the system works. The system works in favor of guys like Colonel Marks — excuse me, General fucking Marks. The system wants somebody to blame it on. Right after we got back to Fort Bragg, Marks called each of us in, before our interviews with CID, and says, ‘I’m preparing my statement and I want to make sure I have my facts straight. What is your recollection of what happened?’ And I say, you know, ‘I don’t recall one way or the other, sir.’ I was a good soldier. I knew what to say. But he wanted more than that. He says, ‘Didn’t you see Kubik suddenly raise his weapon and begin to shoot?’ I say, ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’ I mean, this was night, and I was like two hundred yards away. I saw someone fire. How the hell do I know who it was? He says, ‘Are you sure you didn’t see Kubik suddenly go crazy and start firing? Be sure about this, Sergeant. This’ll make or break your career. Kubik has violent tendencies. If you search your memory, I’m sure you’ll recall Kubik suddenly taking out his weapon and firing.’ Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I say, ‘Yes, sir, of course, that was it. That’s what he did, sir, you’re absolutely correct, sir.’ And that’s all it takes.”

Claire nodded as if he were simply confirming something she already knew.

“And let me tell you, I’ll deny all this on the stand. I’ve got to deal with the Pentagon every day. They buy billions of dollars of equipment from my company. And they don’t like snitches and turncoats. I got a meeting.” He stood up. “Was all that true, in the Post?”

“I didn’t see the Post yet this morning,” Grimes said. “What are you talking about?”

“You,” Abbott said to Claire. “You really do that? You probably don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

“Shit,” she said. “The Post found out why I’m in Washington, didn’t they?”

He looked puzzled. “You read it, didn’t you?” He popped open his metal briefcase, reached in, and pulled out a neatly folded copy of the Washington Post, which he dropped on the table in front of her.

She saw her photograph, small and below the fold, and the headline — A HARVARD PROFESSOR’S TAINTED PAST — and she felt the blood rush to her head.

36

Claire smoked.

Annie danced around the kitchen table, chanting: “What? What? What?”

Jackie told her, “Give us some privacy, babe.”

Claire stubbed out her cigarette. She pulled another from the pack, offered it to Jackie, was surprised when Jackie shook her head.

Annie grabbed on to Claire’s skirt. “What are you reading? Tell me. Tell me.”

Claire was too numb to talk.

Annie needed the reassurance of Mommy’s attention. Mommy, however, was a thousand miles away, and almost two decades.

Mommy was twenty-three now. A One-L at Yale Law School. Probably one of the smartest students in her class, but she didn’t actually feel like it. Most of the time she felt like crying, and very often she did. Most of the spring semester she’d been flying back and forth between Pittsburgh and LaGuardia. Renting cars at the Pittsburgh airport and driving to Franklin. Taking buses from LaGuardia to New Haven. Sitting by her mother’s hospital bed and watching her succumb to liver cancer.

There were a dozen excuses. She was barely in New Haven that semester, the second term of her first year. She was distracted. She should have taken a leave but didn’t. She was frightened. Even for a full-time student, law school was a challenge, and she barely saw the inside of the law library.