Rider could not answer, apparently still digesting all that he had heard. If the waist chain had not prevented such a movement, Harms would have reached out and put his hand over Rider’s, not in a threatening manner, but as a tangible plea for help from a man who had experienced none for almost thirty years. “Ain’t you, Samuel?”
Finally, Rider nodded. “I’ll help you, Rufus.”
Harms rose and headed for the door.
Rider put the paper back in the envelope and tucked it and the radio away in his briefcase. The lawyer had no way of knowing that on the other side of a large mirror that hung on the wall of the visitors’ room, someone had watched the entire exchange between prisoner and attorney. This person now rubbed his chin, lost in deep, troubled thought.
CHAPTER SIX
* * *
At ten A.M., the marshal of the Supreme Court, Richard Perkins, dressed in charcoal-gray tails, the traditional Supreme Court dress of lawyers from the Solicitor General’s Office as well, stood up at one end of the massive bench, behind which sat nine high-backed leather chairs of various styles and sizes, and pounded his gavel. The packed courtroom grew silent. “The Honorable, the Chief Justice, and the Associate Justices of the United States,” Perkins announced.
The long burgundy-colored curtain behind the bench parted at nine different places, and there appeared a like number of justices looking stiff and uncomfortable in their black robes, as though startled awake and discovering a crowd next to their beds. As they took their seats, Perkins continued. “Oyez, oyez, oyez. All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable Court.”
Perkins sat down and looked out over a courtroom with the square footage of a mansion. Its forty-four-foot ceiling made the eye look for drifting clouds. After some preliminary business and the ceremonial swearing in of new Supreme Court Bar members, the first of the day’s two morning cases would be called. On this day, a Wednesday, only two cases during the morning would be heard, afternoon sessions being held only on Monday and Tuesday. No oral arguments were held on Thursday and Friday. On it would go, three days a week every two weeks, until the end of April, approximately one hundred and fifty oral argument sessions later, the justices assuming the modern-day role of Solomon for the people of the United States.
There were impressive friezes on either side of the courtroom. On the right were figures of lawgivers of the pre-Christian era. On the left, their counterparts of the Christian period. Two armies ready to have go at each other. Perhaps to determine who had gotten it right. Moses versus Napoleon, Hammurabi against Muhammad. The law, the handing down of justice, could be damn painful — bloody, even. Right above the bench were two figures carved in marble, one depicting the majesty of the law, the other the power of government. Between the two panels was a tableau of the Ten Commandments. Swirling around the vast chamber like flocks of doves were carvings — Safeguard of the Rights of People, Genii of Wisdom and Statecraft, Defense of Human Rights — representing the role of the Court. If there ever was a stage of perfect proportion for the hearing of matters paramount, it seemed that this landscape represented it. However, topography could be deceiving.
Ramsey sat in the middle of the bench, Elizabeth Knight at the extreme right. A boom microphone was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. The moms and pops in the audience had noticeably tensed up when the justices appeared. Even their gangly, bored kids sat a little straighter. It was understandable enough even for those barely familiar with the reputation of this place. There was a discernible feeling of raw power, of important confrontations to come.
These nine black-robed justices told women when they could legally abort their fetuses; dictated to schoolchildren where they would do their learning; proclaimed what speech was obscene or not; pronounced that police could not unreasonably search and seize, or beat confessions out of people. No one elected them to their positions. They held their positions for life against virtually all challenge. And the justices operated in such levels of secrecy, in such a black hole, that it made the public personae of other venerable federal institutions seem vainglorious by comparison. They routinely confronted issues that had activist groups all over the country banging heads, bombing abortion clinics, demonstrating outside prison death houses. They judged the complex issues that would bedevil human civilization until its extinction. And they looked so calm.