Chapter 169: Unbelievable

Frank and Will looked as confused as I did. I said, “What did you say? It sounded like you said the First Lady was in jail.”

He gulped and nodded. “Yes, sir. She’s been arrested and is in the Pittsburgh jail!”

Will hopped up and flipped on the television. It was already pre-tuned to CNN, and there, in living color, was the image of my wife in what looked to be a riot, and then it cut to the stunned anchor reporting that ‘Mrs. Buckman has been taken away in a police squad car, to where we don’t know yet... ‘

I looked back at the agent and said, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

I had one eye on the television as I asked this, and I had to pause as the anchor showed the footage of what apparently started everything, Marilyn wading into a crowd of protesters and making a wild roundhouse swing at an old guy. She rocked him back slightly, but then a woman next to him punched Marilyn! At that it became a free-for-all, with the Secret Service detail and about a million cops wading in.

“Sweet Jesus!” exclaimed Frank.

“Oh ... My ... God!” added Will slowly. They both turned to stare at me.

I was just as flabbergasted as they were. The door knocked again, and another agent barged in. It was John Thompson, the supervisory head of the Presidential Detail. He was responsible not just for me, but also the much smaller details watching over Marilyn and the kids. He came to a stop in front of my desk and saw that we already knew something was the matter. “Mister President, I can explain...”

I looked at him while pointing to the television. “You can explain that?”

“Well, not explain it, but I can tell you what happened,” he admitted. He motioned for the first agent to retire, and he silently slipped out.

I looked over at Frank and Will. “You two might as well stick around. I think Charlie’s accident just became old news.” I turned back to Thompson. “Proceed.”

“It all happened about fifteen minutes ago, shortly before you arrived back here. Mrs. Buckman had just visited Charlie and told him she would be back tomorrow - that’s what she told us - and was leaving the hospital with your children and Miss Morgan. I don’t know why, but her detail had the limousine brought to the main entrance rather than a side entrance. That was where the protesters were massed.”

“Protesters! What protesters?”

“It’s the Westboro Baptist Church, sir.” I must have given a blank look at that. “I’ll get to that, sir. Anyway, they were there protesting your son...”

“WHAT!”

“Please, sir, I’ll explain in a bit. Anyway, they had a bunch of signs and a bullhorn, and were yelling out ‘God hates fags!’ and ‘Death to Charlie Buckman!’ when Mrs. Buckman came out the door. The team was moving them down to the limo, but when they got to the limo, she kept moving, around the car and across the grass to the protesters. She barged right up to the head of the protesters, Fred Phelps, and punched him in the face.” My eyes flicked over at the others, and I was sure they were as ashen faced as I was. “At that, the woman next to Mister Phelps, a daughter we think, punched Mrs. Buckman. At that point the detail moved in to get her out of there, and the rest of the protesters moved in, and then the Pittsburgh City Police and the Pennsylvania State Police got involved. Eventually everybody was taken to the local jail to be sorted out.”

“Including my wife?”

“Yes, sir.”

“INCLUDING MY WIFE?” I roared out. By now I was standing and bending over my desk and yelling into the face of the agent.

“Sir, she committed assault and battery...”

“SHUT UP!”

I pushed myself off the desk and slumped back down into my chair. In a much lighter tone, I asked, “You want to tell me how she managed to do this while surrounded by the elite United States Secret Service? And how she managed to break through the combined ranks of both the Pittsburgh cops and the Pennsylvania State Troopers?” Somebody on my wife’s detail had managed to fuck up by the numbers, since I could think of about a half dozen procedural violations with this mess.

John managed to look even more embarrassed. “Not really, sir. I don’t have all the details, but it sounds like everybody was taken by surprise. It looked like she wanted to argue with them, but she just kept going, right through the line of cops. The LEOs, the local law enforcement officers, were afraid to touch her when she went through them.”

“And she is where, now?”

“It was pretty tense there, for a moment, anyway. They wanted to arrest her, but her detail wouldn’t let them, and we had a standoff until Mrs. Buckman said she would go to the jail if the protesters were taken in, too. Everybody was transported to the local police station. We have a female agent with her right now. The locals have not put her in the general lockup or with the protesters,” he told me.

“Well, I am so glad that she is safe from the other PRISONERS!” I yelled. “Now, when can she get out of there?” My wife’s volunteering to go to the jail probably kept the Secret Service and the local cops from shooting each other. This was just about the only bright spot to this that I had heard so far.

“Sir, the latest we’ve been told is that she will be in jail overnight, and then be booked and processed in the morning...”

“Tremendous. Now, just shut up and stand there. I’ll get back to you in a second.”

I thought hurriedly for a few seconds. I could call the Attorney General, and get Frank Keating to yank Marilyn out of there, but that would just create even more problems. It didn’t sound like my wife was in any danger. I picked up the phone. “Get me David Boies. He’s one of my attorneys. I don’t care if he is undergoing a heart transplant. Wake him up and hand him a phone. Thank you.” I turned back to Thompson. “Now, who or what is this Westboro Church and why do they want my son dead?”

Just as I asked this question, the phone rang. I picked it up. “DADDY!”

“I’m here. Where are you guys?”

“We’re at the Hyatt!” answered Molly. “Mom’s been arrested!”

“So, I’ve been told. I’m trying to get a lawyer for her...”

“You have to get her out of jail!”

“We’ll do that. I just learned about this. Now, are you all there? Did any of you guys get arrested, too?”

“DADDY! No!”

I sighed. “Let me speak to Bucky.”

I heard the phone fumbling some, and then my son-in-law came on the line. “Hello?”

“Bucky, keep a lid on those women! I am leaving you in charge.” I heard him chuckle. “Under no circumstances are any of them to talk to a reporter or go anywhere near the jail unless I tell you to, got it? Don’t even let them out of the room!”

“Got it, Uncle Carl. They really want to go down there and bust out Aunt Marilyn,” he replied.

“Tell them they can’t bail out their mother if they are in jail with her!”

“Yes, sir!” he laughed.

“I have to go.”

“I have to tell you, Uncle Carl, she was pretty awesome! I had to see it to believe it!”

Awesome! Great! “You are not making me any happier, Bucky! I am expecting more calls on this. Keep those women under lock and key!” I hung up and put the phone back down. I looked back at Thompson. “You were saying?” The phone rang again, and I swore. I picked it up and said, “Hello?”

“Carl, it’s David Boies. I just heard about your wife. How can I help?”

Finally, somebody who might be able to help! “David, just get her out of there!”

“I’m in New Mexico at the moment but I have somebody making some calls. I’ll get somebody in Pittsburgh and call you back. I’ll call you back in half an hour or less.”

I agreed to that, and we hung up. I looked back at John Thompson and motioned him to start. “Just who the hell is this Westboro whatever and why do they want to kill my son?”

“It’s the Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. They are the bunch that protest at military funerals,” he began.

I vaguely remembered these crazies. They hated gays and figured that God was punishing America and the Army because we weren’t killing them off. Or something like that. “So? Charlie’s not gay! Trust me, he’s not gay!”

“It doesn’t matter, sir.” Then he began to explain about Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps was a uniquely American creation. In any sane society somebody would have either locked this guy up in jail or locked him up in a psycho ward and thrown away the key in either case. He was an old guy, in his mid-seventies, an Eagle Scout, a disbarred lawyer, an abusive husband and father, a Democratic political wannabe who kept running for office in Kansas and losing in the primaries, and a preacher.

His Baptist church, Westboro Baptist, was unaffiliated with any other Baptist organization and his theology was suspect, to say the least. It was very small, only a few dozen parishioners, mostly members of his extended family. Church doctrine was organized around whatever Fred Phelps hated the most. Gays headed that list, but it also included almost every religion other than the Baptists, including Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Islam. He also wasn’t all that thrilled with most Baptists! As a rule, he hated practically every Democrat in the nation, and yet he continued to run for office in Kansas as a Democrat.

Phelps’ God was a hateful God, and Westboro Baptist’s agenda was simply to picket every military and political funeral around the country, waving signs that said, ‘God Hates Fags!’ and all sorts of other crap, including wishes for death to other people. They had a website which basically said the same thing. Today, since they didn’t have any convenient funerals to harass, and they had been in Cleveland on Saturday protesting at the funeral of a soldier who had died when he fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road, Fred and his merry minions decided to protest Charlie being in the hospital. They had crude signs made up and bullhorns blaring ‘God hates fags!’, ‘God hates Catholics!’, ‘God hates Buckman!’, and various exhortations for God and everybody else to kill all of the above.

More than a few states and municipalities had enacted laws banning protests at funerals because of him, and Phelps and his church had been arrested more than a few times for disturbing the peace and other crimes. At least one lawsuit had made it to Federal Court, suing the Phelps family for emotional distress, and had been found in favor of the complainants; the Supreme Court had not yet taken it up. Phelps kept winning the lawsuits based on the First Amendment right of free speech.

“So, what set Marilyn off with these idiots?” I asked.

“When she and your children came out, Phelps saw her, and began yelling into his bull horn that she was an idol worshipper and had raised her children up in the ways of Satan, that sort of thing, and how they were praying that God would strike down her son so that people would learn about how gays were destroying America. What really set her off, we think, was when he called her the Whore of Babylon.”

Frank and Will visibly winced at that, and I just buried my face in my hands. Anywhere else this would almost be amusing. Almost. In reality it was an unmitigated disaster. I was saved from a response by the phone ringing. It was David Boies again, this time with a conference call including a criminal lawyer from Pittsburgh who was taking the case. He assured me that he would go over to the jail immediately and figure things out. Simply let the Secret Service know he was coming. I jotted down his name.

As soon as I hung up, I turned to Thompson. “Tell your people at the Pittsburgh jail to expect this guy, Paul D’Agosta, to be coming. He is to get access to everything. Then get out of here. The next Secret Service agent I see had better be Ralph Basham, and it better be now!”

“Yes, sir!” He turned around and moved out.

I looked over at Frank Stouffer and Will Brucis, both of whom were simply sitting there slack jawed and disbelieving. “Please, for the love of God, tell me this isn’t as bad as I think it is.”

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Frank said, “Sorry, boss. I got nothing to help you.”

“It’s probably worse,” added Will. “I can’t even begin to think about how I am writing this press release!”

“Shit! I don’t suppose I can use my power to pardon on my own wife.”

Will visibly cringed at that, and Frank commented, “You could, but Harry Reid will try to use it to have you impeached. He won’t be able to do it, but it sure won’t look good.”

“Harry Reid is the leader of the Senate, not the House. Only the House can impeach me, and we have a lock on the House.” Frank opened his mouth to say something, and I simply held up my hand. “I know, I know, it would still look horrendous.”

“What I want to know is how in the hell the Secret Service let your wife anywhere near these nuts?” said Will.

My phone rang. It was the secretary announcing the arrival of Ralph Basham, the head of the Secret Service. I ordered him in. “That’s a very good question, Will, so let’s find out.”

Ralph came in and moved to the desk in front of me. “Mister President, I am really sorry about this.”

“Ralph, I am glad you are here. Will was just asking me how the hell this could happen. I sure hope you have an answer other than a total and colossal clusterfuck by the agency that is supposed to protect me and my family.”

He sighed. “No, sir, that would be the answer. This is a complete and total breakdown in security on our part. Your family should never have been brought out a door anywhere near the protesters, they should have been immediately placed in the limo, and Mrs. Buckman should never have been allowed to get near the protesters. I have no excuses for the agency. I have ordered a complete review of what happened, and the supervisory agent in charge of her security has been placed on administrative leave pending disciplinary action.”

“Yeah? Well, that ain’t going to cut it, Ralph! I am expecting a complete review of the entire damn system! Oh, and you can expect to explain this to the Senate, too! Your little agency has just managed to put my entire administration into the hot seat for the next few months. Congratulations and thank you.” I pointed at the door. “OUT!” This was going to cost him his job.

Basham left, and I looked over at the other two. “I am going upstairs. I don’t care if a nuclear war breaks out. I am taking no calls except from my family or their lawyers. Will, I leave you to figure out a graceful way to dig me out of this. Feel free to throw everybody under the bus, including my wife. Hell, throw her under the bus, and then back it up over her a few times!” I stood up and headed up to the Residence.

I went upstairs to the Residence, wondering to myself just how much worse this was going to get. I doubted Marilyn was going to have to spend any hard time in the house of many doors, but the video now endlessly repeating on the news channels clearly showed my wife punching a preacher in the face and starting a riot. That must have violated at least some laws, even if it was only disturbing the peace! I was tempted to drink more than I should, and I held off on that, but decided that one drink wouldn’t hurt, so I made myself a Seven & Seven. Who knew, maybe I could get drunk enough to get sent to jail. Marilyn and I could share a cell.

I was still nursing my drink, and contemplating looking for some leftovers in the kitchenette, when the phone rang. “Hello?”

“Mister President, this is Paul D’Agosta. I have somebody here who would like to speak to you.” I heard the phone fumbling.

“Carl?”

I sighed to myself. It was Marilyn. “I’m here. Having fun, are we?”

“Carl, don’t be like that.”

“Like what, honey? Are you meeting new friends? You know, it’s important to be polite to your cellmates.”

She gave a small shriek. “It’s not funny!”

“It’s too bad you’re not here! We have a double feature down in the movie theater. We’re going to watch Women in Chains One and Two. Sounds exciting! I love buttered popcorn...”

“CARL!”

“Let me speak to your mouthpiece. I think that’s what they call lawyers in prison,” I asked.

“ASSHOLE!” I heard her faintly telling D’Agosta. “Here! He’s being a jerk!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Mister D’Agosta, what’s going on?” I asked.

“I already have an appointment with the Allegheny County District Attorney in the morning. Your wife is not in a cell or a holding tank or anything like that. She has not been searched or processed. She’s in a small office and they promised to bring in a meal and a cot, and one of her detail will be with her at all times...”

“That would be one of the detail that managed to get her tossed in jail?”

“Mister President, I am not going to get into that, but it is not being helpful. You need to calm down while we sort this out.”

“Yeah, okay, sorry.”

“Now, like I said, I am meeting with the District Attorney tomorrow, early. I don’t think he is any more interested in this going to trial than you are, so we have an excellent chance of getting this all tossed out,” he told me. “With any luck at all, she’ll be out of here early in the morning.”

“Okay, thank you. I’ll be expecting your call. Can I talk to my wife again?”

Marilyn took the phone and said, somewhat frostily, “Yes?”

“Sorry about earlier. I’m just not used to the idea of you going to jail. That’s usually my job. I love you. Are you okay?”

“I know. I’m fine. I’m just so pissed! I love you, too. I’m sorry if this is going to be a problem.”

“That’s all right, we’ll figure it out. Just be careful. You don’t want to become somebody’s prison bitch.”

“CARL!”

“Hey, if they book you, can you bring me back a copy of the photo, you know the one with the numbers on it, maybe an 8x10 glossy, with you in a prison unif...”

“ASSHOLE!” She hung up the phone.

I smiled to myself and made another drink. I sat down in my recliner and Stormy jumped up beside me. I rubbed her head and asked, “You’re not going to bite a mailman, are you? I can’t afford to have you in puppy jail, too.” Stormy licked my face and then passed gas.

Wonderful! I had to wonder if there was some subtle moral to be drawn from that, but if there was, it was too subtle for me. I finished my drink and got up, to wander into the kitchen. I toasted some bread and opened a can of sardines and made a sandwich, which I had with iced tea. I didn’t need to drink any more. No matter how much my family might drive me to drink, I had to resist the temptation.

I called the kids back and told them the latest. Then I called Utica and told Marilyn’s mother about her daughter being in jail. That was not an enjoyable conversation.

I woke up the next morning feeling somewhat better about it all. I knew, realistically, that this ridiculous incident was not going to land Marilyn in the Big House, where she would be a prison bitch making license plates for the rest of her life. Even if these nut jobs decided to press charges, my wife was a first-time offender, and even a hack public defender would be able to plead this thing down to time served, some kind of fine, and maybe some public service. Much more likely was a reduction from assault and battery down to disturbing the peace or making a public nuisance, which were misdemeanors, not felonies. As far as the family was concerned, it would be embarrassing, and fun to tell at Christmas and family reunions, but nothing more.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t just my family. Marilyn and the Secret Service had fucked up by the numbers on national television. My administration had been relatively scandal-free up to this point. There had been Babygate in 2004, which had also been personal, but since it occurred when I was a kid, had never really amounted to much. Granted, that fruit of my loins had managed to get arrested more than once since then, usually for DWI or possession of cocaine or something equally stupid, but he had abided by the terms of the agreements and kept his mouth shut. The New York papers would make a stink for a few days and then let it die. Once I was out of office, nobody would give a shit.

My real children - Charlie, Holly, and Molly - were all pretty well behaved, and kept their sinning off the pages of the papers. Charlie was relatively well known, primarily because he was a celebrity in his own right in the small field of motorcycle racing. Holly and Molly were quite unknown outside of their appearance that one time on Saturday Night Live. Marilyn and I had raised some good kids and could be proud of the results.

As far as official scandals, I had managed to avoid anything that stuck to me. Jack Abramoff had managed to get caught buying a bunch of Congressmen and Senators and had also taken down some mid-tier Bush appointees in the process, for influence peddling. There had also been a minor problem in the Pentagon, related to both Navy and Air Force contracts and appropriations. That had mostly splashed on Tom Ridge, but outside of Congressional outrage and a few generals and admirals getting retired, hadn’t been too bad. There had also been some isolated incidents where the Government Accountability Office caught various low-level people taking bribes, but that happened all the time. There hadn’t been any tell-all books by disgruntled Cabinet Secretaries I had fired, or any of that sort of thing. (Okay, there had been a tell-all book by Dick Cheney; it received lousy reviews and didn’t make back the advance paid to him.)

Some of the worst issues with the Bush 43 administration, as I originally remembered it, didn’t surface, because I had changed things too much. We never went into Iraq and Afghanistan, so we simply didn’t have those scandals. There was no Homeland Security or Transportation Security Administration. We had also been much lower key on our implementation of the PATRIOT Act and weren’t sending people to Guantanamo or torturing people or doing military tribunals. It’s rare that you get in trouble by not doing something.

This mess, on the other hand, had massive potential to get sloppy! I could envision several outcomes, none of them pleasant. For one thing, the Secret Service was under the control of the Treasury Department. Elizabeth Warren was the unpopular bank regulator in charge of Treasury, so any scandal with the Secret Service was going to be on her hands. I could foresee any number of calls for her head. I was sure she would survive but be politically weakened. Ralph Basham was already a dead man walking. There was probably going to be a large-scale investigation into the Secret Service, probably tying in last year’s botched assassination attempt, and anything else they could scrape up - and they could always scrape something up if they looked hard enough!

This was going to weaken me, as well. I was going to have to protect Warren, for one thing. Fire her and I look petty and weak, keep her and I look stubborn and obstinate. Marilyn was going to be all over the news. Just wait until somebody in Congress decided to subpoena her to testify at hearings! She wasn’t employed here, so I doubted I could even claim Executive Privilege. Harry Reid was still smarting from when I rammed a bunch of recess appointments down his throat, so he would be gunning for me. Max Baucus was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee (they oversaw Treasury), and while he and I didn’t have any personal issues, when Harry Reid decided to have him chew on me, Max would obey orders.

My morning staff meeting was the Marilyn Show, all Marilyn, nothing but Marilyn. The confrontation had taken place too late in the day to be on the evening late night comedy shows, but had certainly made the news, and was already running nonstop on the morning news shows. By tonight, with 24 hours of lead time, the comedy shows would have more than enough time to do this up proper. Worst of all, Senate Democrats were lining up to castigate me, the Secret Service, me, the Treasury, me, Allegheny County, me, Pittsburgh, me, Marilyn, and me. The only people not talking were Marilyn, Fred Phelps, and the Westboro Baptist Church, simply because they were all still in jail. Even the cops were keeping silent; I was guessing that somebody from the Chief of Police’s office had put the fear of God in them. I knew that wouldn’t last long.

At nine, the phone rang, interrupting the meeting, and the voice on the speakerphone told me to pick it up. I shrugged at the others and grabbed the phone. It was the voice of Paul D’Agosta. “Mister President, I have somebody who wants to talk to you.”

“Carling? You there?”

“Hi, honey. What’s happening? You still in jail?”

“No,” she answered. “I’m back at the Hyatt. I was just released.”

“You sound good.” I decided to lay off the jokes until I could see her in person. “What happened?”

“Here, talk to Mr. D’Agosta.”

The phone fumbled as she passed it along. The others - Frank, Will, and Mindy - moved to leave, but I waved them back into position. Whatever I learned, they would need to know. This was no longer a family matter. “Mister President?” came over the phone.

“Mister D’Agosta. I gather my wife is freed from durance vile. Thank you for that. What’s going on out there?”

“Yes, sir. I stayed with Mrs. Buckman all night and scheduled a meeting with the District Attorney early in the morning. He was no more interested in this going to trial than you or she was. He is dropping all charges on everybody and sending everybody home. The Secret Service managed to bring one of their vehicles into the building and we hustled Mrs. Buckman out and through the crowds and brought her over here to the Hyatt. Security is extremely tight at the moment, at least it seems that way to me.”

“No, I imagine it really is tight right now. Probably some new faces, too. Okay, so no jail time, no felony record, none of that stuff?” I asked.

“She’s completely clean. Not even a misdemeanor. No prosecutor with an iota of ambition wants to be the guy who puts the First Lady in jail, no matter which party her husband is in. The desk sergeant was heard to say that if somebody wanted the First Lady searched, they could send the Police Chief down to do it, since nobody else would be that stupid! I can’t promise anything on the civil side. This idiot Phelps and his bunch spent the night making themselves a real nuisance and are demanding your wife be turned over to them. The Pittsburgh Police aren’t being anywhere near as accommodating with them, and the last I heard they were still being processed out, slowly. I would bet my bottom dollar you’re going to get hit with a civil suit,” he replied.

“Wonderful! Listen, thank you for everything. Make sure you let David Boies in on all of this, and make sure you keep an eye on Marilyn and the kids while they are out there. I am going to owe you on this, and not just your bill.”

“Understood, Mister Buckman. They’ll be fine, but I’ll make sure I check in with them.”

We said some good-bye pleasantries, and he passed the phone back to my wife. I promised I would call her later in the morning, and then hung up. I turned to the others and said, “Well, you probably heard everything. Calamity Jane is out of jail, but the nut jobs are baying at the moon.”

I looked over at the others. Frank asked, “Is Mrs. Buckman all right?”

I sighed and nodded. “It would seem that her hard time in the big house wasn’t too hard. She’s back at the Hyatt. No charges for anybody. Phelps and his bunch are being turned loose. I suppose I’m being a dreamer if I say I hope he drops this.”

Frank had the good grace not to laugh. It was Will’s chance to snort derisively. “Not hardly. Publicity is the lifeblood of kooks and crazies, and let’s face it, they now have publicity in spades! Phelps is going to milk this for all it’s worth.”

Mindy asked, “Isn’t there any way to shut him up?”

“No, not at all. The bottom line is that the man is crazy. As in, howl at the moon, line your hat with tin foil, talk to imaginary friends crazy! If we were to line up every single gay and lesbian in the country and shoot them all, it still wouldn’t be enough. He wants everyone not like himself to die. Fifty years ago, they would have locked him up in an asylum and given him Thorazine but we’re much more evolved now. Now we give him free airtime,” Will answered.

“Any chance we can do something legally about them? Classify them as a hate group or something?” I asked.

Will and Mindy shrugged, but Frank responded. He was a lawyer, after all. “I don’t know. Their first amendment free speech and freedom of religion rights are pretty potent shields. Your best bet is to call Frank Keating and have him look into it. My bet? If they tell people to kill your family, they are protected. If somebody listens to them and kills somebody, maybe not so much.”

“You’re just a bundle of fucking joy, Frank. You want to call Frank and take this up with him, please? I can’t believe they aren’t already watching these guys.”

I dismissed everybody and called my wife back over at the Hyatt in Pittsburgh. I let her ramble on. The cops were very pleasant with her, and much more sympathetic to the mother of a critically injured athlete and war hero than to the fruitcakes down in the holding cells. Security was much tighter than before, and her lead agent, in fact almost her entire detail, had been replaced. Ditto for the kids. Holly, Molly, and Bucky planned to visit Charlie in the hospital and then go home, to work and to college. Megan planned to stick around for at least a few days more. She and Marilyn were going to visit him in the hospital again today. I made her swear six ways from Sunday not to punch anybody out.