Episode 40: Acey's Reaction

In the basement holding area of the courthouse a few minutes later, a new controversy erupted. “I call bottom bunk,” Senator Travis declared.

“With all due respect, to you and your office, Senator,” Mike smiled, “in this forum, I have the seniority, and I already claimed the bottom bunk. Unless you want to sleep on my dirty sheets?”

“Very well,” Senator Travis acquiesced.

“Let me get a photo of you both first,” Kim insisted, “before you climb up there.”

Senator Travis posed grim-faced beside his client and behind the bars.

“Got it!” she declared.

“Use your personal account,” Senator Travis ordered, “and post it to Gab first, and Truth Social. Give our guys a head start to run with it. Give ‘em a couple hours, then you can tweet it, too.”

“Caption?” she asked. “How about, ‘he never stops fighting for us and our children.’”

Senator Travis paused and pondered. “Let’s run with, ‘arrested for speaking truth to power.’”

“On it,” Kim replied.

“As God is my witness,” Senator Travis declared, before climbing up to sit on the top bunk. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”

“You’re awfully cheerful,” Mike commented, “for a new convict.”

“Damn straight,” Senator Travis confirmed. “Sometimes the coach has to let himself get thrown out of the game to inspire the team – or in this case, the jurors. We’re doing way better than I had any right to hope, even with the judge’s asinine rulings. Your testimony hit it out of the park, Mike. Can’t believe Roxy beclowned herself like that with her comments about you not having a real job. That cost her. Never can tell for sure, but I’m more confident than ever that the worst case now is a hung jury. Can’t see her getting a unanimous verdict.”

“Now, you get to be a martyr, too, sir,” Kim pointed out. “That’s got to be worth a few points come next election.”

“Playing the victim’s more of a lefty move,” Travis looked up at the ceiling, “but sure thing it won’t hurt. Kim, why don’t you get us all some dinner, then I’ll work on my closing statement until…”

“It’s Ms. Buchmann, Doc,” Deputy Martínez announced.

“Sure Ruy,” Mike answered the implied question. “Let her in.”

Acey walked deliberately over to the holding cell and stood next to Kim. Acey shook her head in disgust. “A fine mess you’re both in. Serves you both right.

“All Mike had to do is apologize.

“Just show some SHRED of remorse.

“But no.

“You couldn’t admit that you were wrong, could you?”

“Acey,” Mike stood up from his bunk. “I wasn’t wrong.”

“You just don’t get the big picture,” Acey insisted. “Do you, Mike?

“YOUR word games and YOUR logic and YOUR principles,” she shook her head in disbelief at Mike’s intellectual denseness. “They don’t mean ANYTHING to a mob that’s angry with you. You should have taken the deal!”

“Your mother would have never honored our deal,” Mike pointed out.

“I COULD have MADE her honor the deal!” Acey insisted. “All you had to do was say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But no. You were too DAMN stubborn and too DAMN arrogant to think of ANYTHING but your beloved principles.”

Kim took a step back from Acey who was shaking with anger and rage.

“Now there’s going to be a riot and people are going to get HURT,” she yelled. “Maybe even YOU! They’re going to blame YOU for it all. You’re going to LOSE YOUR JOB and be UNEMPLOYED and POOR! It’s all YOUR fault because you’re too FUCKING STUPID to avoid it and too DAMN ARROGANT to admit you were wrong and just say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and put all this behind us.”

Mike stood up and faced Acey through the bars.

You want me to say ‘I’m sorry?’” he said in a level voice, a grim look of barely-controlled anger on his face. “OK.” He took a step closer to the bars.

“I’m sorry,” Mike said matter-of-factly.

“I’m sorry I played their game as long as I did.

“I’m sorry I wasted an entire year applying for faculty positions that they were never going to give me, no matter how good I was, because I wasn’t on ‘their team,’ and they knew it.”

“I’m sorry I was so STUPID that I didn’t realize it until they kicked me out of their rotten, corrupt system and threw me in jail instead of my having the discernment and gumption to bail long ago.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to see and understand how the game is rigged.

“I’m sorry I’m only just now realizing that the only way to win is not to play their game.

“And, I’m sorry I’ve been compromising with a weak-willed girlfriend who buys into their lies, dyes her hair ridiculous colors, and who lets herself follow their silly trends and their stupid ideas and doesn’t THINK for HERSELF!”

Acey’s jaw dropped, but Mike wasn’t finished.

“I’m sorry I trusted you to be any different from your mother.

“So here we are.

“And, yes, I am sorry.

“Is that good enough for you?”

“Well!” Acey shouted. “I’m sorry, TOO! After everything I’ve done for you! Michael Philip Andrews… you can GO TO HELL!” Acey stormed out of the basement holding area, Deputy Martínez holding the door open for her.

Mike took a deep breath and collapsed back to sit on his bunk, emotionally exhausted.

The reverberation of the closing door gave way to an awkward stillness.

“There’s one more thing I’m sorry about,” Mike broke the silence at last. “I’m sorry you all had to see that blow up.”

“No problem,” the deputy consoled Mike. “Women… the hot ones are always a bit crazy. That’s just how it goes. Fun while it lasts, but it never lasts long.”

Kim glared at the deputy a moment and then at the door through which Acey departed. “Skittle-haired bitch!” she muttered, looking back toward Mike and the senator.

“Deal?” Senator Travis looked down at Mike. “What’s this deal your young lady was talking about?”

Mike reached into his folder, pulled out the offer from President Buchmann, stood up, passed it up to Senator Travis, and sat back down.

“What the hell?” Senator Travis skimmed the terms. “Tenure track? Start-up funds?” His jaw dropped as he sucked in a gasp. “They tried to BRIBE you! So yesterday… when you said you were wrestling with temptation… That wasn’t just a joke?”

“Best two out of three, Chad.” Mike held his head in his hands. He looked up at the senator looming over him on the top bunk and held two fingers a fraction of an inch apart. “It was THAT close. I… I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“They tried to bribe him?” Kim frowned.

Senator Travis shook his head in disbelief. “She used her daughter. President Buchmann used her daughter to try to seduce him… with a dream job offer that’s everything he ever wanted… if he’d just apologize and sabotage the whole…”

Senator Travis turned to face Mike. “You should have told me about this earlier, Mike,” he declared. “You REALLY should have told me earlier. You could have accepted the offer and then gone after damages and a settlement when they tried to renege on it… We can still use this against them. You need to make a statement…”

“Seriously, Senator,” Mike looked up. “No. I don’t want to talk about it.

“Let it go.

“Please.”

Senator Travis took a deep breath, “If you insist… but in exchange, I want to know something. I want to know… This is exactly what you said you always wanted. Why the hell did you turn it down?”

“I can’t put words to it.” Now it was Mike’s turn to collect his thoughts with a deep breath. “Not exactly…

“I mean… it was obvious I couldn’t trust President Buchmann not to turn on me. There’d be a gotcha or a problem with my conduct. Best case, I’d be spending three years jumping through their hoops pretending I was trying to get tenure while they pretended to evaluate me when both sides already knew exactly what the outcome was going to be. The last thing they want is another white male researcher, particularly one with my political opinions, no matter how competent, no matter how successful, on their faculty. I could do a lot with the laboratory funds they offered, if I could avoid outright disaster for the three years I’d have, but… But the price was simply too high.

“Having to look the world in the eye and say ‘boys are girls’ and ‘a girl can be a boy,’ ‘feelings can trump facts,’ ‘black is white’ and ‘white is black,’ to have to say ‘false is true,’ and ‘evil is good’ and ‘ugliness is beauty?’ To have to say that pumping confused children full of dangerous hormones and surgically mutilating them is some kind of ‘positive gender affirmation?’ To publicly submit and endorse the lie? They offered me my heart’s desire. Everything I’ve been working toward since high school... But whoever was sitting there in the witness stand when I was done apologizing… well, he wouldn’t have been me.

“And, you know… the one thing that you can’t trade for your heart’s desire… is your heart.”

“THAT’S why,” Senator Travis had a sudden epiphany. He jumped down from the top bunk and began pacing the cell, thinking aloud. “No wonder she was slow rolling the case! She needed time to turn the screws. To pressure you. Only…” he looked across the room at the big-screen TV which had so thoroughly captured the deputy’s attention, and he burst out laughing. “All the media hype and bullshit they were shoveling about this apology you owed your student. About your lack of empathy. It amounted to nothing, because the most important person they needed to influence… wasn’t paying it the least bit of attention!”

“The propaganda sure worked on the superintendent, though,” Kim noted. “He called me AGAIN earlier today insisting Mike needed to apologize. Demanded to speak with you. I blew him off.”

Deputy Martínez looked over at the muted big screen television that even now was showing some talking heads engaged in an animated discussion while a crawler bar relentlessly scrolled below them.

“So where DID the TV come from,” Mike asked.

“I’ll bet it leads back to some murky lefty coalition Castillo has ties to,” Kim replied. “They hoped you’d pay attention to all the relentless propaganda about ‘empathy’ and ‘apologies.’”

The deputy slowly, solemnly, picked up the television remote, as if it were a dangerous weapon he had not realized was loaded. He pushed a button, and the screen went blank.

“Not many people can say George Soros bought them a TV!” Senator Travis chuckled and began nodding his head as the pieces fell together. “Castillo never was a top lawyer,” he declared. “Simply didn’t have a head for legal argumentation. I knew she’d never be much of a lawyer from the first day I met her. But as a politician, and I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said this, she’s absolutely brilliant. She has the gift of rhetoric and knows how to use it, and she has the shamelessness not to let logic or morality stand in the way of a persuasive argument.”

“She was smart enough to get you on that stipulation business needing to be in writing, though,” Mike pointed out.

“Bah,” Travis brushed it off. “She’s not that smart, but she is diligent when she puts her mind to it. In law, diligence usually beats smarts.”

Senator Travis leaned against the bars. “They say ‘The world’s best swordsman doesn’t fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can’t predict what the idiot will do.’ Any lawyer worth their degree wouldn’t play that kind of gotcha game because their word is their bond. Start making and breaking verbal agreements, you get a reputation for it, and you pay the price in much greater friction to get anything accomplished. No real lawyer would have done it.”

Mike thought the ‘best swordsman’ ought to be taking that kind of thing into account, but he wasn’t going to press the point. “You make it sound as if you like her,” he observed.

“I despise everything she stands for,” Senator Travis replied coldly, lost in thought and recollection for a brief moment. “But a true artist can admire the artistry of another, even if you despise their subject matter. The whole thing was brilliant. Sandbag me and you and the case by having you apologize in public. Declare victory across the media. By the time the wheels of justice grind through in a couple of years, the actual trial outcome hardly matters. She’d have won in the realm of political and public opinion, and she would have ridden the wave all the way into the White House.

“And, it all fell apart because one man was oblivious to the media and had the wisdom to follow his heart instead of taking the easy way out,” Senator Travis grinned. “At least someone had the guts and wisdom to listen to Nancy and ‘just say no.’”

“Nancy?” Mike frowned. “Pelosi?”

Senator Travis looked back at his young client and facepalmed. “Reagan,” he replied at last, shaking his head at Mike’s youthful ignorance. “Never mind, before your time,” he dismissed it, then extended his hand, “but… thanks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome,” Mike stood up straight, shaking the senator’s hand. “I don’t see it, though… How could she have counted on my caving to the pressure?”

“She couldn’t,” Senator Travis looked thoughtful. “She had to have a plan B. I wonder if your girlfriend knows the score. She seemed awfully agitated.”

“Well, we can’t ask her now,” Mike pointed out.

“Riot…” Senator Travis noted with an unnatural calmness. “She mentioned a riot. ‘Now there’s going to be a riot and people are going to get hurt,’ she said.” His eyes got big. “Deputy! Kim!” He leapt to the cell door and grabbed the bars.

“You two,” The senator took command of the situation, “you need to tell the mayor, the police chief, the sheriff, everyone in authority. There is going to be a riot. A bad one. They’ll have brought in all kinds of outside provocateurs. Throwing rocks. Firebombing buildings… Maybe even the courthouse itself. They have to get ready. They have to try to stop it. The rally. She’s going to set it off at the rally. You have to move fast to…”

“Roxy, Roxy, Roxy, Roxy!” The chanting was becoming audible even in the basement.

“Damn,” Deputy Martínez shook his head. “I thought this was going to be an easy job.” He swallowed hard. “What the hell.” He threw the keys over to Senator Travis who caught them deftly. “Please don’t escape on my watch,” he said, “but just in case. I suggest you lock the door behind me.”

Deputy Martínez looked at Kim. “Let’s roll.”