Blackstone was standing in front of the statue of Albert Pike in the Judiciary Square district, at 3rd and D Streets in the northwest section of downtown Washington. During the summer the trees had grown to the point of covering the top of the statue, hiding it from view unless one was standing, as Blackstone was, very close to its base.
Julia’s last comment in Blackstone’s office had sent him scurrying out of the office, grabbing a cab, and then getting to Pike’s statue as soon as possible.
The bronze statue stood eleven feet tall, mounted on a white marble pedestal. The Italian sculptor who created the memorial had also sculpted another figure at its base—this one resembling a reclining Grecian female, who was holding the banner of the Scottish Rite of the Freemasons.
In Pike’s left hand was a massive book—his monumental life’s work, a book he titled Morals and Dogma. The huge tome set both the symbolic and philosophical basis for the ascending degrees that a Mason can aspire to. But the book also did something else. It laid out Pike’s complex, opaque religious philosophy, incorporating a crazy quilt of pagan religions, Egyptology, and Gnosticism.
In his preparation of Vinnie’s case, Blackstone had obtained a copy of Pike’s book but had only read small portions here and there. But he was now more convinced than ever that the “AP” in the first line of Langley’s note of the cryptic Booth diary entry must be referring to Albert Pike.
As he gazed up at the statue—with Pike dressed, not in the Confederate uniform he wore during the Civil War as an officer for the cause of Southern secession, but in nineteenth-century civilian long coat and trousers—Blackstone realized the anomaly of it all. Here was the only Confederate officer ever memorialized in a statue in Washington DC. And not only a Confederate, but a rebel suspected of treason and war crimes.
But there was another symbolic feature in this monument. One that seemed to reach out to Blackstone like the figures in a 3-D screen grasping directly at the startled audience.
There he was, Albert Pike, in all his philosophical pomposity, the grandiose form of a man who spent his life trying to rethink the nature of the world and the essence of its religions. Below him was the servile female figure, like a doting pagan goddess assigned to serve the great figure above on Mt. Olympus. Who was the female at the base of the statue? Was it actually supposed to represent Vinnie Ream, the beautiful sculptress of President Abraham Lincoln and the object of the much older Albert Pike’s frustrated affections?
But Blackstone was thinking about his case. About the grandiose and very rich Lord Magister Dee, who fancied himself a kind of contemporary Albert Pike. Which necessarily made Vinnie Archmont the later-day Vinnie Ream. And he was also considering Senator Bo Collings, who headed up a nonprofit foundation whose mission was to preserve the memory and the reputation of Albert Pike.
Suddenly, as J.D. Blackstone was gazing at the two statues he felt a kind of shiver race down his spinal column.
Maybe, he suddenly thought to himself, I’ve had the perspective all wrong. Perhaps everything needs to be reversed here.
He stood before the statue for several more minutes, pondering his revelation.
Then he flagged down a taxi.
He climbed in the cab clumsily with his one good arm, trying not to bang the shoulder with the sling into the car door. When he was in the backseat he leaned forward and instructed the cabbie to wait a moment before leaving that spot.
Then he pulled his cell phone out and called a number.
Vinnie Archmont answered.
“Hey,” he started out. “I’m hoping to cash in my rain check. What do you say?”
“Oh that would be marvelous!” she exclaimed. “So, you’re coming over for dinner?”
“If you’ll have me,” he said. “Your place?”
“Sure…anytime…how about right now?”
He asked Vinnie if she could wait for a second. Then he gave her apartment address to the cab driver.
“Okay. I’ll be there in about fifteen, twenty minutes, counting crosstown traffic,” he said.
“Oh, I am so looking forward to seeing you,” she said happily. “Any requests for dinner?”
“I’m not picky. Most of my meals come out of frozen boxes.”
“I think I can do better than that,” she said brightly.
Just then Blackstone could hear the call-waiting beep on his cell phone.
“Look,” he said, “I think someone is trying to call through—can you hold for a few seconds?”
“Don’t worry,” Vinnie replied. “Take the call. I want to get started on dinner anyway.”
Blackstone clicked on the call. It was Julia.
“Hi, it’s me,” Julia started out. “I left your office a little abruptly today…I know I told you about Senator Collings’s involvement with that Albert Pike foundation.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Just thought you might want to know that Tully also gave us a copy of the foundation’s charter document,” Julia continued.
“Good.”
“It says,” she continued, “that the objective of the foundation is to, and I quote, ‘Preserve and protect the name, history, and reputation of Albert Pike, statesman, philosopher, military officer, lawyer, judge, and internationally renowned scholar whose writings and insights influenced the foundations of the Scottish Rite and Freemasonry.’ ”
Then Julia added, “Sorry I interrupted your call. I could hear the beep and knew you were on the line with someone else.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I was talking to Vinnie. Just setting up a dinner date with her tonight over at her place.”
There was no response from Julia on the other end of the line.
Blackstone broke the silence.
“Does it occur to you that I might really know what I’m doing here?”
“You want me to trust your judgment, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Blackstone replied.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—not in this case. Not when I see you walking into…oh, I don’t know,” she said grasping for some way to express it, “professional quicksand or something. Frankly, J.D., I don’t think it’s my job to try to pull you out. Which puts me in the very awkward position of trying to figure out exactly what my future is as your law partner. I don’t like the feeling that I’m sitting around, waiting to watch a train wreck.”
Then she added her last thought before hanging up.
“So,” Julia said with a dismal sense of resignation in her voice, “maybe it’s time to just walk away from the scene of the disaster before it happens.”