The Judge

by Steve Martini

  “Can we have your name?”

  Arguillo’s ignoring them.

  “Why don’t you talk about it out here where you can get your ass sued?” Tony continues to taunt me from behind this time. “Just like the rest of the fucking breed. Fucking lawyers all the same.” They will be using a lot of electronic bleeps on the news tonight.

  My blood is boiling like hot lead to the tips of my ears. I fight the temptation to turn and get into it. I ignore him, one fist clenched and shaking at my side; I walk away.

  Harry’s made it to the curb, where he’s hailed a passing cab. It pulls up and he opens the door. The throng of journalists move in around us like piranhas boiling on the surface of a lake. As I look over the top of the vehicle, I see a figure staring intently at me from across the street. It is Gus Lano, making no pretense of the fact that I am the center of his attention at this moment. I am wondering if he was in the courtroom to hear the opening, perhaps with Tony, or if he has heard the questions being propounded here on the steps.

  Whatever Lano’s sense of our case had been before this moment, he is certain to have a whole new perspective now.

  CHAPTER 18

  SATURDAY MORNING AND SARAH IS CLEANING HER room. She is the master of the stall. My daughter, at eight years of age, can take an hour to make her bed in the morning and another to brush her teeth. She can daydream about a dozen things at once, hold her own in aimless conversation with unseen beings, and recite verse with no meter or rhyme. Put her in the shower with a bar of soap and she will drain the local reservoir.

  Sarah’s mother, Nikki, who died two years ago, possessed artistic skills that seem to have passed to Sarah. She can draw human forms, men and women which shame my stick figures. But numbers elude her, and she has her own system for spelling that substitutes the consonants of any word interchangeably. I have talked to the teachers at her school and they tell me to be patient. Each child, they say, progresses at his or her own speed. For Sarah, except for the tasks she enjoys, this seems to be glacial.

  “What’s she doing up there?” Lenore’s laughing, amused by the stomping sounds of little feet on the floor overhead.

  Lenore arrived last evening, only to be corralled by Sarah, and the three of us ended up playing board games until Sarah went to bed. Then Lenore and I turned to the wine and some soft music.

  “She’s supposed to be cleaning up. You want to go up for an inspection?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” she says.

  Lenore’s two children are off this week with their father, who lives in the southern part of the state and comes up only infrequently for visitation.

  For several weeks Sarah has been pleading to ask a little girlfriend from school to the house to play. I have insisted that she wait but not told her the reason.

  For a single father with a little girl these are dangerous times. I have a friend, a career prosecutor whose life was savaged by accusations that he fondled a child at his daughter’s slumber party. Despite the fact that his accuser later recanted and that he was acquitted after a three-month trial, he is now bankrupt and wears his own version of the scarlet letter.

  It is for this reason that Lenore has agreed to spend the day. She is my alibi against paranoia, my own and that of others.

  We sit talking in the kitchen while Sarah supposedly straightens her room. The doorbell rings and I look at my watch.

  “A little early for her friend,” I tell Lenore.

  “Mom’s probably looking for some free day care,” she says.

  I excuse myself for a second and head down the hall for the door; I hear the patter of Sarah’s feet on the stairs.

  “I’ll get it,” I tell her.

  She makes it a race to the front door and of course gets there ahead of me, only to shrink in the shadow of the man through the screen, who fills the frame as she opens it.

  “Is your daddy home?”

  “I told you I would get it,” I tell Sarah.

  By now she is pressing herself back into me, retreating in the way children do when confronted by a strange adult.

  The guy’s wearing a khaki work uniform, a patch with his name—“Mike”—over the left breast pocket.

  “Mr. Madriani?”

  “Yes.”

  “Capital Cable,” he says.

  I give him a dense look. This means nothing to me.

  “Your cable television service. We have some repairs we have to make to your system.”

  “I didn’t call anybody.”

  “Our office should have called you. They didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Darn,” he says. “Somebody screwed up. We have to install a booster where the cable comes into your set. We’ve been getting a lot of complaints about weak signal in this area. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. And there’s no charge.”

  He can tell by my look that I’m not happy with the interruption.

  “Of course if it’s inconvenient I can come back another time.”

  “That might be best,” I tell him. “I’m expecting company in a few minutes.” The fact is that Lenore and I were planning to take the girls out for a picnic to a local park.

  “Maybe we can reschedule.” He’s looking at a clipboard in his hand, some coaxial cable in his hand still encased in its plastic wrapper.

  “I should warn you that you’ll probably lose service without the booster. We’ll be adjusting the signal once they’re installed in the area here. Without the booster all you’re gonna be seeing for a while is a lot of snow.”

  He studies his clipboard for a couple of seconds. “It doesn’t look good. I doubt if I’m gonna be able to get back here for at least a week, maybe ten days.”

  I give him a look that is not kind.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “How long will it take, if you do it today?”

  “Ten minutes, in and out,” he says. “It’s very quick.”

  “Do it.” I open the screen door and let him in.

  He steps through the door and takes off his hat, just as Lenore is coming down the hall.

  “Sorry for the interruption,” he tells her.

  “Cable service,” I tell her.

  “What do you need?” I ask the guy.

  “Just your set,” he says.

  “Over there.” I point to the cabinet against the far wall in the living room.

  I offer him help moving it away from the wall. He tells me he can handle it, but he needs his tools first.

  “Fine. We’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything else.”

  He gives me a smile, puts his hat back on, and is out the door, leaving it open just an inch so that it does not lock behind him.

  Sarah turns back down the hallway, her body filled with disappointment. “I thought it was Mindy.”

  “How’s your room coming?” I ask her.

  With this she is curving her little body into Lenore’s side, seeking sanctuary.

  “Fine,” she tells me.

  “You want me to come up and look at it?”

  “No. I want her.”

  “A court of higher appeal,” I tell Lenore.

  “What’s wrong with our television set?” asks Sarah. To my daughter the thought of a broken TV is a tragedy on the order of a terminal illness. No more Disney.

  “Whatever it is, the man will fix it. Not that it’s going to do you any good. Not until after you finish your room. Now get up there.”

  To this I get a lot of moaning, and evasive body language. She bats her eyes at Lenore in hopes of intervention. When this doesn’t work she’s back to me. Your average manipulative child.

  “Do I have to, Daddy?”

  “Yes, you have to. Now go do it.”

  She slumps h
er shoulders and trudges up the steps.

  “I have a lot of authority with dogs and little children,” I tell Lenore.

  “Wait until she gets a little older,” she says.

  “You mean it doesn’t get any better?”

  Lenore just laughs.

  We settle in the kitchen again. I warm up her coffee. We talk just a little around the edges of Acosta’s case. Lenore wants me to bring her current, though I am careful what I tell her. There is no privilege for communications with Lenore out of the case. Anything Acosta has told me is protected information, attorney-client. Should I disclose this to Lenore, however, now that she is no longer of counsel, the state may be able to force her to reveal it on the stand.

  I mention my bout with Tony on the street in front of the courthouse.

  “With him it is very personal,” I say.

  “I have to apologize,” she says. “It was a mistake to refer him to you in the first place.” She calls it a clash of personalities, and tells me that Arguillo has a warm heart, but a hot head.

  I’m having trouble rationalizing Lenore’s actions in removing the note from Hall’s calendar, and she knows it.

  She apologizes and says that sometimes you do stupid things for friends. “I wasn’t thinking very clearly,” she says. “I’d been fired and I was drinking.” She tells me that if she’d been thinking more clearly she would never have done it.

  “Have the cops gotten into it with you?” I ask.

  “I did what you suggested. Told them nothing and took the Fifth,” she says.

  “Is Kline still threatening to call you to the stand?”

  She tells me that she thinks he is satisfied that she is out of the case. “I’d love to see you kick his butt,” she says. It is clear that she has not buried this hatchet.

  “I’ll have to find some other way to get to Tony,” I say.

  She calls this a dead end.

  “You still don’t think he is capable,” I say.

  “Forget what I think. The investigators would never have taken it seriously, even if they saw the note that I took.”

  I can’t tell how much of this is rationalizing, trying to play down her interference with the evidence.

  She tells me that Tony had a perfectly good explanation.

  “You have two people, the same age, who worked together, they had a lot in common, both attractive. Why wouldn’t they date? It was simply that they canceled that night. Nothing odd in that.”

  “That’s fine, if Tony has an alibi,” I say. “Does he?”

  “I haven’t asked him,” she says.

  “Maybe you should,” I tell her.

  “You’re not thinking of putting him on the stand?”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re not going to get anything.”

  “I see. His warm heart doesn’t prevent him from lying.”

  By her look I can tell that this does not sit well, the thought that to get at the substance of the note, I may have to lay a foundation, an evidentiary highway that passes directly over Lenore’s body.

  “Let’s hope it’s not necessary,” she says.

  For the moment I cannot tell if there is something of a threat in this. I choose not to treat it as such.

  We turn to more pleasant subjects. She tells me how she is filling her days. She has picked up two new clients in the last week, referrals from friends.

  Then out of the blue she tells me she’s going to return whatever fee she’s been paid in Acosta’s case, the small draw she took up front.

  “Don’t worry about it. You earned it.”

  “I am not going to worry about it. I am going to pay it back. As soon as I sort things out, I’ll cut a check.”

  This seems a matter of pride, so I don’t argue the point.

  “Whatever makes you happy.”

  There are footsteps in the hall behind me. I turn and look. It’s cable man.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” he says.

  “Sure. It’s halfway down the hall. On your left.”

  “Thanks.”

  He’s wearing a web belt and a bag for tools on his hip. I don’t get up and he finds his way, closing the door behind him.

  “What’s he doing?” says Lenore.

  “Probably number one or number two. I’ll ask him when he comes out.”

  She gives me an exasperated look.

  I laugh. “You asked.”

  “I mean with your set?” she says.

  “Beats me. Something to boost the signal.”

  In three seconds I hear the toilet flush.

  “Number one,” I tell her.

  “Forget that I asked.”

  And then something that is unmistakable to anyone who has ever lifted it off—the clink of heavy porcelain.

  I give Lenore a quizzical look.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The guy comes out of the bathroom, and doesn’t look this way. Instead he heads into the living room.

  I get up from the chair.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “Just a second.” I head down the hall, into the bathroom, step inside, and look around. Everything is as it should be.

  I head out of the bathroom, down the hall toward the living room, talking before I get there.

  “I didn’t know your cable came through my toilet.”

  When I turn the corner into the room I realize I’m talking to myself. The guy is gone. The roll of new coaxial is on top of my set, unopened, the cable disconnected from the back of the set. He’s gone, perhaps to get more tools or parts.

  I walk to the door and realize that it’s closed, locked. Maybe he forgot and locked himself out. I open the door, then the screen. No sign of him. I walk out to the front of the house. He’s gone. There’s no vehicle.

  By now Lenore is curious. She joins me on the front lawn.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I head back into the house, down the hall to the bathroom. She’s right on my heels. Inside I lift the lid off the toilet, and I see it. Sheathed in a sealed clear plastic bag the size of a small brick is a package, the substance inside unmistakable to anyone who has ever seen a bust on video or handled the stuff in court. I am looking at maybe two hundred thousand dollars, half a kilo of cocaine.

  The look on Lenore’s face tells me she needs no explanation.

  “I’ll get Sarah out the back door,” she says.

  As she runs for the stairs I hear the shriek of tires as cars come to a stop on the street in front of my house. I lay the lid of the toilet on the floor and run for the front door. I bolt it, then realize this is a futile exercise.

  Four months ago I bought one of those brass devices that slips in a metal hole at the base of the door, designed so that the door will swing open a few inches to absorb the force of a blow without breaking. In a panic I cast about looking for this. Then I see it, behind a curtain by the windows. I drop this into its hole, and sprint for the bathroom.

  I can now hear footsteps racing along the walkway at the other side of the house, and voices: “Move. Move. Move.”

  Then the squeak of my front screen door being opened. An instant later I hear the first shot of the metal battering ram as it hits the front door. The small piece of leaded glass, the tiny window that Sarah and I made in a craft class together last year, comes flying in shattered pieces down the hall past the opening to the bathroom.

  I can hear voices cursing at the front door. The brass security bolt has earned its keep. Another shot with the ram and I hear the sound of splintering wood.

  I close and lock the bathroom door.

  “Daddy.” I can hear Sa
rah on the stairs outside with Lenore. For a moment I consider opening it and letting them in. But they are better off out there, away from what I am now holding in my hand, the bag of deadly white powder, twenty years of hard time if I am caught.

  I consider the toilet for a brief instant, then realize I don’t have time. It would take several flushes, and even if I could, there would be sufficient residue in the bag to nail me.

  I look at the small window on the wall next to me. I slide its translucent pane up. This looks out on the fence, which I can nearly reach with my hand. The eaves of the neighbor’s roof another three feet beyond that.

  I grab the towel from the rack and wipe the surface of the plastic back gingerly. If they find the bag, at least my prints will not be on it. Then, holding the bag in the towel, I put my arm out the window, low on the wall, as if I am about to pitch a long shot in a game of horseshoes.

  It is not a heroic posture in which to be caught. By the time the shot comes from the battering ram I am seated on the commode with my pants down around my ankles, the towel back on the rack, and the window closed.

  I am showered with splinters of wood as the door to the bathroom does not come off cleanly. Two cops, both bulls, one of them wearing a baseball cap backward, the other with his face hooded, both try to put their shoulders through the opening of the door after the thin center panel gives way. One of them reaches a hand through and turns the lock from the inside. This actually traps the other one in the hole of the door as it swings open, so that by the time they reach me, they are both charged with a full load of adrenaline, and flushed with anger.

  They grab me by both arms and slam me against the wall by the window. That this does not break the glass amazes me. There is a sharp burning pain at my forehead as it hits the molding around the window. I feel a trickle of blood from my scalp, and the cold metal of a pistol barrel press hard against the back of my neck.

  My feet are pulled out so that if the wall were not there I would fall on my face, hand pulled behind me, the side of my face pressed against the wallboard.

  “Does he have a gun?” One of the voices behind me.

  Where I would keep this with my pants around my ankles, and a shirt they have nearly torn from my upper body, is a mystery.