by Colum McCann
straightened their shoulders around him. Talked differently. It wasn’t much of a perk, but it was better than nothing. Every now and then there was a chance for promotion, to go upstairs to the Supreme Court, but it hadn’t come his way yet. In the end so much of it was just mundanity. A bureaucratic babysitting.
At Yale, when he was young and headstrong, he’d been sure that one day he’d be the very axis of the world, that his life would be one of deep impact. But every young man thought that. A condition of youth, your own importance. The mark you’d make upon the world. But a man learns sooner or later. You take your little niche and you make it your own. You ride out the time as best you can. You go home to your good wife and you calm her nerves. You sit down and compliment the cutlery. You thank your lucky stars for her inheritance. You smoke a fine cigar and you hope for an occasional roll in the silk sheets. You buy her a nice piece of jewelry at DeNatale’s and you kiss her in the elevator because she still looks beautiful, and well preserved, despite the years rolling by, she really does.
You kiss her good- bye and you go downtown every day and you soon figure out that your grief isn’t half the grief that everyone else has. You mourn your dead son and you wake up in the middle of the night with your wife weeping beside you and you go to the kitchen, where you make yourself a cheese sandwich and you think, Well, at least it’s a cheese sandwich on Park Avenue, it could be worse, you could have ended up far worse: your reward, a sigh of relief.
The lawyers knew the truth. The court clerks too. And the other judges, of course. Centre Street was a shithouse. They actually called it that: the shithouse. If they met one another at official functions. How was the shithouse today, Earl? I left my briefcase in the shithouse. They had even made it into a verb: Are you shithousing it tomorrow, Thomas? He hated ad-mitting it even to himself, but it was the truth. He thought of himself as being on a ladder, a well- dressed man on a ladder, a man of privilege and style and learning, in a dark robe, in the house of justice, using his bare hands to pull the rotting leaves and the twigs from the shithouse gutters.
It didn’t bother him half as much as it used to. The fact was that he was part of a system. He knew that now. A small piece of skin on a large elaborate creature. A cog that turned a set of wheels. Perhaps it just was a process of growing older. You leave the change to the generations that come behind you. But then the generation that comes behind you gets McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 254
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blown asunder in Vietnamese cafés, and you go on, you must go on, because even if they’re gone they still can be remembered.
He was not the maverick Jew that he had once set out to be; still Soderberg refused to surrender. It was a point of honor, of truth, of survival.
When he first got called, back in the summer of ’67, he thought that he’d take the job and be a paragon of virtue. He wouldn’t just survive, but flourish. He packed up his job and took a fifty- five percent pay cut. He didn’t need the money. He and Claire had already set a good deal aside, their accounts were healthy, the inheritance strong, and Joshua was squared away at PARC. Even if the idea of being a judge came as a complete surprise, he loved it. He had spent some early years in the U.S. Attorney’s office, sure, and he had put his time in, had served on a tax commission, built himself a track record, buttered up the right people.
He had taken a few difficult cases in his time, had argued well, had struck a balance. He’d written an editorial for The New York Times questioning the legal parameters of the draft dodgers and the psychological effects conscription had on the country. He had weighed the moral and constitu-tional aspects and came out firmly on the side of the war. At parties on Park Avenue he had met Mayor Lindsay, but only glancingly, and so when the appointment was suggested, he thought it was a ruse. He put the phone down. Laughed it off. It rang again. You want me to do what? There was talk of eventual promotion, first as acting judge of the Supreme Court of New York, and then, who knows—from there anything was still possible. A lot of the promotions had stalled when the city started to go bankrupt, but he didn’t mind, he would surf it out. He was a man who believed in the absolute of the law. He would be able to weigh and dissect and ponder and make a change, give something back to the city where he’d been born. He always felt that he had skirted the city’s edges and now he would take a pay cut and be at its core. The law was fundamental to how it was imparted and to what degree it could contain the excesses of human folly. He believed in the notion that even when laws were written down they ought not to remain unaltered. The law was work. It was there to be sifted. He was interested not just in the meaning of what could be, but also what ought to be. He would be at the coal face. One of the important miners of the morality of the city. The Honorable Solomon Soderberg.
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Even the name rang right. Perhaps he had been used as judicial fod-der, a balancing of the books, but he didn’t mind too much; the good would outweigh the bad. He’d be rabbinical, wise, caring. Besides, every lawyer had a judge inside him.
He had walked in, his very first day, with his heart on fire. Through the front entrance. He wanted to savor it. He’d bought a brand- new suit from a swanky tailor on Madison Avenue. A Gucci tie. Tassels on his shoes. He approached the building in a great swell of anticipation.
Etched outside the wide gold- colored doors were the words THE PEOPLE
ARE THE FOUNDATION OF POWER. He stood a moment and breathed it all in.
Inside, in the lobby, there was a blur of movement. Pimps and reporters and ambulance chasers. Men in purple platform shoes. Women dragging their children behind them. Bums sleeping in the window alcoves.
He could feel his heart sink with each step. It seemed for just a moment that the building could still have the aura—the high ceilings, the old wooden balustrades, the marble floor—but the more he walked around the more his spirit sank. The courtrooms were even worse than he remembered. He shuffled around, dazed and disheartened. The corridor walls were graffitied. Men sat smoking in the back of the courtrooms.
Deals were going down in the bathrooms. Prosecutors had holes in their suits. Crooked cops roamed about, looking for kickbacks. Kids were doing complicated handshakes. Fathers sat with smacked- out daughters.
Mothers wept over their long- haired sons. On the courtroom doors, the fancy red leather pouching was slit. Attorneys went by with battered attaché cases. He ghosted past them all, took the elevator upstairs, then pulled up a chair at his new desk. There was a piece of dried chewing gum underneath the desk drawer.
Still and all, he said to himself, still and all, he would soon have it all sorted out. He could handle it. He could turn things around.
He announced his intentions in chambers one afternoon, at a retirement party for Kemmerer. A snicker went around the room. So sayeth Solomon, said one sad sack. Slice the baby, boys. Great hilarity and the tinkling of glasses. The other judges told him he’d get used to it eventually, that he’d see the light and it’d still be in a tunnel. The greatest part of the law was the wisdom of toleration. One had to accept the fools. It came with the territory. Every now and then the blinkers had to be lowered. He had to learn to lose. That was the price of success. Try it, they said. Buck the McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 256
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system, Soderberg, and you’ll be eating pizza in the Bronx. Be careful. Play the game. Stick with us. And if he thought Manhattan was bad, he should go up to where the real fires were raging, to American Hanoi itself, at the end of the 4 train, where the very worst of the city played itself out every day.
He refused to believe them for many months, but slowly it dawned on him that they were correct—he was caught, he was just a part of the system, and the word was appropriate, a part of the Parts.
So many of the charges were just whisked away. The kids pleaded out, or he gave them time served, just so he could clear the backlog. He had his quota sheet to fill. He had to answer to the supervisors upstairs. The felonies got knocked down to misdemeanors. It was another form of demolition. You had to swing the wrecking ball. He was being judged on how he judged: the less work he gave to his colleagues upstairs, the happier they were. Ninety percent of the cases—even serious misbehavior—
had to be disposed of. He wanted the promised promotion, yes, but even that couldn’t stifle the feeling that he had taken whatever idealism he once had and stuffed it inside a cheap black robe, and now, when he went searching, he couldn’t even find it inside the darkest slits.
He arrived at 100 Centre Street five days a week, put on his robe, wore his shiniest shoes, pulled his socks up around his ankles, and prevailed when he could. It was, he knew, about choosing his fights. He could have easily had a dozen pitched battles a day, more if he wanted. He could’ve taken on the whole system. He could have given the graffiti writers fines of a thousand dollars so that they’d never be able to pay it. Or he could’ve sentenced the firework kids on Mott Street to six months. He could’ve sent the drug addicts down for a full year. Chained them with a heavy bail. But it would all rebound, he knew. They would refuse to plead. And he would get the book slung at him for clogging up the courts. The shoplifters, the shoeshine boys, the hotel sneaks, the three- card- monte kids, they were all entitled eventually to say, Not guilty, Your Honor. And then the city would choke. The gutters would fill up. The slime would spill over. The sidewalks would fill. And he’d be blamed.
At the worst of times he thought, I’m a maintenance guy, I’m a gate-keeper, I’m a two- bit security man. He watched the parade come in and out of his courtroom, whichever Part he was in that day, and he wondered how the city had become such a disgusting thing on his watch. How it lifted babies by the hair, and how it raped seventy- year- old women, and McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 257
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how it set fires to couches where lovers slept, and how it pocketed candy bars, and how it shattered ribcages, and how it allowed its war protesters to spit in the faces of cops, and how the union men ran roughshod over their bosses, and how the Mafia took a hold of the boardwalks, and how fathers used daughters as ashtrays, and how bar fights spun out of control, and how perfectly good businessmen ended up urinating in front of the Woolworth Building, and how guns were drawn in the pizza joints, and how whole families got blown away, and how paramedics ended up with crushed skulls, and how addicts shot heroin into their tongues, and how shysters ran scams and old ladies lost their savings, and how shop-keepers gave back the wrong change, and how the mayor wheezed and wheedled and lied while the city burned down to the ground, got itself ready for its own little funeral of ashes, crime, crime, crime.
There wasn’t a bad thing in the city that didn’t pass through Soderberg’s gutter watch. It was like surveying the evolution of slime. You stand there long enough and the gutter gets slick, no matter how hard you battle against it.
All these idiots kept coming from their grind houses, strip joints, freak shows, novelty stores, peep shows, fleabag hotels, and they looked even worse for having spent some time in the Tombs. Once, when he was in court, he saw a cockroach literally climb from a defendant’s pocket and crawl along his shoulder and up along the side of his neck before the man even noticed. When he realized it, the defendant just whisked it away, and continued his guilty plea. Guilty, guilty, guilty. They nearly all pleaded guilty and in exchange got a sentence they could live with, or they went for time served, or they coughed up a small fine, and went along their merry way, a swagger in their walk, out into the world, just so they could turn around and do the same foolish thing and be back in his courtroom a week or two later. It put him in a state of constant agitation.
He bought a hand exerciser that fit in the pocket. He slid his hand underneath the slit in his robe and took it from his suit pocket. It was a spring-loaded thing with two wooden handles that he squeezed surreptitiously under his garments. He only hoped he wasn’t seen. It could of course be misinterpreted, a judge fumbling beneath his gown. But it calmed him as his cases came and went, and his quota filled. The heroes of the system were the judges who disposed of the most cases in the quickest amount of time. Open the sluice gates, let them go.
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Anyone who swung by, anyone who participated in the system in any way, got sideswiped. The crimes got to the prosecutors—the rapes, the manslaughters, the stabbings, the robberies. The young assistant D.A.’s stood horrified by the enormity of the lists in front of them. The sentences got to the court officers: they were like disappointed cops, and would sometimes hiss when the judges were soft on crime. The slurring got to the court reporter. The blatant sideswipes got to the Legal Aid lawyers. The terms got to the probation officers. The vulgar simplicities got to the court psychologists. The paperwork got to the cops. The fines—
light as they were—got to the criminals. The low bail figures got to the bondsmen. Everyone was in a jam and it was his job to sit at the center of it, to dole out the justice and balance it between right and wrong.
Right and wrong. Left and right. Up and down. He thought himself up there, standing at the edge of the precipice, sick and dizzy, unaccountably looking upward.
Soderberg downed his coffee in one smooth swallow. It tasted cheap with creamer.
He would get the tightrope man today—he was sure of it.
He picked up his phone and dialed down to the D.A.’s office, but the phone rang on and on and when he looked up at his little desktop clock it was time for the morning’s clear- out.
Wearily, Soderberg rose, then smiled to himself as he followed a straight line along the floor.
—
h e l i k ed t h e bl ack gossamer robe in summertime. It was a little worn at the elbows, but no matter, it was breezy and light. He picked up his ledgers, tucked them under his arm, caught a quick glance of himself thick- bodied in the mirror, the tracery of blood vessels in his face, the deepening eye sockets. He pasted the last few hairs on his pate down, walked out solemnly through the corridor and past the elevator bank. He took the stairs down, a little skip in his step. Past the correction officers and probation people, into the rear hallway of Arraignment Part 1A. The worst part of the journey. At the back of the court, the prisoners were kept in the pens. The abattoir, they called it. The upper holding cells ran the length of half a block. The bars were painted a creamy yellow. The air was McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 259
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rank with body odor. The court officers went through four bottles of air freshener every day.
There were plenty of police and court officers lined up along the gauntlet and the criminals were smart enough to keep quiet as he went along the chute. He walked quickly, head down, among the officers.
—Good morning, Judge.
—Like the shoes, Your Honor.
—Nice to see you again, sir.
A quick simple nod to whoever acknowledged him. It was important to maintain a democratic aloofness. There were certain judges who bantered and mocked and joked and buddied up, but not Soderberg. He walked quickly out along the chute, in through the wooden door, into civility, or remnants of it, the dark wood bench, the microphone, the fluorescent lights, up the steps, to his elevated seat.
In God We Trust.
The morning slipped away quickly. A full calendar of cases. The usual roll call. Driving on an expired license. Threatening a police officer. Assault in the second degree. Lewd public act. A woman had stabbed her aunt in the arm over food stamps. A deal was cut with a tow- headed boy on grand theft auto. Community service was handed out to
a man who’d put a peephole into the apartment below him—what the Peeping Tom didn’t know was that the woman was a Peeping Tom too, and she peeped him, peeping her. A bartender had been in a brawl with a customer. A murder in Chinatown got sent upstairs immediately, bail set and the matter passed along.
All morning long he wheeled and bartered and crimped and cringed.
—Is there an outstanding warrant or not?
—Tell me, are you moving to dismiss or not?
—The request to withdraw is granted. Be nice to each other from here on in.
—Time served!
—Where’s the motion, for crying out loud?
—Officer, would you please tell me what happened here? He was what? Cooking a chicken on the sidewalk?! Are you kidding me?
—Bail set at two thousand dollars’ bond. Cash one thousand two hundred fifty.
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—Not you again, Mr. Ferrario! Whose pocket was picked this time?
—This is an arraignment court, counselor, not Shangri- La.
—Release her on her own recognizance.
—This complaint does not state a crime. Dismissed!
—Has anybody here ever heard of privilege?
—I’ve no objection to a nonjail disposition.
—In exchange for his plea, we’ll reduce the felony to a misdemeanor.
—Time served!
—I think your client was overserved in the narcissism department this morning, counselor.
—Give me something more than elevator music, please!
—Will you be finished by Friday?
—Time served!
—Time served!
—Time served!
There were so many special tricks to learn. Seldom look the defendant in the eye. Seldom smile. Try to appear as if you have a mild case of hem-orrhoids: it will give you a concerned, inviolable expression. Sit at a slightly uncomfortable bend, or at least one that appears uncomfortable.
