Adjourned

by Lee Goldberg

  "No," Macklin said to the closed door. "No, you don't."

  # # # # # #

  "Judge for Yourself!" the toothsome host yelled, a huge grin stretched across his face. "The show that puts you behind the bench and sentences you to prizes like . . . a brand-new car!"

  The studio shuddered with shrieks of glee and hundreds of clapping hands. The clatter sounded to Shaw, standing behind the window of the control booth to the rear of the audience, like a flock of deranged birds.

  The stage curtain behind the host opened. Lights flashed. Buzzers rang. A buxom brunette drove a glossy silver Oldsmobile Cutlass across the stage, parking it in front of the massive judge's bench that dominated the set.

  The cameras panned over the audience, zooming in on the clapping, cheering, screaming, hysterically happy women bobbing in their seats. The show's synthesizer-borne theme song blared over the speakers beside the flashing "APPLAUSE" signs above the stage.

  The host swept his hand over the set behind him. "Now, meet our two contestants!" Two smaller judges' benches, one occupied by a woman with an overbite and the other by a black marine, appeared on either side of the set as if under the host's magical control.

  Shaw shifted his weight uncomfortably. He didn't like being here. The emotional echo of his heated encounter with Macklin this morning was strong. Now here he was watching this. The contrast made him slightly dizzy. Or perhaps it was just the claustrophobic control room, the heavy cloud of cigarette smoke, the dreamlike glitz and blitz of the game show.

  Or Shaw's fear. Coming here could be, he realized, the biggest mistake of his life.

  "Okay, two, zoom in on Dirk," the director said into mouthpiece of his headset in a voice that sounded like it escaped from a throat filled with splintered wood. The camera-two TV monitor filled with the host's face.

  ". . . just predict the judge's verdict on these real, small-claims cases and you win!" The perpetually grinning host sauntered behind his podium on the far side of the set. "And now, here's our judge, the Honorable Harlan Fitz!"

  "Camera three, close on Fitz, cue the commercial," the director mumbled perfunctorily. These same shots, Shaw assumed, were called day in and day out.

  Harlan Fitz appeared at the bench, in his traditional judge's attire, with what Shaw thought to be a tired grimace on his face. Fitz was a broad-shouldered, strong fifty-five-year-old man, and his face had aged well. Shaw noticed it hadn't fattened or sagged with time. A gray-brown mustache and beard gave him a scholarly look. Age showed itself only in the few lines across his brow, the puffy bags emerging under his eyes, and the slight recession of his hairline.

  The Judge for Yourself theme music swelled as Fitz took his seat, and the audience clapped like performing seals ready to do tricks.

  The host pointed at the camera. "Stay right there—the excitement begins right after this!"

  "Okay, bring up the music. Camera one, pull back wide." The director raised his hand, his index finger extended. "Aaaaaand"—he whipped his arm down and jabbed the woman beside him—"roll commercial."

  The commercial filled the screen. A good-looking woman, apparently a lawyer, ran through the courtroom, breezed through an executive board meeting, and whisked past the maître d' of a fine restaurant to a table.

  "Gee, Mary, how do you stay so active?" her plain-looking harried female lunch companion asked, her voice dripping with absolute awe.

  Mary reached into her purse. "New You–brand tampons!"

  Shaw sighed, switching his attention from the monitor to the stage. Technicians scurried on the set like ants. Fitz sat stoically at his bench, staring blankly into the audience. Shaw felt a little sad. This wasn't the Harlan Fitz who had once been a feared judge and outspoken critic of the inadequacies of the law.

  Shaw thought back to the Public Disorder Intelligence pision file on Fitz he had read after the meeting with Macklin in Stocker's office several days ago. The report attributed Fitz's retirement to political and personal pressures. It concluded that Fitz was overwhelmed by the futility of battling what he saw as the inadequacy of the law and became disheartened by the lack of cooperation from fellow judges. Exasperated and exhausted, he retired.

  Fitz became a nomadic media personality, a frequent guest on radio and TV programs. According to the numerous newspaper clippings of interviews done with Fitz that Shaw read in the PDID file, Fitz thought he could educate the public, initiate change. The media exploited Fitz's outrage, Shaw believed, ignoring the man's insights and turning his vehement attacks on the legal system into entertainment.

  Shaw studied Fitz now as the director signaled the cameramen that the commercial break was nearly over. Shaw thought Fitz looked lost. He prayed to God that he was reading Fitz right. That assumption was his long shot. Macklin—the city, for that matter—depended on that.

  Yet once the commercial was over, Shaw watched Fitz come alive, whittling away what little confidence Shaw had in his all-important assumption.

  Fitz played the game with wit and vigor, appearing both knowledgeable and authoritative. Even interested. That was no small feat. The contestants were argumentative morons with no concept of the law or, it seemed to Shaw, simple logic.

  Once the next commercial break came, Shaw noticed the judge sag, the glow disappearing from his face. Unlike the toothy host, when the cameras went off, so did Fitz.

  Maybe, Shaw thought, just maybe there is some hope.

  After a few more cases were heard, Ms. Overbite broke the 0-to-0 deadlock with the black marine and won the game. Then came the "judge-off" for the car. She had to match Fitz's decision on a particular case. Shaw didn't hear the host read the question, but it had something to with premature ejaculation, mud wrestling, break dancing, and a set of broken skis.

  Ms. Overbite closed her eyes and clutched the host. Her lip quivering, she announced her decision. She looked hopefully at Fitz. A prerecorded drum rolled. A hush fell on the audience. Fitz held up a gavel-shaped placard with his answer scrawled across in felt-tipped marker. Their decisions matched.

  The woman screamed joyfully, jumping around the host like a hysterical kangaroo. As the audience went wild with applause, Shaw slipped out of the control room and into a narrow slate gray corridor. He shuffled toward a door a dozen footsteps away. Harlan Fitz's name, hastily handwritten in capital letters on a sheet of typing paper, was affixed to the door with yellow masking tape. As Shaw neared Fitz's door, his fear grew. He knew that Fitz had frequently—and publicly—chastised the ill-prepared prosecutors, careless cops, and sleazy lawyers who let criminals slip through the justice system unscathed. That's what had gotten the PDID interested in him. But Shaw also knew his proposal could just piss off Fitz even more. The judge could go to the press.

  And then comes the end of the world.

  Shaw turned the doorknob and stepped inside. He immediately felt cramped for breathing space. The windowless room seemed to him to be barely larger than his car. The lack of circulation gave the room the hot, oppressive quality of an oven recently used to cook a batch of Arrid Extra Dry. A white wood table and lightbulb-lined mirror claimed half the room, and two folding chairs were propped against the opposite wall.

  He opened a chair and sat down, crossed his legs, and waited.

  It will work out, Ronny.

  Shaw laughed to himself. Yeah, sure.

  He heard footsteps outside, and before he could brace himself, Fitz pushed open the door.

  "I see you found my dressing room, Sergeant." Fitz grinned, dropping heavily into the folding chair opposite Shaw. Gone were the judge's robes. Fitz was in the sweat-dampened shirt and jeans he had worn under his robes, which he had rolled up into a ball and placed on his dressing table.

  "What did you think of the show?" Fitz asked, slapping Shaw's knee.

  "It was very entertaining," Shaw replied.

  Fitz laughed. "Bullshit."

  Shaw smiled awkwardly, not knowing whether to join in Fitz's laughter.

  "You probably hated it
more than I did," Fitz said. "Look, a guy has to make money. Maybe I'm educating someone out there, who knows?"

  "Well, it educated me, if that means anything," Shaw replied. "It's the first time I've even been behind the scenes, so to speak, of a TV show. I'm impressed."

  "Thank you. You're very kind, Sergeant." Fitz's smile waned. "So why exactly do you want to talk with me?"

  Shaw shifted uneasily in his seat. "Well, that isn't easy." He dropped his gaze and pondered his feet. Unable to think of an easy way to approach it, Shaw opted for the bottom line. "What do you know about Mr. Jury?"

  "I know he's a vigilante who has killed half a dozen people."

  "That's all?" Shaw asked, chancing to look at Fitz. The judge frowned.

  "What more do you want, Sergeant? The guy is running around doing what most of us would like to do."

  "Would you call it a sort of justifiable homicide?" The remark didn't come from Shaw but from the script Shaw chose to perform. It was as if he was part of an undercover operation, playing a role. Nothing, to him, could ever be said to justify Macklin's actions.

  "Just what are you getting at, Sergeant? I just got done playing the only game I want to for today." Fitz folded his arms across his chest and pinned Shaw under a stern gaze.

  "What if I were to tell you Mr. Jury is interested in introducing some due process into his vigilante justice?"

  "I'd say it's still vigilante justice," Fitz replied. He stared into Shaw's eyes, trying to see something there. Shaw wanted to get up and run.

  "And I'd say it seems Mr. Jury is a better man than I thought," Fitz said slowly. His eyes narrowed. "Am I talking to Mr. Jury?"

  "No," Shaw responded quickly. Too quickly, he thought.

  "All right, Sergeant," Harlan Fitz groaned testily. "Let's quit the sparring. Make your point."

  "What would you say if Mr. Jury wanted you to be that due process, to evaluate evidence and determine who, within the scope of the law, is guilty and innocent?" Shaw's throat felt raw, stone dry.

  Fitz's stare didn't waver. The silence in the room was a crushing weight on Shaw's shoulders that grew heavier with each hourlong moment.

  "I'd say my phone number is in the book."

  CHAPTER SIX

  That next afternoon Mother Nature got angry. She blew the rain clouds away with fierce, gale-force winds that blasted through the city, ripping trees out of the ground, tearing off roofs, severing power lines, and smashing in plate-glass windows.

  People on the street, who were still recovering from five days of pounding rain, were caught by surprise and were tossed around like leaves by their wind-opened umbrellas. Tourists must have thought they were watching a sadistic Mary Poppins sequel in the making.

  The merciless weather, along with a merciless editor, kept Jessica Mordente away from her desk at the Los Angeles Times and out on the street for most of the day. Her Thomas Brothers street map was her bible as she raced around the city interviewing the victims of Mother Nature's wrath.

  She talked to an irate starlet in Beverly Hills whose pink Rolls-Royce was crushed by a tree. Then Mordente sped west to the Santa Monica Pier, where the wind had kicked one of the city's notorious vagrants into the sea. After two more hours of on-the-spot reporting, Mordente shoved her three full reporter's notebooks into her purse and headed downtown for the Times building.

  Mordente remained in front of her computer terminal for the rest of the afternoon, piecing together a story from her notes and frequent telephone interviews. It was nearly 7 p.m. before she was able to switch off her screen, relax, and grab a bite to eat. She left the newsroom and wearily trudged down the hallway to the elevator, taking the jolting ride to the cafeteria.

  Her stomach growled, Get me food!, all the way up to the tenth floor. She strode into the cafeteria, bypassed the salad bar, and zeroed in on the grill. The gangly Mexican cook, dwarfed by a white hat resembling a mushroom cloud, greeted her with a cheerful grin.

  Mordente placed her order hurriedly in Spanish, asking him for two grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches. While he prepared her sandwiches, she whirled around the circular buffet, snatching a handful of chocolate chip cookies, a bag of Doritos, and a tall paper cup full of black coffee.

  She took her sandwiches with a thankful smile, rushed through the cashier's line, and settled down to eat at a table by a window. The moment her rear end touched the seat and her nose took in the aroma of the hot food, she could feel herself beginning to unwind. Outside, she could see the red numbers on the Times building clock glowing against the dark backdrop of the Civic Center buildings. Today, she realized, had felt like a week.

  Her stomach took control of her body now, ordering her to grab a sandwich and wolf it down in six hungry bites. She did. Mordente had learned long ago how to handle her body. She knew she could occasionally put her stomach on hold for an entire day, but when the food was on the table, she had to let her stomach call the shots. That was the deal she had struck with her stomach. She understood her body and had worked out agreements with her bowels, hair, bladder, teeth, uterus, and, most important, her lower back.

  The quick consumption of sandwich number one had taken the edge off her hunger, and her stomach allowed her to approach the rest of the meal in a more relaxed manner. Sipping her coffee, which was so hot it nearly scalded her tongue, she folded open the paper to the Metro section.

  She scanned the narrow story running down the first column about the robbery of another bank by a gang who hid their faces with rubber Halloween masks. This bank was robbed, it seemed, by Yoda, Jimmy Carter, and a werewolf. She glanced at a feature photo of an elderly woman in a wheelchair rolling down the street, a duck on a leash following along.

  Midpage, just under the fold, she found her lengthy roundup of southland wind damage. She read it with a sense of mild achievement and a renewed feeling of fatigue.

  She was about ready to follow the story to the jump when she saw the tiny boxed article below hers. It was just a glorified filler, so unimportant that no by-line was attributed to it, but she looked at it anyway. Sometimes these short stories were interesting.

  VENICE—A Hollywood nurse was killed Wednesday morning by an exploding bomb rigged to the ignition system of her boyfriend's car.

  Cheshire Davis, 32, was leaving the home of 35-year-old Brett Macklin at about 6 a.m. when the blast occurred. Police say she triggered the bomb when she tried to start his car, a vintage 1959 Cadillac.

  The blaze resulting from the explosion was quickly contained by firefighters before it could do more than superficial damage to Macklin's home.

  A police spokesman said there is no apparent motive for the bombing and, refusing to venture an explanation of any kind, noted an investigation is under way. Macklin is owner and operator of Blue Yonder Airways in Santa Monica and has no history, according to police sources, of any "criminal associations."

  The early morning blast jolted residents living as far as two miles away from Macklin's home, police say.

  Mordente felt that annoying tingle between her shoulder blades that told her there was something more to the story than she caught at first glance.

  She read the story again. So maybe one of 'em had a jilted lover that tried to get even. The tingle didn't fade. Mordente gave the story a third goingover, wondering what it was about the article that nagged at her.

  Then it hit her. That name . . . Macklin . . . she had heard it somewhere before. She got up, her hunger forgotten, and dashed down the stairwell to the Times morgue.

  # # # # # #

  The smoke from the fire was trapped in Brett Macklin's house. It clung to the walls, his body, the furniture. Everything he ate or drank in the house tasted charred.

  He spent the morning moving aimlessly through the house, trying to hide from it. But the smell was everywhere. And so was Cheshire. Everywhere he turned he was confronted by her presence—the houseplants Cheshire had brought over and nurtured; the dish towels she had made while they watched old movies on TV
together; her makeup scattered on the bathroom countertop; her comforter, covered with broken glass, in a heap on the bed.

  Macklin felt smothered, on the verge of screaming. Death was everywhere, closing in on him. Yet he couldn't leave the house. Something kept him there. He picked up the glass, shard by shard, from the bedroom and made the bed. He got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed the chocolate ice cream off the kitchen floor. He cleaned the house like a robot, unthinking, performing the tasks as if controlled by some irreversible computer program.

  By late afternoon, there was nothing else to clean, nowhere to hide. He was forced to feel. He felt the coldness gradually sweep over him, numbing the dull ache of sadness as it had months before.

  He paced in the living room. The coldness inside him was melting under the searing heat of a new emotion. It scorched through him, fed by his sadness. It flushed his skin, tightened his face muscles, and quickened his heartbeat.

  His depression was gone, beaten. A familiar voice spoke to him again.

  Make them pay.

  Macklin rebounded, snapping out of his depressed lethargy. He called up a local rent-a-car place and had them deliver a full-size Chevrolet Impala. He took the Glad bag filled with Saputo's trash, put it in the trunk, and drove to Kmart, where he bought a pair of plastic gloves to examine the typewriter ribbons.

  While Mother Nature drop-kicked transients into the Pacific Ocean, crushed European luxury cars, and swatted homes off the Hollywood hills, Macklin was sitting alone in the cavernous Blue Yonder hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, wading through Saputo's trash.

  First, he studied everything that had been typed on the ribbons by reading them backward, following the three lines of letters in a W-shaped trail and jotting them down on a legal pad.

  The ribbon contained memos to kiddie-porn distributors that promised new films within several weeks and a regular production schedule. Also, Macklin read through sales copy for the kiddie-porn films and products:

  ". . . Kiddie Call Girls, Moppet Cock Suckers, and Cuddly Clit offer the demanding man hot child sexuality at its erotic best . . ."