The Judge

by Randy Singer

  “That’s because I’m using a holistic approach to treatment,” the Swami said. “I’m not injecting chemo poisons into my body. Plus, I’m only eating natural foods, no preservatives, and I’m on an herbal regimen.”

  Finney had noticed that the Swami ate some weird stuff. Now he knew why. He suddenly felt self-conscious about his own burger and fries selection.

  “What parts of your body did you say were affected?” Kareem asked, making the not-so-subtle point that he was unimpressed with the Swami’s regimen.

  “Basically everywhere,” the Swami said, not even trying to put a good face on it.

  “I’m not doing chemo anymore, either,” Finney said. “Once the liver’s involved, it’s just a matter of time. Might as well feel good.”

  They took a few bites in silence before Kareem broke in. “That’s not necessarily true,” he said.

  “What isn’t?” Finney asked.

  “That when the liver’s involved, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Could have fooled me,” Finney said.

  Kareem set down his fork. This subject didn’t do much for a guy’s appetite. “I took an antidepressant drug named Serzone,” Kareem said. “I didn’t notice at the time, but it had a black-box warning on the side listing several potential side effects, including liver failure. About a month ago, I got a call from some big plaintiffs firm that is filing a class-action lawsuit, and I went in to get tested.”

  Kareem frowned at the table, recalling the moment. “Because I’m otherwise pretty healthy, I’m now on a list of possible transplant recipients, though younger patients have priority.”

  Finney just shook his head—what do you say? “I hope you get one,” he managed. “I’ll trade you mine if you’re interested.”

  “I’ll pass, Judge.”

  “You need to change your diet,” the Swami suggested, looking at the slab of meat on Kareem’s plate. “I could hook you up.”

  “Right,” Kareem said. “That way it can spread to my bones and lungs as well.”

  “Did you know you had anything wrong before you got tested?” Finney asked.

  “Not really. I didn’t have much of an appetite and got a little jaundiced, but that’s about it. Since then, I’ve noticed some yellowing in my eyes.”

  Finney looked but couldn’t see anything like that.

  “You ever try green tea extracts?” the Swami asked.

  24

  Finney wasn’t sure who was in charge of enforcing the rules for the island, but he figured that he might as well go straight to the top. After dinner, he knocked on the door to Cameron Murphy’s condo.

  A cameraman had followed Finney and was shooting over his shoulder. As usual, Finney had a small mike attached to his golf shirt with the ever-present battery pack snuggled in the small of his back.

  Murphy answered the door shirtless, wearing a pair of baggy khaki shorts that sagged low enough to expose a two-inch band of boxers. The skin underneath the hair on his bony chest was at least two shades lighter than his tanned neck, face, and arms. He was holding a beer in his right hand.

  “You got a second?” Finney asked.

  Murphy shrugged. “What’s up?”

  Finney motioned to the camera over his shoulder. “Can I ask you something in private?”

  Murphy thought about this and frowned. “Okay,” he said. Then, to the cameraman, “Take a break. Come back in five minutes.”

  Murphy turned and walked toward the wicker furniture in the TV room. “I’d offer you a beer,” he said over his shoulder, “but that would violate our no-fraternization policy.”

  Finney unhooked his mike and the attached battery pack, dropping it all on the kitchen counter. “I don’t drink anyway.”

  “I knew that,” Murphy said as he sank into the couch. “We know a fair amount about you.”

  It was a subtle reference to the speedy-trial cases, an interrogation that Finney was certain Cameron Murphy had watched. And enjoyed.

  “Actually,” Finney said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Finney took a seat, coughed for a minute, and explained his dilemma. The interrogation earlier today had reminded him of another case he had left sitting on his desk. Finney told Murphy about the Terrel Stokes matter, knowing that Murphy’s goons could look it up if they wanted. Finney explained how Stokes had sent a letter to a gang member outside the prison, ultimately resulting in the bloody execution of a critical government informant. He explained how prosecutors had filed a motion to use the out-of-court confession of the witness at trial based on their theory that Stokes had ordered the killing.

  Finney failed to mention that he had ruled from the bench on the same day as the hearing.

  “My recollection is that Stokes has been in jail for nine or ten months already. If that motion filed by the prosecutors is not resolved in a timely manner, I may be looking at another speedy-trial problem. And, Cameron, I’d rather quit this show right now than allow a man like Stokes to go free.”

  Finney waited in silence for an answer, looking Murphy dead in the eye.

  Murphy took a healthy pull on his beer and studied the judge. “Two weeks is going to make a difference?”

  “I’m not sure exactly how long he’s already served,” Finney responded. “But after today, I’m not willing to take any chances. You can’t just arbitrarily set a trial date without giving the defendant a few weeks’ notice so his attorneys can subpoena witnesses and get prepared. And as you undoubtedly know, I don’t set trials until motions like this one are resolved. Two weeks at this stage could make all the difference.”

  “Okay,” Murphy said with an exaggerated sigh. “What are you proposing?”

  “I’ve written a brief opinion resolving the motion. Can you just see that it gets sent to my law clerk, Nikki Moreno?” Finney pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the opinion and her e-mail address.”

  Murphy read the opinion while Finney watched in pained silence.

  Murphy looked up when he finished, studying Finney again with suspicious eyes.

  “I really shouldn’t do this,” Murphy said, and Finney knew he had him. “Don’t tell the others.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And don’t even think about asking again.”

  “I understand.” Finney stood and reached out his hand.

  Murphy rose and shook it awkwardly. “You ought to be a little more diligent with your cases, Judge Finney.”

  Though he wasn’t in the mood, Finney hosted a poker party on his patio that night. It was part of the plan that he and Dr. Kline had cobbled together earlier on the Hobie Cat. Finney would yuk it up with the Swami and the two cameramen who had joined their poker game on the plane. Meanwhile, Kline would pay a visit to Bryce McCormack.

  Finney chomped through two cigars and lost nearly a hundred dollars—no small feat in a dollar-ante game. The Swami was the big winner, but he was probably cheating again. Finney didn’t care. His body was on the patio, but his mind was elsewhere.

  One of his concerns was whether Nikki would catch on to the code he had used. His first thought had been to employ the same code used by Terrel Stokes, but he soon realized that code wouldn’t work. Stokes’s code would have required Nikki to locate any dates, then count down the number of lines that corresponded with the month and then count to the word in that line that corresponded with the day part of the date. But that approach required that the message transmitted to Nikki would stay in exactly the same format as the handwritten message drafted by Finney. There was no way to guarantee that would happen. For example, the eleventh word on the fourth line after the date 4/11 in Finney’s handwritten message wouldn’t necessarily be the same as the eleventh word in the fourth line in whatever typed e-mail Nikki received.

  Finney thought about possible ways to use the computer in his condo to overcome this problem, but he came up empty there as well. The game show’s producers had been explicit in their instructions about computer u
se. They had shown the contestants the computer center, where a bank of screens in front of production assistants displayed everything that appeared on the screens of the contestants’ computers. These assistants monitored every keystroke made by the contestants and had the power, using the keyboards in front of them, to take control of the contestants’ computers and override the contestants’ keystrokes. Any e-mails, instant messages, or other attempts by the contestants to communicate with the outside world were strictly prohibited. In addition, any attempts to access Internet sites with reports or news about the reality show would be blocked. If a contestant abused his or her limited Internet privileges, the computer would be taken away.

  Finney’s other problem was the inability to print documents from his computer. Otherwise, he would have just printed out the document and asked the producers to fax it to Nikki. Any request by Finney to personally type and send the e-mail would have made Murphy and his staff suspicious.

  In the end Finney decided to modify the code slightly from the version used by Stokes. To compensate, he dropped obvious hints to Nikki. He was pretty sure that anybody who could pass the LSAT puzzles and games section would have no problem with this.

  Which was what worried him so much about Nikki. He said a prayer for her as he lost another poker hand and chomped harder on his cigar. The key would be the name of Wellington Farnsworth. If she just picked up on that, she would be fine.

  But as much as he hoped Nikki would figure it out, she was not the main focus of his thoughts as the cool ocean air blew through the back patio of Finney’s condo.

  “You aren’t very talkative tonight, Judge O,” the Swami said.

  “Just thinking,” Finney replied.

  “About what?”

  “A bunch of stuff.”

  It was a lie. He was really only thinking about two things. The code-breaking capacity of Nikki Moreno was a passing concern. But what really weighed him down was the family of a young woman in Youngstown, Ohio, on whom he had inflicted inconsolable grief.

  What kind of judge am I?

  25

  The e-mail arrived at approximately 10:35 p.m., and Nikki just happened to be online. She read the message immediately, her brow knit with confusion. Finney had ruled from the bench the day of the Stokes hearing. The drug case was already scheduled for trial, and as Nikki happened to know from bumping into Mitchell Taylor recently, Stokes was about to be indicted by a grand jury for conspiracy to commit murder as well.

  So what was Finney doing? Why send a written opinion on the Stokes case out of the blue, especially when it was unnecessary? It obviously had something to do with the game show. And knowing Finney’s love of puzzles and codes, it probably contained a hidden message. She read the opinion a second time and tried to remember how the Stokes code worked. It had something to do with the dates—she was sure of that much.

  Opinion in the Matter of Terrel Stokes

  (Revised 6/7)

  In our criminal justice system, things are seldom as clear as this case. A hearing was held in my courtroom on 5/9 with arguments becoming unusually tense. After hearing arguments, I took under advisement the issue of whether an out-of-court confession from an informant who was prepared to testify against Stokes but died on 4/11 under suspicious circumstances may be used at trial if prosecutors need it to prove their case.

  The court is now prepared to rule on that issue.

  Defendant Stokes, an alleged leader in a gang called the Black Gangster Disciples, told other gang members that a man named Antoine Carter was a confidential informant on the government’s witness list. (Stokes passed along this information, which he had received from his attorney, in a letter Stokes wrote from jail dated 4/5.) Did the letter help enlist gang members in an assassination attempt? This court thinks so.

  The 4/5 letter, addressed to Wellington Farnsworth by the defendant, contained coded language presumably understood by Farnsworth to authorize the 4/11 hit. Wellington Farnsworth and others made sure they would have no trouble in the future with gang members turning state’s evidence. They cut out Carter’s tongue and allowed him to choke to death on his own blood.

  In a reply letter to Stokes dated 4/12, Farnsworth and the others confirmed the hit. Farnsworth decided he would use the same code in his letter as the one Stokes had originally used to authorize the hit.

  In the last 4 weeks, through various Westlaw searches and a review of the cases cited by the parties, the court has examined the relevant case law on this issue. It is clear that defendant Stokes procured the absence of a key witness at his trial by ordering a coded hit on the potential informant. Stokes will not be allowed to benefit from his own misconduct.

  Accordingly, this court hereby rules that the out-of-court statement of the informant may be used at trial as well as the 4/5 letter that may account for the death of the informant. The fact that the 4/5 letter is a coded communication does not make it any less culpable. Since all pretrial matters are now resolved, the clerk of the court is ORDERED to set this case for trial on an expedited basis.

  Judge Oliver G. Finney

  Nikki pulled out a sheet of paper and her pen. She was pretty sure she remembered how that Stokes thing went. She would look at the month and count down that number of lines. Then she would look at the day of the month and count over that many words within the line. When she had finished her decoding, Nikki was left with the following message:

  rule called was made death others law _____ _____

  She stared at her solution. The first blank represented a line that didn’t even have enough words to fit the pattern, and the second blank indicated that the message didn’t seem to have enough lines. She was obviously doing something wrong.

  Maybe the days represented how many lines down she needed to go and the months represented how many words in. She checked that method. More nonsense.

  She tried going up the specified numbers of lines instead of down. Argh! Why did Finney have to make things so difficult?

  She read the opinion again. It said revised on 6/7—today’s date. Was that a hint that Finney had revised the code used by Stokes? If so, she’d never figure it out.

  But there was another hint. Wellington Farnsworth. The name rang a bell. She knew it wasn’t somebody involved in the Stokes case, but she couldn’t quite place the name. She stood and started pacing around her apartment. She grabbed some celery sticks from the refrigerator. Maybe they would help.

  Wellington Farnsworth. Wellington Farnsworth. His name might be in Finney’s contact list. She could access the judge’s computer tomorrow. In the meantime, she decided to read through the message one more time.

  When the card game ended, Finney slipped inside his condo and, under the watchful eyes of wall-mounted cameras, lit a cigar, stripped off his shirt, and sat down at his computer. He knew that everything he pulled up on his computer screen, every keystroke he entered, was being mirrored on another screen monitored by one of the show’s assistants. These next few hours would be critical.

  On the one hand, he was probably overreacting. Dr. Kline thought she heard the show’s producer and director talk about having some dirt on the contestants that could be used for blackmail, that could keep the contestants from going to the cops. This afternoon Finney and all the others had found out exactly what the show’s producers had on them. And Javitts had given a plausible explanation for why they were taping those segments—in case any of the contestants didn’t play by the rules.

  But on the other hand, some things still didn’t add up. And besides, Finney loved a good intellectual challenge. If the producers wanted to play “gotcha,” it was a game two could play.

  First, he logged on to Westlaw—a password-protected Internet search engine that Finney had been using for the past ten years. Like thousands of other lawyers, Finney paid a monthly subscription fee that gave him access to every reported case in the country, categorized by jurisdiction and subject matter. Big law libraries with impressive-looking books were a thing of
the past. Westlaw now provided all the information formerly housed in thousands of bound case volumes and more—real estate records, periodicals, newspapers, scientific treatises, regulatory rulings, company information databases, people-finding databases, just about anything a lawyer would need to do his or her job.

  Finney had already used Westlaw a few times yesterday when he had been performing research for his cross-examination of Dr. Ando. Whoever was monitoring Finney’s research would not be surprised if he used it again tonight for more research about Buddhism.

  Finney’s idea to use Westlaw as a pipeline for messages hit Finney right after dinner, just before he drafted the encoded message to Nikki. It would be ideal for several reasons. Nikki used his Westlaw account when she conducted research, so she knew his password. Also, Westlaw stored the history of past search requests in sequence under a tab labeled Research Trail, so Nikki would be able to log on and see what Finney had typed in earlier. Plus, the cumbersome search engine worked better if you entered a date to serve as a cutoff for information. So, for example, typing in “da (after 1/1/05)” in the magazine database meant you were looking for all articles dated after January 1, 2005. Quotes were used to designate an entire phrase to be searched as opposed to individual words. The use of the word and to connect two words or phrases meant that the article had to contain both words or phrases. The use of or meant an article had to contain at least one.

  For tonight’s message, the dates would be critical.

  Finney opened the database for “allnews” and plugged in his first search request:

  da (after 1/1/05) Change and Buddhist and “codes of conduct”

  Westlaw generated one article from the Journal of Sex Research, and Finney decided not to spend much time reviewing that one. A few seconds later, he was typing in his second request:

  da (after 1/1/01) “Frequently quoted” and Buddha

  This search generated six results, and a few of the articles were actually helpful. As Finney scrolled through synopses of the articles, he realized that this would take a lot longer than he had anticipated. Altogether, he would have to plug in around twenty different search requests. And to make it look good, he would have to scroll through several of the magazine articles produced by each request.