The One-Eyed Judge

by Ponsor, Michael;

  “Have a ball,” Patterson added.

  Linda Ames did not look a bit bothered, which Campanella certainly would be if he were her. With an indifferent expression, she gathered the papers together and dumped them into her briefcase, then looked at the two of them.

  “I’ll get together with my client, then maybe we can talk again.”

  “Not a whole lot to talk about,” Patterson said.

  Campanella watched as Ames gave the FBI agent an appraising look.

  “You may be right,” she said. “But you’ve been pretty open with me, so I’ll reciprocate.”

  Patterson reached into the pocket of his gray linen jacket. It impressed Campanella how sharp Patterson always looked. Campanella could try for the rest of his life, and for two lives after that, and he’d never look half as cool as Special Agent Michael Patterson.

  “Want a pistachio?” Patterson asked.

  Ames smiled and nodded her head. “You bet. I’m starving.”

  Patterson dumped a generous pile onto the desk in front of Ames. “Help yourself.”

  “Okay, I’ve got two things for you to think about,” Ames said. Campanella noticed that Ames took the approach of methodically opening half a dozen shells first, then eating them in a group, fast and greedily. Patterson always went one by one. He tried to think if this was telling him something about Ames but came up empty.

  “First,” Ames said, “something sort of unusual has happened I think you ought to know about.”

  “Okay.” Campanella looked carefully at his adversary across the desk. She was still busily shelling pistachios with her eyes down. Patterson had a half smile creeping over the far side of his face where Ames couldn’t see. Did Patterson think Ames was funny? Attractive?

  “I’ve never done this before,” Ames said. She popped another handful of pistachios into her mouth.

  “First time for everything,” Patterson said.

  “Right, here goes. Norcross’s girlfriend …”

  “Oh, God.” Campanella put his hand on his stomach and looked slightly ill. “Now what?”

  “Some English professor who also happens to know Cranmer—”

  Campanella broke in. “The very close friend he mentioned at the—”

  “Right, at the initial appearance. Claire Lindemann.” Ames chewed and swallowed. “Called me out of the blue. Except for the mention in court, I never heard of her. She didn’t sound like a nut job, and she gave me the name of a kid at Amherst College, someone who might have a grudge against Cranmer, who she thinks might know something about how all this garbage got onto my client’s computer.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Patterson broke in gruffly. “Norcross’s girlfriend is doing investigative work for you?”

  “Oh, Lord.” Campanella dropped his face into his hands. This case was supposed to be a layup.

  “I know, it’s loony tunes. But here’s the kid’s name. I’ll be talking to Sid about this, naturally. Maybe give the kid a call.” Ames shoved a sheet of yellow paper, folded in half, across the desk toward Campanella, blank side up. “Up to you if you want to do anything with him. Just letting you know.”

  “Do you plan to let Norcross know about Lindemann’s phone call?” Campanella knew this was a Hail Mary, trying to fob a nasty job off onto the defense attorney.

  Ames snorted. “Oh yeah, like I’m going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.” She leaned back and folded her arms. “Anyway, why would I do it? Lindemann’s not a witness herself, just a middle man.”

  “Middle woman.” Patterson reached across the desk and shoved the slip of paper back toward Ames. “We don’t work for you, Linda. Do your own interviewing.”

  “Fine. It’s your decision. But if it comes up later, I can say I told you. I’ll probably give the kid a call, like I say, but my bet is he won’t want anything to do with me. You might have better luck, Mike, flashing that shiny badge of yours.” Patterson had poured out more pistachios. Ames gave him a grateful look and went back to shelling. “Anyway, now you know.”

  Campanella’s brain was reeling. He stared down at the sheet of paper. Should he submit something ex parte—for the judge’s eyes only—to make sure Norcross knew that this Lindemann person was sticking her oar in? Ames was right, though. She wasn’t a witness. If she’d only passed a name along, Campanella might look like a tattletale going to the judge, as though he wanted to zing Norcross for not recusing himself. On the other hand, had the judge put Lindemann up to this? The possibilities were mind-boggling. Ames was going on.

  “There’s another thing you ought to know. It turns out that Sid Cranmer got a Silver Star from when he was a medic in Vietnam.”

  “I thought it was a Purple Heart,” Patterson said.

  “Silver Star. Much bigger deal. He won’t talk about it, but I did some research. Sid was involved in some horrific battle called Lam Son 719 in 1971.”

  Even inside his mental dust storm, Campanella sensed a sudden change in the feel of the room. Patterson’s body tensed. He sat up, then seemed to notice and make himself relax. Taking his time, he gathered a pile of shells into a heap on the desk and shoved them over the edge into the wastebasket before speaking.

  Patterson’s tone was casual. “Your guy was in Lam Son 719?”

  “Right. I never heard of it, but I checked Wikipedia, and my God …”

  “I know about Lam Son 719.”

  Patterson was a military history buff. He’d talked to Campanella about his library of books on the post-WWII military, especially Vietnam.

  Patterson continued. “So that’s where Cranmer got his star?”

  “Something like that,” Ames said. “And I thought, with you getting wounded in Afghanistan …”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Little birdie.”

  Campanella watched Patterson, who had fallen silent and was drumming absently on the desk with his fingers. One of the deputy marshals must have mentioned Patterson’s combat record to Ames. Hadn’t he been rescued by a medic? Two or three of the deputies had been on deployments to the Middle East, and Ames had probably managed to wheedle this information out of one of them.

  Ames lifted her chin at Patterson. “Any more pistachios?”

  “You’ve eaten them all.” Patterson tossed the empty bag into the wastebasket.

  “My bad. If there’s no more food, I’ll be heading out.” Ames picked up her briefcase and stood. “I’ll go over this stuff with Sid and get back to you.”

  The folded piece of paper was still sitting on the desk when she left.

  22

  Claire Lindemann steered up her driveway, stopped with a jerk, and cranked the hand brake. She’d drunk three large glasses of some sort of delicious red wine—exactly what vintage, she couldn’t recall—and she was happy to be home without attracting the attention of the Amherst constabulary. All she needed at this point was a DUI. David would go ape shit.

  The evening with Darren Mattoon had turned out frighteningly well. Darren made her laugh, really laugh, which was something she needed to do more of. She was flattered at how obviously he was interested in her and impressed at how tactfully he was letting her know. His careful, self-assured approach was awakening something in her that felt free and sexy. The kiss on her cheek at the end of the evening was affectionate to just the right degree, and he offered no more snarky comments about Sid Cranmer.

  Somehow, out of her giddy and intoxicated mind, the thought emerged that something dramatic needed to be done about David. Unless she took forceful action, she was going to wake up in Darren Mattoon’s bed fairly soon, probably in the next month. Some headlong evening, she’d let herself be convinced that it was just recreational, just a romp in the hay, and it would be, literally, a fucking disaster. As she sat in her drive, listening to the faint whistle of her own breathing and the ticking of the car’s engine
as it cooled, her need to take some wild and extravagant action grew in intensity.

  Before long, it was obvious exactly what had to happen. Claire needed to go to David’s house. Right then. It was after ten p.m., but he’d be back from DC. It was possible he’d still be up, and if she got him out of bed, then what the hell. They needed a large bucket of ice water thrown over their heads. Exactly what this meant as a practical matter and not as a metaphor, she wasn’t sure, but now was the time, and she was the person to do it, whatever it might be. She shifted into reverse, backed quickly out of her driveway, and sped off on her quest.

  A few minutes later, Claire felt uncertainty gnawing at the edges of her brave impulse. She’d been determined, for once in her overintellectualized life, just to do something without thinking it to death, but it was not coming easy. Her dwindling confidence took a big hit when she oversteered a turn, bumped up onto a neighbor’s lawn, and missed taking out a mailbox by a whisker.

  By the time she was making her way up David’s shadowy driveway, she was in a losing battle with a strong sense of impending doom. It was very possible that she was about to screw up badly again. Would David mistake her for a burglar? An outraged litigant? Did he own a gun?

  The nights had gotten frosty, and the trees bending over David’s house had dropped some of their leaves. They made a deafening racket as she waded through them toward his front door. The house was dark except for a glow from the right-hand upstairs window, David’s bedroom. When she stopped walking and stood in front of his door, the leaves mostly settled down, and except for a soft fluttering, all was quiet. Her breath came in silvery puffs against the moonlight.

  Apparently, he hadn’t heard her. He must be in bed, probably reading. The cool air was dissolving the fog in her head, revealing what a truly borderline idea this whole thing was. Nevertheless, she reached up, took hold of the knocker, and gave it a tentative clack. Four woofs, the first one softly uncertain and the final three good and hearty, immediately broke the silence. A sound of footsteps followed. Rubicon.

  When he answered the door, David was in his painfully familiar burgundy bathrobe and slippers. Marlene, standing behind him, looked ready to resume barking at first, but when she picked up that it was Claire, she began hopping around, trying to wriggle past David.

  “Claire?” David’s face didn’t give much away.

  She plunged. “When I started on my way out here, I thought we needed to have an immediate and serious conversation.” She struggled with the tricky phrase “serious conversation,” but then, by a miracle, what needed to happen—what she really wanted to have happen—and why she had made her dangerous journey—suddenly became clear to her. It helped that under his robe David was wearing the cranberry silk pajamas she’d given him, an outfit that belonged, in her opinion, as much to her as to him.

  David tipped his head. “Okay.” A smile, very faint, was forming at the edges of his eyes. “A serious conversation.”

  Marlene nosed forward, and Claire patted her head.

  “But now that I’m here, all I want to do is …” She was trying to find a phrase that would get her point across without being too coarse.

  David put his finger on her lips. “For once, let’s not talk.”

  She bit his finger, not too hard, and he pulled it back.

  “See that?” He touched his finger to her mouth again and then held it up. “Now I need you to make it better.”

  David swept his arm across the threshold and toward the staircase, an ironical, showy gesture, like a concierge at a fancy hotel giving a lavish welcome to a favorite guest. With a glance up at David as she passed, Claire proceeded straight up the stairs, unbuttoning her blouse as she went. David followed, putting his hand on her right hip.

  In David’s bedroom—their bedroom—Claire found the blankets folded back in a neat triangle where he had gotten up. The lamp on his side of the bed was on, and two piles of First Circuit appellate decisions, one faceup, one facedown, were sitting in the space Claire usually occupied. David threw back the bedspread, shooting the papers onto the carpet in a swirling shower. Very soon, it was clear that, whatever else was going haywire with them, one part of their relationship was working as beautifully as ever.

  23

  Buddy liked that the new girl was chubby.

  “The roly-polies are my favorite,” he drawled. “Remember … what was her name?”

  He’d managed, after several tries, to reach Buddy on his cell. His nephew needed a lot of lead time, and a lot of reminders, to get his head into the game. Right now, he could tell from the background noise that Buddy was trawling the mall—probably the one in Holyoke, which he called his Fishin’ Hole. He’d be playing his usual game of selling pot to the middle schoolers. When a girl—or a boy if he was young and pretty enough—didn’t have the cash, Buddy would sometimes swap half an ounce for a blow job in the back of his pickup.

  He guessed Buddy was at his hangout spot near the entrance. A burst of engine noise in the background, some dickhead teenager showing off, drowned out the piped-in pop music and the gabble of voices. He couldn’t remember the porky girl’s name either. Something Jewish-sounding, just a few months ago. He was getting fuzzy in his middle age.

  “We’re going to need you to book the room, Buddy, but not until that morning, okay? Buddy?” As usual, the kid was pissing him off. “Buddy, are you there?” He could hear some kind of conversation in the background and waited. After a little while, Buddy came back on.

  “Sorry, man. The fish are biting.”

  “Listen to me, okay?”

  “I’m listening. I book the room, like last time.”

  “But not until that morning, Buddy. And don’t forget your outfit. We don’t …”

  “Hey, man, you know how I like dressing up. No way the girl at the desk will ever pick me out.” He spoke off to the side, fainter. “Hello, sweetheart. Can I help you with something?”

  “Buddy, listen, are you there?”

  “Right. What day was it again?”

  “The Saturday before Columbus Day. Jesus Christ, we talked about this. At the Ho Jo’s.”

  “What? Oh right. I got it on my phone.”

  “And, Buddy, tell them—”

  “I know. Tell them we need a quiet room, away from—”

  “Because I have trouble sleeping. Something at the back.”

  “Got it. And pay cash. But call me that morning, okay? I lose track sometimes.” More voices to the side. Business must be good. He couldn’t help being a little envious.

  Buddy suddenly laughed. “Hey, listen to this. I’ll hold the phone up.” There was some pop song in the background. He couldn’t make out the lyrics.

  “Come on, Buddy. Stay focused here.”

  “Gotta run. Sorry.” And the line went dead.

  Fucking idiot.

  24

  Despite his reluctance, Patterson had picked up Linda Ames’s slip of paper after their meeting and put it in his pocket. This had bugged Campanella. He’d asked, nervously, what Patterson was planning to do. Patterson had told him he didn’t know.

  “I wish you wouldn’t poke around, Mike. It’s just going to complicate things.”

  “I probably won’t.”

  Campanella had looked suspicious. He was no dummy.

  “If you do talk to someone, for God’s sake, don’t put anything in writing, okay? I’ll have to turn any new witness statements over to Linda, and she’ll try to stuff them down my throat at the trial.” He’d watched Patterson carefully. “Can we at least agree on that?”

  Patterson thought for a while, then said, “It’s a deal, Paul. Nothing in writing.”

  “It would be better not to contact this kid at all. It’s just giving Ames a stick to beat me with. If she lists him as a witness, you can talk to him then.”

  “Got it. I probably won�
��t do anything. I don’t know.”

  Campanella grimaced. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell anyone I told you not to follow up on this.” He stroked his goatee nervously. “I had a hard enough time convincing Boston to let me take this case on my own, okay? I don’t need any red herrings complicating the trial.”

  Campanella’s boss, U.S. Attorney Buddy Hogan, had been blunt. He’d let Campanella take his first solo flight, he said, but if Campanella crashed such an easy case, he’d be back sorting documents in the subbasement of the Worcester courthouse for the next decade.

  “Those herrings,” Patterson said. “They’ll swim right up your butt.” They both laughed, and Patterson stood. He patted Campanella’s arm and smiled down at him. “Don’t worry, Paul. This conversation never happened.”

  Patterson’s statement that he didn’t know what he was going to do with Ames’s note was not quite true. In fact, Patterson did know. He owed it to Cranmer—not to the moth-eaten little professor of today, but to the scared, gutsy kid up in the chopper forty years ago—to check out this Jaworski character. The interview probably wouldn’t go anywhere, but he’d feel better.

  As he merged into the traffic on I-91 heading north from the courthouse toward Amherst, Patterson ran over the handful of facts he knew about Jaworski. He was a junior, a computer science major, and he came from Chicago, where his dad was a big shot. His girlfriend—Lizzy Spencer? Libby Spencer?—was the girl they’d run into at the arrest scene. She was Cranmer’s research assistant and probably would have been happy to sneak Jaworski into the professor’s house. According to what Claire Lindemann had told Ames, Jaworski had a beef with Cranmer over some class he’d taken. Patterson had trouble imagining a mediocre grade provoking all this, but with some of these kids nowadays—especially the rich, entitled ones—you never knew.

  The visit to Jaworski was prompted partly by convenience. The kid’s condo was located on his route home from Springfield to Amherst Woods. It was coming on toward sunset as he passed Holyoke driving north, and the slanting light deepened the lingering greens and contrasting oranges and reds lining the Connecticut River. Columbus Day was coming up, the peak of the foliage. Now and then, on a rise, he’d catch a glimpse of the smoky Berkshires off in the distance to the west. He was getting a soft spot for this area. The rented house was very comfortable, and Margaret and James were starting to make friends at the high school. A year here wasn’t the end of the world.