Final Appeal raa-2

by Lisa Scottoline

  “It’s time!” somebody shouts, and then everybody starts blowing horns and noisemakers, like New Year’s Eve.

  “Ready for the countdown?” shouts a pretty blonde in a dark suit. She checks her watch, as do several of the others.

  “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!”

  The kids all shout, growing giddier with each second. I have no idea what is going on.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine!” says one of the partyers, who’s older than the others. He takes me by the hand and pulls me inside. “Count with us!”

  “What for?” I yell, over the din.

  “Six! Five!” shouts the crowd in unison. “Four! Three! Two!”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Justice!” He raises a plastic glass. “The Court denied the stay in Hightower. This is the big day! 9:03!”

  “One! Zero!”

  “Good-bye, Tommy!” shouts the blonde, next to a familiar head of wiry hair.

  Ben. He sees me in the doorway, and his shocked expression freezes for a moment. Then he turns his back on me.

  24

  “You had a phone call, Grace,” Eletha calls out from Armen’s office, as soon as I get into chambers. “From that reporter.”

  “Reporter?” I pause in the doorway to Armen’s office, taken aback by the sight. Everything has been packed up. There’s not a trace of Armen still visible; none of the books he loved or the objects he collected. Even the cudgel he kept on the wall has been wrapped. I feel a sharp twinge inside.

  “That stringer, the one who was givin’ Susan such a hard time after the memorial service.” She pushes a stiff strand of hair out of her eyes, looking beautiful without even trying. No wonder Armen loved her. “The curly guy, who needed the shave. Faber.”

  Are you gonna let somebody get away with murder? “I know the one. Did he leave his number?”

  “You’re not gonna call him back, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s an ass. He called here, buggin’ Ben, even Sarah. Artie hung up on him.” She strips some wide packing tape from a roll and presses it onto a box. “I can’t be bothered. I got another asshole to deal with. Did you see?” She steps aside, presenting the chair behind her like Vanna White. A long Indian headdress is draped over the chair. Its feathers are a brilliant cardinal red, with orange in the center, and the pointy tips of each plume are black. It’s easily eight feet long and makes a gaudy caterpillar onto the carpet.

  “What’s that doing here?”

  “It’s Galanter’s, he’s the chief now, get it? Think he’ll wear it behind the goddamn desk?” She shakes her head. “Meanwhile, check out what’s going on down the hall. You won’t believe that either.”

  “I saw.”

  “They should be ashamed of themselves. I called the clerk’s office upstairs. They’ll stop ’em.”

  “Was Galanter in?”

  “He’s been gone all morning.”

  “Where?”

  “Damned if I know. He left some typing for me, like I’m his goddamn secretary.”

  I turn to go. “I gotta check the mail.”

  “How was your weekend?” she calls after me.

  I think of my newfound father, then the secret apartment full of toys. “Same old same old.”

  “You’re talkative this morning.” She’s puzzled by my coldness, and I decide to level with her in a way she didn’t with me. Or maybe I want to pick a fight.

  “Actually, I had an interesting weekend, El. Went up to West Philly.”

  “You? In my neighborhood? What’s up there?”

  “Armen’s apartment.”

  Her mouth forms a glossy chestnut-stained O. “Say what?”

  I close the door behind me. “I thought I knew you, El, but it turns out I don’t.”

  She eases down onto one of the boxes. “Now don’t say that.”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “How’d you find out about the apartment?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I came across some papers in here the other night. A lease.”

  “I thought I packed all that stuff.”

  “You didn’t tell me about Malcolm.”

  “You expected me to?”

  “Of course, we’re friends. I thought he was yours and your ex’s.”

  She points an electric nail at me. “I never told you that. You assumed it.”

  “You let me assume it.”

  “You’d’ve blamed me.”

  “Blamed you? It’s him I blame.”

  She frowns. “Armen? Why?”

  “Hitting on women who work for him. First you, then me.”

  “Armen wasn’t like that.”

  I look away at the bookshelves, empty and hollow. “Come on, El. I wasn’t born yesterday and neither were you. It’s the same old shit, just in a black robe.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t or isn’t?”

  “Wasn’t,” she says firmly. “It’s ancient history.”

  “Good. So he wasn’t cheating on me, just his wife.”

  “We ended before he met Susan, Grace.”

  It sets my teeth on edge. “Then why didn’t he marry you?”

  “Because I said no.”

  “What?” It’s a surprise.

  “The bottom line is”—she pauses, then laughs and throws up her hands—“we fell in love, then we got pregnant. He wanted to make it legal, but I couldn’t see marryin’ him, takin’ him away from everybody he loved. His mother. His community.”

  “What community?”

  “The Armenians. The dinners, the church, the whole thing. It was the center of his life.” She looks down. “You think his mama liked it when she met me, my belly big as a watermelon? I’m half the reason she killed herself.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know. Armen always blamed himself. So when he asked, I said no.” She sighs. “Don’t think I haven’t regretted it, plenty of times. I even felt a little jealous of you.”

  “Me?”

  She waves it away. “Water under the bridge. It was the right thing. I didn’t fit in his life.”

  “Did Susan?”

  She wrinkles her stubby nose. “Not really, but he fit into hers. Now you were different, you woulda been the one. You fit into his life and he fit into yours.”

  I feel a lump in my throat. I know that, inside.

  “With him and me, we were betwixt and between, both of us. My family wasn’t in love with the situation either. It never would’ve worked.”

  “So you took Malcolm yourself and raised him?”

  “Not on my own. Armen was in on every decision, we talked about Mal all the time. He was a great father, Grace. The best.”

  “How’d you swing it financially?”

  “Armen paid Malcolm’s expenses. Now I don’t know what’ll happen.” She flicks some imaginary dirt out from under a nail. “It’s part of the reason I’m thinking about quitting school. To get another job at night.”

  I think of the checkbook. “Did Armen leave a will or anything?”

  She laughs. “For what? He had no extra money, it went to us. You saw the apartment, he bought that boy everything. I told you he saved. Well, it was Malcolm he was saving for, for his college.”

  “How much had he saved?”

  “About fifty–sixty grand, like I told you. Not bad, huh?” She smiles proudly, and the irony hits me full force. I can’t shake the image of the $650,000, socked away in a money fund. Did Armen hold out on her and Malcolm?

  “Let’s say he did have money, Eletha. Do you think he had a will? Did Susan say anything?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Does she know about you and him?”

  Eletha’s eyes widen comically. “You crazy, girl?”

  I smile, feeling my hostility subsiding. Maybe I wouldn’t have told me either. “Why not?”

  “Uh-uh.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to tell her, and he p
romised me he wouldn’t. She has no idea.”

  “But how did he get away every Sunday?”

  “How do most men get away? Work. Clubs. It became his Sunday off. We were careful during the campaign, laid low, and she found plenty to do, believe me. She was into him early on, but when she caught Potomac fever she left him behind.”

  “Is that when he asked for a divorce?”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy again. “Armen? Never. He loved her in his bones. She’s the one who called it quits.”

  I don’t understand. “Susan was the one who ended the marriage, not Armen? But he told me she’d asked him to stay with her.”

  “Through the campaign, because she needed a hubby to smile pretty for the pictures. Otherwise, that woman didn’t need him at all.”

  I sit down in one of the chairs at the conference table. “I don’t know what to think, El. I don’t understand Armen. I don’t understand anything.”

  “You’re takin’ this bad, girlfriend,” Eletha says. “What don’t you understand, baby? Mommy make it better.”

  “I don’t know if Armen was a bad guy or a good guy.”

  “A good guy. Next question.”

  “I don’t know who killed him.”

  “He killed himself. Next.”

  I look at her in bewilderment. “How can you say that? You had a son with him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said he was a good father.”

  “He was. The best.”

  “How could he be? What kind of father leaves his own child?” I think of my own father, though I hadn’t started out thinking about him. Suddenly I need to know the answer to the question, burning like hot lead at the core of my chest. “Tell me that, Eletha. How can a father turn his back on his own flesh and blood?”

  “Because he has no choice. Maybe the pain is too great to stay.” She shakes her head. “Look, you left your husband, didn’t you? Why?”

  “He cheated on me,” I say, the words dry as dust in my mouth. “It’s not the same.”

  “Yes, it is. You loved him, didn’t you? But you left.”

  “I had to.”

  “Right. You had no choice. Just because you left doesn’t mean you didn’t love.”

  I feel a catch in my throat. I can’t say anything. I think of Sam, Armen, then my father. I need Ricki, fast.

  Eletha folds her arms. “And I always thought you were so smart. Fancy degrees and all.”

  “You just assumed wrong,” I say to her, and she laughs.

  The marshals’ smelly gym is empty; it’s midafternoon. Against the wall is a huge mirror and racks of chrome free weights. A treadmill stands at the end behind some steppers. On the far wall hangs a poster of Christie Brinkley and beside it one of the electric chair. At the bottom it says: JUSTICE—FRIED OR EXTRA CRISPY? I kid you not.

  “How can they have that there?” I ask Artie, who’s flat on his back, pumping a barbell up and down over his chest.

  “Have what?”

  “That poster.” I point, and his eyes follow my finger.

  “Christie? She’s a babe. An old babe, like you.”

  “The other one, whiz.”

  He hoists the barbell up and down, exhaling like a whale through a blowhole. “I never noticed it. They let me work out here, Grace, I don’t give a shit about the artwork. Which rep am I on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a lousy spotter.” He presses the barbell into the air.

  I can’t take my eyes from the poster. The newspaper said that Hightower’s last meal was steak and an ice cream sundae. He ate the dessert first. After dinner he played Battleship with his guard, and the guard won. “Artie, if you were playing Battleship with a man who was condemned to death, wouldn’t you let him win?”

  “What?” The barbell rises and falls.

  “Wouldn’t you let him win? I mean, the man’s going to die.”

  “I don’t know, would you?” He grunts with effort, his bangs damp from sweat.

  “Of course. I let Maddie win all the time. What’s the difference? It’s a game.”

  “Games matter, Grace.”

  “Excuse me, I forgot who I was talking to.” I look back at the poster. The witnesses at Hightower’s execution said he shook his head back and forth as the lethal chemicals flowed into his veins. His feet trembled and his fingers twitched for about three minutes, and then it was over. Final, unknowable, and beyond this world. “Artie, what do you think about the death penalty?”

  “What is this, menopause? Hot flashes and questions?”

  “Come on. Tell me what you think.”

  “I don’t think about the death penalty.”

  “But if you had to say, how do you come out?”

  He presses the barbell all the way up to a hook on a rack behind him, where it falls with a resounding clang. “It’s no biggie.” His arms flop over the sides of the bench.

  “I thought you were against it.”

  “That was when I was fucking Sarah. Now that she’s fucked me, it’s just fine.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  He pushes his wet hair away from his forehead. “Yes, I do.”

  “But think about the act. The actual act of killing someone.”

  “I could do it, if he deserved it.”

  “My, we’re in a macho mood.”

  “You started it. This isn’t why I asked you to meet me in my branch office.”

  I laugh. He has been spending a lot of time here, I gather because he’s out of work and avoiding Sarah. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”

  “I wanted to tell you I was sorry about the other night. I drank too much. I wasn’t making any sense.”

  “It’s okay. I understand why it happened.” Drowning your sorrows. I’ve done it exactly once.

  “Thanks, Mom.” He rubs his chest, and sweat soaks through his thin T-shirt. I remember the basketball underneath.

  “You still got that tattoo?”

  “Until I find a blowtorch.” He sits up, straddling the bench, then sighs heavily. “Lifting sucks. I miss hoops.”

  “You’re not playing anymore?”

  “Nah. The team broke up.” He wipes his forehead with the edge of his T-shirt. “You know, before Sarah dumped me she told me something. She said you thought Armen was murdered.”

  “I do.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Why, what do you think? You gonna laugh at me?”

  “No. I even thought of it myself, for a minute. After the way Galanter’s been acting.”

  It surprises me. “You suspect Galanter?”

  “I didn’t know about suspecting him, but if anybody did it, he did.”

  “Why?”

  “Besides the fact that he’s a dick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he wanted to be chief judge. He would never have been chief if Armen hadn’t died.” Artie straightens up, rallying. “And remember how Bernice went after him?”

  “Do you think becoming chief judge is enough of a motive?”

  He snorts. “What are you, funny? It’s the same as Battleship. It’s winning.”

  “People don’t kill to win.”

  “Sure they do. Plenty of people—mostly men, I admit—would kill to win. It’s ambition. Raw, naked, blind, cold. Ambition.”

  I think of Galanter taking a bribe in Canavan and killing Armen to guarantee the result. That makes sense to me, in a perverse way. “I don’t agree. I think people kill for money—or love.”

  “Love? Not Galanter, what does he know from love? He’s not even married, he lives for the frigging job. He has an Indian headdress, Grace. The man is not fucking kidding.”

  “True.”

  “As chief judge, he’ll get on all the Judicial Conference committees. Get to go to D.C., hobnob with the Supremes. It even positions him for the next appointment to the Court. Look at Breyer, he was chief.”

  The Supreme Court. I hadn’t thought
of that. Combined with Canavan, that’s one hell of a motive.

  “It’s a place in history, Grace.”

  I remember that Galanter has a collection of first editions in his office. “He would love that.”

  “He sure would. It’s the top of the profession. They ain’t final because they’re right, they’re right because they’re final.”

  “But Galanter’s a Republican appointee.”

  “The Dems won’t be in forever, babe.” He looks down, then shakes his head. “Justice Galanter. That’s so beat. Can’t you just hurl?”

  I consider this, and he’s right. I could just hurl.

  25

  I slip my master key into the doorknob. It turns with a satisfying click, admitting me to the darkened chambers. No one’s there, as I expected; it’s too late even for geeks. I told my mother I had to work late, killing two birds with one stone: avoiding her and poking around. I enter the reception area and close the door quietly behind me.

  The computer monitors are on, standing out like vivid squares of hot color in the dark, wasteful but helpful. ORDER IN THE COURT! WELCOME TO THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM! guides me through the reception area, where the blinds are down.

  The chambers are laid out like ours, with the judge’s office to the left. I walk into Galanter’s office; even at the threshold it stinks of cigar smoke. The far wall is entirely of glass, like Armen’s, overlooking the Delaware. The lights from the Camden side make bright wiggly lines on the black water.

  In the light from the wall of windows I can make out Galanter’s glistening desk, also of glass. I walk to it with more nervousness than I want to acknowledge and whip out the flashlight I keep in the car; it says WALT DISNEY WORLD. Official burglary tool, patent pending.

  I flick on the flashlight with an amateurish thrill and flash it around the room. Next to Galanter’s desk are the same shelves we have, where Armen used to keep the current cases. Galanter does it the same way. I look over the shelves. The circle of light falls on each stack of red, blue, and gray briefs, the colors regulated by the Third Circuit’s local rules. Attached to the briefs with a rubber band is the appendix in each case and the record. That’s what I’m looking for.