The Inglorious Arts

by Alan Hruska

  Judge Porter—a slim, beakish man with a receding hairline and the fierce stare of an egret—looks right at him. “Your meeting, Alec.”

  “Sensitive matter, Judge.”

  “You think I’m biased and should recuse myself.”

  Alec smiles cautiously. “Well, that clears the air.”

  “You guys think I haven’t thought about this issue? After that raking I got in your Biogen case, Brno, I think I’m pretty sensitive to any such appearance. But that’s the point. Any judge on any issue has baggage. The trick is to recognize it and deal with it. Make sure it doesn’t get in the way. Maybe I let it get in the way in Biogen. I won’t here.”

  He glances around the room. “Does that satisfy you guys?”

  Frederick Musselman sits back and gathers himself as if he’s about to propound ancient wisdom. “Certainly. This meeting was not my idea, Judge. I want that made clear.”

  “Thank you, Freddy. Yes, I appreciate that.” The judge shifts his eyes once more to the meeting’s obvious initiator. “Alec?”

  “No, Judge, sorry.”

  “You’re not satisfied,” the judge says, as if already extremely tired of this conversation.

  “Sorry, no.”

  “And you feel you must tell me why.”

  “Two things you said indicate why. You said ‘maybe’ you let your bias get in the way in the Biogen case. The fact is every single judge on the Court of Appeals failed to see any ‘maybe’; they thought it a very clear case. And it wasn’t the normal three-judge panel. The case was heard by the Court of Appeals en banc. Fourteen judges considered the question, and there were no dissents. The second thing you said was that the issue was one of appearance—and, of course, that’s absolutely right. And as difficult as it is for anyone to detect his own bias, it’s almost impossible to detect whether there will be an appearance of bias to others. Biogen shows that. But, of course, the point is obvious.”

  The judge glances at the long-legged man seated to Musselman’s right. “Is it to you, Karol?”

  Karol Stash, who has just filed an appearance as co-counsel for plaintiff, says, “What’s obvious to me, Your Honor, is that this is a motion made without notice, without papers, and without proof of any sort. If there were any proof, we would have seen it in an affidavit. As it is, it’s baseless and presumptuous, not worth a minute more of anyone’s time.”

  “It’s not a motion,” Alec points out. “Because what would waste everyone’s time is the filing of papers. At this stage, Judge—before any rulings have been made in the case—only you can know whether you can deal with it without actual bias. And as for the appearance issue—no reason you shouldn’t take counsel on the subject. Not, however, from the parties or their lawyers.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “That you talk to someone. Another judge.”

  “And you have someone in mind?”

  “Yes. Judge Weinfeld.”

  Judge Porter laughs. “Eddie Weinfeld. The holy man of this court.”

  “And we keep the matter informal. No motion for recusal. No papers at all. Judge Weinfeld blesses this, we’ll shut up.”

  “Quite a package.”

  “Meant to be fair,” Alec says.

  “Freddy?”

  “I think this whole thing’s ridiculous. You’ve already thought it through; nothing more need be done.”

  “Caddy?”

  “I agree with Alec, Judge. No one can go wrong taking counsel from Eddy Weinfeld.”

  The only sound in the room is the exhalation of breath from the jurist.

  “All right,” he says finally. “I’ll sleep on it and let you know soon.”

  As they file into the corridor, Caddy Breen asks Karol Stash, “What the hell’re you doing showing up in this case?”

  “Helping Freddy, obviously.”

  “Really!” Breen says, and turns to Musselman. “I thought you considered this case to be open and shut.”

  “I do indeed,” Musselman says. “But there’s the next one to consider.”

  “Oh, yes? Which one is that?”

  “I seriously doubt, Cadigan, that you’ve forgotten about the 125 other public utilities standing in the wings.”

  “Oh, those fellows,” Breen says, and turns to Alec. “We’re not worried about those fellows, are we?”

  “Shouldn’t think so, no.”

  They ride down together in a crowded elevator and part with nods in the lobby, Alec and Caddy heading downtown. On the street, they walk together. Breen says, “So you think he’ll take your bait, talk to Weinfeld?”

  “I think any judge on that court would be happy to have a reason to confer with Eddie Weinfeld.”

  “And Weinfeld will tell him to recuse?”

  “Like a shot,” Alec says.

  “No other judge on that court would.”

  “I know.”

  Breen stops at the corner of Water Street. “You’re what? Fifteen, eighteen years younger than me? How the hell do you know these judges so well?”

  Alec smiles and looks toward the entrance to his building. “That’s me, Caddy, 60 Water. If you hear first, let me know.”

  Upstairs, in Alec’s office, Ben Braddock and Frank Macalister lie in wait.

  “So how’d that go?” Braddock asks from Alec’s chair.

  “He didn’t hold us in contempt.”

  “He’ll talk to Weinfeld?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then you got him,” Mac says, circling to the doorway, possibly to block Alec’s retreat. “See, Ben? I told you about this kid. He eats with the judges. You want to predict how they’ll react, talk to Alec.”

  “What the hell you mean,” says Braddock, “ ‘eats with the judges’?”

  “Judges’ lunchroom,” Alec says. “Federal courthouse, Foley Square. Awful food. I think you’re familiar with it.”

  “What the fuck you doing in the judges’ lunchroom?”

  “I’m invited there. Once a week, usually. By the chief judge, Rivington Kane. We consult.”

  “You do what?” Braddock says.

  “You remember,” Mac says, “that job you pushed him to take? When was it? Ten years ago. Secretary to the Judiciary Committee, City Bar. Well, two years later he was secretary of the whole damn bar association. That put him on the Planning and Program Committee of the Second Circuit Judicial Conference, and now he’s the chairman. So the chief judge, who actually cares about how that conference is run, pulls him into his lunchroom once a week to talk about it—and, as it happens, to witness all the interesting things that go on there.”

  Alec hangs up his suit coat in his closet and sits facing Braddock, who still occupies Alec’s desk chair. “Whether or not Mark Porter steps down,” Alec says, “we have a case to deal with, and there’s only one way to do that.”

  “You want some facts,” Braddock says.

  “Right. Facts. On about a hundred transactions. Gathered and analyzed by a large team of lawyers and businessmen. Which should show that, no matter what our client was signaling in the press, it was doing the opposite—cutting the hell out of the price. For any sale it wanted to make.”

  “Nice theory,” Braddock says.

  “Which is why we need facts,” Alec says.

  “What you’re talking about,” says Mac, now seated on the radiator shelf, “is what we call an elephant fuck.”

  “Correct,” Alec says.

  “Bad timing,” says Mac.

  “I know everyone’s strapped.”

  “Strapped!” Macalister says with a laugh. “You know what happened while you were in Porter’s chambers this afternoon? You remember we asked the Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus against Judge Ettinger in the government antitrust case against U.S. Computer Corp.?”

  Braddock chimes in with his singsong voice. “The extraordinary writ of mandamus. Highly disfavored, never granted—unless the trial judge is behaving like a total ass.”

  “Well, they just granted
it here,” says Macalister. They told Ettinger, in effect, to stop fucking around. That trial will now move with a vengeance.”

  Braddock rises. “My signal to leave. You can have your chair back.”

  As Braddock ambles out of the office, Mac watches while Alec regains his seat.

  Mac says, “You’d better talk to Jack.”

  “Jack Stamper?”

  “Yeah. You want half the office to work day and night on Allis-Benoit? He wants two-thirds for U.S. Computer Corp.”

  “We need a firm meeting,” Alec says.

  “Department heads, anyway. Ben just went off to schedule it. Saturday morning. Not here. Basement of his co-op building. Get your speech ready.”

  “I need a speech?”

  “You want to take associates from forty partners who consider themselves overworked—and most actually are!—you need a speech. And it’d better be damn convincing.”

  Jesse, still feeling very much not at home, opens the door to admit the owner of the apartment.

  Karol Stash says, “Did you lock the door?”

  “You don’t?” Jesse says.

  “Not usually,” he says, dropping his attaché case in the hallway and stripping off his jacket. “There’s no one else on this landing.”

  They look at each other awkwardly for a moment. “Have you had dinner?” he says.

  “A couple of hours ago.”

  “All good?”

  “Lizzie, your housekeeper, did all the work. Kenny’s been asleep for an hour.”

  “Any coffee left?”

  “There’s a pot of tea, still warm.”

  “Would you join me? I’d like to hear about the day.”

  “Sure,” Jesse says.

  The apartment occupies the top floor of a new condo building with views from the living room across the Hudson River and out to New York Bay. More interesting, however, is the northern view from the kitchen: up the Hudson River coasts to the dim lights of New Jersey and the bright lights of New York.

  They settle at the kitchen table with two cups of tea. “So tell me,” Stash says, “how’d it go, how’d the boy do?”

  “For our first day together, I thought it went fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Well, I picked him up from school. We went out to lunch to a burger place he said he liked, but he didn’t eat much. Ordered a burger, then just stared at it. He had a couple of the fries. I think something happened at school that he didn’t want to talk about. So I didn’t push hard. Early days, right? The rest of the day went okay. I found a book I thought he might like and read to him.”

  “Really? He stood still for that?”

  “For almost an hour, yeah.”

  “Hey, that’s terrific.”

  Stash stirs his tea unnecessarily, which makes Jesse feel her own discomfort. This man is uncomfortable—in his own apartment, in his own skin. And there’s rather an abundance of that, which he carries about on a dominating, thickish frame.

  “I spent some time with your brother-in-law,” he says.

  “Alec?” Involuntarily she puts her hand to her face.

  “Do you have any others?”

  She tries to smile, despite the unpleasant expression she finds on the long, fleshy cheeks of his face. “No, he’s the one.”

  “Tricky guy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, something that happened in court. He doesn’t like our judge, so he’s trying to get rid of him.”

  “How?” she says. “I thought once a judge is assigned to a case—”

  “Alec asked him to recuse himself. To declare himself biased and step down.”

  “Is he biased?”

  Stash shrugs. “All judges are biased.”

  “It would be a matter of degree, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  “So what’s tricky about asking him to admit it?” she says, keeping her tone level. “Seems rather straightforward.”

  He laughs. “You wouldn’t understand. But Alec was always like this, even in law school. Bit more surface than substance.”

  “Really?” Jesse says. “I thought he was editor in chief of the Law Journal.”

  “Exactly. That’s the equivalent of being head of the Politburo.”

  “Wow,” she says. “You really dislike him.”

  “No,” he says, patting her hand. “Not at all. I wouldn’t do some of the things he does, but he’s a very effective lawyer. We get along fine.”

  She gets up. “It’s been a long day.”

  He rises too. “I see I’ve upset you. Sorry. I hadn’t realized you were so attached to him.”

  “I am not attached to him,” she says in a steady voice.

  “Good,” he says. “Go to sleep. I’ll clean up.” He flashes a smile. “My penance.”

  “So we gonna talk about it, or not?” Cissy says to Sarah.

  “Talk about what?” Sarah says from the guest bed in Cissy’s room.

  “The subject you’ve been dodging, girl. Like ever since that dumb basketball game you dragged me to.”

  Both girls are in pajamas. No one else is at home, except for the austere Jamaican woman who’s already asleep in a maid’s room on the first floor. It’s an ideal night for the girls’ sleepover, since Cissy’s parents left for London, taking her brother with them. The apartment is a swanky duplex on Park Avenue. As is customary, the daughter has the better room, Cissy’s facing front, with two windows on the avenue; the brother’s, a cave on the courtyard.

  “You mean to torture me about Tino,” Sarah says.

  “Well, I think it’s very interesting, actually.”

  “Oh, yes, to you?” Sarah says sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” Cissy says. “The school I went to in London—you’d never meet a guy like that. Or someone with your background, for that matter. In fact, in that school, I was an outcast for months. My dad’s filthy rich, of course. God knows what he gave that school to get me in. But my granddad started as a mere—you’d say a clerk—we spell it the same way and say clark, since we’re so goddamn British and posh, don’t you know. But our people way back? No one talks about what they were. Probably horse thieves. Here, people don’t seem to care that much. I mean, everyone’s nosy as hell, but it doesn’t trash how they treat you.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “And you don’t?” Cissy says. “Not your experience?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Just tell me,” Sarah says. “What do you think you know about Tino… and me?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “I don’t,” Sarah says. “You had us investigated?”

  “No. I just asked my dad. He knows about everyone. He’s a banker. He has to.”

  “And? What the hell did he tell you?”

  “He knew about your birth father,” Cissy says. “And about the Angiapellos. I always thought the sign on your bedroom door was just you being clever. Now I think it’s a scream. And he knows who your adoptive father is. Big-deal lawyer, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t talk about it.”

  “You like him?” Cissy asks nonchalantly.

  “Alec? He’s the best. How about your father?”

  “Simon… well… I can’t say I really know him that well.”

  “Your own father?”

  “My family… they’re more into sons. I get the nice room, and Simon III, who you know as Neeko, gets the time. But there are obvious advantages besides the room. Freedom. Spending money.”

  Sarah’s not fooled but overlooks the apparent hurt and says, “So what’d you learn about Tino?”

  “More about his family. Which, I guess, is still your family. Christ, he’s your cousin.”

  “He’s adopted.”

  “No, really?” Cissy says. “You’re both adopted? Now that’s really interesting. No wonder you’ve got a thing for him.”

  “Who said I had a thing for him?”

  “Sarah, Jesus!
You practically fall over at the sight of him. At the game I thought you’d gone into a trance.”

  “I hardly know him.”

  “What do you need to know? He’s a little too sure of himself, but he’s gorgeous. And he can’t be so dumb, he’s at Trinity, for Christ’s sake. The problem is, girl, I don’t want to see you end up as a victim.”

  “I’m not even sure I want to see him again.”

  “So you did talk to him after the game?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s interesting too,” Cissy says. “Tell me more.”

  “It gets complicated.”

  “I’m all ears!”

  “I really don’t think I want to talk about this boy.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because, if you must know,” Sarah says, “I’m getting really fucked up thinking about him.”

  EIGHT

  Larry Rilesman, gazing out of Alec’s office window, says, “It’s great to see a river actually flowing, compared to that sludge pit I get to look at all day.”

  “So move in,” Alec says. “You’re going to have to be here often enough. Now that we have a new judge, the case should start moving again.”

  “The folks in Cleveland are amazed, Alec. I’m amazed. And you called it. How the hell did you know? I mean, two days after you ask, he steps down!”

  “He’s an honest guy.”

  “Well, it’s gonna help us get approval for the transaction file project, I can tell you that.”

  “There was opposition?”

  “Opposition,” Rilesman says and laughs. “It’s gonna cost money. Big bucks. We’re businessmen, Alec. We do what is known as a cost-benefit analysis.”

  “Great,” Alec says. “So analyze this: losing the case will cost you $6 billion. Even more importantly, trying it will cost you the company, and your jobs. Consequently, you’ll want to prevent such a trial. And this is the way. The only way. That enough benefit?”

  Rilesman muses the point for a bit and nods reluctantly. “Okay. I see that. Maybe I can sell it.”

  “You want me out there to pitch it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe yeah.”

  “Just let me know,” Alec says.