The Amber Room

by Steve Berry

  She glanced over at the jury, then at the other counsel table. The Fulton County assistant district attorney sat impassive, apparently pleased that her opponent was digging his own grave. Obviously, the young lawyer didn’t grasp what Nettles was attempting. But she did. “You’re absolutely right, counselor. It is a trivial matter. Proceed.”

  She sat back in her chair and noticed the momentary look of annoyance on Nettles’s face. An expression that a hunter might give when his shot missed the mark.

  “What of my motion for mistrial?” Nettles asked.

  “Denied. Move on. Continue with your summation.”

  Rachel watched the jury foreman as he stood and pronounced a guilty verdict. Deliberations had taken only twenty minutes.

  “Your Honor,” Nettles said, coming to his feet. “I move for a presentence investigation prior to sentencing.”

  “Denied.”

  “I move that sentencing be delayed.”

  “Denied.”

  Nettles seemed to sense the mistake he’d made earlier. “I move for the court to recuse itself.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Bias.”

  “To whom or what?”

  “To myself and my client.”

  “Explain.”

  “The court has shown prejudice.”

  “How?”

  “With that display this morning about my inadvertent use ofsir .”

  “As I recall, counselor, I admitted it was a trivial matter.”

  “Yes, you did. But our conversation occurred with the jury present, and the damage was done.”

  “I don’t recall an objection or a motion for mistrial concerning the conversation.”

  Nettles said nothing. She looked over at the assistant DA. “What’s the State’s position?”

  “The State opposes the motion. The court has been fair.”

  She almost smiled. At least the young lawyer knew the right answer.

  “Motion to recuse denied.” She stared at the defendant, a young white male with scraggly hair and a pockmarked face. “The defendant shall rise.” He did. “Barry King, you’ve been found guilty of the crime of aggravated assault. This court hereby remands you to the Department of Corrections for a period of twenty years. The bailiff will take the defendant into custody.”

  She rose and stepped toward an oak-paneled door that led to her chambers. “Mr. Nettles, could I see you a moment?” The assistant DA headed toward her, too. “Alone.”

  Nettles left his client, who was being cuffed, and followed her into the office.

  “Close the door, please.” She unzipped her robe but did not remove it. She stepped behind her desk. “Nice try, counselor.”

  “Which one?”

  “Earlier, when you thought that jab aboutsir andma’am would set me off. You were getting your butt chapped with that half-cocked defense, so you thought me losing my temper would get you a mistrial.”

  He shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  “What you have to do is show respect for the court and not call a female judgesir . Yet you kept on. Deliberately.”

  “You just sentenced my guy to twenty years without the benefit of a presentence hearing. If that isn’t prejudice, what is?”

  She sat down and did not offer the lawyer a seat. “I didn’t need a hearing. I sentenced King to aggravated battery two years ago. Six months in, six months’ probation. I remember. This time he took a baseball bat and fractured a man’s skull. He’s used up what little patience I have.”

  “You should have recused yourself. All that information clouded your judgment.”

  “Really? That presentence investigation you’re screaming for would have revealed all that, anyway. I simply saved you the trouble of waiting for the inevitable.”

  “You’re a fucking bitch.”

  “That’s going to cost you a hundred dollars. Payable now. Along with another hundred for the stunt in the courtroom.”

  “I’m entitled to a hearing before you find me in contempt.”

  “True. But you don’t want that. It’ll do nothing for that chauvinistic image you go out of your way to portray.”

  He said nothing, and she could feel the fire building. Nettles was a heavyset, jowled man with a reputation for tenacity, surely unaccustomed to taking orders from a woman.

  “And every time you show off that big ass of yours in my court, it’s going to cost you a hundred dollars.”

  He stepped toward the desk and withdrew a wad of money, peeling off two one-hundred-dollar bills, crisp new ones with the swollen Ben Franklin. He slapped both on the desk, then unfolded three more.

  “Fuck you.”

  One bill dropped.

  “Fuck you.”

  The second bill fell.

  “Fuck you.”

  The third Ben Franklin fluttered down.

  TWO

  Rachel donned her robe, stepped back into the courtroom, and climbed three steps to the oak dais she’d occupied for the past four years. The clock on the far wall read 1:45P .M. She wondered how much longer she’d have the privilege of being a judge. It was an election year, qualifying had ended two weeks back, and she’d drawn two opponents for the July primary. There’d been talk of people getting into the race, but no one appeared until ten minutes before five on Friday to plunk down the nearly four-thousand-dollar fee needed to run. What could have been an easy uncontested election had now evolved into a long summer of fund-raisers and speeches. Neither of which were pleasurable.

  At the moment she didn’t need the added aggravation. Her dockets were jammed, with more cases being added by the day. Today’s calendar, though, was shortened by a quick verdict inState of Georgia v. Barry King . Less than a half hour of deliberation was fast by any standard, the jurors obviously not impressed with T. Marcus Nettles’s theatrics.

  With the afternoon free, she decided to tend to a backlog of non-jury matters that had clogged over the past two weeks of jury trials. The trial time had been productive. Four convictions, six guilty pleas, and one acquittal. Eleven criminal cases out of the way, making room for the new batch her secretary said the scheduling clerk would deliver in the morning.

  TheFulton County Daily Reportrated all the local superior court judges annually. For the past three years she’d been ranked near the top, disposing of cases faster than most of her fellow judges, with a reversal rate in the appellate courts of only 2 percent. Not bad being right 98 percent of the time.

  She settled behind the bench and watched the afternoon parade begin. Lawyers hustled in and out, some ferrying clients in need of a final divorce or a judge’s signature, others looking for a resolution to pending motions in civil cases awaiting trial. About forty different matters in all. By the time she glanced again at the clock across the room, it was 4:15 and the docket had whittled down to two items. One was an adoption, a task she really enjoyed. The seven-year-old reminded her of Brent, her own seven-year-old. The last matter was a simple name change, the petitioner unrepresented by counsel. She’d specifically scheduled the case at the end, hoping the courtroom would be empty.

  The clerk handed her the file.

  She stared down at the old man dressed in a beige tweed jacket and tan trousers who stood before the counsel table.

  “Your full name?” she asked.

  “Karl Bates.” His tired voice carried an East European accent.

  “How long have you lived in Fulton County?”

  “Thirty-nine years.”

  “You were not born in this country?”

  “No. I come from Belarus.”

  “And you are an American citizen?”

  He nodded. “I’m an old man. Eighty-one. Almost half my life spent here.”

  The question and answer was not relevant to the petition, but neither the clerk nor the court reporter said anything. Their faces seemed to understand the moment.

  “My parents, brothers, sisters—all slaughtered by Nazis. Many died in Belarus. We were White Russi
ans. Very proud. After the war, not many of us were left when the Soviets annexed our land. Stalin was worse than Hitler. A madman. Butcher. Nothing remained there when he was through, so I leave. This country is the land of promise, right?”

  “Were you a Russian citizen?”

  “I believe correct designation was Soviet citizen.” He shook his head. “But I never consider myself Soviet.”

  “Did you serve in the war?”

  “Only of necessity. The Great Patriotic War, Stalin called it. I was lieutenant. Captured and sent to Mauthausen. Sixteen months in a concentration camp.”

  “What was your occupation here after immigrating?”

  “Jeweler.”

  “You have petitioned this court for a change of name. Why do you wish to be known as Karol Borya?”

  “It is my birth name. My father named me Karol. It means ‘strong-willed.’ I was youngest of six children and almost die at birth. When I immigrate to this country, I thought, must protect identity. I work for government commissions while in Soviet Union. I hated Communists. They ruin my homeland, and I speak out. Stalin sent many countrymen to Siberian camps. I thought harm would come to my family. Very few could leave then. But before my death, I want my heritage returned.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “No. But I wonder how long this tired body will hold out.”

  She looked at the old man standing before her, his frame shrunken with age but still distinguished. The eyes were inscrutable and deep-set, hair stark white, voice gravelly and enigmatic. “You look marvelous for a man your age.”

  He smiled.

  “Do you seek this change to defraud, evade prosecution, or hide from a creditor?”

  “Never.”

  “Then I grant your petition. You shall be Karol Borya once again.”

  She signed the order attached to the petition and handed the file to the clerk. Stepping from the bench, she approached the old man. Tears slipped down his stubbled cheeks. Her eyes had reddened, as well. She hugged him and softly said, “I love you, Daddy.”

  THREE

  4:50 p.m.

  Paul Cutler stood from the oak armchair and addressed the court, his lawyerly patience wearing thin. “Your Honor, the estate does not contest movant’s services. Instead, we merely challenge the amount he’s attempting to charge. Twelve thousand three hundred dollars is a lot of money to paint a house.”

  “It was a big house,” the creditor’s lawyer said.

  “I would hope,” the probate judge added.

  Paul said, “The house is two thousand square feet. Not a thing unusual about it. The paint job was routine. Movant is not entitled to the amount charged.”

  “Judge, the decedent contracted with my client for a complete house painting, which my client did.”

  “What the movant did, Judge, was take advantage of a seventy-three-year-old man. He did not render twelve thousand three hundred dollars’ worth of services.”

  “The decedent promised my client a bonus if he finished within a week, and he did.”

  He couldn’t believe the other lawyer was pressing the point with a straight face. “That’s convenient, considering the only other person to contradict that promise is dead. The bottom line is that our firm is the named executor on the estate, and we cannot in good conscience pay this bill.”

  “You want a trial on it?” the crinkly judge asked the other side.

  The creditor’s lawyer bent down and whispered with the housepainter, a younger man noticeably uncomfortable in a tan polyester suit and tie. “No, sir. Perhaps a compromise. Seven thousand five hundred.”

  Paul never flinched. “One thousand two hundred and fifty. Not a dime more. We employed another painter to view the work. From what I’ve been told, we have a good suit for shoddy workmanship. The paint also appears to have been watered down. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll let the jury decide.” He looked at the other lawyer. “I get two hundred and twenty dollars an hour while we fight. So take your time, counselor.”

  The other lawyer never even consulted his client. “We don’t have the resources to litigate this matter, so we have no choice but to accept the estate’s offer.”

  “I bet. Bloody damn extortionist,” Paul muttered, just loud enough for the other lawyer to hear, as he gathered his file.

  “Draw an order, Mr. Cutler,” the judge said.

  Paul quickly left the hearing room and marched down the corridors of the Fulton County probate division. It was three floors down from the mélange of Superior Court and a world apart. No sensational murders, high-profile litigation, or contested divorces. Wills, trusts, and guardianships formed the extent of its limited jurisdiction—mundane, boring, with evidence usually amounting to diluted memories and tales of alliances both real and imagined. A recent state statute Paul helped draft allowed jury trials in certain instances, and occasionally a litigant would demand one. But, by and large, business was tended to by a stable of elder judges, themselves once advocates who roamed the same halls in search of letters testamentary.

  Ever since the University of Georgia sent him out into the world with a juris doctorate, probate work had been Paul’s specialty. He’d not gone right to law school from college, summarily rejected by the twenty-two schools he’d applied to. His father was devastated. For three years he labored at the Georgia Citizens Bank in the probate and trust department as a glorified clerk, the experience enough motivation for him to retake the law school admission exam and reapply. Three schools ultimately accepted him, and a third-year clerkship resulted in a job at Pridgen & Woodworth after graduation. Now, thirteen years later, he was a sharing-partner in the firm, senior enough in the probate and trust department to be next in line for full partnership and the department’s managerial reins.

  He turned a corner and zeroed in on double doors at the far end.

  Today had been hectic. The painter’s motion had been scheduled for over a week, but right after lunch his office received a call from another creditor’s lawyer to hear a hastily arranged motion. Originally it was set for 4:30, but the lawyer on the other side failed to show. So he’d shot over to an adjacent hearing room and taken care of the house painter’s attempted thievery. He yanked open the wooden doors and stalked down the center aisle of the deserted courtroom. “Heard from Marcus Nettles yet?” he asked the clerk at the far end.

  A smile creased the woman’s face. “Sure did.”

  “It’s nearly five. Where is he?”

  “He’s a guest of the sheriff’s department. Last I heard, they’ve got him in a holding cell.”

  He dropped his briefcase on the oak table. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Your ex put him in this morning.”

  “Rachel?”

  The clerk nodded. “Word is he got smart with her in chambers. Paid her three hundred dollars then told her to F off three times.”

  The courtroom doors swung open and T. Marcus Nettles waddled in. His beige Neiman Marcus suit was wrinkled, Gucci tie out of place, the Italian loafers scuffed and dirty.

  “About time, Marcus. What happened?”

  “That bitch you once called your wife threw me in jail and left me there since this mornin’.” The baritone voice carried a strain. “Tell me, Paul. Is she really a woman or some hybrid with nuts between those long legs?”

  He started to say something, then decided to let it go.

  “She climbs my ass in front of a jury because I called hersir —”

  “Four times, I heard,” the clerk said.

  “Yeah. Probably was. After I move for a mistrial, which she should have granted, she gives my guy twenty years without a presentence hearin’. Then she wants to give me an ethics lesson. I don’t need that shit. Particularly from some smart-ass bitch. I can tell you now, I’ll be pumpin’ money to both her opponents. Lots of money. I’m going to rid myself of that problem the second Tuesday in July.”

  He’d heard enough. “You ready to argue this motion?”

  Nettles laid
his briefcase on the table. “Why not? I figured I’d be in that cell all night. Guess the whore has a heart, after all.”

  “That’s enough, Marcus,” he said, his voice a bit firmer than he intended.

  Nettles’s eyes tightened, a penetrating feral stare that seemed to read his thoughts. “The shit you care? You’ve been divorced—what?—three years? She must gouge a chunk out of your paycheck every month in child support.”

  He said nothing.

  “I’ll be fuckin’ damned,” Nettles said. “You still got a thing for her, don’t you?”

  “Can we get on with it?”

  “Son of a bitch, you do.” Nettles shook his bulbous head.

  He headed for the other table to get ready for the hearing. The clerk popped from her chair and walked back to fetch the judge. He was glad she’d left. Courthouse gossip blew from ear to ear like a wildfire.

  Nettles settled his portly frame into the armchair. “Paul, my boy, take it from a five-time loser. Once you get rid of ’em, be rid of ’em.”

  FOUR

  5:45 p.m.

  Karol Borya cruised into his driveway and parked the Oldsmobile. At eighty-one, he was happy to still be driving. His eyesight was amazingly good, and his coordination, though slow, seemed adequate enough for the state to renew his license. He didn’t drive much, or far. To the grocery store, occasionally to the mall, and over to Rachel’s house at least twice a week. Today he’d ventured only four miles to the MARTA station, where he’d caught a train downtown to the courthouse for the name-change hearing.

  He’d lived in northeast Fulton County nearly forty years, long before the explosion of Atlanta northward. The once forested hills of red clay, whose runoff had tracked into the nearby Chattahoochee River, were now covered in commercial development, high-end residential subdivisions, apartments, and roads. Millions lived and worked around him, Atlanta along the way having acquired the designations ofmetropolitan and “Olympic host.”

  He ambled out to the street and checked the curbside mailbox. The evening was unusually warm for May, good for his arthritic joints, which seemed to sense the approach of fall and downright hated winter. He walked back toward the house and noticed that the wooden eaves needed painting.