Final Appeal

6

Judge Galanter’s breath carries the harsh tang of Binaca. Cigar smoke clings to the fine wool of his double-breasted suit. His movements are deliberate and his speech formal, as if he were trying to control each syllable. I know as sure as he’s standing before us, flushed slightly in front of Armen’s desk, that Galanter has been drinking. It evokes another memory of my father, flitting like a ghost across my mind.

“You law clerks can stay on for a week or two,” he says.

“We hadn’t even thought about it,” Artie snaps from the doorway.

“I’ll attribute that crack to your extreme emotional distress, Mr. Weiss.”

Artie looks away from Galanter, out the window. The courthouse flag flies at half mast, flapping in the wind that gusts off the Delaware River.

“Finish up the cases you’re working on. Draft the bench memos as before and hand them in to me. Argued cases will have to be reargued.” Galanter slides a gleaming Mont Blanc from his breast pocket and makes a check in a leather Filofax he’s holding like a missal. I can imagine what it says.

Things to do: Take over. Before noon.

“Next order of business. The office will have to be packed up. How much time will you need, Eletha?”

Eletha sits at the end of the conference table, fuming. “I would have to talk to Susan about that,” she says, crossing her slender arms across her chest.

“Senator Waterman? Already spoke with her. She said it’s up to you. Box the stuff and ship it to the house, she’ll go through it there. How long will it take you? I have to plan my own move.”

“You mean you’re takin’ this office?” Eletha asks.

Galanter jerks his chin upward, as if the folds of his turkey neck were pinched in his collar. “Of course, it’s the chief judge’s. I’d like to be in in two weeks. By the way, I understand the staff attorneys need an extra secretary, so there’s room for you there. Talk to Peter about that.” He makes another check in his Filofax, and Eletha breathes in and out, in and out.

“Judge,” I say. “I was wondering—”

“Of course. I forgot about you. They may need an extra staff attorney downstairs. You should apply. Part-time will be a problem, you’ll have to step up to a normal work week.”

“No. I wanted to ask about Hightower.”

He purses his thin lips. “I’ve reassigned it. The death warrant expires Monday, but we’ll have it decided well in advance.”

“Who was it reassigned to?”

“That information is strictly need-to-know. Did I mention the memorial service?” He shoots a questioning look at Ben, who’s standing against the bookshelves. Ben shakes his head discreetly.

“Not a high priority,” Artie says.

Galanter points at Artie with his pen. “Don’t test me, young man. I’ve just about had it with your lack of respect.”

“Respect?” Artie explodes. “Who are you to talk about respect? Armen just died and you can’t wait to take his office. Can’t wait!”

“Artie,” Sarah says nervously.

“Listen, you,” Galanter says, raising his voice. “This court has to maintain operations. We have a public trust.”

“Fuck you!” Artie shouts, almost in tears. He storms out of the room into his office and slams the door.

“I’ve never seen such conduct in a law clerk! Ever!” Galanter says.

“Judge Galanter.” I start talking, almost reflexively. “Artie and Armen were close. This is hard for him. For us all.” I hear an involuntary catch in my voice, but Galanter’s gaze is fixed in the direction of the clerks’ office. I feel a shiver of fear inside, from somewhere deep, but press it away. “You were saying, Judge, about the memorial service?”

Galanter looks down at me, still lost in his own anger. “What did you say?”

“The memorial service.”

“The memorial service? Oh, yes.” He exhales sharply, regaining control, and returns the pen to his breast pocket. “Memorial service. The day after tomorrow, Thursday. In the ceremonial courtroom. The time’s not fixed yet.”

“Have you heard about the funeral arrangements?”

“No idea. Senator Waterman said she’d call about that. Eletha, get me that memo I sent you.”

Eletha doesn’t move a muscle. “Memo? What memo, Judge?”

Galanter hasn’t drunk enough to miss the challenge in her manner. He tilts his head ever so slightly. “The one about the new sitting schedule. I sent it this morning, on E-mail.”

“I was busy this morning.”

“So was I. Get it now,” he says, staccato.

Eletha leaves the room. In a second she’s slamming her desk drawers unnecessarily.

Galanter hands me some papers from his book. “Xerox these for me and come right back.”

I take the papers and leave the office. When I open the door to the hallway, Eletha’s giving the finger to the wall.

I read the papers on the way to the Xerox machine. It’s a complete sitting schedule, with Armen’s initials crossed out next to his cases and a new judge’s written in. All of Armen’s cases, reassigned so fast it’d make your head spin.

READY TO COPY, the photocopier says. I open the heavy lid, slap the paper onto the glass, and hit the button. The light from the machine rolls calcium white across my face.

Suicide? I don’t understand. They were going to file for divorce, if what Armen said was true. I feel a pang of doubt; would Armen lie? Of course not. Afterward we talked for a long time, holding each other on the couch. He was an honest man, a wonderful man.

READY TO COPY. I hit the button. You don’t kill yourself just because you’re Armenian. Armen was a survivor. And he hated guns, was against keeping them in the house. Where did he get the gun?

READY TO COPY, says the machine again, but I’m not ready to copy. So much has happened. We found and lost each other in one night. I stare at the glass over the shadowy innards of the machine; all I see is my own confused reflection. What was that noise last night, and does it matter?

I turn around and look down the hall, but it’s empty. There are only two occupied judges’ chambers on this whole floor, ours and Galanter’s; the rest are vacant, the chambers of judges who sit nearer their homes in Wilmington and northern New Jersey. Only eleven people work on the entire floor.

Now it’s ten.

A boxy file cabinet sits against the wall next to the judges’ elevator. A few paces to the left is the door to the law clerks’ office. To the right, down the hall, are Galanter’s chambers.

Everything looks perfectly normal.

I step away from the machine and peer at the government-spec brown carpet. There’s nothing on the rug, no trace of anything. I straighten up, feeling stupid. What am I looking for, muddy footprints? Clothing fibers? What am I thinking? I shake my head and turn back to the Xerox machine.

ADD PAPER, it says. The words blink red, like the old pinball machines that go tilt.

Damn it. Why am I the only one who refills this thing? I look in the cabinet next to the machine for a ream of paper, but it’s empty except for the torn wrapper. The law clerks never pick up after themselves. I slam the cabinet door and walk down the hallway back to chambers.

Bbbzzzzzz goes the security camera, as I tramp angrily by.

Then it hits me. I do an about-face and look up at the camera. It’s black and boxy, and looks back at me like a mechanical vulture perched above the judges’ elevator.

The camera’s on all the time, monitored by the federal marshals. It saw everything that happened in the hall last night and probably recorded it, like at ATM machines.

It knows if anyone came into chambers and saw Armen and me together. And it knows who they are.

7

His breast pocket bears a plastic plate that says R. ARRINGTON over the shiny five-star badge of the marshal service. His frame is brawny in its official blue blazer, and his dark skin is slightly pitted up close. “Lunchtime!” I say to him, making an overstuffed tuna hoagie do the cha-cha with a chilly bottle of Snapple lemonade. “All this can be yours.”

He does not look impressed. “No can do, Grace.”

The hoagie and the lemonade jump up and down in frustration. “All I want is two minutes. I look at the monitors, then I’m outta there.”

“There’s twenty monitors, Grace,” he says, sighing deeply. Maryellen, the cashier in the building’s snack shop, cocks her head in our direction. She may be blind, but she’s not deaf. I decide to be more quiet.

“Come on, Ray. You said only one monitor shows our hallway. How long can it take to look at a monitor?”

He folds his thick arms. “Maybe if you tell me why this matters.”

I glance at the jurors behind us buying newspapers, gum, and fountain soda. The ice machine spits chunks into a tall paper cup, and a juror plays mix-and-match to find the right size lid. He’ll never find it; I never can, and I have a J.D. “Let’s just say I want to check security.”

“Come clean, Rossi.”

I consider this. Ray is one of the few marshals who liked Armen; he’s also one of the few African Americans, which I suspect is no coincidence. “Tell you what. Get me in. If it pays off, I’ll tell you why.”

“What am I supposed to tell the marshals?”

“What marshals? You’re the marshal.”

“I’m a CSO, technically. A court security officer. I mean the marshals watching the monitors.”

“Tell ’em I’m checking security, that I’m the administrative law clerk to the chief judge.”

“Grace.” His somber expression reminds me of something I’d rather not dwell on. Armen is gone.

“Forget it, I’ll tell them something. I’ll handle it. Just get me in, I’ll owe you. Big-time.”

Suddenly he snaps his fingers. “I know what you can do for me.”

“Anything.”

“You can introduce me to your fine friend, the lovely Eletha Staples.”

“Eletha? Don’t you know her?”

“I’ve been workin’ here as long as she has, but she won’t give me the time of day. She seein’ anybody?”

I think of Leon, Eletha’s boyfriend, who gives her nothing but grief. “No.”

“Hot dog!” He rubs his hands together; it makes a dry sound. “Lunch. I’ll start with lunch, take it nice and easy. Can you set it up?”

“Deal.” I set the tuna hoagie and Snapple on the counter in front of Maryellen. At the last minute, Ray tosses in two packs of chocolate Tastykakes.

“What are you having today, Grace?” Maryellen says. Her cloudy eyes veer wildly around the room.

“Thanksgiving dinner,” I say to her and she laughs.

After we leave the snack bar, Ray leads me through a labyrinth of hallways to the core of a secured part of the courthouse. It would have been impossible to find this myself, and when I reach the barred entrance I understand why.

It’s a prison.

Sixteen floors from where I work, in the same building. It gives me the creeps. The sign on the barred door says: ONLY COUNSEL MAY VISIT PRISONERS.

We head down another hall, past a room with a number of empty desks in it, and open a door onto a small room, brightly lit by a ceiling of fluorescents. A wall of TV screens dominates the room, giving it a futuristic feel. There must be twenty-five black-and-white TV screens here, trained everywhere throughout the courthouse.

The monitors in the left bank flash on the stairwells at each floor of the building, and the large screens in the middle offer an ever-changing peek into the courtrooms. In 12-A there’s a young woman crying on the witness stand. In 13-A an older man is being sentenced. In 14-A a little boy is testifying.

“It’s like a soap opera, huh, Worrell?” Ray says amiably to the stony-faced marshal watching the screens. He’s a stocky middle-aged man in a black T-shirt that says UNITED STATES MARSHAL SERVICE. It looks more like a get-up for Hell’s Angels, but I do not remark this aloud.

“Ugh,” the man says, his attention focused on the TV pictures of prison cells on the far right. Each cell is numbered and occupied by a man in street clothes, probably awaiting trial. They sit slumped or asleep in their cells; one is a black teenager in an oversized sweatshirt, just a kid. I think of Hightower.

“This is Grace Rossi, Worrell. She’s a lawyer, works for the appeals court. She wants to see—”

“I want to see the monitors,” I say with faux authority. “It’s a security check for the new chief judge.”