Scott Turow - Limitations

His wife is sitting at the slate-topped kitchen island when George comes in, and he can tell something is wrong. She has dug out the bottle of Chivas they keep for guests, and there’s a finger of brown liquid in her glass. Two decades ago, George decided that he needed to set some limits, and neither Patrice nor he usually drinks at home. But it’s the merciless look she settles on him as he enters from the garage that’s most telling.

“Death threats?” she asks then. “You’ve been getting death threats for weeks and never told me?”

The news has been on TV. ‘A judge who has been receiving menacing e-mails for several weeks was attacked tonight in the courthouse parking garage but reportedly escaped with only minor injuries.’ The phone has not stopped ringing-concerned friends and several reporters who somehow got the number and want a comment.

Caught out, George’s first response is, “How did it get on TV?” But by now the cops know everything, and there is no such thing as a secret in McGrath Hall. Marina too might have spoken on background, knowing what the headline will be worth with the County Board.

“Do I really need to explain this?” he asks Patrice.

“Yes, you really need to explain this.”

“I thought we were dealing with enough death threats in this house.”

“Oh, George.” She takes his good hand and blessedly lingers close, wraps herself around him. “No wonder you’ve been so loony.” A marriage marches through so many stages of intimacy. The first, when you are convinced that the outer shells will melt away and make you one, is the most exalted, celebrated, and dramatic. But like a good lawyer, George can argue in behalf of others-the early moments of parenthood, when you try to figure out how to survive nature’s slyest trick, using love to produce someone to come between you. Or this one. In sickness and in health.

“Is this why you were talking about not running?” she asks.

“Not really. Not for the most part.”

“Well, what’s ‘the most part’? And please don’t say me.”

He tells her about Warnovits and Lolly Viccino. She listens to the whole story without letting go of his hand.

“You’ve been having a rough time, mate, haven’t you?” She puts an arm around him again. “George,” she says. “You are a good man. A very good man. It was another era. Things like that-It was vulgar, George. It was disgusting. But it wasn’t criminal. Not then. Times change. Things get better. Humanity improves. And you get better with it. With the help of other human beings. That’s what law’s about. I don’t have to give you that speech. You’ve been giving it to me for thirty years.”

“And you haven’t believed a word,” he says, smiling.

She takes a second to consider.

“Well,” she says, “at least I was listening.”

They are still sitting together, talking about the effects of fear, what it takes from life and, oddly, adds, when he hears her cell phone buzz in the pocket of his jacket, which is hanging from his chair. He tells himself not to look, but Patrice stands to get the phone for him, and he reaches back rather than let her be the first to see the text message.

The screen says, “Next time 4 real. C U.”

When George wakes up at 6:30 he can hear voices outside, and he cracks one panel on the bedroom shutters. Behind the black-and-white, which has been positioned at the curb all night, three TV vans have parked. Their long portable antennas, looking like giant kitchen whisks, have been raised for broadcast. Awaiting George’s appearance, the crew members from the competing stations are lounging together against one of the vans, drinking their coffee and shooting the breeze with the two cops who are out there to guard the judge.

“Mate,” he tells Patrice, “you aren’t going to like this.”

Marina arrives in a courthouse van an hour later. Three more cruisers have shown up as well. George calls Marina’s cell to invite her into the house rather than appear outside and reward the camera crews for lying in wait.

“Shit,” she says succinctly when he shows her the text message. “We gotta give this phone to the Bureau. See if they can set up some kind of trap. I can’t believe he had the balls to do this again.”

#1 clearly knows what Marina explained the other day about the difficulty of tracing text messages. And therefore did not care who had the cell phone now, law enforcement or George. He’d get the message either way.

“Maybe you should think about staying here, Judge.”

“Good luck talking sense to him,” Patrice says.

But George knows he’s being prudent. Today every local security resource will be dedicated to his protection. He’ll be safer than the President. And it would send the wrong message to stay home and cower. He took this job recognizing that the responsibilities are often symbolic.

Patrice continues peeking through the curtains to inspect the growing crowd on the parkway. There are at least a dozen journalists now, as well as eight cops and, naturally, quite a few of their neighbors. Patrice is having fits about the fate of everything she labored to plant this spring, an act of love and dedication that required energy she didn’t really have so soon after surgery.

At 8:30, George opens his front door, feeling for all the world like he is entering a stage set. His arm remains too sore for any thought of abandoning the sling, and so his coat is draped across his right shoulder in the fashion of somebody who got winged in a western. Eyes forward, he endeavors to appear pleasant but businesslike and speaks not a word as the camerafolk and reporters dash beside him along his front walk.

Looking more officious than a general, Marina marches a step ahead of him while Abel alights to sweep open the van door. On George’s behalf, Marina recites a one-line statement George and she composed inside-‘The judge is feeling well and looks forward to conducting the business of the court’-while the cameramen jostle one another for the chance to poke their huge black lenses through the open window on the driver’s side of the van. Screwing up his courage, George glances back to the line of little white sweet alyssum that have been trampled along the edging of the walk.

The vehicles take off in a convoy, one cruiser in front of Marina’s van and another behind, while the TV trucks zoom up and drop back for camera angles. He considers how this is going to play on the news and laughs.

“What?” Marina asks.

“Private joke.” After this star turn as urban war hero, George realizes he could not only free the Warnovits defendants but order the state to pay them reparations and still win the retention election.

The morning is a procession of visitors to chambers expressing sympathy, as well as constant phone calls from friends and reporters, which George does not take. The only persons he can’t defer are his colleagues on the court. The Chief, appropriately, is the first to show up, instants after George has reached his chambers. He requires a full rundown of last night’s events, shaking his head throughout.

“Nathan is bonkers,” he says then. “He’s sure he’s next. I’ll bet he’s found himself a ‘secure location’ that’s not within three hundred miles.”

Neither of them can keep from laughing.

“So what’s your theory?” Rusty asks. “About last night?”

Unrelated events, George explains, except that attempting to be bold in the face #1’s threats seems to have made him more stupid.

“Still not buying Corazon?”

Strangely, only now, after avoiding it for weeks, the fear that properly belongs with that possibility invades the judge. His heart knocks and his hands clench as he imagines what it would mean to be stalked with lethal intent by a ruthless sociopath like Corazon. With his self-imposed exile, Koll might have the right approach if that actually were what is happening. But in his heart of hearts, George still does not believe it.