Joel Goldman - Final judgment

He laid on his back, cradling her to his side, her head on his chest, his arms tense even as he held her. “It’s complicated, but I’ll get it worked out.”

“You’re in it, aren’t you?”

“I’m his lawyer.”

“But you’re in it like your other cases. You’re in trouble. I can tell by the way you hold me, like you’re afraid to let go.” She raised her head, searching his face.

He breathed deeply, letting it out slowly. “It’s complicated,” he repeated, watching her reaction, waiting for her to pull away.

She put her head down again. He felt a tear on his chest. “I called Mickey after I got your message. He’ll be here in the morning. He’ll help.”

Mickey Shanahan had worked for Mason until Abby took him with her to Washington. He had been part office manager, part scam artist, and part wingman, covering Mason’s flank while Blues took Mason’s back. Abby had recruited Mickey by appealing to his ambition to work in politics. Her pitch disguised her maternal instinct to protect him from the dangers of working for Mason. Now, she had brought Mickey home.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“You had a hole in your heart,” she told him, pressing her palm over the scar on his chest. “The surgeon fixed it. Now I have one,” she said, moving his hand to her heart. “I need you to fix mine.”

He answered her with a kiss that promised to fix them both. They slept under an afghan he kept in the closet for those nights when he couldn’t make it home. He rose before dawn, stiff from their close quarters, careful to cover her as she curled into the space he’d left. He picked his sweats off the floor, slipped them on, and sat behind his desk, watching her sleep.

Confession soothed her soul. Making love eased her heart. Commitment bound her to him. It may be enough for her, but it wouldn’t be enough for both of them unless he could give the same to her. Overs. A clean slate, he said to himself. He couldn’t keep his promise to Abby as long as he and Judge Carter were exposed to a blackmailer. Time was running out and he was not close to a solution.

Confession might be his least bad and only option. A blackmailer depended on the victim’s fear of exposure. Take that away, and the blackmailer is out of business. Could he do that? he wondered. Could he sacrifice Judge Carter and himself? What if he could protect the judge, take the fall himself? Would he do that? He found the answer in the gentle rhythms of Abby’s sleepy breathing.

Abby stirred, rolling onto her back and pulling herself up on her elbows. Groggy, she swept her hair off her face, focusing on him across the room.

“Is that you or the boogeyman?”

“Just me. I gave the boogeyman the night off.”

“What time is it?”

Mason looked at the clock on his desk. “Five-thirty.”

“Ugh. I hate five-thirty. Make it go away.”

He reached for the lamp on his desk, the light enough to make them both blink. “It worked. It’s five thirty-one.”

“Swell. I’ve got a breakfast meeting with the senator.”

She gathered her clothes, dressing with nonchalance as though they were an old married couple, and kissed him, neither noticing their sour morning breath.

“Tonight,” she said. “Dinner, enchanting conversation, and a real bed.”

“I’ll bring the conversation. You bring the bed.”

“Deal. I love you,” she said and left.

He turned on the rest of the lights and saw his calendar for the day. Dinner-Samantha Greer-birthday.

“Shit!” he said, snatching a dart off his desk and flinging it at the board hanging on the back of his door, missing the bull’s-eye by a wide margin.

He shoved his chair away from the desk, swiveling and stopping in front of the fax machine sitting on the credenza behind him. A five-page fax from Lari Prillman lay in the tray. It was her telephone records, the call made from her office Saturday night circled and starred. Next to it she’d written a note. Cell phone. Stolen. What now?

The FBI had converted the phone in Fish’s kitchen into a government party line, the kind where the person on the other end didn’t know he’d been invited to the party. Everything Fish and Sylvia McBride said would be recorded, the text simultaneously appearing on a laptop computer as Pete Samuelson, Kelly Holt, and Mason used headphones to listen. A scruffy technician, his FBI identification tag hanging from a chain around his neck, double- and triple-checked the connections before giving Samuelson and Kelly a thumbs-up.

An order signed by a federal magistrate judge permitting the government to wiretap Fish’s phone lay on the kitchen table, partially obscured by the morning paper, one corner held down and stained by a coffee mug. Mason flinched when he saw the order, instinctively recoiling at the tool the government had so often used like a crowbar to break into his clients’ lives. He picked it up, reading the dry prose that blessed the raw invasion of Sylvia McBride’s life, the government’s allegations of reasonable cause accepted as gospel. Dropping the order on the table, he turned to Fish, motioning him into the living room.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mason asked him when they were alone.

“What choice do I have? They’ve got me by the short hairs and, even at my age, the short hairs can still hurt.”

“There’s always a choice. Some are harder than others.”

“Not this one. That bastard partner of mine got into my shorts for fifty grand. He played me like I was buying a time-share, then made me cry at his funeral. Now the FBI is going to help me balance the books and give me a pass on my indiscretions. That’s not a choice, my friend. That’s an opportunity and America is the land of opportunity.”

Kelly Holt appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. “Let’s get going.”

Fish left him as Mason lingered for a moment, glancing at the mantle above the fireplace where he saw Fish’s tallit and tefillin. The tallit was a prayer shawl worn by Jews during religious services. The tefillin were two small black boxes with black straps attached to them. Some Jews wore them while reciting morning prayers, one box strapped on their head, the other strapped to one arm.

“Don’t worry,” Fish said, looking back at him. “I prayed for both of us this morning.”

“Did God laugh when you mentioned our names?”

“No. He said quit complaining.”

Mason followed Fish into the kitchen. Kelly handed out copies of a photograph of Sylvia McBride taken as she got out of her car in a parking lot, an office building behind her. The picture was stamped with the date it had been taken a month earlier. The sky in the background was cloudy, the pavement asphalt, her car black. Dressed in gray, she was late fifties, early sixties; slender, almost shapeless; her indistinct brown hair cut short. Though the picture had been taken from a distance, the zoom lens had captured her plain face, free of expression, her flat countenance giving nothing away. Only her eyes showed any life, though her gaze was guarded. She was practically invisible.

Mason slipped headphones over his ears, the soft pads muting Samuelson’s last-minute instructions to Fish, who listened patiently, patting Samuelson on the shoulder as if to say, Relax, sonny, and watch me work. Fish was wearing a green warm-up suit that made him look like an overripe bell pepper, but his face was calm, his eyes sharp.

Sylvia answered on the third ring, saying hello in a voice that had the husky resonance of cigarettes and booze. If she wasn’t five years older than Mason had guessed from her picture, her life expectancy was at least that much shorter.

“It’s Avery Fish. How are you, Sylvia?”