Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

The lawyers state their names and Sonny makes her record: she knew the Eddgar family twenty-five years ago but has had no contact with any of them since, save Nile Eddgar, who may have appeared as a probation officer in this courtroom once. Tommy Molto, deputy supervisor in Homicide, a smallish dumpy-looking lifer who rose close to the top of the PA's Office a few administrations back, only to slide back down in the shadow of some disremembered scandal, has appeared for the state, filling in on the initial appearance.

'Mr Aires, or Mr Molto, if either of you feel the slightest reservation, I'll be happy to return this case to the Chief Judge for reassignment.'

Aires just shakes his head. 'No problem, Judge.' Molto repeats the same words. She knew the Prosecuting Attorney's Office would have no objection. They have 106 cases in this courtroom. They will have between 98 and 112 cases on her docket every day of the year. They are not about to question her impartiality. Not on the record. The only cavil she will hear, if there is one, will come in the corridors, through the grapevine.

Sonny recites the charges in the complaint. Hardcore looks on alertly. The defendants are usually fazed or anxious, lost to arcana of the courtroom. But Hardcore, burly, dark, with thick eyes, maintains himself with dignity. He knows what is occurring. Innocently, as if she did not know she was sounding a battle alarum, Sonny asks, 'Mr Aires, do you have a motion?' Long-limbed, still lithe-appearing, Jackson Aires uncrosses his arms and edges closer to his microphone that angles up from the oak podium before the bench. To Jackson Aires the criminal law really has no categories, only colors, white and black. He can play the game, talk your talk, cite the precedents, but with no evident belief they control, or even contribute to, the result. To him, every rule, every procedure is simply one more device to delay, by other means, the emancipation of the slaves. Now he looks disconsolately at the rug.

'No motion, Judge.'

There is a decided change, a pulse in the atmosphere. The two lawyers look up at her like collared hounds, hoping for understanding. They wish to say no more in front of the reporters, many of whom nonetheless seem to have gleaned the significance of Aires's remark. Stanley Rosenberg, Sonny notes, has slipped over two seats toward Stew Dubinsky from the Tribune. Stanley's smooth coiffure holds a spot of courtroom light as he bobs his head, absorbing Dubinsky's interpretation.

'Perhaps counsel should approach,' says Sonny. She waves away Suzanne, the court reporter, and meets the lawyers, remaining on the lowest step beside the bench. 'What's the deal?' she whispers. ‘I take it the defendant has made an arrangement with the People?'

Aires looks to Molto. Molto says, 'That's correct, Judge. We've worked something out. If the court approves.' His Adam's apple does a turn beneath the second chin. He is badly pockmarked. 'We're still checking the details, Judge,' Molto whispers. 'There's a lot to investigate. But if the defendant's story holds, we've agreed to twenty years, Judge.'

'On the shooter?' She has raised her voice more than she would like. With day-for-day good time, Hardcore will be out of the penitentiary in a decade. 'On this case? With a sheet? He's only doing ten inside?'

'He's not the trigger, Judge. And he's giving us someone else. He was just the broker, Mr Aires's client. There was someone else who got him to do it.'

"The Mayor?'

The two lawyers both laugh, a peculiar outbreak of sound in the courtroom where everyone else is silent in hopes of getting an idea of what is transpiring beside the bench. When she became a judge, Sonny found she had grown much funnier. In the interval, she ponders what Molto is saying. Hardcore has flipped, turned state' s evidence, which the gangbangers seldom do. It's an interesting development.

'Look,' she says, 'when you can talk about the case, you call me. This is going to require some discussion.' Sonny is visited by her recurring suspicion: they are setting her up. Somebody is -the cops, the prosecutors, the Chief Judge Brendan Tuohey. They are hoping she'll make a noteworthy mistake, so they can run her out of the building. She gathers her robes, ready again to ascend, then thinks to ask if Molto plans to indict Hardcore and his co-defendant together. Molto nods. It will be her case. She will preside at trial, if the threat of Hardcore's testimony does not persuade whoever engineered the murder to plead guilty. Molto speaks up to detain her.

'Judge,' he says. His voice has dropped to the very edge of audibility. Even his lips are self-consciously stiffened to defeat the most intrepid of the reporters. 'Judge. Just so you know. It's Nile Eddgar. It's no problem for the People. But so you know. Given what you said.'

An empty second passes among the three.

'Wait.' She's come down the last stair. 'Wait. I'm playing catch-up. Let's not be cryptic, Tommy. You're telling me Mr Aires's client, whatever, Hardcore, that he's going to testify that his probation officer, Nile Eddgar, conspired with him to plan this killing of Mr Eddgar's mother?'

Molto looks at length across his shoulder to the reporters before he answers. 'More or less,' he says. The two lawyers face her without expression, awaiting whatever will come next. Sonny labors an instant with the turmoil. 'We haven't picked him up yet,' Molto says. 'We'll probably get a warrant tomorrow.' It's a secret, he's telling her. She nods two or three times, numbed.

After the call, she finds Wells and Lubitsch loitering in the inner office. They've placed the draft on her desk, but Lubitsch winds his head back around toward the courtroom as soon as she appears.

'Average American family, right?' he asks her. 'Apple pie, hot dogs, and Chevrolet, right?' This gloating, the usual cop smugness – us and them – is rankling to Sonny. Only yesterday, Fred Lubitsch would have called Nile a player on his side. With a bare inspection, she signs the warrant and lets the officers go.

Marietta slinks in about an hour later, having wheeled the morning files across to the main building. She is curious, naturally, about the goings-on at sidebar and utters a startled, dyspeptic groan upon learning of Molto's news about Nile, but shows little other emotion. Marietta has been around.

'Should I take myself off the case now?' Sonny asks.

'Cause you knew these folks twenty-five years ago? Hell, who they gonna give the case to, Judge? Everybody else sitting in the Criminal Division knows Nile Eddgar better than you now. You're the junior here, Judge. The other judges? They've all had Nile before them a bunch of times, worked with him, believed his testimony under oath. We've only had him in here but once. And plenty of these judges know the father, too. He ran for controller a couple years back, didn't he? He was at all the dinners. Sides, Judge. A case like this? Nobody's gonna be happy to see it turn up on their calendar.'

Race. That's what she means. The great unmentionable. That's what the case will be about. Black against white. On the street. On the witness stand. In the jury room as well. With the press holding up its magnifying glass throughout. Her colleagues will be convinced that politics, not scruples, led her to dump it. There will be narrow looks in the corridors, colder shoulders. Tuohey, surely, will call.

'I'd like to hear it. Really. Who wouldn't be intrigued to see what's happened to people decades later? But it feels so – close.' She pauses, waging battle with her own fierce propriety. Is she afraid of something, she wonders suddenly.

'Hell, Judge,' says Marietta. 'This here's bound to be a jury trial anyway. Defense lawyer's gonna wag his finger and say how this gangster can't be believed, when he's puttin all the blame on someone else. We – all seen that a thousand times. Won't be anything for you to decide, except the sentence. Why don't you wait and see, Judge? See what the parties say? Spell it out for them. Like you done today. If it don't bother none of them, no reason it oughta bother you.'