Steve Martini - The Judge

“Yeah. As I was saying. My office door is open. I remember closing it before I left. There’s a deputy sheriff parked in a chair outside, reading the paper. I thought maybe he was a witness in a case waiting to be interviewed.”

I give her a nod. Logical conclusion. I pop the cork and pour her a glass.

“Then before I can get there I hear noises in my office, somebody rummaging around. You know, I’m like, what the hell? Then he stops me.”

“Who?”

“The deputy,” she says. “He puts his hand out and grabs my arm like he’s going to tackle me if I try to enter my own office. He demands identification. So I show him my I.D. The little folder,” she says.

This is something that looks like a passport, and serves for that purpose at crime scenes, issued with a picture on it by the prosecutor’s office to each of its deputies, a ticket to the law enforcement fraternity.

“He looks at it, then puts it in his pocket,” she says.

I agree with her that there is a message in this.

“Yes, well. I tell him I want it back. He tells me to take a seat. I ask him what the hell’s going on, and he doesn’t answer.

“Mind you, while this is going on somebody’s inside my office going through my desk drawers. I can hear the rustle of papers, voices inside, so I’m arguing with the cop outside in the hallway. And I’m getting pretty pushy.”

Visions of Lenore, all one hundred twenty pounds, taking on some burly deputy.

“Three guesses,” I tell her, “and the first two don’t count. Kline’s inside with a flashlight and picks working the tumblers on your desk drawer?” I say.

She gives me a nod like “damn right.”

“He’s got that woman with him. Wendy. The pink slip dispenser. Someone he brought from the outside. They worked together at that association before he was elected.” She makes the word association sound like something dirty.

“Anyway, she’s standing there taking notes on a little pad, apparently taking inventory of everything in my office. I ask him what the hell’s going on.”

Lenore sips her wine. “This is good.”

“I’ll break out the cheese and we can do the wine tasting later,” I tell her.

She gives me a pain-in-the-ass expression.

“Anyway, he wants to know where all my notes are in the Acosta case. I tell him everything was in the file, that I gave it to him.”

She tells me that for some reason he doesn’t believe this.

“At that point I start getting really pissed. I guess I said some things,” she says.

She takes a drink, and I am left to use my own imagination to fill in the blanks, what part of her mind she no doubt gave to Kline at this point.

She swallows, then looks at me. “Then he tells me I’m fired.” The look on her face imparts only a small measure of the shock she says came with this news.

“I ask him why, and he tells me he’s been advised by the County Counsel’s office not to state the grounds, that I’ll be getting a letter, but that I’m terminated effective at five o’clock today. No explanation,” she says. “Can you believe it?”

The sorry fact is that I can. It is a measure of job security in the modern workplace. We discuss Lenore’s recourse, which takes all of a nanosecond. As part of management she is what is called a “pleasure appointment,” exempt from civil service protection. Hired and fired at the pleasure of the elected district attorney. Kline does not even require cause to fire her. Anything that is not grounded in discrimination will do. She tells me she has no intention of fighting it, that taking the long view, it is probably for the best. “Time to strike out on my own,” she says.

I ask her about prospects, clients or money. She has neither.

“I could give you Tony as a client,” I tell her.

“Yeah, right. Just what I need.”

I think perhaps this is a lot of booze talking, that when she considers the sum of her financial obligations around payday, she may have other thoughts.

“Did you ever figure out what Kline wanted from the Acosta file? What it was he thought was missing?” I am thinking maybe this has something to do with her firing.

“With that one, God only knows,” she says.

“You said he asked about your notes?”

She gives me a face that is a question mark. She doesn’t have a clue.

“What happened then?”

“High drama,” she says. “He has Wendy hand me a cardboard box filled with personal items they’ve taken from my office and Kline tells the deputy to escort me from the building. Like I’ve committed some crime,” she says.

Lenore is walking, pacing across my kitchen, straggly hair, drink in hand, steam seeming to rise from her body as she revisits the image in her mind.

“I never thought I’d end up pulling for some slime like Acosta,” she says.

“The enemy of my enemy,” I tell her.

“Exactly. Two days ago I wouldn’t have given him a second thought, or two cents for his chances.” She’s talking about Acosta.

“And now he’s a knight on a charging steed,” I tell her.

“I wouldn’t go so far as that. But I think he may kick some ass. At least his lawyers will.”

“You think Kline’s that bad in court?”

“That,” she says, “and the fact that his evidence has now suddenly turned to shit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Right after Kline grabbed the file off my desk and announced to the world that he was going to do this thing himself, the audio techs call. The wire. The one worn by Hall that night. It didn’t work.” This brings the only smile she has exhibited since arriving at my house, something sinister that does not rest well on Lenore’s face. “They don’t know if it simply malfunctioned, or if somebody turned it off.”

“Turned it off?”

She gives me a look that says “think about it.” “Acosta. Lano and the association. If you sandbagged the judge. .” She leaves me to finish the thought; that if the cops set the Coconut up, they would not produce the audiotape that might exonerate him.

“They’d be better off going one-on-one,” says Lenore. “Hall’s word against his.”

“There was nothing on the tape?” I ask.

“Nothing beyond Acosta’s husky voice and a somewhat salacious hello from Hall. Not exactly incriminating,” says Lenore. “After that it all goes buzzy.”

I can feel my heart sag in my chest. Twenty more years of the Coconut on the bench.

“So it’s his word against hers?” I say.

She nods.

“It may be enough. She seemed as if she would come across well on the stand.” A wishful thought on my part.

Lenore waffles one hand at the wrist, like it could go either way.

“Before I was escorted from the premises I heard rumors,” she says. “Talk of a deal.”

“God. Don’t tell me.”

“Some reduced infraction,” she says, “but only on condition that he resign from the bench.”

I sigh like a man before a firing squad that’s just shot blanks.

“He rejected the offer,” she says, “out of hand. Some story that he was visiting the witness on judicial business.”

“That’s his defense?” I say. “What was this business? A major mattress inspection? I can hear him on the stand. ‘I was merely lying on top of the woman to see if we could punch a hole in a Posturepedic.’”

Lenore does not laugh. “You have to admit, it’s a little strange. The judge is pressing for information of police misconduct and gets nailed in a Vice sting. Before they can get him to trial, the evidence turns sour.”

“So what are you thinking? A shot across his bow. They want to warn him off.”

“Who knows? All we know now is that it comes down to a credibility contest. Who the jury believes,” says Lenore. “With removal from the bench as the bottom line.”