Steve Martini - The Judge

“Hey!” she says.

“Thusly,” says Harry. He has placed both of his hands around Lenore’s neck from behind, both forefingers meeting in the center of her throat, squeezing her Adam’s apple like a pimple.

“Cut it out,” she says.

“No, there was no knife,” says Harry, his hands still on her throat. Harry’s pressing his luck.

“They found a four-finger pattern across the lateral anterior portions of the throat, with opposing bruising at the nape of the neck, here,” he says.

His hands come off her throat not a moment too soon. Lenore’s hand has just reached the stapler on my desk.

“It’s not clear after that whether she fell, was thrown down, or was struck with something heavy and blunt.”

According to Harry the pathology report leaves all three as possible scenarios. The cops are leaving all options open at this point.

We talk about scrapings from under the woman’s fingernails. “A little interesting dirt and lint,” says Harry, “but no foreign tissue.” From this Harry deduces that the victim had very little time to react before she was killed, or at least rendered unconscious.

“Normal reaction when someone takes you from behind by the neck,” he says, “is to come up with the claws extended.”

It does make sense.

Harry settles into his chair again.

“Cause of death?” I ask.

“Fracture of the skull, massive brain hemorrhage,” says Harry. “Now ask me if you think he’s capable.” Harry’s talking about Acosta.

He gets looks from both of us.

“Fine,” he says. “Stick your heads in the sand. But consider for a moment that there is every indication that this is a crime of passion, heat of the moment, not something planned or calculated,” says Harry. “I would agree that the judge is not a candidate for cold-blooded murder.”

“You have amazing confidence in our client,” says Lenore.

“We may be doing him a disservice by circling the wagons,” says Harry. “We defend on the murder charge, and he goes down, it’s his life we’re talking about. All the eggs in one big basket.”

“So what are you proposing?” she says.

“Maybe manslaughter. An accident. An argument that turned violent and got out of control,” he says.

“You forget: He says he didn’t do it.”

“Right,” says Harry.

“What, a little hair and fibers and you want to fold the tent and go home?” she says.

“And a motive to kill for, and a possible witness who heard him make death threats, and no alibi, and a note on her calendar with his name on it, and maybe his thumbprint on the front door, and God help us if they find a witness who saw him in the area that night,” says Harry. “How much more do you want?” says Harry.

“A lot of surmise,” she says.

“Yeah. That’s what death cases are made out of,” he says, “surmise.”

“Maybe you’ve been doing misdemeanors too long,” she tells him. “Lost your edge.”

“I don’t need this crap,” says Harry. He’s out of his chair. “Call me when you’re finished,” he tells me. Then Harry turns for the door. The last thing I hear is the pane of glass rattle in the frame of the door as Harry slams it behind him.

Lenore rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I went too far. But I sense that he resents me.”

“You have to cut Harry a little slack,” I tell her. “Give him a break. He’s not big on women in the workplace.”

“I’ve noticed,” she says.

“You have to get to know him. He’s a good man. A good lawyer and a friend,” I tell her.

“Hey, I’m a friend, too.” She says this almost defensively, so that there is some pain evident in her expression.

Almost without thinking, I’m on my feet, my arm around Lenore’s shoulder. “I know you are. I’ve never questioned that.”

She turns toward me, and for an instant our eyes lock, one of those psychic meetings of the mind, and there is in this instant the unstated fact: Lenore is now much more than a friend.

I am treading the middle ground here between Harry and Lenore. I tell her I will talk to him, try to smooth things out.

“Not on my account,” she says. “He doesn’t see his way to a defense. We can’t use him unless his heart is in it.”

“He will warm to the notion,” I tell her. What I do not tell her is that I am not far behind Harry. I am troubled by what was an obvious deception on the part of Acosta: his failure to tell us about his wife and her horse.

“So how do you see the defense playing out?” I ask her.

“The same as you,” she says. Lenore is a quick study. “What we have is a judge who was driving a serious grand jury investigation into police corruption. I think perhaps he didn’t know how close he was cutting to the bone.”

“You mean the skimming by the union?” I ask.

Lenore’s brow furrows. “That and other things,” she says.

“You mean the dead cop? The drug raid?”

“I don’t know,” she says. This is a touchy subject with Lenore. It may involve Tony and she knows it.

“Let’s just say it’s not unheard of for a city to have a few bad cops, engaged in what some might call ‘private enterprise.’ Shaking down drug dealers, some extracurricular raids where drugs and cash disappear and no charges get filed. It is what your friend, uhh. .” She’s at a loss for a name.

“Leo Kerns,” I say.

“Yes. Leo Kerns. That is what he told you, isn’t it?”

“So you think they set him up on the prostitution sting?”

“It is a serious possibility,” she tells me.

“And the murder?”

“Convenient,” she says. “Who knows why the girl was killed, or who did it? But no one can deny that the judge had a powerful motive, and was sitting in a vulnerable position when it went down.”

“And a lot of circumstantial evidence pointed his way,” I say. “You think they may have helped the case along a little, some of the boys in blue?”

“Planted evidence?” she says.

I nod.

“I don’t like to think so,” she says. Her law enforcement side is showing. “But in for a penny, in for a pound. If they killed one of their own, it was probably a mistake, but if so, doctoring some evidence would be a minor infraction, at least in their minds.”

“Are you telling me something?”

A whimsical look from Lenore. “Just theorizing,” she says.

She gets up from her chair and moves toward the door, an indication that in her mind there is not much left to discuss.

“As I said, there are a lot of cars with those fibers, and the horse hair is nonspecific. We should not jump to any conclusions,” says Lenore. “And of course the cops, no matter what else we might think, did not kill that girl.”

As she says this I am still perusing the copy of Brittany Hall’s phone directory, the little book with its missing pages. It strikes me that they were on a first-name basis. Someone went to such trouble to remove the letter L from this little book, and still missed the entry under the Gs: a phone number and a name in parentheses-the name of Gus Lano.

Short and fat, stealth was never his style, though today Leo Kerns cloaks himself behind the concrete pillar of a parking structure, sneaking peeks at City Center Park across the street. The park is bordered by McGowen Center on the other side, the police department headquarters. We have come to do the devil’s deal: exchange some information. Leo is about to finger a face from the P.D. for me.

“No sign yet,” says Leo. “But he takes lunch here every day, like fucking clockwork. The guy’s in a rut,” he says.

Leo’s munching on a hot dog, mustard dribbling down his chin as he says this. I have purchased it for him from one of those vendors at a rolling cart on the corner; that and a Coke, which rests on top of a trash can next to him. I have dragged him here during the noon hour, and Leo made it clear he wasn’t coming without lunch.