Steve Martini: The Judge

If Kline knew Lenore was here, or for that matter that she had referred Arguillo to counsel, he would no doubt draw and quarter her. So far she has managed to stay out of his sights. Fortunately for Lenore, she was too new to the office to take sides in the election.

Kline is balding, thirty-eight, and married to money. I am told his wife is the heir to some fortune grounded in the land: almonds and rice. We are not talking pocket change, but something to launch a political career into the stratosphere.

Anyone, including Kline’s mother, who thinks they know what is going on in that calculating mind at any time of the day is dreaming. He smiles only on command, and then just when speaking before groups of more than one hundred. I am told that since he attained the age of reason, his every move has been measured precisely for political effect, that he is a man with his eyes on the political heavens. Lenore could do worse than tie her star to his wagon. But for reasons unstated, she does not seem to trust him. It may be a difference in management styles, or the fact that she views him as a religious fanatic that makes her uncomfortable.

“Maybe you should hang a shingle,” I tell her. “Private practice may have fewer occupational hazards.”

“I’d only end up doing what you’re doing.” She gives me a sheepish grin. She means Tony’s case, which I am for the moment doing pro bono, without compensation, because Arguillo is tapped out. Child support and alimony; at the moment the man is heavily invested in a former wife.

“What do we do?” Like powdered cream in hot coffee, Tony’s machismo is beginning to dissolve. Images of an iron cell door swinging shut.

“Not a lot of options,” I tell him.

We do the self-incrimination thing. Lenore and I talk about Tony’s Fifth Amendment rights. Immunity punches a quick hole in this balloon. Kline, if he is interested, will simply offer immunity to Tony for his testimony and force him to talk. Acosta has threatened as much. It comes down to how much Tony really knows, which to date he has not shared with me. While lawyer-client confidences are sacred, that privilege has all the effects of water on pitch when it comes to officers of the law and their ultimate loyalties. “To serve and protect” may be the inscription lettered on the door panel of every patrol car in this country. But on the inside, branded into the leatherette of the upholstery, is law enforcement’s true and highest credo, the ultimate rule of survival on the street: Never give up a fellow cop. As to what he knows, and whom he can finger, Tony Arguillo has kept me in the dark.

“Maybe it’s time we had a chat,” I tell him.

“Yeah. Right,” he says. He looks at the ceiling, wrings his hands. A glance to Lenore, who at this moment can offer him nothing but a supportive smile.

“Not a chance,” he says. “I’m not going behind closed doors with any grand jury and I’m not talking. Acosta’s barking up the wrong tree. He can’t make me roll over on good cops. Why? So that fucker can make a name for himself, climb over a few more bodies, maybe get himself on the appellate court?”

I can sense a palpable shudder from Harry with that thought.

“He’s talking general lockup,” I tell him. Acosta is probably hunting at this very moment to find a few thugs Tony has collared as prospective bunk mates.

But Arguillo’s now on a roll. I don’t think this has even seeped in. It does not slow him down.

“He doesn’t understand rank and file,” he says. “We stand together. We know how to take care of our own,” he tells me. “He screws with us, he’ll need night goggles to figure out just how far up his ass his head’s been jammed.” He gets more colorful as he goes, his male anatomy seeming to swell in size as he pumps himself up, adrenaline and testosterone both tipping the scale. Then, just as suddenly, he stops, looks at me.

“I gotta go,” he says.

“Where?”

“Call of nature,” he tells me.

I think maybe he’s worked himself up to a fit where he is now ill, his face flushed, his hands shaking.

Tony heads out the door toward the men’s room down the hall. For a brief moment the three of us-Harry, Lenore, and I-sit silent, looking at each other.

“He won’t talk, you know.” Lenore says this matter-of-factly, a maxim like the force of gravity.

“Loyalty? Cop’s tenet of faith?” I say.

“That, and the rules of survival.”

“His job?”

“His life,” she says.

“Now you’re being dramatic. Nobody’s threatened him.” I don’t dwell on the Coconut’s plans for cohabitation in the county jail.

“It doesn’t take much to put an officer on the street in jeopardy.” Her mind is more subtle. “A violent domestic call without adequate backup-a street robbery and Dispatch forgets to tell you that your suspect is armed. A million ways to kill you and all of them look like accidents,” she says.

“Why would they do that?” I ask her. I wonder if maybe Tony has told her something he hasn’t told me.

“How well do you know this guy Lano?” she says.

“Just from the stories,” I tell her. “I’ve never met him, and from what I hear I’m not missing much.”

Gus Lano is the head of the Police Association. He is a man with an immense ego and terminal ambition like a growing cancer. Since taking over the union four years ago, he has extended creeping tendrils of power into every nook and cranny of the county, like a tumor growing out your rectum. When it comes to charges of police misconduct, he has paralyzed whole agencies of government. The command structure of the department has now become a collaborative exercise. The chief does not move without consulting Lano.

His reputation is that he takes care of his people, the keynote to survival, the path to power in labor.

“Are you saying that Lano has threatened my client?”

“If there’s anything to it, the missing money, Lano would cover himself,” says Lenore. “He’s not the kind to take a fall gracefully. It’s not his style,” she says.

“You think he’d take steps to keep Tony quiet?”

She makes a face, like my best guess.

My daughter is a lover, a hugger, one of those children who will for no stated reason come to me, silent and wistful, seeking a hug as other children might ask for candy. I will peck her on the forehead or cheek, a reassurance of love, that I will not leave her as her mother did last year through death.

I am now both father and mother to our daughter, a task that is no mean feat. Nikki was not only the disciplinarian of our family, but the Tooth Fairy. Last week that mythic dispenser of pocket change blew a visit, forgetting to leave her deposit under my daughter’s pillow. The next morning Sarah came to me in tears. Not only was her mother gone, but the Tooth Fairy had now neglected to make a stop. In her mind, I am sure she was wondering whether she would soon be stricken from the appointed rounds by Santa.

I spent the next evening reducing my hand to writer’s cramp as I penned an apology in Fairyese, tiny block letters, some homily about an emergency involving another ill elf and my need to be with her. An excuse I prayed Sarah would understand.

When chastised by her mother for some errant act, Sarah at an early age often came to me, sensing a lenient court of appeal. Children have a sixth sense. They can smell the chemistry of parental resolve in the air. She knew that I, the stone idol of a father, was the one to remit her sentence.

We both learned quickly the terror that was Nikki when I was countermanded in matters pertaining to child rearing. My wife was an authority not to be crossed, not so much angry as stern, a firm believer that children should never be allowed to manipulate parents, to divide and conquer, that consistency was the correct path to the holy grail of raising our daughter.