Phillip Margolin - Supreme Justice

“Did you play college hoops?” she asked.

“High school, JV,” he said, unable to lie, though he was tempted. “I was never good enough for a college team.”

“Give it here,” the woman said. Brad tossed her the ball. She glided across the hardwood before firing a shot from the spot where Brad had attempted his three. The ball swished through the net without touching the rim.

“Awesome,” Brad said, reacting to the unexpected grace of the woman’s moves. She laughed. Then she picked up the ball and walked over to Brad. As she drew closer, he realized that she was more than just pretty, and she was definitely sexy, with her flat bare midriff and long smooth legs.

“Did you play in college?” Brad asked.

“Point guard at MIT.”

Of course, Brad thought, feeling more inadequate than usual. He’d been a decent tennis player in college and could usually console himself with the idea that he was a better athlete than his fellow clerks even if he wasn’t as smart, but this clerk could not only play hoops better than he could, she had a degree from MIT.

The woman thrust out her hand. “Wilhelmina Horst. It’s a horrible name. Everyone calls me Willie. You probably don’t remember, but we met at Happy Hour,” she said, referring to the courtyard get-togethers hosted in turn by each chamber, where the clerks could get to know each other over a beer and eats.

“Oh, yeah,” Brad said, fighting to hide the discomfort he felt being this close to a very attractive, half-naked woman. The guilt the attraction elicited was due to his status as a man engaged to be married. “I didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”

Willie smiled. “I was probably wearing glasses along with my suit. I use contacts when I’m not trying to look lawyerly.”

“Brad Miller.”

“Yeah, I know; the president guy. You’re famous.”

Brad blushed. “I wish I wasn’t. Being a celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, believe me. It’s actually a big pain in the butt.”

“Oh, come on. Bringing down a president has got to be a rush.”

“Not really. Mostly, I was in a state of terror. So, whom do you clerk for?” Brad asked, desperate to change the topic. Willie wasn’t the first clerk who had tried to pump him for inside dope about the Farrington scandal.

“Millard Price. You clerk for Justice Moss, right?”

Brad nodded.

“My boss is pissed at her.”

“Oh?”

“Something she did at conference with the Woodruff cert petitions upset him.”

Brad’s mental alarm went off. Horst was the second of Price’s clerks to talk to him about Woodruff.

“What did she do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He was just muttering about Justice Moss when he got back to chambers, and he looked concerned. Your boss didn’t mention Woodruff when she got back from the conference?”

“Not to me. I didn’t work on that one. I don’t even know what it’s about.”

Willie looked directly into Brad’s eyes, making him more nervous than he was already. Then she thrust the ball at him.

“Want to go one-on-one?”

Willie’s voice sounded huskier than it had been moments before. Brad felt something stirring bellow his belt line and tried to control his panic. He looked over Willie’s shoulder at the clock. It was almost eight.

“I should be going. My fiancée is probably waiting to have dinner with me.”

“Maybe some other time?” Willie said, her voice full of promise. She was apparently unfazed by the revelation that Brad had a significant other.

“Not if I want to preserve my dignity,” Brad answered with a nervous laugh. “You’d probably kick my ass.”

Willie smiled. “It would be fun to try. Say, I’ve heard that Justice Moss’s chamber is decorated with really interesting civil rights memorabilia.”

“It is.”

“Any chance you can give me a tour some evening, after work, when she’s gone?”

“Uh, sure, maybe.”

“Good.”

“I really have to go. Ginny’s probably starving.”

“Right. Nice talking to you again.”

Brad left the gym sweating more than he had when he was working out. The questions about Woodruff had raised a red flag. Something was up, and he decided he should tell his boss about his conversations with Millard Price’s clerks as soon as he had a chance.

Brad took a quick shower, then headed down to his office to call Ginny.

“Are you up for dinner?” he asked when he got through to her.

“I would love to have dinner with you, but General Tso asked me first.”

“Ditch the takeout. I can be at your office in fifteen minutes.”

Ginny sighed. “I can’t. One of the partners dumped a file on my desk at six and needs a memo first thing in the morning. You remember what that’s like.”

“Unfortunately, I do,” Brad said as he flashed back to the bad old days at the law firm in Portland.

“I love you, and I’ll see you at home.”

“You’ll probably be too tired for wild sex,” Brad said, half joking and still aroused by his encounter with Willie Horst.

“Or any other kind.”

Brad laughed. “Just kidding. I’m pretty beat myself. You’re the best.”

They traded kisses and Brad hung up. He smiled. Willie Horst might be sexy, but she was no Ginny Striker.

Ginny hung up the phone and sighed. In front of her was a sixty-page contract so boring that it would put a speed freak to sleep. To her right, a pair of chopsticks stuck out of a carton of greasy General Tso’s Chicken. She would have given anything to be in her pajamas, snuggling on her couch with the man she loved while they watched a great old movie on the Turner Classics station. Unfortunately, she owed thousands of dollars in student loans and also found it necessary, for some strange reason, to eat and put a roof over her head. Ah to have been born a royal princess or heir to an industrialist’s fortune. Life was definitely not fair.

Ginny plucked a piece of chicken out of the carton and washed it down with a swig of Coke. Then she slapped her cheeks to get her adrenaline going. She made it through the contract a little after nine and e-mailed her memo to the partner at 10:15. At this hour, Rankin Lusk Carstairs and White was a ghost town inhabited by the cleaning crews that moved silently through the plush offices of the partners and the Spartan broom-closet-size spaces occupied by oppressed associates who, like Ginny, had been saddled with last-minute assignments by their sadistic masters.

Ginny was almost to the elevator when she heard the ding that signaled the arrival of a car. A woman stepped out, followed by Dennis Masterson. Ginny was not surprised to see Masterson with a female. He had a well-deserved reputation as a womanizer. As new as she was to the firm, Ginny knew of two associates who’d had to fend off his advances. What did surprise Ginny was how ordinary the woman looked. She was dressed in a severe beige business suit and had thin, pinched features and mousy brown hair. Her eyes were her best feature, and they examined Ginny without emotion, the way a computer might if it could stare.

Masterson nodded at Ginny as he passed her on his way to his sprawling corner office. Ginny wondered if the woman was a client, then wondered why she would be meeting with Masterson in his office at this hour. She considered the possibility that the meeting was a tryst but discounted it. If Masterson was going to make love to the woman, they would be in a hotel room. Ginny was too tired to give any more thought to the pair, and they were forgotten by the time the elevator doors opened in the garage.

Inverness, a sleepy college town of roughly thirty thousand in northern Wisconsin, was founded by Scotch immigrants who migrated west from New York in the mid-1800s. The population of the town more than doubled each fall when the students at Inverness University and Robert M. La Follette School of Law started the fall semester, and it swelled again during hunting and fishing seasons. Hiking and camping were popular diversions for Inverness students, and the university orientation package contained maps highlighting the hiking trails that started at various points on the outskirts of the campus, and the location of the many lakes that could be found in the verdant forest that surrounded the town and the university.