Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

“I don’t know,” Juliana said at last.

Matías was sitting about twenty feet away.

Why is he here?

“Most people would say you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Linda said softly. She seemed to mean it as a question. She looked at Juliana hard; she seemed to know more than she was saying. “Myra Silver’s death means the federal judgeship is open; you’re aware of that, right?”

She was barely listening. “I suppose.”

Linda smiled. “You suppose? Word on the street is that you’re being seriously considered for the job. I suppose you’re aware of that too?”

Juliana nodded. “You’re not the first to say so,” she admitted.

“You want to be very careful about the decisions you make these days,” Linda said. “You know, you look at some of the recent Supreme Court appointments — I mean, these are people who always put every foot right. They made the right friends and executed every move perfectly. It’s like some giant quadrille, and it never stops.”

“Does that sound like me?”

“You’ve always got to play the long game. The higher you climb, the thinner the air gets, and the ledge you walk on gets narrower and narrower. So be careful.”

She walked Linda downstairs, embraced good-bye, went back upstairs.

Had she imagined him? Had that been some kind of hallucination?

But Matías was still sitting in the club chair in the corner. She looked around. No one was sitting nearby.

“Your Honor,” he said quietly.

She felt something like a kick in the stomach.

“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered, closer to a hiss.

“Juliana. I’m sorry about this.” He looked genuinely sad.

“I don’t know who you are or what sort of game you think you’re playing, but I’m not going to be trapped or coerced or manipulated.”

“Juliana, don’t try to resist. For your own sake.” He didn’t say it menacingly; there was even something like tenderness in his voice.

“What do you think you’re going to accomplish?”

“You’ll grant our motion for a protective order. You will say that the company has the right to protect confidential and proprietary information. That they can withhold certain chats.” He shrugged. “All quite reasonable.”

She laughed, low and rueful. “Oh, I see. You’re trying to blackmail me, is that it?”

He was still for a moment. When he spoke next, it was in a whisper.

“There’s a video.”

“I’m sorry? What did you say? A—”

He nodded once. “Yes, Juliana. A video. Of that night.”

Her mouth went dry. “Bullshit. Matías, or whatever the hell your real name is.”

He leaned to one side and pulled out a laptop from his shoulder bag. He opened it and clicked an icon. A video started playing in a large window on his screen.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

It took her a moment to orient herself, but then she could see her naked torso crisply, the roil of her breasts as she moved up and down, riding him. It was unmistakably her. Over her right shoulder, his face. Also clear. The video was playing on some kind of video-sharing website. Next to the window a box was checked: “Private.”

“All I have to do is click the ‘Public’ box, and your life as you know it is over.” A member of the rambunctious fireplace party was walking by, probably on her way to the restroom. Matías closed the laptop and put it back in his shoulder bag. “You can already imagine what the tabloids will call you. The Love Judge, right? But the thing is, nobody ever needs to see this video. The choice is yours.”

Disgusted, her lip curling, she said, “What would your late wife think about this?”

Matías gave her a pitying look.

She felt faint. Of course: the whole thing was a carefully scripted snare. There was no late wife. She had been painstakingly played and seduced. “That picture of your daughter you showed me,” she said. She remembered the blond, pigtailed girl, the red-and-white-striped T-shirt, the gap-toothed smile. “You don’t have a daughter, do you?”

“I used what they gave me. I assume it was some Google Image grab.”

What they gave me.

“Well, good for you,” she said bitterly. “You must be so proud of the work you do.”

“You understand what this means, yes?”

“I’m going to rule the way I’m going to rule. However I decide.”

“And if you rule the wrong way, I check ‘Public.’ But why would you want to do this? You’re a judge. Your rulings might be appealed, but the decision-making behind your choices? Your choices? Nobody will ever second-guess that. Nobody will ever have to know.”

She was silent.

“Or, Juliana? If you defy them, you get in their way — then the judgment will come. No appeals. No mercy. No justice. You’ll be ruined.”

“You’re threatening an officer of the court.”

“I am only telling you the truth.”

Juliana was momentarily stymied. She couldn’t find the words. Finally she said, “What’s to stop me from picking up the phone and calling The Boston Globe ?”

“And telling them what? That your career on the bench is over? That for law firms you’ve become untouchable? And as for your personal life, your kids, your husband, your marriage — you’ll need to decide how much you value it. I’m sure the Globe would love to run a piece about the sordid fall of a Massachusetts Superior Court judge. But is that really in your interest?”

She looked at him long and hard. Finally she said, “I don’t accept this.”

“I advise you to see it through,” said Matías. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“Neither do you,” she said.

The house was quiet when she arrived home, but deceptively so. She knew Jacob was upstairs in his room, headphones on, listening to music, and maybe even doing his homework. Duncan was probably in his home office working on his journal article.

And the kitchen was still a mess.

Juliana put on an apron and set to work carrying dishes to the sink, rinsing them, and loading the dishwasher — a mindless exercise that allowed her to think about what had happened.

The scene at the Bostonia Club had blotted out everything else. Matías Sanchez sitting sedately, almost regally, in the leather wingback chair, reading a copy of The Economist .

If you defy them, you get in their way — then the judgment will come. No appeals. No mercy. No justice. You’ll be ruined.

Them.

He had seduced her in Chicago in order to entrap her. To blackmail her. And she had willingly, and thoughtlessly, gone along with it.

He was, had to be, working for Wheelz. To force a verdict favorable to the company. Why in the world go to such lengths for a sex-discrimination case? She didn’t get it.

If you defy them, you get in their way — then the judgment will come. No appeals. No mercy. No justice. You’ll be ruined .

Well, they weren’t going to get what they wanted. She scraped crusted cheese off a plate.

Her reply — I don’t accept this — had been piddling and inadequate, but she’d been stunned into near silence. Almost paralyzed from fear.

She didn’t know what to do. She only knew she had to do something.

Washing the dishes she noticed that her hands were trembling. As she was rinsing, a wineglass slipped from her fingers and shattered in the sink.

“Shit,” she said.

“Hey, let me do that,” she heard Duncan say, entering from his study. “I’m sorry, Jake and I got into a discussion after dinner, and then I had an idea for my lecture tomorrow.”