“I worked late, and I wasn’t upset. I wanted to draft that complaint. I’m fine.”
“You can’t do everything alone, Bennie.” Marshall clucked. “What’ll you do when I have a real baby to take care of?”
“God knows,” Bennie answered, then went off to be her own messenger.
A half an hour later, she had arrived at the United States Courthouse, which rose like a red-brick monolith among the historic halls and the new Constitution Center. Lawyers, court employees, jurors, and judges flooded into the courthouse this morning, typically busy for a Monday, when new juries were impaneled. Inside, new security measures had forced the slicing up of the courthouse’s formerly generous marble lobby into glass chutes that funneled people to the metal detectors. Bennie joined the back of the line, ending up not far from the courthouse entrance, and was just about to jockey for a faster lane when she felt a hand on her arm. It was Chief Judge Kolbert, but today she appeared stiff in a trim tweed suit, carrying an accordion briefcase.
“Long time no see, Chief,” Bennie greeted her. The lawyers in front of her glanced back, jealous. Knowing Chief Judge Kolbert was the legal equivalent of knowing Madonna.
“Good morning, Bennie,” the judge replied, but her freshly made-up face wrinkled so deeply her foundation cracked. “I gather you have a rather large headache this morning.”
“No, not really. Why do you say that?”
“Your conduct last night.” The chief judge leaned over, scented with Shalimar and annoyance. “You had had quite a lot to drink at the restaurant. You certainly tied one on.”
“What?” Bennie asked, surprised. “I had only the one glass of wine.”
“Please. You disappoint me. Judge Eadeh told me he saw you, in the crowd at the bar. You made quite a scene. He told me they asked you to leave.”
“That’s not true!” Bennie felt slapped in the face. The lawyer in front of her glanced back to see who was making a fool of herself in front of Madonna. “Nobody threw me out, Judge! What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going to argue with you about it.” The chief waved hello at a passing group of lawyers, then returned her attention to Bennie, her whisper thinned to a hissing. “I’d advise more prudence in public. I know you were on your own time, as were we, but really, everybody noticed. You are well known and you represent all of us.”
“But, Judge, I didn’t get thrown-”
“Judge Eadeh saw you, and so did Judge Sherman. Are you saying they were lying?”
Judge Sherman, too? “No, of course not, but they must have made a mistake. The bar was crowded. Maybe it was someone who looked like me, but it wasn’t me, I swear it!”
“Bennie, I tell you as a friend. If you have a drinking problem, attend to it. Now, I must go.” The chief judge pivoted on her patent pumps and left bearing her briefcase.
Bennie stood stunned, her face aflame. What was the judge talking about? She hadn’t had more than one glass. She hadn’t made any scene. She hadn’t been thrown out. The line shifted forward, and she shifted with it, on autopilot. She couldn’t understand it. There had been a crowd at the restaurant’s bar. Maybe someone in the bar area had made a fuss, and the judges had mistakenly thought it was her. Maybe it was someone who looked like her. That had to be it. But what could she do about it? Go to each judge and explain? Excuse me, Judge, I’m not an alcoholic?
Bennie passed though the security checkpoints, shoving her briefcase and bag onto the conveyor belts and flashing her laminated court ID, completely preoccupied. There must have been some sort of misunderstanding, simple as that. Best to let it go. Say nothing, and pray that St. Amien’s complaint wasn’t assigned to a judge who thought she needed Alcoholics Anonymous. It gave a whole new meaning to the term “judicial intervention.”
Bennie grabbed the escalator to the second floor, and by the time she reached the blue rug of the landing, she had another theory. She’d said it herself earlier, the thought coming out of its own volition: Maybe it was someone who looked like me. Because there was someone who looked like her. It was possible that Alice, her twin, had come back to Philly. They looked identical, but Bennie hadn’t seen Alice since the day she’d left town two years ago, and given Alice’s lifestyle, Bennie had even wondered if she were still alive. Alice hadn’t wanted a twin, and Bennie hadn’t either-after she’d met hers. The two women hadn’t grown up together, and one had become a lawyer, while the other had become a criminal. It had all come out in court, when Bennie defended Alice on a murder charge. Was Alice back in town? And why would she be in the same Chinese restaurant last night?
Bennie walked distracted down the corridors of the building, through a warren of bright white halls and past the door to the United States marshal’s office, flanked by framed movie posters of Kevin Costner as Wyatt Earp and Tommy Lee Jones in U.S. Marshals. Evidently everybody was having trouble separating fiction from reality this morning. Bennie walked on, considering her situation. It couldn’t have been Alice in the restaurant, could it? She hadn’t seen her there, and she would have noticed her doppelgنnger eating dim sum. It seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. No reason to jump to conclusions. Alice had no business in town, and she’d said she’d never come back. The judges had simply made a mistake. They did that all the time, whenever they ruled against Bennie. She tried to laugh it off, but she wasn’t laughing.
She reached the office of the district court clerk and opened the double doors into the large office, buzzing with characteristic activity. Facing the entrance was a long Formica counter of fake wood, and behind it fifty-odd court employees hustled back and forth with court documents or keyboarded at their desks in maroon cubicles covered with American flags and Eagles calendars. Bennie never lost sight of the fact that even the biggest lawsuit started with a single complaint, which would be accepted by someone, time- and date-stamped, then assigned to somebody in a black robe. The employees in the clerk’s office, dressed in rugby shirts and Cherokee jeans, were as integral to the justice business as the guys in the black robes, and Bennie had come to know many of the clerks personally over time. She took a place in line at the counter, suppressing nagging thoughts about Alice.
“Yo, Joe,” she said, settling when she reached the front of the line. Joe Grimassi, the clerk at the counter, greeted her with a smile. He was a twenty-five-year-old in a blue oxford shirt and khakis, and he attended Temple Law at night.
“Hey, Bennie. How you been?”
“Good.” She reached into her briefcase, slid out a manila folder containing the complaint, the civil cover sheet and the other papers, and her check for the filing fee. “How was your Civ Pro exam?”
“Last semester? I got an A! Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Res judicata’s a bitch.”
“Tell me about it. If it weren’t for you, I’d be screwed. So, what do you have for me today?” Joe held out his hand, and Bennie passed him the papers and check.
“A class-action complaint. I’m an old dog, learning new lawsuits.”
“I recognize this defendant.” Joe nodded, skimming the caption. “I heard this case is gonna be a monster. We already had four other complaints filed in it last week.”
Huh? “Already? You’re kidding. From who? Whom?”
“The usual suspects. Kerpov, Brenstein, Quinones, and Linette’s firm. Linette filed first, of course.”
“I shoulda known.” Bennie was kicking herself. So much for getting ahead of the curve.
“These class-action jocks, they don’t sit on their thumbs. Not on a case this big, with lead counsel in play. It’s a gold rush.” Joe leaned over the counter like a co-conspirator. “And you didn’t hear it from me, but the word is Bill Linette signed the lead plaintiff.”