The numbers of the budget game appealed to him. It was pretty simple. You had so much money to spend, first you looked around at who had been good to you, then you factored in services you needed and you cut where you had to – or wanted to – make a point, where the system wasn’t working efficiently. And then you made the numbers balance. For an organized guy like Leo, it was a cakewalk.
For example, during some budget committee meetings Leo had made a big stink about liberal judges, especially in San Francisco, getting paid a lot to do nothing – letting off people caught in stings, like that. Clip, clip. Cut back on salary adjustments, do away with judicial raises.
Of course, to survive, yourself, you didn’t make too many friends. You really couldn’t afford to. You had allies instead – the Attorney General-turned-Governor, for example, was a damn good one. Leo’s wife also, Gina. Brilliant, much smarter than he was – and attractive. A Santa Barbara Republican, she’d been a staffer, too, but after they’d had Leo Jr., all thought of politics left her head. Now she was an ally. She was loyal and did her jobs. That was life, right?
And then, according to plan, Leo got what he’d wish for. On his way out of office, his mentor the governor had rewarded him for his sixteen years of loyal service by appointing him to a judgeship in San Francisco. Except that now that he was here, he found the job had all the glamor of a stockyard, except the cattle were human.
Before Leo Chomorro had arrived eighteen months before, Calendar judges in the City and County of San Francisco were rotated every six months. The work was so dull that no one could be expected to keep at it longer than that. But Leo’s budgetary philosophy when he’d been with the Governor, combined with his lack of belief in personal friendships, had created for himself a cloud of political resentment, and San Francisco’s judges wasted no time putting him in his place – which was Calendar, where he had remained and remained.
It was ironic. Leo was a judge who believed there was justice in the world. Or should be. He had believed that if you worked hard and did a good job, people came to value you. You got promoted. You moved up.
Ha.
Today, Tuesday, July 7, Leo Chomorro sat sweating under his robes in Department 22, overseeing work he wouldn’t have assigned to his clerk. The Calendar was a necessary evil in all larger jurisdictions – there had to be some mechanism to decide which suspects went to what courtroom, whether or not cases were ready for trial, all of the administrative work that went along with keeping eight courtrooms and their staffs reasonably efficient so the criminal justice system could keep grinding along.
It was the kind of work for which Leo was suited by experience and temperament. He thought he’d never get out of it, and it was driving him mad.
‘Okay, Trial Calendar line six, what have we got here?’
This morning was never going to end. The bailiff brought in Line Six – all the cases were given line numbers off the huge computer printout that had to be processed every Monday. Except Monday had been a holiday. So the list was longer.
He forced himself to look up. Line Six was a guy about Leo’s age and, like Leo, an Hispanic, although Leo couldn’t have cared less about his race. Line Six shuffled behind the bailiff to the podium in front of the bench. Mr Zapata was represented by the public defender, Ms Rogan. Chomorro looked down at the list for the next available judge. Fowler, Department 27. He intoned the name and department.
‘Excuse me, Your Honor.’ Leo looked up. Any interruption, any change in the deadly routine was welcome. It was the summer clerk who’d been quietly monitoring proceedings at the D.A.‘s table all morning. ’May I approach the bench?‘
The boy reminded Leo of himself when he’d been a student. Dark, serious, intent, fighting down his nerves, he whispered. ‘Mr Drysdale would like to ask you to reconsider your assignment of Mr Zapata to a different department.’
Leo Chomorro cast his eyes around the courtroom. He and Art Drysdale went over the Calendar on disposition of cases every Friday night, and he’d mentioned nothing about Zapata at that time. Well, maybe something new had come up, but Art wasn’t in the courtroom.
‘Where is Mr Drysdale?’
‘He’s in his office, Your Honor. He asked if you’d grant a recess.’
‘When did he do that if he’s not here?’
‘That’s all he’s asked me to say, Your Honor, if you could grant a recess and call him.’
Leo frowned. He wanted to keep things moving but felt empathy for the kid, and Drysdale made up the Calendar with him every week. In a world full of no friends, Art was as close to one as he had. He looked up at the defendant.
‘Mr Zapata, sit down. We’ll take a ten-minute recess.’
‘It’s pretty unusual, Art. It’s circumvention.’
‘I know it is.’ Drysdale wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything. This was Locke’s call, and he was delivering a message, that was all. He was sitting back, comfortable in the leather chair in front of Chomorro’s desk. ‘We don’t want Zapata going to Fowler’s department. He threw out the last one.’
‘I know. I read about that. Zapata’s another sting case?’ Art nodded. ‘I just plain missed him on Friday or I would have mentioned it then.’
Chomorro was moving things on his desk. ‘I’ve already assigned it, Art. Rogan might make a stink.’ He’d called out Department 27 – Fowler’s courtroom. If the defense attorney he’d appointed was on top of things, she’d know Fowler’s position on these kinds of cases. From Rogan’s perspective, Fowler was a winner for her client – he’d throw out the case. Any other judge probably would not.
Art leaned forward. ‘We’re ready to lose one like that. What we don’t want is Fowler getting any more of these -start another landslide and screw up this program.’
Chomorro shuffled more paper. His life was shuffling paper. He didn’t believe he could do what Art was suggesting. It was at the very least close to unethical. The D.A. or the defendant could challenge one judge, on any case. A judge could be recused from a case because of conflicts of interest, because he or she knew the defendant, for no reason at all, but such a public challenge always involved a political fight that both sides lost. Usually such problems were settled privately in the chambers of the Master Calendar department -certain cases just never happened to be assigned to certain judges. But here, Mr Zapata’s case had been publicly assigned for trial. ‘I don’t think I can do it, Art.’
Drysdale wasn’t surprised. He nodded, then leaned forward, fore-arms on knees, and settled in. ‘Leo, Your Honor, how long have you been on Calendar here?’
It took Chomorro a minute, a subtle shift in posture, like Art’s own. His mouth creased up. ‘Year and a half, maybe.’
‘Any talk of you getting off?’
Chomorro shrugged. ‘Somebody’s got to retire soon, die. I’m the low man.’
Art leaned back. ‘The job used to rotate, Leo. You know that?’
Again, a tight smile. ‘I’d heard that rumor.’
‘But if somebody carries a grudge around, maybe a little superior attitude, doesn’t make any friends, do any favors…’ Art held up a hand. ‘I’m not talking illegal, I’m talking little things, amenities. Things could change, that’s all I’m saying. Chris Locke is pals with some of your colleagues, so is Rigby. They both like this program, the one that got Zapata. And no one – not even Fowler -is denying these guys are stealing. They’ve still got to be found guilty by a jury. They get a fair trial. We’re not circumventing justice here, maybe just fine-tuning the bureaucracy.’
Chomorro did not for a moment buy Drysdale’s argument that they weren’t circumventing justice. Of course they were. But Chomorro was not a newcomer to politics, deals. He knew a deal when he heard one, and – assuming you were going to play – it wasn’t smart to leave things up in the air. ‘Labor Day,’ he said. ‘I’m off Calendar by Labor Day.’