Justice Straczynski was the most respected jurist to ever sit on that court, a brilliant legal scholar who used economic theory to slice through the Gordian knots of the most difficult legal problems. His great legal treatise, The Economic Laws of Constitutional Interpretation, once a fixture only on the bookshelves of the most conservative law student and right wing legal activist, had become, with the rightward tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court, a staple desktop reference for every constitutional scholar in the country.
After a stint making policy at the Department of Justice for Ronald Reagan, and a period teaching law at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater, Straczynski was tapped by the Republican Party to run for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He wasn’t much of a campaigner, his speaking style was likened to that of an aardvark on Quaaludes, but it just so happened that during the campaign he published a much-publicized article interpreting the Second Amendment to protect the unequivocal right to buy and bear anything with a trigger. Two things are wildly popular in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, guns and funnel cakes, both are tasty, both are deadly, but if the state’s denizens had to pick one, well, you can’t kill an eight-point buck with a funnel cake, now can you? Straczynski won his election in a walk and now he sat on the state’s highest court, writing uncompromising decisions of uncompromised brilliance and waiting for that call from Washington. The pundits all said it was coming.
“So we agree, right, Kimberly,” I said, as we sat side by side on the beige couch in the justice’s wood-lined waiting room, “I’ll do all the questioning, you’ll just sit quiet and watch the show.”
“Whatever.”
Kimberly glanced at the stern-eyed secretary with the high gray hair manning the desk in the middle of the room. “But remember,” Kimberly said in a hushed voice, “Mr. D definitely wants his name kept out of this.”
“Mr. D?”
“Sure. He was very clear about it.”
“Okay.”
She sat for a moment, something obviously bothering her. “What if a question sort of pops out of my mouth on its own?”
“Gosh, I hope it doesn’t. He might not want to tell us his favorite boy band.”
“Excuse me?”
I looked her up and down. She was dressed like quite the career woman, so long as the career was taking place in the early 1960s, bright green faux-Chanel business suit, matching heels, and small clutch.
“You look like a bowl of Jell-O in that getup,” I said.
“We’re visiting a judge, right? This is my government outfit. Mint green, get it?”
She gave a little smile, but the way she bit her lower lip with nervousness made me feel like a jerk. She had that way, did Kimberly.
“Okay,” I said. “Ask what you want. But my advice would be to say as little as possible to this guy. He’s not your usual drunken frat boy.”
Just as I said that a tall man in a black suit came into the waiting room. “Mr. Carl, Ms. Blue,” he said, his voice gilded with an Island lilt. “My name is Curtis Lobban,” said the man. “I am Justice Straczynski’s file clerk.”
Curtis Lobban stood straight and tall, with the deep voice and dignified manner of a dignitary, his dark suit, broad shoulders, and the gray at his temples all added mightily to the effect. He held in himself the same hush of serious purpose that pervaded the entire suite of offices and he looked down at me with a gaze of thinly veiled contempt that made me feel every inch the two-bit hustler invading some grand temple of the law. I jumped to standing at the sight of him, fighting the urge to salute.
“Pleased to meet you, Curtis,” I said. “We talked on the phone, I believe.”
“Yes, we did,” he said slowly.
I reached out a hand to shake, but Curtis Lobban, his face as somber as his outfit, refused the proffer. Pleased to meet me too, obviously.
“The justice, he is sorry to have kept you both waiting and is ready to see you now. Follow me, please.”
He turned and led us out of the waiting area into a large library, its walls lined with huge sets of law books. State reporters, federal reporters, U.S. Supreme Court reporters, digests of all sorts. Two young lawyers, a man and a woman, were hard at work at a conference table, books piled around them, legal pads thick with notes. Gnawing at the pylons supporting the Bill of Rights like hungry termites, I figured. They both gave Kimberly a long look. Kimberly always drew long looks, especially dressed in mint green, but the clerks barely noticed my presence, and why should they? Only the best and brightest clerked for Justice Jackson Straczynski, and I was neither. They only paid me enough notice to wonder what the hell I was doing there. What the hell indeed?
It’s not so easy to get close to a Supreme Court justice, even a State Supreme Court justice, so I hadn’t expected much when I called that morning before running off to seize Manley’s Eldorado. I mentioned my name, I mentioned Tommy Greeley, I waited on the phone a bit. And then it was this Curtis Lobban who came on the line. “What is the purpose of the inquiry?” he asked in his deep somber voice. “It is personal and I can’t say anymore,” I said. “Hold on for a moment please,” he said. I waited, and when he came back on the phone I was told, shockingly, that the justice would see me that very afternoon.
So here we were, Kimberly and I, passing by the serious young law clerks, headed for a visit with their august boss, Tommy Greeley’s old college pal.
“Right through here,” said Curtis Lobban, courteously holding open a door at the far end of the library. We stepped through the doorway and into a Moorish fantasy.
Most judges go for the tree and tome look for their offices, you know what I mean, dark wood paneling, bookshelves filled with thick legal texts, tree and tome, all designed to give the office a sheen of serious scholarship so often lacking in the robe’s wearer. But Justice Straczynski’s office was nothing of the kind. The walls were a rich red, pillars of golden fabric fell from iron pikes, the ceiling was patterned with octagonal indentations painted in a riot of colors. Ornate arches rose above each window, the arches covered with intricate paintings of vines and flowers, and the wooden floor was covered with piles of oriental carpets. Dark wooden furniture scattered across the room was accessorized with plush pillows, maroon and gold, intricate geometric shapes in the weave. The justice’s desk was less a workplace than a fantastically carved piece of oriental sculpture straight from the Ottoman Empire. The whole place, scented lightly with sandalwood, was like the official chamber of a pasha’s grand vizier.
The justice was hunched over at his desk, his back turned, on the phone, and so I took the opportunity to examine his strangely exotic office. I walked around, dazed by the beauty and strangeness of the room. There was no ego wall in the office, no pictures of the justice with presidents and senators and movie stars. But there was, carved into one corner, a series of shelves with ceremonial objects. Tiny Japanese statuettes carved of ivory and jade, fertility fetishes from India, masks from Africa. There was a frame made out of Mayan slate surrounding a picture of a very young woman taken from the neck up, a lovely woman with a heart-shaped face, downcast eyes, and shy smile, her shoulders bare, her head held in an overly dramatic pose. And something out of place among the splendors of the distant world, a garish and tall fencing trophy with a golden swordsman on top captured in the midst of a lunge.