“Your Honor, this-”
“Quiet, Counselor. You have done your client no favors during these proceedings. Your whole strategy was to attack the police here, to smear as racist an officer simply doing his job, an officer, I might add, of the same race as the defendant. I do not wish to paint your client with the foul brush you have used before this court but your actions leave me little choice. Mr. Porter, you have some lessons to learn. One, stay away from stolen cars. Two, stay away from illegal drugs. Three, stay away from lawyers like Mr. Carl.”
“This is uncalled for-”
“Shut up, Mr. Carl. Mr. Porter is hereby sentenced to one year incarceration, no part of that to be suspended.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard right.”
“Judge.”
“Quiet, Mr. Carl.”
“That is an entirely inappropriate sentence for-”
“He was found with an ounce and a quarter, Mr. Carl. That takes him out of the personal-use category.”
“By five grams, Your Honor? An extra eleven months for five grams? That’s outrageous.”
“No, sir,” he bellowed, his face swollen near to bursting, “it is you who are outrageous. One more word from you and I’ll find you in contempt.”
I stared in disbelief at Judge Wellman, his face dark with an inexplicable anger, his hands shaking on the bench. Rashard was standing next to me, looking at me, wondering what had just happened to him. From behind I heard a “Dear Lord,” coming from Mrs. Porter. Clerk Templeton was staring me with victory in her eyes. I looked around and tried to understand. A year? Rashard was going to jail for a year? What the hell was going on? This was wrong, dead wrong. Judges get it wrong, that is another of the three immutable laws of the legal profession, but this judge wasn’t getting it wrong for the usual reasons, out of ignorance or sloth or plain prejudice. No, this judge was getting it wrong simply because I was on the side of the right. Here was my final proof that the law had turned against me, but not only me. The law had also turned against anyone in any way connected to me, and it was moving with an unimaginable fury.
“You want to find me in contempt, Judge,” I said. “Don’t bother looking too hard, I’m there already.”
“Five hundred dollars, Mr. Carl. Anything else to say?”
“He got to you too, didn’t he?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“You’re just a tool for that bastard.”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“Go to hell.”
“Two thousand. Another word from you and you go to jail.”
I was about to loose a stream of invective but I stopped. It would feel grand, but it wouldn’t do any good, it wouldn’t help my client. There was only one place I could go to help my client now, and jail wasn’t it.
“Step back, Mr. Porter,” said the judge. “Bailiff, please escort Mr. Porter out of the courtroom.”
As the bailiff started to take hold of Rashard, I put my arm around his shoulder. “This won’t stand,” I said to him softly. “I’ll get you out.”
“Mr. Carl…” said Rashard. The promise of his future was leaking out of his eyes along with his tears of incomprehension. He had trusted me and now there was this.
“Rashard,” I said. “Listen to me. This has nothing to do with you. I’ll get you out soon, I promise.”
The bailiff appeared, holding out his handcuffs.
I gave Rashard a smile and a nod and told him not to do anything to make it worse. Then I started packing up my briefcase.
“Going somewhere, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.
I didn’t answer, I finished putting my papers in the briefcase, closed it with a click, turned to ADA Carter.
“This isn’t right,” I said to her.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said.
“I do,” I said. “And it isn’t right.”
“Going somewhere, Mr. Carl?” said the judge again, this time as I was walking down the aisle toward the door. “We’re not finished here,” he called after me.
I stopped, turned. “Oh yes, we are,” I said. “Now crawl back to your hole and get that bastard on the phone and tell him I’m on my way.”
Chapter 46
AFTER SCOWLING AT the security camera and being buzzed through the security doors, I barged into the justice’s reception area loaded for bear. The closest thing I found was Curtis Lobban, the justice’s clerk. He was waiting for me, standing tall and broad, his suit black, his shirt white, his muted tie tied tight. His huge hands, empty of files or books, hung ready at his sides. He stood there before me like the personification of somber power and I stopped my barging at the very sight of him.
“These chambers, they are off limits to the public,” he said, his deep voice soft and yet all the more menacing for its tone.
“I’m not here as a member of the public,” I said.
“But that’s all you are,” he said. “A insignificant man without a scintilla of importance. You are not welcome here. You will leave one way or the other. One way is preferable to you, I suppose, but as to me, I don’t care. Just so you leave.”
The justice’s secretary was away from her desk, there was no one waiting in the waiting room. It was Curtis who had buzzed me through and now it was just me and him, and him took a step forward.
“You’re going to throw me out bodily?”
“If I must.”
“You and what army?”
He looked at me, big somber Curtis Lobban, he looked at my pencil neck, my flagpole arms, my fists like pale undersized fish. “Do everyone a favor, Mr. Carl, especially yourself. Go on away home and leave us be.”
“Who are you talking for?”
“All of us, the justice, Mrs. Straczynski, my own wife.”
“Your wife?”
His fists clenched. “Don’t think I don’t know about the man you sent around to spy on us.”
“I didn’t send anyone to spy on your wife.”
“She is ill. You have disturbed her delicate equilibrium. This whole affair has left her distraught. Go away, Mr. Carl, leave us alone. Leave us in peace.”
“I’m here to see the justice, Curtis.”
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
“He’ll see me.”
“No, he won’t. And you know how I know? Because I am his file clerk. He does nothing without my say so. If a file is pushed to the top of the list, action is taken immediately, a decision is made, an opinion is written, an appeal denied or granted. Life moves on either way because I said it should. And if a file is shuffled to the bottom of the pile, or is somehow for some reason mysteriously misplaced, then it is as if time itself has stopped its course. There is no yes, there is no no, there is nothing. And all the world waits. You see, Mr. Carl, I keep the files, create the schedule, man the doors. I decide who comes in and who stays out.”
“So you’re the gatekeeper of justice, is that it? The gray ferry-man with glowing eyes?”
“Yes, that it is, exactly. You know who got it for me, this job? The Mrs.”
“Alura?”
“She is something of a saint.”
“She’s a spider.”
“Maybe that too. But you only know that part of her, not the other part.”
“I know enough.”
“You know nothing. Go away, Mr. Carl. Go away and stay away and maybe things will take care of themselves. But know this,” he hissed, “you are trespassing and you’ve had your warning.”
There it was, that same voice, the exact same words. He had hid his accent that night in the vestibule, but I could still tell. You are not welcome here, he had said. You are trespassing, he had said. And the word “scintilla,” a legal term that rolled so easily off his tongue, sort of like the rules of adverse possession had rolled so easily off his tongue when his foot was on my face.