Judge Kroungold’s eyes slipped toward the jury, then bored down into me. “Lower your voice, counsel. Now.”
Win some, lose some. “Yes, sir.”
“I would never have expected to see something like this in my courtroom. For God’s sake, you’re even wearing a black suit!”
“I noticed that, too,” Vandivoort added, as it began to dawn on him.
“Your Honor,” I said, “I’ve worn this suit to court many times.”
“Not in this trial you haven’t,” the judge spat back. Literally. “And no makeup. Last week you had on lipstick, but not today. What happened to that pink lipstick? Too bright?”
Time to raise him. “Your Honor, why are we discussing my clothing and makeup in court? Do you make comments of this sort to the male attorneys who appear before you?”
Judge Kroungold blinked, then his eyes narrowed. “You know damn well I wasn’t making… comments.”
“With all due respect, Your Honor, I find your comments inappropriate. I object to them and to the tenor of this entire sidebar as an unfortunate example of gender bias.”
His mouth fell so far open I could see his bridgework. “What? I’m not biased against you. In fact, I took great pains in my instruction not to tell the jury whose mother had died, in order to avoid undue sympathy for the defense. You, Ms. Morrone, are giving the jury the distinct and entirely false impression that it was your mother who died and not Mr. Vandivoort’s.”
“What?” I said, sounding as shocked as possible. At the same nanosecond, a quart of adrenaline dumped into my bloodstream and a familiar rush surged into my nerves, setting them tingling, jangling, and twanging like the strings of an electric guitar. Believe. “Your Honor, I would never do such a thing! I couldn’t even begin to do such a thing. Who can divine what a jury is thinking, much less attempt to control it?”
Judge Kroungold’s eyes glittered. “Oh, really. Then you won’t mind if I suggest to the jury that the death was in Mr. Vandivoort’s family, not yours.”
Shit. Was he bluffing, too? This game could cost me my license to play cards-I mean, practice law. “On the contrary, Your Honor. I would object to any attempt to gain the jury’s sympathy for male counsel, whom you are clearly favoring. In fact, I move that you recuse yourself immediately on the grounds that you are partial to defense counsel, sir.”
Judge Kroungold reddened. “Recuse myself? Step down? On the last day of trial?”
Up the ante. “Yes, sir. I wasn’t sure until today, but now you’ve made your sexism quite clear.”
“My sexism?” He practically choked on the word, since he fancied himself a liberal with a true respect for women. Like Bill Clinton.
“Are you denying my motion, Your Honor?”
“I most certainly am! It’s absurd. Frivolous! You’d lose on appeal,” Judge Kroungold shot back, but he twitched the tiniest bit.
It was my opening and I drove for it. I had a straight flush and a dead mother. I believed. “With all due respect, Your Honor, I disagree. This sidebar is interrupting my cross-examination of a critical witness. Every minute I stand here prejudices my client’s case. If I could proceed, perhaps I could put this ugly incident behind me. Mr. Vandivoort didn’t object to my questioning, after all.”
Kroungold snapped his head in Vandivoort’s direction. “Mr. Vandivoort, don’t you have an objection?”
I looked at Vandivoort, dead-on. “Can you really believe I would do such a terrible thing, George?” The pot is yours if you can call me a liar to my face. In open court, on the record.
Vandivoort looked at Judge Kroungold, then at me, and back again. “Uh… I have no objection,” he said, folding even easier than my Uncle Sal. Vandivoort was too much of a gentleman, that was his problem. Biology is destiny. It’s in the cards.
“Then may I proceed, Your Honor?”
“Wait a minute, I’m not done with you, Ms. Morrone. Stay here.” Judge Kroungold scowled at Vandivoort. “Mr. Vandivoort, take your seat.”
What was this? Not according to Hoyle, surely.
Judge Kroungold signaled to Wesley as soon as Vandivoort bounced away, and Wesley got the convenient urge to stop typing and crack his knuckles.
What gives?
Judge Kroungold leaned over the dais. “I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers, Ms. Morrone, so I can’t say I’m surprised by your showmanship. But I warn you. Play all the tricks you want. It might work in this case, but it won’t work in Sullivan. You’re in over your head in Sullivan.”
It gave me a start, like he was jinxing me, but I couldn’t think about Sullivan now. “Then may I proceed, sir?”
“Of course, Ms. Morrone,” Judge Kroungold said loudly. “Ladies first.” He leaned back and waved to Wesley to go back on the record.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, and turned to face my jury. But not before I remembered my bereavement and brushed an ersatz tear from my eye.
Which is when I caught a glistening behind the engineer’s glasses.
Winner take all.
2
I shifted position on the stool that had been my perch in the butcher shop since I was a kid. Grayish stuffing puffed out of a rip in the green vinyl cushion, exposing the top of a steel pole. I didn’t know which was making me more uncomfortable, the steel pole or my father’s silent treatment. Frankly, I’d rather sit on the goddamn pole.
“Dad, you’re not happy for me?” I asked.
Thwack! His stocky frame bent over a rack of fresh lamb and he separated two chops with a familiar cleaver and more vigor than necessary.
“I won four hundred grand, you know.”
Thwack! Thick steel-rimmed glasses slipped down his bulbous nose. Gray chest hair strayed from an open button on his white uniform. His bald dome bore a constellation of liver spots, like a planetarium.
“The jury was only out for an hour. An hour, that’s nothing.”
Thwack! No lamb deserved this kind of treatment. Neither did the meat.
“Dad, if you don’t talk to me, I’m going home to my boyfriend who doesn’t talk to me.”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t like it, what you did in court. It wasn’t right.”
“Why not? I won, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t raise you that way!” He brandished the cleaver at me but I barely flinched, I’ve grown so accustomed to my father threatening me with sharp objects. You name it-boner, slicer, butcher’s needle-I’ve had it an inch from my nose. It’s good training for litigation.
“How did you raise me?”
“I raised you to be a good girl.”
“Good girls make bad lawyers, Pop.”
“Hah!” He returned to his work, squinting as he positioned the chops on a wooden carving block. It was dark with blood at its concave center and knifemarks scored its surface. “Hah!” he said again, but didn’t elaborate. Thwack!
My victory champagne was wearing off. I crossed my legs in the offending suit, breathed in the spicy smells of the shop, and watched the sluggish traffic through the neon letters in the MORRONE’S MEATS sign, with its glowing orange pig. My father’s shop was in the Italian Market, a city district of stores and outdoor stands hawking fresh crabs, squid, and poultry alongside detergent, pantyhose, and sponge mops. Cars crept down Ninth Street, navigating between the stalls and debris like an urban Scylla and Charybdis.
“They should clean up here,” I said to no father in particular. “Pick up the garbage. Don’t you think?”
Thwack!
Wooden pallets and cardboard boxes were piled in the gutter; pictures of apples smiled from the boxes and the California oranges looked positively giddy. But the fruit pictures were the only thing smiling in the market lately. An arsonist had burned Palumbo’s restaurant to the ground, tearing the heart out of the neighborhood, and a Vietnamese jewelry store down the street was robbed at gunpoint last week. My father’s shop hadn’t been hit. He thought the crooks respected him; I thought they knew he was broke.