The Missing Piece (2 page)

The boy pushed out of the cabinet. He crawled beneath the slowly swinging feet, then ran out the back door and over the hill.

 

CHAPTER 2

“You take the pedestrian knockdowns, the misdiagnosed fatal illnesses, the unpaid promissory notes, the commercial lease pissing contests, and you slog through them all, pretending each is the most important case in the world, when in reality they are all just part of the general din.”

Judge Oliver Johnstone poured sherry into two tiny crystal goblets and pushed one across the desk. Waterford, Linda Conover noticed, the same Lismore pattern as the salad bowl that sat in the corner cabinet of her parents' dining room. It had been her mother's “good” bowl, which meant too good ever to use.

Linda nipped at her drink and set the goblet back down. The sherry was the same color as the top of the judge's huge desk, which in the lowering afternoon sunlight took on a reddish cast.

Judge Johnstone knocked his shot back and swiveled his chair to face the window. He had thick white hair, a perpetually ruddy complexion, and craggy features. But those features softened in repose, and as he stared out the window he looked almost wistful.

“But then you get a case like this one, and it's like your first day on the bench again, when you didn't give a hoot about the salary or the pension because you wanted to be a judge. You know it's the case you can wrap your career around. You need to savor it, let it play out, make it last. Because the truth is, no one will remember any of your thousand other cases except the people directly involved. But this one, everyone will remember. This one will be the envy of your colleagues, this one will warm you during the cold nights of your retirement. And believe me, there is no sadder, lonelier person in the world than a retired judge.”

He lifted the bottle.

“Another?”

Linda shook her head. She had not touched hers since that first sip.

The judge knocked back his second shot.

“We did it, kiddo. Me and you, you and me. We've shaped this trial exactly the way it should be tried, the way it deserves to be tried.”

The judge turned toward the window again with that same wistful stare. The shaping involved several motions the lawyers had presented the previous morning at the final pretrial conference. They were not complicated motions, but they raised serious issues that needed to be addressed carefully. Now here it was, close of business on Friday afternoon, and with an alchemic blend of his gut instinct and her superior research and writing skills, they had crafted what they both considered to be the correct decision. The lawyers would hear it from the bench first thing Monday morning. And then the trial would begin.

“I am concerned about bringing in that exhibit,” he said.

“It's part of what makes this trial unique,” said Linda.

“I understand. But there are security issues.”

“The captain promises a detail of six officers guarding it from the moment it comes out of the armored car till the moment it's loaded back in.” She rolled the stem of the goblet between her thumb and forefinger. “It will be here for all of about three hours.”

“I'm sure it will seem like much longer,” said the judge.

“That's the idea.”

The judge poured himself a third shot, then corked the bottle and shoved it into the cabinet behind his desk.

“There could be a book in this,” he said.

“Judges can't write books,” said Linda.

“Retired judges can.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Like what?”

“That you see this trial as your last hurrah.”

The judge grinned tightly, his eyes sliding off Linda and focusing somewhere beyond her. Then he knocked back his drink and held the goblet up to the light.

“Oh no, kiddo. Don't worry. I'm going to stay here till they drag me off the bench.”

*   *   *

At eight-thirty on Monday morning, Foxx finished changing into his court officer's uniform and slammed his locker shut. The men's locker room was in the basement of the New York County Courthouse—an old landmark better known by its address of 60 Centre Street—and Foxx needed to get all the way up to the security desk on the fifth floor to begin his day officially by scratching his name on the sign-in sheet. He climbed instead of riding the elevator, choosing a stairwell that turned clockwise as it rose up through the building.

The security desk was in a small lobby where two corridors intersected. Foxx, still huffing, grunted “good morning” to the newbie seated behind the desk. He bent over the sign-in sheet, noting Mike McQueen's name neatly printed on the top line and Gary Martin's name scrawled several lines below. He added his trademark
Foxx
near the bottom.

“Foxx, huh?” said the newbie. “Captain wants to see you.”

The captain's office was behind the security desk. Foxx knocked on the frosted glass door, then entered without waiting for a reply.

Captain Kearney sat at a desk as cluttered as a Bosch painting. He wore a wrinkled brown suit jacket and a dingy white shirt with a loosely knotted brown tie. Across from him, Gary Martin, in uniform, sank so deeply in a leather Chesterfield that his knees angled up to his chest. His white-blonde hair was still slick from his shower, his red beard completely covered his shirt collar.

“Please sit down, Officer Foxx,” said Kearney.

Foxx weighed the effort of climbing over Gary to reach the other half of the Chesterfield and took the chair opposite Kearney instead.

“I'm switching your assignments,” said Kearney. He had cut himself shaving, and a tiny wad of paper clung to his chin as he spoke. “Gary, you're going to Pearl Street, and Foxx, you're taking Judge Johnstone's part.”

“Why the hell you doing that?” said Gary.

“Because change keeps us sharp.”

“But I've been in Johnstone's part for over a year, and you drop this on a Monday morning?”

“I apologize for the short notice,” said Kearney.

“Do you know what's going on in Judge Johnstone's part?”

“I do,” said Kearney.

“And so you're going to pull me out and put him in? Don't you think the judge will care? Don't you care?”

“Certainly I care, but I have other considerations.”

Gary abruptly stood up. He was a big man who invited comparisons like
bear
and
mountain
. He grumbled under his breath and blew out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

Kearney sighed. He peeled the wad of paper from his chin and flicked it behind his desk, then tore off another shred from a roll of toilet paper and pressed it into place.

“What's this all about?” said Foxx.

“No idea,” said Kearney. “When Bev calls, I listen, I obey, I don't ask questions. Find out for yourself if you want to know.”

Foxx pressed his hand against his shirt pocket, but his cell phone was still.

“Okay,” he said. “Why's Gary so pissed about changing assignments?”

“You heard him. Short notice.”

“Doesn't make sense,” said Foxx.

“Ask him. He's your friend.”

Foxx looked at his watch. Eight forty-five. The usual time that he and Gary and McQueen met to drink coffee and shoot the shit at the start of another day.
Ask him.
He would do just that.

“And what's going on in Johnstone's part?”

“A big trial to determine ownership of an ancient Roman silver treasure,” said Kearney. “It should dovetail nicely with your classical sensibilities.”

*   *   *

Classical sensibilities, thought Foxx as he punched through the leather-bound doors of the courtroom where McQueen brewed coffee each morning. Four years of high school Latin concluding with an F in Virgil hardly qualified as classical scholarship. In the middle of the courtroom, a custodian worked the levers of a mobile scaffold. The electric motor whined as the platform rose to a darkened light fixture hanging from the ceiling.

The judge's bench resembled an altar. It was made of black walnut and stood on a pedestal above the mottled cork floor. The facade of the bench stretched sideways, encompassing the witness stand on one side and, on the other, the clerk's box where McQueen sat.

“'Bout goddam time you got here,” said McQueen.

“Fifty thousand bulbs in building,” the custodian called down. “I check them all every day.”

“Yeah, yeah. You're a regular Thomas Edison.”

McQueen was set up for the day: music played softly from a hidden radio, wax paper remnants of breakfast littered the desk, his thumb held his place in a thick paperback thriller. His judge rarely descended from chambers, so McQueen had the luxury of treating the courtroom as his personal men's club.

“Do you have to be such an asshole?” said Foxx.

“I'm just kidding. Ain't I kidding, Ivan?” said McQueen.

“Maybe,” said the custodian. He was a wiry man with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a mustache so thin it might have been a smudge of dirt. The cuffs and sleeves of his blue coveralls were rolled as if several sizes too big.

Foxx poured himself coffee from the pot on the bank of file cabinets, then took his usual spot at the front rail of the clerk's box. The courtroom doors opened, and Gary Martin stormed down the center aisle of the gallery. A leather bag hung from one shoulder and a large backpack dragged along beside him.

“Going somewhere?” said McQueen, peeking around Foxx.

Gary dropped the bag and backpack at Foxx's feet, then fixed himself a cup of coffee and took his spot at the other rail. “Kearney reassigned me.”

“So what the fuck do you care?” McQueen had an oily brown beard that somehow sprouted through a moonscape of acne scars. His green eyes swam behind aviator glasses he refused to give up despite being decades out of style.

“Because Kearney's switching me with him.” Gary poked a thick forefinger into Foxx's shoulder.

“Same question,” said McQueen.

“Because I'm in Johnstone's part for a goddam year, and here it is Monday morning and he's starting a big trial and I'm packing up a year's worth of crap and dragging it to the Pearl Street post.”

“Since when do you care about trials?” said McQueen. “You always complain whenever he gets one. ‘I gotta handle evidence.' ‘I gotta keep track of the jurors.' Pearl Street is the only post easier than this one. After the employees come in, what do you get? A couple of crips in wheelchairs?”

“Maybe I don't want easy,” said Gary. “Maybe I want to work, Mike.”

“Maybe you want to drool over Johnstone's law clerk,” said McQueen. He turned to Foxx. “You ever see her? Nice piece of ass.”

Foxx shrugged. He had not had the pleasure. But he wanted McQueen to continue questioning Gary; it saved him the trouble.

“It ain't that, Mike.” Gary took a big swig of coffee. “Thing is, I want to be busy because Ursula moved out yesterday.”

“Seriously?” said McQueen.

Gary nodded. Big as he was, his head still seemed too big for his body.

“Well, hell, Gary, you knew that was coming,” said McQueen.

“Doesn't make it any easier,” said Gary. “At least if I was in the courtroom, I'd be busy instead of dwelling on it.”

“All right, all right.” McQueen arched his eyes at Foxx. “All we need now is him blubbering. Where'd she go?”

“Someone's couch somewhere. She wouldn't tell me, and even if she did I wouldn't tell you. Aw, fuck it.” Gary slugged more coffee.

Foxx saw the twinkle in McQueen's eye that usually preceded a wiseass remark. He shook his head, and McQueen swung his attention to the scaffold descending to the floor. The custodian jumped off the platform and flipped the light switch.

“Hey, that was amazing, Edison,” said McQueen. “‘What hath God wrought.'”

“Edison didn't say that, you imbecile,” said Gary. “It was Bell.”

“No, it was Morse,” said Foxx.

“What did Edison say?” said Gary.

“Shut up, you feckin' eejit,” said Foxx.

“Edison said that?” said McQueen.

“No, I did,” said Foxx. “I don't know what Edison said.”

The custodian pushed the scaffold through the gallery and out the door.

“See, guys, who the hell needs women when we can entertain ourselves?” said McQueen.

Gary lifted his shoulder bag and backpack and followed the custodian. The sound of his fist pounding the door echoed through the courtroom.

“You're going to piss him off someday,” said Foxx.

“Ivan or Gary?”

“Both of them.”

“I don't give a shit about Ivan. And I've known Gary a lot longer than you, Foxx. He gets about as angry as Winnie the Pooh.”

 

CHAPTER 3

On the fifth floor of the courthouse, Linda Conover worked alone in the quiet of chambers. It was almost nine fifteen, and Judge Johnstone had not arrived. Odd, she thought—he was always at his desk when she breezed in at nine—but fortunate, as well, because his absence allowed her to key in the edits she had made over the weekend. Linda had never learned how to touch type, but developed her own method in college using two fingers on the keys and her right thumb on the space bar. In straight typing she could reach the amazing speed of thirty-five words per minute. But editing text was a tedious process of moving the cursor within all the hunting and pecking.

Judge Johnstone was not a stickler for details. During his many years on the bench, he had developed a visceral sense of the law that allowed him to judge by instinct rather than by the many books that lined the shelves in chambers. Linda had a different attitude. She loved words, loved to craft decisions that not only could declaim the law but whisper its nuances, as well. Over the weekend, she reread the decision that she and the judge had constructed on Friday and spotted paragraphs where the reasoning could be tighter and sentences that begged for rhetorical flourishes. This was the judge's special case, and a special case called for a special decision. So she had taken out her pen, and in a matter of hours the final draft bled red ink.