WHATEVER WATERS I had expected to roil by my visit to a State Supreme Court justice, they didn’t take long to splash back into my face.
“That judge’s wife was so hitting on you, V,” said Kimberly, as we walked back to my office after our meeting with the justice.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh, please. The way she was going, ‘Victor, Victor, darling,’ the way she insisted you stay for champagne, the way she laughed uproariously at all your jokes.”
“They were good jokes,” I said.
“Lame, V. They were tripping over their crutches. But she was laughing and fawning all over you like you were some Chippendale. And you were all, ‘Oh, Mrs. Straczynski’ this and ‘Oh, Mrs. Straczynski’ that and she was all, ‘Call me Alura, darling.’ It was a brutal display, V. Really. I was embarrassed for you.”
Kimberly was right that Alura Straczynski had been inappropriately flirtatious with me, but she was wrong that I had liked it. It more than made me wildly uncomfortable, it gave me the skives. The judge’s clerk, Curtis Lobban, had been invited to join the little party and he had stood in the corner the whole time, staring at me with his piercing gaze of flat contempt. And worse, as the justice’s wife leaned toward me and touched her throat, the justice himself was watching, carefully, with utter control, his face again a mask without an ounce of emotion.
“But did you believe what he told us?” she said.
“Yes, about not being part of the drug business, at least. His ambitions, even then, were too large to risk on something as stupid as dealing cocaine, no matter how lucrative, and the FBI was never able to link him to the organization. But I sensed that his connection to Tommy had been stronger than he let on and that there was some unfinished business.”
“About what?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Well, he was lying about one thing,” said Kimberly.
“Really?”
“He said he didn’t watch television.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,”
“Oh yes, he does,” she said. “He went all Evita on us when he said it, like he was better than the rest of the world because he didn’t vegetate in front of the tube. But he watches, when the wife’s away playing her games, he watches, yes he does. And the bad stuff too.”
Just then we turned the corner and saw the suit. He was standing at the front door to my building, just under the big sign of the shoe. The man had a name, but the name wasn’t important, just the suit and the haircut and the way he pushed himself off the wall when he saw me, the way he flashed his credentials with a flip of the wrist.
“I’m supposed to walk you to the District Attorney’s office, Mr. Carl,” he said.
“What if I’m busy?”
“I was told you’re not that busy.”
“What if I refused, sat right down on the sidewalk, and sang ‘Freebird’ at the top of my lungs?”
“Then I’d have to have you arrested, Mr. Carl.”
“On what charge?”
“Singing Lynyrd Skynyrd without a shred of talent.”
“Fair enough. Should I bring a toothbrush?”
“Prudence might suggest so,” he said.
“Let’s leave her the hell out of it, shall we?”
“Are you finished trying to be clever, Mr. Carl?”
“Trying, huh? They hire you right out of law school?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Harvard.”
“Three years of Harvard and this is what they have you doing?”
“I’m so proud I could burst.”
“Okay, I’m yours. Lead on Macduff.”
“The name’s Berenson.”
“And don’t you forget it,” I said, even as I gave Kimberly a shrug and then let Berenson lead me back the way I had come, back to a dressing down at the DA’s office, where I’d be lucky if I was left, by the end of it, with even my boxers.