though: The more I hear of this one, the gladder I am it didn't go jury-waived. Let those good people figure it out. I don't envy them for a minute.' Then she said: 'Well, 're we ready to go now? Tell them to bring down the jury.'
'I dunno,' Robey said. 'When do you want the immunity hearing? Four today or first thing in the morning? I need to know now, so I can have someone get word to the witness's lawyer so he'll know when he has to come down here.'
'Sandy,' she said. 'I already told you: we don't need a hearing. May need one, but don't need one yet. Tell whoever it is down there in the US Attorney's office to send up the order they want me to sign. Then if the witness still takes the Fifth, then we'll have him in and I'll put on my usual impressive performance, plant my brogan right on his neck. What's the matter with the government anyway? This isn't the first one of these things we've ever had here. They should know by now how we do them.'
'The guy's lawyer's the one that wants it,' Robey said. 'He's got some argument why he thinks the grant's improper, unenforceable, and therefore his client shouldn't be compelled to take the Fifth and make the grand jury think he's guilty of something, before he gets in to see you.'
'That's a new one,' the judge said. 'Who dreamed up this new way to waste time? Some jackass with his first federal case?'
'Could be, now that you mention it,' Robey said, grinning at her. 'I know I've never seen him in here. Heard of him though. Geoffrey Cohen's his name. People say he's not bad. Think his office's over South Hadley.'
The judge regarded Robey with mixed vexation and amusement. 'SHee-it,' she said, 'you're not telling me that. The jackass lawyer's my lawyer?
Was, anyway. Did a good job for me, too. What the heck is he doing down here, federal criminal case? He's not a criminal lawyer;
Geoffrey's a divorce lawyer. He's always been that. Bob Pooler's the man for this kind of ugliness. People should stick to what they know.'
'In the first place,' Robey said, 'Cohen appears to be branching out.
That drug case that you drew last Thursday there. Sanderson, I think it was? Golf pro; in the winter he tends bar in Vermont moderate amount of coke; Bissell tells me Cohen represents the broad who turned him in. State plea-bargain of her own. Apparently in this corruption matter that we're talking about now, Bob Pooler already had a client.
His client's the one they want Geoffs client to sink. Bob'd have a big conflict of interest.'
'Who's Bob's client?' the judge said. 'What poor devil're they after now?'
'From what Bissell told me,' Robey said, 'the lucky nominee's the ever-popular Daniel J. Hilliard. Former state rep from Holyoke?
Chairman of House Ways and Means when he stopped running, Eighty-two, Eighty-four, I think it was. His pals on Beacon Hill gave him his very own college. Hampton Pond Community. Since then he's more or less faded out of sight.'
Judge Foote looked glum. 'Oh I hope that that isn't so,' she said, after a while. '1 hope that isn't true. And I hope if it is true that they don't decide to indict him. And if they do, then I hope they lose. Now I don't want you telling anybody else what I just said, but goddamn, I wish they wouldn't do that.'
'Oh God, I'm sorry,' Robey said, looking chagrined. 'I didn't realize you knew the guy, were close to him.'
'Oh I wasn't,' she said quickly, silently chastising herself for having spoken impulsively and hoping not to have to tell more lies than she'd be able to remember. 'Not the way you're thinking, at least. Keep in mind, Sandy: I can almost always tell what you're thinking. Shame on you.' Robey looked sheepish.
'It was nothing you could really call 'personal,' she said, thinking:
It was more what you'd call sexual.
'I got to know him from when I was still married to Ray. Not happily married by then, anymore, but still, you know, under contract.' For another eight or nine years or so, as a matter of fact — not that I let that stand in my way. 'That racetrack deal I mentioned, 'Seventy-two or so, early in 'Seventy-three. One of the chores the Chief had me doing involved staying in touch making sure the local reps were up to speed on the project. Dan Hilliard naturally was one of them.' Getting into bed with Dan Hilliard wasn't on the Chiefs specs; that was extracurricular.
'I saw him three or four times. Once I had to drive down to Boston, I recall.' And a room in the Lenox Hotel. 'And then the other times I went up to Holyoke, the huge second-floor office he used to have there.
Unless it was crowded, your voice echoed in it. I thought he was a very nice man, a thoroughly, truly, nice, man. I suppose I have to say he was charming.' He's buying it, she thought, with a tincture of relief and shame. What they say is true, I guess: Once you get the hang of it, you never lose the touch. Very nicely done, girl, very nicely done.
'In fact I may've been a little bit too hard on you just then. Now that you've gotten me thinking about it, I remember having it go through my mind at the time that if I hadn't been still married to Ray and so forth, I could see myself getting very interested in this Hilliard guy. Although of course he was still married then, too.'
'Talk was he never let that interfere with his personal life,' Robey said, smirking. 'He is a charmer, no question. I remember when his wife was divorcing him; she alleged adultery. There was a lot of talk.
That was a fairly unusual thing to do: meant someone was really pissed off. There was considerable speculation about whose names might get dragged into it, how many other divorces there'd be, if theirs ever came to a trial.'
'I recall that,' she said, a lot more calmly than she had lived through it.
'And then when it didn't,' Robey said, 'when it settled word was she cleaned him out then the word was that was the reason.
TWO
That he'd done the right thing and given her everything she asked for, so she wouldn't raise such a stink that he'd have to leave town maybe along with a lot of other people. Bad enough he was washed-up in politics; if he let that stuff hit the fan he would've had to forget the college job, too.'
He paused. 'I think Geoff Cohen might've even had that case.'
'He did,' the judge said. 'Sam Evans from our shop represented Dan.
Sam was the divorce specialist. He was extremely good at it. Up until that case, consensus was he was the very best around He couldn't make divorce fun, but if you had to go through one and you could get Sam Evans, at least you could relax a little knew you were in good hands.
Top-notch negotiator; meticulous about details; scrupulously honest and a complete gentleman to boot.
'After the Hilliard case was over, Sam was almost inconsolable He said with all the sexual misconduct Hilliard had against him there'd been nothing he could do; he'd never had a chance The only hope that he'd had was that Geoff d make the kind of dumb mistake young lawyers sometimes make out of inexperience, and give Sam something he could use.
'Didn't happen. Sam said Geoff d known exactly what he had to work with; played his cards perfectly; made no mistakes at all and as a result ended up cleaning Sam's clock for him. After that in this part of the world there were two 'best divorce lawyers around.' In fact what Sam said about Geoff was what made me hire him. Sam'd gotten close to Ray during that racetrack deal-I thought it'd be too hard for him.'
Then she frowned. 'Who's the poor guy they're trying to make sink Dancin' Dan? Anyone else I might know?'
'I don't know,' Robey said, 'you might. His name's Ambrose Merrion.
Canterbury District Court clerk. Ever got a speeding ticket on the way north to ski on something steeper than you've got right where you live?'
'I don't ski,' she said. 'People fall down doing that. Break their legs and stuff.'
'Not if they know what they're doing,' Robey said. 'Anyway that's how I met him. Trooper wrote me up for eighty on Route Three-ninety-one in Cumberland. The other way to meet him's being active in politics. All the real Democratic insiders around here, all the way up to the state, even national, level: all of them would know him,
