thinking about some things that happened back then.”
“Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t remember. I can’t even picture anything from that time. I hated all of it.”
“Oh,” he says.
“So I’m afraid I can’t help you, Judge. Mason?”
“Yes.”
She lingers then. Of course, she thinks she knows the name. Which she does. You can’t grow up in Virginia without hearing of George Mason. They named a university for him, and roads. Saving that, George is certain she would have hung up moments ago.
“I suppose,” he says, “I suppose I’ve been curious about how your life turned out.”
“Really? And why is that? How did your life turn out?”
“Pretty well,” he responds instantly. “Very well.” That, in fact, has been the unvoiced question of the last few months, and this, he realizes, is his answer. He has most of what he ever wanted. He’s been able to say that for quite some time, especially since he reached the Court of Appeals. His family’s always been A minus to A plus, depending on the moment. Judge Mason gets up most mornings knowing that life worked out better for him than for most people.
“I can’t say that,” she says. “I get by. I’ve gotten by. But I’m here, you know? One day at a time. That’s how it is for everybody, right? It’s not easy for anybody, Judge, is it?”
“Well, I’m sorry for anything I did to make it harder,” he replies. If you had pressed him for an answer when he lifted the phone, he would have said that he was calling her to help decide a case. He thought he might have been searching for Lolly to see how much damage had been done, and how angry she remained four decades later. Or to try to confirm his current interpretations. Did she think she had been trying to punish or debase herself when she hooked up with Hugh Brierly and his roommate, or had she simply suffered from one of those boundless, youthful misapprehensions of what might be fun? Had she been deceived somehow? Or even coerced? Or was it possible, if he were being unsparing, that the incident did not stand alone? But it turns out that his greatest desire is to address her as someone who has profited from his life and now knows better. Who looks back with regret. Who wishes he made something sweet, rather than cruel, out of what was inevitably a momentous instant in his life, for his sake, first, and also for hers. And to tell her that.
“Oh, brother,” Lolly Viccino says in response. “Get in line. Are you in AA?”
“No.”
“Because those people always want you to get hold of somebody you haven’t seen since Noah and tell them you’re sorry. That’s why I quit,” she says. “I didn’t see the sense of that. Who forgives me for all the stupid crap I did? Nobody. That’s for sure. Just go on. That’s what you have to do. You can’t change the past, right, Judge? Am I right? So forget it. That’s my attitude.”
“I see,” he says.
“That’s how some people are. That’s how I am. So I’m afraid I can’t help you. Whatever it is, it’s all ancient history.”
“Of course.”
“So thank you for calling, Judge.” Now that she has reaffirmed the motto she lives by, she seems determined to get away before he can remind her of anything else. Then someone speaks behind her, a woman whose arrival only seems to hasten Lolly’s desire to end the conversation. The last word he hears from her as the phone is going down is “Strange.”
19
George Mason has known Cassandra Oakey all her life. He held her no more than a month after she was born, and he retains a clear memory of playing Go Fish with her for an entire afternoon when she was seven and had come to the office with Harrison on a school holiday while George was in the life-suspended state that always set in when he was waiting for a jury. Harry, ever the cheerleader, dragged George to several of Cassie’s high school tennis matches, when she played number two on a conference championship team. She lacked quickness, but she was a determined and powerful player, with a serve like a mortar.
But Cassie Oakey can-and does-walk in and out of the judge’s chambers with impunity, and among his staff, she would approach George’s personal computer with the least natural trepidation. Far more telling, Cassie Oakey was the only staff member with him at the Hotel Gresham when his cell phone disappeared. And Cassie is leaving in two weeks, apparently with a sense of unrelieved injury.
“It has to be somebody who works in chambers,” George explains to Patrice as they eat dinner in the kitchen, picking over the leftovers of a restaurant meal from two plastic containers. “It’s not realistic that anyone else would be able to steal on to my computer twice in the same day when I wasn’t around. Cassie’s office is right there. Who else could get in and out so quickly?”
“I don’t believe it,” says Patrice.
“I don’t believe it of any of them. Dineesha?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Banion’s been with me nearly nine years. Marcus-I mean people can surprise you, but if Marcus is a computer whiz-”
“No,” Patrice says definitively about George’s hoary bailiff.
“No.” He had reached the same conclusion about Cassie while he was speaking to Marina at Area 2 but wanted time to disprove it to himself. Her motive remains elusive. Harrison is often a practical joker, and George wonders if perhaps this started as some kind of prank, which she could not acknowledge when it turned out that no one saw the humor. “It’s got to be some psychiatric mishmash. Don’t you think? Some issue with her father? It just makes no sense.”
Patrice groans then. “What will you say to Harry and Miranda?”
In response, he emits a similar sound. But the judge will have to confront his clerk, if for no other reason than to save her from herself. The threat to Nathan Koll means that George cannot quietly excuse this escapade on his own. Besides, Marina is going to review her notes tonight and realize that only Cassie was with him at the luncheon. His clerk will have to resign tomorrow to avoid Marina’s inquisition and to gain control of events that could ultimately imperil her law license. Always the defense lawyer, George is already thinking how he can smooth this over if Cassie fesses up quickly. He’ll need Rusty’s help, which is not guaranteed. We all run true to form, and Rusty, after all, started as a prosecutor.
George calls Cassie at home a little after 8:30 P.M. Something urgent, he says. Can she meet him for breakfast at 8:00?
Predictably, she more or less insists on knowing what this is about. “Is it Warnovits? Have you finally made up your mind?”
“Well, that’s one thing,” he says. Since his conversation with Lolly this afternoon, the case, for the first time in weeks, seems less like his own dose of iodine-131, beaming destructive rays through his body. “I’ve decided I want to write a draft myself. A matter like this probably justifies being a little more expansive.” George’s opinions normally run lean. His ingrained view of judging is to decide only what needs to be resolved and with as few words as possible.
“What did I mess up?” she asks at once. “Is it the limitations stuff?”
“Your work was as good as always. I’m sure I’ll use a lot of it, and ask for your help. I just want to lay my own hand on this to start.” It occurs to him that this is a pointless discussion. Cassie is going to be gone from chambers by tomorrow afternoon.
“So what else do you want to talk about?”
“It will be better in person.”
She sighs with her characteristic absence of deference, indicating that George is being a pain.
“Where?”
He gave that question some thought before picking up the phone and had an inspiration.
