Final Appeal

ORDER IN THE COURT! WELCOME TO THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM! guides me through the reception area, where the blinds are down.

The chambers are laid out like ours, with the judge’s office to the left. I walk into Galanter’s office; even at the threshold it stinks of cigar smoke. The far wall is entirely of glass, like Armen’s, overlooking the Delaware. The lights from the Camden side make bright wiggly lines on the black water.

In the light from the wall of windows I can make out Galanter’s glistening desk, also of glass. I walk to it with more nervousness than I want to acknowledge and whip out the flashlight I keep in the car; it says WALT DISNEY WORLD. Official burglary tool, patent pending.

I flick on the flashlight with an amateurish thrill and flash it around the room. Next to Galanter’s desk are the same shelves we have, where Armen used to keep the current cases. Galanter does it the same way. I look over the shelves. The circle of light falls on each stack of red, blue, and gray briefs, the colors regulated by the Third Circuit’s local rules. Attached to the briefs with a rubber band is the appendix in each case and the record. That’s what I’m looking for.

I sort through a bunch of criminal cases, all sentencing appeals, and a commercial contract case; the Uniform Commercial Code seems less interesting to me than it used to. Underneath the stack, at the very bottom, is Canavan and its record. I tug the Canavan papers off the shelf and settle down on the floor.

I pull off the briefs and appendix to get to the record. I expect to find a stack of blue-backed pleadings bound at the top, but the papers are stuffed in a yellow envelope. SEALED COURT DOCUMENTS, says a forbidding red stamp on the envelope. A court order is taped underneath.

Why would a district court seal this record? In any event, it doesn’t apply to me, at least not tonight.

I plunge into the envelope, pulling out the first part of the record. On top is the complaint, which alleges that Canavan Flowers was driven out of business by a group of local flower retailers. The defendants listed Bob Canavan on their FTD-like telephone network but never sent him any orders to fill. The complaint is a poorly drafted litany of the ways Canavan was starved out, but never explains why. The young lawyer couldn’t flesh out the Mob connection. Neither can I.

A ring of florists? Galanter laughed.

I flip past the complaint and skim the appendix until I come to the names of the wholesalers. I take the crumpled crossword puzzle Winn gave me from my pocket and compare it with the papers, sticking the flashlight in my armpit. None of the names are the same. The list of wholesalers’ names reads like white bread, the list of mobsters’ names like Amoroso’s hoagie rolls. I put the pleadings aside in favor of the depositions. If there’s gold to be found, it’ll be here. Something that isn’t what it seems.

I read the first deposition, then the second and the third, fighting off a sinking feeling. None of the names are the ones on the crossword; none of the allegations amount to anything other than common law fraud by a bunch of rather hard-assed florists. Isn’t that what Townsend said? How is it different from a case of garden variety fraud? Was he speaking from the casebook or the checkbook?

I start the next deposition, given by one of the vendors. An inadvertent reference to a delivery-man sounds familiar. Jim Cavallaro. I look down at the short list on the crossword puzzle:

James Cavallaro.

It must be the same man. I think a minute.

Of course.

The Mob couldn’t care less about the carnations; it’s in the delivery. In the trucks and the truck drivers. In an operation that runs by phone orders, the delivery is where the money is to be made. It doesn’t matter what’s being delivered, even something that smells like roses.

I leaf back to the other depositions, looking for references to the truckers. I scribble down the names, but there’s only a few. My next step is to check Galanter’s phone log to see if any of them made calls to chambers, or if there’s any other connection to Galanter.

Suddenly I hear the jiggling of the doorknob in the reception area to Galanter’s office. I freeze, listening for another sound, but by then it’s almost too late.

The door opens, casting a wedge of light into the reception area. I flick off the flashlight and shove the record back onto the shelf. If this is Winn, I’ll bludgeon him with my Pluto flashlight.

Where can I hide? I look around the room.

Galanter’s private bathroom. Right where Armen’s was, off a tiny hall leading from the office. I scoot into the bathroom and slip behind the door, willing myself into stillness.

Whoever’s coming in has a flashlight of his own.

He strides into Galanter’s office as if he doesn’t have any time to lose. He casts the flashlight this way and that, throwing a jittery spotlight at the bookshelves, then at the couch and back again. All I can see of him is that he’s big-shouldered, an ominous outline above the blaze of the flashlight. Too heavyset to be Winn. I withdraw behind the bathroom door, afraid.

The figure strides to Galanter’s desk. His back is to me as he aims the flashlight on the papers piled neatly on the glass surface. He touches each pile; his hand is hammy as it falls within the flashlight’s beam. He seems to be looking for something, rapidly but with confidence. He’s been in this office before, it seems. He had a key, unless he picked the lock.

His hand moves over the desk like a blind man reading Braille. He finds something and picks it up. I squint in the darkness. He holds a wrinkled piece of yellow paper in the beam of the flashlight. It must be a phone message; we use the same ones. They’re printed on thin paper so they’ll make a carbon copy. They tear constantly.

“Fuckin’ A,” the man says, in a voice I almost recognize. He takes the paper and slips it into a pocket.

Who is this man?

I get my answer when he turns around. In one terrifying instant he passes in front of the bathroom on the way out. I don’t see his face clearly, but the mustache is a giveaway, as is the glint of an official marshal badge.

Al McLean.

My mouth goes dry. I hold my breath as I hear the outer door to chambers open, then close behind him. He jiggles the doorknob to make sure it’s locked.

McLean. Christ. And he was the one on duty the night Armen was killed. I wait in the bathroom a minute, not surprised to be perspiring. I wipe my forehead and tiptoe into the office. I want to know what McLean was looking at, and what he took.

I walk over to the polished desk, stand in the same position he did, and flick on the flashlight. Everything is upside down, all the papers and correspondence that tie a circuit judge to the outside world. In a stack on the middle pile is a group of yellow message slips, written in the careful script of Galanter’s secretary, Miss Waxman. The first two messages are from Judge Foudy and Judge Townsend. PLEASE CALL BACK, the secretary has checked. But the three messages after those are from Sandy Faber.

The reporter. The same one who’s been phoning me and everyone in our chambers. The latest message, recorded at 4:58, says IMPORTANT! in letters so perfect they could be printed.

What did Faber find out? And whose message did McLean take?

It could be Faber’s, since the three preceding it were from him. But it ain’t necessarily so; the odds are worse than a flip of the coin. I decide to check the phone log tomorrow; it will have copies of each message. It’s too risky to stay tonight.

I set the messages down the way I found them. Underneath is a small squarish envelope, its address the tiny Gothic typescript characteristic of only one institution: the Supreme Court of the United States. Hobnob with the Supreme Court, Artie said. Position himself for the next appointment. I open the stiff envelope.

What’s inside is a surprise.

A note from Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, thanking Galanter for his recommendation letter on behalf of Ben Safer. Incredible. Ben doesn’t even clerk for Galanter. I read it again, then slip it back in the envelope. I stack everything up the way it was, three-inch messages on top, small cards under that, letters next, then briefs. Strict size order, calibrated to telegraph CONTROL.

Boy, am I going to hate working for Big Chief Galanter.