Rough Justice

'No. I love your mother. I like your mother better than you do.'

But Mary was thinking. 'Maybe Darning rose up in the ranks at the bank, and there was some finagling with Steere's accounts or something. Bribes. Embezzlement.'

'You're guessing.'

'Can you blame me?' Mary asked, but that was all she said or needed to. She didn't want to talk about the past, she didn't even want to think about it. And she certainly didn't want to relive it.

Suddenly there was a commotion outside the conference room. The lawyers heard Marta talking to someone and sprang into action like Pavlov's associates. 'Yikes!' Judy yelped, snatching the papers and photos from the table and stuffing them in the nearest accordion. 'How'd Erect get here so fast?'

Mary punched a key to wake the laptop. 'She took the broom.'

14

Judge Harry Calvin Rudolph brooded at his heavy, polished desk in his modern chambers at the Criminal Justice Center, fingering the handwritten note that threatened to put the kibosh on his judicial career. The promotion of a lifetime was in striking distance, and Judge Rudolph wasn't about to let it slip away, not at his age. His hands had only recently begun to sprout liver spots and the strands of hair sneaking from under his French cuffs were just silvering to gray. Judge Rudolph was in his prime as a jurist. A scholar, a leader. He could make history.

Before he presided over the Steere case, Judge Rudolph had spent fifteen years on the Common Pleas Court of Philadelphia County. He'd wanted to be a judge so much in the beginning, he'd left private practice when it was beginning to prosper. Money wasn't everything, and young Harry was drawn to the scholarship, trappings, and prestige inherent in a judge's station. A robe, a gavel, a dais. He imagined what his Bucknell classmates would think. The frats who ignored him at rush week. Now Harry Rudolph was not only in the frat, he was the frat.

Judge Rudolph twisted the piece of yellow legal paper in his hands, remembering his idealism in the beginning. Leave it to others to fight for money; let his colleagues battle for the ephemeral power of partnership. Judge Rudolph's power was real, lasting, reinforced by judicial might. In his tenure on the bench he caused fortunes to change hands, ordered criminals to jail, and even locked up a couple of reporters. Judge Rudolph administered justice. When you had that, who needed money?

Fifteen years later, Judge Rudolph did. Fifteen years later, money was all he needed. The income of his peers had skyrocketed past his, even though he was making a hundred grand a year. He'd heard that Blumenfeld was taking home $450,000 at Dechert Price & Rhodes and Simonsburger was raking it in at Morgan, Lewis. Hell, everybody was raking it in at Morgan, Lewis. Judge Rudolph couldn't stand to look at their faces at reunions, law review banquets, or those rare occasions when his classmates appeared before him in court. He knew they were having the last laugh on the way home. In the Jag.

Judge Rudolph set the note down. If he held it in his hands any longer he'd tear it in two. He stared at it in contempt, there on his soft green blotter in the middle of his glistening desk. Just last week, Dave DeCaro came to court defending a CEO at Witmark. DeCaro was tanned from a vacation on Grand Cayman. A winter vacation to the Caymans, for God's sake, with all six kids and his wife. Judge Rudolph couldn't have done that in a pig's eye and he was ten times the lawyer DeCaro was.

The judge laced his fingers in front of him, studying the note. Christ Almighty. Not now. There was an opening coming up on the state Supreme Court, and Judge Rudolph was a shoo-in for the nomination. Justice Harry C. Rudolph. Chief Justice H. C. Rudolph. Superchief. He wasn't about to let this note ruin everything. Not his last chance.

The Steere case had gone so well and the judge had done everything right so far. No cameras in the courtroom; a gag order as soon as the lawyers started yapping. Only fifty spectators at a time; all press conferences after business hours. Two side-bars a day; arguments limited to five minutes a side. He'd even seen to it that the Steere jury could deliberate through the snowstorm and bound Steere over at the courthouse. They didn't call him 'Rocket Docket' Rudolph for nothing, and that was exactly the kind of thing that got the attention of the big boys. Keep the cases moving and don't fuck up the felonies. Steere was the case that would make him a Supreme Court justice. If this note didn't queer it.

Judge Rudolph fumbled beside his blotter for his reading glasses. Maybe he had misread it, in anger. Then again, maybe not:

YOUR HONOR, ONE OF THE JURORS HAS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND WANTS TO TALK TO YOU.

SINCERELY,

CHRISTOPHER GRAHAM YOUR FOREPERSON

The judge snapped off his glasses and barked, 'Send him in!'

* * *

'You were a tailor, Mr. Tullio?' Judge Rudolph glared over his glasses at the juror, who couldn't have been more than five feet tall. He wore a brown suit with a hand-stitched lapel, worn thin.

'Yes, Your Honor. Until I retired. Your Honor. Sir.'

'You live in South Philadelphia, near Second Street. Is that right?'

'Yes, sir. Your Honor. Near the museum.'

'But the art museum's on the parkway.'

'The Mummers' museum, I mean.' Nick nodded with jittery vigor. 'Got the Mummers costumes and all. In glass.'

Judge Rudolph cleared his throat. 'Mr. Tullio, I understand you have a medical emergency. Do you?'

'Yes. No. Your Honor. Not an emergency. I'm not bleedin' or nothin'.'

'I can see that.'

'I just heaved, is all.'

Judge Rudolph sighed deeply. 'Is that your medical problem, Mr. Tullio? You—'