the Amber Room

She almost smiled. At least the young lawyer knew the right answer.

'Motion to recuse denied.' She stared at the defendant, a young white male with scraggly hair and a pockmarked face. 'The defendant shall rise.' He did. 'Barry King, you've been found guilty of the crime of aggravated assault. This court hereby remands you to the Department of Corrections for a period of twenty years. The bailiff will take the defendant into custody.'

She rose and stepped toward an oak-paneled door that led to her chambers. 'Mr. Nettles, could I see you a moment?' The assistant DA headed toward her, too. 'Alone.'

Nettles left his client, who was being cuffed, and followed her into the office.

'Close the door, please.' She unzipped her robe but did not remove it. She stepped behind her desk. 'Nice try, counselor.'

'Which one?'

'Earlier, when you thought that jab about sir and ma'am would set me off. You were getting your butt chapped with that half-cocked defense, so you thought me losing my temper would get you a mistrial.'

He shrugged. 'You gotta do what you gotta do.'

'What you have to do is show respect for the court and not call a female judge sir. Yet you kept on. Deliberately.'

'You just sentenced my guy to twenty years without the benefit of a presentence hearing. If that isn't prejudice, what is?'

She sat down and did not offer the lawyer a seat. 'I didn't need a hearing. I sentenced King to aggravated battery two years ago. Six months in, six months' probation. I remember. This time he took a baseball bat and fractured a man's skull. He's used up what little patience I have.'

'You should have recused yourself. All that information clouded your judgment.'

'Really? That presentence investigation you're screaming for would have revealed all that, anyway. I simply saved you the trouble of waiting for the inevitable.'

'You're a fucking bitch.'

'That's going to cost you a hundred dollars. Payable now. Along with another hundred for the stunt in the courtroom.'

'I'm entitled to a hearing before you find me in contempt.'

'True. But you don't want that. It'll do nothing for that chauvinistic image you go out of your way to portray.'

He said nothing, and she could feel the fire building. Nettles was a heavyset, jowled man with a reputation for tenacity, surely unaccustomed to taking orders from a woman.

'And every time you show off that big ass of yours in my court, it's going to cost you a hundred dollars.'

He stepped toward the desk and withdrew a wad of money, peeling off two one-hundred-dollar bills, crisp new ones with the swollen Ben Franklin. He slapped both on the desk, then unfolded three more.

'Fuck you.'

One bill dropped.

'Fuck you.'

The second bill fell.

'Fuck you.'

The third Ben Franklin fluttered down.

TWO

Rachel donned her robe, stepped back into the courtroom, and climbed three steps to the oak dais she'd occupied for the past four years. The clock on the far wall read 1:45 P.M. She wondered how much longer she'd have the privilege of being a judge. It was an election year, qualifying had ended two weeks back, and she'd drawn two opponents for the July primary. There'd been talk of people getting into the race, but no one appeared until ten minutes before five on Friday to plunk down the nearly four-thousand-dollar fee needed to run. What could have been an easy uncontested election had now evolved into a long summer of fund-raisers and speeches. Neither of which were pleasurable.

At the moment she didn't need the added aggravation. Her dockets were jammed, with more cases being added by the day. Today's calendar, though, was shortened by a quick verdict in State of Georgia v. Barry King. Less than a half hour of deliberation was fast by any standard, the jurors obviously not impressed with T. Marcus Nettles's theatrics.

With the afternoon free, she decided to tend to a backlog of non-jury matters that had clogged over the past two weeks of jury trials. The trial time had been productive. Four convictions, six guilty pleas, and one acquittal. Eleven criminal cases out of the way, making room for the new batch her secretary said the scheduling clerk would deliver in the morning.

The Fulton County Daily Report rated all the local superior court judges annually. For the past three years she'd been ranked near the top, disposing of cases faster than most of her fellow judges, with a reversal rate in the appellate courts of only 2 percent. Not bad being right 98 percent of the time.

She settled behind the bench and watched the afternoon parade begin. Lawyers hustled in and out, some ferrying clients in need of a final divorce or a judge's signature, others looking for a resolution to pending motions in civil cases awaiting trial. About forty different matters in all. By the time she glanced again at the clock across the room, it was 4:15 and the docket had whittled down to two items. One was an adoption, a task she really enjoyed. The seven-year-old reminded her of Brent, her own seven-year-old. The last matter was a simple name change, the petitioner unrepresented by counsel. She'd specifically scheduled the case at the end, hoping the courtroom would be empty.

The clerk handed her the file.

She stared down at the old man dressed in a beige tweed jacket and tan trousers who stood before the counsel table.

'Your full name?' she asked.

'Karl Bates.' His tired voice carried an East European accent.

'How long have you lived in Fulton County?'

'Thirty-nine years.'

'You were not born in this country?'

'No. I come from Belarus.'

'And you are an American citizen?'

He nodded. 'I'm an old man. Eighty-one. Almost half my life spent here.'

The question and answer was not relevant to the petition, but neither the clerk nor the court reporter said anything. Their faces seemed to understand the moment.

'My parents, brothers, sisters--all slaughtered by Nazis. Many died in Belarus. We were White Russians. Very proud. After the war, not many of us were left when the Soviets annexed our land. Stalin was worse than Hitler. A madman. Butcher. Nothing remained there when he was through, so I leave. This country is the land of promise, right?'

'Were you a Russian citizen?'

'I believe correct designation was Soviet citizen.' He shook his head. 'But I never consider myself Soviet.'

'Did you serve in the war?'

'Only of necessity. The Great Patriotic War, Stalin called it. I was lieutenant. Captured and sent to Mauthausen. Sixteen months in a concentration camp.'

'What was your occupation here after immigrating?'

'Jeweler.'

'You have petitioned this court for a change of name. Why do you wish to be known as Karol Borya?'

'It is my birth name. My father named me Karol. It means 'strong-willed.' I was youngest of six children and almost die at birth. When I immigrate to this country, I thought, must protect identity. I work for government