Final Appeal (12 page)

A bottle of Crown Royal stands like a king behind the pawns. The lattice blown into its glass catches even the dim light. I pick the bottle up by its gold plastic crown and climb down from the shelf.

I am going to get drunk. This strikes me as a daring and powerful act, something a man would do. I am going to have myself a drink, yessir, I am going to tie one on. I put the bottle on the counter and crack open the cap, which sticks slightly. The bottle’s almost full. I take a whiff.

Fragrant. Sweet. Tangy. Strong.

I remember this smell, and it brings a memory down on my head. My parents fighting again, shouting. My father, lurching out the door. My mother, crying alone. A bottle of Crown Royal sitting in the center of a kitchen table, eye level with me: It’s so majestic, glinting like gold. A regal beacon in a world where Daddy is gone and the future is a mystery.

I pour myself a shot.

13

M
y head buzzes with liquor from the night before; my stomach gurgles like a polluted stream. Getting drunk isn’t as manly as I thought it would be. At least not the next morning.

You don’t have to be hung over to be seeing double. Even triple. There are judges everywhere in the grand ceremonial courtroom: circuit judges, district judges, bankruptcy judges, magistrate judges. They gather like ravens in ebony robes on either side of the dais and in the reserved section in front of it. Twenty representative judges from the circuit and district courts fill the dais in two tiers. Crows on the power lines.

The audience, relegated to the back rows, is standing room only. Lawyers, academics, and reporters clog the courtroom. Standing in the back are older men in shabby overcoats, the courtroom junkies dressed up. Shake and Bake isn’t here, but one of them, in a dark overcoat, looks familiar. Thick and bulky, like a thug. I try to think where I’ve seen him before.

Outside the police station? Maybe the man in the black car with Virginia plates.

I crane my neck to see him better, but he disappears behind a group of Armen’s closest friends, the Armenian men in his dinner club; they cleave together, olive-skinned and outnumbered. Susan has been doing what she can to cut them and everybody else out, flying Armen’s body to Washington for a funeral tomorrow. Meanwhile she sits dry-eyed in the front row, sucking up all the attention by saying nothing, like a vacuum.

Does she know about Greg Armen?

It makes me sick to my stomach. Everything does.

Ben has joined Galanter’s clerks, up front. Artie sits with Eletha, comforting her before the service begins, but he looks like he needs comforting himself. He’s more unkempt than usual, his hair uncombed and his rep tie wrinkled. Sarah is next to me in the row behind them; she and Artie don’t exchange a word during the ceremony. Is there trouble in Paradise? I haven’t been paying attention.

Chief Judge Galanter begins the memorial service from the coveted center seat. His statement is ruthlessly generic, and over as soon as it starts. A few of the other judges make short speeches, their words shaky, their sentences halting. They mourn, but it’s a peculiar sort of mourning, characterized by bewilderment. One of their own, a suicide. Only Judge Robbins says the word, his eyes red-rimmed behind rimless spectacles. I close my mind until the service is over, hoping my head will stop thundering.

When it’s over the judges adjourn to the robing room, and some of Armen’s Armenian friends linger near the dais, waiting for a chance to talk to Susan. At the periphery of the crowd are reporters, interested in the same thing. Susan doesn’t seem to mind talking to anyone and doesn’t shed a tear. Her own husband’s memorial service. What had the detective said?
Cried a river
?

A wild-haired reporter with a day’s stubble gets close to her and says, “Senator, just clear up one thing for me. Senator, over here.”

She looks up, but her smile vanishes when she seems to recognize him. “One question, Sandy. That’s it.”

“Is it true that you and the judge were having marital problems?”

Shocked, the well-wishers turn and look at him.

Susan’s mouth sets into a thin line. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” Instantly, a tall, preppy aide in expensive eyeglasses takes her elbow and hustles her through the crowd to the robing room door.

“Have some decency!” an older lawyer says to the reporter, who takes off through the crowd after Susan. Two marshals, Mutt and Jeff, head after him; the big one, McLean, takes the lead.

“What an asshole,” Sarah says, but I watch the reporter until I lose him in the crowd. “Let’s go.”

Sarah and I bobble together in the mass of people leaving the ceremony. I whisper to her, “How do you think he knew?”

“Lucky guess. He’s been hustling since the campaign, trying to get a real job.”

I consider this, but it hurts my head to think. I keep seeing the checkbook, hidden now in my underwear drawer.

We pour out of the courtroom doors into the marble walkway that connects the north half of the federal building to the courthouse. I let the crowd carry me past the plant-filled atrium on the right, which the court employees use to smoke in. A hunchbacked man sweeps up the discarded cigarette butts with a broom.

“You’d think we could find him something better to do,” says a man’s voice beside Sarah. The wild-haired reporter. Up close, he looks sweaty and his curls are permed. “Remember me, Miss Whittemore?”

“What happened to the marshals?” Sarah says, and picks up the pace next to me.

“I’m Sandy Faber. I write for a lot of newspapers in the city.”

“Where do you get off asking a question like that?” Sarah says, barreling ahead.

The reporter falls into her brisk stride. “Did I upset your client, Miss Whittemore?”

“I don’t have any clients, and you don’t fool me for one minute. You’re the one who wrote that victim’s rights story. You called Armen a killer.”

“I didn’t call him a killer, I merely quoted—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

The reporter scrambles over to me and grabs my arm. “Ms. Rossi, it’ll just take a minute. I know you cared about the judge.”

“We all did,” I say, wresting my arm back.

“Somebody didn’t. The person who killed him.”

It stuns me in my tracks, but Sarah reacts instantly. “How dare you!” she says. “You want me to call the marshals?”

“Take a look at your co-counsel here, Miss Whittemore. She’s not so sure it’s a suicide either.”

I feel my gorge rising, only partly from the alcohol. I look past the crowd for the ladies’ room and spot it at the end of the gleaming hall. “I have to go.”

“Grace, are you all right?” Sarah asks.

I wave her off. “See you upstairs.”

“Ms. Rossi?” calls the reporter, who takes off after me, opening his skinny steno pad as we walk. “You were close to Judge Gregorian, weren’t you?”

Does he suspect anything about me and Armen? I hurry past the crowd. The rapid motion makes me seasick. I’ll never drink again; I don’t know how my father stood it.

“Did you know that the judge and his wife were having marital problems?”

I try to ignore him and make my way through the crowd to the ladies’ room. I zigzag left and right, like a sunfish trying to tack in a hurricane.

“Can you shed some light on that, Ms. Rossi? Ms. Rossi?”

I reach the door and pull its stainless steel handle with all my might, but the reporter stops it with his hand. He’s breathing heavily; he smells like cigarettes.

“Grace, are you gonna let somebody get away with murder?”

I look into his face with its sheen of sweat. I feel a stab of confusion and nausea. I yank on the door. “I have to go.”

“Is that the way it’s gonna be? Is it?” he calls after me, as the heavy door closes between us.

I lurch into an empty stall, lock it, and drop on to the seat until the wave of nausea passes. I hang my head, examining the speckles in the floor tile; gray, black, and white fragments tumble together like a kaleidoscope. Between each tile is a steel line where the grout would be, but it wiggles from time to time. I right myself and wrestle with the oversized dispenser for a square of toilet paper.

Are you gonna let somebody get away with murder?

I wipe my face with the thin square and decide to stay there until the earthquake stops. I listen to other women flush the toilets, wash their hands, and leave. I wait until all the hands are washed and all the women have gone. In time, the voices outside the bathroom diminish, then disappear altogether.

I think of the checkbook. I think of Armen. I’m not sure if I can’t move or won’t. I stay a long, long time at the bottom of the tall, glistening courthouse, sitting on the john in silence, thinking about my murdered lover. The judge with the alias.

What does that reporter know?

I hear the bathroom door open.

Shit. Who’s coming into my bathroom? I feel intruded upon. I hate to share a public bathroom with the public, especially when my stomach is barely parallel to the floor.

Whoever it is walks farther into the bathroom. There’s no sound of pumps on the floor; she must be wearing flats. I lean over and squint through the slit where the door meets the jamb, but I can’t see anybody.

I know someone is there, but she’s not going into a stall. She doesn’t turn on the water, either, or strike a match for an illicit smoke. Maybe she came in to fix her makeup or brush her hair. I listen for the sounds, but nobody’s fumbling in a handbag.

Still, someone is there. I heard the door. I feel a presence. I squint through the slits but see nothing.

Then I hear the faintest sound, of human breathing.

Someone is standing right in front of my door.

Panic floods my throat. I rise involuntarily.

There’s a shuffling outside the stall as the presence moves closer in response. I lean next to the door, every nerve taut, straining to listen.

I hear the breathing, louder now.

I look underneath the door to my stall.

Planted there is a pair of large black shoes.

A man’s.

14

“W
ho’s there?” I shout, terrified.

“Are you all right?” says the man. Concerned, professional. “You’ve been in there awhile.”

“Is that you, Faber?”

“No, I’m a special agent with the FBI.”

“In a ladies’ room?” My voice clatters off the tile walls. “Go away or I’ll scream, I mean it! Right now!”

“Wait, relax. I swear to you, I
am
an FBI agent. Our office is here in the building. Seventh floor.”

“Anybody would know that. It’s on the directory.”

“I’m with the agency for ten years now. I trained at Quantico. Eighteen months, not counting in-service training.”

“Quantico, Virginia?” I think of the man at the memorial service, the car with the Virginia plates.

“Yes. Listen, I don’t have much time. Here’s my ID.” A hand materializes above the shoes, carrying a card-size plastic wallet.

I start to reach for it, then draw back. What if he grabs my wrist? “Drop it. Near the toilet. Now.” I sound ridiculous, even to myself.

“All right, all right.” He tosses the wallet into the stall like a Frisbee; it banks against the toilet and settles at my feet. I’m not close enough to the door for his hand to reach under, so I pick it up. My hands have stopped trembling. So has my stomach. I open the billfold like a tiny book. On one leaf is a photo of Tom Cruise and on the other is a Pennsylvania driver’s license.

“What is this, a joke? Where’s your FBI badge?”

“I can’t carry my creds, I’m undercover.”

“Sure you are. You a friend of Tom’s, too?”

“It goes with my cover. Look at the license, at least you’ll see who I am.”

I look at the driver’s license. His features are nondescript in the state-sponsored mug shot, and it says that he’s six feet one, 185 pounds. His hair is dark brown, eyes blue. It could be the man with the Virginia plates, but I had only a glimpse of him. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“It’s right on the license.”

“Maybe you stole the license. What’s your name?”

“Oh, a test. I get it. Abe Lincoln.”

“You think this is funny? You scared the shit out of me. If this is standard FBI procedure—”

“It isn’t, believe me. They’d have my ass. I wouldn’t do it unless I were absolutely desperate.”

That rings true. “So what’s your name, desperate?”

“Thaddeus Colwin.”

I strain to read the name on the driver’s license. Thaddeus Colwin III. “Thaddeus?”

“It’s Quaker.”

“A Quaker cop?”

“A good cop, a bad Quaker. Call me Winn anyway. Thaddeus is my father.”

“Wait a minute, if you’re undercover, why are you carrying around your real license?”

“I knew I’d be contacting you after the service, and I knew you’d bust my chops.”

“How’d you know that?”

“You’re a lawyer. Duh.”

Hmmm. “Do you have kids?”

“No, and my favorite color is yellow. This is getting kind of personal, isn’t it? We just met.”

A comedian. “What’s your address?”

He sighs. “Twenty-one thirty-three Adams Street, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.”

“Social security number?”

“What?”

“Tell me your social security number or I scream.”

“What is it with you?” he says, amused no longer.

“I’m somebody’s mother, that’s what it is with me. If you kill me, my daughter’s stuck with a dog. For a father.”

“166-28-2810.”

It matches the driver’s license. Maybe he
is
for real. “What do you want anyway?”

“Can you come out? I need to talk to you. I don’t have much time. Somebody could’ve seen me come in here.”

“Why do I have to come out? Why can’t we talk like this?”

A huge sigh. “Artie told me you were like this.”

“Artie? Artie who?”

“Weiss. The law clerk.”

“You know Artie? How?”

“We play ball.”

“Where?”

“At the Y. Now I have three minutes left. Will you please open the goddamn door?”