The Judge (31 page)

"There was no time," says Howie. "There was a tip they were movin' the stuff today."

"I'll tell you what's happening," I say.

"Shut your fucking mouth." Howie has his baton in my face.

"Your pals are rousting a lawyer in the middle of a murder trial by planting evidence in my house," I tell the sergeant. "Look at his name under the flak jacket. It says Mike. "He posed as a cable repairman to plant the stuff in my bathroom." Howie has something between a sick smile and rage on his face. I ask him if he's going to fix my television set like he promised before he leaves. He raises the baton, but doesn't hit me.

He is getting some serious looks from the uniformed cop.

"Howie. I'm ashamed of you." Howie laughs, like big joke. How can he believe a pusher?

The sergeant's face is an enigma.

One of the other cops comes in with the dogs on a short tether, big German shepherds, and they head straight down the hall.

"Maybe you'd like to be here for this." Howie's talking to the sergeant.

They both stroll down the hall.

I hear the dog go ape-shit in the bathroom, barking, scratching the walls. Howie tells the sergeant it's in there someplace.

"Hope for your sake you find it," says the sergeant. They both stroll out and join us in the living room again." Cuz the watch commander's on his way over."

"Who the hell called him?"

"I did." This has Howie stomping around in the middle of my living room floor.

"What the fuck for?" he says.

"My turf," says the sergeant. "You don't come into my area without telling me, Howie. I think you got some explaining to do." The cavalry is on its way.

Howie stops his stomping long enough to look down the hall. "Kennedy. Did you find it?"

"No."

"Shit." Howie's down the hall to help.

We are left in the living room with the baseball cap, one of the hooded cops, and the two uniforms.

"I'm Sergeant Lincoln," says the uniform. "Who are you?" He's talking to me.

"I don't think Howie wants you talking to them." This from the guy in the baseball cap.

The sergeant gives him a look that, if baseball cap had a brain, would kill him in place.

"Really, do I actually look like I give a shit what Howie wants?" When the guy doesn't answer, the sergeant gets in his face, two inches away.

"Well, do I?" The guy called Knelly actually blanches, holds his ground for an instant, then turns away.

"Why don't you go and sniff for drugs," says the sergeant. Knelly leaves the room, his baton dangling from one hand like a deflated dick.

"And you," says the sergeant. He's talking to the other hooded wonder.

"Douglas. Take that damn thing off your head. You look ridiculous. Get outta here. We'll watch your prisoners." The guy joins his compatriots.

The sergeant turns back to me. "Now one more time. Who are you?" "My name is Paul Madriani."

"Heard of you," he says. "And you?" Lenore's face is now puffed out, and she is showing all the signs of a shiner, her right lid beginning to close.

"Let me introduce you," I say. "This is Lenore Goya, formerly of the district attorney's office." I hear Lenore give a palpable sigh. I think for a moment she thought they were actually going to kill us.

THIS MORNING Radovich IS CONDUCTING HIS OWN inquisition in chambers. He has called the city's police chief and Kline on the carpet to explain the raid on my house. While he is taking no official position, and dodging questions from the press on the matter, he is clearly concerned that news reports of this may affect the trial.

"Why wasn't I told about this? Who the hell's running your office?" Radovich is pressing Kline for answers.

Harry and I sit quietly on a couch against the wall, a Band-Aid on my forehead where there are four stitches, bruises clearly visible on my neck. Acosta sits in a chair next to me, one of the bailiffs behind him, and a guard outside the door. I have insisted that he be present as he has read the accounts of the raid in the paper. He is worried as to how this may affect his trial.

It took the watch commander only ten minutes to sweep cable man and his clan from my house. After nearly tearing the floorboards from my bathroom they came up with nothing. It took a little longer to get Sarah back from downtown. Child Protective Services had a million questions.

They wanted to keep her overnight. After a threat of litigation and a call to the county counsel they came to their senses.

In all of this, not a single person in the ranks of government has issued an apology. They are holding their breath to see if lenore and I will sue.

While the dogs went wild in the bathroom, their trail of sniffing apparently ended at the wall below the window. All things taken together, they might have found it, except for the interference of the brass, the watch commander and his lieutenant. Those in authority have their own way of rectifying abuses in the ranks. In my case their
penance was to be ordered off the scene before they could complete their search.

This morning Kline is a catalog of excuses, most of them coming down to a single point; that he was never told of the raid himself.

"Your Honor" he's standing at the edge of radovich's desk "I want you to understand that I had no part in this." He seems genuinely at a loss, insisting that he was out of the loop.

"Had I known, of course I would have consulted the court." "Somebody must have issued a search warrant," says Radovich.

"A new appointee," says Kline. "Municiple court judge on call. It was cleared early Saturday morning, through one of the junior deputies in my office, also on call." According to Kline, the cops told his deputy, a kid seven months out of law school, that there were exigent circumstances, no time to wait.

According to the police, the drugs were about to be moved that morning. "My deputy didn't connect Mr. Madriani's name on the warrant. If he had, I'm sure I would have been alerted." Kline turns his head and says this for my benefit. This is the closest thing to an apology I have yet heard.

"Sounds to me like somebody in your department was shopping." Radovich turns his attention to Wallace Hansen, the chief of police.

"New judge. Young prosecutor," says Radovich. "We're looking into it," says Hansen.

"What about the information on the affidavit?" Radovich is talking about the statement of evidence sworn under oath, by the cops, what is required to establish probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant.

"Where did it come from?" says Radovich.

"An informant," says the chief. "A reliable source." Hansen has the complexion of an albino, reddish blond hair, and a face that looks as if it is in a state of perpetual hostility.

"So reliable you came up with squat," says the judge.

"Believe me, it wasn't for want of trying," I tell Radovich. "The adjuster is still tallying the damage to my house." Hansen wants to know if I intend to sue the city.

"You'll know when he files," says Harry.

I have told Radovich privately that the cops planted the drugs in my home, something that he clearly did not want to hear. His advice was that I not repeat the charge here, in mixed company, for fear that it might tend to incriminate confirmation that drugs were in fact present.

Hansen would no doubt demand to know where they were. He is the kind of stand-up cop who will take abuse for his men, even when he suspects there is something untoward. Dirty linen he would air in private. He insists that if his men conducted a search they had good cause. "Did they have cause to beat the crap out of Mr. Madriani?"

"I'm told he resisted," says Hansen.

"And Ms. Goya. Did she resist, too?" Hansen doesn't answer this.

"I've seen her face," says Radovich. "She's wearing a steak on one eye. " Hansen just stands there and takes it, the professional punching bag. "I don't like this. I don't like it at all," says Radovich.

He has been told privately that the men involved have now been suspended pending an inquiry by Internal Affairs. Radovich has confided at least this much to me. The city attorney's office, for reasons of liability, has instructed the department not to discuss any pending disciplinary actions. So we play the lawyer's dance, no apologies from them, no quarter from us.

"Well, Mr. Kline. I am very troubled as to what to do," says Radovich. "The press is having a field day with this. If word of it gets to the jury, there is a chance of a mistrial."

"Surely you can instruct them to disregard it," says Kline.

The jury is not sequestered. While they have been instructed not to read press coverage of the trial or to listen to television or radio reports, everyone knows that such admonitions are regularly ignored.

"I'll tell you one thing," says Radovich. "I want your reliable source in my chambers tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. I want to know where this information came from. If there was any attempt on the part of the state to taint this jury by undermining defense counsel."

"I don't know that we can do that," says Hansen. "Produce the witness, " he says.

"Why not?"

"I'm told the information was given in return for a guarantee of absolute confidentiality."

"Do I have to issue a court order?" says Radovich.

Kline is not even offering moral support to the chief on this. As far as he is concerned, Hansen is on his own.

The chief raises an issue as to the court's jurisdiction, something he no doubt has been briefed on by the city attorney's office. The raid on my house is not a matter properly brought before Radovich.

Kline winces when Hansen attempts to take this tack. Radovich goes ballistic. He actually comes up out of his chair and leans on the center of his desk, less than a foot from Hansen's face. The two men are nose to nose.

"You jerking my chain?" he asks the chief. "No."

"Then have your man in here tomorrow morning. We'll discuss the fine points of my jurisdiction some other time." He then turns to Kline.

"These are your people. I want your guarantee."

The prosecutor talks to the chief briefly in one ear, they confer, then Kline guarantees the appearance.

"I also want your word," says Radovich, "that there will be no further replays of this." This it seems does not require a conference.

"Not from us," says Hansen.

"I don't want to play word games, either," says the judge. "That means you don't go handing this thing off to some other agency to play midnight marauders under another warrant. Do I make myself clear?" The two men nod in unison like some part of a drill team.

"Good," says Radovich. "Now let's get out of here and try this case."

We are nearly down the hall leading from the judge's chambers, the jail guard with one hand on my client's arm, when Acosta leans back into my ear and whispers. "That was not so bad. I think in fact it may work for our benefit with the judge in the end." Acosta is not feeling the pain in every part of my body at this moment the way I am.

It has been a fitful night; only four hours of sleep. I put Sarah down just before nine, showered, read some documents in preparation for tomorrow morning's session in Acosta's trial, and was in bed by eleven.

I set the alarm with low-volume music for three in the morning, but was awake before it went off.

I rise and put on an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of running shoes with thick rubber soles. It has been drizzling outside for more than an hour, so I slip a dark nylon Windbreaker with a hood over my head.

On the way down to the stairs I check on Sarah. She is asleep, with most of the blankets kicked to the bottom other bed. She sleeps with a small doll's comforter pulled up over the upper part of her body to her shoulders, leaving her little legs covered with goose bumps. I cover her and she stirs just a little before falling back into a deep slumber, little mewing snores.

I head down the stairs, through the hall, into the kitchen, where I can see the remnants of the raid three days ago. There are missing drawers that were smashed on the floor and a cabinet door that was pulled from its hinges. The shelves inside the yawning hole of the cabinet are empty, as the dishes were pulled down onto the tile countertop and broken. Those that survived were swept onto the floor and crushed under foot. There is a major dent in the enamel of my refrigerator door where I am told one of the cops laid into it with a cast-iron skillet. After photographing the damage, I swept up the mess with help from friends, including Lenore, who was in pain the entire time but refused to leave.

She is certain that Kline is behind all of this. She is single-minded in her enmity toward the man. My own suspicions lie elsewhere. Some confirmation of this I have acquired over the past two nights.

Lenore saw the white powder and has asked me several times what I did with it. I have not told her.

I head out the back door into the yard, and around to the side of the g house, the narrow passage that dead-ends at a fence separating this from my front lawn. It is dark, but I do not use a flashlight. A bright beam could attract a neighbor, or worse. ' The dirt path along the side of the house is open, with only some ivy growing on the fence that separates my yard from the neighbor's. Overhead are the eaves of my house. If I move flush against the siding, I am sheltered from the spray of fine rain that is coming down.

About halfway along the path I see the small window. One of its panes is now broken, covered instead by a piece of black plastic that I have tacked up from the inside of the bathroom.

I try to visualize the layout of my neighbor's home. Unlike my own, it is a single-story ranch-style, a gentle pitch to the roof.

On the other side of the fence I can see the eaves of my neighbor's garage, just a few feet away.

As quietly as I can I boost myself onto the top railing of the fence, then rise slowly on my feet, standing on the railing. I balance like a tightrope walker for an instant before I lean, catching the edge of their roof with my hands. I lean forward, muscling my weight with my arms, and swing one leg up. I shimmy my body until I am lying prone at the edge of the roof. As I do this, one foot drags on the edge of the rain gutter, making a noise like hard rubber dragging across a washboard.

The shake shingles are slick with rain. The lower part of my body is already soaked. My jeans are now sodden, three pounds heavier than when I put them on. I lie silent for several seconds, waiting to see if lights will come on below in my neighbor's house. The sheet-metal gutters and downspouts are dripping their metallic cadence; this seems to have covered the noise of my foot scraping the edge.

On my stomach I crawl toward the back side of the roof. It is a hip roof that rises from three directions toward a peak in the center. From there the garage roof runs a ridge until it joins the main part of the house itself and then cuts in valleys and angles in two directions, front and back.

The valleys are all lined with metal flashing. Tonight they are running like rivers.

It is the reason I could not wait. I could not be certain that in the constant rain the bag would hold up. It would not take long for a s neighbor to question the white flow, like a stream of bat guano, running through the downspouts of his house and out onto the lawn, every gardener's miracle cure. They would be wondering why it is that they are driven to stand in the same place and rake the dust all day.

Around the back side of the roof I move into a half crouch and up toward the pitch, until I can see just over the top. From here, the street below is illuminated by the yellow glow of a vapor light on the pole several doors down.

In the opposite direction, under the branches of a young elm, I can see the curious dark van that appeared for the first time two nights ago.

It has two round bubble windows, a vestige from the seventies, one on each side. It has been parked there, always in the same place when I get home at night, and still there when I leave for work in the morning.

Subtle they are not. If they cannot nail me for dealing, they want their drugs back.

It is the reason that I suspect Kline is not involved. Given the tail chewing he has already taken from Radovich, he would not dare to be this bold, to place my house under surveillance. Still, it is a measure of the lack of control that the authorities, both he and the chief, have over this faction of their own force.

I have taken the license number of the van and asked Harry to check DMV. I have also snapped pictures of the vehicle with a telephoto lens from the end of the block.

In the morning when I leave for work I put a light film of baby powder on the floor inside each door, front and rear, as well as in strategic places in the hallway in case they use a window. I check these for foot prints each night when I return. So far, if my sign-reading skills are any good, they have stayed out. I think they have concluded it is not in the house. I have made certain that Sarah is never there if I am out.