The Missing Piece (22 page)

He buzzed his secretary and asked her to summon his two litigation associates. They arrived at his desk quickly. He explained the new development, and they furiously took notes. He nodded in the direction of one, and she headed off to begin work. The other associate remained.

Braman closed his office door. For years, generations actually, the associates his firm hired had rolled off a single assembly line with the same intellectual and cultural pedigree—white, male, Northeast Corridor, double Ivies. That had changed, slowly and imperceptibly at first, before accelerating in recent years, and the associate who sat before him—Darius was his name—was the apotheosis of this new, multicultural template.

“I need Judge Conover off the case,” said Braman.

*   *   *

Damien Wheatley had to concede that Hannigan was right. Many of the same lowlifes who had dissed him only yesterday now jumped at the chance to occupy the tent city in Foley Square.

“Hey, you're doing great,” Hannigan told him over his cell phone. “Thirty-two showed up so far.”

Thirty-two, thought Damien, translated to three hundred and twenty dollars. Not bad, but nothing like he could make on the Roman silver case if he could come up with an angle.

“The tent city needs a catchy name,” said Hannigan. “Something like Stipend City or Conover Square. You have any ideas?”

Damien, way uptown near Riverside Park, tried to catch the attention of an old man with a flowing white mustache and leathery, sunburned skin. The man's head, weighed down with a scuffed Mets batting helmet, bent forward so that his chin rested on his chest, his wrist flicking a cup in a rhythmic jangle of nickel on tin.

“Conover Square,” said Damien. “It's in the middle of Foley Square and it sounds like Hanover Square.”

“Yeah, with all its Financial District associations,” said Hannigan. “I like that.”

Hannigan rang off, and Damien tried again with the old man. He waved his hand, then crouched into his line of sight. The man's eyes were closed.

“Hey, wanna make twenty bucks?” said Damien.

The old man only flicked the cup harder. A nickel popped out and rolled a slow arc on the sidewalk until Damien stomped it with his foot. He picked up the nickel and plunked it into the cup.

“God bless,” said the man.

One block farther on, a man sat on a bench with a blanket spread on the sidewalk in front of him. Pictures lay on the sheet, and as Damien drew closer he saw they were charcoal sketches of buildings.

“Five bucks each,” said the man. “Three for twelve.”

The sketches weren't worth five bucks, or four bucks, or anything at all. They weren't even on drawing paper but on lined sheets ripped from a spiral notebook.

“How about I give you twenty bucks and you keep your pictures,” said Damien.

The man cocked his head, waiting for the catch.

“You just need to spend some time down at Foley Square.”

“Where's that?”

“Downtown. Got a tent city growing there. Shelter. Three squares.”

The man stroked his chin. He had a salt-and-pepper beard. Dandruff powdered his shirt where his gut protruded.

“Don't like downtown,” he said.

“Then screw you,” Damien said and walked away.

This was a waste of time, begging the crazy homeless to join Hannigan's protest when the Roman silver trial was back. He opened his phone and scrolled through his contacts. He still had the numbers: Arthur Braman's, Robert Pinter's, the small hotel where the woman named Natalija stayed last time. He clearly recalled the black Town Car stopping alongside him on Broome Street, the back door opening on a dark interior that made the pair of legs all the more obvious. They were long legs, crossed at the ankles and shaped elegantly by open-toed heels. Natalija had blonde hair, sharp features, sinewy arms. She took a long drag on a cigarette and blew the smoke to the ceiling. When she spoke his name, she sounded like a spy.

*   *   *

“Thank you for meeting like this,” Darius said as he guided Mark into a small park filled with office workers eating take-out lunches.

Mark had been surprised by the phone call. Surprised, intrigued, and ultimately worried enough about its impropriety to pay cash for a two-trip MetroCard for the subway rather than use his regular unlimited monthly pass that could track his movements if this meeting ever came to light. Still, he had come, and when he told the judge he might take an extra hour for lunch, her reaction had been a distracted if pleasant
whatever
, as if he needed more proof of his low standing in the pecking order of her esteem.

“Mr. Braman has a concern,” said Darius. He held a file folder on his lap.

“I know. I tried to explain the division of labor in chambers and that I might not always have the judge's ear.”

“It's not that.”

“Oh,” said Mark.

“Mr. Braman believes that Judge Conover should be disqualified from trying this case.”

“Disqualified?” Mark performed a quick mental calculus. Disqualified equaled not trying the case. Not trying the case equaled him being cut off from all contact with Arthur Braman. Arthur Braman equaled his last best hope for future employment.

“Mr. Braman believes that she formed a definite conclusion about the case when she worked as Judge Johnstone's law clerk,” said Darius. “He believes this indicates bias, which is a ground for disqualification.

“He also thinks that she could be aware of, perhaps even in possession of, inadmissible evidence that may influence her handling of this trial. The bell that can't be unrung, if you will.

“But, as you understand, a disqualification motion is a difficult one to bring and an even more difficult one to win. High risk, high reward. It can't be based on a lawyer's thoughts or feelings or impressions. That's where you come in. We hope. We want you to give us an affidavit.”

They were sitting on the edge of a large concrete planter filed with mums and ornamental bushes. The lunch crowd was beginning to disperse. No one was within earshot.

“I don't know,” said Mark. He plucked a few bark chips from the planter and crushed them in his hand.

“I understand,” said Darius. “It is no small thing to give an affidavit to disqualify your judge from trying a case. But you are our only window into chambers. If we decide to use your affidavit, and we won't know that until we actually have it in hand, you will lose your job. But then, we know you're out at the end of the year anyway, right?”

Mark nodded.

“And your political club, the West Chelsea Reformed Democrats, will not help you get a new job, right?”

Mark nodded again. Darius opened the file folder just enough to reveal it held Mark's résumé.

“You fucked up a few clerking gigs.”

“Hey, those judges weren't rocket scientists,” said Mark.

“We understand,” said Darius. “These are political jobs and sometimes they end for political reasons. Judge Conover is several cuts above your prior bosses. But you're in a funny little box.”

“It's not so funny,” said Mark.

“You're right,” said Darius. “And maybe you're not cut out for the court system. Maybe your future lies elsewhere. So think of this as a head start on the next phase of your legal career.”

“With your firm?” said Mark.

“That's not for me to say because I'm not privy to those decisions,” said Darius. “What I can say is that this gambit is Mr. Braman's idea. He has a plan. He always has a plan, and his plans always account for every vagary and every ramification.”

They did not go to the firm. Once Mark agreed, Darius steered him two blocks downtown to a building that housed several physical therapy practices. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor, then followed the corridor to a nameless office suite. Darius unlocked the door to a white, windowless office with a gray industrial carpet, a desk, and three chairs. A stenographer sat in one of the chairs.

“You'll talk,” Darius told Mark. “I'll refine what you say, and Rosemary will take it all down. She'll print it, we'll shape it, and we'll have your affidavit. It will take an hour at most.”

And so, Mark began to talk. He recounted his first meeting with Judge Conover on the first day of her term. He had been sent by his political club with a letter of introduction that spelled out the conditions of his employment, and the judge, after reading the letter and folding it back into its envelope, spoke at length about what she expected from her law clerk and what she hoped to achieve on the bench. The Roman silver trial—and the heist and the shooting of the court officer—had occurred only fifteen months earlier and was still raw in the judge's memory. She explained how that trial, both factually and symbolically, had been the springboard to her judgeship.

Darius shaped the trial and the prospect of the retrial into a continuing theme. Mark allowed that the judge “might have” mentioned how she would handle the retrial if given the opportunity, “routinely scanned the
Law Journal
” for news on the status of the appeals, and “occasionally spoke in low tones about the case” to someone on the phone.

“Do you think she was plotting to have the retrial steered to her?” said Darius.

“I never thought of that, but yeah,” said Mark. “Her husband has a lot of clout at Sixty Centre.”

“We know all about him,” said Darius.

The stenographer gathered the scattered bits together into a series of numbered paragraphs and printed what they had composed so far. Mark read it, seeing how deftly Darius's embellishments strengthened the affidavit.

“Is there anything else you could offer?” said Darius.

“Oh yes,” said Mark. “There's this file.”

 

CHAPTER 25

The administrative office on the seventh floor consisted of one large room with six large desks and many file cabinets. A door at one end connected to the private office of the chief clerk, while double doors on the opposite side opened into a well-appointed conference room. By four forty-five on most weekday afternoons, the occupants of the six desks were gone for the day. A closed door indicated that the chief clerk was not in attendance, and the open double doors showed no conference was in session.

Despite Gary's passionate certainty, McQueen hadn't bought the idea of the missing treasure piece being hidden in the courthouse. But he'd definitely gotten a weird vibe from that meeting between Robert Pinter and Ivan and now felt more engaged.

The file cabinets had employee personnel files arranged according to job titles. There were security titles, legal titles, clerk titles, and support titles. McQueen didn't know Ivan's last name. He didn't, for that matter, even know if Ivan's name even was Ivan. He had used the name derisively for so long he couldn't remember whether Ivan had volunteered it or whether he had made it up himself. So he started at A in the support titles and worked forward. Since each file contained a photocopy of the employee's photo ID card, there would be no missing Ivan, whatever his name was.

Of course, Ivan's given name was not exactly Ivan, and, of course, his surname began with a Z.

McQueen spread the file on the nearest desk and photographed each document with his cell phone. Then he closed the file and wedged it back in the drawer at the very end of the alphabet.

*   *   *

Just before five, Linda wandered into the anteroom. With nowhere special to go and nothing special to do, she planned on staying in chambers until six, when she could phone Hugh and not interrupt his day in court. Karen had gone, and Mark sat at his desk, his fingers poised over his keyboard and his eyes staring through his monitor.

“Mark?” she said.

He jerked as if startled, blinked his eyes, then focused on her.

“I wanted to thank you,” she continued, “for sitting in on that conference today.”

“It's my job,” he said. “Besides, all I did was sit there.”

“It may seem so, but it's important to have someone else in the room.”

“Glad to help,” he said.

“So, what do you think?”

Mark tilted back in his chair and gripped the armrests.

“I thought Mr. Braman proposed an interesting idea. But even if Hungary and Croatia take it, the trial isn't any simpler.”

“You're right about that. Do you think they'll take it?”

“I doubt it,” said Mark.

“Why?”

“No reason. Just a feeling. Maybe if he asked for less, but it sounds like he's tied in to that number.”

Linda tapped her watch. “Almost five. You don't get overtime, you know.”

Mark forced a smile.

Linda wandered slowly back into her office and took a can of seltzer from the minifridge. At a distance, she could hear Mark shutting down his computer and grabbing his things. He called “good night” and then the outer door shut and when the squeaking sound of his shoes faded in the corridor it was quiet enough that she could hear the seashell hissing of the bubbles in her seltzer can.

Her desk was empty. She had signed everything she needed to sign, read everything she needed to read, and still had an hour to kill. She sipped the seltzer, then considered whether it was time for her to look in that file. She had been thinking about it ever since returning from the courtroom this morning. Luckily, work kept her occupied.

She was about to get up when she heard the outer door open and shut. She heard nothing else, but definitely sensed a presence in the anteroom. On the underside of her desk was a button that tripped an alarm in the captain's office. Every judge's desk in every chambers had that button, but to her knowledge no one ever had pressed it.

“Hello,” she called.

A moment passed, and then Foxx stepped into the doorway.

“Sorry, Judge,” he said. He had a pile of motion folders tucked under his arm. “Didn't know you were still here.”