“Although,” Gina continued, “it is always nice to see Kathy. She’s looking particularly perky today, don’t you think?”
“I do, but enough about Kathy,” Hardy said. “I need a little advice. I’ve got a question for you guys.”
Farrell was ready for him. “Berlin,” he said.
“Good answer,” Hardy replied. “Wrong question, though. The real question is what do you do if you see your judge schmoozing with your opposite number?”
“Yeah, Berlin would be wrong for that one,” Farrell conceded. “You’re talking ex parte? When did it happen?”
“Just now. Five minutes ago. Braun and Stier and Jerry Glass, back in her chambers.”
“What were they talking about?” Roake asked. “Not that it should matter too much.”
“That’s my point,” Hardy said. “I think at the least I’ve got to have her memorialize what went on.”
Farrell asked, “Doesn’t she already hate you?”
“I believe that’s accurate. So in that case, how could it hurt?”
“It could always hurt,” Roake said. “Your judge hates you, she can fuck you in myriad subtle and unreviewable ways, as I know you’re aware. You really don’t want her hating you more than she does.”
“Yeah, but this happened. If she doesn’t memorialize it, it goes away.”
“All I’m saying,” Roake went on, “is compare it to what happens if she does. Could be a lot worse, and you wouldn’t even know it. And more to the point, Diz, what do you get for pissing her off? They’re going to make up some kind of bullshit explanation no matter what they were doing, and no court of appeal will ever give you a reversal. You get nothing for your trouble, so anything you could lose is not worth it.”
“Maybe,” Farrell put in, “you could ask her if she wants to recuse herself.”
“That would just piss her off too.”
Farrell made a face. “Okay, then, how about going to Thomasino?” Oscar Thomasino was the presiding judge of the Superior Court and, more importantly for these purposes, a reasonably warm acquaintance of Hardy and both his partners.
“I thought of that,” Hardy said. “But I didn’t hear anything they said, and Braun will just say it was a casual conversation that had nothing to do with the case. And guess what? That, too, will piss her off. Knowing that I get out of bed every morning probably pisses her off, now that I think about it.”
“Maybe you should have challenged,” Farrell said.
“Thank you,” Hardy replied with heavy irony. “If only. Maybe I’ll whip into my time machine and go back and do it when I could.”
“Do you really want her out, Diz?” Roake asked.
Hardy turned to her, his voice barely a whisper. “Nothing would make me happier. But one ex parte communication seems a little thin, as grounds go, to get rid of her. Especially if they weren’t, in fact, talking about the case.”
“It might be smarter,” Gina said, “to let her keep on knowing that you’ve got something on her.”
“I like that,” Farrell said. “Better to have her think she owes you.”
“And I’m guessing,” Roake added, “that you want to decide right away.”
“Actually, I think I’ve decided. But the last thing is I don’t want her thinking I’m a wimp and she’s frightened me off.”
Farrell grinned at that. “I think she already knows you better than that.”
“So I just keep this in my pocket? That flies for both of you? No memorializing? No recusing?”
His partners silently conferred with each other, glances back and forth, consensus.
As soon as she ascended to the bench and got the courtroom under control, Braun called the attorneys up to her bench for a sidebar. “Mr. Hardy,” she began, “we’re on the record now. Is there anything you’d like to bring up before the court?”
Calling him right away on what he’d seen. If he was going to make trouble for her, it would start now. And she’d have it in her mind while he was delivering his opening statement.
Hardy, his blood rushing with what had somewhat surprisingly turned into rage-tinged frustration, tried to slow his breathing. He finally came out with it. “Nothing, Your Honor.”
Hardy saw Braun’s eyes narrow. If he looked, he was sure he could have seen the wheels spinning in Stier’s head as he tried to figure out what trick the legendary Dismas Hardy was pulling now.
Braun could see no reason not to accept the Trojan horse, and actually looked as though she felt a moment of relief, if not gratitude, that Hardy had decided to let her off the hook. “Mr. Stier?” she asked.
Just at that moment a camera clicked loudly in the gallery, followed immediately by a cell phone going off, and Braun looked up and exploded, rapping her gavel several times in quick succession. “That’s all I’m going to tolerate of cameras and other disturbances! I granted permission for a number of news cameras to be in this courtroom. At the slightest further disruption that permission will be revoked. I want no more pictures taken. I want all cell phones turned off.” Here she looked over the front of her podium. “As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, for the remainder of this trial, after today-bailiffs, please note-I will not be allowing cameras into the courtroom.”
At the mild rumble of protest that arose in the gallery at this edict, she banged her gavel again. “I am this close,” she said, “to expelling people with cameras right now. But in the interests of keeping things moving I’ll hold off on that order, unless someone abuses it.” She glared through her glasses for another ten seconds or so, scanning the gallery right to left, left to right, for signs of disobedience.
Finding none, she returned to the prosecuting attorney, standing next to Hardy in front of her. “Mr. Stier?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I believe before that interruption that the court was asking if the People are ready to begin?”
The Big Ugly for an instant took on an expression that somewhat explained the nickname. Nervous, and with a light sheen of perspiration on his high forehead, Stier cleared his throat and threw a quick glance at Hardy, then came back up to the judge.
He finally decided that while he couldn’t figure out what Hardy was doing, if Hardy wanted something, any smart prosecutor wanted the opposite. “Your Honor,” he began, “I call your attention to a meeting that took place just minutes ago at the door to your chambers, where you and I exchanged a few pleasantries relating to the mayor’s appearance in the courtroom today, but outside of the presence of Mr. Hardy.”
Hardy couldn’t believe his ears. But he wasn’t inclined to interrupt.
Braun looked for all the world as though she was going to have a stroke right there on the bench. “Go on,” she said. “What do you think is so important that it needs to be memorialized at this point in the proceeding?”
Oblivious, Stier kept digging his grave. “I believe that in the interests of precluding a defense appeal on grounds of this technically ex parte communication between you and myself, it is in the interest of justice that that discussion be memorialized and entered into the record. Then, if Mr. Hardy’s got any objections, he can raise them now.”
Hardy stood with the muscles in his jaw locked against breaking into a victory grin. This was the kind of moment that his old mentor, David Freeman, had lived for. You plan and you plan and then you strategize and plan some more and then something completely unexpected happens and you’re back in the ball game in a way you had never imagined possible. Sometimes you just had to love the majestic insanity of the law.