“Way to go, Einstein,” Ben says.
“I know I have the case somewhere,” says the attorney, nervously riffling through his legal pad. He should be nervous; the circuit court is the last stop before the Supreme Court, which takes fewer appeals each year. It’s all those speaking engagements.
“Armen’s upset,” Sarah whispers, and I follow her eyes. Armen is looking down, worried about the appeal. The only sound in the tense courtroom is a frantic rustling as the lawyer ransacks the podium. A yellow page sails to the rich navy carpet.
The silence seems to intensify.
Galanter glares at the lawyer’s bent head.
A sound shatters the silence—ticktickticktickticktick—from the back of the courtroom.
The back rows of the gallery turn around. The sound is loud, unmistakable.
Ticktickticktickticktick.
Row after row looks back in disbelief, then in alarm.
Ticktickticktickticktick.
“It’s a bomb!” one of the lawyers shouts.
“A bomb!” yells an older lawyer. “No!”
Ticktickticktickticktick.
The crowded courtroom bursts into chaos. The gallery surges to its feet in confusion and fear. Lawyers grab their briefcases and files. People slam into each other in panic, trying to escape to the exit doors.
“No!” someone shouts. “Stay calm!”
I look wildly toward the back row where Artie was sitting. I can’t see him at all. The mob at the back is pushing and shouting.
Tickticktickticktickticktick.
Ben and other law clerks run for the judges’ exit next to the dais. My heart begins to thunder. Time is slowed, stretched out.
“Artie’s back there!” I shout.
Sarah grabs my arm. “Armen!”
I look back at the dais. Armen stands at the center, shielding his eyes from the overhead lights, squinting into the back row. Judge Townsend is stalled at his chair.
Galanter snatches Armen’s gavel and pounds it on the dais: boom boom boom! “Order! Order, I say!” he bellows, red-faced. He slams the chief judge’s gavel again and again. “Order!”
“Oh, my God,” Armen says, when he realizes what’s happening. “It can’t be.”
2
“Are you saying it was Shake and Bake?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yes. I’m busted. Totally,” Artie says. He flops into his chair in the small law library that serves as the clerks’ office, having been grilled behind closed doors by Armen and an assortment of bureaucrats. “It took the poor guy an hour to stop crying. He was worried he got Armen in trouble, can you believe that?”
“Yes,” Ben says, typing nimbly at his computer keyboard.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Did he have a bomb?”
“No. He had a shot clock.”
“A what?”
“Actually, he was the shot clock.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Sarah says.
“I do, but I don’t care,” Ben says, gulping down his third cup of coffee. He gets in at seven and guzzles the stuff like a thirsty vampire. “The whole thing’s absurd.”
“No, it isn’t,” Artie says. “Not if you think like Shake and Bake.”
“Like a paranoid schizophrenic?” I say.
“Look, Shake and Bake was watching the argument. He knew the lawyer had to answer a question and he thought time was running out, like in basketball. He figured the guy had twenty-four seconds to shoot. It got all crossed up in his head.”
I try not to laugh. “So he starts ticking.”
“Yeah, with his mouth. He was counting off the time.” Artie yanks the knot on his cotton tie from side to side to loosen it.
“That’s ridiculous,” Sarah says.
“Not to a paranoid schizophrenic who loves basketball,” I say, a quick study.
“Right, Grace.” Artie nods and tosses the tie on the briefs scattered across his desk.
“Told you. Absurd,” Ben says, tapping away.
“Is he really schizophrenic?” Sarah leans over the Diet Coke and soft pretzel that constitute her breakfast. These kids eat trash; it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
“I don’t think so,” Artie says, unbuttoning the collar of his work shirt. “He’s like a little kid. Harmless.”
I smile. I own a little kid. They’re not harmless.
“Why do you say he’s harmless?” Sarah asks. “He’s obviously not.”
“Come on, Sar. He’s fine. Shake and Bake can’t even do his laundry. You think he can blow up a building?”
“I do, Weiss,” says a dry voice at the door to the clerks’ office. It’s Eletha Staples, the judge’s Secretary for Life, a willowy, elegant black woman. Prone to drama, Eletha pauses dramatically in the doorway.
“Yo,” Artie says.
“Right, bro. Yo.” Eletha rolls her eyes as she walks into the room, trailing expensive perfume. Her glossy hair is pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of a slim neck. In her trim camel suit she looks more like a judge than a secretary, and the day black women get to be federal appellate judges, she’ll be mistaken for one. “Who you invitin’ next, Charlie Manson?”
“That’s not funny, El.”
Eletha stops in the center of the office and puts a hand on her hip; a quintet of clawlike polka-dotted fingernails stand out on her otherwise classy look. “It’s not funny, bro?”
“No.”
“It’s not funny when you invite a crazy man to court? It’s not funny that some nut boy endangers Armen’s life? Endangers the lives of us all?”
Artie fiddles glumly with his Magic Eight Ball, one of the many toys on his desk. “He’d never hurt any of us, he idolizes Armen. And he’s not a nut boy.”
“He ticks, Artie,” I remind him.
Eletha looks crazed, but she crazes easily. “What are you tellin’ me, he’s not a nut? The man thinks he’s a friggin’ Timex! Why they let him in the courthouse I’ll never know.”
“They have to,” Sarah says. “He has a right to access. It’s in the Constitution.”
“The hell it is,” Ben says, without looking away from his monitor.
“He’s not a nut.” Artie pouts.
Eletha puts a hand to her chest and begins Lamaze breathing to calm herself. I first saw this routine three months ago when she had to interview me for my job, because Armen had gotten stuck in Washington. After she calmed down, we spent an hour swapping ex-husband stories. I touch her arm. “El, keep breathing. Don’t push, it’s too soon.”
She looks down at me, her face suddenly grave. “That’s not the worst of it. Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“They filed the appeal in the death penalty case this morning. Hightower. The death warrant expires in a week.” Her words hang in the air for a moment.
“Oh, no.” I sink deeper into the leather chair next to Artie’s desk. I better not get this case. I’m a working mother now; I have enough guilt for an entire hemisphere.
“A week?” Ben says, shaking his neat head. “Of course Hightower waited until the last minute. Wait till the bitter end to file and hope the warrant expires. It’s a game with them.”
Sarah looks over sharply. “It’s only his first appeal.”
“Fine. Let’s make it his last.”
“Ben, he even tried to kill himself. He thought he deserved to die.”
“He did.”
Eletha’s soft brown eyes linger on Ben’s face, but her thoughts are clearly elsewhere. “This case is gonna be a real bitch. The law clerk’s gonna be up all night, Armen’s gonna be up all night, and I’ll be up all night. Last time, I didn’t tell Malcolm why.” Malcolm is Eletha’s son, whose picture she keeps on her desk; he’s an intelligent-looking boy with lightish skin and glasses. “Some things kids don’t have to know.”