Anna looks at me in a hard way, an expression I've seen occasionally and that will greet hundreds of witnesses on cross-examination in the next decades.
"Do you love Barbara?"
There's a question. Oddly, she has never asked until now.
"How many hours do you have?" I ask.
"A lifetime if you want it."
I smile thinly. "I think I could have done better."
"Then why not leave?"
"I might." I have never said this aloud.
"But not for someone younger? Not for a former clerk. Because you care about what people would say?"
I do not answer. I have already explained. She continues to apply that cool, objective eye.
"It's because you're running, isn't it," she says then. "You're picking the supreme court over me."
I see it instantly: I must lie. "I am," I say.
She emits a derisive little snort, then lifts her face again to continue her frigid assessment. She sees me now, all my weakness, all my vanity. I've lied, but she still has glimpsed the truth.
Yet I have accomplished one thing.
We are done.
My relationship with Sandy Stern is intense and sui generis. He is the only lawyer who appears in the court of appeals from whose cases I inalterably recuse myself. Even my former clerks come before me five years after they've left. But Stern and I are not intimates. In fact, I did not speak to him for nearly two years after my trial, until gratitude overwhelmed other feelings I had about what had gone on in my case. By now, we have an appreciative rapport and eat lunch on occasion. But I hear none of his secrets. Yet his role in my life was so epochal that I could never pretend he is just another advocate. His defense of me was masterful, with every word spoken in court as significant as each note in Mozart. I owe him my life.
We chat in his office about his kids and grandkids. His youngest, Kate, has three children. She divorced two years ago but has remarried. His son, Peter, moved off to San Francisco with his partner, another physician. Clearly the most content is Marta, his daughter who practices with him. She married Solomon, a management consultant, twelve years ago, with whom she has three kids and a full life.
Sandy looks himself, if rounder, all of that obscured by perfect tailoring. One advantage of appearing middle-aged as a younger person is that at this stage you seem immune to time.
"You look like you recovered well from your laryngitis," I tell him.
"Not quite, Rusty. I had a bronchoscopy the day before you called me. I shall be having surgery for lung cancer later this week."
I am devastated for both our sakes. His damn cigars. They are ever-present, and when deep in thought, Stern seldom remembers not to inhale. The smoke pours out of his nose like a dragon's.
"Oh, Sandy."
"They tell me it is good they can operate. There are worse scenarios with this sort of thing. They will remove a lobe, then wait and watch."
I ask about his wife, and he describes Helen, whom he married as a widower, as herself, brave and funny. As always, she has been just what he needs.
"But," he says, enjoying the joke, "enough about me." I wonder if I was truly doomed, if my hours were dwindling, I would choose to ascend the bench. It is a tribute to what Stern has done that he feels these remain his best moments.
I tell him my story in bare strokes, relating the minimum he needs to know: that I was seeing someone, was followed by Harnason, who caught me unaware and left me unsettled-angry, intimidated, guilty. The story draws Stern's complex Latin expression, all his features briefly mobilized while he embraces the elusive categories of life.
The two weeks I have waited to see Sandy have not done much to clarify my thinking about my predicament with Harnason. I want Stern's advice concerning what the law and ethics require me to do. Must I tell the truth to my fellow judges or the police? And what will happen to me as a result? Listening, Stern reaches out reflexively for his cigar and stops. Instead, he rubs his temples as he thinks. He takes quite some time.
"A case like this, Rusty, a man like that-" Stern does not complete the sentence, but his manner suggests that he has fully grasped Harnason's strangeness. "He bankrolled his flight very cleverly, and I suspect he has made equally careful plans to hide himself. I doubt he will be seen again.
"If he is apprehended, then of course-" Sandy's hand drifts off. "It would be problematic. One might hope the fellow would keep your confidence out of gratitude, but it would be unwise to expect that. As a criminal matter, however, it seems to me a very difficult prosecution-a twice convicted felon, whom you initially sent to the pentitentiary? Not much of a witness. And that assumes Molto could gin up some imagined crime. But if Harnason is the only witness the state has-and it's difficult to see how there could be another-it will be a meager case.
"As a disciplinary matter for the Courts Commission, that is another thing. Unlike the criminal inquiry, you will be required to testify eventually, and no matter how confused you found yourself, we both know your conduct ran afoul of several canons of judicial conduct. But as long as the prospect of criminal prosecution is not ephemeral-and it surely is not with Tommy Molto sitting in the PA's chair-you need say nothing to your colleagues. I rarely make a record of my exchanges with clients, but in this case, I will do a memo to the file, in case you ever want to substantiate that you received this advice from me."
He speaks offhandedly, but of course he is referring to the likelihood he will be dead by the time any occasion arises for me to explain my silence.
In the elevator down, I try to absorb Stern's assessment, which is largely the same as my own. Understanding the realities, I am likely to get away with all of it. Harnason is gone for good. Barbara and Nat will remain unknowing about Anna. I will ascend to the supreme court and will forget in time a brief era of incredible folly. I will obtain what I've wanted, if not fully deserved, and, having risked it all, may enjoy my life more than I might have otherwise. The train of reason seems inexorable but is of little comfort. A sickness swims through my center.
I emerge from the gauntlet of revolving doors into a radiant day, with the first full heat of summer. The street is thronged with lunchgoers and shoppers, who walk with their wraps across their arms. Out in the street, roadworkers are repairing winter-made potholes, heating tar whose fulsome aroma seems oddly intoxicating. The trees in the park across the way wear new green, finally in full leaf, and the steely smell of the river is on the wind. Life seems pure. My way is set. And thus there is no hiding from the truth, which nearly brings me to my knees.
I love Anna. What can I possibly do?
CHAPTER 10
Tommy, October 23, 2008
Tommy Molto did not like the jail. It was three stories high, but dim as a dungeon, even in daytime, because in 1906 they prevented escapes by building windows that were only six inches wide. There was also something unsettling about the sound, the anguished din arising from three thousand captured souls. And none of that was to talk about the odor. No matter how strict the sanitation, so many men in quarters this close, with a coverless stainless-steel toilet between every two of them, filled the entire structure with a swampy, fetid smell. It wasn't the Four Seasons. Nor was it meant to be. But you would think after thirty years of visiting the place to talk to witnesses, to try to roll defendants, Tommy would be used to it. But his gut still clutched. Some of it came down to the ugly reality of what he did. Tommy tended to think of his job as being about right and wrong and just deserts. The fact that his work culminated in a stark captivity that he himself always doubted he could survive remained even now an unwelcome reality.
"Why are we talking to this bird now?" Tommy asked Brand as they waited in the gate room. It was nine p.m. Tommy had been at home when Brand reached him. Tomaso has just gone down, and Dominga was in the kitchen, cleaning up. The house still smelled of spice and diapers. These were the precious hours in Tommy's day, feeling the rhythm of his family, the sweet order arriving out of the relative chaos of the rest of his life. But Brand wouldn't have asked the boss to come out unless it was something that really couldn't wait, and he'd gone and put his suit back on. He was the PA. Wherever he went, he had to look the part, and as it turned out, both the warden and the captain of the COs had skedaddled in from home once they heard he was coming, so they could shake hands and pass some gas together. It was only a second ago they had departed, leaving Tommy to get a briefing at last from his chief deputy.