"Any of them about to be elected to the state supreme court? Rusty casts a big shadow, Jimmy."
"I'm just saying," said Brand.
"Let's get the autopsy results. But until then, nothing else. No nosy coppers trying to sniff Rusty's behind. And no involvement by this office. No grand jury subpoenas or anything unless and until something substantial turns on the post. Which ain't gonna happen. We can all think whatever we wanna think about Rusty Sabich. But he's a smart guy. Really smart. Let the Nearing coppers go play in their sandbox until we hear from the coroner. That's all."
Brand didn't like it, Tommy could tell. But he'd been a marine and understood the chain of command. He departed with the faint damning that always went with it when he declared, "Whatever you say, Boss."
Alone, Tommy spent a second thinking about Barbara Sabich. She had been a babe as a young woman, with tight dark curls and a killer bod and a tough look that said that no guy could really have her. Tommy had barely seen her in the last couple of decades. She did not share the same responsibilities as her husband and had probably avoided Molto. During Sabich's trial years ago, she sat in court every day, sizzling Tommy with a furious look whenever he glanced her way. What makes you so sure? he sometimes wanted to ask her. The answer was gone to the grave with her now. As he had since his days as an altar boy, Tommy moved himself to a brief prayer for the dead. Commit, dear Lord, the soul of Barbara Sabich to Your eternal embrace. She was Jewish, as Molto remembered, and wouldn't care for his prayers, and even before Rusty's indictment had never much cared for Tommy, either. The same welling hurt Tommy had felt his whole life in the face of frequent scorn rose up in him, and he fought it off, another ingrained habit. He would pray for her anyway. It was inclinations like these that Dominga had recognized and that eventually won her. She knew the good in Tommy's heart, far more than any human being save his mother, who passed five years ago.
With the image of his young wife, slightly plump, bountiful in the right places, Tommy for a moment was overcome with longing. He felt himself swelling below. It was no sin, he had decided, to lust after your own wife. Rusty had probably once yearned for Barbara that way. Now she was gone. Take her, God, he thought again. Then he looked around the room, trying once more to decide how different he was.
CHAPTER 3
Rusty, March 19, 2007
The State Court of Appeals for the Third Appellate District now resides in the seventy-year-old Central Branch Courthouse, a white-columned redbrick structure that was remodeled in the 1980s with federal crime-fighting money. Most of the funds were spent refurbishing the criminal courtrooms on the lower floors, but a fair chunk also went to create a new home for the court of appeals on the top floor. The millions were invested in the hope that this area, beyond Center City and the canyon created by U.S. 843, would revive, but the defense lawyers depart in their luxury cars as soon as court is over, and few merchants have been inclined to take a stake in a neighborhood in which the largest number of daily visitors are accused criminals. The concrete square between here and the County Building across the street, a bland piece of public architecture, has proved most useful as a place to stage demonstrations.
I am no more than two hundred feet outside the courthouse door, on my way to meet Raymond and learn his news about my campaign, when I hear my name and turn to find John Harnason standing behind me. He now wears a straw porkpie hat, his reddish hair protruding a little bit like Bozo's. I sense at once that he has been lurking, waiting for me to emerge.
"So, may I ask. How am I doing, Judge?"
"Mr. Harnason, you and I should not be speaking, especially when your case is under consideration." No judge can meet with a party outside the company of the other side.
Harnason touches a stout finger to his lips. "Not a word about that, Your Honor. Just wanted to join in the birthday wishes and say thanks personally for my bail. Mel told me it would take a judge who was swinging titanium ornaments to grant bond. Not that I wasn't entitled. But he said nobody gets applause for setting convicted murderers on the loose. Of course, you know a little of what it's like to be in this kind of spot."
By long practice, I show no reaction. At this stage of my life, months pass without people making any reference to my indictment and trial. Instead, I start to turn away, but Harnason holds up a hand with those strangely long nails.
"Have to say I was curious whether you remembered me, Judge. I've been a bit of a bad penny in your life."
"We've met?"
"I used to be a lawyer, Your Honor. Long ago. Until you prosecuted me."
In all, I spent nearly fifteen years in the prosecuting attorney's office, more than twelve as a deputy and two, like Tommy Molto, as the court-appointed acting PA, before I was elected to the bench. Even then, there was no chance I could remember every case I handled, and by now it's hopeless. But we charged very few lawyers in those days. We did not prosecute priests or doctors or executives, either. Punishment, back then, was reserved largely for the poor.
"Wasn't called John," he says. "That was my dad. Used to go as J. Robert."
"J. Robert Harnason," I say. The name is like an incantation, and I let slip a tiny sound. No wonder Harnason looked familiar.
"Now you've placed me." He seems pleased the case came to mind so quickly, although I doubt he feels anything but pique. Harnason was a knockabout neighborhood lawyer, scuffling for a living, who eventually hit on a familiar strategy to improve his lifestyle. He settled personal injury cases, and instead of paying out the share of the insurance proceeds due his clients, he kept it until he stilled one client's repeated complaints by repaying him with the settlement money due somebody else. Hundreds of other attorneys in the Tri-Cities committed the same big-time no-no every year, dipping into their clients' funds to make rent or pay taxes or their kids' tuition. The worst cases led to disbarment, and Harnason probably would have gotten away with only that, but for one fact: He had a lengthy arrest record for public indecency, as a denizen of the gay shadow world of those years, where bars were alternately raided and shaken down by cops.
His lawyer, Thorsen Skoglund, a taciturn Finn now long gone, didn't bother pulling punches when he came to argue my decision to charge Harnason with a felony.
'You're prosecuting him for being queer.'
'So?' I answered. I frequently recall the conversation-if not who it concerned-because even when I said that, it felt as if a hand had started waving near my heart, asking for more attention. One of the harshest realities of the jobs I've had, as a prosecutor and a judge, is that I have done a lot in the name of the law that history-and I-have come to regret.
"You changed my life, Judge." There is nothing unpleasant in his tone, but prison was a hard place for a punk in those days. Very hard. He had been a handsome young man as I remember him, a bit soft-looking, with slicked-back auburn hair, nervous, but far more self-possessed than the oddball who has come to accost me.
"That doesn't sound like a thank-you to me, Mr. Harnason."
"No. No, I wouldn't have offered any thanks at the time. But frankly, Judge, I'm a realist. I truly am. Even twenty-five years ago, shoe could have been on the other foot, you know. I applied twice to the prosecuting attorney's office and nearly got hired as a deputy PA. I could have been the one trying to send you away because of who you slept with. That's what they prosecuted you for, really, right? If my memory's good, there wasn't much proof besides you had your finger in the pudding?"
The facts are close enough. I've got Harnason's message: He sank, I floated. And it's hard, at least for him, to see why.