Past Due

There it was. Right there. What I hadn’t noticed before. Behind the wild pile of plastic limbs was a black covering. The ma

A headlight.

“You’ll hear about this,” Rothstein said.

“I suppose I will.”

“Derek won’t be happy.”

“I suppose he won’t.” I thumbed at the boxes. “Are these yours?”

Rothstein looked at the stacked boxes and his eyes blinked a bit as he did the calculation of how co

“Then we’ll take them too, is that all right, R.T.?”

“It’s your seizure,” said R.T.

“Derek won’t be happy,” said Rothstein.

“I suppose not,” I said. “The name’s Victor Carl. Carl with a C. Derek will know how to get hold of me.”

Chapter 24

WHERE SIT THE honorable justices of the Pe

Any place they want to.

The Pe

It’s not a bad life, the State Supreme Court life, the pay is high, the perks many, and the justices get to wear those boss robes. A lot of lawyers have their eyes on that particular prize and there is only one small requirement for getting your very own seat: enough votes. Aye, there’s the rub. It takes not merit to rise to Pe

What do you get when you mix justice and politics?

The Marx Brothers starring in Duck Soup.

I don’t mean to paint the Pe

Justice Straczynski was the most respected jurist to ever sit on that court, a brilliant legal scholar who used economic theory to slice through the Gordian knots of the most difficult legal problems. His great legal treatise, The Economic Laws of Constitutional Interpretation, once a fixture only on the bookshelves of the most conservative law student and right wing legal activist, had become, with the rightward tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court, a staple desktop reference for every constitutional scholar in the country.

After a stint making policy at the Department of Justice for Ronald Reagan, and a period teaching law at the University of Pe

“So we agree, right, Kimberly,” I said, as we sat side by side on the beige couch in the justice’s wood-lined waiting room, “I’ll do all the questioning, you’ll just sit quiet and watch the show.”

“Whatever.”

Kimberly glanced at the stern-eyed secretary with the high gray hair ma

“Mr. D?”

“Sure. He was very clear about it.”

“Okay.”

She sat for a moment, something obviously bothering her. “What if a question sort of pops out of my mouth on its own?”

“Gosh, I hope it doesn’t. He might not want to tell us his favorite boy band.”

“Excuse me?”

I looked her up and down. She was dressed like quite the career woman, so long as the career was taking place in the early 1960s, bright green faux-Chanel business suit, matching heels, and small clutch.

“You look like a bowl of Jell-O in that getup,” I said.

“We’re visiting a judge, right? This is my government outfit. Mint green, get it?”

She gave a little smile, but the way she bit her lower lip with nervousness made me feel like a jerk. She had that way, did Kimberly.

“Okay,” I said. “Ask what you want. But my advice would be to say as little as possible to this guy. He’s not your usual drunken frat boy.”

Just as I said that a tall man in a black suit came into the waiting room. “Mr. Carl, Ms. Blue,” he said, his voice gilded with an Island lilt. “My name is Curtis Lobban,” said the man. “I am Justice Straczynski’s file clerk.”

Curtis Lobban stood straight and tall, with the deep voice and dignified ma

“Pleased to meet you, Curtis,” I said. “We talked on the phone, I believe.”

“Yes, we did,” he said slowly.

I reached out a hand to shake, but Curtis Lobban, his face as somber as his outfit, refused the proffer. Pleased to meet me too, obviously.

“The justice, he is sorry to have kept you both waiting and is ready to see you now. Follow me, please.”

He turned and led us out of the waiting area into a large library, its walls lined with huge sets of law books. State reporters, federal reporters, U.S. Supreme Court reporters, digests of all sorts. Two young lawyers, a man and a woman, were hard at work at a conference table, books piled around them, legal pads thick with notes. Gnawing at the pylons supporting the Bill of Rights like hungry termites, I figured. They both gave Kimberly a long look. Kimberly always drew long looks, especially dressed in mint green, but the clerks barely noticed my presence, and why should they? Only the best and brightest clerked for Justice Jackson Straczynski, and I was neither. They only paid me enough notice to wonder what the hell I was doing there. What the hell indeed?