Final Appeal. Lisa Scottoline
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I don’t answer. I recognize the man in the cell. “Ray, let’s go.”
“Shake and Bake is in jail?” Artie says, shocked.
“Show me where, Grace.”
“You can’t visit him.”
“What do you mean I can’t visit him?”
Eletha looks over wearily, dead on her feet against the bookcase in the law clerks’ office. “That lunatic is the last thing you should be worried about today.”
“Grace,” Sarah calls from her desk, “what were you doing in the security office?”
“I wanted to see the cameras.”
“What cameras?”
“You know, the ones in the hallways. I wanted to see who’s on the other side.”
“Why?”
“I was curious. I wanted to know if they saw anything peculiar.”
“Is this about the noise?” Sarah asks.
Ben looks up from the newspaper accounts of Armen’s death. “What noise?”
“I heard a noise last night, so I wanted to see the tapes, only—”
“Tapes?” Sarah asks. “You mean of what they see in the cameras?” She flushes slightly, and I play a hunch I didn’t even know I had.
“Yes. They tape everything, for security reasons. Like at Seven-Eleven.”
“They do?”
“Sure.” I look at Eletha. “Right, El? They tape from those cameras.”
“If you say so,” Eletha says, playing along. “They keep the tapes?”
Thanks, El. “Yep, in a vault. They said they’d show me tomorrow.”
Ben presses a button on his computer keyboard. The modem sings a computer song as he logs on to Lexis, the legal research database. “Surprised the government has the money.”
“Safer, what the fuck are you doing?” Artie asks. “Are you working? Today?”
“I’m going on Nexis, that okay with you?”
“What’s Nexis?” Eletha asks, as Sarah suddenly busies herself making a full-fledged tea ceremony out of a single bag of Constant Comment. She has to be the one I heard last night, and she should never play poker.
“Anybody gonna answer me? What’s Nexis?” Eletha plops into a chair like a much heavier woman. Her chin falls into her hand. “Forget it. Who gives a shit?”
“Nexis is a database of newspapers,” I say. “It has magazines, newspapers, wire services. Everything.”
“How do you like that?” Ben says, in his own world as he reads his computer screen. “We’re under HOTTOP. Hightower and the Chief.”
“Christ, Safer!” Artie says.
“I need a translation,” Eletha says.
“HOTTOP stands for hot topics in the news,” I say, the words sour in my mouth. Without thinking twice, I cross to Ben’s computer and press the power switch to OFF. The powerful unit crackles in protest, then fizzles out. “Show some respect, Ben. A man is dead.” I feel a wrenching inside my chest and turn my back on Ben’s surprised expression.
“Way to go, Grace!” Artie says, bursting into applause.
“She’s right,” Eletha says. She stands up and smooths out her skirt. “I don’t even know what we’re still doin’ here. We should all go home. The packing can wait.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sarah says, standing at the coffeemaker. The only sound is the hot water spurting into the glass pot. Sarah removes the pot a little too soon and the last drops dance across the searing griddle like St. Vitus.
“Let’s not get maudlin, please,” Ben says.
Artie looks as if he’s about to snap, then his brow knits in alarm. “Wait a minute. Grace, does Shake and Bake know about Armen?”
“I have no idea.”
“Oh, fuck. I have to get in to see him. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he hears. Where’s the prison?”
“On the second floor, but they won’t let you in.”
“The hell they won’t. He has a right to counsel, doesn’t he? I’m counsel.” Artie bounds over to the coat rack and tears Ben’s jacket from a wooden hanger, leaving it swinging.
“That’s my best jacket, Weiss,” Ben says.
“I know, dude. Thanks.” He yanks the jacket over his chest. “Sar, lend me your briefcase.”
“You really want to do this?” Sarah hands him a flowered canvas briefcase but Artie pushes it back at her.
“Give me a pad instead. Where’d you say they’re taking him, Grace?”
“Courtroom Fourteen-A, before Katzmann. They’re trying to charge him with trespassing on federal property.”
Artie shakes his head. “I tell ya, these kids today, in and out of trouble. Where did I go wrong, Mom?”
“Don’t ask me, pal.”
“I gave him everything. Summers in Montauk, winters in Miami Beach.” He gives the jacket a reckless tug and Ben flinches.
“Will you at least take it easy?” Ben says.
Eletha covers her eyes. “I didn’t see this. This is not happening.”
“How do I look, Mom?” Artie says to me. He sticks out his arms, and the sleeves ride up to his elbows. “Hot?”
“Smokin’.”
“Excellent.” He sticks a legal pad under his arm and runs out of the clerks’ office. I hear the heavy pounding of his feet as he heads for the outer door. My eyes meet Sarah’s, but she looks down into her steaming mug of tea.
“You okay, Sar?” I ask her. Flush her out. Isn’t that what detectives do?
“Sure.” She takes a quick sip of tea, avoiding my gaze. “Who’s Hightower been reassigned to, Ben?” she asks.
“What makes you think I know?”
“You know Galanter’s clerks. The buzz-cut boys.”
The telephone rings at Eletha’s desk. “Shit,” she says. “Thing’s been ringing all day.” Before I can offer to get it, she kicks off her heels and is padding to her desk.
Ben flicks on the power switch, animating the machine. “Grace, hate me if you must, but I’m logging on again.”
“Tell us who got Hightower, Safer,” Sarah says, but I hold up my hand.
“Sarah, think a minute. Who’s even more conservative than Galanter?”
“Adolf Hitler.”
“On our court, I mean.”
“Judge Foudy.”
“Right. And Galanter would pick somebody to vote with him, now that Armen’s gone. He’d want to stack the deck. Change the result.”
She blinks. “Could he do that?”
“Sure. He’s the chief judge. In an emergency, he picks the panels.”
Ben pounds the keys. “I neither confirm nor deny.”
He doesn’t