Bad News

24

Friday, December 1. The only interesting workweek in Judge T. Wallace Higbee’s entire twelve-year career on the bench was at last, thank God, coming to an end.

It had all started on Tuesday, when Frank Oglanda and Roger Fox had filed the charges of fraud and extortion against the young woman who, it seemed, must be known henceforward as Little Feather Redcorn. The case had at first seemed like no more than the normal run of stupidity, this time on the part of someone then named Shirley Ann Farraff, until Marjorie Dawson had come to chambers the next day to say the perp wouldn’t play the game.

Then the Mohawks’ peacemaking plaque had surfaced to buttress Little Feather Redcorn’s story, and at that point, it seemed to the judge, the smart move would have been for Roger and Frank to cut a deal with the young lady. Not try to buy her off and send her on her way, but deal her in. That would have been the smart move, and the judge couldn’t help but wonder why Frank had decided to be stupid instead.

Damn it, he didn’t want to think about this stuff. He liked the drowsy progress of his days, the slow shuffle of stupidity that passed his glazed eyes every day like the doomed peasants in a Breughel allegory. So why the hell were Roger and Frank insisting on behaving in mysterious ways, giving poor Judge Higbee’s brain tough hardtack to chew on?

It had been so obvious, in chambers yesterday, that Frank Oglanda didn’t care if the Redcorn woman were Pottaknobbee or not; he just wanted her gone. Which could only mean he and Roger had something to hide, out there on the reservation. Now, what would that be? The casino was a gold mine; wasn’t that enough for them? Had they succumbed to the temptation of smuggling, being right there on the Canadian border, or drug dealing, or cooking the books? In other words, had those boys been stupid, even when they didn’t have to be? Was Judge Higbee going to have to think about them?

Not this week. This week was done. This morning, the judge had rewarded several acts of gross stupidity with room and board at state expense, and he was in the process now of finishing the week’s quota of stupidity this afternoon. In between, Hilda, his secretary, had started to tell him about a phone call from some lawyer in New York City who was apparently Ms. Redcorn’s replacement for poor hapless Marjorie Dawson, but the judge had had enough for this week, thank you. “Tell me about it on Monday,” he’d ordered, not even wanting to listen to the lawyer’s name, much less whatever his message might be.

Another smart-ass New York City lawyer; as though the judge didn’t have enough trouble. Were they going to start acting like smart-ass New York City lawyers together in his court? Were they going to play tricky games, challenge each other’s (and the judge’s) legal knowledge, come up with obscure precedents, send everybody to the law library, drag it out and drag it out, force poor Judge T. Wallace Higbee to make decision after decision?

Damn! Why didn’t Frank and Roger just bite the goddamn bullet, bury the hatchet—well, maybe that wasn’t quite the right image, but whatever—get over the shock, fellas, the new girl in town is here to stay. That confidence of hers about the results of DNA testing wasn’t feigned, and Frank knew it as well as the judge did.

In the meantime, the soothing sob stories of the severely stupid flowed like a warm bath in the judge’s courtroom. Firing a pistol at the dinner table to attract the family’s attention; forgetting you’d sold that car to your cousin and just happening to have the other set of keys in your pocket when it was time to drive to Florida for the winter; not knowing the drunk you’d decided to roll outside that bar was an off-duty cop and then complaining bitterly about police brutality for having been shot in the leg while trying to escape. Oh, sing these songs, sing them. Judge T. Wallace Higbee loves you all, see you in three to five.

Midafternoon, the day and the week and the march of these morons nearly done, and a person entered the courtroom to sit in the rear row, near the door. Judge Higbee was immediately aware of him, of course, because from where he sat, he looked directly toward that rear door, but he would have been aware anyway, because who was that person?

Within seconds, everybody else in court also became aware of the stranger, even though their backs were to him and they had to take quick peeks over their shoulders to get a gander at him. He created awareness simply by his existence, because he was a stranger, and there were never any strangers in Judge Higbee’s court.

This courtroom had been constructed inside this ancient municipal building in the late seventies, and it was still as bright and shiny and impervious as the first day it opened for business. The churchlike pews were a honey-colored wood, and so were the tables for prosecution and defense, and the jury box, and the judge’s bench. The floor was pale blue linoleum tile, the walls creamy yellow, the dropped ceiling half white sound deadener and half shiny fluorescents. In this clean, well-lighted, and somehow inhuman space, there were, besides Judge Higbee and the court officers, four categories of persons: perps, lawyers, cops, and witnesses. Very rarely, there were also jurors, but that was an exception, the jury system of American law having long ago been replaced by the more efficient and less chancy plea bargain system.

But, the point was, nobody else ever entered this courtroom, nor ever would. So who the hell was the stranger?

And he was strange indeed. Very tall and very thin, he had a long, pale face that seemed to pucker and shrink behind thick-lensed eyeglasses with heavy black rims. He wore a black suit that looked a little too small for him, a white shirt, a thin black necktie. He sat primly, knees together, pale, bony hands crossed on legs, head straight, face expressionless, black eyes glinting in the fluorescent glare as he watched the activity in the courtroom.

Not much activity left, today. Doing his best to ignore that black-clad figure in the back of the room—he was like a knife slash across a painting—doing his best not to distract himself with questions as to who the fellow might be and what trouble he might portend, Judge Higbee dispensed the rest of the day’s justice with dispatch, gaveled the final miscreant on his way to Dannemora, and was about to stand and flee to his chambers, when the stranger rose and moved down the central aisle toward the bench, walking rigidly and holding up one pale finger for attention.

Now what? Judge Higbee wondered, and remained where he was, grasping the gavel as though to ward off attack. As attorneys lugged their briefcases past him on the way out, the spectral man approached the judge and said in a deep but faintly hollow voice, “Good afternoon. I am Max Schreck.”

The name meant nothing. Wary, Judge Higbee said, “Good afternoon.”

Schreck seemed a bit doubtful. The eyes behind the thick glasses flickered, like a lightbulb thinking of burning out. He said, “My secretary spoke to your secretary this morning.”

“Oh my God,” the judge said, and the heart within him sank. “You’re the new lawyer!”