Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 24

Cate opened the door to her chambers, immediately taken aback. Men in dark suits, FBI windbreakers, and even bulletproof vests clogged her reception room, spilling into her office along with personnel from the clerk’s office, the circuit executive’s office, and an array of federal marshals. They milled around, talking to each other and into walkie-talkies so loudly that they didn’t hear Cate enter.

“Val?” she called out, and the secretary waved over their heads. Their faces turned toward Cate, one by one, and everyone greeted her while she threaded her way to Val’s desk. She thanked them and leaned over the divider. “Full house, huh?”

Val gestured her closer. “You ever see so many cops? They’re playing CSI Philadelphia, you ask me.”

“When they leaving?”

“Soon, I hope. I don’t know when I’m gonna clean your office up. They don’t want us to touch it while they’re lookin’ around, but I can’t stay late tonight. I have choir.” Val held up a business card with a tiny gold FBI seal. “Special Agent Mike Brady is the one in charge. You’ll know him right away. He’s the tallest one. And Chief Judge Sherman says, call your rabbi when you can. That mean anything to you?”

“Yes.” Cate smiled.

“By the way, Mo said Meriden called Sherman five minutes before we did.”

“So grade school.”

“But the funny thing is, Mo keeps losing his phone messages.” Val’s eyes glittered with ersatz evil, and Cate laughed.

“Did the FBI talk to Sam?”

“Yes, and so did the marshals, and Mike from the clerk’s office and Brad from the court executive’s office.”

“Oh boy. Is he okay?”

“For a bowl of Jell-O, yes.”

“Poor thing.” Cate checked her watch. 4:10. “I gotta be on the bench in five minutes. Proceeding’s at four-fifteen.”

“Four-thirty.”

“Sam here? It’s his case.”

“No, it’s Emily’s, and she’s in her office. I’ll buzz her.” Val hit the intercom button on the telephone and picked up the receiver. “The judge’s here, Emily. Bring the case file and her robe.”

“My robe! Good thinking.” Cate rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t eaten since last night, running on bile and caffeine. She tried to collect herself as Val hung up the phone.

“You sure you don’t want to cancel this proceeding?”

“Nah, it’s just a guilty plea.”

“No, it isn’t.” Val frowned. “Judge, we canceled the guilty plea, that was the one at two-thirty.”

Yikes. “What’s this one?”

“A sentencing.”

“Uh-oh.” Cate worried. Guilty pleas were easy, involving her asking a series of rote questions, but a sentencing was something else entirely. She hoped that Emily had written a good bench memo, the summary for judges who are too busy with murder-suicides. “Okay, we’ll just have to see how it goes. Maybe it’s an easy one.”

Val held out her hand. “Gimme your coat, Judge.”

“Thanks.” Cate slid out of her coat and passed it to Val.

“And your purse.”

“Thanks again.” Cate plopped her purse on top of the coat.

“Need a pad?” Val handed Cate a fresh legal pad and a pen, which she accepted. “How was the meeting with the police?”

“I’ll fill you in later. Expect a phone call from SpectaSafe, a security company.” Cate had called them from the car on the way in. “I’m hiring us a bodyguard until they pick Russo up.”

“For real?” Val lifted an eyebrow.

“Yep. He’s gonna sit on that couch and keep you safe. He should be here first thing tomorrow morning. They’re going to call you back with the details. Give them my personal American Express for the bill.” Cate turned to her left as louder talking came from her office, and a basketball player in a suit made his way through the crowd toward her. She tried not to let her nerves show.

“Judge Fante?” The agent extended a huge hand, and Cate felt hers squashed for the second time that day.

“Special Agent Brady, I know you need to speak with me, but I’m due on the bench.”

“Judge, where are you?” It was Emily, on the right, over the din. She emerged from the crowd with a file and a black robe.

Yay! “Right here!” Cate hollered, way too eagerly.

On Cate’s left, Special Agent Brady was saying, “Judge, if you have a minute before you go on the bench, we can chat now.”

Simultaneously, on her right, Emily was saying, “Judge, we’re good to go.”

“Thanks, Em.” Cate accepted the documents and robe, then turned to Special Agent Brady. “You left a card with my secretary, and I’ll call you when I get off the bench, first thing.”

“Hey, girl, let’s go!” Cate said to Emily, juggling the papers to escape through the front door. A judge, running from the law. What’s wrong with this picture?

Once they were safely outside, Cate slipped into her robe and they ducked inside the anteroom to the courtroom, where they could be alone. Cate asked, “Okay, what did you find out at Jenkins, on the stalking issue?”

“Judge, there’s no case on point, so it’s arguable either way.”

“How so?” Cate checked her frustration. Clerks always said things like this until they became lawyers and read the law the right way-their client’s.

“Your actions occurred in public, so they’re entitled to follow you. It shades into harassment and stalking at some point, but the issue is your knowledge. The argument would go that you didn’t know that you were being followed, so you weren’t harassed by it.”

“What about the TV-show issue?”

“If it’s fiction and properly disclaimed, there’s no liability.”

Damn. “What about for private people, like friends of mine or their families?”

“You didn’t ask me about that.”

I never dreamed they’d stoop so low. “Well, from your reading, does it turn on the fact that I’m a public figure?”

Emily frowned, stumped. “That, I’d have to check.”

“Okay, good work.” Cate would have to get Matt Sorian on the phone. She checked her watch. 4:25. “We’ll talk later. Let’s go,” she said, pushing open the courtroom door.

“All rise for the Honorable Cate Fante!” the courtroom deputy boomed.

Cate entered the courtroom, whisked up the few stairs to the dais, and took her seat behind her desk. She skimmed the pleadings index while the courtroom settled down. After a minute, she raised her head and caught the courtroom deputy’s secret wink, this time with a sympathetic smile.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Cate said at the sight of two female lawyers before her in identical dark suits, like girl bookends. “My, things are changing, aren’t they?” The lawyers laughed, only because they had to, and she checked the pleadings for the attorneys’ names before she faced the assistant United States attorney on her right. “And you are Jessica Connell?”

“Jessica Conley,” the AUSA corrected, with an easy smile. She was a slim brunette with bright eyes.

“Sorry, Ms. Conley. What brings the government here today?” Cate asked, though usually when she said that, she already knew the answer.

“May it please the Court, the government comes before you to fix a sentence for defendant Louis D’Alma, who was convicted by a jury almost a year ago of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. Section 846, and use of a communication facility in furtherance of the conspiracy offense, in violation of 21 U.S.C. Section 843(b).”

Cate groaned inwardly. A sentencing in a drug case had become a morass since the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the federal guidelines. Every district court in the country struggled with the new law, and now, so would she, completely unprepared. She reached for her bench memo, but it wasn’t on top. She shuffled through the pleadings and the other papers, but it wasn’t there. She felt herself sweating under her robes.

“The delay in sentencing Mr. D’Alma was due to his cooperation with the government in connection with the Danton Bonat matter, in a series of cases being tried these past few months before Judge Dalzell, with a jury.”

Oh boy. Cate knew none of this background and was hoping it didn’t matter. She looked through her desk as casually as possible, but she couldn’t find the bench memo. She started to signal to Emily, but was surprised to find her talking to a blond male clerk sitting next to her. It was the law clerk that Sam had nicknamed Todhunter Preppington; one of Meriden’s law clerks. What was he doing here, in her courtroom?

AUSA Conley continued, “The sentencing issue in this matter, which was tried before Your Honor ascended the bench, is complicated by the fact that the jury did not find the amount of narcotics attributable to defendant. They convicted him of conspiracy to distribute an unspecified amount of cocaine, a Schedule II controlled substance. The Government urges that it is permissible for the Court to make a finding as to drug weight for sentencing purposes.”

Cate couldn’t stop watching Meriden’s law clerk. He was talking to Emily, nonstop. Meriden couldn’t come himself, so he’d sent his kid to spy. She hated that Meriden had seen what Russo had done to her office. He must have called the chief right after.

The AUSA was saying, “The Government urges that the Court can, and should, apply a base-offense level of thirty-two, which is the level applicable under the guidelines when five to fifteen kilograms of cocaine are involved.”

The gallery was empty except for the defendant’s side, where an older woman sat in the front row, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex. She wore a torn black North Face jacket and blue stretch pants, and was flanked by younger women who could have been girlfriends or sisters, because they’d been crying, too. Around them, teenage boys, girls, and two children clustered like a forlorn collection of hollow street gold, sideways baseball caps, and Sean Jean sweatshirts. The sight brought Cate to her senses. This was the most important day of their lives, and she wasn’t even paying attention.

Conley said, “The maximum statutory sentence for the Section 846 conviction would be twenty years or two hundred forty months incarceration.”

Twenty years? Cate felt the blood drain from her face. She looked at the defendant, D’Alma. He couldn’t have been twenty years old. He sat slumped in his olive green jumpsuit at counsel table, his face all dark eyes above a flat nose and small mouth, his hair shaved to a fade on a head shaped like a Mason jar with a fuzzy lid. A black script tattoo marred his neck.

“In addition, Section 841(b)(1)(C) provides that if any person commits such violation after a prior condition for a felony drug offense has become final, such persons shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than thirty years.”

Thirty years? “But he’s just a kid!” Cate blurted out from the bench. The courtroom deputy looked up, Emily stopped talking, and Meriden’s clerk sat riveted to the dais. Cate didn’t care anymore. “Did you say he had a prior conviction? He doesn’t look old enough to have a prior conviction.”

The AUSA nodded, professionally hiding her surprise. “It’s in the record, Your Honor, and in our brief. Also in the presentencing report. Mr. D’Alma does have a prior conviction, and the jury so found, as matter of fact.”

Cate didn’t know what to say. She was completely unprepared. She didn’t know the facts. She was shaky on the law. She’d never felt more the imposter than she did at this very moment. Her gaze strayed to D’Alma’s mother, wet-eyed, looking up at her with a naked hope.

The AUSA was saying, “Your Honor, may I continue?”

“No,” Cate answered finally.

“Do you have another question, Your Honor?”

“No, but thanks for asking.” Cate found herself on her feet in the next moment, with all the faces in the courtroom turned up to her. Both lawyers, AUSA and defense. Emily, with her eyebrow pierces, and the preppie. D’Alma’s dark, lost gaze. And his mother’s eyes, begging. Cate had never done this before, so she didn’t know how it was done. She knew only that it had to be. D’Alma deserved more than she was giving him today, and so did the government. Cate grabbed her gavel and banged it hard. Crak! The sound reverberated in the stunned and silent courtroom.

The courtroom deputy rose, looking at her funny. “Judge?” he asked, but Cate waved him off.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please accept my apologies. With your kind permission, I’ll have to adjourn Court for the day.” Cate faced AUSA Connell. Conley. Whatever. “I’m very sorry, I know you worked hard to prepare for today, but we’ll have to reschedule for as soon as possible.” She turned to the defense lawyer, whose name she hadn’t gotten in the first place. “Please excuse me, and I’ll see you again soon. Thank you.”

As if on cue, the courtroom deputy boomed, “Court is adjourned!”