Judgment

13

Late afternoon the next day, Juliana was sitting in the Bristol Bar in the Four Seasons, at a table that overlooked the greenery of the Public Garden.

Martha Connolly wore a beautiful Chanel suit, navy blue with white piping, and a necklace of black pearls. She was in her early seventies, a handsome woman with a halo of white hair and clear blue eyes that could turn serious and judgmental without warning. Martha had authored a number of important and controversial Supreme Judicial Court opinions and was regarded, in the legal community, as something of a demigod.

She also had a salty tongue and a bawdy sense of humor. She was even known to smoke cigars, on occasion. And she was responsible, more than anyone, for Juliana’s being a judge. It was Martie who kept urging her to think about it. She’d guided her through the whole arcane process, from the seventy-page application to the appearance before the Governor’s Council. That had been intense, the Governor’s Council thing. She’d been interviewed by twenty-one influential people, at some downtown law firm, where they threw all kinds of questions at her, trying to get a sense of her judgment, her temperament. The ridiculous application asked you to list every trial you’d done for the last twenty years, and to name every single defense lawyer you ever worked with, or against.

And it was Martie who had pulled the strings to make it happen, urging Governor Wickham to appoint Juliana to the Superior Court. Her advice was good and plentiful. Martha was childless and seemed to consider Juliana her substitute daughter. She could be as intrusive as a Hollywood parent, which Juliana sometimes found annoying, but she did her best to suppress her annoyance. Martha was a hero to her.

Juliana started the conversation by saying, “I’m seeking legal advice.”

Martha understood at once, of course: what Juliana was about to say was between them only and was protected by attorney-client privilege. Her eyes twinkled agreement. “Got a dollar?”

“Sure.”

“Fork it over. Otherwise a single peppercorn will suffice.”

Juliana took a single dollar bill out of her purse and handed it ceremoniously to Martha. Then she told her story, leaving nothing out. She had always thought of Martha as unshockable. She’d seen it all. But now she was registering astonishment.

“It was definitely you on the tape?”

Juliana nodded.

“Dear God.” She took a swallow of her Knob Creek.

Juliana exhaled, nodded again.

“Honey. And you’re always the good girl. Aren’t you full of surprises.”

For just one night, I did what I never do. Juliana, who did everything right; Juliana, the obeyer of rules, had gone and done one single incautious, impetuous thing. And it was just like she’d always feared it would be: everything she worked so hard for had been overturned.

“It’s a serious problem,” she said.

“Oh, it’s worse than that, Jules.” A waiter came by, but Martha dismissed him with a quick smile and a head shake.

Juliana groaned. “I think the simplest thing to do would be to resign from the bench. Face the consequences — the tape, the public humiliation, everything that follows. Face Duncan and beg for his forgiveness. Maybe he’ll understand.”

“He sure as hell should. After what happened with that law student.”

Juliana had forgotten that she’d told Martha.

“That was a long time ago. And we’ve moved past it,” Juliana said, though she wondered if that was the truth or a mantra she simply told herself.

“I’m just saying, sauce for the gander.”

“It’s not... It’s not like that.”

“Listen, it’s not just that a woman has to work twice as hard and be twice as smart; she also has to be twice as clean. Don’t forget, it was Caesar’s wife, not Caesar, who had to walk the straight and narrow. Caesar, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.”

Juliana closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted to teleport herself out of there. To make it all go away somehow.

“Men are allowed to screw up,” Martha continued. “Women are not. This is the God’s honest truth. The guy who sleeps around is sowing his wild oats. A woman does the same, she’s a pathetic slut. What did George W. Bush say? ‘When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.’ Imagine Hillary Clinton trying that line.” She sipped some more bourbon. “You’re Teddy Kennedy, you can survive Chappaquiddick. You’re Joe Biden, and a couple of plagiarism episodes fade from memory like they never happened. And you wanna talk about Bill Clinton?”

Juliana put a hand over her eyes, nodded. “I know.”

“But if you’re a woman and you don’t walk the path of the straight and narrow? You’re a punch line, and then you’re history. Was the tinsel of Camelot tarnished by the revelation that JFK had an assembly line of mistresses? No, it was burnished. Honey, the passage of time treats men and women differently in all sorts of ways. When men make mistakes, the mistakes are forgotten. When a woman makes a mistake, the woman is forgotten.”

Juliana shook her head. “It’s not like that anymore,” she said. “All the ‘Me Too’ stuff, all those powerful men dethroned...”

“Tip of the iceberg,” Martie said. “A few high-profile sacrifices to the media gods. Then attention shifts and everyone moves on. You think we all hit Reset and men have actually reformed? Everyone keeps different ledgers for men and women.”

“Maybe. But how exactly does this help me?”

“Do you want me to lay out your options for you?”

“Yes.”

“You recuse yourself, and your career is torpedoed right out of the water.”

“And my marriage—”

“Only you would know that.”

“It’s possible we’d survive this.”

“Okay. Or you don’t recuse yourself, you stick with it, but you don’t rule the way they want. They release the tape, and your career is torpedoed, and your marriage is damaged, maybe irreparably.”

“Or I go the third way, and I do what they say. I become a marionette. It’s a breach of my judicial responsibility. But then at least Duncan and I aren’t arguing over child custody.”

“Child custody? Honey, you could be taken into custody. As in, jail time. If anyone can demonstrate that your judgments were suborned, that’s a major felony conviction.”

“What the hell can I do, Martie? I’m screwed any way I go.”

Martha was silent a long time. Juliana could hear the clink of silverware against china, the tinkle of ice in water glasses, the murmur of people around them. Then Martha reached over for her purse, lifted it onto the table, took out her wallet, and began going through it. Finally she seemed to have found what she was looking for. She took it out and held it up. A small white business card, its edges frayed and soiled. “There’s one other way,” she said, handing Juliana the card.

Juliana took it and glanced at it. It read PHILIP HERSH, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, and listed an address in the Park Colonnade Building in downtown Boston and a phone number.

“A private investigator?” she asked. “And you trust him?”

“With my life. Because I have... Trusted him with my life.”

There was a long silence. Neither woman spoke for a while. Finally Juliana said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” said Martha. “I don’t. It was a long time ago.”

Juliana nodded. It felt like she was on the verge of something life-changing, something permanent and irreversible. She put the card facedown on the table, touched it with her fingertips, feeling the cardboard as if it were warm and alive. She drummed her fingers on it for a few beats.

“What do you think he can do for me?”

“You are being extorted,” Martha said. “Blackmailed. You have to fight fire with fire.”

“That’s not who I am.”

Martha sighed. “Do you know how hard people have worked to help you get where you are?”

They both knew Martha was referring to herself. “I know,” Juliana said, “and I’m incredibly grateful.”

“You have so much at stake. You’re being mentioned in the right circles now. Governor Wickham is behind you. You’re being talked about for other judgeships. And maybe one day not too far in the future — who knows. The high court. You have a bright future ahead of you. And you need to play this right. We need to make this go away.”

“And how can this PI make it go away?”

“I can’t tell you that. Maybe by turning the tables on this — what’s his name?”

“Matías.”

“Right. Track him down. Find out who he’s working for. If you’re trying to outplay a blackmailer, you need to get the goods on him.”

She nodded.

“Honey, everyone has a little smudge on them,” Martha said. “Why do you think our robes are black? So they don’t show the dirt.”