Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

CHAPTER 4

Scoreless in October

Sam Truitt came out of his chambers to greet her. He was wearing a blue oxford cloth buttoned-down shirt with a green tie that he wasn’t sure matched. The tie had little orange patterns shaped like the state of Florida, a gift from the governor to the first Floridian ever to sit on the Supreme Court. Truitt had left his suit coat in his chambers, purposely setting an informal tone, trying to put the young woman at ease. He’d shaken enough sweaty palms the last few weeks to know just how much pressure his young charges were feeling.

Truitt made a mental note to put his suit coat back on when he went out to lunch. A memo from the chief that very morning announced with considerable distress that certain justices had been seen in the corridors in their shirtsleeves. Truitt toyed with the idea of putting on a powdered wig and flowing robe for his promised meeting with His Holiness.

He approached the young woman, who sat demurely in a chair in his outer office. “I’m Sam Truitt.” He smiled and extended his hand, getting his first look at her. Startled by her beauty, he nonetheless maintained a judicial demeanor.

She rose from the chair and gave him a polite, how-are-you smile. “I’m Lisa Fremont” said the stunning woman in the navy double-breasted blazer. Her handshake was firm, dry, and warm. She had a fair complexion, eyes nearly as blue as her blazer, golden red hair, and what appeared to be a great figure underneath the conservative outfit.

No way will I hire her. No fucking way. Too good looking. Way beyond attractive. Connie would kill me.

“I see you’ve met Eloise,” he said, gesturing toward his secretary, a plump woman in her sixties who was perched in front of a word processor, eyeglasses dangling on a rhinestone chain looped around her neck. “Elly was with me in private practice, at legal services, at Harvard, and now here. She keeps track of my appointments, corrects my misspellings, and warns me when I have gravy on my tie.”

“At Harvard, you didn’t wear a tie,” Eloise said, without looking up from her keyboard, her voice disapproving. “Blue jeans and chambray shirts, you looked like a cowboy in a Marlboro ad.”

“Elly remembers when I couldn’t find the courthouse door.”

“His first trial was a pro bono criminal case,” Elly said, momentarily stopping her typing. “His presumably innocent client stuck a firecracker into the ear of a friend.”

“A couple of drunks in a bar,” Truitt explained.

“Boys will be boys,” Lisa said, easily working her way into the story.

“Exactly,” Eloise agreed. “So here’s young Scrap-that was his nickname before he got so high and mighty-dancing around the courtroom like Fred Astaire, cross-examining the victim.” She dropped her voice a couple of octaves and sang out, “Isn’t it true, Mr. Fiore, that you suffered no permanent injuries?”

“And the witness looks at me,” Truitt broke in, “and says-”

“I beg your pardon,” Lisa interrupted, cocking her head and putting a hand to her ear.

Truitt looked at her in astonishment.

“That’s right!” he said, impressed.

The story was meant to loosen up the applicant as well as test for a sense of humor. This was the first time anyone had the courage or intuition to beat him to the punch line. It did not occur to Sam Truitt that Lisa already knew his often-told tale from reading an obscure legal newspaper that had profiled him.

If only you weren’t so distractingly, maddeningly beautiful I could be as chaste as one of the chief’s monks in the monastery, but with my reputation, he’d still think I was shagging you.

Nearly all the 532 resumes Truitt had received were from qualified candidates. Top students from the best law schools, they could all write, research, and analyze. For his three clerks-he was entitled to four but wanted a smaller staff-Truitt sought a team with camaraderie. They’d have to put in long hours, but they should also be able to have a beer together. He admired hard workers, and perhaps because of his own background, appreciated those who did not have a law school education handed to them as a legacy. He also wanted at least one woman, and someone from west of the Mississippi.

So far, he had hired two men. Victor Vazquez came to Florida from Cuba with his parents on the Mariel boatlift, attended Miami High, worked two jobs at Tulane, then earned a free ride at the University of Michigan Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Law Review. Next was Jerry Klein, whose IQ was off the charts and who had dropped out of medical school to enroll at Yale Law because he thought it would be fun. He won the job by telling Truitt that the only difference between the two professions was that lawyers merely rob you while doctors rob you and kill you, too.

“I think W. C. Fields said that,” Truitt responded, testing the chubby young man.

“Actually it was Chekhov.”

“I know,” Truitt told him. “I just wanted to see if you’d correct me. You’re hired.”

Either Klein had chutzpah, or he lacked the natural instincts to be wary of correcting his boss. Either way, Truitt liked him. He sensed that Lisa Fremont had the same self-confidence. Only difference, the obese, pimply Klein looked like a sausage stuffed into an ill-fitting suit. This goddess standing before him looked as if she just stepped off the cover of Cosmopolitan.

Ten years ago, hell five years ago, he would have relished the sexual tension, the flirtatiousness that is a constant companion in the workplace. But there was a difference between a university faculty and the Supreme Court. The chief justice, bless his scurrilous heart, was right about that. The tabloids would love to have another scandal as juicy as the President and the intern.

Truitt was determined to be polite but brief with Ms. Lisa Fremont, then dismiss her and continue the search for the female equivalent of Jerry Klein.

“Let’s go into my office and talk,” he said. “If you’re up for it, Elly makes a potent cafe Cubano. Any that’s left over, we send to Cape Canaveral for the booster rockets.”

“Sissy,” Elly called at him.

“I’d love some,” Lisa said. “I missed my morning coffee.”

It was the first lie she would tell that day, but by no means the last.

Sitting primly with legs crossed in an antique chair more handsome than comfortable, Lisa sized up Sam Truitt’s office. It had that messy, genius-at-work look. Trial transcripts, pleadings binders, the official records of a hundred cases covered the mahogany desk, a brown leather sofa, and portions of the plush blue and gold carpet. Somewhere on that desk or on a wooden cart nearby, Lisa knew, would be the consolidated cases of Laubach et al. v. Atlantica Airlines. There would be copies of the pleadings, the summary judgment dismissing the cases, the one-sentence affirmance in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the plaintiffs’ petition for certiorari, and the Supreme Court’s four-to-four decision-prior to Truitt’s confirmation-to hear the case. Although it would take five of the nine justices to overturn the summary judgment, under the Court’s time-honored Rule of Four, a majority had not been necessary to grant review.

Lisa had already read the file, courtesy of Max’s lawyers. She knew the facts. She knew the law. All she did not know was how to convince anyone-much less the humane and sensitive Sam Truitt-to close the courthouse door to nearly three hundred grieving families. But that would have to come later. First, she had to get the job, and she was beginning to feel the butterflies. She tried to chase a recurring thought-that she didn’t really belong here. That all the higher education, and the fine clothes and the superficial gloss that came from flying first class and staying in penthouse suites couldn’t hide who she really was. Draping a streetwalker in mink didn’t make her a duchess.

All this time, I thought I’d come so far, but have I? Why do I feel like the same scared kid who ran away from home?

She feared that Sam Truitt would see right through the facade, that she would be humiliated and never get the job. For a moment, Lisa felt lightheaded and thought she might faint. Then she sipped the demitasse of Cuban coffee, waiting for the caffeine to surge into her veins. As she half-listened to the justice explain the law clerk’s duties-all of which she knew-she forced herself to calm down and concentrate.

Max is counting on me, and I can’t fail him.

She studied the chambers, looking for clues to Sam Truitt, the man. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered one wall. The books contained every decision of every federal court since the founding of the Republic. The latest edition of the United States Code, the federal statutes, were there, too, as were the tens of thousands of regulations of federal agencies. A computer at the desk was linked to databases that could research in seconds what would have taken days or weeks in earlier times. In the corner, half-a-dozen cardboard boxes remained to be unpacked.

A mahogany stand-up reading desk stood against one wall. An American flag with gold fringes was lodged on a pole in the corner. A framed black-and-white photo of a football team, the players and coaches sitting on bleachers, rested on an oak credenza, as did a partially deflated ball. Antique books with cracked golden bindings were displayed behind glass, and a portrait of Chief Justice John Jay hung over the fireplace mantel.

Truitt went on for a while about the pool memos the clerks prepare to help the Court to determine whether to review lower court cases. With little enthusiasm, he mentioned the importance of writing objective bench memos for him, fairly summarizing each party’s position, and listing similar cases that may have been omitted from the briefs. It was a mechanical speech he seemed to have given before.

Omigod! He’s bored. I don’t even have his attention. He’s already dumped me in the reject pile.

“Tell me about yourself,” Truitt said, leaning back in his leather chair and sneaking a quick look at his wristwatch. “Skip all the legal stuff. I’ve already read your transcripts and I’ve spoken to Judge O’Brien, who gives you a glowing recommendation. Tell me about Lisa Fremont, the person.”

He’s just being polite before showing me the door.

Lisa fought the urge to speak quickly, to cram a lifetime-and not an entirely honest one-into a minute. She took a deep breath to relax and began at her own pace. “I grew up in Bodega Bay, California.

He nodded and said, “ The Birds.”

“Right. They made the Hitchcock film there, but that was before I was born. I think of the place more as The Old Man and the Sea. My father was a fisherman.”

She paused, just as she had rehearsed, then watched as he nodded with approval. Tilling common ground, or rather, fishing the same waters, the son and daughter of humble men facing each other in the palatial Courthouse, one block from the Capitol, with the Library of Congress and the Senate offices on either side.

The Justice, the law clerk, and Joe DiMaggio… all children of fishermen.

“He was a shrimper mostly,” she said. “Crabs, too, depending on the season. For a while, he crewed on someone else’s boat, but usually he just worked alone.”

When he worked at all When he wasn’t drunk, sprawled across the convertible sofa with the popped springs, the sofa he hauled onto the front porch to her everlasting shame, the sofa where he lay, unshaven and reeking of sweat and beer and vomit, tossing bottles at passers-by, the sofa where on a dark night when no one heard her screams, he…

“It was a hard life,” she said. “Neither of my parents even graduated from high school. In fact, Mom was in tenth grade when she got pregnant with me. I knew I had to get out of there. I left home for San Francisco and went through a series of minimum wage jobs that convinced me of the need for higher education.”

“I don’t recall those early jobs on your CV.”

Let me orally refresh you.

“Just some waitressing, barmaid work, that sort of thing. One summer, I had a job at Yosemite, clearing trails.”

“Really,” he said, perking up, paying attention. “I spent a summer as a park ranger at Fort Jefferson.”

“Where’s that?” she asked, seemingly with real interest.

He told her that the Civil War fort was in the Dry Tortugas near Key West, but she knew that. She knew Sam grew up in Everglades City, that his father, Charlie, had piloted a stone crab boat and that he died of lung cancer at fifty-seven. She knew that Sam had camped out in Ten Thousand Islands as a young boy and fished off Shark Point. She knew he drew pictures of all the animals he spotted-water moccasins, manatees, ospreys, and alligators-and that he could imitate the caw of a mockingbird and build a fire from two pieces of wood. She knew he skippered a homemade airboat through the Everglades and built his own fishing hideaway in the islands at age sixteen. She knew he had won two hundred dollars in the eleventh grade for an essay about preserving the Glades and was rewarded with a trip to Tallahassee, where his picture was taken with the lieutenant governor.

She knew that the local Rotary Club had taken up a collection to help him buy books for his first semester at Wake Forest, that he worked two jobs and was a walk-on with the football team, which never did give him a scholarship. She knew he took a year after graduation to work with the Peace Corps in Central America, went to law school at the University of Virginia, and afterward spent two years with Legal Services, helping migrant workers in Florida’s sugar cane-fields, before a short stint in private practice and then on to Harvard to pick up an LL.M. degree.

Lisa Fremont knew all these things because she had read the three books and ninety-eight legal articles he had written and seven hundred sixty-seven newspaper and magazine articles that had mentioned his name. Thanks to the very same software that could find every reference to the phrase “capital punishment” in every judicial opinion over the past two hundred years, she could find all published references to Samuel Adams Truitt, including last August’s social columns in a Nantucket weekly where the newly appointed justice and his wife, Constance, enjoyed grilled lobster and sweet corn at Senator Parham’s summer home. For the early material that wasn’t stored on a hard drive, she had dug up copies of his high school and college yearbooks and student newspapers. Lisa Fremont was nothing if not a great researcher.

Now she maintained eye contact as Sam Truitt spun his personal history with the enthusiasm of a man who loves life and doesn’t mind talking about it.

At least I’ve got his attention. Now, be appealing but not seductive, smart but not arrogant.

After telling his abbreviated version of his trip from Everglades City to the Supreme Court, with various stops en route, Truitt said, “I appreciate the fact you’ve had some real jobs. I confess to having a bias against people who were groomed from infancy to become lawyers. It’s a great asset to have some life experiences.”

Does erotic dancing count? You wouldn’t believe what I used to do with my “great asset.”

“Do you have any underlying legal or moral philosophy?” he asked, and she was caught off guard. She knew that he’d written with admiration of the humanism of Jean Calvin, whose teachings provided the bedrock for the protection of individual liberties. She could memorize and take tests and research the law, but…

What do I believe?

It was the same question that plagued her last night. Though she wished it were otherwise, she didn’t believe the slogans on the pediments. At best she had an ideology that came from listening to Max Wanaker’s theory of enlightened self-interest.

Do unto others before they do unto you.

“I’m not sure I have a clear, discernible philosophy,” she said, sounding lame, hating her answer, knowing it disappointed him.

“If you were a judge,” he asked, giving her a second chance, “what moral and ethical framework would you bring to the courtroom?”

She bought time by finishing her Cuban coffee, feeling the caffeine rush. She needed to wing it, to spin bullshit into gold. Wasn’t that a large measure of lawyering? She’d won moot court at Stanford by keeping her poise and cleverly answering the unexpected question, but just now, she lost her concentration. Her mind flashed back to Max and the way he looked last night, how desperate he seemed about the case.

“ This is more important than you know.”

Why? And why wouldn’t he tell her more? Sure, the case was important. Jesus, nearly three hundred people had died. Damage claims could exceed half a billion dollars. But that’s why every airline carries massive amounts of insurance. Other than a quick spurt of adverse publicity from a megabucks verdict if Atlantica lost the case, what was the crisis?

Regaining her focus, Lisa was aware of Justice Truitt staring at her, waiting for her answer. “I’d just call them the way I saw them,” she said, using the sports cliche, falling deeper into the pit she had dug. The look on his face told her he was dissatisfied.

“Let’s try it this way,” he said, patiently. “What’s your view of Calvinism?”

She forced herself to focus. That she could be sitting here, in this majestic building, being asked to judge the work of a sixteenth-century French theologian struck her as both quaint and oddly moving. Sam Truitt, a man whose own words would be studied and critiqued by scholars a century from now, actually sought her opinion.

And I have none.

Oh, she could recite Calvin’s belief in the ultimate power of the moral law. She could ace any test on Aquinas or Aristotle, Bacon or Bentham. She was smart with what Max derisively called “book learning.”

But beneath it, she had no core, no body of beliefs that shaped her. She was an empty vessel, and realizing it, she suddenly felt chilled and frighteningly alone.

The justice waited for her reply. The easiest course would be to agree with his well-known written work. But she knew that he hated bootlickers. She needed to get back on track, back to the job she had promised Max she would do.

Oh Max, what have you gotten me into? I can’t hack it here.

Struggling to control her emotions, she pushed away the anxiety and the dread. “You probably don’t agree,” she said, haltingly, “but I’ve never thought that there is a natural law arising independent of governments. I take the view that all moral obligations are artificially realized, imposed by governments.”

“Aha!” he said, rising to the challenge, and in fact rising out of his chair and beginning to pace in front of the credenza. “You’re with Hobbes! You’re a bloody Royalist.”

“He was more realistic than Calvin,” she said. “Hobbes understood that moral obligations require laws, not the goodwill of men. It’s the sovereign that sets the rules, not our own consciences.”

She gave him a half smile and cocked her head. In another setting, it would have been flirtatious. Here, in the midst of a polemical quarrel that Cromwell and Charles the First might have had, if they spoke at all, it was an intellectual challenge.

“I think you have it backward,” he said. “‘We, the people-’“

“To coin a phrase,” she interrupted, beginning to feel more comfortable in the ebb and flow of a dialectic debate she was prepared to win or lose, as the situation required.

He laughed and continued. “The people give the government its rules, but those rules arise from natural laws. Take the Decalogue of Exodus. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not bear false witness…”

Thou shall not commit adultery.

Funny how that popped into her head as she watched the judge-her judge-stalk around the perimeter of his chambers, a smaller stage than in Cambridge. He had the enthusiasm of a young boy and the wisdom of philosopher. Not to mention the body of an athlete and the easy grin of a man who finds the world amusing.

A damned intoxicating combination in the person of Samuel Adams Truitt. If only you weren’t married, if only this weren’t a job.

Truitt carried on for a while, attacking Hobbes for his view that government could prescribe an official religion and ban all others, which she admitted was a mistake.

“A mistake this Court unanimously followed in 1892,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “when it held that the government can prohibit the exercise of religions other than Christianity. Four years later, the Court upheld laws prohibiting blacks from riding in the same railroad cars with whites. The decisions were wrong because they violated the natural law, as codified in our Constitution. Under Calvin, citizens can resist immoral laws because the sovereign is beholden to the natural law.”

“But who determines what the natural law encompasses?” she asked. “In the 1870s, the Supreme Court said it was the ‘law of the creator’ that women be barred from becoming lawyers. These days, a lunatic in Florida says God tells him to kill a doctor who performs abortions. Does he have the right to ignore the lesser law of the government?”

“No, because the most basic natural law of all is not to kill.”

And so it went, teacher and student, judge and clerk, man and woman, traveling through the centuries on the magic carpet of their mutual knowledge, Truitt noting that being “endowed with certain rights by their Creator” came from Calvin, Lisa responding that the “pursuit of happiness” came from Hobbes.

She was focused now and ready to impress the justice with her erudition on a number of subjects, all of which interested him, she knew from her research.

I’m rallying. I think he likes me.

Truitt sat down again, and they spoke easily for another forty minutes, Lisa working into the conversation a cross section of popular culture. She mentioned novels that moved her, films that resonated, and rock music she loved, the songs invariably stemming from Truitt’s era. She moved the conversation toward the American musical theater and why didn’t they write shows like Guys and Dolls anymore? He agreed, telling her he had acted, though not very well, in a college production of the show about a thousand years ago.

“You must have been a wonderful Sky Masterson,” she said.

“Actually, I was Big Jule.”

“No!” she said, feigning surprise. She’d already seen the yearbook photo of young Sam, brawny in a gangster’s pinstriped double-breasted suit with exaggerated lapels and enough shoulder padding for an offensive lineman. He was hoisting Sky Masterson up by his somewhat narrower lapels, holding him two feet off the stage floor with one hand. “I really would have thought you’d have the romantic lead.” She blushed, her face seeming as red as her hair. “Oh… I didn’t mean…” The more she stammered, the redder she became, a trick that required holding her breath, or at least not inhaling while she spoke. “I’m sorry, I mean… If I said anything inappropriate…”

“No. That’s all right. I was just the biggest guy in the University Thespians. It was either play the heavy or haul the scenery around.”

She quickly regained the composure she had really never lost. The blushing, stuttering episode had bee i rehearsed in front of a mirror just as Sam Truitt had rehearsed “Luck Be a Lady” so many years ago. It had seemed to her that being too polished, too poised, might come off as artificial and, well… rehearsed. So the momentary slip had the dual purpose of making her seem human and letting him know she found him attractive. I like her, Sam Truitt thought. She’s bright and beautiful, articulate and interesting, but beyond all that… I like her. Obviously, she can do the work. And she’d be fun to have around.

If only she weren’t so damned sexy.

“Is there anything you want to ask me?” Truitt said.

“I was looking at the football you were holding. Did I read somewhere that you were captain of your college team?”

“No, I wasn’t good enough for that. I was captain of the special teams.”

“What made them so special?”

He laughed. At least she wasn’t an expert on everything. “At Wake Forest, nothing, I assure you. I was the long snapper.”

“Sounds like a fish,” she said with a feminine shrug.

“I spent all my playing time looking between my legs, snapping the ball to the punter or field goal kicker. It’s a knack, seeing the world upside down and putting a tight spiral on the ball, getting it to the punter, nose up, in seven-tenths of a second, thigh high, so he can think just about the kick. A good snapper gets the ball to the punter faster than the quarterback can throw it the same distance.”

“Really? I guess it’s much more complicated than most people realize,” she said, encouraging him.

“It sure is. You fire the ball with the right hand, guide it with the left. Before the snap, if you squeeze the ball, or cock your wrist, the defensive linemen will time their rush and get a jump on your linemen. So no hitches, no nerves, and most important, you’ve got to have the perfect stance. You’ve got to keep your ass down.” He laughed and went on, “Which, come to think of it, was the president’s advice when he appointed me to this scorpions’ nest. ‘Keep your ass down until you get the lay of the land.’“

“Sounds smart. You’re here for life. Why be impatient to make your mark?”

“I’ve never been good at laying low,” he said, then walked to the credenza and picked up the partially inflated football. Although he didn’t ask her to, she rose from the chair and joined him there, putting her hands on the cracked leather. It was, in its way, an intimate gesture, each of them touching the other, through an intermediary, the old football. She ran her fingers across the chipped white paint that spelled out, WAKE FOREST 16 – FURMAN 10.

She has beautiful hands. What’s happening? Jesus, Sam, act like a judge, not a schoolboy.

“It was my last game, my only game ball. A reward for playing three years without a bad snap. That and some tackles on the kickoff team. Unfortunately we didn’t kick off much.”

“I know enough about the game to understand that. You didn’t score often, right?”

“Often? The Demon Deacons were scoreless in October.”

‘“Scoreless in October,’“ she repeated with a laugh that trilled like a pine warbler in the Carolina woods. “Sounds like a movie tide.”

“Or a lonely fraternity boy’s lament,” he said, chuckling.

“Or the number of opinions the junior justice writes his first month on the bench,” she said, keeping the ball in the air.

“I’m afraid the C.J. would agree with that,” Truitt said. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to being the new kid on the block. I was playing basketball with Justice Braxton yesterday, and he started calling me ‘Junior’ just to mess up my jump shot. Did you know there’s a basketball court above the courtroom?”

She nodded. “The highest court in the land.”

“Right again. You seem to have a feel for this place.”

And for me. What am I going to do? She’s almost too good to be true.

Lisa watched him squeeze the old football, seemingly lost in a private thought. “You speak very fondly of your football team,” she said, “even though…”

“We were really abysmal,” he said, finishing her sentence.

“But winning wasn’t everything to you, was it?”

“I haven’t thought about it much, but you’re right. We lost ten games in a row before beating Furman. I loved the game and I loved my teammates, even though we were probably the worst team in the history of college football.”

“No,” she said in mock disbelief.

“You can look it up,” he said, but of course she already had.

“In 1974, we were shut out five games in a row by a combined score of two hundred and ten to zero,” Truitt said. “North Carolina, Oklahoma, Penn State, Maryland, Virginia, and Clemson.”

“Wow, is that some kind of record?”

“Maybe. We even lost to William and Mary, and I suspect Mary could have done it all by herself.”

She laughed, knowing he’d used the line many times before. She was turning the tables on him, becoming the interrogator. “What did you learn from all the losses? About life, I mean.”

“No one’s ever asked me that,” he said, seeming to think it over.

C’mon, Sam. Every man I’ve ever known loves to talk about himself.

“The value of hard work, patience, and discipline,” he said after a moment. “That to win you have to sweat and sacrifice and put the team first and even if you do all of those things, you may still lose, but that it’s no disgrace to lose with honor. Most of all, I learned that you’ve got to play the game within the rules, and that surely goes for life, too.”

The rules. Max Wanaker makes his up as he goes along. Sam Truitt follows the ones engraved in the marble.

The phone buzzed just as Truitt was telling how he got the nickname “Scrap” and how the little-used kickoff team was called the “Scrap Pack.”

“The chief says you’re to come to his chambers right away,” Eloise said over the speaker.

“Tell the chief I don’t work for him,” Truitt replied.

“No, sir!” Eloise screeched over the intercom. “We’re not going to start off seeing who’s got the biggest bulge in his briefs. I’ll tell him you’re in conference and will be there the instant you’re free.”

The intercom went dead, and there was a moment of silence as interviewer and interviewee tried to remember exactly where their conversation had ended.

“That’s probably the only time anyone will catch you quoting Justice McReynolds,” Lisa said.

“You picked up on that?” Truitt asked, astonished. “That’s a really arcane bit of Court trivia.”

He looked at her with something approaching awe, and Lisa smiled.

“Back in the 1930s,” she said, “Chief Justice Hughes left a message with McReynolds’s secretary. ‘Tell the justice to come to my chambers at once, and wear his robes.’ McReynolds responded with… well, just what you said. ‘Tell the Chief I don’t work for him/”

“McReynolds was a real misanthrope, a racist, and a bigot,” Truitt said. “But you probably know that, don’t you?”

“I know he wouldn’t appear for the Court photo because he didn’t want to be in a picture with a Hebrew. That’s what he called Brandeis.”

Showing off now. Put a lid on it, Lisa.

“That was him. And you’re right. It’s the only time I’ll quote the bastard.” Truitt glanced at his watch. “Whoa. We’ve been at it for nearly two hours.”

Sensing that was her cue, Lisa said, “I want to thank you so much for your time, Justice Truitt.”

“I’ve enjoyed this. I really have,” Truitt said. He paused a moment, as if she shouldn’t leave just yet.

Sam Truitt couldn’t pinpoint the moment he changed his mind about Lisa Fremont, couldn’t even say exactly why he had. She was smart and savvy, and they seemed to have great synergy, and he was tired of interviewing candidates. There was such a relaxed nature to their conversation, he felt as if he had known her forever. So without ever actually consciously deciding, Truitt reached the conclusion that she’d be perfect. He would hire her despite her great looks, though he didn’t think his wife would buy that for a second.

What is he thinking? Lisa wondered. Am I overstaying my welcome? Should I curtsy and head for the door?

“Once the session begins,” Truitt said, breaking the silence, “I’m afraid there won’t be time for what Elly would call ‘high-falutin’ gabfests.’”

As if I already had the job.

“And from now on,” he continued, “it’s just plain ‘Judge.’ That’s what Vic and Jerry call me. Ask Elly for the forms you’ll need to fill out, then get ready to roll up your sleeves.”

Omigod! What did he say?

“You mean I’m hired?”

“Didn’t I say that? No, I guess I didn’t. I must have thought you could read my mind.”

“That would be a pretty good attribute for a law clerk,” she said, beaming. “I’ll work on it.”

“Along with about a thousand cert petitions.” He stood and extended a hand. “Welcome aboard.”

For the second time that day, Lisa Fremont shook his hand, and their eyes locked. This time his expression seemed to come from a deeper place, and for a moment, she felt he was trying to look deep inside her. At the same time, he clasped both hands over hers. There was nothing inappropriate about it, nothing sexual, overt or otherwise. It seemed to be a gesture of comradeship, a recognition that they were about to spend the next year together embarked on a great adventure.

Wow! I did it. I’m a clerk on the Supreme Court of the United States. Me! Lisa Anne Fremont from Bodega Bay. And Max didn’t do it for me.

She allowed herself just a few seconds of elation. Then the realization set in. She wasn’t just Sam Truitt’s law clerk. She was also working for Max Wanaker and Atlantica Airlines, petitioner in one of the biggest cases of the new term. In legal jargon, she had a major conflict of interest. Her job was to subvert justice, not to achieve it. She tried not to think about the cruel paradox, which threatened to ruin the moment.

She focused a businesslike smile on Sam Truitt. In the past two hours, she thought, they had learned all about each other. Or had they? She’d already known him. And he only thought he knew her. For a moment, looking into his blue-gray eyes, she thought there was a glimmer of recognition, that he saw through the gaps in her resume and in her life, that somehow he glimpsed the abyss that separated who she had been from who she had become. But if he had sensed anything wrong, why had he hired her?

She broke eye contact, and he released her hands. “Thank you, Judge. I’ll try to live up to your expectations.”

“You and me both,” he said, laughing, giving her a warm smile. Then his voice dropped nearly to a whisper and his brow furrowed. “Lisa, we have a chance to do wonderful work here. Not just to resolve individual disputes, but to set the tone for civilization, to draw boundaries for conduct, to define fundamental rights and responsibilities, and to right wrongs. We’re the conscience of society and the buffer between the government and the governed, striking the balance between the state and the individual. We protect against anarchy on the one hand and dictatorship on the other. Our job is to breathe life into that glorious two-hundred-year-old document they keep under glass a few blocks west of here. God help me, I hope we’re both up to the task.”

Lisa stood in stunned silence. What could she say? Oh, I’m sure you’ll combine the wisdom of Solomon with the compassion of Gandhi and the strength of Zeus. And I’ll be right there beside you… corrupting the process, violating everything you believe in.

She had never known anyone like Sam Truitt. He was truly afraid of falling short, of failing to live up to his own standards and those who came before him. Here was a Galahad whose greatest fear was that he could not attain the Holy Grail.

She admired and respected this man who was honest and devoted to principles, not to the accumulation of power and personal wealth. He was everything Max Wanaker wasn’t. What a sad irony that she had to betray Sam Truitt’s trust and tarnish his beloved bronze statues. For a moment, she felt such shame that she could not look him in the eyes.

He guided her toward the door, grabbing his coat for the walk down the corridor to the chief’s chambers. “Wait!” he said at the last moment, and she tensed.

What is it? Has he seen through me? Maybe he’s the mind reader!

“I’ve completely failed to ask what substantive areas of the law interest you,” he said.

With the self-discipline and poise that had brought her so far, she chased away the guilt and the fear. “Aviation law has always fascinated me,” Lisa Fremont said.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES GLORIA LAUBACH,

individually and as representative of the

Estate of Howard J. Laubach, deceased, et al.

Petitioners, vs. ATLANTICA AIRLINES, INC.,

Respondent.

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI QUESTIONS PRESENTED

Whether the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act bars Petitioner’s claims under the Florida Wrongful Death Act for the death of her husband in the crash of a commercial aircraft, and if there is no such federal remedy, leaves Petitioner without the right to sue for money damages?

Whether Petitioner presented sufficient evidence as to Respondent’s negligence so as to preclude the entry of summary judgment and to permit jury consideration of that issue?

REASON FOR GRANTING THE WRIT

The decision below (a) radically departs from established case law; (b) subverts the intention of Congress; and (c) immunizes the tortfeasor from liability, thus permitting a wrong without a remedy, an abhorrent result in a case involving the deaths of nearly three hundred persons.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert M. Goldman, Esq.