The Venus Fix

Forty-Two

“That’s impossible,” Alan Leightman said to his doorman through the intercom.

“Sorry, Judge. But I’m looking at their badges.”

“Okay, Jimmy, send them up.”

He stood in his hallway waiting for the elevator to stop on his floor. He was a New York City Supreme Court judge. The police treated him with respect. They certainly didn’t show up at his home at eleven at night unannounced. But apparently that’s exactly what they were doing.

Watching the numbers light up, charting the detectives’ progress, he tried to imagine what had brought them here at this time of night.

Someone he was responsible for putting in jail must have been released. He would listen, nod, reassure the detectives that he was not only careful but was well guarded both in his luxury apartment on upper Fifth Avenue and in his downtown office. The city in the post-September 11th world did not take the safety of its officials lightly.

The elevator door opened and two men stepped off, their coats still flecked with snow. Alan nodded to them as they stood there stamping the last of the slush off their boots. He recognized both of them, welcomed them, and then ushered them inside.

He liked to watch people come into the apartment. Despite his high-profile job, it was his wife’s salary that paid for them to live floating above the city. No one was unimpressed by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Central Park. At night, the view crept up on you, seduced you, pulled at you. The sparkling lights from thousands of apartments across the park, on the West Side, looked like stars.

Leightman led the detectives into his den and motioned to the seating area. Detectives Jordain and Perez sat down side by side on a couch. The judge took a chair facing them. A coffee table piled with papers and leather-bound books separated them.

“Would either of you like a drink? Coffee? A cigar?”

“I wouldn’t mind some coffee,” Perez said as he rubbed his hands together, warming them up.

Leightman nodded and looked at Jordain. “And you, Detective?”

“Sure, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“None at all. I just hope you’re not here about something that’s going to be too much trouble.” He chuckled.

“It may be, Judge.”