The Judge

by Steve Martini

“Nothing. He’s clean.”

  I feel cuffs being slapped on my wrists behind me, locked so tight that they close off the circulation to both hands. One of them pulls my pants up so that I hold them from behind, open in the front.

  By now I can hear Sarah, who is hysterical, screaming somewhere off near the kitchen. She is calling my name.

  “It’s okay, Sarah.”

  “Get the woman in the living room. Get the kid outta here. Take her downtown, CPS,” he says. Child Protective Services.

  “Touch my daughter and I’ll kill you,” I tell him.

  This earns me a sharp knee, a full thrust into my kidneys, pain that is white hot behind my eyes.

  “Fuckin’ hotshot lawyer. I told you you were gonna be seeing a lot of snow. So where is it? Tell me?” The words are hissed in my ear as he presses the gun harder into my neck.

  I am sliding down the wall in pain. One of them has me by the hair, lifting me literally by the locks that I have left. They drag me through the door, and down the hall toward the living room.

  I am not seated but thrown onto my couch, from which all the cushions have now been removed. One of the cops is busy slicing these with a sharp knife, pulling all the padding from each of them and throwing it on the floor, not a purposeful search as much as sheer destruction. They know that I did not have time to zip these open and slip the cocaine inside.

  There are china cups and small dishes that Nikki left to Sarah assembled in a little tray on our coffee table. These are shattered where they sit, the remnants swept onto the floor with a baton by the cretin with the backward baseball cap. The one dish that does not break he stomps with his foot until it is many pieces.

  “Daddy!” I can hear Sarah’s screams as she is being carried down the walkway by the side of the house. I glimpse her for an instant through a window in the living room. She is being carted off, her feet under the arm of one of these animals.

  “Leave my daughter alone.” Without warning I thrust myself across the table with all the force my thighs can propel. I crash headlong into the gut of the cop with the backward cap, flattening his gut and forcing the air from his lungs.

  In an instant two of the others land on my back, and I pay the price. Truncheons land full force on my head and shoulders, what feels like the trigger guard on a pistol cuts into the back of my head, and the gun discharges near my ear with a loud report, nearly deafening me.

  “Son of a bitch.” One of them in high anxiety. “You stupid shit. Put the safety on.”

  The pain of the blows to my shoulders numbs my spine, its own form of anesthesia, until I can no longer feel my legs. They are still beating on me.

  “Cut it out. You’re gonna kill him.” From a daze I hear this voice.

  “One less fuckin’ lawyer. Who’s gonna miss him?” Whoever says this has a knee in my back so that I cannot breathe. These are masters of pain.

  I lie there on the floor for several moments while they argue over what they should do to me: more beating or put me on the couch. One of them periodically comes over and kicks me in the ribs, full force with a work boot. He does this two or three times as a gratuitous diversion from their debate. I recognize the khaki pants and the boot, though when I look up his face is hooded. It is cable man.

  They drag me back and throw me on the couch. This time I remain lying on one side, conscious of only one thing: I can no longer hear Sarah’s frantic screams.

  Shuffling feet in the hallway.

  “Bring her in here.” They drag Lenore into the room. I can see her from my partially prone position on the couch. Her hands are cuffed behind her. There are scratches on her face, and marks where they have struck her with something on one cheek. One of the bulls has her by the nape of the neck, a hand so big that he could crush her throat without giving it thought.

  “I tried to get Sarah out.” It is all she can say to me before the guy squeezes.

  “Shut up.” The hooded marvel throws her across the coffee table. She lands on the couch beside me, falls on her side, and has difficulty righting herself, showing more anger in her eyes than I have seen in a lifetime.

  “Where’s Sarah?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know.”

  One of the cops comes over and, with the full force of a backhand, lays his baton across the shin of my right leg. The pain is excruciating, so that I cry out. Nausea begins to rack my body. My brain reeling, I wonder if he has broken the bone.

  “Shut your fucking mouth. Understand? You talk when we want you to.”

  I hear the porcelain on the toilet being smashed, the hissing of water as the plumbing goes, flooding the floor in the bathroom.

  “It’s not there.” One of them steps out just long enough to announce this. “Should I get the dog?”

  “It’s gotta be there. Look again.”

  I hear cupboards opening, doors being ripped off their hinges. Drawers being pulled from their runners, and the contents spilled on the floor.

  Two of them in the room with us are whispering. A cold chill runs down my spine. No doubt that there is more where the first kilo came from. In hushed tones they talk, consider the alternatives available. So far I have counted four cops. Then I hear pots and pans being tossed in the kitchen. There is at least one more, maybe two. A total of five or six.

  “He only had sixty seconds.” This is cable man talking. It is a face I am not likely to forget soon.

  The black jackets they are wearing, the ones I have seen, all have the same logo emblazoned on the back: the word POLICE in four-inch-high white letters. I see nothing that says DEA, FBI, or identifies these thugs as Treasury or Customs agents. Unless I miss my guess, this is strictly a local party.

  Suddenly there’s a lot of commotion, agitation among the cops in the room. “Who’s that?” They’re looking out the window behind me.

  I prop myself up by the elbow of one arm so that I can see over the back of the couch to the front street. Two cops in uniform are getting out of a squad car, coming up across the lawn.

  “Get the dog,” says cable man. “We gotta find it. Move!”

  One of them is out the front door. He nearly runs over one of the uniformed officers, who has now made it to the walkway leading to the front door. He says something to the cop running by, but I cannot hear it. The man seems to ignore him, so the uniformed officer continues to the front door.

  He’s a big man, well over six feet, eyes shaded by dark glasses, wearing a crisp blue uniform and a badge that could blind you in the bright sunlight.

  “What’s going on?” he says. He doesn’t take off the glasses, so that the direction of his gaze is only a guess.

  No one answers him.

  “Jesus.” He does a quick survey with his eyes of the damage down the hall, Noah’s flood.

  “You guys bring your own wrecking ball?” He carefully removes the dark glasses from his eyes, then glances at Lenore, then me. He puts the glasses in his breast pocket.

  “Lemme guess. Resisting arrest?” he says. “The lady beat the shit out of each of you.” Only the other uniform laughs at this. The one who is talking is wearing sergeant’s stripes.

  “What are you doing here, Hazzard?” It’s cable man’s voice that I hear.

  “My patrol area,” says the sergeant. “I might ask you the same thing.”

  “We got a tip on drugs.” Cable man finally pulls the hood off his head. His face is flushed, covered with sweat. He straightens his mussed hair with one hand. His patch with the name “Mike” is now covered by a flak jacket. I know this workshirt is borrowed when the sergeant in uniform calls him Howie.

  I can hear dishes being broken in the kitchen. They are working their way through my cupboards.

  “What are you guys doing out there?” the sergeant hollers down the hall.

  Howie giv
es a head signal to the backward baseball cap, who sprints down the hall. Like magic, the clatter of glass splattering on my tile floor ceases.

  “Why didn’t you guys call for backup?” says the sergeant. “Nobody told Patrol this was happening.”

  “There was no time,” says Howie. “There was a tip they were movin’ the stuff today.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s happening,” I say.

  “Shut your fucking mouth.” Howie has his baton in my face.

  “Your pals are rousting a lawyer in the middle of a murder trial by planting evidence in my house,” I tell the sergeant. “Look at his name under the flak jacket. It says ‘Mike.’ He posed as a cable repairman to plant the stuff in my bathroom.”

  Howie has something between a sick smile and rage on his face. I ask him if he’s going to fix my television set like he promised before he leaves. He raises the baton, but doesn’t hit me.

  He is getting some serious looks from the uniformed cop.

  “Howie. I’m ashamed of you.”

  Howie laughs, like big joke. How can he believe a pusher?

  The sergeant’s face is an enigma.

  One of the other cops comes in with the dogs on a short tether, big German shepherds, and they head straight down the hall.

  “Maybe you’d like to be here for this.” Howie’s talking to the sergeant.

  They both stroll down the hall.

  I hear the dog go ape-shit in the bathroom, barking, scratching the walls. Howie tells the sergeant it’s in there someplace.

  “Hope for your sake you find it,” says the sergeant. They both stroll out and join us in the living room again. “’Cuz the watch commander’s on his way over.”

  “Who the hell called him?”

  “I did.”

  This has Howie stomping around in the middle of my living room floor.

  “What the fuck for?” he says.

  “My turf,” says the sergeant. “You don’t come into my area without telling me, Howie. I think you got some explaining to do.”

  The cavalry is on its way.

  Howie stops his stomping long enough to look down the hall.

  “Kennedy. Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  “Shit.” Howie’s down the hall to help.

  We are left in the living room with the baseball cap, one of the hooded cops, and the two uniforms.

  “I’m Sergeant Lincoln,” says the uniform. “Who are you?” He’s talking to me.

  “I don’t think Howie wants you talking to them.” This from the guy in the baseball cap.

  The sergeant gives him a look that, if baseball cap had a brain, would kill him in place.

  “Knelly, do I actually look like I give a shit what Howie wants?”

  When the guy doesn’t answer, the sergeant gets in his face, two inches away. “Well, do I?”

  The guy called Knelly actually blanches, holds his ground for an instant, then turns away.

  “Why don’t you go and sniff for drugs,” says the sergeant. Knelly leaves the room, his baton dangling from one hand like a deflated dick.

  “And you,” says the sergeant. He’s talking to the other hooded wonder. “Douglas. Take that damn thing off your head. You look ridiculous. Get outta here. We’ll watch your prisoners.”

  The guy joins his compatriots.

  The sergeant turns back to me. “Now one more time. Who are you?”

  “My name is Paul Madriani.”

  “Heard of you,” he says. “And you?”

  Lenore’s face is now puffed out, and she is showing all the signs of a shiner, her right lid beginning to close.

  “Let me introduce you,” I say. “This is Lenore Goya, formerly of the district attorney’s office.”

  I hear Lenore give a palpable sigh. I think for a moment she thought they were actually going to kill us.

  CHAPTER 19

  THIS MORNING RADOVICH IS CONDUCTING HIS OWN INQUISITION in chambers. He has called the city’s police chief and Kline on the carpet to explain the raid on my house. While he is taking no official position, and dodging questions from the press on the matter, he is clearly concerned that news reports of this may affect the trial.

  “Why wasn’t I told about this? Who the hell’s running your office?” Radovich is pressing Kline for answers.

  Harry and I sit quietly on a couch against the wall, a Band-Aid on my forehead where there are four stitches, bruises clearly visible on my neck. Acosta sits in a chair next to me, one of the bailiffs behind him, and a guard outside the door. I have insisted that he be present as he has read the accounts of the raid in the paper. He is worried as to how this may affect his trial.

  It took the watch commander only ten minutes to sweep cable man and his clan from my house. After nearly tearing the floorboards from my bathroom they came up with nothing. It took a little longer to get Sarah back from downtown. Child Protective Services had a million questions. They wanted to keep her overnight. After a threat of litigation and a call to the county counsel they came to their senses.

  In all of this, not a single person in the ranks of government has issued an apology. They are holding their breath to see if Lenore and I will sue.

  While the dogs went wild in the bathroom, their trail of sniffing apparently ended at the wall below the window. All things taken together, they might have found it, except for the interference of the brass, the watch commander and his lieutenant. Those in authority have their own way of rectifying abuses in the ranks. In my case their penance was to be ordered off the scene before they could complete their search.

  This morning Kline is a catalog of excuses, most of them coming down to a single point; that he was never told of the raid himself.

  “Your Honor”—he’s standing at the edge of Radovich’s desk—“I want you to understand that I had no part in this.” He seems genuinely at a loss, insisting that he was out of the loop.

  “Had I known, of course I would have consulted the court.”

  “Somebody must have issued a search warrant,” says Radovich.

  “A new appointee,” says Kline. “Muni court judge on call. It was cleared early Saturday morning, through one of the junior deputies in my office, also on call.”

  According to Kline, the cops told his deputy, a kid seven months out of law school, that there were exigent circumstances, no time to wait. According to the police, the drugs were about to be moved that morning.

  “My deputy didn’t connect Mr. Madriani’s name on the warrant. If he had, I’m sure I would have been alerted.” Kline turns his head and says this for my benefit. This is the closest thing to an apology I have yet heard.

  “Sounds to me like somebody in your department was shopping.” Radovich turns his attention to Wallace Hansen, the chief of police.

  “New judge. Young prosecutor,” says Radovich.

  “We’re looking into it,” says Hansen.

  “What about the information on the affidavit?” Radovich is talking about the statement of evidence sworn under oath, by the cops, what is required to establish probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant.

  “Where did it come from?” says Radovich.

  “An informant,” says the chief. “A reliable source.”

  Hansen has the complexion of an albino, reddish blond hair, and a face that looks as if it is in a state of perpetual hostility.

  “So reliable you came up with squat,” says the judge.

  “Believe me, it wasn’t for want of trying,” I tell Radovich. “The adjuster is still tallying the damage to my house.”

  Hansen wants to know if I intend to sue the city.

  “You’ll know when he files,” says Harry.

  I have told Radovich privately that the cops
planted the drugs in my home, something that he clearly did not want to hear. His advice was that I not repeat the charge here, in mixed company, for fear that it might tend to incriminate—confirmation that drugs were in fact present. Hansen would no doubt demand to know where they were. He is the kind of stand-up cop who will take abuse for his men, even when he suspects there is something untoward. Dirty linen he would air in private.

  He insists that if his men conducted a search they had good cause.

  “Did they have cause to beat the crap out of Mr. Madriani?”

  “I’m told he resisted,” says Hansen.

  “And Ms. Goya. Did she resist, too?”

  Hansen doesn’t answer this.

  “I’ve seen her face,” says Radovich. “She’s wearing a steak on one eye.”

  Hansen just stands there and takes it, the professional punching bag.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all,” says Radovich.

  He has been told privately that the men involved have now been suspended pending an inquiry by Internal Affairs. Radovich has confided at least this much to me. The city attorney’s office, for reasons of liability, has instructed the department not to discuss any pending disciplinary actions. So we play the lawyer’s dance, no apologies from them, no quarter from us.

  “Well, Mr. Kline. I am very troubled as to what to do,” says Radovich. “The press is having a field day with this. If word of it gets to the jury, there is a chance of a mistrial.”

  “Surely you can instruct them to disregard it,” says Kline.

  The jury is not sequestered. While they have been instructed not to read press coverage of the trial or to listen to television or radio reports, everyone knows that such admonitions are regularly ignored.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” says Radovich. “I want your reliable source in my chambers tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. I want to know where this information came from. If there was any attempt on the part of the state to taint this jury by undermining defense counsel.”

  “I don’t know that we can do that,” says Hansen. “Produce the witness,” he says.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m told the information was given in return for a guarantee of absolute confidentiality.”