Courting Death

by Paul Heald

  “Would Pavarotti like a cup of decaf?” Suzanne’s voice called from the kitchen.

  “You sing really loud!” Maria exclaimed.

  He laughed, wishing just loud were good enough. “Thanks, Maria.”

  He walked into the kitchen and handed Suzanne the music. “This is going to be really fun. Have you ever heard it?”

  “No, but that doesn’t really mean anything.” She looked and handed it back. “My folks listened to big band and jazz stuff when I was growing up, not much classical.” She handed him a cup of steaming coffee and left to begin Maria’s bedtime routine.

  * * *

  An hour later, he heard Suzanne enter the television room where he was watching the Kentucky basketball team destroy some hapless conference foe. He felt her kiss the side of his head.

  “Do you have a second?” she asked.

  He watched the Kentucky center finish a fast break with a thunderous dunk and muted the television. “Sure. This is like watching Goliath beat the living crap out of David.”

  She sat sideways on the sofa next him and propped a leg in his lap. “You’ve been really preoccupied and distant, but I didn’t want to say anything until you snapped out of it a little.” She seemed to struggle to find the right words. “Maria and I have been trying to stay out of your way. I remember when my mom died. I just wanted to be left alone … I hated those sympathy cards that came every day, reminding me that she was gone.”

  He felt fine. He had gotten one or two cards, but that was weeks ago. Where was this coming from?

  She leaned forward and touched his hand. “Are we doing the right thing with you? Or do you want to talk?”

  He was at a loss for a response. He couldn’t remember moping around the house or being anything except his usual self.

  “Until you came into the house singing tonight, I’ve barely recognized you. You’ve been working so late and spending so much time in your room.”

  He shrugged and deflected her concern. “We’ve been really busy in chambers.” He glanced at the score of the game and gave her a puzzled look. What was she seeing? “I’m sorry if I’ve put you all on suicide watch.”

  “I never said that! But I can tell that something’s been eating at you.” He felt her study him for a long moment. “You’ve been wandering around here like a ghost, never making eye contact, all wrapped up inside yourself.”

  He looked up, but the intensity of her expression drove his gaze back to the silent television. Was it possible that she knew him better than he knew himself? Where was she coming from with this? He’d been doing his share of the dishes and housework. Hell, he had even vacuumed the whole upstairs without being asked.

  “You know,” he murmured, a strategy of misdirection taking shape, “now that you mention it, I could use some serious therapy for my mental condition. Why don’t we go upstairs and talk about it?”

  She laughed as he pressed a series of swift and sensuous kisses on her lips and neck.

  “All right,” she conceded with a whisper.

  He kissed her again, then took her hand and led her up the stairs. As soon as the door to his room clicked shut, their bodies pressed together, hips and mouths grinding, hands groping under sweater and shirt, sliding past belt-lines to waist and hip. Clothing dropped, then flew desperately to all corners of the room. Suzanne’s bra landed askew on the ancient teddy bear perched on his desk, an odd merger of Toys“R”Us and Victoria’s Secret. They burrowed under the warm covers, bypassing foreplay. Her need seemed as strong as his, relentless as never before, bulldozing over his plea to slow down after he had come with unexpected speed deep within her. As her own climax approached, he sublimated the sensitive agony of her movement and managed to cooperate just enough to help her over the edge.

  “Wow,” he gasped as he caught his breath, “where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe it’s a full moon or something.”

  “Or something!”

  After a prolonged snuggle, Suzanne slipped downstairs, but Arthur was unable to sleep. It was sweet that she was so concerned about him, even if it came from a hyperactive imagination. He put a CD in his portable player and listened to Robert Shaw’s recording of the Fauré Requiem. The light in his room was off, and tiny dry snowflakes began to swirl down against the backdrop of the streetlamps. He cracked the window slightly and let the cold air connect him to the outside world. He leaned back with his bare feet on the sill, listening to Fauré’s plea for repose eternal and wondering whether Suzanne was overreacting or whether he was in fact a little depressed. He had to admit that he hadn’t yet fully processed his father’s death.

  Downstairs, Suzanne was awake, staring at Maria’s sleeping form and praying hard that the slight twinge she felt just below her navel was not a sign of premature ovulation.

  XX.

  LEAVE THE ROAD (AND MEMORIZE)

  Melanie sat in her office late on a Wednesday evening. The chambers were as still as her mind was restless. In a moment, she planned to reach inside Ms. Stillwater’s desk, take the keys to the filing cabinet, and peek into Carolyn Bastaigne’s personnel file. She hesitated, waiting for a rationalization that would justify her transgression. Unfortunately, the convenient purpose of protecting the Judge from her crazy mother provided little justification for prying into his own private papers. When she realized she had nothing to rely on but raw curiosity, she sighed, but nonetheless went into Ms. Stillwater’s office.

  She paused as she reached the desk and thought suddenly of her parents. They would be horrified. But maybe that was a reason to go ahead with the plan. She was tired of meeting their—and everyone else’s—expectations of her. Valedictorian of her high school class, beauty pageant queen, Harvard Law Review editor and, let’s not forget, the lead role in “The Littlest Fairy,” her third-grade class musical that started the whole mess. She was tired of being perfect. It was time to do a little rebelling.

  She opened the drawer and withdrew the keys.

  The location of the personnel files was no secret. They were plainly marked in a brown metal cabinet behind Ms. Stillwater’s desk, in between drawers marked “News Clippings” and “Post-its, Pens, and Envelopes.” She didn’t know for sure whether Ms. Stillwater’s circle of keys contained the proper one for the cabinet, but it was a good bet that such an organized woman would link everything together. It took less than a minute to find a likely looking suspect and spring the lock on the top of the cabinet.

  She was proud of herself for not pulling her own file or those of Phil and Arthur. She would have loved to read what her professors had said in their letters of recommendation (she got the job—they must have said something good!), but she denied herself this pleasure and pulled nothing but the Bastaigne file. Then, she shut the cabinet, locked it, and brought the manila folder into the library. She sat next to a stack of books, ready to slip the file into her briefcase and feign reading something else in the unlikely event that one of her co-clerks returned late to meet a deadline.

  The story of Carolyn Bastaigne emerged slowly in the letters, school transcripts, and notes lying before her. The first mystery—how someone so lazy could have gotten the job in the first place—was solved fairly quickly. Melanie knew that Carolyn had gone to Yale Law School, but she had forgotten that Yale did not give letter grades, nor any indication of class rank or honors. As a Harvard graduate, she had heard her classmates and professors ridicule the presumption made by Yale that all of its students were so talented that any quality distinctions made between them would be spurious and misleading. She looked at the transcript and couldn’t make heads or tails of the “Ps” and “HPs” next to each course Carolyn had taken.

  For a Yalie, like Carolyn, letters of recommendation would be key. The first two were standard and uninformative, probably penned by professors with more important work to do and laboring under the assumption that anyone who could get into their school was prima facie fit for a federal appellate clerkship. T
he third letter was more striking. Carolyn Bastaigne knew the governor of Georgia, and he had written her a glowing letter. Her father had practiced law with the governor, and he had known her since she was a small child. Having grown up in Georgia, Melanie understood what an impact the letter must have had. Before Governor Jackson had taken office, he had made his reputation as the state’s attorney general, working hard to enforce the Judge’s civil rights decisions. Faced with a stack of talented applicants from the usual selection of elite schools, the letter probably tipped the balance in Carolyn’s favor, although it gave no indication that the governor had ever read a single word she had written.

  The penultimate page in the file was a folded piece of yellow legal paper. It contained two sets of notes, one dated a year before Carolyn started work and another dated the day before she died. “Pleasant enough … helped Jackson on his campaign … no strong feelings about death penalty … favorite teacher BZ!” Melanie guessed that BZ was Brent Zwicki, the author of Melanie’s constitutional law textbook and the Judge’s most successful clerk in academia.

  The entry at the bottom of the page was written in bolder strokes. “CB late … denies all knowledge … more upset by Cravath call than by fucking me over!” More was scrawled, but Melanie could not make out the handwriting. A low whistle escaped her lips.

  A letter from the Justice Department clipped to the back of the yellow sheet provided a final clue to Carolyn’s fate. It was addressed to the Judge from Ross Pritchard, a former clerk writing on Antitrust Division letterhead. It was great to see you at the reunion last month! Marilyn’s doing great and sends her love. I wish that I had better news to report about Ms. Bastaigne. Your instincts, as usual, are right. I contacted a colleague at the SEC, and a check of recent market transactions showed that she purchased over five thousand shares of the stock you mentioned two weeks ago. We won’t proceed without your go ahead. We’re pretty busy with the S&L crisis, as you might imagine! Hope to hear from you soon …

  So, after learning about Carolyn’s insider-trading scheme from his ex-clerk in the Justice Department, the Judge had followed up with a career-killing call to Cravath and then a fraught interview with the perpetrator herself.

  The image of Carolyn fleeing the terrible news delivered in the Judge’s chambers flitted through Melanie’s mind. Distraught and careless, years of education wasted and her future in a shambles, she might easily have tripped and plummeted down the stairs. It made for a vivid picture.

  Melanie read through Pritchard’s letter to the Judge one more time and put the file back in Ms. Stillwater’s cabinet. Once it was safely locked away and the keys replaced in the desk, Melanie went back to her office, slipped on her coat, and left the chambers. The exit light above the stairwell door provided the only illumination in the hallway. She could barely see the door to Judge Meyers’ empty chambers down the hall. What had happened five years ago? The source of Carolyn’s distress that night was obvious, but why head for the stairs without her shoes? And wouldn’t a barefoot person be less likely to trip on a marble staircase than someone in heels?

  A critical question suddenly occurred to her. Had Carolyn been wearing hose on night she died? If she had been, a slip would be much easier to understand.

  * * *

  The Judge entered the library and announced that a new round of briefs had arrived. He watched his minions sort through them as he set forth the timetable for the rest of the spring. Melanie would attend the late-February sitting of the court in Atlanta. Phil was slotted for Miami in early April, and Arthur for Tallahassee the last week in May, which would be Phil’s final month before he left Clarkeston for a firm in San Francisco.

  “Don’t lose your focus now that the rest of the year is mapped out. The home stretch can be tricky sometimes.” To emphasize his constant scrutiny of their labors, he sat down and leafed through the pile of briefs. Humming and chewing the corner of his mustache, he skimmed a case and tossed it at Phil.

  “Mr. Garner, this looks right up your alley. Employment discrimination, an appeal to the NLRB, and an illegal strike all in one case.” He relished the look of surprise on the clerk’s face. Did they think he didn’t notice the pattern of the cases they chose to work on?

  “Miss Melanie, here we go, another prison case. No blood and guts, but an interesting looking First Amendment claim.”

  He squinted at Arthur. “I haven’t really detected a clear trend in your choices, Mr. Hughes. You did an excellent job with Gottlieb, though, so maybe I’ll make you my Death Clerk.”

  The Judge watched Arthur laugh nervously. Judge Lindsey in Orlando was infamous in the Eleventh Circuit for designating one of her clerks every year to handle all of her death cases. Her theory was that the cases were complicated and that she was better served if one person mastered the complex web of procedural issues that repeatedly cropped up. The unlucky designee gained instant notoriety and bore the brunt of grisly jokes whenever clerks gathered for drinks after a sitting of the court.

  “How come you don’t have a Death Clerk, Judge?” Melanie asked.

  “Oh, it would be unfair to let one clerk have all the fun.” He winked at Arthur but then spoke seriously. “You all come here to get a deeper and broader education into the law. I’d be cheating you if I forced you to spend all your time on habeas cases. That’s why I let you choose your own cases and why I do a lot of the death work myself. You may not know it, but I only dump habeas cases on you when I’m swamped. And then, I ask the person who’s made the most progress with the rest of his work. That’s kind of a perverse incentive, but it usually works out to be fairly random.”

  They nodded their understanding, and the Judge felt a wave of good will wash over him. It had been a decent year so far. A little too much talking in the library, but most of it was work-related. The three clerks helped each other out, and the work benefited from their diverse talents. He would not want them to closet themselves in their offices all day long.

  “I don’t usually pat my clerks on the back—although Stillwater says I should—but you’ve done a good job this year. Just don’t let down your guard and start dreaming about leaving here and making money.” He frowned and stood up to leave. “That said, let me share an article that I just read in the Legal Times. It says that the governor of Florida has finally got his pen out and will be signing a slew of execution warrants next month. His theory seems to be that victims’ rights will be better served if the habeas attorneys who take these cases get completely overwhelmed. That’s their problem, of course, but it will eventually become ours. Don’t fall behind on your work, because you’ll need plenty of time to deal with the mess he’s going to create.”

  As it turned out, the Florida governor got involved in winter session politicking and held off until the end of January before signing the warrants piling up on his desk. During the interlude, the chambers attacked a fresh batch of federal cases: a sex discrimination class action, a bad faith bankruptcy filing, a teacher fired for being overly critical of her principal in the local paper, and the usual criminal procedure cases arising from drug arrests. The state law cases were interesting too: a negligence action for burns suffered in a trailer fire, a breach of promise not to compete, and a convoluted case involving the wrongful repossession of a farmer’s combine. The clerks scurried from library to office, and back again, trying to get as far ahead on the work as possible.

  The Judge was energized by the frenzy of activity. He visited the conference room more frequently, asking questions about bench memos or sharing courtroom war stories about the days before his appointment to the appellate bench. Ms. Stillwater fueled the productive mood by leaving snacks on the conference table—brownies, cookies, and homemade cheese straws. The clerks appreciated the food, but the Judge did not.

  “Stillwater, you’re gonna make my clerks fat and slow,” he growled at her as he left the library. She always treated his clerks like elementary school children. “They’re supposed to be working in there, not making
a mess and attracting roaches!”

  “They spend less time eating than they do listening to the stories you make up!” she snapped back at him. The Judge caught Arthur winking knowingly at Melanie across the conference room table and getting rewarded with a giggle and a small air burst of brownie crumbs. You’re bad, she mouthed at the young man as the Judge turned and headed back to his office.

  * * *

  The week before the death cases arrived, Arthur arranged to meet Phil at the Wild Boar after the Thursday evening practice of the King David. After Ms. Henderson dismissed the group, Arthur asked Kennedy, the history professor, if he would like to join them.

  “Absolutely,” the professor replied as they walked through the lamp-lit fog of the south quadrangle, “we earned a beer with that rehearsal.”

  “How often does Henderson fly off the handle like that?” Arthur asked.

  “Oh, she usually reams out the group once a semester. We old farts take it more philosophically than the students do.” He laughed and kicked a pine cone out of their way. “It’s kinda funny, though, they seem to like being abused—sort of like law students.” He gave Arthur a mischievous grin. “President Assad of Syria used to bite the heads off snakes to fire up his troops; she likes to bite the heads off sopranos.”

  Practice had been going quite well until she heard a couple of sopranos scooping for the high notes. “When you sing a sizeable ascending interval between two notes, like a fifth or an octave,” she explained patiently after the first offense, “you should not audibly slide through the pitches in between the lower note and the higher note.”

  The second time, she demonstrated sarcastically exactly what an offending scoop sounded like.