by Tal Bauer
Avoidance. Hmm. His lawyer’s brain couldn’t resist a challenge, the gleeful chance to examine a witness. One corner of his mouth curled up. “I do.” He licked his lips. “Do you like being a JSI?”
Mike glanced up, eyeballing him across the table. “I do.” He tried not to smile.
The game was on. Tom flicked his eyebrows, smothering his own grin. “And you didn’t like being on the task force?”
“I never said that.”
“You never said you did like it, either.”
Mike flipped a page in his menu, his lips pressed together. “Do you like your tacos crunchy or soft?”
“Both at the same time. Crunchy, with a soft tortilla smothered in beans or guacamole wrapped around the outside.”
“That sounds pretty good.”
“As good as being on the task force?”
Sitting back, Mike flicked shut his menu, his smile breaking free. “Your reputation as a thorough prosecutor is well-founded, I see.”
“You heard about me?” He had been one of thirty AUSAs for the DC federal court, and though he’d been on the criminal side of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he’d never met Mike until he was a judge. When he needed a JSI, it had always been Villegas or Winters, or the guys who had been there before Villegas, Winters, and Mike. Never Mike.
“I read your file when you were assigned to me.”
Not as exciting. He’d thought he’d made an impression on Mike, that Mike had known him before they’d even met. “Ah.”
“Villegas said you were a hell of a prosecutor, though. Said you could eviscerate on cross-examination.”
“I enjoy a good conversation now and then.”
“Conversation? Is that what you call it?”
“Of course. Speaking of, where were you when you were on the task force?”
Mike shook his head, holding back his laughter. The waitress came and asked for their drinks. Tom waited, letting Mike order first, and when Mike ordered water, he stuck to a diet soda. Some Dutch courage wouldn’t be amiss right now, but he should keep it professional. Mike was, obviously. Mike also ordered queso to share.
“I was assigned to a big fugitive hunt, and by the end, I was disgusted with the whole thing. I didn’t like any of it. I came away thinking that this country is holding together with bubble gum and twine, and one lit fuse in the wrong place could blow the whole thing. I wanted to do more.”
“Like investigating crimes?”
“That’s more the FBI’s job.” Mike sighed. “I wanted to make sure that this country always had a fair system in place for everybody. That our legal and justice system worked more times than it didn’t. Judicial security seemed like a good fit. Protect the best, and keep the system honest.”
Slowly, Tom smiled, his grin stretching until his cheeks hurt. Mike snorted and looked away, a flush dusting the arches of his cheeks.
“I know, I’m a sentimentalist.” Mike shrugged.
“I think it’s great. You’re great.” He spoke too quickly, words tumbling from him, filling the empty table and the space between them. Mike’s gaze flicked to his, but Tom froze, overly exposed like he’d been caught unprepared in a trial. His mind was a blank hum, his words repeating in a loop.
The waitress bustled back, saving him and dropping their drinks and queso on the table. Mike ordered tacos, along with a side of guacamole and a stack of flour tortillas. Tom ordered the same.
“Going to give my way a try?” He tried to redirect the conversation, get them back to safer ground.
“Yep. So, tell me about this trial that has you fearing you’ll die behind a stack of law books.”
Tom groaned. “If I tell you about it, you’ll die of boredom, too. Then where will the court be without its best JSI?” He grinned as Mike’s flush returned. “How’s Judge Juarez’s trial?”
“Going well. The defendant has gotten uppity a few times, but he’s settled down when Judge Juarez has warned him. He’s on his last warning, but seems to be behaving. No outbursts for the past two days.”
“That’s good.” Tom grabbed a chip and broke off a corner. “What’s next, after her trial? Judge King have anything coming up?” Judge Tonya King, by some mystery of the universe, usually got civil cases instead of criminal cases. Every case was randomly assigned to each of the fifteen judges, but out of the four on their combined fourth-floor docket, Judge King handled three times as many civil cases as him, Judge Juarez, and Chief Judge Fink all together.
“I have a week without trial protection, actually.” Mike grinned. “I can catch up on everything else I’m supposed to do. I’ve got fifteen different intelligence reports I need to analyze, low-level threats I need to circle back on for their three-and-six-months checks, monthly prison gossip analysis from headquarters to review—” He stopped, shaking his head. “Hopefully I can get it all in in that week. What about you? What’s after this trial, if you manage to survive?”
Tom groaned. “A patent trial, unfortunately. The only thing worse than this current case is a contested patent.”
Mike frowned. He took a long drink, his throat working, and then set his glass down, licking a bead of water from his bottom lip.
Tom fought not to stare. “Patent cases are a special kind of awful. There’s no jury. It’s just the patent lawyers and me. And, patent lawyers are usually engineers and attorneys. Double doctorate plus a law degree type of person. They’re specialists in the field of the patent, and the whole case is two legal and technical experts arguing over very, very specific technical knowledge. The one patent case I heard last year made my brain bleed, and I still have no idea what the patent was actually about. I really thought about flipping a coin to decide whether to validate or invalidate it. I was that inadequate.”
“What did you do?”
“I validated the patent, and I waited for it to go to appeal. I figured Chief Judge Fink was going to be in my chambers by the end of the week, reading me the riot act and telling me what I should have done. He likes to do that. But… there wasn’t an appeal. They accepted my ruling.” He shrugged, scrunching up one side of his face. “I hope I did both parties justice, but I honestly didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. And, I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy.”
“Kinda smart. You are a judge, after all.” Mike winked. “So, what’s this patent case about? What’s the dispute?”
Tom ignored the compliment, just pushed it out of his brain, or he’d go silly like a teenage girl. “From what I can tell from the brief, it’s challenging whether a section of code… within a section of code… within a section of code—” Tom arched his eyebrows as Mike grinned. “—was lifted from another company’s proprietary software. It’s more than a decade old, as well, so there’s civil ramifications if I invalidate the patent, or give the patent to the plaintiff. But, I am in for a crash course in computer technology and software code next week.”
“Sounds exhilarating.”
“You’ve never seen one, I take it? Drop in. You can share my pain. And, hey, if you understand what’s going on, I’ll get you to rule on the patent.” Somewhere, there was a boldness within him, a hint of the younger man he’d once been. He knew how to flirt, once.
Mike laughed. “I am still amazed at the breadth of cases you all hear. Watching TV, it’s like judges hear only the big murder cases, or only civil cases, or only drugs. But in a month, you’ve had two civil cases, two drug cases, and a white-collar crime case.”
“And that terrorism case is gaining speed. It might be coming to our court. We’re all watching the news on that one.” The FBI had foiled a homegrown terrorist months before, stopping his plan to bomb the DC Metro by using an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of ISIS. He’d gone silent after he was arrested and the case against him was made by the government. Slowly, rumors of his case—was he or wasn’t he cooperating? Would he or wouldn’t he go to trial? Would he just plead guilty?—grew.
Nodding, Mike crunched a chip. “Winters, V
illegas, and I have been working on some plans for all new terrorism cases. There are a lot of angles on those.”
“They’re media circuses, for one.”
“And everyone will need protection. The jurors, the prosecutor, the judge.” He pointed a chip at Tom. “If it goes to trial—and there’s a really good chance he could just plead guilty, according to what we hear—then we’ll take care of you. Or whoever gets this case.”
Mike heard a lot of gossip from his fellow marshals, especially the ones on prison transport and in the jails. He should probably ask Mike more about the rumors he heard, and for information on the judicial grapevine. It was likely more accurate that the information he got from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “With my luck, it will probably be me.”
“Then we’ll be working together again.”
Mike’s words shouldn’t make him giddy. They shouldn’t fill him with warmth, with happiness. He shouldn’t want high-risk trials just so he could be near Mike, fill his days with sights and sounds of the man.
Their waitress arrived, bringing their food. The plates were a riot of color, boisterous with spirals and flamboyant flowers, and she spread out tortillas and cups of guacamole between the two of them. When she left, Mike looked questioningly at Tom.
“Like this.” He showed Mike how to spread the guacamole on his tortilla and then wrap it around the outer shell of his taco. Guacamole squeezed out of the sides of Mike’s, smearing all over his hands, and Tom almost stopped breathing when he licked his fingers clean. He waited, watching while Mike took his first bite.
He forced himself not to react to the blissed-out expression, the eyes-rolled-back happiness that he saw on Mike’s face. That would stay with him.
“This is really good,” Mike muttered around another mouthful. “Where has this been all my life?”
“Clearly there weren’t a lot of tacos where you were stationed on the task force.” Tom winked and took a bite of his own as Mike snorted.
“How do you like being a judge?”
Mike’s question, tossed at him in-between bites, made Tom pause. He blinked at Mike. “It’s…” He sighed. “I never expected it. Never thought I would ever be a judge, so I never imagined what it would be like.” He looked down. Picked at the lettuce trailing out of his taco shell. “I really have no idea if I’m even doing it right.”
“You don’t like being a judge?”
“I do,” Tom said quickly. “I do. It’s meaningful. It’s amazing, and I’m honored every day. I still think, though, one day I’m going to get a call from the Senate. ‘Oops, you’re not the Tom Brewer we wanted. Our bad. Here’s the door.’”
Mike swallowed a huge gulp of water and shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re great.”
“Uhh, thanks.” Tom looked down, looked sideways at the salt, and willed the heat in his cheeks to disappear. “It’s harder than I imagined. And I don’t mean the cases, or managing the courtroom, or applying the law. I mean, that’s all challenging, but it’s the aspects of the job that no one talks about that are the hardest.”
Silently, Mike waited, his full attention on Tom.
“I was an AUSA. A hard-ass one, and I know a lot of my fellow AUSAs expected me to be a hard-ass on the bench, too. I remember FBI agent Harvey congratulating me and telling me that they needed some good blood on the bench. Stern sentencing.” Tom shook his head. “But, I fought for the government’s case because I believed in those cases. I took the ones that were good cases to trial, and I believed in every one of them. We were getting bad people off the streets, and upholding the law. I also let go of cases that I didn’t believe in. I didn’t try to cram a suspect into a crime that didn’t fit. I also don’t believe that just because someone is accused means that they’re automatically guilty, especially before all the facts and the evidence have been borne out. And, I worked hard for fair plea deals.” He shrugged. “My old coworkers won’t speak to me anymore. I earned a reputation early on as a softie on the bench. Remember the Sousa trial?”
Mike nodded.
He’d sentenced a first-time offender to the lower end of the criminal sentencing guidelines, defying the wishes of the AUSA, and his former coworkers. Even Chief Judge Fink had come tottering into his office, hollering at him in his scratchy southern drawl that he’d just fallen on his face right out of the gate. He was going to be the defendants’ favorite judge and get all the trick defense attorneys clamoring for his sympathy, his bleeding heart. He listened to the Chief Judge in silence, taking his lumps.
He’d read in the newspapers after the trial that he’d been eviscerated at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, called a soft-on-crime judge and a traitor to his own people. Ballard had resented him before for leapfrogging into the federal judiciary, but after the Sousa trial, resentment had coalesced into a burning hatred.
He’d been off to a great start, on the federal bench. Pissed off his Chief Judge, made a name for himself in the papers as a bleeding-heart softie, and was now a sworn enemy of the United States Attorney’s office.
Compared to Ballard, he was a softie. The United States Attorney for the DC district was a man who seemed to have been born without a heart. Instead of a warm, human center, Ballard had a cold fusion device instead. He was as friendly as an android, as gentle as the Terminator. His soul existed in a ball of passionate rage, focused through his job on a somewhat perverted sense of justice.
He'd been worried, when he worked for him, that Ballard would one day become a federal judge.
“I don’t believe in being overly harsh. I believe each and every crime, each and every defendant, is unique. A mafia boss is not the same as a desperate drug smuggler. A low-level gang member who joined because he didn’t know what else to do and didn’t have any options in his life and got caught selling drugs is not the same as a stone-cold killer. Painting everyone the same, and shoving lesser criminals in with the major criminals, is only hurting everybody. Only hurting society.
“So,” he sighed, sitting back. “I have to be extraordinarily careful with my sentences. With what evidence I allow into trial, and what I exclude. Every action I take, every decision I make, will be evaluated by an appeals court. My decisions have to stand on the merits of the law. I can’t be open to accusations in either direction: that I am too hard, a prosecutor’s judge, or too lenient, a softie who gives defendants everything but the keys to their own cells. I have to be fair, and there’s no guide for that. Fair isn’t fixed. I can’t point to a line and walk it and say, ‘this is fair.’ I have to be individual—”
He broke off, snapping his lips shut. “Sorry, this is incredibly boring. You don’t need to listen to an old judge whine.”
“It’s not boring.” Mike sounded serious, as serious as he did when he delivered his threat briefings and warned Tom about suspicious activity around the courthouse. “What you said…” He shook his head. “I mean, that’s why I became a marshal. I wanted to make sure that everyone got their day in court. The bad guys, who needed to go away, and the ones who needed to be heard before the law and needed their name cleared.” He exhaled. “I once chased a woman across three states because she’d shot her husband dead and then ran. She was wanted on felony murder, and the state wanted to prosecute her hard. I found her and brought her back. Her husband had been beating her six ways from Sunday every day for seven years. She snapped. I told her she’d have her day in court and the judge would hear her out. It would be justifiable. A crime of passion, or self-defense.” He shook his head, and a sad smile turned down the corner of his lips. “Turns out, the judge and the sheriff were both family members of her dead husband. Small town courts are like that, and there wasn’t a thing I could do.”
“Was this when you were on the task force?”
“Before.” Mike was quiet. “I thought, ‘these aren’t the kind of judges this country needs.’ I mean, her life is over. When she gets out of prison, the hate will have eaten her up. She was free. She was finally free, and I brought her back to hell.�
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“I’m sorry. That wasn’t justice.”
“No.” Mike shook his head, but tried to smile. He was trying to fight back through the sudden sadness, the heaviness that had fallen over their table. It cocooned them, the vivid colors seemingly muted beneath their shared dismay. “I didn’t find a lot of justice out there. But, I see it happening in your courtroom. You’re a good judge, Your Honor.”
He smiled slowly, his lopsided grin turning embarrassed, so wide his cheeks ached. He looked down, before the burn on his face turned into a blazing fire. “Thanks.”
“And you’re not old.”
Tom snorted. “Putting on the judge’s robe has made me ancient. No matter what my driver’s license says, the judge’s robe says ‘grandpa.’”
“Grandpa? No way. You’re, what, forty-one?”
He beamed. “Forty-six.”
“Well, you look good.”
Tom’s chest swelled. His mind burst, like an opera singer had just struck her high note, or a new year’s celebration had exploded into fireworks. Mike kept speaking, and Tom blinked, focusing back on what he said.
“No family? No grandkids?”
Snorting, Tom shook his head. “No grandkids. And no family. Never married.” Because I’m gay. Because I’m gay, I’m just like you, but I’m too scared to—
No. He couldn’t leap from his closet like that. He was going slow. Being deliberate. Being careful. Cautious.
“I think you’re one of the only single judges in the country.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly, arching his eyebrows.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Being a federal judge is very attractive, I know.” Tom held up his hands, as if telling Mike to back up or slow down. “It’s hard to beat back the admirers.”
Mike had the good sense to look bashful.
“It is lonely being a judge. I didn’t have a lot of friends before I was appointed, and now…” He blew air out of his lips and waved, waving goodbye to his social life. “It’s me and my dog and my law library.”
“You have a dog? What kind?” Mike seemed to light up, sitting forward. Dog people were easy to recognize.