“So now you see what him and I talked about that day last month down there at Manoogian. I told him all this I’ve told you about her and more. Did he even remember her? Oh, he remembered, all right. He just said her name, Celia, but the way he said it was the way a man does when he remembers something real precious he lost.
“I told him she changed her name to Conroy and named her son, their son, Mark. And then you should have just seen his face. I made it plain, told him he was the same Mark Conroy who was under indictment for grand larceny. And I said I thought he, as mayor, had it in his power to help his son. If it came to it, I was prepared to remind the mayor of all I’d given him in those years he’d spent in the City Council and what I’d done to help him get elected mayor. Hell, I would have shamed him, pleaded with him. But none of that was necessary. All he said was, ‘I’ll see what I can do for him.’”
“And that’s all it took?” I asked.
“It may have taken a lot more,” said Ismail. “Maybe he had to lean on some people. Maybe he had to threaten. Or maybe all he had to do was change his mind. In other words, I’m not sure whether or not he engineered all this. I only know what you know.”
“Charges dropped.”
“That’s right, and now, Charley, if you’ll pour me a big glass of water, I’ll try to get my voice back. Push the oxygen over closer, too. Then I think maybe it’s time for you to tiptoe on out of here.”
Ismail was wrong. I hadn’t suspected the truth. Not for a second. Even having heard from Mark Conroy about his mother, his illegitimate birth, and the fact that he never knew the name of his father, I could never have put together such a tale of coincidence and fate. It would have been well beyond my powers of speculation.
Only God can invent such stories. We want order in the world. We count on Him to make sense of human lives, to give them shape. We want there to be a pattern in the incidents and events that litter all our days. If we could only sort through all that, we might see the beginnings, middles, and the ends of those stories. I’d been given the ending of this one by Ismail Carter. But Mark Conroy would never hear it from me. Somehow he’d have to discover it for himself.
Judge Paul Murray fought his way up from his working-class Irish roots to the Federal bench. Tough and honest, dedicated to the law, he relishes sitting on the headline-grabbing case before him. The outcome is worth billions, the tactics cutthroat, and suddenly, with the threatened exposure of a ruinous secret, everything Paul cares about is on the line—his marriage, his career, his reputation. Now, faced with choices he never thought he’d have to make, he must confront what truly lies at the heart of justice…
WILLIAM J. COUGHLIN
National bestselling author of In the Presence ol Enemies
The Heart
of Justice
“Satisfying and right on targat…among Coughlin’s best.”
—Detroit Hews
THE HEART OF JUSTICE
William J. Coughlin
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HJUST 10/97
Elizabeth Daren is in dire straits. With evidence missing and key witnesses changing their stories, the battle for her dead husband’s fortune is turning ugly. Someone is out to get her, and only Jake Martin, one of the country’s shrewdest, most battle-hardened lawyers, can save her. If he can trust her.
IN THE PRESENCE
OF ENEMIES
WILLIAM COUGHLIN
IN THE PRESENCE OF ENEMIES
William Coughlin
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The Judgment Page 43