The Hanging Judge

by Michael Ponsor

  “What is my name and what is my mission. Right. You’re not allowed to ask me the square root of anything.”

  “Come on, um …” She consulted the card. “David. What is your mission?”

  “Oh,” he rummaged through his mental files for something clever and, as usual, found nothing. “Just, I suppose, to get home before my dog explodes.”

  She dropped her arms in disappointment. “That’s it? Your dog? Oh David, David … ”

  “Okay, and to bring truth and justice to the American way.” He paused. “And if at all possible to locate the Holy Grail.”

  “Derivative, but acceptable. I’ll hold my last one. You go.”

  They’d somehow inched closer during the questions, and there was less than the length of a yardstick between them now. Her green eyes were looking straight into his, and her eyebrows were raised, challenging him to make her laugh. Since he could think of nothing funny, Norcross decided to be crafty.

  “What question would you most enjoy having me ask you?”

  “Hmm. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ ”

  “Scrambled eggs. Give me the keys.”

  “Nice try, David! That was my answer, not my question. I still have one more.”

  “ ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ That’s what you’d most enjoy having me ask you?”

  “Sorry, you’ve had your three. Let me think now.”

  She looked up at the ceiling and weighed the final question, the one that might get him flung, like one of Monty Python’s hapless crusaders, into a bottomless crevasse.

  “No mathematics now,” Norcross said. “Or song swallow questions.”

  She dropped her eyes and regarded him coolly. “Are you married, or seeing anybody?”

  It was not, objectively, a tough question. Still, as the judge struggled to compose an answer with just the right ironical flip, the sound of distant sirens distracted him. He couldn’t help wondering, as he always did, what catastrophe was unfolding out there and whether it was going to end up in his courtroom.

  4

  The next morning, the sun, still in a cloudless sky, dropped a slanting column of apricot light on Frank Baldwin, who was staring at his computer screen.

  “Sheeesus!” he groaned. “No one should have to die wearing pea-green tennies!”

  Gritty urban tragedies like yesterday’s drive-by in the Holyoke Flats still fascinated Frank. He’d spent seven years as a city-desk reporter for The Hartford Courant before escaping to law school, badly frayed and in need of a change. Now he was in his second year as one of two full-time law clerks for Judge David S. Norcross.

  Frank accepted that he was not conventionally handsome; he had a beer gut and a bad habit of sucking on the end of his scruffy blond mustache. Yet somehow he’d hit the lottery of life; he was a happy man. Pictures of his wife, Trish, and their bug-eyed four-year-old son, Brady, cluttered Frank’s desk. Scrawled crayon drawings of fish, or perhaps horses, decorated his walls and bookshelves, giving his office the look of a kindergarten art room.

  “What’s so awful?”

  Frank swiveled to see Eva Meyers, whose office was next door, poking her head into his doorway. Barely five feet tall, she had a well-balanced gymnast’s posture and a thick topping of curly brown hair. Her horn-rimmed glasses seemed too large for her face. This was her first day as Frank’s brand-new co-clerk, replacing a man who’d decamped for a corporate law firm in Worcester. In her right hand, Eva was holding something heavy, like a paperweight.

  “Another gang banger kisses the pavement in Holyoke. But this time, they nailed a bystander, too. Take a look.”

  He tapped the mouse, and a close-up of the hatch of an ambulance appeared with a body being loaded in. Two limp feet with green Nikes protruded from the end of a sheet.

  “Ginger Daley O’Connor, a pediatric nurse volunteering at the Walnut Street Clinic,” he read. “Granddaughter of Martin Daley, former mayor of Holyoke. Forty-two, three kids. Youngest eleven. Oh man!”

  “It was on the news. Terrible.” Eva flexed her arm with the heavy object. “Can I … ?”

  “Says here she was bending over to pet a puppy when she got smacked. That’s a nifty little journalistic detail.” Frank shook his head and added, more quietly, “At least they didn’t shoot the damn dog. We’d have riots.” He closed the screen. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  Frank noticed his co-clerk’s eyes moving around his office. Her mouth was open, and she was beginning to smile.

  “You have a child, I see. A child who draws pictures.”

  “If you like those, I have a couple scrapbooks here, just his better stuff.” He started to pull out a drawer. “We don’t save everything.”

  “That’s okay.” Eva removed her glasses and rubbed her right eye in rapid circles. After a few seconds, she continued. “Why is the Bar out here so ratty about our judge?” She replaced her glasses and leaned against the doorframe. “My girlfriend says he’s not all that popular.”

  “A lot of people never wanted him.” Frank closed the drawer and twiddled the mouse to open a game of solitaire. “Two years ago, when he was appointed, most locals thought David Norcross was some do-good carpetbagger from Boston.” He nodded toward the thing in Eva’s hand. “What the heck’s that?”

  “Mini-barbell,” she said, curling it against her side. “I messed up my wrist.” Eva pointed with her free hand. “Queen on the king. So how’d our guy get picked?”

  “Never hurts to have a cabinet member for a brother.” Two aces appeared, and Frank began moving cards briskly. “Now we’re cooking. Raymond Norcross, the gazillionaire former governor of Wisconsin, and now our secretary of commerce, happens to be the judge’s big brother.”

  He held up four fingers and waggled them. “So. Western Massachusetts had the following choices: take David Norcross, take nobody, wait to see if the administration changes, or wait until Secretary Norcross screws up and gets fired. In the end, they chose the little piggy that went to market.” He paused to examine the screen. “But one or two people are still going ‘wee-wee-wee’ all the way home.”

  “So it was rigged?”

  “No, no. The ABA gave him its highest rating. But stellar qualifications only get you so far in this game.” He made a face at his computer, closed the solitaire screen, and looked up at Eva. “Rumor has it Secretary Norcross got worried after his little brother’s wife passed. After the funeral, I guess he was billing, like, eighteen hours a day and sleeping on the foldout in his office. So brother Ray …”

  The intercom beeped, and Frank picked up. After a pause, he said, “Be right there.” He set the phone down. “We’re wanted.”

  Frank led Eva through the library and reception area. They found the judge bent over his computer like a heron studying the surface of a pond. He gestured at them to sit down but did not glance up. The oak credenza behind his desk carried a row of African sculptures.

  “What’s on for this week?” Frank asked. “Something more cheerful I hope.”

  Frank enjoyed Norcross’s habit of tapping out a fresh quotation for his computer’s scrolling screen saver to establish a weekly theme for the chambers. Last week’s, in Frank’s opinion, had been too leaden—the question to God in Psalm 8: “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?”

  “ ‘Oh spirit of love,’ ” Norcross quoted. “ ‘how quick and fresh art thou!’ ” He scratched his cheek, dropped his eyes from the screen, and checked off something on his yellow pad.

  “Much better!” Frank said.

  Eva, with a quick glance at Frank, began, “Uh, is it out of line to ask …”

  Norcross held up a hand and smiled. “Nope. Rule Seventeen.”

  “Rule Seventeen,” Frank said. “No cross-examination about the weekly quote.”

  “Rule Eighteen,” Norcross added. “No cross-examination about why we have Rul
e Seventeen.”

  The judge tilted back his chair and blew out a breath. “We’re a strange little family here, Eva, but you’ll get used to us.” He rocked forward. “Anyway, listen. I just got a call from Skip Broadwater. It looks like we may have a doozy coming.”

  The reference to Delmore “Skip” Broadwater, chief judge of the District of Massachusetts, provoked happy memories in Frank. As a reporter he’d done a profile of Broadwater and had been amused to discover that this powerful Boston Brahmin was actually an elf in half glasses—totally bald, and about five foot three. His penchant for salty phrases made him a journalist’s joy. When Frank asked him how he liked his job as chief, he replied that he was “busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” Frank was crushed when his editor spiked the quote.

  He wrote “Broadwater” on his yellow pad with a smiley face next to it and waited while Norcross pulled on the end of his nose and sniffed, a sure sign something big was up.

  Norcross pointed at the two clerks. “I need some banzai research on what constitutes conduct in furtherance of a racketeering enterprise. The word from Boston is that our U.S. attorney will be making moves to shift a gang case, this double homicide yesterday, out of state court into federal court here in Springfield using the RICO statute.”

  Frank broke in. “So he can …”

  “Right,” Norcross said. “So he can seek the death penalty.”

  “Oh brother.” Eva’s shoulders drooped, and she looked up at the ceiling.

  “Hogan’s been aching to zap somebody for ages,” Frank said. “He must have had all the papers ready, just waiting for something like this. The shithead. Excuse me.”

  “I thought death penalty cases hardly ever happened in federal court,” Eva said.

  “They don’t, but Massachusetts has no DP,” Frank replied. “No one’s gotten the big jab here in more than fifty years. But in federal court it’s allowed, and there’s a huge push from Washington to bring federal capital cases in states like Massachusetts. Hogan’s happy to …”

  “Be that as it may, Frank,” Norcross interrupted. “We might be toys for the politicians, but the fact is our session will probably have the honor of getting the first of these lollipops. We need to be ready.” He sniffed again and shook his head. “Death. My favorite thing.”

  “It might not happen,” Eva said. “They only got the kid who drove the car.”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “The talk shows are already on fire. The dead nurse, O’Connor? She helped start the Walnut Street Clinic, working for free. Her family even donated the damned building. Now she gets whacked on the sidewalk right outside.” He shrugged. “I’m, um, I’m betting the driver caves …”

  As the end of his sentence trailed off, Frank noticed that the judge was staring out the window, his face blank. After a few seconds, Norcross spoke, and his voice was tired. “This I certainly did not expect.” He cleared his throat, turned from his view of the sky, and pointed to the clerks. “So. We’ll need to get a jump on this. I want a genius-level summary of the law of continuing criminal enterprises by noon tomorrow. And here’s a nice bone for you two to chew on: Can the accidental shooting of a bystander constitute conduct in aid of a racketeering enterprise such as a street gang?”

  When the two clerks continued to sit looking at him, he waved them off. “That’s it. Go. Work hard. Make me look brilliant.”

  On the way back to their offices, Frank leaned toward Eva and whispered: “Sorry. Forgot to mention Rule Seventeen.” His tongue probed for the tip of his mustache. “Still. Spirit of love? You can’t help wondering what’s up.”

  5

  By the beginning of November, the bright days of early autumn had passed, and a steady rain was falling on the town of Ludlow. Heavy drops spattered the razor wire surrounding the Hampden County Correctional Center, slapped against the windows, and formed inky puddles on the blacktop sidewalks connecting the towers. At approximately six thirty p.m., in a mustard-yellow, windowless conference room, with the defendant’s appointed attorney, Holyoke Police Captain Sean Daley, and an assistant district attorney from Hampden County looking on, Ernesto “Pepe” Rivera, the driver of the stolen Nissan, affixed his wobbly, childish signature to two documents.

  The four people in the room were a highly unsociable group. Rivera looked at no one and exuded a sullen wariness just short of outright hostility. His lawyer simply pointed to where his client had to sign. In the lockup after his arrest, the boy had barely condescended to speak to him, asking only if his uncle Carlos had shown up, if his mother knew what happened, and how much rec time he’d get at the jail. The lawyer could hardly believe it when his client phoned him out of the blue two weeks later to say he wanted to meet with the prosecutors.

  Captain Sean Daley was Ginger Daley O’Connor’s uncle; he looked as though he hadn’t slept since her shooting. He glared at Rivera with so much malicious contempt that, without saying a word, he spoke louder than anyone in the room.

  The assistant district attorney did little more than make sure the papers were in order, since she suspected, correctly, that Rivera’s case would soon migrate from state to federal court. Two FBI agents had already stopped by her office, picking up police reports and getting names. Soon Buddy Hogan, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, would be selecting the local assistant who would actually present the evidence to the federal grand jury and, when the indictment came down, try the case. Good luck to him or her. Half of western Massachusetts would want to hang the defendant without bothering with a trial; the other half would hit the roof at the idea of a death penalty case. If this was Hogan’s idea of fun, the feds were welcome to it.

  The first of the two documents Rivera signed was a plea agreement, which in exchange for the defendant’s full and complete cooperation gave him a chance, if the judge went along, at a maximum prison term of no more than twenty years. The second was a three-page statement providing the details of the drive-by and naming the man who shot Edgar “Peach” Delgado and Ginger Daley O’Connor. Rivera initialed each page; then he and his attorney signed both documents at the bottom. Rivera’s eyes, as he shoved the papers across to the ADA, returned Captain Daley’s icy stare. He said nothing as he rose and limped out of the room, manacled and shackled between two correctional officers.

  Later that evening, Alex Torricelli was hunched over a keyboard at the Holyoke Police Headquarters typing out two other documents, both applications directed to the Hampden County Superior Court: the first for a search warrant specifying an address on the outskirts of the Flats in Holyoke, and the second for an arrest warrant naming the man who lived there, Clarence “Moon” Hudson. Hudson was a twice-convicted drug dealer, known to have a grudge against Peach Delgado; he was associated with the street gang La Bandera, and he was the man Rivera had named as the shooter.

  As soon as the ADA informed headquarters of the positive identification, Alex phoned the clerk magistrate, Delores Andersen, and made sure she was available to come downtown after hours to swear out the affidavit and sign the paperwork. The clerk was known by law enforcement officers throughout the county, not too affectionately, as Deadly Delores due to her tendency to mess up paperwork, lose documents, and generally get sand in her undies. Given the risks, the police were requesting a “no knock” warrant, permitting entry onto the premises without a prior warning.

  Off-duty Holyoke officers were already arriving to beef up the arrest team. Since it was a joint investigation under the auspices of the Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force, city police would be joined by an FBI case agent and two special agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Because of his personal interest, Captain Daley would be joining the group only as an observer. The arrest site was already under surveillance, but the target was not yet on the premises. Moon Hudson was known to be living with his wife or girlfriend and their infant child.

  The weeks s
ince Rivera’s arrest had not been happy ones for Alex Torricelli. After a bridge, two caps, and many hours in the dentist’s chair, his mouth was more or less repaired, but it was still puffy and distorted. Even worse, the work on his left ear had not been entirely successful. Despite the surgeon’s best efforts, a gnarled fold protruded. Alex’s older brother, Tony, had taken to calling him Mr. Spock, and Alex was still startled and depressed by the face he saw in the bathroom mirror each morning. But his insurance had paid out as much as it was going to, and if he had to spend the rest of his life with a puss that looked like a half-deflated soccer ball, so be it. Alex secretly agreed with his brother that it was no great loss.

  After almost three weeks, Janice and the baby finally returned from her parents’ home in Billerica, but Alex was still exiled to the spare bedroom.

  Alex heard heavy footsteps behind him and felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “So, Allie, how’s the secretarial work going? Mind if I play with your tits?”

  “Don’t bug me, Jimmy, and I’ll get this done faster.”

  It was Alex’s sergeant, a man with chrome-white hair and a perennial toothpick in his mouth, a famous kidder. Alex didn’t bother to look at him. He peered down at a photocopy of Rivera’s statement, then resumed typing.

  “Some of us were looking at your report from the day of the shooting, Al.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You said the guy you saw leave the gray Nissan by the projects was probably Hispanic. Could he have been a black guy?”

  “Could’ve been.” Alex’s typing slowed down.

  “Could it have been this joker?”

  The sergeant placed a three-by-five color photo of a solemn-faced African-American male on the desk next to the typewriter.

  Alex did not look at the picture, but he stopped typing, pushed the photo away, and turned around.

  “You’re the third guy in the last fucking hour who asked me that question, Jimmy. And guess what? The answer is still the same: It could have been. It could have been him, but I didn’t get a decent look at his face so I can’t say for sure. Okay? I couldn’t say for sure a half hour ago, and I couldn’t say for sure fifteen minutes ago. And I won’t be able to say for sure ten minutes from now, either. So do me a favor and go direct some traffic while I finish this up.”