The Judge Who Stole Christmas

by Randy Singer

  Arginot laughed out loud. “Let me get this straight. You want David Arginot to carry the bags of a third-year law student who’s never tried a case?”

  “What I want doesn’t matter. But yes, that’s what the client wants. And did I mention you’d have to do it for free? Reverend Hester will have to agree not to use this case for fund-raising purposes.”

  Arginot snorted. “Nothing personal, Jasmine, but that’s not going to happen. Since you’re just a law student, let me explain a few facts about the real world. Number one, David Arginot never works for free. Number two, you’ve got to file a motion asking the court to allow you back into the case—”

  “Done.”

  “Congratulations. Number three, you’ve got to find someone to supervise you, because I’m sure not going to do it.”

  “I can find someone else if I need to.”

  “And number four, the judge has to allow this to happen, which I doubt she’ll do. Even if she’s willing, she won’t do it without a hearing. And since I’m busy working on the appeal right now, I won’t be available for a hearing until sometime later this week, and by then it will be too late.”

  Jasmine waited a few beats in order to calm down. Yes, he was condescending. And yes, he was arrogant. But Jasmine needed someone to supervise her on this case, and Arginot was the only other lawyer up to speed right now.

  “The judge thought you might say something like that,” Jasmine replied. “So after she read my motion to rejoin the case, she called me and asked me to make this phone call at her secretary’s desk, just outside the judge’s chambers. She said if you objected, I should come inside her chambers, and we could call you back on the speakerphone so we can resolve this situation immediately.”

  Jasmine smiled at the judge’s secretary as she heard Arginot inhale sharply. “You’re at the judge’s office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And she asked you to do it this way?”

  “She did.”

  “Don’t you see, Jasmine? She just wants you to handle the appeal so that she won’t get overturned. She knows I’ll get her reversed.”

  “Do you want me to get her on the speakerphone in her office so you can tell her that yourself?”

  A big sigh. “No, that won’t be necessary. You can take the lead in the courtroom, but you need to at least allow me to handle the press.”

  Jasmine considered this for an instant. It wasn’t perfect, but then things seldom were. “At no cost.”

  “What’s your client got against Hester?”

  “Our client, Mr. Arginot. And that’s beside the point. Are you willing to do this pro bono, or should I get somebody else?”

  “All right,” he said. “I don’t like it, but it doesn’t appear that I have much choice unless I’m willing to let you bumble through this case without me. And as we both know, the precedent at stake is too important for me to do that.” Jasmine smiled to herself as she listened to this face-saving lecture. “Tell your client it’s an early Christmas present,” Arginot sputtered.

  Jasmine thanked him and got off the phone as quickly as possible before Arginot could change his mind. Ichabod leaned against her door and smiled. “Nicely done,” she said.

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “Now go do us all a favor and tell your client to learn a little respect for the rule of law. You can still appeal my decision even if he’s not sitting in jail.”

  Jasmine didn’t know what to say. She was grateful that Judge Baker-Kline had allowed her back on the case, but this was pushing a little too hard.

  “I understand that, Your Honor. But Mr. Hammond has his reasons.”

  “So do I, Ms. Woodfaulk. So do I.”

  Jasmine made the second phone call she was dreading on the way to the law school library. This time, she talked to one secretary, one receptionist, one paralegal, and eventually ended up in Pearson Payne’s voice mail. Ten minutes later he called back.

  He was not happy to learn that she would be back in the case. “That French lawyer working for that televangelist is not doing you any favors,” Pearson said. “He’s filling up the airwaves with all kinds of bigoted nonsense. You wouldn’t believe how many of my partners have said how grateful they are that you’re off the case. What am I supposed to tell them now?”

  How about telling them the truth? Jasmine wanted to say. But she found 115,000 reasons to swallow those words. “I don’t know, Mr. Payne. I’m sorry, but I need to do this.”

  “Think about the future, Jazz. This case might seem big now, but it’s nothing compared to the cases you’ll be handling if you come to Gold, Franks.”

  Jasmine hesitated. She didn’t want to argue with Pearson Payne. “It’s not the size of the case, Mr. Payne—”

  “Pearson.”

  “Right. Pearson. It’s just that I feel strongly about this. It’s something I really need to do.”

  Pearson let silence be his answer. After he had made his point, he spoke softly, accenting his disappointment. “I’ll do what I can, Jazz. But I can’t promise you that we won’t revoke our offer. A lot of our clients see this differently than you. And my partners don’t like our recruits to create problems with the clients.”

  “I know,” Jasmine said. “I wish there were some other way.”

  When she hung up, she realized how much she liked Pearson Payne. He was the kind of lawyer she hoped to become. And the last thing in the world she wanted to do was upset him. Well, maybe the second-to-last thing. The last thing would be to bail on a deserving client.

  Quitters never win. To be able to look at herself in the mirror, she had to do this, even if it cost her the best job she would ever be offered. How dumb was that? Sometimes she wished her dad had been anything but a basketball coach.

  When Theresa called the breeder, the man acted like he worked for the CIA. “Your puppy is the runt of the litter,” he told Theresa. Traditionally, the owner of the sire got to pick one puppy from the litter for himself or herself. That person had been very clear that he or she didn’t want his or her name divulged to anybody who called with a question. According to the breeder, the owner of the sire swore him to secrecy, saying the puppy would be a special and mysterious Christmas gift for somebody.

  “Are the dogs good with little kids?” Theresa asked.

  “The best,” the breeder said. “Especially if they’re around children while the dogs are still puppies.”

  “How big will he get?” Theresa asked.

  “Thirty pounds max—a great inside dog.” The breeder went into a long spiel about how playful and even-tempered cocker spaniels are. “What did you name him?”

  “I’m waiting till the older kids get home.” When Theresa hung up the phone, she felt a little guilty for pretending she might keep him. And the puppy didn’t make things any easier when he looked at her with those droopy little eyes and wagged his tail so hard that his entire backside shook.

  The kids were pretty quiet as Theresa drove them home from school. She parked the minivan next to the trailer, and the kids got out without a word, helping her drag “the babies” out of their car seats and carry them inside.

  “Let’s put the babies in the living room and put up the gate,” Theresa told Tiger and Hannah. “Then I want you guys to wait in the kitchen and cover your eyes.”

  A surprise! This perked the kids up a little. After taking care of the toddlers, they stood with their hands over their eyes, still wearing their winter coats, as Theresa went to the bedroom to get the puppy out of his crate. “No peeking,” she called out.

  She quietly placed the puppy on the kitchen floor. “You can look now,” she said, thinking it was a miracle that Tiger had not already done so.

  Hannah dropped her hands, spotted the cocker spaniel, then jumped and squealed in delight. She covered her mouth and stifled another scream. Tiger darted around her and cornered the puppy so the mauling could begin. The kids loved all over the hyper little guy while Theresa tried valiantly to explain
that they couldn’t keep him. The puppy got a little scared and tucked his tail between his legs as the kids passed him back and forth. He was looking at Theresa, practically begging her to bail him out. When he realized it wasn’t going to happen, he resorted to Plan B. The kids dropped him on the floor immediately.

  “He does that when he gets excited,” Theresa said.

  “Gross,” Tiger said.

  “He’s so cute,” Hannah said. “Can’t we keep him, Momma? Pleeeeease!”

  Within seconds, the begging started in earnest. They both promised to feed and water the puppy every day, take him for walks, train him in the most sophisticated tricks, and clean their rooms every day for the rest of their lives. Without hesitation, both offered to forgo any other Christmas gift if they could just keep the puppy. Hannah even offered to throw in next year’s birthday as well, though Tiger was conspicuously silent on that point.

  The kids were relentless, and everyone involved knew that it would be only a matter of minutes before Theresa would crack. Secretly, Theresa was on the side of the kids—how could she not be when she looked into those sad brown puppy eyes? She knew Thomas wouldn’t approve. If they ever did get a dog, he’d want some kind of huge outdoor mutt that he could take into the woods logging with him, not some prissy indoor puppy. But as far as Theresa was concerned, Thomas had forfeited his vote by getting himself thrown into jail. If he wanted to veto the puppy, he needed to be home to do it.

  “If we did keep him,” Theresa said, “what would you name him?”

  Because he came as a Christmas gift, Hannah suggested “Angel.”

  “Mom said he’s a boy,” Tiger responded. “Angel’s a girl’s name.”

  Hannah pondered this for a moment. “Then how ’bout Gabriel,” she said, showing off her almost-encyclopedic biblical knowledge—it seemed the girl remembered everything she heard in Sunday school. “Gabriel is the name of an angel.”

  Tiger studied the puppy. “He doesn’t look like a Gabriel.”

  Hannah grunted and threw her hands in the air. “Then you name him.”

  “What about Spot?” Tiger suggested. “He’s got a light brown spot right in the middle of his forehead.”

  Hannah made a noise like this was the dumbest idea she had ever heard in her long and well-traveled little life. “Everybody names their dog Spot,” she complained. “See Spot run.” Then she had another idea. “What about King? There are kings in the Christmas story too.”

  Tiger looked skeptical but didn’t reject the name outright. His face brightened. “His nickname could be King Kong.”

  So King it was, though Theresa didn’t think this innocent little puppy looked anymore like a king than the Christ child must have in the manger.

  “Does this mean we can keep him? I mean, keep King?” Hannah asked.

  Theresa tried to act put out. “If you promise to take care of him, and if you keep your rooms clean every day, and if you continue to make good grades in school, we can probably keep him.”

  This set off a chorus of squealing while King drizzled his enticement on the kitchen floor.

  “Yippee!” Tiger shouted. “This is the best Christmas ever!”

  “Except that Daddy’s in jail,” Hannah reminded him.

  “Oh yeah,” Tiger said. “I didn’t mean that part.”

  Jasmine had no time to second-guess her decision about the Hammond case. Late Monday afternoon the Fourth Circuit responded to the notice of appeal and request for an expedited schedule that David Arginot had filed early Monday morning. Arginot called Jasmine to break the news.

  “They want both sides to file briefs by the close of business on Wednesday,” he said. “Oral argument will be Thursday at 2:00 p.m. They’re obviously trying to have a decision out by Friday, before Christmas.”

  Jasmine knew things would move fast—but two days to write the brief! She nearly had to pick herself up off the floor. “How much progress have you made on the brief?” she asked.

  Arginot grunted. “I had my hands full this weekend responding to media requests. I was lucky to get the notice of appeal done today.”

  “So nothing—you’ve done nothing on the brief?”

  “I’ve done some research, Jasmine.” Defensiveness crept into Arginot’s tone. “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “What about the town? Do you know how they’re coming?”

  This brought a sarcastic laugh. “The town?” Arginot repeated. “As in Mr. Ottmeyer?” Another forced chuckle. “We couldn’t even talk him into filing an expedited appeal.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Ottmeyer said the town didn’t have any real immediacy associated with its case. No town officials are in jail, and even if they got a decision late this week, they’ve already missed the opportunity to display the manger scene in the final weeks before Christmas this year.”

  “What if they got a reversal on Friday? Is he saying they wouldn’t even try to set something up for Saturday night or Christmas Eve?”

  “I think what he’s really saying, Jasmine, is that he knows we’re pushing for an expedited appeal, and he can just tag along with a lot less work than if he filed his own.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “You want his cell phone number so you can tell him that?”

  Jasmine sighed. “No. I’ve got too much work to do.”

  They spoke for a few more minutes about the details of the appeal, with Jasmine expecting Arginot to offer his help in some way on the brief. But there were apparently too many media opportunities still to mine. When she hung up the phone, one thing was blatantly obvious—she might have to share the credit if they won, but there was nobody willing to share the work in the meantime.

  Forty-eight hours to write, edit, and file the most important brief of her life.

  She found a study carrel in the back of the library, booted up her laptop, and settled in for a long night.

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19

  By Tuesday afternoon Jasmine started to panic. Twenty-four hours had passed since the phone call with Arginot. In another twenty-four hours she had to file her brief. That deadline had kept her at the library until it closed at midnight, when she shifted to her apartment, where she worked the rest of the night. Still, she was making little progress. She would write a few pages, throw them out, do some more research, then repeat the process. At this rate Thomas Hammond would lose by default.

  The case seemed simple enough—can a town display a manger scene on the town square along with other symbols of the holiday season? That question had already been answered affirmatively by the Supreme Court. But the town and its attorney had fumbled this matter so badly that it was almost impossible to construct a good argument on behalf of Thomas.

  If the town had initially included the manger scene as part of a much broader display of Christmas traditions, they would have been fine. The case would have been virtually identical to Lynch v. Donnelly, where the Court held that the crèche had a secular purpose—depicting the historical origins of a national holiday—and therefore didn’t violate the establishment clause when it was displayed alongside other symbols of the season. But the original display in Possum had included only the manger scene, a Christmas tree, and an unmanned Santa Claus sleigh. And the display was managed by the mayor’s own church, a fact that Harrod would undoubtedly emphasize to show that a reasonable observer would view it as an endorsement of the Christian religion.

  The town’s attempt to remedy the situation—Operation Xmas Spirit—had its own set of difficulties. According to Ichabod, Possum had shown its true religious purpose when it first displayed the crèche pretty much by itself. Judge Baker-Kline ruled that this original purpose tainted even the Operation Xmas Spirit display, despite the fact that the new display had more things secular than it did religious.

  To make matters worse, Jasmine was not even sure that she could raise these issues about Ichabod’s first two rulings on her appeal. Thomas was not in jail because of the original displ
ay or the Operation Xmas Spirit display—he was in jail because he kept setting up his own display. Under the Capitol Square Review case, Thomas should have been allowed to set up a religious display in a public arena using the same application and permitting process that everyone else had used. But that was the problem. Thomas hadn’t been treated the same. He had been given preferential treatment and granted a permit only after he had already set up the crèche.

  What a mess, Jasmine thought. She rubbed her eyes and stared at her laptop screen.

  Her cell phone vibrated. Though she had made a rule not to answer any calls or check voice mail until she filed her brief, she glanced at the caller ID out of curiosity. Area code 212. Pearson Payne or some New York talk-show producer. It was the third time today someone had called from a New York City area code.

  Jasmine let the call kick into voice mail and then, knowing she would regret it later, started checking her messages. There were eight, three from Pearson Payne. He didn’t sound happy.

  She rubbed her face and settled back to work, but she couldn’t get her mind off the calls. You couldn’t refuse to call back a man as powerful as Pearson Payne, though she really didn’t want to deal with him right now. The publicity on the case had continued, with Christian leaders calling for spontaneous displays of manger scenes everywhere—church property, private homes, town squares. Jasmine was pretty sure that Reverend Hester was still using the controversy to raise boatloads of money, though she didn’t have time to check.

  Pearson would not be happy. But still, she owed him a call.

  She grabbed her cell phone and walked outside the library into the frigid late-afternoon air. She knew that Pearson would still be in his office—New York firms get their second wind at 5 p.m. She dialed the number and closed her eyes.

  “Pearson Payne’s office.”

  “Hi, this is Jazz Woodfaulk returning Mr. Payne’s calls.”

  “One moment please.”

  When Pearson came on the line, Jasmine braced for an explosion. Instead, Pearson asked about the case and seemed genuinely interested as Jasmine explained her predicament. He quizzed her about the hearings in front of Judge Baker-Kline and made a few suggestions about how to argue the appeal, mostly things Jasmine had already considered. She told him how panicked she was about filing a brief tomorrow that she hadn’t really even started.