The Judge

by Randy Singer

  Her flight ran late. She ended up in a middle seat. Plus, the taxi smelled like somebody threw up in the backseat last night and the air conditioner didn’t work. She rolled down her window and let the wind frizz her hair. She gave the cabbie a twenty, and he claimed he didn’t have enough ones to make change. She settled for two dollars in quarters.

  By the time Nikki made it to Preston Randolph’s office on Connecticut Avenue, she was hot, sticky, and more than an hour late. She spent a few minutes in the ladies’ room to freshen up before the receptionist ushered her into the conference room. Two men in blue blazers drank coffee and huddled over thick files. They flashed FBI credentials and introduced themselves. Agent Rafferty was a bit old for the FBI—thin body and thin, dark hair. He had leathery skin so wrinkled that it seemed like somebody had left him on the spin cycle too long. His partner, Flynn, was a shorter man with prematurely gray hair and black-rimmed glasses. Nikki could tell right away that Flynn had a Napoleon complex.

  “We understand you have some suspicions about what’s happening on the set of Faith on Trial,” Flynn said. He took his seat after shaking hands and immediately began scrutinizing Nikki. He placed a voice recorder in the middle of the table. “You mind if we tape this?”

  Nikki gave him a puzzled look. “We aren’t going to wait for Mr. Randolph?”

  “He had to leave for court about ten minutes ago,” Flynn said. “He didn’t know we’d be running so late.”

  It sounded like an accusation, and Nikki began wondering whose side Flynn was on. “Neither did I,” she shot back.

  “You mind?” Flynn asked again, nodding at the recorder.

  This was not a good start. Nikki sensed a been-there-done-that skepticism in Flynn’s voice. She had expected Randolph and the agents to be fully engaged. This was, after all, a national reality show scandal with the life of a sitting state court judge at stake. Instead, Randolph was off to court on some other case, and these guys were acting like she was reporting a missing hubcap.

  “Did Mr. Randolph say when he would be back?”

  Both agents sighed in unison, like a choir of bored Feds. “In an hour or so,” Rafferty said.

  “Could you state your name for the record?” Flynn asked, turning on the recorder. “And give your verbal consent to our taping?”

  “I could,” Nikki said. “But I’d prefer to wait until Mr. Randolph returns.”

  Flynn shoved the pile of documents in front of him a few inches toward Nikki. “This pile right here is a case we’ve been working on for several months. We start grand jury proceedings on Friday. I’ve got four more just as urgent at the office. We’re here as a favor to Mr. Randolph. If there’s anything illegal happening on the Faith on Trial set, we’ll get to the bottom of it. But frankly, Ms. Moreno, we don’t have time for games.

  “Now, please state your name for the record and your consent to the taping of this interview.”

  “My name is Nikki Moreno,” she sputtered. “My tax dollars pay your salaries. The life of a state court judge may be in danger, and you guys are worried about shuffling paperwork. And no, I don’t mind if you tape this stuff as long as I get a copy of the tape.”

  “Are you done?” Flynn asked.

  “I’m just getting started,” Nikki said.

  For the next sixty minutes, the agents asked questions and Nikki provided answers, the level of skepticism growing by the minute. They filled up two tapes with Nikki’s sarcasm and the agents’ cynicism. Nikki offered several times to get Wellington on the phone so he could explain some of the codes in more detail, but the agents said it wouldn’t be necessary.

  Nikki was about ready to throw in the towel when the door blew open and Randolph breezed into the room. “Make any arrests yet?” he asked, smiling. He shook hands with Nikki and apologized for getting caught in court.

  Flynn and Rafferty both gave Randolph a skeptical look. “This isn’t exactly what you described on the phone,” Flynn said, his voice a combination of boredom and frustration. “Secret messages from a game show contestant who expects us to get a search warrant just because he tells us to—”

  “A judge,” Nikki interrupted. “Not a game show contestant.”

  “A judge,” Flynn repeated, “who ought to know we need more than this.”

  “Oh,” Nikki said, “why didn’t you say so. I’ll just call Judge Finney and see if he can get a taped confession on national TV instead.”

  Flynn extended a palm toward Nikki as if to say, “See what I’ve been putting up with?”

  “If it were easy, we wouldn’t need the FBI,” Randolph said, his voice still pleasant. Rafferty rolled his eyes.

  “Can’t you guys at least go to the island and shake them up a little?” Randolph asked. “If they know we’re onto them, they won’t dare try anything.”

  “The Galápagos aren’t exactly our jurisdiction,” Flynn claimed.

  “And that’s stopped you before?” Randolph grabbed a bottled water and took a seat. Nikki was grateful for the reinforcements as he continued. “They’re taping a show that airs all over the United States. The production crew is entirely American. The contestants are Americans. They send the show by satellite uplink to their studios in New York City. This case has FBI written all over it.”

  Thus began the Moreno-Randolph tag-team combination. Randolph reminded the agents of a few favors they owed him. Nikki told them again that Finney knew what he was doing and would never cry wolf. She detailed the information about Murphy’s religious bias. The tag team eventually wore the agents down and extracted a promise that the agents would visit the island and ask a few questions.

  “We won’t be able to get down there until Friday,” Rafferty said. But Nikki and Randolph both agreed that Friday would be too late. Somebody could get killed in the meantime. By the time the agents escaped the meeting, they had agreed to head to the island the very next day.

  “Are you hungry?” Randolph asked after the agents left. It was midafternoon and Nikki suddenly remembered that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  “Starving.”

  “Me too,” Randolph said. “Begging always does that to me.” He flashed Nikki a billion-dollar smile. “And I know just the place.”

  55

  The food was every bit as delicious as Randolph had said it would be, but the conversation left much to be desired. Randolph spent almost the entire time talking about himself—cases he had tried, verdicts he had won, cars he owned, vacation places that Nikki would have to visit sometime. But Nikki’s favorite topic of conversation was sitting on the opposite side of the table from Randolph. And whenever she brought hers up, Randolph seemed to interrupt with another of his long and elaborate Randolph-centric stories.

  It wasn’t until after they had ordered from the dessert tray that Randolph finally turned to an interesting topic. “If you couldn’t choose your man Finney, who would you say is winning Faith on Trial?” he asked.

  Nikki pretended to think about this for a few seconds, though she already knew the answer. “The Swami.”

  Randolph gave her a knowing smile. “Because of his religion or because of his bedroom eyes?”

  The question seemed out of character for a sophisticated man in such a fancy restaurant, but then a thought hit Nikki. Is this Randolph’s awkward way of flirting? Does he finally realize that he is having lunch with one of Tidewater, Virginia’s, most sought-after bachelorettes?

  “Both.”

  “I see,” Randolph said, his lips still curled in the slightest hint of a smile. “And what particular aspects of his religious beliefs are appealing to you?”

  Nikki didn’t know a thing about the Hindu religion. But she did have a lifetime of experience at changing the subject and avoiding tough questions. “Pretty much all of it. What about you? If you couldn’t choose Kline, who would you say is winning?”

  “That’s hard to say,” Randolph said, looking past Nikki to the windows that lined the far wall. “I guess I’d say Dr. Ando be
cause Buddhism best explains suffering.” He refocused on Nikki, and she noticed a tinge of sadness, something that couldn’t be washed away by living the high life. “In my work, Nikki, I see a lot of clients who have suffered. I need a religion that explains that.”

  In my work. Nikki could tell immediately that this wasn’t really about his work. She remembered Finney’s cross-examination of Ando. “But how does Ando explain it? By saying suffering will always be there? By telling us to ignore it? By detaching from everything important to us, including our lovers and our families?”

  Though Randolph looked surprised at Nikki’s sudden animation, he couldn’t have been nearly as shocked as she was. Listen to me. I suddenly sound like some kind of comparative religion guru.

  “And your religion does?” Randolph chased the sarcasm with a sip of martini.

  “Actually, my religion tries to balance suffering by even greater amounts of partying,” Nikki said, bringing the sly smile back to Randolph’s face.

  “I think I’m a bishop in that religion,” he said.

  “But seriously, Preston, Christianity at least describes an afterlife where all our suffering is over, where perfect justice is done. Buddhism just keeps recycling us so we can face more suffering and injustice.”

  This brought an unnerving stare from Randolph, as if he were trying to look into Nikki’s soul and see if she really believed that herself. Part of her discomfort was in not knowing the answer. She took a quick swig from a nearly empty wineglass.

  Randolph poured her another. “Did you know that I lost a cousin in the 9/11 attacks?” he asked.

  The question shocked Nikki. And she suddenly felt silly debating religion with a man who had lost a relative at the hands of religious extremists. “No. I’m sorry.”

  The sadness returned to Randolph’s eyes, aging the man by a good ten years. “She left behind two kids and a husband who doesn’t have a clue about how to raise them alone.”

  “That’s terrible,” Nikki said. What else could she say? This was so uncomfortable. But it was also helping her see a different side of Randolph. An insecure side. A searching side.

  “It makes you feel helpless,” Randolph said. “All the money in the world can’t bring her back. It’s the first thing I tell my clients when they want to sue somebody for wrongful death.”

  And then dessert arrived. It was hard to talk of suffering while eating such delicious raspberry cheesecake, so Randolph directed the conversation back to his favorite topic—war stories from his various trials. Nikki was actually relieved.

  Dessert was nearly gone when Nikki suddenly remembered to call Wellington and tell him that he no longer had to be on standby for her meeting with the FBI agents.

  “How’d it go?” Wellington asked.

  “The FBI is all over it,” Nikki said, faking as much enthusiasm as possible.

  It was the little things that made Finney want to quit in the first hour. A water droplet formed on the side of his nose, tickling him, but he couldn’t wipe it off. Water running into his eyes and lodging in his ears. One lousy drop at a time, yet he felt like he was drowning, the water dripping down the sides of his face and soaking his hair.

  Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat. He answered all of Dr. Hargraves’s questions and told the shrink he was doing fine. A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews appeared and checked Finney’s vital signs. The doctor expressed concern about the blood pressure but let the judge continue. That was the only human contact Finney had the entire first hour.

  Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat. Finney began counting. Sets of four and repeat. He estimated forty or so drips a minute. Twenty-four hundred drops an hour. He opened his eyes and checked the digital clock on the wall. He worked on the breathing techniques the Swami had shown him. He consciously thought about his heart rate, the swoosh of blood through his veins, and he tried to slow it down. Splat . . . splat . . . splat. When Hargraves and Andrews returned at the top of the second hour, Finney’s blood pressure had improved.

  The chills started in hour three. The water was colder than room temperature and seemed to grow more chilling by the minute. The rivulets flowing through his hair turned into icy spiders. His body itched everywhere. He put on a brave face for Andrews but could tell the doc was concerned. Andrews made Finney take a drink of Powerade through a straw.

  Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat.

  At three hours and twenty minutes, the headache became noticeable. Twenty minutes later, it was all Finney could think about. His mind started playing tricks on him—he pictured the drops like a waterfall that would carve canyons out of rocks over time. He imagined the indentation starting on his forehead. At three hours and fifty-five minutes, he had to consciously relax or he knew the shrink would make him quit.

  Hargraves showed up and asked the same questions as before. Finney answered calmly, hypnotically. His speech had fallen into rhythm with the splat . . . splat . . . splat. A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews arrived and made Finney drink some more Powerade. “Not too much,” Andrews said, “or you’ll have to use the bathroom.”

  “Thanks for making me think about that,” Finney said. “Just what I needed.”

  “We can make those arrangements,” Andrews said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Finney said.

  “See you in another hour,” Andrews said.

  Surprisingly, the next few hours got better. The headache stayed about the same, but Finney fought back the chills. He even stopped counting for a while, though that didn’t last long. His own compulsiveness was adding to the torture, he realized. But there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  The shackles seemed to shrink as the torture progressed, growing more and more uncomfortable. They rubbed against his neck, wrists, and ankles. The experience wouldn’t be half as bad if he could just move around more.

  At the end of hour seven, just as Finney was trying to calm himself in preparation for his visit from Dr. Hargraves, he started coughing. He had been hacking away periodically throughout the time in the chair, but never at the precise moment when the doctors entered the room. This time, he couldn’t bring himself to stop before Hargraves walked in the door.

  “We need to call it quits,” Hargraves suggested, but Finney wouldn’t hear of it. When the judge finally stopped coughing, he insisted that Hargraves bring in Andrews so that the medical doctor could make the call. By the time Andrews arrived, Finney had returned to a nearly vegetative state. “The vitals look fine,” Andrews said. “If you want, you can stay on another hour.”

  The next hour was the longest Finney could remember. The water seemed to explode on his forehead—splat, splat, splat . . . boom! The chills returned with a vengeance, and the headache became nearly unbearable. The doctors consulted and agreed that Finney should quit. He begged for another twenty minutes.

  He never dreamed it would be this hard to endure the water torture for eight hours. The next twenty minutes clicked by ever so slowly—five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen. How did victims of torture ever survive? At eight hours and sixteen minutes, Finney started watching every click of the digital clock, his open eyes stinging from the water. Splat, splat, splat . . . He flinched each time a new drop hit. And then, at precisely eight hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-five seconds, he pushed the panic button.

  The drops stopped immediately.

  A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews entered the room. “That was a good choice, Judge Finney,” he said. Andrews started unfastening the shackles and checking vital signs. “Dr. Hargraves and I were starting to worry about you.”

  “Who’s left?” Finney asked.

  “Just Ando and Hadji.”

  “Good,” Finney said. “How’s Hadji holding up?”

  Andrews didn’t answer for a minute as he counted Finney’s pulse. Then he said, “He’s totally relaxed. Seems like he could go forever.”

  Finney wiped some more water out of his eyes and smoothed back his hair. “Let’s hope so,” he said
.

  56

  Late Thursday afternoon, Nikki received a call from Agent Flynn, her least favorite of the two FBI agents. She had described him as “the little Napoleon” when she told Wellington about him, though the phrase was probably redundant.

  “We just got done talking to the show’s producer and director,” Flynn reported. “They answered every one of our questions. You can relax. Apparently they’re just raising suspicions among the contestants as part of the reality show game.”

  “And you believed them?” Nikki asked.

  “Of course.” Flynn ramped up the defensiveness in his voice. “They had scripts already written showing how that element would play out. Something about seeing how the contestants’ faiths hold up when they’re facing death.”

  “Did you talk to the contestants?”

  “No, we didn’t talk to the contestants. It tends to ruin the element of surprise when you fill the contestants in on what’s happening.” Nikki did not appreciate the sarcasm oozing over the phone lines. “And frankly, I wouldn’t even be telling you this if I thought you still had a way of communicating with Judge Finney. But according to the show’s producer, they’ve suspended the Internet access for the contestants.”

  The comment jarred Nikki. Her only means of communication with Finney disrupted. “Why?”

  “Because the contestants don’t need it anymore. That part of the show’s over.”

  To Nikki, the timing seemed too coincidental. “Did you conduct any searches?”

  “No.”

  “Talk to any assistant producers or production crew members?”

  “Ms. Moreno, we arrived unannounced on the island. We immediately began asking the producer and director questions, and they both got these snide little smiles on their faces like Agent Rafferty and I were the butt of some clever joke. Since I don’t like being laughed at, I ripped into them pretty good. But then they showed me the preexisting scripts for the last few shows where all of this will be unveiled. It became clear that my partner and I were wasting our time.”