Judgment Read online

  WESTERFIELD: I can’t get you access.

  MEYERS: But the SEC specifically requested the accredited investor forms.

  WESTERFIELD: I’ll handle.

  MEYERS: This is a problem. I can’t certify without access to those forms.

  WESTERFIELD: not to worry

  Juliana made a note on a legal pad: Mayfair Paragon? Then: accredited investor forms? What was that? Was this the reason she was being blackmailed? Did it have something to do with this?

  A knock at the door.

  “Come on in,” Juliana said.

  The door opened. Philip Hersh entered, holding a paper bag. He closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and set the bag down on her desk. “You like chicken Caesar salad, right?” he said. “Light on the dressing?”

  “How’d you know?”

  He shrugged. “I understand this is your lunch break. Mind if I take a couple minutes of it?”

  “Please. And thanks for the salad.”

  “I have a bit of information on Matías Sanchez.”

  “So do I. I saw him after we spoke.”

  “I know.” He looked annoyed. “I asked you not to. Urged you not to.”

  She was surprised by his tone. She said, “Well, I’m here, aren’t I? What information do you have?”

  “It’s interesting. Harlan Madden doesn’t know much about him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Harlan and I had a good chat this morning.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Apparently American Lawyer is working on a piece about Boston’s Top Defense Legal Eagles.” He smiled. “Harlan’s a superlawyer.”

  “And he fell for it.”

  “Vanity knows no bounds. So he says that the client, Wheelz, insisted that Matías Sanchez be added to the defense lineup.”

  “But why?”

  “He has no idea. Sounds like they’re not coordinating, not working together at all. Madden’s not sure what he’s there for. It sort of pisses him off, I could tell, but he wouldn’t say that out loud. Okay, so your meeting with the guy. Was it really worth it? Did you find out something useful?”

  “What I learned was that he’s not a player. He’s a pawn. And he’s scared.” She opened the bag, took out a clear plastic box and a plastic fork, opened the box, and speared a piece of grilled chicken.

  “He said so?”

  She nodded. She took a bite, chewed.

  “Pawn of who?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure he knows. Which reminds me.” She checked her notepad. “I need you to dig into something called Mayfair Paragon.”

  “What is it?” He took out a pocket notebook and wrote it down.

  “That’s what I want to know. It came up a number of times in the chats they want to withhold. The Mayfair Paragon file.”

  He pointed at the pile of boxes. “The chats are in there?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you show me?”

  “I can’t. Legally, only my law clerk and I can look at the discovery materials.”

  “Who’s gonna know?”

  “Me. That’s the problem. Sorry.”

  “Then at least give me context.”

  “I can’t right now. I have to finish reading for the afternoon’s motion session.” She glanced at her watch. “Back to work.”

  * * *

  —

  “All rise,” the court officer called out. He was a tall man of forty with a gray crew cut and a large pear-shaped protruding gut. His name was George, and he’d been working in the Suffolk courthouse since forever.

  She entered the courtroom, laptop under her arm. She took her seat at the bench, put down her laptop, and looked over the courtroom.

  Glenda Craft and Harlan Madden were there, along with their second chairs, but not Matías Sanchez.

  “Uh, Mr. Madden?” she said.

  “Yes, Your Honor?” He rose.

  “I see your whole team isn’t here.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Sanchez will be here any moment. Traffic, I bet.”

  “Do you have any objection to our proceeding without him?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Then let us begin.”

  Matías Sanchez never showed up.

  20

  Right after the afternoon session, Juliana left the courthouse, got her car from the garage across the street, and picked up Jake in front of his high school. He had to get to his SAT prep class in the farthest reaches of Newton. The sun was still out and bright; it hung in the air, burnt orange and enormous. Jake got into the car, shrugging off his backpack, looking sullen.

  “How was school?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “That bad, eh?”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Faculty meeting. You’re stuck with me.” She pulled away from the curb. She glanced in her rearview.

  Are you being followed? Hersh had asked.

  “How was the history exam?”

  “Fine.” His tone invited no follow-up.

  “How do you like Mr. Bertone?”

  No reply. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him shrug.

  “He’s got to be better than Ms. Thomas.” Ms. Thomas was his seventh-grade history teacher with whom he had repeatedly clashed.

  She signaled left and merged into heavy traffic on Route 9. From time to time she checked her rearview mirror. Jake was looking at his phone.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re famous.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, not you, but the Wheelz case. Wow, there’s this whole subreddit about the trial.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s on Reddit—anyway, what’s her name, Rachel Meyers? Wheelz employees are really sliming her.”

  “How so?”

  He read from his phone. “‘That skanknasty bitch should be on her knees saying thank you to Devin for putting her in a big job she wasn’t ready for.’”

  “Lovely.”

  “‘Skeevy ho wants millions for every bj she gave.’”

  “Jake.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t write it.”

  “It’s a swamp of trolls out there.”

  “It says Wheelz offered her millions of dollars for a settlement and she turned it down. That she’s just some greedy pig, and it’s all ’cause Devin Allerdyce asked her out on a date.”

  “It went a lot further than asking her out on a date, Jake. She was subjected to all kinds of abuse. Sexual harassment. So she reported it to the head of HR, who’s a woman. She figured, you know—”

  “The sisterhood.”

  “Instead, the head of HR turned right around and told the CEO. Who fired her on a totally bogus pretext. Performance issues. Bad advice. Like that.”

  “You don’t sound very neutral.”

  “In the courtroom I am. Totally. You know that. But I’m also a human being, and I have opinions. Can’t help it.”

  In her rearview mirror she noticed a black Suburban with a tinted windshield, the same one that had been behind her since leaving the high school.

  There was a long silence, and then she said, “Was Tyler back in school?” Tyler was one of his best friends and had been out sick for a while.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad he’s better. His mom was worried. Speaking of which, you don’t still have a sore throat, do you?”

  “That was one day, and it wasn’t even really sore.”

  “You’d tell me if it was getting sore, wouldn’t you?”

  “Jesus!” He hated questions about his health.

  She knew she tended to be alarmist and think the worst, fear a return of the Hodgkin’s, but what could she do? When he went throug
h that ordeal, she did too. She’d seen the fragility of life. She’d seen her son go partly bald during chemo; he had the rest of his hair shaved off. She remembered how skeletal he looked, his skin fish-pale. She’d seen her son hooked up to an IV for more than two months because his intestines had stopped working and he could no longer eat. No longer would a fever or a lump ever be routine.

  Yet her overprotectiveness invariably incited his anger, as if she were pointing out some kind of weakness.

  “All right, all right,” she said. She glanced in the rearview again and saw the same black Suburban, a couple of cars behind. Opaque windows, a Massachusetts plate.

  She felt her insides twist. That had to be them, following her for some reason. Some reason she didn’t want to know.

  “Why do I have to go to this stupid class anyway?”

  “Because it’s important.” She could barely concentrate on the argument, she was so anxious.

  “It’s pointless.”

  “If you . . . If you do well on the SAT you won’t have to take it again, think of it that way.”

  “Lots of colleges are SAT-optional now. It’s not like when you were in high school.”

  “Okay,” she said. She didn’t want to argue. Her mind was stuck on that black Suburban a couple of cars back. What the hell was it doing, were they doing—just intimidating her? Reminding her that she couldn’t make a move unobserved?

  “If I don’t get my homework done, you’re just gonna be pissed off.”

  “If you . . .” She wanted to say, If you don’t waste your time on Instagram or whatever, but she caught herself in time. Don’t be Judge Judy. “You’ll get your homework done,” she said.

  “It’s tedious.”

  “What is?”

  “This pointless SAT prep class. It’s a waste of my time.”

  “And we know how valuable your time is,” she said. She changed lanes, and so did the black Suburban. Anxiety sent ants crawling up the back of her neck. What the hell? If they were trying to intimidate her, it was working.

  “Dad says this whole ridiculous system is just designed to turn us all into sheep. Excellent sheep.”

  She sighed. Duncan had a well-thumbed copy of a book called Excellent Sheep on his bedside table.

  He went on, “Bionic hamsters. The whole thing is a factory that turns out conformists who get perfect grades and are good at taking tests. Dad says it’s all bullshit.”

  She didn’t want to argue about this either. The grim fact was that Jake’s grades had been dropping, and he didn’t seem to care. His father’s attitude had infected him, she was fairly sure. She wasn’t a tiger mom, but she knew how the world worked, and she wanted Jake to have every opportunity.

  “My brother, Calvin—”

  “Not Calvin again!” Jake protested.

  Her younger brother, Calvin, had been a loser whose life had been a series of failures, until the day he died in a collision with a tractor-trailer that probably wasn’t an accident. He was a Bukowski-reading romantic who prided himself on being edgy and interesting. He’d dropped out of college after his freshman year.

  He smoked a lot of dope—another reason she wanted Jake to stop. The friends he made were the kind who encouraged him in the worst way, brought out the worst in him. One of them turned him onto something stronger. He started a garage band that wasn’t very good. Once she’d even helped him get a booking at a local club in Allston, and then his band showed up totally stoned and barely able to play.

  Calvin’s life, and death, haunted her. Her parents never recovered. Calvin was like an object lesson to her: what could happen, how your life could be derailed, when you made reckless choices.

  She hated using Calvin as a parable, a metaphor for bad judgment, but she did it anyway and always felt guilty when she did.

  “You need to have a plan, that’s all. When people don’t plan, life makes plans for them.”

  “Dad says, ‘Man plans, God laughs.’”

  She smiled. “But you can’t just coast, honey. Look, I see the real world. I have people coming into my courtroom who come from good families and end up in trouble, make bad decisions. I see it all the time.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “You’re at a really crucial point in your life, Jake. It’s not the time to slack off.”

  They had arrived at the modern red-brick office building where the prep course was held. She pulled up to the curb, and Jake opened the door and hopped out.

  As he entered the building, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the black Suburban again, idling at the curb, and something in her finally snapped. She was more angry than scared. How dare they follow her. How dare they intrude on her family. She shut off the car and got out. She felt a tightening in her chest. They would never do anything to her here, not out in the open, not with people around.

  She strode up to the Suburban, feeling hot, prickly with anticipation.

  She rapped her knuckles on the tinted driver-side window, her heart pounding in her ears.

  The window powered down, and an Asian woman in a business suit was looking at her, puzzlement in her eyes. “Juliana? Everything okay?”

  The mother of Soo Jung Kim, a kid in Jake’s class.

  “I’m sorry, Chae-won,” she said. “Wrong car.”

  21

  Jake would be in class for the next two hours, which meant that Juliana had a choice: she could find a Starbucks nearby and work while she waited for him, or she could drive home and then come back to pick him up.

  She decided to drive back to the courthouse and pick up a stack of documents to read at home. As she drove, she replayed her conversation with Jake and regretted how she’d somehow gotten sucked into an argument. He didn’t like talking about school or schoolwork anymore. She remembered when he would chatter excitedly about his day when she picked him up, about his teachers and what he was learning and what happened in recess. But that was long ago; he must have been no older than ten. Now, everything was grist for a potential fight. He didn’t argue nearly as much with his father. Jake was hyperarticulate, unusually so for a kid his age, and scary smart.

  Unfortunately, he’d started coasting, it seemed, at just the wrong time. He just stopped caring. Was it weed? Was it something else? His grades had dropped this year. He was screwing things up for himself. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was doing a Calvin. How could you motivate someone like that? He was so different from Ashley.

  Jake was also so different from the way she’d been when she was his age. She’d been the real grown-up in the house, not her alcoholic mother or her recessive father. She made sure Calvin got to bed on time and did his homework.

  And Calvin, of course, came to resent it.

  Everyone always thought she was so together, so on top of everything, so in control. When the truth was, she always feared she was one stumble away from becoming Calvin. Or Rosalind. She knew it was a lot easier to judge them than to acknowledge how easily she could have been them.

  How baffled poor Chae-won Kim had looked when Juliana had stormed up to her. And she still couldn’t stop looking in the rearview mirror from time to time to check whether she was being followed. Even if she were being followed—what would they find? That she went from home to courthouse and back, with occasional jaunts to Jake’s school. That was about it.

  She lucked into a space on Cambridge Street and entered the courthouse.

  “Judge, isn’t it kind of late for you?” said one of the security guards, waving her through.

  “No rest for the wicked,” she said, an old line they batted back and forth. If you only knew.

  “I hear you.”

  She took the elevator to the ninth floor and walked to her office. The hallway, normally bustling with people going to court, was empty and still.

  She unlocked the door, and before she switched on
the light, she noticed light seeping in from the adjoining courtroom. Strange, she thought. Who could be in the courtroom at this time of day? She switched on her office light and then strode across to the courtroom door, which she opened.

  A janitor was vacuuming the floor of the courtroom. A light-skinned black man with a shaved head, wearing steel-framed glasses. She knew the maintenance and custodial staff, always greeted them by name. But this one she’d never seen before.

  Her nerves were really frayed, her suspicions out of control. The janitor looked up at her; she nodded, and he went back to vacuuming. She closed her office door.

  She located the place in the pile of printouts where she’d stopped reading—she’d marked it with a sticky note—and grabbed about an inch-thick pile of documents, looking around for a file folder.

  She heard a key turn in the door lock and, surprised, looked up. The janitor was opening the door.

  She smiled. “I’ll be out of your way in five or ten minutes,” she said.

  He entered her office anyway, holding a broom.

  “Excuse me,” she said a little louder. “I should be out of here in five or ten minutes.”

  But the janitor kept walking toward her. “This will only take a minute, Judge Brody,” he said. She was surprised he knew her name. She felt a pulse of fear.

  He leaned the broom handle against her desk, then picked up a delicate glass object, blindfolded Lady Justice holding up her scales.

  “Judge of the Year,” he said. He had a pronounced, jutting jaw and was staring at her intently.

  She felt the breath catch in her throat. He was a tall, powerfully built man wearing a tight, tan T-shirt. She could see the ropy muscles along his shoulders and his arms.

  “I’m sure you were worthy of the prize.”

  She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “It’s fragile,” he said. “Like everything we most love in life.”

  He looked as though he could crush the glass statuette in his giant bare hands. Then abruptly he let go, and it smashed on the floor, shattering.

  She gasped and stepped back, terrified, as he picked up something else from her desk, a silver picture frame. Her favorite picture, of her and Duncan and the kids in the middle of a pumpkin patch in autumn. He admired it for a few seconds.