The Laws of Gravity (14 page)

She looked around Peter’s well-appointed office. “It’s a start,” she said aloud. She talked to herself more and more these days, as if cancer had given her permission to be eccentric. Her brakes had gone out, no question about it. “Now we’ll see what happens when the car starts rolling downhill.”

It rolled faster than she expected. Less than two weeks later, Peter was on the phone, giving her what he obviously considered to be the bad news. He spoke quietly, as if softening his voice could soften the blow.

“Your cousin has requested a change of venue,” he said. “Says he can’t get a fair trial in Suffolk, apparently there was a similar case a year ago. Prejudicial publicity. So he’s requested that we move the case to Nassau—I suspect his lawyer knows someone or something about the Mineola Courts that we don’t. The Supreme Court judges in Suffolk are a little more open to scientific cases. I was hoping we might keep it out east.”

“What if we refuse the move?” Nicole asked.

Peter sounded impatient. “If we oppose the motion to change venue, that could drag out the decision for several more months. I don’t think your situation can wait. They’re bluffing, in a way, counting on that.”

“Then the hell with it,” Nicole said. “Let’s agree to Mineola. You said it was a gamble either way.”

“It is,” Peter said.

“All right. So let’s go for it.”

“I agree with you,” Peter said. “In addition, they’ve made one mistake they hadn’t calculated on.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ve pissed me off now,” he said. “And I am a far more effective lawyer when I’m angry.”

That same afternoon Mimi called “just to talk, and because I miss you”—this was the message she left on Nikki’s answering machine. Nicole was home, she recognized the caller ID even before Mimi began talking—Mimi had her own distinctive ring tone on their phone that played “You Are My Sunshine,” an old joke between them. But Nicole let the machine
pick up. She did not think she had ever, in the fifteen years she had known Mimi, let a call from her best friend go unanswered. But right now she was too wiped out to talk. This trial was taking everything out of her, and it hadn’t even begun yet, not the ugly part.

She felt angry and bitter, though she knew none of this was her friend’s fault. Somehow that didn’t help. She didn’t know what she would have said if she
had
picked up. That Daisy was trick-or-treating with someone else this year? Someone she didn’t love one-tenth as much as Julian. That she, Nicole herself, felt like an orphan for the first time in her life, though her parents had been dead for years? She let the song play through four rings, then sat listening to Mimi’s voice, its familiar hesitations, the slight nasal quality and tentative laugh in between the hesitations. The voice she would recognize ten thousand years from now. Mimi ended by saying, “I’m babbling here in the hope you might just pick up. So, here’s a short summary of every Jewish holiday: ‘They tried to kill us. We survived. Now, let’s eat.’—Okay, so call me back soon, sweetie.”

But Nicole did not call her back, not then, not soon. The silence stretched between them, a yawning abyss. And that seemed a kind of early death.

Good News, Bad News

The Supreme Court chambers in Mineola divided into two basic camps, if you didn’t count the justices who simply hid in their chambers, uninvolved, and there were many of those. But among those inclined toward socializing, about half of the justices went down into the basement coffee shop, mostly the younger ones. You could hear the buzz of conversation and the clink of cups and cutlery before you’d stepped off the elevator; the smell of toast and coffee drifted out to meet you.

The fare in the coffee shop was basic: grilled cheese sandwiches, wraps, bagels, coffee, fruit, and dessert. The same ancient Chinese woman had been managing the place for ages. Judge Lieu, the most popular of the senior judges, held informal court here, sitting at one of the longer wood-veneer tables. It normally sat eight, but if one pushed in another smaller table right against it, it could fit as many as twelve. There were smaller tables, of course, for friends, coworkers, court-bound families, knots of secretaries, and loners. But Judge Thomas Lieu, even when he sat entirely alone, drinking the green tea he favored, sat at one corner of the long table that ran down the center of the room.

Judge Lieu was Vietnamese. He was a small man, his features so sharply chiseled they seemed carved with a knife, and his hair was still jet-black though he was in his midsixties. He was athletic, a sixth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, known for his long-distance running. Now and again you’d see him out running in a pair of gray sweat shorts and a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt, five or six miles from the center of Mineola, sprinting down Old Country Road with the traffic, or downhill on one of the smaller streets. Then he’d shower in the court officers’ locker room, and dress in his dark suit again before driving home to his house in Oyster Bay.

Lieu was a quiet, thoughtful man. He’d made his name in family court, where he listened and sighed and said, “Terrible, terrible sadness,” or “More civilities, please!” when tempers flared. He addressed everyone as sir or ma’am, including the janitorial staff. He was immensely popular with the younger judges, especially the women. Even those who appeared before him remarked that no matter how crowded the courtroom, they felt as if they were alone with Judge Lieu, and that his remarks were meant especially for them.

He had a melancholy streak that he hid behind a small, sad smile. He was a great kidder, always telling jokes and teasing the younger judges and lawyers. Women were drawn to him. He had been married for twenty years, and then one day his wife—a doctor with a family practice in Syosset—walked out, taking the two smaller children, leaving Lieu to the company of his eldest son, who had just entered high school. It was around this time that he left family court and became an elected member of the New York Supreme Court, the first Vietnamese to succeed in a power cartel run almost entirely by Italians.

One by one, the two younger children fled their mother’s house and came to join him in Oyster Bay. He never spoke of his own private life. Sol learned all of this second- and thirdhand. Tom Lieu had a way not merely of removing but of erasing himself from all conversations. That may have been one reason why he became a father confessor to so many colleagues and coworkers. He was modest to a fault. The basement coffee shop suited him.

A very different group of judges socialized up in the posh space of the new law library. Here the scent was of new leather and lemon furniture polish. There were comfortable sofas, easy chairs, gold-embossed law books, and plush wall-to-wall carpeting. This was where Judge Michael DeNunzio held court unofficially. Unlike the basement, people didn’t casually drop by for chitchat. Most sat at the computer desks, doing research, taking notes, scurrying back and forth on soft-soled shoes, the women secretaries and paralegals teetering in the thick carpeting on too-high heels.

DeNunzio could be found there many afternoons, at the center of a knot of men, deep in disputation. DeNunzio had been a law professor at St. Joseph’s and some scent of academia clung to him, though he dressed better than any academic Sol had known. His suits were bespoke; he was given to electric blue shirts and expensive ties. He was a tall handsome man with sleek black hair, in his early fifties, but he seemed to hail from a much older generation. Perhaps even another century. He was soft-spoken; listeners had to bend their heads to hear each word.

Sol did not especially like DeNunzio, but he respected him. DeNunzio had worked his way through Princeton University, coming from an immigrant Italian family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. First in his family to attend college, DeNunzio had a sharp, clear legal mind. He knew the law, and
more than that, he could penetrate to the subtleties beneath and around the law. You watched him run his finger across a page of a legal brief, and it was like a man running his finger across water; you sensed the depths of something moving underneath the surface.

So when Flannery came to Sol triumphantly waving
Greene vs. Wiesenthal
—the case Sol had quickly come to think of as simply “the blood case”—he was undecided about where to turn for a second opinion. It was a messy situation, the one dying cousin suing the other. There was the possibility of a breach of contract, and the larger question of whether one could force rescue. The case might or might not even be actionable. Sol studied the gathered materials and said, “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about it.”

“What do you mean?” Flannery cried. “It’s the case of a lifetime! Here is a question of individual rights—our own particular bailiwick.” Over the years they had taken on a number of tough cases—a family fighting enforced seat belt use, another case about chlorinating the water in Bayville.

Still, Sol said, “Hard cases make for bad law. The defendant has already requested a change of venue to Nassau. Now he’s making a motion to dismiss. His attorney insists that the letter he signed for his cousin is unenforceable. I’m inclined to agree.” He shrugged. “I’ll be honest, I don’t like it. That’s all.”

“That’s
all
?” Flannery said. “Have you seen what’s on your calendar, Your Honor? One petty case after another. Most will never even make it to the courtroom. And the valedictory year is racing by.”

“General jurisdiction ranges from the mundane to the complex,” the judge said. “It always has, always will. And half the cases settle before going to court. You know that.”

“I do know it,” Flannery said stubbornly. “That’s why I say we take this on. This case is worth trying. It’s got meat on its bones.”

“All I can promise is that I’ll consider it,” Sol said.

Flannery began to protest. “Your Honor, this is our big chance.”

Sol narrowed his eyes at his chief clerk. “I’m not looking for a big chance,” he said. He showed the clerk to the door.

After he sat down again, alone, he pressed the button on his phone. Myra answered, sounding bored. “Yes?”

“Myra, please keep Flannery out of my way for the rest of the day,” he said.

“Gladly,” Myra said.

The judge looked at the pile of papers on the blood case and sighed. He did not trust himself with this case—something made him hesitate. There was something ugly about it, something thorny. His closest friends among the judges had retired in the past few years—to Florida and the mountains of North Carolina. Should he go to Lieu or to DeNunzio for a second opinion? He had a feeling Lieu would advise against the case. DeNunzio was harder to read.

Feeling vaguely guilty, as if he were betraying Tom Lieu, Sol made his way an hour later to the law library on the second floor. It was nearly empty. One new young clerk, his eyes as red as a rabbit’s from too much research, sat as if stapled into his seat in front of a computer in the corner. A pair of interns flirted over a pair of books at the center table. And there, in his corner of the room, sat DeNunzio, alone for a change. Sol nearly bolted. But DeNunzio spotted him immediately, as if he’d sensed him coming along the second-floor hallway.

“Ah,” he said. “The Honorable Justice Solomon Richter”—gently mocking Flannery’s calling-out in court—“What can I do for you?”

Sol had no choice but to take the leather chair catty-corner to DeNunzio, Sol’s chair a shade smaller, a shade shorter—were these things deliberate? Sol wondered. With a sinking feeling he offered up a few pages of the numerous
Greene vs. Wiesenthal
motion papers that Flannery had given him.

“You’d like me to take a look?” DeNunzio said in his soft voice.

Sol almost said no. He hung on to the papers a few seconds longer than made any sense. But there was something in the sharpness of DeNunzio’s eye that moved him. Did he serve justice or didn’t he? Did he, Solomon Richter, desire to do the right thing, even the difficult thing, or would he slouch his way through these final months of public trust? He had earned his reputation on thorny cases like these. He’d upheld the rights of a deeply religious woman to refuse a needed blood transfusion. He had visited her in the hospital on her deathbed. But she died at peace with herself; he could not regret what he’d done.