The Missing Piece (4 page)

“Finally,” said the judge, “the auction house is directed to produce one piece of the treasure to display to the jury during opening arguments this afternoon. Counsel may use the hard-backed, high-definition photographs of the pieces during the trial as exhibits. But this case is too important for the jury to decide without a direct sense of exactly what is at stake.”

The lawyer for the auction house stood up.

“We are still concerned about safeguarding the piece.”

“I understand your concerns,” said the judge. “Your responsibility is to transport the piece here. We will handle the rest. I will see you at two p.m.”

*   *   *

As soon as the judge left the bench, Arthur Braman hustled Leinster out to the corridor.

“Raise your right hand,” he said.

“What?” said Leinster.

“Your right hand. Raise it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Above them, a custodian on a mechanical scaffold unscrewed the cover of a ceiling light fixture. The sound of squeaking metal sent a chill down Leinster's spine, like fingernails on a blackboard.

“This,” said Braman. He lifted Leinster's right arm and slapped his hand against the open palm. “It's called a high-five. It's an American form of celebration.”

“What are we celebrating?”

“Those rulings. Judge Johnstone practically directed a verdict in your favor.”

“All I heard was that Croatia and Hungary had another twenty-four hours to find witnesses,” said Leinster.

“If they haven't found credible witnesses yet, I doubt another day will make a difference.”

From up above came more metallic squeaking. Leinster shuddered.

“I'll feel better at nine thirty-one tomorrow,” he said.

*   *   *

McQueen had been accurate in his prediction about the Pearl Street post. Unlike the front and rear entrances, the Pearl Street door had little traffic and no magnetometers, just a single officer seated at a desk who used experience and perspicacity to determine whether a visitor posed a threat. It didn't take much. After the usual wave of employees rushing to swipe in at the time clock, there had been exactly two wheelchair-bound people buzzing at the bronze door. Gary drummed his pen on the top of the desk. He lifted the cell phone again to check the signal strength. Three bars. He had expected a call or a text, but here he was, halfway to lunch hour, and he had nothing but silence.

He reached into his backpack and fished out the book, still wrapped in the plastic bag from when he bought it on Friday. His twin niece and nephew had an old hardcover edition, the spine broken to show the stitching that held the pages together. They would tuck close on opposite sides of his giant lap and listen while he read the story. The character simply was known as “it,” but Gary called him the cheese wheel. The kids liked the book. They liked the simple but evocative drawings and the minimalist but rhythmic text. Gary liked its clever philosophy.

He had used his lunch hour on Friday traipsing from store to store. He wanted to find a hardcover, but at the third store capitulated and bought a trade paper edition. He thumbed the pages gently now so the spine would be pristine. Where do you sign something like this, he wondered, inside cover, dedication page, title page? It wasn't as if he wrote the book and was signing it for a fan. He only wished he wrote the book because it made so much sense.

He closed the book and found a legal pad in the desk drawer. Here was the problem he tried to explain to McQueen. If he was still in Judge Johnstone's part, he'd be as busy as hell, but his mind would be engaged. Here his mind was as silent as the phone.

He scribbled a few words, then crossed them out. He scribbled a few more and crossed them out, too. He dropped the pencil, leaned back in the chair, tried to think.

The sound of the phone startled him. It was the desk phone, not his cell, and he saw the number of the captain's office on the readout.

“Pearl Street,” he said.

“Gary.” It was Kearney. “I need you to work the lunch hour and the rest of the day. So grab your lunch when you can and report directly to the front steps when your relief arrives.”

Gary acknowledged with a grunt and hung up. He leaned back in the chair again and drew the book onto his lap. Maybe something meaningful would come to him if he read it one more time.

 

CHAPTER 4

At one o'clock on a warm and sunny October Monday, office workers filled Foley Square. People lined up at the sidewalk food vendors, sat beneath the sycamores of Thomas Paine Park, and sunned themselves on the courthouse steps. Halfway down these steps, six court officers watched the midday traffic flow past the courthouse.

“We're getting overtime, aren't we?” said McQueen. “Because there's a lot I could be doing right now.”

“Like what?” said Foxx.

“Like reading in the park.” McQueen slapped the paperback jammed into his back pocket.

Gary Martin turned around and sneered. Though standing one step below, he still towered several inches over Foxx and McQueen.

Foxx felt the buzz in his chest twice before he realized it was his cell phone and not a burp forcing its way up his gullet. He cupped his hand against the sun and saw “IGGY” crawling across the screen. IGGY stood for IG, which stood for inspector general. Foxx broke away from the pack and climbed up into the shade of the columns to answer.

“Where are you?” said Bev.

“On the front steps, waiting for an armored car.”

“He's going through with it, huh? You couldn't talk him out of it?”

“Was I supposed to?” said Foxx.

“No. That was Kearney. He buckled like a cheap table.”

“Don't you mean he folded like a cheap suit?”

“I'm not going to debate clichés with you, Foxx.”

“Then tell me why the hell I'm here, because we both know it isn't because of my security skills.”

“I want you to observe the judge,” said Bev.

“Johnstone?” said Foxx. “Why?”

“You don't need to know why,” said Bev. “Just keep your eyes and ears open.”

Foxx rejoined the security detail, and barely a minute later an armored car nosed against the curb between two orange cones. Two security guards and two workers in overalls got out. The guards stood at the rear of the armored car with their hands on their holsters while the two workers opened the back door and lowered a hand truck and a wooden crate onto the pavement.

Four officers descended the steps to meet the hand truck while Foxx and McQueen hung back, watching.

“You see anything suspicious?” said McQueen.

“No,” said Foxx.

“I'm only kidding,” said McQueen. “What do you think? Bandits will swoop in and steal this thing? Isn't this over the fucking top?”

“It's a job, Mike. If we weren't doing this, we'd be doing something else.”

“I'd be reading in the park, and you'd be … what the hell do you do?”

“Try to live the best life I can,” said Foxx.

McQueen rolled his eyes.

Down on the sidewalk, the four officers surrounded the workmen as they hauled the hand truck up the steps. Foxx and McQueen stayed in place, scanning Foley Square until the hand truck rolled safely through the portico and into the lobby.

On the third floor, Foxx unlocked Judge Johnstone's courtroom to let everyone in, then locked the doors behind them. Except for mirror-image reversals, all the courtrooms on the second through fourth floors of 60 Centre Street had the same floor plans. Public entry off the corridor was through double entry doors, each leather-bound and with a small glass window. Inside, there was a shallow gallery made up of nine movable wooden benches arranged in rows of three. A thick wooden rail started at the end of the jury box and continued almost across the entire courtroom before curving to the clerk's desk at the opposite corner. A thick velvet rope hung from hooks at the opening in the rail.

The well was larger than the gallery, and for this trial there were six chairs arranged along the large wooden counsels' table, two for Croatia's counsel, two for Leinster's counsel, and one each for attorneys representing Hungary and the auction house. The bench sat on a riser. There were two doors in the wall behind the bench. The one closest to the clerk's desk opened into the robing room. The other door opened into a small vestibule where stairs led up half a flight to the jury room.

Foxx posted McQueen at the entry doors, Gary at the robing room door, and the other three officers in the well. He took the jury room door for himself and watched the workmen lift the crate onto the table, then pop the lid and pull out fistfuls of straw. When there was no straw left, one workman donned a pair of velvet gloves and slowly lifted the treasure piece out of the crate.

*   *   *

Tucked between courtrooms on the inner edge of the fourth floor was a warren of cubicles where the law department worked. The law department was a pool of court attorneys who drafted decisions for judges because the volume of work at 60 Centre Street was too onerous for any judge and law clerk to handle themselves.

In the one o'clock hour, the cubicles were almost empty, which allowed Linda to drag a chair into Bernadette Symanski's cubicle. The two huddled over their brown-bag lunches.

“I don't know why I'm so mad,” said Linda. “I've asked myself that question all morning. He's the judge and I'm not. Simple as that. But he led me to believe that this would be the biggest case of his career and then, just like that and for no reason, he comes in and treats it like any other one.”

Bernadette leaned back in her chair. She was Linda's oldest friend and, like her, still saw herself as a Catholic schoolgirl from modest means. Their careers diverged after the bar exam, with Bernadette landing a job in the law department and Linda slaving unhappily through a succession of private firms. It was Bernadette who told her about the opening in Judge Johnstone's chambers, Bernadette who personally delivered Linda's résumé, Bernadette who advocated to both the judge and Linda that they would be a good fit.

“We work for judges,” she said. “You work for one and I work for several, but it's still the same deal. Trust builds up, and they begin to rely on us so implicitly that ninety-nine times out of a hundred they do what we tell them. Then that hundredth time comes, and we're surprised?”

“But what he did makes no sense,” said Linda.

“To you, maybe. Me, too, if I were in your shoes. But being on the bench is very different from only being near the bench.”

“I know, I know. But in this case I don't understand.”

“Who really can understand them?” said Bernadette. “The only way would be to become one ourselves. Thank God that isn't in the cards for me.”

“Not for me, either,” said Linda. “Not now.”

*   *   *

In the waning minutes before the afternoon session, the courtroom was quiet. Foxx sat in the jury box, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and deep. McQueen sat on the last gallery bench, reading his paperback. Gary and the other three officers played a hand of hearts at counsels' table. The court reporter, a recent arrival, set up her machine on the apron below the bench.

Foxx opened his eyes, took inventory, and crossed the well to the clerk's desk.

“You got a minute?” he said, nodding toward the robing room door.

The clerk got up, and Foxx followed him inside.

“Something you said this morning stuck in my mind.”

“I said lots of things this morning,” said the clerk. “I'm surprised any of it stuck anywhere.”

“The lovers' quarrel, figurative or literal?”

“Hey, Foxx, you've been assigned to the part for five hours. You think I'm going to tell you something like that, even if I knew?”

Foxx bit the inside of his mouth, summoned his baleful stare.

“Okay, Foxx, this doesn't go beyond us,” said the clerk. “What I think? No. What I know? There've been a couple of times I came back from lunch early and found the robing room locked.”

“You have a key, right?”

“I do, the judge does, Linda does, so does Gary. Or did. Fact is, I find the door locked at lunchtime, I figure someone doesn't want me in there.”

“Who's the someone?”

“I say that, I'd be assuming a fact not in evidence.”

“You think Gary knows?”

“Ask him,” said the clerk.

Foxx decided to table that suggestion. Today was not the day to ask Gary anything about Judge Johnstone's courtroom. The question could wait till tomorrow. At least.

Foxx returned to his seat in the jury box and closed his eyes. At precisely two o'clock, the entry doors rattled with the sound of someone bumping against them. Foxx took a deep breath and opened his eyes. McQueen got up and peeked out the window.

“It's the lawyers,” he said.

“Let them in,” said Foxx. “And lock up behind them. Captain's orders.”

*   *   *

Linda found Judge Johnstone sitting at his desk in the robing room. His fingers were laced behind his neck, and the chair was swiveled toward the window, which showed the buildings that lined the bottom of Mulberry and the top of the narrow street that climbed into the heart of Chinatown. The judge turned and leaned forward, dropping his elbows onto the desk.

“The piece is out there,” he said. “Take a few minutes to look at it.”

“I don't think I will,” said Linda.

“No, I insist. When I look at it I see something my wife dragged home from Bloomingdale's and stuck in our dining room. At least you can appreciate it, probably more than anyone else in the courtroom will.”

His habit of extracting great truths from minute facts irked her. She once had mentioned taking classical art and architecture courses in college. She did well in those courses, well enough that she might have pursued an advanced degree if circumstances had been different. But now, many years and a law degree later, she was just someone who could converse about Praxiteles or the Third Style over cocktails as long as the conversation did not go too deep.