“Yes. I’m busted. Totally,” Artie says. He flops into his chair in the small law library that serves as the clerks’ office, having been grilled behind closed doors by Armen and an assortment of bureaucrats. “It took the poor guy an hour to stop crying. He was worried he got Armen in trouble, can you believe that?”
“Yes,” Ben says, typing nimbly at his computer keyboard.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Did he have a bomb?”
“No. He had a shot clock.”
“A what?”
“Actually, he was the shot clock.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” Sarah says.
“I do, but I don’t care,” Ben says, gulping down his third cup of coffee. He gets in at seven and guzzles the stuff like a thirsty vampire. “The whole thing’s absurd.”
“No, it isn’t,” Artie says. “Not if you think like Shake and Bake.”
“Like a paranoid schizophrenic?” I say.
“Look, Shake and Bake was watching the argument. He knew the lawyer had to answer a question and he thought time was running out, like in basketball. He figured the guy had twenty-four seconds to shoot. It got all crossed up in his head.”
I try not to laugh. “So he starts ticking.”
“Yeah, with his mouth. He was counting off the time.” Artie yanks the knot on his cotton tie from side to side to loosen it.
“That’s ridiculous,” Sarah says.
“Not to a paranoid schizophrenic who loves basketball,” I say, a quick study.
“Right, Grace.” Artie nods and tosses the tie on the briefs scattered across his desk.
“Told you. Absurd,” Ben says, tapping away.
“Is he really schizophrenic?” Sarah leans over the Diet Coke and soft pretzel that constitute her breakfast. These kids eat trash; it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
“I don’t think so,” Artie says, unbuttoning the collar of his work shirt. “He’s like a little kid. Harmless.”
I smile. I own a little kid. They’re not harmless.
“Why do you say he’s harmless?” Sarah asks. “He’s obviously not.”
“Come on, Sar. He’s fine. Shake and Bake can’t even do his laundry. You think he can blow up a building?”
“I do, Weiss,” says a dry voice at the door to the clerks’ office. It’s Eletha Staples, the judge’s Secretary for Life, a willowy, elegant black woman. Prone to drama, Eletha pauses dramatically in the doorway.
“Yo,” Artie says.
“Right, bro. Yo.” Eletha rolls her eyes as she walks into the room, trailing expensive perfume. Her glossy hair is pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of a slim neck. In her trim camel suit she looks more like a judge than a secretary, and the day black women get to be federal appellate judges, she’ll be mistaken for one. “Who you invitin’ next, Charlie Manson?”
“That’s not funny, El.”
Eletha stops in the center of the office and puts a hand on her hip; a quintet of clawlike polka-dotted fingernails stand out on her otherwise classy look. “It’s not funny, bro?”
“No.”
“It’s not funny when you invite a crazy man to court? It’s not funny that some nut boy endangers Armen’s life? Endangers the lives of us all?”
Artie fiddles glumly with his Magic Eight Ball, one of the many toys on his desk. “He’d never hurt any of us, he idolizes Armen. And he’s not a nut boy.”
“He ticks, Artie,” I remind him.
Eletha looks crazed, but she crazes easily. “What are you tellin’ me, he’s not a nut? The man thinks he’s a friggin’ Timex! Why they let him in the courthouse I’ll never know.”
“They have to,” Sarah says. “He has a right to access. It’s in the Constitution.”
“The hell it is,” Ben says, without looking away from his monitor.
“He’s not a nut.” Artie pouts.
Eletha puts a hand to her chest and begins Lamaze breathing to calm herself. I first saw this routine three months ago when she had to interview me for my job, because Armen had gotten stuck in Washington. After she calmed down, we spent an hour swapping ex-husband stories. I touch her arm. “El, keep breathing. Don’t push, it’s too soon.”
She looks down at me, her face suddenly grave. “That’s not the worst of it. Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“They filed the appeal in the death penalty case this morning. Hightower. The death warrant expires in a week.” Her words hang in the air for a moment.
“Oh, no.” I sink deeper into the leather chair next to Artie’s desk. I better not get this case. I’m a working mother now; I have enough guilt for an entire hemisphere.
“A week?” Ben says, shaking his neat head. “Of course Hightower waited until the last minute. Wait till the bitter end to file and hope the warrant expires. It’s a game with them.”
Sarah looks over sharply. “It’s only his first appeal.”
“Fine. Let’s make it his last.”
“Ben, he even tried to kill himself. He thought he deserved to die.”
“He did.”
Eletha’s soft brown eyes linger on Ben’s face, but her thoughts are clearly elsewhere. “This case is gonna be a real bitch. The law clerk’s gonna be up all night, Armen’s gonna be up all night, and I’ll be up all night. Last time, I didn’t tell Malcolm why.” Malcolm is Eletha’s son, whose picture she keeps on her desk; he’s an intelligent-looking boy with lightish skin and glasses. “Some things kids don’t have to know.”
I wonder how I’d tell Maddie. What would I say? Honey, Mommy works for a man who decides whether another man should live or die. No, Mommy’s boss is not God, he just looks like him.
“Has Armen served on many death panels?” Sarah asks.
Eletha rubs her forehead. “Too many.”
“Three,” Ben says. “All dissents. The proverbial voice in the wilderness.”
Eletha glances at him. “They were from Delaware, I think. None from Jersey. And we haven’t executed in Pennsylvania since I don’t know when.”
“About thirty years.” Ben pops the SAVE button with an index finger. “Elmo Smith, for the rape-murder of a Catholic high school girl. But I can’t recall the method.” He pauses just a nanosecond, his mind working as rapidly as the microprocessor. “Pennsylvania executes by lethal injection now, but then—”
“Christ, what difference does it make?” Sarah says, making tea on the spare desk. “Move to Texas, you can watch it on pay-per-view.”
Ben snaps his fingers. “Electrocution, that’s right!”
“Death penalty for twenty, Alex,” Artie says, and Eletha starts to breathe in and out, in and out.
“The death penalty is revenge masquerading as justice,” Sarah says, unwilling to let the grisly subject go. I like Sarah but am coming to understand that not letting anything go is an avocation of hers. It served her well last November; she worked on Armen’s wife’s campaign for the Senate, in which the feminist lawyer came from behind to win by a turned-up