Chapter One

Happy New Year all!  Before you get too excited, the following post is not a traditional "Jonah K. Haslap" tome.  It is, instead, the first chapter of a novel -- a legal "thriller", if you will -- that I've been working on.  I debated whether to share it, considering that you probably read this site more for my shameless self-introspection than anything else, and don't worry, I haven't lost the desire to shame myself more in the near future.  But I'd also like to write a novel as well, something that I can publish without fear of my mother suing me for libel.  So I hope you enjoy this first chapter of an as-of-yet untitled novel, at least, for what it's worth at the moment.

-JKH 

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The boxes arrived in Judge Steven P. Glassman’s chambers on Friday afternoon, just before 5PM. There were at least a dozen of them, labeled with various legal terms that marked several years of investigation. Autopsy 12/28/04. Grand jury minutes 10/4/05. Deposition 2/12/06. Witness interview 4/27/07. They were sealed tight with several layers of tape; it took a clerk twenty minutes just to open one box. The judge was surprised that the boxes didn’t come with a Masterlock.

“Leave them,” Judge Glassman instructed, as the clerk started removing briefs from the first box. “They can wait until Monday.”

But the judge knew that the case that had just arrived at his doorstep could not wait until Monday. The last judge on the case had resigned on the eve of trial, after the New York Times uncovered photographs of his dalliances with several underage escorts. Judge Glassman knew the previous judge well, and was not surprised by the revelation – the man had a curious fascination with Blaire from the Facts of Life – though he was shocked by how quickly the judge had resigned. Federal judges are appointed for life, so it usually takes more than a few scandalous photographs to get them out. Recently CNN had run an expose on a judge in Las Vegas who had been issuing rulings based on advice he received through the Psychic Friends Network, behavior which might befit a president and his wife, but which was most unbecoming in a jurist. The judge vowed to remain on the bench until the stars were in their correct alignment.

Judge Glassman went back to his office, and left his clerks to debate over who would be responsible for the case.

“Wow, I can’t believe we got the case,” the judge heard one of the clerks say excitedly from the other room. It must have been the Columbia clerk, who was the designated emotional basketcase of the group. After considering standard qualifications like grades and recommendations, the judge looked for diversity in his clerks. Not in terms of law school, of course – there were only a handful of (top) law schools from which Judge Glassman selected his clerks. Other law schools might contain diamonds in the rough, but the judge lacked both the patience and the energy to find them. And the judge didn’t care much about ordinary indicators of diversity like sexual orientation and race; what mattered most to the judge was personality.  An African-American Muslim lesbian from Pakistan could be just as pleasant, or just as objectionable, as a heterosexual white male from Alabama. Good breeding isn’t in the blood; it’s in the behavior.

Despite the immense amount of work the next few months would entail, each one of the four were jockeying for the assignment. Personally, Judge Glassman preferred anyone but the Yale graduate, who would spend too many hours needlessly intellectualizing the simplest issue, and require constant monitoring as a result. The Yale clerk was best-suited for the complex and non-time-sensitive cases; she was an academic powerhouse, but a practical nightmare.

But even though he had his own preference, he thought it best to leave the decision to the clerks themselves. This was, after all, the case of the year – maybe even of the decade, or the century. If he chose one of them over the others, he would be playing favorites, and even if he wasn’t always even-keeled, Judge Glassman was always fair-minded. In his opinion, there weren’t enough fair-minded judges on the bench. Despite the lifetime tenure, politics and personality too often got in the way. Of course, the most biased judges were often the most brilliant, and they used their brilliance to mask their agendas, both on the right and on the left.

Judge Glassman saw through the pretense of many on his colleagues, though, and he had little patience for dishonesty in any form. The lawyers who appeared before him knew that, and also knew his penchant for scathing criticism.

“Counsel, next time you appear before me, I’d like you to bring your law school diploma, because I’m not entirely sure you actually graduated,” he reprimanded a government attorney, after the attorney had missed a filing deadline. “Did you graduate, counselor?”

“Yes, Your Honor. I graduated,” the attorney replied, meekly. “From Harvard.”

“Oh, from Harvard,” Judge Glassman said, sneering at the attorney’s name-dropping, which annoyed the judge even more than tardiness. “I wouldn’t share that with too many people, Mr. Prosecutor. Harvard has enough troubles these days.”

A few years back, someone had posted a sign in front of Judge Glassman’s courtroom, saying “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.” His deputy was about to throw it out, but the judge rescued it just in time and hung it over his desk. It wasn’t an insult; it was a badge of honor.

The judge sat at his desk, listening to the clerks’ bickering in the other room. Besides the sign, his office was a cluttered with memorabilia from various important moments in his life. A souvenir from his trip to the Galapagos. A Mickey Mouse hat one of his clerk’s had brought him from Disneyworld. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of non-fiction books on multiple topics, all of which had piqued the judge’s interest at some time or another, usually in connection with a pending lawsuit. There was even a bag of sexual lubricants in one corner, from a trademark infringement case in which the makers of a certain dairy product sued the lubricants’ manufacturer, claiming that consumers might confuse the products due to their similar slogans, labels, and consistency. The judge found in favor of the manufacturer, concluding that it was unlikely that a reasonable consumer would spread a sexual lubricant on a piece of toast.

But the most noticeable feature of his office was the dozens of pictures that lined the walls, most of them of himself with all of his past clerks and every president since Johnson. Most judges only had pictures of themselves with the president who appointed them; you could almost predict their rulings by the pictures they had in their chambers. But Judge Glassman smiled next to Reagan and Carter, Nixon and Clinton, Johnson and Bush (both father and son). His favorite was the one with Nixon. Shortly before that picture was taken, Nixon had been subpoenaed in the Watergate scandal.

“Can’t you do something about that?” Nixon asked the judge, just before the flash went off. He wasn’t smiling.

From his desk, the judge could see the boxes sitting in the foyer. Hundreds of little pieces of paper, thousands – maybe millions – of words like “heretofore” and “forthwith,” all holding the fate of the most reviled man in America. Of course, in the public’s mind, his fate had been sealed years ago, the moment the bombs went off. Judge Glassman could still smell that moment. It’s the smell that sticks with you, years later. Eventually the debris is cleared, the bodies are buried, and the buildings are replaced with bigger and better ones, symbols that a bomb can destroy our homes but not our spirits. But in fact, the judge thought, our spirits do break, just a little, every time a body is buried. And all the uplifting songs and primetime specials and burnings in effigy can’t replace what can’t be replaced.

The judge realized he had been staring at the boxes for several minutes, and redirected his attention to his rapidly filling e-mail inbox. No time for thoughts of the past now. He – the entire country – had spent enough time in the past. Judge Glassman was determined not to oversee a trial haunted by ghosts and personal torment. They attacked us because our system works, he thought. It’ll work again. He would see to it.

The NYU clerk knocked. He was usually the spokesperson for the group. Probably because he had the biggest mouth, and the least shame.

“Judge, we decided that Allison would be the primary clerk on the case,” NYU said. The judge sighed, resigned to working closely with the Yale one over the next few months. He wasn’t surprised that Yale won. Her pleasing nature ended where her competitive nature began. Yale Law School had done away with grades years ago, ostensibly for purely academic reasons, but the judge suspected that the school had no choice – if Yale students had to compete for grades, the violent crime rate on Yale’s campus would skyrocket.

“We also decided that, considering the amount of work entailed in this litigation” – NYU always talked like a legal brief with legs – “we would take turns helping Allison out with any overflow. We hope and trust that this is an acceptable arrangement to your honor.”
Ah, of course. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Yes, NYU, it is an acceptable arrangement to this honorable jurist. Also, an acceptable arrangement would include you not kissing my 76-year-old butt at every turn.

“That’s fine, John, thanks.”

NYU went back into the clerks’ office, and was likely already exaggerating his encounter with the judge.

“The judge seemed reluctant to consent to our proposal; however, I explicated the benefits of permitting each of us to contribute to this historic prosecution, and eventually, he relented.”
Still, even if NYU annoyed him at times, the judge appreciated his by-the-book approach to the profession. The judge longed for the days of bow-ties and procedure, wing-tips and rules. There were too many liberties being taken these days. Liberties were for politicians, not for judges. Judges are supposed to keep politicians in check, and not the other way around.

An unopened New York Times lay on the judge’s desk. The day had been so hectic, he had not had the opportunity to even glance at it. The call from the Court Executive had come early in the day.

“Steven, I thought I should let you know, your name came out of the wheel,” the Clerk of the Court informed him. The judge didn’t particularly appreciate being called “Steven” during working hours, but he had known the Clerk of the Court since their law school days, and asking an old friend to call him Your Honor seemed a little too harsh, even for the judge. Still, it would be nice if he did it voluntarily. It’s like receiving a compliment after you asked for it; it never feels the same when you have to ask for it.

“You’ve been assigned to the Saalam case.”

It wasn’t welcome news, at first. Judge Glassman had recently assumed senior status, and he was looking forward to slowing down a bit. Not retiring completely, of course. His wife would never consent to that. Judges (indeed, most lawyers) usually work until their final breath. Not necessarily because they like it, but because it’s all they – and their spouses, families, pets – know. After five or six decades of eating at the same dinner table once a week at most, it was best to keep it that way. Why spoil a successful marriage right before the finish line? There would be plenty of time to catch up, in the next life.

But even more than the late nights and missed box seats that the case would bring, the judge was uncomfortable with its notoriety. Ever since the government had arrested Salaam, not a day had gone by without his name appearing somewhere in the newspapers. Even before he was arrested, the name Salaam had become synonymous with pure evil, a development carefully cultivated by the prosecutors, even before a shred of evidence had been presented against him. 

And everyone shared in the glory when Salaam was finally captured, not in a cave in Afghanistan or a safe house in an Iranian village, but in a modest, split-level house in Miami. The current president had not been elected so much on his own record as Salaam’s.

Yet though the notoriety was unwelcome, it was nothing new to the judge. A few years earlier, he had presided over the trial of a serial killer who had allegedly murdered a dozen small children in ways so horrendous that even the Daily News, a publication not known for its restraint, refused to report the details. After the trial was over, the judge was giving a lecture at Columbia Law School when he was asked how he remained objective in the face of gruesome testimony by the victims’ families, as they described the mangled remains of their children.

“When a defendant enters my courtroom, he is no longer a human being,” the judge answered. 

“He is a hypothetical on a law school exam. The victims, too. They are only words on a piece of paper.”

“But, judge,” the student continued, noticeably uncomfortable with the judge’s response. “Isn’t compassion part of justice?”

“Compassion in the law, yes,” the judge replied, in a measured tone. “But personal compassion, like personal condemnation, has no place in the criminal justice system.”

And Judge Glassman honestly believed that. He believed it when the jury acquitted the defendant – who the judge was certain had committed the crimes. He believed it when his son-in-law was convicted of securities fraud, and he believed it when his own granddaughter was arrested for shoplifting.

And even when he watched the bodies fly through the air as explosions rocked the street beneath his chambers, even when his wife called him hysterical because she hadn’t heard from him in hours, even when there were lines down the block at the city morgue, filled with people who were hoping that somehow, their father had missed the train to work that day, or their daughter had been one of a handful of survivors on the number 6 train, or their husband was lying unconscious at St. Vincent’s and not dead on a slab, he believed it.

Judge Glassman could preside over this case, and he could preside over it fairly. He was perhaps the only person who could.

“You can decline the assignment, you know” the Clerk said, referring to a perk of the judge’s senior status. Before he assumed senior status, the judge wondered if there were numerous, secret perks to being a senior judge. Maybe a separate cafeteria that served filet mignon, or a special elevator with ornate chandeliers, or a secret handshake. But none of those hopes had come to fruition. Another sign that the judicial system, like the country, does not respect its elders.

“No, Daniel, thank you. I’ll take it.” The judge glanced at his calendar, and realized that taking the Salaam case would mean postponing his summer vacation, which was fine with him. The first time he visited the Grand Canyon, he was struck by its awesome beauty, by how an empty valley can be as magnificent as a majestic mountain. The eighteenth time he visited it, he was struck only by the cost of bottled water at their hotel.

“You know, they may have to give you a security detail, like they did for Michael,” the Clerk continued, referring to the secret service agents assigned to Judge Michael Mukasey during the World Trade Center trial, after Judge Mukasey had received numerous death threats. How many death threats would he have to receive before he received his own “security detail,” the judge wondered. Is there a chart somewhere that dictates how many death threats each judge must receive before they are entitled to protection? A slightly competitive part of Judge Glassman wondered whether he would have to receive more or less than Mukasey.

“As long as I don’t have to feed and clothe them,” the judge replied.

“I’m serious, Steven. This isn’t a typical trial.”

No shit, the judge wanted to say. Judge Glassman generally disliked using expletives, which he regarded as lazy argumentation, but sometimes one just fit the situation.

“You’ll be a target.”

“A target for who?” the judge asked, unconvinced that a group of international terrorists would expend the time and energy to take him out. Besides, if he kept eating the chicken marsala they served in the courthouse cafeteria, nature might do the job for them.

“Don’t worry about me,” the judge continued, signaling for his assistant to help him get this guy off the phone. His assistant was not the nicest person, but she was good at getting rid of people, and even the judge – who had told Nixon after their photo shoot that he should “fight his own battles” – was slightly scared of her. But then he remembered that he had given her the afternoon off, just because she asked for it, and he was too afraid to say no.

“I’m tough.” At least, in the courtroom. He had the sign hanging above his desk to prove it.

“But is Laura?” the Clerk asked, referring to the judge’s wife. The judge rarely considered his wife’s perspective on anything career-related, not because she wasn’t smart enough to weigh in, but because she wouldn’t stop weighing in if he let her. “Your decision affects her too, you know. And your kids, too, and grandkids. How old are they now?” His words were careful and measured, as if there was a warning hidden beneath the warning.

“I have to go, Daniel,” the judge said, suddenly becoming eager to end the conversation. It seemed like the Clerk was fishing for something, but the judge wasn’t sure what, and he didn’t want to find out. “Thanks for the heads up.”

The Clerk paused, and after a long silence, wished the judge good luck, and promised to keep the assignment secret until Monday so he could prepare his chambers for the onslaught. The judge hung up, still vaguely unsettled by the call. He supposed he should appreciate the concern, but he refused to condone paranoia, especially not in his courtroom. And after all, the terrorists had better targets than me, he thought. What benefit would they get from killing me? The case would just get transferred to another judge, and they certainly couldn’t kill all the judges in the federal judiciary. Especially not the ones in Texas, who it was rumored carry handguns underneath their robes.

The sun was already setting outside, and it felt like the first snowfall was right around the corner, a bit early in the season but not unheard of in mid-November in New York City. It was on an evening very much like this one, six years earlier, that the ground had shook. Not just the ground under the courthouse; the ground shook under every building in every major metropolitan area in the country. But the courthouse, which was built directly over a bustling subway station, bore the brunt of the impact in this little corner of the universe. The building was closed for five months following the attacks, as the universe reorganized itself into a brave new world. It was a world very similar to, and entirely different from, the one that came before.

“We’re going to catch the monsters who committed these heinous acts,” the President had promised on national television the following evening, even though the killers were also lying in little pieces across the ground, mixed together with little pieces of their victims. But the President didn’t mean the men who had strapped explosives to their bodies and boarded subways, cars, buses, and trains across the country. Those men had turned themselves into walking bombs, and were little more than the sum of the parts they left behind. 

No, the President meant the planners. The brains. The so-called “masterminds,” as if great works of terror require something more than a common goal, and utter desperation. And eventually, the President meant just one man. The mastermind. Salaam.

When the judge was finally allowed back into his chambers after the attacks, he immediately went back to work, and demanded the same from his clerks, often working them through weekends and holidays, weddings and anniversaries, stomach bugs and, even in one unfortunate situation, chemotherapy (he let that clerk go home early once in a while). He didn’t want to make them miserable – well, most of the time, anyway – but he had no other choice. Maybe back in the days of wingtips and bow-ties, judges had time to manage their cases on their own. 

But these days, when every judge has several hundred cases on their docket, when every Joe Six-Pack sued because they were fired from their job, or they broke a leg in front of Burger King, or their coffee was just too hot, dammit – these days, a judge is only as good, or bad, as the clerks who work for him.

The judge unrolled the newspaper and quickly skimmed the first five pages. Everything after those pages was fluff, anyway, and he rarely had time to read anything that didn’t appear above the fold. I need a break, he thought. The case could wait till Monday. It had already waited six years, three more days wouldn’t make a difference. When he came in on Monday though, everyone had better be prepared, on both sides. No one would get a free ride here. As far as the judge was concerned, Salaam was just another defendant, presumed innocent, afforded the same rights and privileges as every other man and woman who had appeared before him in his forty-two years on the bench. Justice is blind, even in the ashes.

And besides, no one could tell him what to do in his courtroom. He was the king of his kingdom, answerable to no one except his own conscience.

The judge stuffed a few briefs in his satchel – he might be taking it easy this weeknd, but he still needed something to read while his wife knitted, during their lovely, silent Sundays – and headed out of his chambers, passing the clerks as he went.

“Have a good weekend,” he said to shocked faces. The judge was leaving at 5:30pm? NYU almost asked him the reason, but even he had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

“And Allison – be here bright and early on Monday, please. I need you at the top of your game, from here on out.”

It was slightly cruel of the judge to leave with those parting words, which would surely cause the clerk to spend the next two days reading every scrap of paper in every one of those boxes. But in fact, he did need her to be fully prepared as soon as possible, because like it or not, Salaam’s fate hung not only in the hands of the judge and jurors, but in hers as well. These pseudo-adults, who only a few years ago were working at ice cream parlors and smoking pot in their parents’ basements, now largely controlled the judicial system. And there was nothing the judge – or anyone else – could do about it, except trust them to do the job he just didn’t have enough time to do himself.

The security guards politely smiled as the judge exited the main courthouse doors, and entered the frigid Chinatown air. Other judges preferred to use a special entrance designated only for them, choosing to avoid possible encounters with prosecutors or defense attorneys who appeared before them, but Judge Glassman welcomed the opportunity to catch people off-guard, and maybe overhear conversations about him between disgruntled attorneys. It’s not what people say to your face that really counts, but what they don’t say. Besides, he still hadn’t figured out who had hung the sign that now hung over his desk; what’s more, he wasn’t sure what he would do with the culprit if he did figure it out, whether he would buy him a drink or have him disbarred. It would be a spur of the moment decision.

The street was bustling with activity, and the judge instantly cursed his decision to travel during rush hour. But then again, it’s always rush hour in New York City, regardless of the time. The judge walked past his favorite lunch spot and waved to the owner inside, who waved back. He used to wave to the owner and his wife, but his wife was killed in the attacks, so now the owner waved alone.

If it hadn’t been physically impossible for a bullet to magically appear in a person’s chest, no one would have even noticed the shot. The pain itself was negligible; if a woman hadn’t screamed for a doctor, the judge might have just walked it off. But then he grew very tired very quickly, and the warm spot behind his shoulder became hot and then burned through his body, as he fell against the glass of his favorite lunch spot.

The owner of the restaurant rushed out, and propped the judge’s head up on his lap, shouting something in Chinese, or maybe English, it all sounded the same at this point. The urgency seemed excessive, though. This too shall pass. Everything does.

He saw his wife, kids, and grandkids, one at a time and all at once; he saw his chambers and his home, Disneyworld, the Galapagos and the Grand Canyon; and he thought of his assistant, who would probably retire now, since no one else would put up with her mood swings; of the Clerk of the Court, and his curious words of warning; of the bag of personal lubricants in his office, and the shock on the face of whoever found them; of underage escorts, and walking bombs, and the alignment of the stars.

And before he closed his eyes to rest, Judge Steven P. Glassman thought of the dozen or so boxes, still sitting in his office un-opened, and of the next judge – and clerk – who would be responsible for vindicating the living, and avenging the dead.