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Honor—”
    Elkins raised his voice and kept talking. “As if the malicious and mean-spirited persecution of Mr. Balagula were not travesty enough—”
    “That’s enough, Mr. Elkins,” the judge said.
    “As if the emotional damage and financial ruin visited upon Mr. Balagula and his family were not a blot on our system of justice—”
    “Your Honor!” Klein again.
    The judge’s jowls shook as he banged the gavel three times.
    “That’s quite enough, Mr. Elkins,” he said.
    Now Elkins looked contrite. Caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He used his manicured fingernails to flick the document in his hand. “Victor Lebow is a disgruntled employee, Your Honor. A man with a grudge. A man with a score to settle.” He raised a finger and played to the crowd. “A man, I might add, who was facing the very real possibility of spending the foreseeable future in a federal penitentiary, until…” He paused for effect, his face a mask of righteous indignation.
    “Your Honor,” Klein pleaded.
    “…until these people agreed to give Mr. Lebow total and complete immunity from prosecution, in return for his testimony against Mr. Balagula.”
    Klein’s face was red. “If I may,” he began.
    “A man who”—Elkins walked to the rail and confronted the invisible jury, invisible behind the one-way screen—“…a man who is being paid for his testimony.”
    Judge Fulton Howell leaned forward in the seat, resting his forearms on the bench. He heaved a sigh and waved his gavel at the jury box. “The jury will disregard Mr. Elkins’s outburst.” He got to his feet and checked his watch with an air of sadness and then pointed the little hammer at Elkins and Klein. “Mr. Elkins, Mr. Klein: in my chambers.” He checked his watch and sighed again. “Court is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” Bang!
    Corso watched as Klein and Elkins followed the judge through the door behind the bench. To the right, Raymond Butler pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket and wandered over to the wall. Renee Rogers began sorting papers and putting them back in their proper folders. When he swiveled his head the other way, Corso saw Nicholas Balagula and Mikhail Ivanov whispering together and staring intently in his direction.
     
    “It’s no wonder they believe in God,” Nicholas Balagula said. He looked around the courtroom with thinly disguised contempt. “What else but divine intervention can explain how such fools as these could have prospered?”
    Mikhail Ivanov leaned closer, hoping his proximity would encourage Balagula to keep his voice down, but it was not to be.
    “How else can they justify this silly legal system?” Balagula waved a hand in anger. “It is for children and fools. It punishes only those foolish enough to put themselves at its mercy.”
    “They have more people in prison than the rest of the world combined,” Ivanov reminded him. He could feel the eyes of the jury on them.
    “They have the coloreds and the poor in prison.” Balagula shook his big head, as if in disbelief. “In Russia, we lock people up for their politics. Here, they lock you up for your class. For your culture.” He looked Ivanov in the eye. “Marx was right.”
    Desperate for a change of subject, Ivanov nodded toward the far side of the room. “Our Mr. Corso is in attendance again.” Few subjects got so predictable a rise out of Nico as did the subject of Frank Corso. Despite years of glaring media coverage, Nico rarely took offense at anything generated by the media storm. The dogs of capitalism, he called them, and neither read the papers nor watched the news. Mr. Corso, however, was another matter. Anything written about him by Mr. Corso he wanted to see immediately.
    “He looks like some…some hippie.”
    “Don’t be fooled, Nico,” Mikhail Ivanov whispered. “He’s a most dangerous man.”
    Nicholas Balagula curled his thick rubbery lips. “And we are not?”
    Ivanov sighed. All too often lately,