Falls the Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

main library, which is its exact double in architecture. The buildings were modeled after twin palaces at the mouth of the Champs-Elysées, built by ambitious civic leaders determined to turn Philadelphia into the Paris of America.
    Talk about missing the mark.
    On the third floor of the Family Court Building, I stepped warily into a large, beat waiting room outside Judge Sistine’s courtroom. The room was as noisy as a day-care center at recess. In one corner was a carpet with a few sad plastic toys strewn upon it. Young children, placed with desperate hope on the carpet by their mothers, looked around and screeched as if to say, Is that all there is? Older children sat sullenly on the molded plastic chairs and mouthed off, infants cried, mothers fussed, men eyed the nearest exit as if waiting for their moment to dash for it.
    I checked in with the clerk and then went around the waiting room asking each of the women there if she happened to be Julia Rose. She wasn’t.
    The slim file in my briefcase told the story. An anonymous complaint had come into the child welfare department concerning the treatment of a young boy named Daniel Rose, age four. After an investigation it was determined that the boy’s interests might best be represented by his having his own lawyer. This was not a case designed to make me rich or put my mug on the front page of the newspapers, and so my plan was to get in and get out as quickly as I could. The social worker at child welfare, a woman named Isabel, had assured me the boy was in no apparent danger. I figured the judge would lay out a series of concrete steps for the mother to follow, the mother would agree, and that would take care of that.
    Julia Rose’s not being in the waiting room wasn’t helping my get-in-andget-out strategy.
    I slumped in disgust on one of the hard plastic chairs and gently rubbed my swollen jaw. You can imagine my delight when a woman with an infant sat down right next to me, the baby crying and slobbering, drool flying as the baby shook in its mother’s arms. I pulled my suit as far out of harm’s way as I could. Sitting across from me, a skinny old man in a bow tie and a black porkpie hat was jiggling his leg. I caught his eye, and for an uncomfortable moment we fell into an impromptu staring contest. I lost, turning my attention to the side of the room, as if something of great import were happening there. As surreptitiously as possible, I glanced back at the old man. He was still staring, a bent smile of victory on his narrow face.
    This, I thought, as I leaned away from the baby and pretended that I hadn’t noticed the old man’s stare, as children ran and squealed around me, as the smell of an unchanged diaper wafted from behind, this, I thought, was why I became a lawyer.
    “Daniel Rose,” called out the clerk.
    The old man glowered at me as I stood.
    It was less a courtroom I entered than a small, shabby conference room. Judge Sistine, a large woman with the forearms of a wrestler and reading glasses perched on her nose, sat at the head of the table. To the judge’s right was a file clerk, to her left was the child-welfare social worker, the woman I had spoken to on the phone, Isabel Chandler, who turned out to be tall and stern and quite pretty. I sat at the far end of the table, feeling uncomfortably like I was on trial.
    “Have you met your client yet, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.
    “Not yet, Your Honor.”
    “Don’t you think you ought to?” said Judge Sistine, peering at me over her glasses.
    “I was hoping to meet him today. I called the mother, and she assured me she would show up at this hearing.”
    “From what I can tell, her assurances don’t mean much. That’s why we’re here. Miss Chandler, have you been able to contact the mother today?”
    “No, Judge.”
    “I’m concerned about this report. I’m concerned that we can’t get a grip on the conditions in which this boy is living. How many times have you tried to visit the