The Laws of our Fathers Read Online Free PDF Page A

folks are strictly crazy. Yet there was some aspect of happy communalism in those years - young, before the walls were up, the boundaries drawn. Seth's best friend, who was in law school, was always in their apartment, Hobie something, a big, funny guy, black, a wild character.
        Annie has looked up from the files and studies the judge, trying to comprehend all of this - the names, the relations. She has delicate looks, her eyes smallish against a broad flange of cheek. Sonny repeats herself.
        'Michael wasn't my boyfriend. My boyfriend's name was Seth. He's the one who writes the column. But the pen name he uses is Michael Frain.'
        Marietta, with a big-city look of mistrust, finally speaks the lingering question. 'So what happened to Michael Frain?'
        ‘I haven't the foggiest,' says Sonny. 'God's truth. Seth and I were past tense by then.' Not that she hasn't wondered. A sudden stab of curiosity sometimes reaches her when she sees the name, the picture at the heading of the column. How did Seth become Michael? Where did Michael go? The questions, even now, make her uneasy.
        This talk of Seth, of newspapers, brings Sonny's mind again to June Eddgar and the murder. There will be reporters in the courtroom. A white lady murdered in a drive-by. Mother of a probation officer. A prominent politician's ex. Lubitsch is right. It's a doozy.
        'I'd love to keep this case,' she says to Marietta. It's not really the attention that excites her. Since all new judges face a yes-no retention vote six years after appointment, the accepted wisdom is to avoid publicity, so that the voters will have no reason to reject you. It's more the past that seems somehow alluring. The unexcavated remains of her own existence. Something back there, perhaps merely her youth, inspires curiosity, the vaguest thrill to think of the distances she's moved.
        'Keep it,' Marietta answers. 'Chief Judge don't like you to transfer cases anyway.' The judges - lawyers, pols, bureaucrats by training - are often schemers, inclined to dump demanding or controversial cases on colleagues with less clout. As a result, the Chief, Brendan Tuohey, has erected strict rules. The mere thought of Tuohey and his edicts makes Sonny uneasy. Raised without a father at home, she inevitably finds men of a certain age formidable. And Tuohey, a crafty pol whose probity has long been open to question, has never cared for Sonny or the Reform Commission that forced her into his domain. To her face, he is unfailingly polite, even courtly, but Sandy Stern, Sonny's old friend and occasional mentor, has gone so far as to suggest that Tuohey placed her in the Criminal Division, in spite of her limited judicial experience - a year in the matrimonial division, a few months in the criminal branch courts - in the hope she would fail.
        'Well, I have to put something on the record. About knowing June. When's this case up for the bond hearing? Now?'
        It's nearly 2:00. There will be no bail, of course. The gang defendants are invariably on probation or parole, and bond, under the law, is not permitted. Sonny asks about Hardcore's probation status and Annie sets off to the outer office to get the answer from Marietta's computer console. Marietta continues racking the files from the morning call on a stainless-steel cart for transport back to the clerk's office.
        'Hardcore has himself a probation officer.' Lubitsch, having thrown open the door a bit too forcefully, is on the threshold, with Annie beside him. Beaming, virtually luminous with secret knowledge, the policeman engages in a stage pause until Sonny beckons with a hand.
        'Nile Eddgar,' says Lubitsch. 'He's Hardcore's probation officer.'
        In the corridor outside, between the chambers and the courtrooms, somebody important enough to be disdainful of the peace happens by whistling.
        'This gangbanger killed his probation officer's mother in a drive-by?'