38

“What can I do for you, Mr. Carl?” said Judge Sistine when I stepped into her rather ordinary office. She barely glanced up at me as I entered. She was sitting behind her desk, law books piled all about her, scrawling on a legal pad.

“You look busy,” I said.

“Always in this job.” She dropped her pen, leaned back, beckoned me to sit.

I sat.

“I was a civil litigator before I became a judge. Personal-injury defense, medical-malpractice defense, you know the drill. Good money, but I was getting tired of the fighting, tired of the hours. When I ran for the judgeship, I thought I’d be able to relax a bit. No one knew more about civil litigation than I. I figured I’d be up to speed my first day, on cruise control shortly thereafter. So of course, the chief judge assigned me to family court, where I had never set foot my entire career. Six months, and I’m still struggling to figure it out.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said, “because I’m totally lost. I came about the Daniel Rose case.”

“Yes, of course. I’ve been getting reports from Miss Chandler.”

“So you know the details of his situation.”

“You misunderstand, Mr. Carl. The reports I’ve been getting from Miss Chandler haven’t been about Daniel. They’ve been about you.”

“Me?”

“Of course. I rely on the lawyers to keep on top of difficult situations, often volunteer lawyers like yourself. I can’t do it, my caseload is ridiculous, and Social Services is swamped. If I trust the lawyer, then I can assume problems will be dealt with properly. But you worried me. Frankly, you looked to be lazy and uninterested, a disaster waiting to happen.”

“That’s our firm’s motto,” I said. “ ‘Derringer and Carl, a disaster waiting to happen.’ ”

“So I asked Miss Chandler to keep me apprised of your performance.”

“That little spy. She said good things, I hope.”

“I haven’t replaced you yet. Is that why you are here? Do you want to be replaced?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good. Then what is it, Mr. Carl?”

“Apparently Daniel has a sister. Her name is Tanya. She is older than Daniel, and she’s missing. Not just in her person but in the documents, too. She’s not in the Child Services file. In fact, there is no record of her anywhere. But I learned about her from what I believe is a reliable source, and Daniel confirmed her existence.”

“Daniel is how old?”

“Four. He doesn’t say much, but what he says, I believe.”

“Have you asked the mother about her?”

“Not yet. She’s very skittish. Daniel’s teeth are a mess. The mother has taken him to a dentist I found who will do the necessary work for free. The dentist is going to cement caps on Daniel’s upper teeth in a few days, which is the only way he’ll save the teeth. The mother is also cooperating with Isabel’s parenting plan. But she has a tendency to disappear when things get difficult, and I fear that if I press her about the daughter too soon, she’ll disappear with Daniel before all the work is done on his teeth. And with her gone, even if you issue a bench warrant, that will be the end of our ability to help.”

“So what do you want to do about it?”

“I think you should appoint the missing girl an attorney, someone to find her and make sure she is all right.”

She pinched her lip and thought about it for a moment. “We don’t even know if she exists.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“I agree. Good work. I’ll find someone.”

She leaned forward, started writing again on the yellow pad, noticed I hadn’t moved. Staring at me over her reading glasses, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Carl.”

When I still didn’t move, she said, “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Go ahead.”

“I think you should appoint me.”

“Don’t you have enough on your plate? I saw your name in the paper in connection with the François Dubé case.”

“That’s right.”

“I used to eat in his restaurant. He made a wonderful duck.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him.”

“It sounds like a murder trial will keep you busy enough.”

“I expect so.”

“And still you want me to appoint you to represent this girl?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Isabel said you and your client had started to bond.”

“I don’t really like kids.”

“And that you keep surprising her with the fruits of your investigations.”

“I’ve been lucky.”

“Why you and not someone else with more time?”

“I promised Daniel I’d find her.”

“You promised? That’s a hell of an irresponsible thing to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You have no idea where she might be, or even if she exists.”

“No, ma’am.”

“We make a lot of promises to these kids, and sometimes we even keep them.” She tapped her lip with the tip of her pen as she thought. “All right then, Mr. Carl. A promise is a promise. I’ll have the paperwork taken care of. As of now you represent that girl.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s her name again?”

“Tanya Rose.”

“Very good.”

She went back to her document. I stood and headed for the door, but before I got there, she stopped me.

“Mr. Carl,” she said. When I turned around, I noticed that she had taken off her glasses and her expression was now devoid of the rigidity that had heretofore been its chief characteristic. There might even have been a blink of concern. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I hope you find that girl, but be careful. Emotionally, I mean. I haven’t been doing this for too long, but it’s been long enough to know that these cases very rarely work out as well as we would wish.” She tried to smile and failed. “Hope for the best, of course, but be prepared, always, for the worst.”

“Don’t worry, Judge. Preparing for the worst is the first thing I ever learned in the law.”

39

Beth knocked hard on the brass front door of Marrakech. It was locked, as was to be expected that early in the afternoon for a restaurant that served only dinner. If anyone could hear us, we were being studiously ignored, but still she knocked.

“Maybe we should go around back,” I suggested.

“I’m not done banging,” she said.

“You’re going to break your hand. Listen, Beth, we don’t know where it will lead. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“He lied to us.”

“It’s little Jerry Sonenshein, the teacher’s pet rat,” I said. “How could we have expected anything different? One time one of the AV guys was showing a driver’s-ed film, you know, the one with all the bloody accidents to try to scare you straight? Suddenly, right in the middle, while the Signal 30 soundtrack droned on, someone cut in a porn video that-”

“I don’t want to hear old high-school stories, Victor. I want to know what he’s hiding.”

“So do I, but banging on a door like some demented tax collector is not going to help us. What’s gotten into you?”

She let out a nervous breath. “This could be what he needs.”

“I know,” I said slowly, looking at her carefully. “That’s why we’re here.”

She heard something in my voice, because she stopped the banging, backed away from the door. “All right,” she said, turning from me so I couldn’t see her face. “Finish your story.”

“Okay, this is great. So the porn video went on for like five minutes, five revelatory minutes, before the teacher glanced at the screen and figured out what was happening. The AV guy got expelled, but word was, it was little Jerry did the cutting. He denied it, swore up and down, but there was some AV feud going on, a tussle for AV president, which is like a battle for king of the dung hill, and the porn video was enough to knock out his competition and for him to end up on top. He’s always been that kind of guy.”

“A liar?”

“Yes, and seriously creepy.”

She sighed, looked down the street. “Let’s go around back.”