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all. If it’s meant to disconcert and intimidate attorneys, it achieves its goal. Yet if the stories I hear are true, I am less afraid of Hatchet than are most of my colleagues. For example, I haven’t pissed in my pants yet.
    Hatchet etiquette requires letting him speak first, so I just stand there waiting for the barrage. Finally, after about thirty seconds that feel like three thousand, he looks up. “Do you know what time it is?” he asks.
    I look at my watch. “Eight forty-five. I got here as soon as I—”
    He interrupts. “Do you know how long I’ve been up?”
    “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I have no idea.”
    “Four hours. My wife woke me at four forty-five.”
    This is a stunning piece of news. Not that Hatchet has been up since early this morning, but that he has a wife. Someone actually sleeps with this man. I find myself picturing a female leaning over in bed and saying, “Hatchet, dear, it’s almost five a.m.—time to get up.” It’s not a pretty image.
    “I assume this is somehow my fault?” I ask.
    “She woke me to say that I cannot kill some poor dog. I assumed she was talking about an attorney, until she showed me what she was watching on the television.”
    “She sounds like a very compassionate person, who doesn’t sleep much,” I say.
    Hatchet takes off his glasses and peers at me. “Are you trying to turn my court into a circus? A sideshow?”
    “No, sir. Never. Definitely not. No way.”
    “Then why are you representing a dog?”
    “Because if I don’t, he’ll be killed. And that would be unjust. And it would make many people unhappy, including me and Mrs. Hatch—Henderson.”
    If he is going to kill me, this is the moment. He doesn’t say anything for about thirty seconds; it’s possible he’s so angry that he’s unable to unclench his teeth. He finally speaks, more softly and calmly than I would have expected. “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but I’m going to issue a stay of execution. I am scheduling a hearing in this court tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. It is a hearing that I do not want to take more than one hour, and I will be conveying that view to certain city officials. Is that understood?”
    It’s completely understood, and I say so. I leave Hatchet’s office, my dignity and testicles intact, and head down to the shelter to conduct the television interviews.
    This won’t be officially resolved until tomorrow, but I now know one thing with total certainty: Yogi and I have already won.
    I say this because we have surmounted the only serious obstacle that was in front of us. Mostly through the use of media pressure, along with a creative defense, we have gotten the legal system to give us our day in court. In a normal situation, we would now have to defeat our legal adversaries.
    But the reason we’ve already won is that we don’t have any real legal adversaries. Simply put, we want to win, and there’s no one who will want us to lose. Nobody gains if Yogi is killed in so public a fashion, and there isn’t a politician in Paterson, in New Jersey, in America, or on the planet Earth who would want to be responsible for it.
    The afternoon media interviews are a slam dunk; I’m not exactly bombarded with difficult questions. This makes for a great story, and the press will willingly help me promote it. Besides, all I have to do is keep pointing to Yogi and asking as plaintively as I can why anyone would want to end his life.
    The most interesting piece of information comes from one of the reporters, who asks if I’ve heard the news that the mayor of Paterson is at that moment meeting with his director of Animal Services to discuss this matter. I would imagine the “discussion” consists of the mayor screaming at the director to find a way out of this.
    I’m not going to get overconfident and let up, but my guess is that by tomorrow, Yogi will be dining on biscuits at my house.
    I wonder how Tara is going to feel about that.

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