The Judgment Read Online Free

“I’m to be released on personal bond. I will be given a leave of absence without pay until a jury makes the final decision.”
    “It sounds like they have a pretty good case.”
    “You think I’m guilty?”
    “What I think doesn’t matter, does it? It’s up to the jury.”
    “You have any suggestions about who I can get to be my lawyer?”
    “Are you interested in making a deal?”
    “I told you, they won’t go for anything. Nor will I, for that matter.”
    “I don’t mean with the court, I mean between you and me.”
    “What kind of deal?”
    “If I take the case, I can drop it anytime if I think I want out.”
    His eyes bore into mine, and he paused before replying. Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”
    “My services won’t come cheap.”
    “I know that.”
    “I’ll need a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”
    He took a checkbook from his inside pocket and quickly scribbled out a check and then handed it to me.
    “You still don’t like me, do you, Sloan?”
    “If you want love and affection, you’re at the wrong store.”
    He laughed. “I got the right store. Can you be at my office at eight in the morning?”
    “Sure,” I said. “Oh, one more thing. Wear your dress uniform and don’t say anything. From here on in, I’ll do the talking.”
    He got up and walked to the door, then turned. “I feel better already,” he said. “Thanks.”
    Then he was gone.
    I looked at the check and wondered why I had taken the case. I didn’t like him, and the case sounded like a loser, a big, public loser.
    Still, defending people was what I did for a living. I stuck the check in my wallet.

2
    M aybe Conroy was right. Perhaps my office did look like it should be lighted by gas lamps. But I felt comfortable in it, and most of my clients didn’t care if I practiced out of the back of a truck. They had far too much trouble in their lives to even notice what kind of furniture their lawyer owned.
    But my office, decrepit and a bit musty, had a feature that compensated for any shortcomings. You couldn’t beat the view. The office had been built, almost as an afterthought, on top of a squat marine insurance agency building located on the river, hence the outside wooden stairway was the only way up.
    My window looks out on the magnificent St. Clair River, the connector between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair, part of the Great Lakes waterway chain. On the other side of the river is Canada, but not the pretty part. It is a Canada of chemical factories, miles of them, looking like a set for a science fiction movie. I tend to ignore that far shore—it is the river itself that I enjoy, nearly half a mile wide, providing a waterway for everything from canoes to ocean-going freighters.
    I swung around in my slightly tilted office chair and looked out upon my private view.
    I tried to think of how I might defend Conroy, but I was distracted by a large ore carrier as it approached, tossinga white plume in front of its huge prow. It was coming from Lake Huron and I was surprised to see that part of its superstructure was covered with ice. Soon the Great Lakes shipping season would come to a halt. It was the beginning of November, that month when ships would be in the greatest danger from winter storms on the lakes. Things could get very deadly when, as the song goes, the witch of November went riding. It seemed that the huge ship would be immune from any force of nature, but it only looked that way. Nature, like fate, unpredictable, played according to its own laws.
    Reluctantly, I turned from the window. I had things to do. One of which was to call Sue Gillis and find out what time I should pick her up.
    I’m not married, not at the moment, anyway. If the institution of marriage paid veteran’s benefits, I would have done all right, having been married three times. All to beautiful drunks who managed to sober up long enough to take me for everything I had at’ the time. Then it didn’t matter, the money just kept rolling in,