Page 25 of Hush
“Like this.” He showed Mike how to spread the guacamole on his tortilla and then wrap it around the outer shell of his taco. Guacamole squeezed out of the sides of Mike’s, smearing all over his hands, and Tom almost stopped breathing when he licked his fingers clean. He waited, watching while Mike took his first bite.
He forced himself not to react to the blissed-out expression, the eyes-rolled-back happiness that he saw on Mike’s face. That would stay with him.
“This isreallygood,” Mike muttered around another mouthful. “Where has this been all my life?”
“Clearly there weren’t a lot of tacos where you were stationed on the task force.” Tom winked and took a bite of his own as Mike snorted.
“How do you like being a judge?”
Mike’s question, tossed at him in-between bites, made Tom pause. He blinked at Mike. “It’s…” He sighed. “Ineverexpected it. Never thought I would ever be a judge, so I never imagined what it would be like.” He looked down. Picked at the lettuce trailing out of his taco shell. “I really have no idea if I’m even doing it right.”
“You don’t like being a judge?”
“I do,” Tom said quickly. “I do. It’s meaningful. It’s amazing, and I’m honored every day. I still think, though, one day I’m going to get a call from the Senate. ‘Oops, you’re not the Tom Brewer we wanted. Our bad. Here’s the door.’”
Mike swallowed a huge gulp of water and shook his head. “Nonsense. You’re great.”
“Uhh, thanks.” Tom looked down, looked sideways at the salt, and willed the heat in his cheeks to disappear. “It’s harder than I imagined. And I don’t mean the cases, or managing the courtroom, or applying the law. I mean, that’s all challenging, but it’s the aspects of the job that no one talks about that are the hardest.”
Silently, Mike waited, his full attention on Tom.
“I was an AUSA. A hard-ass one, and I know a lot of my fellow AUSAs expected me to be a hard-ass on the bench, too. I remember FBI agent Harvey congratulating me and telling me that they needed some good blood on the bench. Stern sentencing.” Tom shook his head. “But, I fought for the government’s case because Ibelievedin those cases. I took the ones that were good cases to trial, and I believed in every one of them. We were getting bad people off the streets, and upholding the law. I also let go of cases that I didn’t believe in. I didn’t try to cram a suspect into a crime that didn’t fit. I also don’t believe that just because someone is accused means that they’re automatically guilty, especially before all the facts and the evidence have been borne out. And, I worked hard for fair plea deals.” He shrugged. “My old coworkers won’t speak to me anymore. I earned a reputation early on as a softie on the bench. Remember the Sousa trial?”
Mike nodded.
He’d sentenced a first-time offender to the lower end of the criminal sentencing guidelines, defying the wishes of the AUSA, and his former coworkers. Even Chief Judge Fink had come tottering into his office, hollering at him in his scratchy southern drawl that he’d just fallen on his face right out of the gate. He was going to be the defendants’ favorite judge and get all the trick defense attorneys clamoring for his sympathy, his bleeding heart. He listened to the Chief Judge in silence, taking his lumps.
He’d read in the newspapers after the trial that he’d been eviscerated at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, called a soft-on-crime judge and a traitor to his own people. Ballard had resented him before for leapfrogging into the federal judiciary, but after the Sousa trial, resentment had coalesced into a burning hatred.
He’d been off to a great start, on the federal bench. Pissed off his Chief Judge, made a name for himself in the papers as a bleeding-heart softie, and was now a sworn enemy of the United States Attorney’s office.
Compared to Ballard, hewasa softie. The United States Attorney for the DC district was a man who seemed to have been born without a heart. Instead of a warm, human center, Ballard had a cold fusion device instead. He was as friendly as an android, as gentle as the Terminator. His soul existed in a ball of passionate rage, focused through his job on a somewhat perverted sense of justice.
He'd been worried, when he worked for him, that Ballard would one day become a federal judge.
“I don’t believe in being overly harsh. I believe each and every crime, each and every defendant, is unique. A mafia boss is not the same as a desperate drug smuggler. A low-level gang member who joined because he didn’t know what else to do and didn’t have any options in his life and got caught selling drugs is not the same as a stone-cold killer. Painting everyone the same, and shoving lesser criminals in with the major criminals, is only hurting everybody. Only hurting society.
“So,” he sighed, sitting back. “I have to be extraordinarily careful with my sentences. With what evidence I allow into trial, and what I exclude. Every action I take, every decision I make, will be evaluated by an appeals court. My decisions have to stand on the merits of the law. I can’t be open to accusations in either direction: that I am too hard, a prosecutor’s judge, or too lenient, a softie who gives defendants everything but the keys to their own cells. I have to be fair, and there’s no guide for that. Fair isn’t fixed. I can’t point to a line and walk it and say, ‘this is fair.’ I have to be individual—”
He broke off, snapping his lips shut. “Sorry, this is incredibly boring. You don’t need to listen to an old judge whine.”
“It’snotboring.” Mike sounded serious, as serious as he did when he delivered his threat briefings and warned Tom about suspicious activity around the courthouse. “What you said…” He shook his head. “I mean,that’swhy I became a marshal. I wanted to make sure that everyone got their day in court. The bad guys, who needed to go away, and the ones who needed to be heard before the law and needed their name cleared.” He exhaled. “I once chased a woman across three states because she’d shot her husband dead and then ran. She was wanted on felony murder, and the state wanted to prosecute her hard. I found her and brought her back. Her husband had been beating her six ways from Sunday every day for seven years. She snapped. I told her she’d have her day in court and the judge would hear her out. It would be justifiable. A crime of passion, or self-defense.” He shook his head, and a sad smile turned down the corner of his lips. “Turns out, the judge and the sheriff were both family members of her dead husband. Small town courts are like that, and there wasn’t a thing I could do.”
“Was this when you were on the task force?”
“Before.” Mike was quiet. “I thought, ‘these aren’t the kind of judges this country needs.’ I mean, her life is over. When she gets out of prison, the hate will have eaten her up. She was free. She was finally free, and I brought her back to hell.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t justice.”
“No.” Mike shook his head, but tried to smile. He was trying to fight back through the sudden sadness, the heaviness that had fallen over their table. It cocooned them, the vivid colors seemingly muted beneath their shared dismay. “I didn’t find a lot of justice out there. But, I see it happening in your courtroom. You’re a good judge, Your Honor.”
He smiled slowly, his lopsided grin turning embarrassed, so wide his cheeks ached. He looked down, before the burn on his face turned into a blazing fire. “Thanks.”
“And you’renotold.”
Tom snorted. “Putting on the judge’s robe has made me ancient. No matter what my driver’s license says, the judge’s robe says ‘grandpa.’”
“Grandpa? No way. You’re, what, forty-one?”
