The Judge’s List

Judge Bannick flipped his switch, and flipped it again, and made himself laugh and smile and talk loudly about little that mattered. At times, though, he felt the weight of the future, the uncertainty of Monday’s mail, the fear of being stripped naked and exposed, and he lapsed into moments of pensiveness. It was impossible not to look around the room at the friends and leaders and people he had always known and admired without asking: What will they say?

He, decked in Zegna and rubbing elbows with the rich, was a most respected judge, admired by important people, and he was also, at least in his opinion, the most brilliant killer in American history. He had studied the others. Thugs, all. Some downright ignorant.

He told himself to shake it off, and took a question about an oil spill in the Gulf. Some of the crude was inching toward Pensacola and the alarms were up. Yes, he surmised that there would be a great deal of litigation in the near future. You know the plaintiffs bar, he said, they’ll sue the moment the oil slick is in sight, and probably before. The spill was front page and for a while the entire table quizzed His Honor on who might be able to sue whom. It passed; the women lost interest and pursued their own little chats as dinner was served.

The waitstaff was well trained and efficient and no one’s wineglass was ignored, especially Helen’s. As usual, she was pounding Chardonnay and getting louder. She’d be drunk by ten and he’d have to once again shovel her into the house with Melba’s help.

He was happy to be quiet and listen to the others. He looked around the large room, smiled and nodded and acknowledged some friends. The mood was festive, even rowdy, and everyone was wearing beautiful clothes. The women were coiffured to perfection. Those over forty had the same noses and chins, thanks to the handiwork of a Dr. Rangle, the most sought-after face-lifter in the Florida Panhandle. He was sitting two tables away with his second wife, a gorgeous blonde of indeterminate age, though she was rumored to be in her early thirties. When Rangle wasn’t carving on women he was sleeping with them, they found him irresistible, and his sexual escapades were the source of endless salacious gossip in town.

Bannick loathed the man, as did many husbands, but he also secretly envied his libido. And his current wife.

There were two in the room he’d like to kill. Rangle was the second. The first was a banker who had denied him a loan when he was thirty years old and trying to buy his first office building. He said Bannick’s balance sheet was too light and his chances of making good money as a lawyer were too unlikely. The town was already saturated with mediocre legal talent, and most ham-and-eggers around the courthouse were barely paying their bills. Typical banker, he thought he knew everything. Bannick bought another building, filled it with tenants, then bought another. As his law practice flourished, he joined the country club and ignored the banker. When he was elevated to the bench at the age of thirty-nine, the banker suffered a stroke and had to retire.

Now he sat at a corner table, old and shriveled and able only to mumble to his wife. He was sad and deserved sympathy, an emotion foreign to Bannick.

But killing him or Rangle would be too risky. A local crime, in a small town. And, their transgressions were too minor compared to the others. He had never seriously considered putting them on the list.

As dinner came to an end the band began playing softly, mostly old Motown hits that the crowd loved. A few eager couples hit the floor during dessert. Helen liked to dance and Bannick could hold his own. They skipped the cake, made their entrance, then jerked and gyrated through some Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson. After a few songs, though, she was parched and needed a drink. He left her at the table with her friends and went outside to the patio where the men were smoking black cigars and sipping whiskey.

He was pleased to see Mack MacGregor standing alone near the edge, a glass in one hand, a phone in the other. After ten years on the bench, Bannick knew every lawyer between Pensacola and Jacksonville, and many others too, and Mack had always been one of his favorites. They had both joined local firms about the same time, then spun off into their own shops. Mack loved the courtroom and quickly became a skilled and sought-after trial advocate. He was one of the few lawyers in the area who could take a case from the beginning, the injury or death, and push it all the way to a successful verdict. He was a pure trial lawyer, not a mass tort chaser, and he handled criminal cases as well. Bannick had seen his work firsthand, but he had never allowed himself to believe that one day he would need Mack’s services.

In the past three days, he had caught himself thinking about Mack far too much. If the sky fell, and Bannick still believed it would not, Mack would be his first call.