24 – Boston
Judy Katz broke her widowed grandmother’s heart every day, torturing the woman who raised her after her parents were killed in an automobile accident when she was six years old. Judy barely remembered her parents and knew little of their history, how they’d met, why they’d married. She retained no memory of her life with them. Her grandmother rarely spoke about her dead son and daughter-in-law, and never spoke about her own husband, who Judy only knew had died long before she'd been born. Judy had no family besides her grandmother, no cousins, no uncles, aunts.
They’d lived in an apartment, an old woman’s apartment in which fresh air was prohibited and the sofa was covered in plastic except when company was present, in the same Queens, New York neighborhood where her grandmother moved on her arrival in the United States after the war.
The only hint about her family history came once when Judy was watching “Schindlers List” on HBO at her grandmother’s apartment, pretending to be able to sip Manischewitz Concord wine, a slightly alcoholic grape juice. Halfway through the movie, with Judy in tears, her grandmother turned toward her and, in a voice as casual as if she were discussing chicken breasts going on sale at Stop and Shop tomorrow, said, “I was there, you know.” A stunned Judy Katz listened to her grandmother describe how she had lived in Warsaw, Poland. When the Germans invaded, all the Jews were imprisoned behind walls, the Warsaw Ghetto. The greater shocker was that Judy’s father had been born there, in the midst of the ghetto. Her grandfather, who she learned for the first time had been a tailor, had smuggled his wife and newborn son out through sewer lines that led under the walls. Once his wife and son were outside the ghetto, the tailor had returned, returned to fight the Nazis. They killed him. No other family member survived the war.
Her grandmother never mentioned that history again, waving her hands and poofing at “history schmistory.” It never left Judy, though. I am a child of death and destruction, the offspring of tyranny and war, she thought.
Her grandmother was less lyrical. She was devastated that her granddaughter was thirty-one years old and not married, not even seeing anybody “serious.”
But that wasn’t the biggest disappointment. After putting her granddaughter through Amherst College - “a wonderful school even if I never heard of it, but what do I know” was her grandmother’s description of her college choice - and Boston College Law School - “a Catholic law school, what kind of law can nuns and priests teach her” - and a year clerking for a federal judge - “seven years of college and you get a job as a clerk” - Judy accepted a prestigious offer from the United States Attorneys Office in Boston as an assistant U.S. attorney. She was assigned to the organized crime strike force. That was the final straw for her grandmother.
“Judilah,” that baby name was always a sign her grandmother was about to treat her like a six-year-old, Judy thought. She sighed, not too loudly, and braced for another dose of angst.
“Judilah,” Estelle Katz whined. “My little Judilah. When are you going to stop breaking your Nana’s heart? Organized Crime Strike Force? What, you’re going to chase mafias, shoot guns, drive fast cars. You’re a lawyah, my little lawyah. Why can’t you get a lawyah job like everybody else? Oy vayzmere. How much can one grandmother’s heart take worrying about her little girl?”
It turned out Judy Katz had a knack for chasing and prosecuting bad guys. Even more surprising to the five-foot-four inch, 117 pound assistant United States attorney, she felt an almost sexual thrill locking eyes with the third-generation Boston Irish and Italian hoodlums as they stood silently before the magistrate judge at their arraignments, brought before the court on the criminal conspiracy, loansharking and mail fraud indictments she obtained against them. She also enjoyed mixing with the similar third-generation Boston Irish and Italian FBI and DEA agents she worked with and then hung out with several nights each week.
If Nana could see me pulling up in front of Mahoney’s Pub in South Boston in a black Ford LTD with six radio antennas on the roof and trunk lid, with four guys with shoulders wider than my grandmother’s coffee table, she’d grab for her chest and roll her eyes, Katz thought. No husband material there, she laughed.
What would really send Nana to the emergency room, Katz thought, was if she could see these buddies of mine reach into their jackets and remove their handguns so they could lock them in the trunk before starting their drinking, a sign that it would be a serious night. I never even saw a gun before this job, she thought. Poor Nana. If she only knew what her little girl was up to now.
Judy Katz was a rising star at the Office of the United States Attorney for Massachusetts. When Jon Cruickshank, the head of the Organized Crime Strike Force, made the inevitable move from the government to “private practice,” joining the Brahmin firm of Bingham Elliot, a law firm that made its first fortune representing owners of China clipper ships, clients who provided the Japanese screens and oriental rugs that still decorated the firm’s reception area, Katz was tapped to replace him.
Which made it all the more surprising when she was not invited to the meeting of all department heads when the Queen, Attorney General McQueeney, showed up unexpectedly in Boston. It quickly became apparent that something big was up, something that did not include Katz. The secret had a short life span, as do so many office secrets.
“We’re having lunch today, Judy,” Bob Shaw, head of the antitrust division told her, sticking his head in her office door. “You can’t say no. You can’t ask why. Just meet me at the Sultan’s at noon. Bye.”
Shaw made no bones about his career plans. Four years slaving in the anti-trust pits here, he said, and then payoff time. He was three years into the game plan and already lunching with headhunters, carefully scripting how he would sell himself to the firms he was presently litigating - but not too fervently - against. Katz didn’t much like Shaw and never had much to do with him. They’d certainly never had lunch alone together before and certainly not a lunch outside the office. After all, the new federal courthouse was known as much for the quality of food served in its cafeteria as for the quality of justice dispensed in its courtrooms. People actually came from outside the building to dine at the courthouse café.
At 11:45 Katz shut down her computer - Never Leave an Unattended Computer Turned On was an office security rule - and walked out past the federal protective service officers at the courthouse entrance. The Sultan’s Palace was a Turkish restaurant across the footbridge from the courthouse. It was popular, but a bit expensive for lunch. Nonetheless, there was always a line.
Shaw was there waiting for her.
“So, what’s the occasion for this unexpected lunch?” Katz asked, walking up to him. She was in a feisty mood, upset that she was not invited to meet with the Queen. She’d met the big boss before, but this seemed to be a special visit, the first unannounced one since Katz joined the office. Something was up and she was not a part of it.
“Not yet,” Shaw said. “Not here.” He indicated the people in front and behind them on the line to the order counter.
Bob Shaw, thought Katz, is the best put together guy I’ve ever met. I’ll bet every hair on his body, his head, his eyebrows and mustache and, she laughed silently, wherever else, is all the same one-quarter-inch length. That must take a lot of energy. Shaw made Katz feel sloppy. She unconsciously straightened her skirt and glanced down at her scuffed shoes.
Minutes later, sitting at the corner table Shaw steered her toward, Katz finally had enough.
“Tell me what this is all about,” she said. She put down her plastic knife and fork, incongruous in a place with twelve dollar lunch entrees, and looked Shaw in the eyes. “OK, what’s up?”
“Judy, my father is Jewish,” he said slowly, not looking at her. “Most people don’t know that. Its not that I have anything to hide but, well, he wasn’t around all that long and my mother was pretty serious about raising me as an Episcopalian and all and, well, I guess you’re the first one in the office I’ve ever mentioned that to.”
“So, why the big confession now?” Katz asked. A thought struck her. “Wait a minute, don’t you dare try to come on to me, don’t you dare think that I’m going to go for the only other Jew in the office. Why you asshole, is that what this is all about?”
She started to get up, taking out her morning’s worth of anger on him. She didn’t need this now, not today, she thought. She was used to her Drug Enforcement Agency buddies inviting her home and playfully clutching their broken hearts in mock despair when she rejected them. Nana was right about such men. Not husband material.
Katz wasn’t looking for a husband. She almost had one, once, briefly, but David Kimelman had turned out to be little more than an empty Armani suit with a CPA and a large office with Deloitte & Touche. He was ten years older than Katz, which she found attractive, avoiding thinking about the implications of a woman raised with no father looking for an older man. It turned out, just a month before the wedding, that she was not the only younger woman David claimed to be in love with. He chose the one with the bigger boobs, Katz told her friends. That was two years ago and she was ready to look for a man again, at least for the company, she told herself, if not yet for marriage.
She looked across the table. Bob Shaw was not the man to replace the father she barely remembered. Shaw lacked solidity, gravitas. Shit, Katz thought, he just isn’t a mensch. But he looked shocked that she’d even thought he was hitting on her.
“No, no, no Judy. Hold on. That’s not it at all. I’m only telling you this to let you know why I’m doing what I’m about to do, which is place my whole job, my whole planned out job PLAN, for God’s sake, on the line.”
Katz sat back down. If this was a come-on, it was an original one. She didn’t think Shaw had the creativity to come up with so subtle a scheme. She was reluctantly intrigued to see what he would say next. She let him continue.
“Look, I can’t say I feel good about everything I’ve done with my life or even about everything I’ve planned to do. I’ve never told you this, Judy, but sometimes I get a bit jealous of you, the big crime buster, the one who gets the newspaper stories about her, the one who actually gets to go to court.”
Shaw smiled at her, confusing Katz further. She let her egg-lemon soup get cold and listened to him.
“I know I’m not the world’s greatest lawyer and I admit I’m just in this job to set myself up for the real money after I move on. Jesus Christ, OK, I’m only in this job because it opens doors for my next job. I’m not especially proud to admit that, especially to somebody like you, but I am admitting that. At least give me credit for that. And at least listen to what I have to say to you. Will you do that?”
Could it be there was more to this guy than a perfect haircut, she thought.
“I’m listening.”
“There was a meeting this morning.”
“I know. I wasn’t invited,” she said. Pausing, a thought entered her mind. “Were you there?”
“I was there. We were all there, all the department heads. And FBI, DEA. ATF. U.S. Marshalls. Even INS. Even Jed. Jed was there.”
Jed Delaney was deputy chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force. Katz was his boss.
“Jed was there?” she whispered. “Why wasn’t I there? Bob, is something going on?”
She sounds worried, Shaw thought. Well, she has something to be worried about.
“Listen, Judy. Nobody can know I’m telling you this. Understand? I’m willing to do the right thing but I don’t want to pay the price for the rest of my life for this. OK? Agreed? I need a promise from you. Nobody ever knows. That means not even if you are under oath. Can you agree to that?”
“Should I agree?” she asked him. “You’re asking me to promise to lie under oath. I can’t agree to that, Bob. That’s too much to ask. I send people to prison for that, Bob.”
A thought suddenly entered her mind. Her mouth went dry at the same time her palms grew sticky. She was always on the other end of the wiretap.
“Bob,” she said slowly, almost in a whisper. “Bob, are you setting me up for something? What kind of game is this?”
Another thought entered her mind.
“Bob, does this have anything to do with why I wasn’t at that meeting this morning? Holy shit, Bob, was I not invited because I’m under investigation? Is that why I wasn’t there, Bob?”
Shaw put both elbows on the table, cupped his right hand in his left hand and supported his chin on both extended thumbs, covering his mouth so nobody in the crowded restaurant could see his lips moving. He leaned forward toward Katz and she instinctively leaned forward toward him. Their faces were inches apart. Incongruously, she wondered whether he would try to kiss her and the tiniest of smiles began to form on her face at the thought, a smile that surprised her, surprised her because it was a long while since she’d felt any interest in any man and Shaw was a guy who’d never even appeared on her radar screen. She leaned an inch closer to him and waited.
Slowly, he spoke, the words coming from his covered mouth in a whisper so faint that she wondered, later in the day, later that night, whether she could have heard him wrong, knowing that she hadn’t, that what she’d heard was, impossibly she thought, what he’d said.
“You weren’t at the meeting. Not because you’re under investigation, Judy,” he moved his head slightly right to left and back again.
“Its because you’re a Jew, Judy. Because you’re Jewish. That’s why.
“I’ve got to go. Judy, I’m sorry. It isn’t right and I couldn’t let it happen and not tell you. Don’t burn me Judy. Please. I did this to help you. Don’t burn me now.”
Shaw stood and walked away between the crowded tables, not looking back at the frozen woman sitting alone at the table, still leaning forward, ready for a kiss, unable to move.