New York City, 2000 — It could be said that Phineus Tierney was a sinner. That could be said. It could also be said that Phineus Tierney, in the thirty-eighth year of his life, did not know where he was going or what he was doing. And for these and other reasons he sat in a pew at St. Thomas More and said his Hail Marys. The Virgin Mary listened to his thoughts and to his fears. She accepted him as he was―at least he believed she did. This ritual was soothing for him, and had been for some time. It did not make him less of a sinner. It just made him a sinner with a bit of a conscience.
Phineus stepped out of the church, lit up an Export “A” cigarette and took a long drag. He slowly exhaled, allowing the rich tobacco smoke to escape from his nostrils. His blue eyes followed the smoke as it drifted toward the sky and the bright May sunshine. Another fine day, he thought. Sunny, warm and full of promise. Sure, full of promise if he didn’t have to go to work. If he could be somewhere else. Anywhere would do.
The morning sun was already making him feel uncomfortable in his tweed jacket. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He’d always hated ties and buttoned collars. His neck was a bit too thick for a tie, which, when tightened, only made his round face look plump. He took another drag of his cigarette and ran his hand through his brown, unkempt hair. His only consolation in being a reporter was that nobody gave a shit about his looks. Including himself. He glanced down at his wrinkled khakis and scuffed brown suede oxfords. He scratched his face. He’d forgotten to shave. Screw it. He wasn’t being paid to shave. Nor iron his shirt and trousers, or even have the coffee stains on his tie removed by the dry cleaner. He was being paid to write about politics. The politics of the city. Down and dirty, up and lofty, elegant or seedy, it was all the same to him. The fact that he thought his writing sucked didn’t bother him; he’d long ceased to give a shit about that. He showed up for work, wrote his weekly column, and got paid. That’s all his editor expected of him. And that’s all he expected of himself. He took one last drag of his cigarette, ground it out with his shoe and headed for the subway.
Crossing the street at Park Avenue he looked south and could see the MetLife Building over forty blocks away. This view―a majestic one that looked down upon the hub of commerce―still gave him a bit of a thrill. When he was a kid he used to wonder if the city was noble enough to hold his dreams. Now, having rolled around a bit in the manure of life, he wondered if he was noble enough for the city.
At Eighty-sixth Street he headed east toward the subway, stopping at Starbucks to pick up a container of coffee. At Lexington Avenue he bought the New York Times and stepped down into the subway station, arriving on the platform just as the downtown train screeched to a halt. The sound and vibration of the skull-numbing train could not be good for a hangover, especially the hangover that dogged him now.
Standing room only. He looked at the faces of his fellow travelers coming in from Harlem and the Bronx. Black and Latino faces of all mixtures and shades. Bronx accents mixed with Jamaican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican. Secretaries, maintenance men, shop girls, file clerks. Working to pay the rent and feed the kids. He looked into their tired eyes. No sign of excitement. Only determination and exhaustion. And love. Hidden under the layers of life he saw God’s people. Could laugh and cry all in the same day. Sing and dance. Sway to the music of life and follow its flow while holding on to a fragile raft.
The train arrived at Grand Central. Phineus stepped out of the subway and headed to his office at the New York Scene over on Thirty-ninth Street.
“Tierney!” shouted Ed Brogan, “Is that you?”
“Yes, Mr. Brogan. It is I.”
Ed Brogan sat at his large desk with a cigarette dangling from his hand. His gold cufflinks gleamed in the morning sunlight that poured into his office. He was bald as a newborn baby―the Bermuda tan on both his head and face making him look, at seventy-four years of age, healthy and formidable. Within this small, dapper man existed the whirling energy of a tornado.
“Get in here, you have work to do,” Brogan barked. “City Hall is hopping and I need to know what’s going on.”
“What is going on?” Phineus asked, a reasonable question, he thought.
“If I knew what was going on, I wouldn’t need you, would I?”
“Well…it all depends. If you want keen insight into the workings of City Hall, then you need―”
“Enough of your self-serving horseshit. That idiot from the City Review, you know, what’s his name―”
“Stan Grabowski.”
“That’s him. He’s probably already gotten the goddamn story by now.”
“Grabowski is an idiot―nobody reads his drivel. So, what exactly am I looking for?”
“Again with the questions. Just get your ass down there―and don’t forget your notebook!” Brogan screamed, scowling as he exhaled a plume of smoke.
Phineus headed back to Grand Central. When he got off the train at City Hall, he called Nora Halley on his cell. In another time and in another world―before he met his wife, fathered a daughter, and pissed away his marriage―he had made a run on Nora Halley’s chastity and failed. The silver lining was a friendship that evolved over a mutual interest: politics. Nora came from Stuytown, a section of the city where the residents ate politics for breakfast. After law school Nora had joined the Mayor’s staff as a legal advisor.
When there was breaking news at City Hall, Nora gave Phineus access to the Mayor’s office and let him observe the action. The Mayor, rather than using the traditional private office afforded all previous mayors, had commandeered a large committee room and plopped his desk in the middle, ordering all his staff to place their desks and cubicles around him. His desk was on an elevated platform so he could see and be seen. Visitors commented that it reminded them of a trading floor. The Mayor behaved as if it was the bridge of a battleship, with him as the captain directing the action below.
Phineus arrived at City Hall and waited outside the Mayor’s office. He stood in a huddle with the other reporters who had received phone calls from mysterious sources. None of them knew what was going on, but the buzz reverberating out of the Mayor’s office was enough to put the scent in the air. Phineus knew the action was good―only a certified political crisis could get the battleship operating at full speed. And the Mayor’s battleship was humming. As Brogan had surmised, Grabowski from the City Review had already arrived and stood in the huddle like a pointer dog, notebook and pencil at the ready. Phineus looked at Grabowski and shook his head, wondering how someone so dense managed to survive.
Suddenly the doors to the battleship were flung open. The Mayor and his staff members shot out of the room and dispersed in all directions. Nora Halley came out of the room, saw Phineus and motioned him over to a quiet corner.
“Took you long enough.”
“And hello to you, Nora. What’s all the excitement about?”
“You know Judge Horan?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s just been arrested for taking a bribe.”
“Come on. In Manhattan? It’s just not done.”
“It’s done, and the judge did it. The DA sent in a lawyer who was wired. They have him dead to rights.”
“Jesus, that’s really tough luck for the judge. But what’s this got to do with the Mayor?”
“Nothing―except fifty years ago he and the judge played college football together. The press will be all over this any minute now.”
“What am I, the school newspaper?”
Nora laughed. “No, but I thought I’d give you a head start.”
“You mean, you thought you’d give me the spin, eh?”
Nora grabbed the sleeve of his jacket, “Say, you know this is about Judge Horan, not the Mayor. You do know that, right? College football or not, the Mayor has nothing to do with what goes on over at the courthouse.”
“I suppose I might believe that, coming from you. But tell me, why bribe the judge when it’s the jury who decides the case?”
“Stop playing dumb. You’ve been covering the courts for a long time.”
“I’m for real. I don’t get it.”
“You get more than you let on.”
“I still don’t get why a lawyer needs to bribe a judge in a jury trial.”
“It’s the grey area of the trial, Phineus.”
“Grey area?”
“The part not seen by the jury.”
“Like what?”
“Like what evidence is admissible. Like what law the jury will apply to the case. Like all the little things that can change the course of a trial.”
“Come on. The witnesses testify and the jury decides. Pretty basic stuff.”
“Seems that way. But often, what’s kept from the jury is more important than what they actually see and hear. And what they see and hear is always determined by the trial judge.”
“Speak English, Nora.”
“A smart judge can flip a case with just a few well-chosen rulings. And a clever one can do it without the lawyers suspecting anything. That grey area of discretion is fertile feeding ground for judges on the take,” Nora said, the sparkle in her eyes and short intake of breath hinting to Phineus that for Nora Halley, talk of politics and the law was quite possibly an aphrodisiac.
He shook his head thinking that he had to stop interpreting a woman’s intellectual excitement as sexual desire―a theory he had been told applied to especially bright women who could only achieve physical orgasm after their intellect had been properly tickled. In this case, Nora had tickled herself because he had added nothing of value to the conversation.
“Well, Nora, as usual you’ve enlightened me on the subject matter of my own well-worn beat. I hope I can digest all this and work it into a story.”
“I’ve said too much. Remember now, the Mayor is nowhere to be found in or around that feeding ground. Just so you understand that.”
“I saw what I saw, and what I saw leaves you nothing to worry about.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means I saw sadness in the Mayor’s face―for another person. And to me, that denotes innocence. Quite simple, really. Why I’m a reporter, and you’re not.”
“Okay, Phineus. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I think it means you’re not going to write some libelous innuendo about the Mayor. At least not just yet,” Nora said, sighing with relief, “But you are an odd duck, you do know that?”
“So I’ve been told, Nora. So I’ve been told.”
Phineus bounded down the steps of City Hall and strode toward the subway entrance. As he headed uptown on the train he thought more about what Nora had said. He surmised that the bribes occurred overnight, allowing a judge to slam an unsuspecting lawyer right before the jury filed in for the morning’s proceedings. But why any judge would want to take this risk was beyond his comprehension. Whether for big money, small money, or helping a political hack, this game was too dangerous for any judge who understood the odds. What perplexed him the most was that Horan had a reputation as a first-class jurist. Phineus realized that he needed to learn more about Judge Horan and where he came from. Always a good place to begin if one wanted to get to the bottom of a story.
The above is Chapter One from a yet to be published novel, “Tierney’s Plate,” in which investigative reporter Phineus Tierney writes columns exposing a secret society of New York lawyers, founded originally by his grandfather, who is from West Cork, where the action eventually leads. James Rodgers is an attorney and the author of the novel “Long Night’s End.” He lives in Manhattan with his wife and children.
