The Judge Read online

  The opening statements had been sincere and passionate but confusing. Ando had shown nobility in the face of suffering and deserved to win the first round. But being the best advocate and serving the true God were two different things. Finney’s profile of Jesus seemed compelling, and the Patient liked Kareem’s passion as well as Hadji’s acceptance of everything life threw at him. He had listened to every word the advocates had said, but he had no idea who was right.

  He knew the answer wouldn’t come from analyzing opening statements. Faith was about so much more than that.

  19

  By Wednesday morning, Finney noticed that the contestants were getting into a routine. Kareem had started the last two days with prayer rituals outside his condo at sunrise, making sure everyone was awake with his loud chanting. Dr. Kline would be the next out, stretching before she took off on her morning run, doing ten or fifteen laps on the sidewalk around the small resort, making Finney tired just watching.

  Finney would then begin his own morning exercise, walking around the same half-mile loop two or three times—something far more reasonable. Even that distance made his lungs ache, but he was determined to keep exercising.

  Next, the Swami would find a spot on the beach and practice yoga for the appreciative cameras. Ando apparently meditated somewhere inside or maybe just slept in.

  The Assassin took careful mental notes about the habits and capabilities of others on the island. He put nothing in writing. Still, he filed away in the recesses of his mind critical details on each person—background information he had gained before coming to the island, physical strengths and weaknesses, personalities, alliances. He knew which contestants played cards together and which contestants operated alone. He knew that Finney started each day with a cigar, coffee, and twenty-five minutes of Bible reading. He knew that Victoria Kline had averaged three minutes and forty-five seconds per lap on day one and three minutes and thirty-eight seconds per lap on day two.

  He had already met every security guard at the resort, filing those names away for possible future reference. He took careful note of the firearms and radios they carried. He scouted out the location of every camera on Paradise Island.

  It had been only three days, and he had more than a week left to complete his reconnaissance, but he was already getting into the zone. So far there had been no surprises, nothing that would keep him from carrying out his assignment.

  In his mind, with a few brain cells not busy cataloging key facts about his environs, he was already counting the money.

  On Wednesday morning Finney decided to have a seat on the lounger a few feet away from the Swami. Finney took his Bible with him—there was nothing he liked better than having his morning devotions while the sun crawled up out of the ocean, throwing off splashes of orange and yellow in spectacular fashion.

  He took a seat, kicked off his flip-flops, perched his reading glasses on the end of his nose, and watched Hadji for a few minutes over the top of the glasses. The kid was looking out over the water, deep in meditation, and apparently didn’t even notice that Finney had joined him. The Swami was wearing nothing but a pair of baggy plaid shorts and was standing with his feet spread wide, his toes and knees pointed outward, and his arms dangling at his sides. He would squat down while inhaling, keeping his back straight as a board, then would bend his elbows at the waist and emit some kind of “ha” sound. He would inhale again as he extended his arms straight in front of him, then pull his elbows back to his chest with another “ha.”

  The Swami did this over and over for a few minutes while Finney watched him, the Bible lying unopened in Finney’s lap. Then the Swami stood, turned his toes forward, and hinged down at the waist, keeping his legs straight and placing his palms on the sand. He slowly rolled up to a standing position and turned toward Finney, smiling.

  “Ha kriya,” he said.

  “Ha kriya, yourself,” Finney said. He took off his reading glasses and began fiddling with them in his right hand.

  “No, Judge O, that’s the name of the exercise. Ha means ‘sun’ and kriyas are ritual actions that unite movements and breath to alter our energetic states. It’s a way to draw on solar power, Judge, to get the kind of energy we’re going to need in the next few days.”

  “Yeah,” Finney said. “I can feel it too.”

  The Swami looked at Finney, as if unsure whether he was serious. “Why don’t you give it a try, Judge O? I’m just about ready to do something to experience the soothing energy of the water.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I draw most of my power from reading this Book.”

  “That’s cool, Judge, but I’m not trying to convert you to Hinduism or anything. I’m just saying that if you want to relax and get ready for the day, this can help you.”

  Finney shook his head. “I’ve got cigars for that.”

  “But, dude, cigars are poison. This stuff is soothing and rejuvenating.” Then the Swami shrugged. “But hey, man, it’s up to you. I don’t want to tell you how to get in touch with your spiritual side. I do know a lot of Christians who like to meditate, though.”

  “Maybe some other time,” Finney said. He put on his reading glasses, opened his Bible, and started where he had left off yesterday. The Swami resumed his yoga.

  Finney thought about the Swami’s last comment. Meditation was one thing, but yoga was meditation of a different sort, centering your thoughts on a spiritual force at odds with Christianity. But that didn’t necessarily mean that Christians had to avoid meditation altogether—to concede the field, so to speak. Finney knew a lot of Christians, including a lot of heroes of the faith, who meditated on God and His goodness. Sure, it was more of a Middle Ages practice than a modern one—another spiritual discipline that had fallen victim to fast-paced lifestyles. But there was certainly nothing wrong with meditation per se.

  Finney had an idea.

  “You ever read this Book?” he asked.

  The Swami looked over at him, finished a repetition of what looked like a breaststroke on dry land, and then stopped. “The whole thing?”

  “Let’s just say the New Testament.”

  “Not really. I’ve heard a bunch of sermons, though. And I watched The Passion once. I think I get the general drift.”

  “But you’ve never read it yourself?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Tell you what,” Finney said. “If you read one of the books in the New Testament that I get to choose, I’ll try one of your exercises. But I’m not into all that chanting and meditating, just the exercise.”

  The Swami shrugged. “Deal.”

  Finney showed the Swami where the Gospel of John started, then took off his glasses, put down his Bible, and received his first lesson in yoga exercises. This one was all about water, the Swami said. He had Finney stand with his heels together and toes apart, place his palms together in front of his body, and then reach up over his head and push the air away, rising up on his toes and exhaling, as if he were swimming through water.

  “Are you soaking in the water?” the Swami asked.

  “Not really,” Finney admitted, “but I am getting a little tired.”

  They stopped the exercise when Victoria Kline wandered their way.

  “Want to join us?” the Swami asked.

  “No thanks.” She snickered. “Judge Finney, you hardly seem the type for yoga.”

  Finney shrugged. “I’m not. I just thought it might help me to focus better on the Scripture I’d been reading.”

  “Did it?”

  Finney looked at the Swami as if to apologize. “Not really.”

  “You sure you don’t want to try it?” the Swami asked Victoria, undeterred.

  “No,” Dr. Kline said. “But there is something I’ve been dying to try.” To Finney’s surprise, she motioned to the Hobie Cat sitting a few hundred yards down the beach. “I always wanted to learn how to sail. Judge, did you say the other day that you knew how to sail one of those things?”

&nbs
p; The question caught Finney off guard. Was Dr. Kline asking him to take her sailing? “I’m better at sailing than I am at yoga.”

  They talked for a few more minutes and agreed on a time for Victoria Kline’s first Hobie Cat lesson. The Swami stared after her as she walked off down the beach.

  “Dude,” he said to Finney, “I knew you had good karma.”

  20

  By late morning, Finney was doing the second thing he never thought he would be doing that day—sailing on the Hobie Cat with the enigmatic Dr. Kline. The warm breeze cooperated, blowing hard enough to keep the colorful sail full and propel them across the bay at a respectable speed. Kline quickly learned how to work the tiller, tacking as if she’d been born on the water.

  She seemed to relax on the boat, smiling more as they sailed around the bay than she had the three previous days combined. Finney caught himself grinning as well, watching Kline’s intense focus as she fiddled with the rope to adjust the sail. She wore blue cotton shorts, a black bathing suit top, sunglasses, and a baseball hat that hung low over her eyes. Finney wore an old bathing suit, a tank top, and his trademark John Deere ball cap, frayed badly around the bill.

  “Can you take over for a minute, Judge?”

  “Sure.” Finney traded sides and took control of the tiller. He could do this in his sleep.

  “I’m grateful for the sailing lessons,” Dr. Kline said, her smile gone as she looked in the direction of the security guard standing onshore next to the WaveRunners. The guards seemed to be everywhere on the property, making Finney feel strangely claustrophobic, as if he were serving time in a minimum security prison rather than competing on a game show.

  “I’ve enjoyed it,” Finney said.

  “But I really didn’t haul you out here to give me sailing lessons,” Kline continued. “I knew they would let us take off our microphones if we came on the water, and I needed to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.” Finney focused on the sail, sensing that Dr. Kline was struggling with whether to tell him something. He didn’t want to intimidate her with the famous Finney stare.

  “I debated all night whether to even say anything. But I decided to talk to you because you seem like someone I can trust.” She paused for a beat. “But you’ve got to promise me that this stays just between us.”

  Finney adjusted the sail and turned to face her. It was hard to tell what she was thinking behind the dark glasses. “It will.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to explain this without giving you the whole story.” She sighed. “You know Bryce McCormack, right?”

  “The director.”

  “Yeah. Well, he started hitting on me before we even got to the island. I didn’t do anything to encourage it, but . . . Well, he’s the director, so I didn’t exactly discourage it, either. So when we set up here on the island, he said something like I ought to come and visit him some night. Instead of just blowing him off like I should have, I took advantage of the situation in order to get out from under the constant surveillance of these cameras; they drive me nuts.”

  “Know what you mean.”

  “I told McCormack that it would be hard to pay him a visit when my every move is being recorded. He asked if it might help if he had the cameras in my condo turned off at night so I could come and go as I pleased. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I said yes.”

  Kline paused and blew out a breath. Finney pushed the tiller hard away from him and swung the sail around, making it necessary for him and Kline to change sides of the boat.

  “Last night I got bored and headed over to his place. Not to do anything—frankly, the man disgusts me. But to be honest, I knew that the first episode had aired, and I wanted to maybe share a drink with McCormack and see what I could find out.”

  Now things are starting to feel like a regular reality show, Finney thought. Intrigue, conniving, and illicit relationships. One part of him wanted to lecture Kline on ethics. The other part wanted to know more.

  “As I was walking down the sidewalk toward his condo, I heard some voices on his back patio, so I stayed in the shadows on the side of the building and listened for a few minutes. It was McCormack and Murphy, and they were talking about the show. It was one of those things where I knew I shouldn’t be listening, but I couldn’t really just come bounding around the corner at that moment and be like, ‘Hey! How’s it going?’ or they’d wonder what I heard. So I just stood there.”

  “And?”

  “They were talking about some really weird stuff. It was like they had a piece of serious dirt on each of us, and they were talking about how they could hold it over our heads if we tried to go public or go to the cops or whatever.”

  “Go to the cops about what?” Finney asked.

  “That’s what I couldn’t figure out. It was like they were planning on doing something to us and then blackmailing us with this secret information.”

  Finney’s head started spinning. This was too weird. Maybe Kline was making it all up, trying to throw him off. Maybe she had some paranoid tendencies. He couldn’t imagine what the show’s producers could possibly have on him. He was clean. Boringly clean. It was a job requirement—judges couldn’t be involved in things that might later subject them to blackmail.

  “Did you hear what they said about me?” Finney asked. It seemed like a good way to figure out whether Kline was making something up.

  “I couldn’t tell for sure,” she responded. “But something about the speedy-trial law and some guys you let off.”

  Stunned, Finney lost focus on the wind for a moment, and the boat slowed considerably. Those cases were ancient history. Or so he had thought. He felt his stomach clench, though he kept a straight face. “What about you? What’d they say about you?”

  This brought such a long pause that Finney wasn’t sure that Kline was going to answer at all. When she did, she spoke softly, staring at the ocean water whipping by the side of their boat. “Plagiarism. It was a long time ago, but it would still ruin my career if it ever came to light. I have no idea how they found out.”

  They spent another fifteen minutes on the boat, devising a plan for dealing with this latest development. They would need more information. They reluctantly decided that they should inform the other contestants in the meantime by passing notes at counsel table. Finney would tell Kareem. Kline would tell Ando and Hadji. Also, Kline would make up some emergency reason for needing to communicate with her agent, an attorney in whom Kline had great confidence. Finney had a few ideas about how to contact Nikki as well, though he didn’t say anything about that to Dr. Kline.

  Hopefully, it was all a big misunderstanding that would be clarified in the next few days. The speedy-trial statute, Finney thought. He thought he’d heard the last about those cases.

  21

  Murphy had it all going—the back-of-the-neck rub, the terse comments, the inability to sit still, the rapidly narrowing eyes. Bryce had learned the warning signs of an explosion, but unfortunately the PR member of the team didn’t seem to notice.

  “We’ve got some damage control to do on Finney,” she said. “A lot of Christians are complaining because we’ve got a cigar smoker representing them. Others have joined with the Anti-Defamation League in denouncing the whole concept. And even the Christians who do like this guy—and there must be a ton of them because he got over 60 percent of the vote—they all think that the voting system is rigged.”

  “Are you done?” Murphy asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. That’s a wonderful synopsis.” Murphy paused, glaring at the woman. “The only minor critique I have of your presentation is that it lacks this silly little item called solutions.”

  The two faced off for a moment before Murphy turned his ire toward another attendee. The man tried to paint an optimistic picture of the Nielsen ratings, but Murphy was not buying it. Eventually, Howard Javitts came to the man’s defense.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with our Nielsens,” Javitts said. “A si
x-point-one rating and a thirteen share. Twelve million homes. Other than Survivor, American Idol, and Dancing with the Stars, what reality show beats that?”

  Murphy responded by articulating his words slowly and forcefully, the way teachers reprimand disruptive junior high students. “The Nielsens demonstrate that our decision to let Demsky have his say at the start of the show worked. People tuned in to see what all the controversy was about. But, Larry, how many phone calls did we get last night?”

  “Not quite eleven million.”

  “Not quite eleven million,” Murphy repeated. He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, and cursed, as if everyone around the table was too stupid to understand what he was saying. “American Idol hits thirty-four million homes and gets sixty-five million calls—nearly two calls per home. But us? We hit twelve million homes and can’t even generate twelve million calls. And most voters call multiple times. So we’re talking maybe four or five million total voters. Anybody see a problem here?”

  “I see a real problem,” Larry volunteered, a young associate producer.

  No kidding, moron, Bryce thought.

  “We started the night with a lot of homes, but our call volume says we lost half of them during the show. And the reviews stink. Everybody said it was too cerebral. No human drama element. Fell short of expectations.”

  “What do they want?” Javitts asked. “It’s not supposed to be Fear Factor.”

  “I’ll tell you what they want,” Murphy replied. “They want conflict. They want controversy. They want love triangles and temptation and people losing their tempers. They want something outrageous enough that it gives the Anti-Defamation League and the Catholic Church and the Christian Right a reason to be upset. We promised them Temptation Island, and we’re giving them Jeopardy!”

  “I didn’t sign up for Temptation Island,” Javitts insisted.