Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [55]
Officer Shaugnessy had trotted to the scene. He pretended not to recognize the good-looking blonde assistant D.A. who had once made mincemeat out of the public defender who had decided that the best way to get his client off the hook was to paint arresting Officer Shaugnessy as an ignorant, prejudiced police thug who took an almost sexual pleasure in persecuting young men of Puerto Rican extraction.
"How much have you had to drink, sir?" was his first question now to Dr. Solomon, who had just given Miss McNamara his effusive apologies and insurance card.
"Drink? It's eight-thirty in the morning! I haven't even had my breakfast!"
"People who speed and drive as recklessly as you obviously were, sir, are often driving under the influence. Would you please extend your right arm, close your eyes, and try to touch your nose?"
"Officer, I don't think the doctor has been drinking," Miss McNamara said. "I think this was just a simple fender bender."
"You sure?" Officer Shaugnessy asked, dubiously.
"I'm sure," Miss McNamara said. "And I'm sure the doctor and I can work this out between us."
"Well, if you say so, ma'am."
"Thank you," Miss McNamara said.
"Yes, ma'am," Officer Shaugnessy said. He filled out the Form 75-48, which the insurance companies would need, and then went back to walking his beat.
While they were waiting for the wrecker, Eileen became aware that the doctor kept stealing looks at her. For some reason, it didn't make her uncomfortable; usually when men did that, it did.
As the wrecker hauled her Plymouth away, Dr. Solomon looked directly at her. His eyes on hers did make her uncomfortable.
"What was that with the cop all about?" Dr. Solomon asked. "You know him?"
"I know a lot of cops," Eileen said. "That one looked familiar. But do I know him? No."
"How is it you know a lot of cops?"
"I'm an assistant D.A."
"Really? An assistant D.A.?" Ben had asked, genuinely surprised. "Good-looking blondes don't come to mind when I hear that term."
"On the other hand, you do look like a doctor," Eileen heard herself say, adding quickly, "What kind?"
"Chest-cutter," Ben had said. "Thoracic surgeon. What do you mean, I look like a doctor?"
"Your eyes," Eileen said. "You have intelligent, kind eyes."
When she heard what she had said, she blushed.
"So do you," Ben had said, softly, after a minute. "Can I buy you breakfast?"
"Breakfast?"
"And lunch, and dinner, and whatever else you want to eat for the rest of your life?"
"You're sure you haven't been drinking?"
"I don't drink," he said. "If I sound a little strange, I was at the table all night--until about an hour ago. And then I met you."
Benjamin Solomon, M.D., and Eileen McNamara, L.L.D., were united in matrimony not quite a month later, which caused varying degrees of joy and despair within their respective Eastern European Hebraic and Irish Roman Catholic communities.
They had been married three years when Eileen told Ben the strangest thing had happened the previous afternoon. She had been asked if she would be interested in running for judge in a special election called by the governor to fill two vacancies caused by the incarceration of two incumbent jurists.
"I think you should," Ben had said after a moment. "You've been on both sides of the fence, and I think you'd do a good job straddling the middle. And you already have the name. Judge Solomon the Second."
She won the election handily, primarily, she believed, because nobody had ever heard of her, and there was general contempt for those whose names were known to the voters.
And she liked the bench, at least trying to keep things fair and just.
They hadn't been able to have children--Ben's fault, the gynecologists said, probably because he'd worn Jockey shorts all of his life--and she really regretted that. But she told herself that a child whose parents both had independent careers could not have gotten the attention it deserved, and that made being childless a little easier to bear.
She had been on the bench six years when a delegation of pols came to her and proposed