The Court by William J. Coughlin Page A

it, Roy, that’s a brilliant solution.”
    â€œWell, it’s a solution, brilliant or not.”
    â€œI read about this fellow Howell. From the sounds of it, it’s my medical opinion that he won’t make it. I hope you get the appointment, Roy. You would do a splendid job.”
    Pentecost stood up. “I hate to usher out someone who talks so nicely, but I do have to go, Dick. I hope you’re wrong about Justice Howell. He’s a good man.”
    â€œStill, if he…”
    â€œGoodbye, Dick.” Pentecost guided him to the door. “If my brilliant solution doesn’t work, let me know.”
    He closed the door and returned to his notes.
    It was all a matter of tactics now. He chose not to go after the job, at least not while Howell was alive. But he knew others would be pressing his case. It would look good, this reluctance of his. It would look judicial.
    And he damned well did want that job.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The airplane circled as it approached the landing in Detroit. It was a bright and cloudless day, although the pilot had announced that snow showers were expected later in the Detroit area. Jerry Green looked out the window. The pilot had come in over the western tip of Lake Erie. They passed the shoreline and glided above the almost geometric pattern of the suburbs and farmlands below.
    He tried to identify some familiar landmarks. He always did that when he was up in a plane, although he could never really tell one river from another, and all interstates looked alike.
    If it wasn’t for the stadium he wouldn’t have recognized the town. They were passing just south of Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan stadium, a huge bowl with a seating capacity of over one hundred thousand, looked like a child’s teacup below them.
    The aircraft began its descent and soon they were flying above the roofs of row upon row of suburban tract houses. They all looked alike from the air. Cars moved on the busy streets, completely heedless of the big jet above them. It was as if they were invisible.
    He felt the clutch of his usual apprehension as they came down. He knew it was foolish, but it was as if he suspected that the pilot had made a mistake. All he could see was fields and distant houses as they came near to ground level. Only the pilot could see the airfield. Then, just as it seemed to Green that they might crash, the runway came into view and its ritualistic markers streaked past as the big jet touched down. Jerry Green felt his usual sense of relief as the pilot used his engines and wing flaps to slow the airplane.
    People began to stir as the jet slowed to taxiing speed. He continued to look out the window. Detroit Metropolitan Airport had nothing to distinguish it from any other major airport. With few exceptions, they all seemed to look alike.
    He moved out of the aircraft in the press of his fellow passengers. For once there was no hassle with the luggage. He had made prior arrangements for a rental car, and that too was ready. When things seemed to be going too well, he had to resist a foreboding of impending disaster. A typical Jewish attitude, he reflected as he eased the car out of the airport and into the fast-moving interstate traffic. He always felt it would be a dead heat between the Irish and the Jewish for first place in any superstition sweepstakes. He smiled at the thought. He hadn’t been on Michigan’s soil for a full half hour and already he was beginning to think ethnically.
    He passed a semitrailer then settled back. It was an hour and a half drive to Lansing, and he had no reason to hurry. He turned the car radio dial until he found a classical music station. The lilting strains of Mahler filled the speeding car.
    Green looked about at the autumn landscape. Michigan never really changed. The populations shifted a bit, the old core cities decayed, and manufacturing plants moved, but it essentially remained the same. Shaped like a mitten, the