Fair is Foul; Foul is Fair: A Clem MacDougall Adventure, Take III

III. IT ONLY GETS WORSE. The Honorable Prunella Jane Virago, President Judge of the Family Court Division of the Green County Circuit Court, ran her courtroom strictly according to the rules – her rules. Judge Virago seemed to take pleasure in changing her rules on an almost weekly and always arbitrary basis, posting densely-worded change orders in an obscure, poorly-lit corner of the bulletin board in the corridor outside the courtroom. Lawyers who practiced in her courtroom were advised to bring their checkbooks; failure to follow Judge Virago’s rules to the letter brought stiff personal fines for contempt of court. Long before Clem MacDougall had undertaken representation of Gladys Weingarten, Judge Virago had let it be known she was fed to the teeth with the battling Weingartens (“Whine-Gardens,” she called them) and their ever-changing cadre of sniveling, wheedling lawyers. Clem MacDougall’s brand-new BMW sport utility vehicle had chosen this particular morning to refuse to start. His brand-new Lexus SUV ran out of gas and sputtered to a stop in the middle of rush hour on the Excelsior City Freeway. His cell phone battery was dead. When he finally reached a pay phone, it ate his last quarter but declined to deliver a dial tone. Which is to say, Clem MacDougall was late for court – by a good forty-five minutes, according to the big clock on the rear wall of the courtroom. Gladys Weingarten, her head an explosion of red-orange hair under a leopard-skin pillbox hat, sat at the plaintiff’s counsel table and glared at him from under bruised-looking purple-shadowed eyelids. She wore heavy gold necklaces and a shiny mauve dress with a low-cut neckline that showed more wrinkled, mottled cleavage than the gaping maw of Hades. At the defense table, Marty Goniff and his client looked as if they’d just placed first and second, respectively, in the pie-eating contest at the Green County Fair. Clem MacDougall stumbled over a wrinkle in the carpet as he scrambled up the aisle and took his seat. For a full minute by the courtroom clock, Judge Virago ignored him. She looked casually through some papers on the bench, then whispered something to her law clerk, who bustled out a side door with a nervous glance over her shoulder at Clem MacDougall. Marty Goniff stood. “Your Honor, it appears Mr. MacDougall has finally decided to join us. Since my client has taken time away from his duties at the hospital, may I request we begin the hearing?” He bowed in Clem MacDougall’s direction. Uriah Heep, Esquire. “I can explain, your Honor.” Clem MacDougall stood quickly, knocking most of his file to the floor. Papers cascaded from folders and three hours of preparation rapidly dissolved into a chaos of disorganized nonsense. The judge peered over her glasses. “One hundred dollars, Mr. MacDougall. You know my rule about punctuality. And one hundred dollars to Mr. Goniff for wasting his valuable time.” Clem MacDougall retrieved his file and dumped a pile of papers on the table. A phrase from A Flame of Wrath for Squinting Patrick repeated in his mind, but now it had something of the sound of a pig being slaughtered. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Nae blood on me blade yet. COULD IT GET STILL WORSE?