“Well, none of my colleagues can understand how she got nominated. Well, that’s not true—it was her husband. But we’re all very concerned about someone like Adams on the Supreme Court.” She smiled, twirling her ponytail. I wondered what dance her bun would have done at that moment—the tango? Salsa? “Don’t get me wrong. We’re all very happy for Linda—she’s a very nice person. But the Supreme Court? I don’t think so.” Krumping, definitely.

“Matthew,” she continued, “I understand that the two of you are just best friends with Judge Adams’s clerks.”

Sweat stains had crept down to Matthew’s elbows. “Well, I don’t know if friends—”

“No! No! No!” She pounded one fist, using the other to yank her sunglasses free, revealing puffy eyelids. “As you people know, Judge Adams’s confirmation hearings will be scheduled at some point. A bunch of us are really concerned about her ability to do the job”—she lowered her voice—“and her ethics. This whole Dell Nelson fiasco and that dead man’s brother is a good example of that.” The puffiness left her eyes, leaving them shriveled jelly beans. I wished Ronald Reagan were there to eat them. “What we discuss in here doesn’t leave these doors. Then again, I trust that you people never ever speak of what happens in here with the outside world!” Before our very eyes, she appeared to turn green, as a tail crept from under her desk. “I want you two to find out everything about Judge Adams from your little play friends up there. Whom she speaks to. How her opinions get written. I have a feeling she doesn’t work at all. And maybe she has some, well, less than savory people with whom she cavorts. Most important, do it in an inconspicuous way. Your friends should think you want to know, not me.”

I was stunned. Judge Friedman was a lot of things—evil and gross came to mind—but a spy?

Matthew returned to his sitting-up-dead position and didn’t stir even when the judge’s phone started ringing.

“Roy! Roy! Damn it. He’s good for nothing,” she barked and answered the phone herself. “Oh, hello, Doctor,” she said, cupping her hand over the receiver. “Get out and shut the door.”

Without speaking, Matthew and I rocketed out of the courthouse, zigzagging our way past live trucks and satellite dishes. One male reporter, a dead ringer for Tammy Faye Baker in drag, shoved a microphone in my face: “Do you know Linda Adams? Do you?!”

We collapsed into a booth at Joe’s Shanghai, steam from the soup dumplings fogging up both of our eyeglasses.

“Well, this is a nightmare,” Matthew said, wiping his glasses with a cloth napkin. “And what on earth is the judge talking about?”