Steve Furman’s iPhone gets a notification too. Wrongful death, Steve thinks. Some interim justice while the state puts together something stronger. They won’t screw up again.

Zack Yellin’s primitive disposable phone gets nothing like that. But he’ll find out on his own. Very directly. Very soon.

72.

72.

Last time, Joey Richter came straight from jail so he was brought in the prisoner entrance at the back of the courthouse and didn’t have to deal with the crush of reporters. This time, he’ll be escorted from the police cruiser at the front curb, where wooden blue police barricades create a path to the front door.

Reporters will probably gesture to him and try to wave him over like he’s on a red carpet and they want a comment. But just as the police cruiser pulls up, a balding guy in a baggy gray suit pulls open the passenger door and says, “Follow me.” He takes Joey’s arm, to help him navigate past the reporters to the courthouse entrance.

“Who are you?”

“Nat Becker. I’m your lawyer.”

“Like a public defender or something?”

“No, Joey, you don’t have a guaranteed right to a lawyer in a civil case.”

“So somebody’s paying you.”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

Becker leans in toward Joey, whispers in his ear. “Somebody who wants you to have representation and is willing to pay, and that’s good enough for me.”

Joey looks at Becker’s fraying suit and scuffed-up shoes. This is no flashy Darwin Cope or Len Carter. This is someone who could use the money.

It’s as if the scene from weeks ago is now running in reverse. Joey is being reeled back into a courthouse, instead of being released from it. The sense of the same scene running in reverse is enhanced by the situation’s same surreal, otherworldly quality.

He is ushered through the courthouse doors accompanied by Becker alone. Three uniformed guards man the trays and the single metal detector. “Keys and cell phones and metal belts into the tray, laptops out, step through one at a time.”

Joey puts his disposable phone into the tray, steps through the metal detector, retrieves the phone from the tray on the other side.

He sees the guards look a little more closely at Becker’s laptop. The keys and phones, they don’t even give a second glance.

In a criminal case, a defendant can’t bring anything into the courtroom. In a civil case, it seems there’s nothing you can’t bring in. No weapons, of course. But cell phones, sure.

“So you can bring a cell phone into a courtroom?” asks Joey.

“At the judge’s discretion. As long as it’s kept off,” says Becker, retrieving his laptop.

Karloff and Will have obviously thought this through. Joey would admire it, if he didn’t think they were about to kill him.