Page 355 - WhyAsInY

Do a JoB—Harvey tHe litiGator
He couldn’t get there; I could handle it for him. His instructions were simple: Our adversaries were unlikely to appear. When our case is called, I should get up and say, “Submit for the motion, Your Honor.” In the unlikely event, however, that our adversaries put in papers in opposition to our motion, I should ask for time for us to put in a reply. Either way, there was no need for me to read the papers in the redweld file folder that I should pick up at his office “just in case” at about 9:15, before I headed down to Foley Square for the 10:00 calendar call. There would be plenty of time to get there, because we were number 87 on the docket. “Oh yes,” he added, “make sure to carry coins with you.”
But, at 9:15 on Tuesday, when I dutifully arrived at his office, Mr. Justice Cardozo’s former clerk told me, somewhat sheepishly, that 10:00 is the time at which calendars are called in Federal Court, where he nor- mally practiced. Sorry, but it transpires that things get started at 9:30 in New York Supreme. “So, young man, I think that you should get going.”
No problem. I grabbed the redweld, ran to the elevator, jumped in when it finally arrived, and paced nervously back and forth in the prison that it had become, hoping that no one would need to enter it on another floor. I counted off the movement of the red arrows from 19 to L as my cell inched toward street level. When it finally landed, I ran through the lobby and north on Madison to 57th Street, as that is where I would most easily get a taxi (I knew that real lawyers take cabs or limos).
And then the skies opened up. Now, rain is ordinarily not a problem for a real lawyer, even when it makes it virtually impossible for him to walk or see and soaks his three-piece suit and redweld, but the problem is that, in New York City, taxis dissolve in water. Miracle of miracles, however, I finally spotted a cab just short of Park Avenue. So I sprinted through the puddles to beat a lady with packages to the car (she did have an umbrella, I hasten to add), grabbed its back door handle, and jumped in. Falling into the backseat with my dripping redweld, I ordered the driver, too much like Rod Steiger did in On the Waterfront, to “take me to Foley Square.”
I might as well have said, “Take me to the Garden,” as Steiger famously did, because the cab, trapped with everyone else in the down-
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