Page 357 - WhyAsInY

Do a JoB—Harvey tHe litiGator
the front of the building that housed the New York State Supreme Court and not the front of the building that housed the United States District Court and the United States Court of Appeals.
I summoned up my courage and found a policeman (no way I would ask a man in a suit), who undoubtedly stifled his amusement as he pointed me in the right direction. Looking at my watch again, I thanked him abruptly and proceeded to run up the correct stone staircase (think of the way in which, during one of the intercuts of the baptism scene in The Godfather, Barzini ran while he was being shot at—and ultimately wiped out—by the Corleone assassin who was masquerading as a cop). Reaching the top and wholly out of breath from the run and too many Marlboros, I sped through the huge front doors and circled the impos- ing lobby until I finally located the door to Supreme One, the Motion Part, where my calendar had undoubtedly become history.
I fixed my hair, straightened my posture, and strode in, all the while affecting what I thought to be the air of a wizened veteran, as I searched for and finally found a seat near the back where I could gather myself further. I was amazed to see that the room was not empty and that, as far as I could tell, the calendar was still being called! In fact, according to the whispered and paternal advice of the disheveled man who was clutching a folded Daily News and sitting next to me in what seemed like the thirtieth row of chairs in the cavernous room that was labeled Part 1, we were “in second call.” Wow! Nobody, not even my former associ- ates at United Lawyers Service had ever told me that they called the calendar twice in Motion Part before calling it a morning. (In fact, I recognized one of them in the front of the room and, comforted by the fact that I knew her and that my troubles were apparently over, I resolved to say hello when the drama had ended, successfully, as I now believed.)
The next voice that I heard was that of the bailiff and, as far as I could make it out, he was intoning, rather emphatically, “Sixty-five! Somethin’ or Udduh voisis So-and-so!” Dynamite! As my case was 87, not only had I made it against all the odds, but I had as many as twenty- two more calls during which I could prepare to approach the bench, identify myself, my firm, and my client, and say, “Submit for the motion,”
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