Blunt Darts

I wanted to at least get a look at His Honor before I started after his son. Also, because of my understanding with Mrs. Kinnington, I thought I ought to do my observing before I did any poking around that would identify me for him.
    The courthouse looked spanking new. It was red brick and from the exterior had some stylish peaks that implied cathedral ceilings inside. As I walked from the lot toward the door, I caught a glimpse of a court officer with a hand-held metal detector at the entrance, thoroughly going over an obvious lawyer type carrying an attache case.
    I immediately spotted a terrible scuff on my right shoe, whipped out a handkerchief, and failed miserably to remove it. Nervously shaking my head, I walked Quickly back to my car, where I opened the trunk, reached in for an imaginary rag, and slipped my wood-handled .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special and clip-on holster from over my right hip. I fussed with my shoe and then tucked the pistol and holster completely under the plastic rug in the trunk before closing the lid and retracing my steps toward the courthouse door. Ever since the bombing at the superior court in Boston several years before, varying degrees of security had been imposed on entry to the commonwealth’s courthouses, but virtually none included checking out well-dressed, distinguished-looking, mature men. Apparently Judge Kinnington’s building, which he ran as presiding judge, was the exception.
    I passed inspection and milled around with the crowd inside the lobby of the courthouse. As I bumped my way up and down the broad corridor, I realized there were two courtrooms on the main floor and at least one other (based on signs at the staircases) on the second floor. I drifted into the clerk’s office and casually asked who was sitting in the First Session (Massachusetts legalese for courtroom number one, i which is usually the courtroom to which all cases report and from which all cases are assigned to other courtrooms for hearing). A faded disco queen behind the desk said “Judge Kinnington, of course,” and I thanked her and went back into the mob just as a short, elderly court officer began shrieking.
    “First Session, First Session, court is coming in. All criminal business. Court is coming in.” The doors of the First Session swung open, and an architectural vacuum cleaner sucked virtually all the inhabitants of the corridor inside. The only exceptions were a few lawyers who looked well-to-do and vaguely uncomfortable, which probably meant they were out here defending General Motors or Boston Edison on some minor but time-consuming civil matter.
    I became part of the wedge cutting its way into the First Session. The courtroom was like a church, with one of the cathedral ceilings I’d spotted from the outside. The doors opened onto a wide center aisle, and the seating for the public was on high-backed benches, rather like Catholic pews without the kneelers. The center aisle ended at a gateway in a fence. The fence is the bar enclosure, so-called by lawyers because usually only members of the bar may sit within it. The fencing reminded me very much of a half-scale model of the balustrade on the stairway in the judge’s house. Past the bar enclosure, which was sunken like a split-level living room, was the bench, raised like a pulpit.
    I spotted two especially scuzzy-looking early-teenaged boys sitting near the aisle. I sat down next to them. I practiced a concerned glance in their direction. They returned a disgusted look, probably thinking that I was there on a morals charge.
    “Courrrrrrrt!” bellowed the little court officer, and the congregation rose as the Honorable Willard J. Kinnington fairly scooted from a door to the right side of the bench and ascended. Possibly he moved so quickly because he was only barely medium height and didn’t wish to advertise it. He had slightly graying, blondish-red hair and was wearing amber horn-rimmed glasses. He clutched a small loose-leaf book in his right hand; with his black robes this gave him the appearance of a new parish priest slightly late for his first mass. Once on the bench, however, he fixed the entire courtroom with a baleful eye. With the added height of the raised bench, he now looked as though he could jump center for the Celtics. He bowed his head as the court officer intoned the full salutation. The courtroom clock showed 9:00 A.M. on the nose,
    “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. All those having business before