The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  Maddie accepted Mosca’s handshake. It was decisive, as if he were trying to demonstrate he considered women to be the equal of men. Yet, his eyes concentrated on her breasts. Let him lust. It would add color to his cheeks, which had the fluorescent pallor of a man who lived indoors. The soft light of his desk lamp added a hint of jaundice and reflected a shine off his gold glen plaid suit, custom tailored to disguise his bulk. No woman would include him in her erotic dreams.

  Mosca’s office, Maddie estimated, would hold ten legal aid cubicles while his desk would not fit in hers. The fabric on the chairs, couch, and curtains matched the accent wallpaper behind the desk: stripes of varying widths in six shades of brown. The view looked north and she wondered if he could see New Hampshire on a clear day. Miniature trees flanked the couch where he gestured for her to sit. Living, not plastic. Their leaves smelled of furniture polish.

  Mosca leaned against the edge of his desk, the coffee table between them. “We’re opening a Washington office and need an experienced trial attorney to fill out the staff. We expect a lot of white-collar defense work.”

  “We don’t get many white collars at legal aid.”

  “You’ll start at $75,000 a year, which gives you credit in our salary structure for four years’ prior experience.”

  “I have eight.”

  “If things work out, we’ll raise you to the level of an eighth-year associate on your first anniversary.”

  “That leaves me a year behind.”

  “You’ll have a three-year contract with generous relocation expenses. You’ll start Monday and have a month’s orientation here before moving to Washington.”

  “I have a bail hearing Friday.”

  “Monday is after Friday.”

  “The court won’t let me withdraw unless my replacement files an appearance.”

  “I’ve secured one. Howard Kaplan.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Mosca tapped a sterling silver letter opener against his palm. Its reflection danced on the ceiling above Maddie’s head. “He’s well qualified.”

  “A hundred fifty thousand and a full partnership after two years. Without capital contribution.”

  “This is not a negotiation.”

  “At least we see eye to eye on one thing.”

  “A hundred fifty thousand and consideration after five. You’ll write your own letter of recommendation if we ask you to leave.”

  “What if he’s innocent?”

  “Don’t play defense attorney with me.”

  “I don’t play defense attorney. I am a defense attorney.”

  “I want your answer in the morning.”

  “It’s always morning somewhere in the world.”

  The receptionist walked Maddie to the elevators with heightened disdain. The way Mosca refused to rise to the bait of her smart-ass answers, his doubling her starting salary after minimal provocation, told her this was a more desperate bribe than the Superior Court judgeship Ugolino had offered. The rabbi and Moskovitzky had been right. About Mosca. About Boston’s Jewish community. About what was really at stake in Levy’s defense. Where were the Jews, she wondered, who taught the Irish how to fight?

  The elevator’s descent roiled her sense of balance. She supported herself against the back wall. Irish history, her family history, was replete with traitors. Anonymous men who informed on her namesakes. Others buried in time. Clancy, who sold his honor for a bottle of Bushmills. What of Jewish history? What of Jeffrey Mosca? What was the moral difference between a bottle of Bushmills and a new life in a new city with a new career and, in a few years, more money in the bank than her da earned in his lifetime?

  She gripped the railing that circled the interior of the elevator. Mosca’s logic was straightforward. Jews needed Levy to be convicted and receive a long prison sentence. In the public’s eyes, he was guilty. That was the only reality the public would accept. The public’s perception of how criminal law worked was that the guilty went free on technicalities, not because they were innocent. If this happened, the public would only see that a Jew got away with the horrific murder of a Catholic boy. Jews everywhere would suffer. To quell this anti-Semitism, he must be represented by Jewish counsel, convicted at a trial everyone thought fair, and severely punished. Only then would Levy be dismissed as a freak, an aberration, a lunatic. Only then would the alliance between Christians and Jews in Boston, so profitable to both, be rebuilt. Everyone would win but Levy.

  She struggled to dodge the stampede of her thoughts, all as irrational, as aberrational, as the heat wave. Levy would be Kaplan’s problem. She would be able to look the rabbi and Moskovitzky in the eye. She would be a new person with a new life without having to change her name from Devlin to O’Doibhilin. Or, to Smith or Jones.

  But, what of Trish? Would she accept Levy’s conviction as the final word? Or, would she believe his murderer still roamed Boston’s angry streets? She was a jury of one and for Maddie the only juror who mattered. Maddie vacillated; now convinced Trish would see it her way, now convinced Trish wouldn’t. Had she done better?

  As Maddie exited the air-conditioned office tower, it was like stepping into an oven so unlike the April of Elizabeth’s death. That April had been cold, wintry, snowy, so much snow the Red Sox cancelled their home opener and the rest of the first home stand. The buds which had blossomed and bloomed during a late March warm spell had withered and died. Over time, Maddie deluded herself into believing that in a seasonable April her daughter would not have died. She blamed God for the ill-seasoned weather and stopped believing in Him the moment she saw Elizabeth’s tiny corpse swaddled in white in the bassinette in the hospital morgue. As the Aprils passed, her attitude softened, not because she once again believed in God for she never would, but because she needed the familiarity of the rites and rituals of the Church to fill the void. She resumed attending Mass, taking communion, confessing by rote, her personal variation of Pascal’s wager.

  Were she alive, Elizabeth would be stepping into the world of a teenage girl now, a world of puppy love, music, cosmetics, clothes, movie stars, a world of experimenting, going to dances in the junior high school gym, stealing kisses in the stairwells, a world of movie dates and hanging around shopping malls, a world of fighting with her mother because that’s what girls that age did, that’s what Maddie had done. Would her daughter’s first date have been as awkward as hers? Or as embarrassing? Hers, Maddie’s, first kiss, Duncan Siward, teeth tightly clenched, lips tightly closed, the pain of braces grinding against the soft, pulpous inside of her mouth. Her second kiss, also Duncan Siward, puckering like a fish darting after flakes of food at feeding time, soft and gentle as she always dreamed it would be. But the dream ended and years later she could not help but think that if the dream had continued her daughter would have been named Patricia or Rose or Maud or some other good Irish name rather than after two English queens. And that she would be alive today. And Michelle Furey would be nothing but another probate attorney.

  CHAPTER 5

  TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1981

  Maddie sat on the toilet trying to squeeze out whatever was constipating her. She had assumed she would be awake all night, but had slept a deep, dreamless, death-like sleep as if she did not have a care in the world. No visions of Elizabeth. None of Traitor’s Hell, nor Kilmainham. No visions of Master Devlin, nor Grand da Michael. No visions of her namesakes, Mary and Ann. Her subconscious had made her decision. After flushing an empty toilet, she telephoned her acceptance to Mosca, whose feigned enthusiasm could not mask his condescension. Fuck him! Fuck Boston! She would insist on a written contract, one on her terms, the money guaranteed for the full term of the contract regardless of when she left or under what circumstances, the letter of recommendation subject to her approval, and St. Patrick’s Day off as a paid holiday. Being Irish, she was always on alert for the double-cross.

  Before going to her office, she visited Rabbi ben Reuben to advise him she intended to resign the case after the bail hea
ring. The rabbi sat quietly at his desk, his white hair a halo against the black bindings of the books on the shelves behind him.

  “Jacob’s grandson has found a Jewish lawyer to replace me. Howard Kaplan. Levy fights me. Says I’m unclean. Traif, he calls me. Says he wants a Jewish attorney. It’s like a broken record. He wants a Jewish attorney. I wouldn’t dare risk putting him on the witness stand. Maybe, he’d be a better witness for Kaplan. Jacob can tell you how essential cooperation is.”

  “As is,” the rabbi said, “the lawyer’s belief in her client’s innocence.”

  “Not as much as knowledge of her client’s guilt.”

  “Avram told me when I delivered his dinner last night.” The rabbi clasped and unclasped his hands, sliding his fingers back and forth through the valleys between his knuckles. “Doubt is a natural human condition. Jacob and I would be lying if we denied having a scintilla of doubt about Avram’s innocence. Yet, we do not abandon him.”

  For decades, the pain in the rabbi’s hands had deadened his emotions, his feelings. Now, that pain gave them life. The last five days had awakened him from the fog of complacency created by living in the United States. It was a thin veneer, he now realized, thin and easily pierced, that shielded Jews in America from the landslide of hatred that had buried them alive in Europe and Russia. He wished he had saved his yellow star from the old country. In Boston, he would wear it as an act of defiance, of rebellion, of assertion of his identity. If the goy have Bumper’s Brigade, let the Jews have the Yellow Stars.

  “Who is this Howard Kaplan?” the rabbi asked. “A schmuck. A check casher. Jacob’s grandson is convinced you will win. He fears Jews will pay for Avram’s acquittal. In reality they, we, will pay for his conviction.” The rabbi paused, gathering his thoughts. “Let me share a story with you from the Talmudic commentaries.”

  Maddie shifted in her chair, suddenly very conscious of the way the wire supports of her bra cups chafed against her skin. In parochial school, she had squirmed whenever the nuns told Bible stories as a way of drilling one religious lesson or another into her. More than once the smack of a ruler against her open palm had stilled her. The plot never changed. Sin. Punishment. Redemption, sometimes. Repetition had dulled the impact of those Bible stories, her familiarity with them breeding her contempt for them. She cloaked her face with a mask of attentiveness. She had been compelled to listen then; she was compelled to listen now.

  “Hundreds of years ago in central Europe,” the rabbi began, “a learned man named Solomon traveled from village to village answering questions that stumped local rabbis. A man of simple tastes, he refused all payment for his wisdom except the necessities of life, plain food for nourishment, sturdy clothes for warmth, and dry straw for bedding. He wore a simple gabardine coat and a black fur hat, gifts from a tailor for whom he had solved a difficult problem. Mendel, the lazy son of a local rabbi who sought to become known as a sage so he could accept the gold Solomon refused, stole Solomon’s hat and coat and rushed to a village at the far end of the province where he posed as Solomon and received great riches for dispensing platitudes to the unsuspecting.”

  Maddie rotated her shoulders. She wished she could unclasp her bra. The fact she had not heard this story before did not ease her discomfort.

  “The duke who ruled this province was a virulent anti-Semite much like those who have risen up against Avram. When word of a new wise man reached him, he contrived a test. Jew, the duke said to Mendel who posed as the wise man. Give me your fur hat. The duke dropped two pieces of folded paper into it, saying one was blank, the other had the word ‘Jew’ written on it. Pick the blank paper, the duke challenged Mendel, and I shall reward you with your life. Pick the other and your life shall be forfeit to me.”

  Maddie interrupted. “There is an Irish variation of this story. It was not a duke, but a British royal. It was not a Jew, but an Irish priest.”

  Rabbi ben Reuben frowned. “Dressed as a beggar, Solomon saw through the duke’s subterfuge but dared not intervene. Mendel, unwilling to risk his life, called forward the beggar, not recognizing him as Solomon. Your test is too easy, Mendel said to the duke. This poor wretch shall draw for me. If the beggar drew the blank, Mendel would claim it for his own. If not, Mendel would quickly draw the remaining piece. Mendel didn’t believe the duke would slay a wise man when he could slay a beggar.”

  “In the Irish version,” Maddie said, “the priest realized neither piece was blank and took one from the hat and swallowed it. The remaining piece, he said to the royal, is written upon.”

  “As did Solomon,” the rabbi said. “The duke pinned a yellow star over Mendel’s heart and remanded him to the custody of his archers. Solomon he rewarded with Mendel’s fur hat.” The rabbi removed his half-glasses and wiped the corners of his eyes with a tissue. The light from his lamp reflected off the moisture in his eyes, turning them into miniature spotlights likes the ones that ornamented the walls that encircled the Charles Street jail. “What was the moral of your story, Ms. Devlin?”

  Maddie hesitated. It had been a bedtime story her da told her when she was a little girl. If it had a moral, he never said. He just told it and she listened and he kissed her on the forehead and wished her pleasant dreams. Morals were for fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs.

  “The kabbalist,” the rabbi said, “teaches Hashem ordained for the Jewish people to survive as many traitors as there are stars in the firmament before the Messiah will come.” The rabbi paused. “Your resignation will send a message that Avram is guilty and incite Bumper’s Brigade to greater violence. The Solomons will survive. The Mendels will die by their own tricks. Which are you?” The rabbi rose. “Excuse me. It is time for services.”

  *

  Outside, the temperature had risen two degrees since sunset and Bumper’s Brigade claimed responsibility for pelting diners at a kosher restaurant with dead pigeons.

  CHAPTER 6

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1981

  The oppressive crematory heat was Commissioner Dante Ugolino’s most effective weapon for maintaining law and order. The weather consumed people, incinerating their life force, even those in Bumper’s Brigade. For the first time since Bumper Sullivan’s death, John Chancellor, Dan Rather, and Frank Reynolds did not originate the national television network news from Boston. The New York Times which had doubled the size of its Boston bureau reduced it to normal staffing levels. Both wire services scaled back. The Washington Post recalled its reporters but for a stringer a few years out of journalism school.

  Avram Levy still dominated the local television news, radio newscasts, and front pages of both Boston newspapers which seemed to be competing for a Pulitzer Prize for salaciousness. The Globe ran a feature article about a college professor who sued the school where he taught for violating his First Amendment rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, by denying him tenure because he argued that vampirism among Jews was genetic, much like hooked noses and avarice. The Herald-American countered with an opinion poll it commissioned: Ninety-one per cent of the mothers of school age children who were Catholic felt Massachusetts should reinstate the death penalty for crimes like Levy’s and that he should be executed if convicted, as did seventy-four per cent of all mothers with young children. The pollster did not disclose whether Jewish mothers were included in its sample.

  Not necessary, Ugolino told Rabbi ben Reuben when the rabbi asked for an increased police presence at synagogues and temples during the period commencing with Levy’s bail hearing on Friday morning and ending with Passover’s second seder Sunday evening.

  Weather reports predicted the heat would continue unabated.

  CHAPTER 7

  FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1981

  -1-

  Judge Simon Gomita banged his gavel to quiet the court-room so that Avram Levy’s bail hearing could begin. Appointed to the bench in 1967, Gomita heard only criminal matters and had earned the respect of both defense counsel and prosecutors. He knew the law, let attorneys try t
heir own cases, and didn’t reject legal arguments because of their novelty. The chief justice of the Superior Court routinely assigned the most sensitive cases to him because he was thorough, discreet, and rarely reversed on appeal. Exempted from military service because of a medical deferment, he had the physical stature of a man who could still fit into the uniform he never wore and an intellectual curiosity about military tactics and strategy ranging from The Battle of Algiers to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to Homer’s Iliad to the latest theories of mutual assured destruction. Dr. Strangelove was his favorite movie.

  The court-room’s air conditioning did not temper the emotions of the mob that competed for the few seats reserved for the public. People crawled over each other like rats swarming through the tunnels of Boston’s archaic subway system. An elbow to the sides here, a kick to the ankle there, and another body shoehorned itself in, adding to the sweat and stink of the overcrowded room. Talk of a public lynching suppurated the air, one noose for Levy, a second for Maddie Devlin. The more militant argued for the guillotine or the rack or both.

  Boston’s Tactical Police Force, in riot gear including masks in case they had to deploy tear gas, patrolled the court-room and adjacent corridors. The Massachusetts State Police had responsibility for the rest of the building. Observers from the U.S. Department of Justice monitored the hearing, equating Boston with Birmingham or Jackson and Massachusetts with Alabama or Mississippi in the early 1960s, another of the aftermaths of court-ordered busing. Although Massachusetts had abolished the death penalty, one of the many concerns of the Department of Justice was that someone would take the law into his own hands and that neither Boston nor the Commonwealth would exert itself to prevent vigilante justice. Mayor Charlie did not understand how federal monitors could prevent an assassination, but he understood his constituency and knew that if secession were put to a vote, it would easily carry the city. His private polls showed him a lock to be Massachusetts’s next United States Senator.