But When She Was Bad

by Peddicord, Lou;

  Judge Biers, totally undone by this loss of control in his courtroom, has reached for his gavel. He’s banging it, very hard, on his desk. The steady whack! whack! whack! only gradually drowns the buzzing.

  “All of you! Everybody! Be quiet down there and sit still!” Judge Biers is shouting. He’s still on his feet, angrily glaring out at the crowd.

  Then Albert Redding attracts his attention with his own renewed banging on the bench.

  “Your Honor!” Redding is calling. “I demand that this hearing be suspended! Right now!”

  “Sit down, Redding!” Judge Biers yells, in what has become the day’s mantra for him. “Sit down and be quiet!”

  “I will not sit down, your Honor, and I will not be quiet!” Redding yells back, pounding some more on the judge’s bench. “I demand that this hearing be suspended this instant!”

  “Sit down!” The judge shouts this.

  Redding is shouting too. “All this scrap of a kid’s purported journal shows is that Wexler and the boy have to undergo DNA testing! To determine whether he’s the father of the boy!”

  “What?” the judge says. It’s a query that stems from utter confusion.

  “If he’s not the father, then this child-custody case is moot. Don’t you see that?” Redding’s face is so suffused with angry blood that he looks like he could have a stroke at any second. He bangs some more on the bench. “We demand that this hearing be suspended until such time as those DNA findings are in!”

  Judge Biers, slowly resuming his seat during this latest onslaught from Albert Redding, looks puzzled at first. He’s obviously taking it all in, this unexpected infusion of logic. It’s clearly something he hadn’t thought of. Gradually, we can all see the Yes! dawning on his face. We all watch as the Of course! takes shape in his mind.

  Suddenly the courtroom is very quiet.

  Annie, sitting across from me at Albert Redding’s table, is clearly holding her breath. Redding, too, is a study in motionless anticipation. Even the spectators are stilled, watching and waiting.

  They all realize that Albert Redding has hit on something here.

  What if Gil Wexler isn’t Todd’s father after all? If that’s the case, then what does it matter if Annie White fooled around in some backroom of a sculpture gallery? Why should I get custody of a child who isn’t mine?

  This is the asterisk Mormon Applebee and I talked about in our first meeting, some six weeks before. This is the land mine that, with one wrong step, could blow it all apart.

  55

  Mormon Applebee never asked me how I was going to ensure that a second DNA testing of my and Todd’s genetic markers came out right—he simply had it written into his agreement that I would pay him his full $150,000 fee if I blew it.

  Nor did he press me on just retrieving that envelope I’d locked up for all time behind a twirl of 4 left, 54 right, 4 left in my office safe.

  When I told him I would never, ever open that envelope, he merely shrugged—as if to say, So be a fool if you wish. He didn’t argue, he didn’t try to persuade me that I could at least look, he didn’t do anything but shrug. Which left it all up to me.

  Shortly after our first meeting, his office dutifully scheduled an appointment with another of the labs in the area which are authorized by the courts to do DNA collections for paternity testing.

  We set it for a Thursday evening about a week later. I asked that the testing be done at my studio, rather than at the company’s walk-in facility. They said there would be an added $50 charge for that. No problem, I said.

  The woman who did the testing showed up right on time. She was a rotund, matronly woman with a ready smile and a happy demeanor. Her name was Kate. She said she was an R.N. and she certainly seemed practiced enough in all the many steps of the procedure.

  It was much the same routine as before. Todd’s thumb-prints, Polaroid photos of him and me and then the both of us, then blood from my arm. Last came the cotton swabs Kate would roll around inside Todd’s cheeks to collect his buccal cells.

  Six cotton swabs.

  “Hold on, Miss,” I said, crossing the studio as she picked up her swabs and was about to begin with Todd. “I’ll bet you could use a little more light for that.” I switched on one of those $29.99 torchieres so popular of late—the floor lamps that burn 300-watt halogens with a fierce heat as they throw harsh light up to the ceiling.

  “Yes, thanks,” said Kate the R.N. “That’s a lot better.”

  I watched her roll three of the swabs inside Todd’s left cheek, then three inside his right cheek. Like the veteran he was by now (after all, he’d done this before), he didn’t raise a fuss. He calmly held his mouth open wide and let the merrily chatting woman do her thing.

  Six cotton swabs. At just about eight or nine seconds for each. Call it 50, 55 seconds total.

  As Kate finished with each swab, she laid it atop the glassine envelope into which they would all ultimately go.

  One by one, I watched them line up—just like the everyday Q-Tips we all use … except these were longer, with tighter, denser cotton tips. They’re specially made, I’d learned a few weeks before, by a medical supply house in Spokane, Washington. As long as you’re willing to buy a gross at a time, they’ll gladly sell them to you.

  Just as the R.N. was laying the sixth swab on the desk and extravagantly praising Todd for his cooperation, a gush of flame spewed up from atop the torchiere I’d turned on roughly 55 seconds before. A hot roaring sound accompanied the flames, which were four feet high and still climbing.

  Todd went, “Wow!”

  Kate the R.N. went “Oh!” and, transfixed by the fire, backed away from Todd and the desk, holding both hands up to her face. As we’re all wont to do, she stared in awe at a roaring fire that seems to have a fierce life of its own.

  I whispered, “Good Lord!” and in a motion I’d practiced again and again until I could likely do it blindfolded, I swept into a pocket the six cotton swabs the R.N. had assembled and just that quickly replaced them with six identical swabs from another pocket. Then I quickly bolted across the room to grab up a fire extinguisher and spray a swath of foam at the billowing pillar of flame.

  “My goodness sakes!” exclaimed the R.N. as all this unfolded. “I’ve heard those things are dangerous but I never could have imagined—”

  “They’re real hazards,” I said, dousing the last remnants of flame on the smoldering drywall above the lamp. I added, “They should ban the damned things.” At the very least, I thought, they should warn people that a pool of lighter fluid poured into the declivity around a white-hot halogen bulb will indeed burst into flame in less than a minute. Every time you do it.

  “Goodness, goodness,” Kate muttered indignantly as she carefully packaged up vials of blood, Polaroid photos, thumbprint cards—and six cotton swabs which bore not Todd Wexler’s buccal cells … but Gaynor Wexler’s buccal cells instead.

  Just to be safe, I told myself. Just to be safe. The DNA in those cells would match very nicely indeed with my DNA. Because while my late wife Jillian may have had her faults, she didn’t so desperately need a possession she could authentically share only with None of the Above. Plus, she wasn’t a tramp.

  I apologized profusely to Kate the R.N. as she went back out into the night, heading off with her harvest of cells and samples to a Federal Express office. “Oh goodness, no, please don’t think it was your fault, Mr. Wexler,” she said. “I’m just glad you were so quick to get things under control.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was lucky. Timing, and all that.”

  “Good night then,” she sang. “And good night to you, too, Toddie!”

  Todd grinned impishly at her, then even more widely at me. As I say, he’s a smart kid. He’d seen how I switched the cotton swabs.

  56

  Judge Malcolm Biers was suddenly a happy man. He’d finally processed the logic of what he’d heard from Albert Redding and he knew he’d found a way to end this all too-contentious, all too-messy
hearing—to get it the hell out of his courtroom, maybe for good.

  If this Wexler character wasn’t the kid’s father, then what the hell? End of story. End of hearing.

  “Mr. Redding,” the judge said to the panting, red-faced attorney who was still planted in front of his bench, “You are quite correct. While admonishing you for the tenor, shall we say?, of your last statement, I will nonetheless consider it as a motion and, accordingly, I hereby adjourn this—”

  “Your Honor? If I may?”

  Mormon Applebee, for all this time utterly still and silent as the recent confusion and chaos swirled around the courtroom, was finally addressing the judge from his position adjacent to a now-empty witness box.

  “What?” groaned the judge in exasperation.

  “One moment, if you will,” Mormon said quietly. He flicked his right hand out and snapped his fingers. One of the svelte young assistants sitting at the table I was sharing leapt up and sprinted to his side. She handed him a piece of paper.

  Applebee glanced at it, nodded, then repeated the hand-flick and finger-snap. A second assistant sprinted over and handed him another piece of paper. He glanced, he nodded, he did it again. Then he did it once more.

  A buzz rose up from the spectators as all four young women were by now docked at whale-side, freed of their flimsy paper burdens but steadfastly holding adoring eyes on Mormon Applebee’s own obsidian eyes, which were ever so slowly studying the four documents.

  “What?” said Judge Biers loudly. “What?” he repeated.

  Applebee flicked a free hand in the judge’s direction. The four women, apparently versed in some arcane fat-attorney language, took this as their signal to disperse and they resumed their seats.

  Mormon Applebee went on with his silent study of the papers recently delivered to him.

  “Your Honor,” called Albert Redding, back at his table, next to a smiling Annie White, “I object to this stalling tactic on opposing counsel’s part. He is simply wasting the court’s time.”

  “Objection sustained,” said Judge Biers decisively. “If you have no further business for this court, Mr. Applebee, I will adjourn this hearing until such time as a DNA test has been conducted to determine—”

  Mormon abruptly flicked a hand in the judge’s direction and proclaimed, “We have the results of just such a DNA testing, your Honor, and they show—” Here, he handed all four papers up to an astonished Judge Biers. “—They quite conclusively show that the plaintiff Gil Wexler is indeed, and in fact, the father of young Todd Wexler.”

  A loud, collective “Ah!” escaped from the gallery at this and, just as surely, Albert Redding sprang like a shot to his feet. “Objection, your Honor!” he shouted. “This cannot be a legally-sanctioned testing, nor can it be admissible in this venue if it has not been pre-ordered by the court, nor can—”

  “Hold on, Redding,” the judge said distractedly, studying the four pieces of paper Mormon Applebee had just handed him. There was a defeated, aggrieved edge to his voice. He was the man rushing to catch a train—which had suddenly pulled out of the station, the doors whooshing shut in his face. He was not a happy jurist, not any longer.

  “As you will see, your Honor,” Applebee began, “there is first the notarized documentation from the DNA Facilitatory Center, of Lima, Ohio, which attests that, and I am quoting here, ‘Based on testing results obtained from analyses of six different DNA probes, the alleged father, Gilbert Wexler, is identified as the biological father of the child named Todd Wexler, to a probability of 99.998%.’”

  “Objection, your Honor!” shouted Al Redding from his table. “This is not admissible in such a form. It is not—”

  Judge Biers ran right over the objection. “Clerk,” he said in a dispirited voice, “show these photos to Ms. White for corroboration that the child who was tested is indeed her son, Todd Wexler.” The court clerk took the single sheet of paper the judge was extending and walked it over to Annie. She looked up at the photocopy, which bore separate color views of Todd alone and Todd on my lap, and she visibly blanched.

  “Ms. White,” the judge called. “You are still under oath, despite your intemperate retreat from the witness stand. Having now seen photos of the child tested, according to this certified documentation, for a DNA genetic link to the plaintiff, Gilbert Wexler, do you affirm that he is in fact your child?”

  “She doesn’t have to answer that, your Honor!” Al Redding insisted, his face as red as ever. “This entire procedure is improper, illegally obtained under deficient authority, and—”

  “Overruled, Mr. Redding! Ms. White? What say you?”

  Annie nodded weakly.

  “Aloud, Ms. White, so the court reporter can affirm your answer.”

  “Yes. It’s Todd.”

  “Very well, then,” said Judge Biers somberly. “Clerk, bring me back that photocopy, and Mr. Redding, please note that among the documents Mr. Applebee has handed me is a decision by the state court of appeals, in Forsythe v. Forsythe, that results from previously collected paternity testing via the DNA procedure are admissible so long as the testing facility is accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks.”

  The judge paused and leafed through the paperwork. “And I do so find that this is the case with the, ah, DNA Facilitatory Center, of Lima, Ohio. Indeed, I’m familiar with the company, having seen its documentation in other cases before this court.”

  Judge Biers looked directly at Albert Redding, daring him. “Relevant objections, counsel?”

  “To the continuation of this hearing, yes!” shouted Redding. “Even if you allow these dubiously obtained test results, you cannot allow, you cannot force a further reading of this purported journal, which is hearsay by its very nature, which is libelous in content and intent, and which has been improperly introduced by opposing counsel!”

  “Mr. Redding, we have already—”

  Mormon Applebee waved a hand. “Your Honor, if I may?”

  “What?”

  Applebee flicked his hand toward his assistants and one of the young women again shot to his side. She handed him another sheet of paper, then fled back to our table. “Your Honor,” Mormon intoned as he handed the sheet up to the judge, “Here again, in Jennings v. Jennings, we have the state’s highest court affirming the right of plaintiff to introduce scurrilous diaries purported to have been kept by defendant in said case.” He waited a beat or two. “The cite is directly on point; it is a one-to-one precedent, your Honor.”

  “By the defendant!” Al Redding shouted from his table. “Diaries kept by the defendant! Not by some cockamamie kid, your Honor!”

  “Cockamamie kid?” Judge Biers repeated scornfully, looking up from the paper he was reading. “Maybe you should learn better to control yourself, Mr. Redding.”

  “This is an outrage, your Honor!” yelled Redding. “I move again that this hearing be suspended forthwith! This entire procedure is absolutely irrelevant to the matter at hand! There is no precedent whatever for what you are making this poor women go through! There is—”

  “Hold it, Mr. Redding!” the judge said sternly. “I will remind you, first, that you are addressing the Court and that you had damned well better do so respectfully! Secondly, it is not me forcing this woman to brand herself as a trol—” He stopped abruptly, knowing he was about to veer onto dangerous ground.

  “Objection, your Honor!” Redding shouted in a renewed frenzy of agitation. “The Court cannot so callously and intemperately vilify an innocent woman! You can’t go calling her a trollop, for Christ’s sake! I move for an immediate mistrial of this custody hearing on the grounds that the Court has disqualified itself as an objective, impartial, dispassionate officer of the court!”

  “Overruled!” bellowed the judge. “Sit down and be quiet, you—you—” The judge struggled visibly to regain control. Vibrating with renewed, born-again indignation at the whole affair which had so sullied his courtroom, he turned to Mormon Applebee and said, “Counsel, you may resu
me your examination of the witness.”

  Turning his dark, furious gaze to Annie, he said, “Woman, get back up here and read this damnable journal!”

  57

  Mormon Applebee again extends the notebook to Annie but she does not take it. He waits a few long moments then finally lays it in her lap. Annie’s shoulders are quaking anew but still she has not picked up the book.

  Judge Biers, even angrier now, begins, “Clerk, go get me a deputy so this woman can be bound over to the sheriff until such time as she consents to the Court’s order and she—”

  Annie picks up the JURNUL and begins reading in a barely audible voice. “OCTOBER 26: TRACK LADY TO SCULPTURE GALLERY AND CLIMB IN—”

  “Louder!” the judge commands.

  Annie begins again. “OCTOBER 26: TRACK LADY TO SCULPTURE GALLERY AND CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL. WAIT A WHILE. BORING. THEN LADY AND TALL MAN COME IN TINY BACK ROOM. LADY TAKES OFF CLOTHES IN BACK ROOM AND KNEELS IN FRONT OF MAN. LADY PULLS MAN’S ZIPPER DOWN AND PULLS MAN’S NIGGLE OUT. LADY LAUGHS AND WAVES NIGGLE LIKE NINTENDO STICK. MAN GRABS LADY’S HAIR AND LADY—”

  I tuned out at that point, got up, and left the courtroom.

  Not a soul noticed.

  58

  Annie read Wolfie’s JURNUL aloud for another twenty-five minutes that day, covering every single entry which had anything to do with her backroom activities in that sculpture gallery. There were a lot of them. Annie may not have sold many pieces of art during her time at the gallery but she sure explored a lot of new, liberated ground.

  Mormon Applebee paced her reading with his slap! slap! accompaniment the whole time, and because it was all familiar ground to him, he was likely the only male in the courtroom who could have safely stood up in the face of such an unintentionally pornographic recital.

  Jaws hung open throughout the courtroom and secret grins were etched on men’s faces as they imagined taking part in the scenes Wolfie, in all his seven-year-old innocence, had so vividly sketched. The women, I’m told, were every bit as entranced by the reading.