by Mark Tiro
At first, David had covered his head, instinctively. But the beating didn’t stop, and at some point, the shock wore off. That’s when the thought came very clearly into his battered mind—it was a thought of release.
Blood from his face was dripping down, clouding his eyesight and pooling up on the floor around his feet. But David’s mind was becoming very clear. He welcomed each new blow. There was no pain now. After each blow, he pulled himself up from the ground. It was a resolve he had known at certain times in his past life. But that resolve had always come and gone. And never in a physical context. Now this resolve rushed in to stay. It seared into his heart. It burned in him. And it grew stronger as he tried to stagger up with each new blow.
David didn’t cover up now. The thought of fighting back had not even occurred to him. Kill me. Keep going, kill me now, was all he was thinking now. And he was determined to make that happen.
He leaned in to accept each new blow. And with each one, something in David died. As it did though, David felt not death but life. Only pure life, and now a deep silence. A wave of love infused him, and carried him outward. The wave, the love is all he felt now. He became the wave. This wave, David, the love—it all merged into one as it expanded out, in every direction, filling every space.
What had not occurred to David was to forgive these men. It hadn’t occurred to him to forgive them, because it hadn’t occurred to him to condemn them. David had become this wave of love. And in this wave, he knew that he could no more have judged these men than he could have judged himself. He was happy now to put down the burden of judgment.
David became aware of reality now. There was no place where these men who were beating him stopped and he began. David’s body was sprawled out, bleeding on the floor. David, however, didn’t feel a thing now. It’s not that he was unaware that his body was dying. It’s just that… he didn’t care. David was aware now. Aware and at peace. Only love was real. This knowing came clearly into focus in his mind. It embalmed him in its comfort and he willingly released himself into it. Everything—he was absolutely certain of this now—was perfectly okay.
Peace came to David at last that afternoon, and for the final time.
It would never leave him again.
He felt no more sadness, no more guilt. Only pure life now, and it extended forever.
And then everything went black. The images stopped. For David, this is where the images stopped forever.
Three days later, handcuffed to a single bed in a county hospital somewhere just south of downtown, David woke up to find that someone had finally gotten around to serving him with the divorce papers. They were resting on his hospital gown, rising up and down with each weak breath.
It would be another week and a half, chained to that bed in the hospital with an IV drip in his arm, until David was transferred back—in protective custody this time—to a single cell on the jail medical ward.
12
Can I get back into lockup to see my client?” Maya asked the courtroom bailiff without looking in his direction.
“Good morning,” the bailiff answered. The pleasantry stopped her, and she turned towards him now. Once she did, he smiled and repeated, “Good morning, Ms. Lee. What’s the name of your client?”
“Nagai. David Nagai,” she answered.
The bailiff looked down, rifling through the various custody lists laid out on the desk in front of him. “Miss-out,” he told her, looking up now from the papers in front of him.
“Do you know if he’ll be here on the afternoon bus?” Maya asked him, still impatient.
“Sorry. It looks like he’s actually in the hospital. We could try for tomorrow, but I wouldn’t count on that either.”
Over the years, Maya had gradually become more personable with court staff, the clerks, the court reporters, the bailiffs. But this particular bailiff had lingered one morning a few months back, looking at her for what she thought was a little too long, while she waited for a case to be called. She had decided then that his staring at her had been a prelude to him asking her out. She’d been cold to him ever since, hoping that he’d get the hint and simply disappear off the face of the earth.
“Ms. Lee, would you like me to call your case?” Now it was the judge who was looking at her. This was a good sign.
“Good morning Your Honor,” Maya told her, turning towards the bench. The judge read out the case number on the record.
“Maya Lee, Deputy Public Defender, on behalf of Mr. Nagai. Your Honor, he’s in custody. I understand, in the hospital?”
“That’s the information we received Ms. Lee,” the judge answered her without giving the prosecutor a chance to state his name for the record. “It looks like your client is a medical miss-out. I understand it might not be until next week that he’ll be out of the hospital. Why don’t we have him ordered out for early next week and see if he makes it here by then?” The judge was already picking up the file, moving it to the stack of finished cases to her left.
“Thank you Your Honor. Also, I’d like to bring up some discovery issues, if I may,” Maya interjected. “It’s been three months, and the People still haven’t gotten me the murder book.”
“We object, Your Honor. It’s not finished yet, and we don’t have any obligation whatsoever to turn it over while the investigation is still ongoing. Sorry,” he paused briefly to look at the court reporter. “Paul Gevorkian, Deputy District Attorney for the People. I’ll be taking over this case for the prosecution from here on out.” He looked back towards the judge and went on talking. “We will be seeking a motion to have a psychologist for the prosecution evaluate the defendant.”
Here we fucking go now, Maya thought before he had even finished talking. Routine fucking continuance, you ass, she added silently, before she turned to thinking through her response to the discovery fight he had just picked. In legal terms, the technical word for his request was clusterfuck. As she did, Maya completely forgot that she was the one who had first raised the discovery issue that day when she had opened the door by bringing up the murder book for really no good reason.
Maya had butted heads with Paul Gevorkian on and off her whole career, ever since she had spent two years in an out-of-the-way juvenile courthouse as part of her initial PD training rotation. He had been just a City juvenile prosecutor back then who had taken it as his mission to make the world safe from her child misdemeanor clients. He also bore an uncanny resemblance to a shorter, less honest version of the disgraced former President, Richard Nixon. As a result, some enterprising PD had tagged him with the nickname Lil’ Dick. It caught on almost immediately and had stuck ever since.
Maya looked over, first at Gevorkian, then at the judge. Her eyes narrowed an instant before she let loose, objecting in the strongest terms she could think of: “Excuse me? The DA is playing games here. They’ve refused to turn over the murder book, the most basic discovery. It’s been over three months, and still no murder book. There’s a new DA assigned to the case every 15 minutes. And now they want to have my client shrunk? Before even attempting to comply with their discovery obligations? I don’t know where to begin Your Honor. Maybe I should just start with the right to remain silent? We would very strongly object. Your Honor, this is the most ridiculous—”
“Ms. Lee, please,” the judge said, giving up her hope of continuing the case without drama. The judge turned back to the DA, and asked, “Mr. Gevorkian, what’s the basis for your request at this stage? You do realize, there hasn’t even been a preliminary hearing in this matter yet?”
“Obviously, Your Honor, the defendant’s mental state is at issue, and we are entitled to have him shrunk—er, evaluated—”
“Who says it’s in issue?” Maya cut him off abruptly, talking louder, and out of turn, to drown him out. “Does the prosecution intend to make my client’s psych eval part of the double secret investigation it’s hiding? Maybe they’ll add it to the murder book, and then refuse to turn it over? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. There is no
murder book.”
“Ms. Lee, please,” the judge stopped her a second time. “I understand that Mr. Gevorkian was just recently assigned this case by his office. You’re taking over for Ms. Barakian, isn’t that right? Ms. Barakian is a fine lawyer. You should really try to talk to her about this case. She seemed to be working through the discovery issues with the defense, so I’m not sure what happened. Here’s what I’m going to do. Why don’t I put this on second call, and the two of you can talk—you know, like lawyers. Second call.”
The judge started to call another case, and the DA turned towards Maya to talk. She turned her back on him without even a glance. Hmmmpphhh, she silently fumed. Then she walked straight out of the courtroom, down the hall and disappeared into the mass of people piling into an open elevator.
Safely ensconced in her office upstairs, and an elevator ride away from the courtroom she’d have to return to in 15 minutes, Maya quickly punched the number for the office’s Writs department into her phone.
A secretary answered and put her on hold. As she waited, her mind drifted back to a job she’d once had. It was a summer internship, a few months before her last year in law school.
“Every law firm needs a guy,” an older lawyer had told her that summer. Maya had been an intern at the insurance defense law firm, and he had been assigned to train her.
“What?” Maya had responded. She’d been thrown off balance, not sure whether it was some anti-feminist introduction to the real world, or worse. She decided to play dumb, on the off-chance that the lawyer was secretly an insurance defense Consigliore who could arrange for her car to have an accident of its own….
“Doesn’t matter if there are three lawyers or 300—every firm needs a guy,” he told her, starting to ease her mind that he might not be a mafia lawyer after all. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances, and kept listening, politely. “It’s someone who keeps up on the law, the new cases each week, and makes sure no one loses their bar card out of ignorance. Or stupidity.”
“Stupidity?” she had asked. “But everyone here passed the bar…”
“You’re in trial and the other side blindsides you, or tries to,” he said, starting to spell it out for her. “You only have time to make one phone call before you have to go back in and take a position on the issue in front of the court. You need a case to cite. But you don’t have time to look it up yourself. So, you need a guy you can call.”
“That’s smart though, to make that call,” she had said.
“True. But stupid lawyers don’t call,” he paused, thinking a second, before correcting himself. “No—stupid lawyers call too. Which is why your guy also needs to be the eyes and ears for the firm,” he said.
“Like the canary in the coal mine? Is that what you’re talking about?” she asked.
“Exactly. The guy has to be the first person to smell the stink of a stupid lawyer. To figure out what’s rotten, where it’s coming from, and who needs to be thrown out on their ass. Oh, and of course, for everyone else, the guy has to be able to come up with a case cite, or a code section on the fly that the lawyers can take back to court and cite, so they make the right argument.”
“And your guy here, is, Stephanie. Wait, your guy in this firm is…a girl?” Maya said. She regretted her words almost as soon as they came out.
“Well of course. What do you think? That we’re all cavemen over here?” he told her, smiling that shitty grin lawyers do when they amuse themselves. “No. Just me,” he answered his own question.
Eight years later now, Maya sat at her Public Defender desk, waiting for the guy to pick up the phone.
“Writs. Jack here. What do you want?” the gravelly male voice answered. In the Public Defender’s Office, that guy was—at least until Jack retired—still decidedly a guy.
“Hi Jack. It’s Maya. Listen, I’m in the middle of a prelim setting date, homicide in a vehicle, not a DUI. Don’t ask. Anyway, the DA hasn’t even turned over the murder book yet, and he’s telling the judge he wants to shrink my client.”
Years of experience in the office making these phone calls had taught Maya one thing: now was the time to pull the phone away from her ear. And quickly. Whatever helpful advice Jack would or wouldn’t come up with in the next few moments, right now Maya knew that it was about to be preceded by—
“WHATTHEFUCK?!” Jack screamed into the phone. “Who in the hell…” At his desk on the other side of the room, Donald reflexively put his hands over his ears.
The ravings of a madman, lunatic, Maya thought. Or maybe a genius. Maya could hear Jack’s voice with the phone two feet away from her ear. She figured her hearing had a better chance of holding up in her old age if she kept the phone there until Jack got his initial barrage of swearing out the way.
“Who in the hell do they think they are? Nothing happens before they turn over discovery—NOTHING! You go in and tell your judge that they don’t get JACK SHIT!”
Jack had turned his fury ever so slightly into an impassioned rant. Maya figured this might be the time to take a chance and put the phone back up to her ear.
She didn’t take it personally. As far as she knew, no one in the office took it personally. At some point, Jack had yelled at everyone who had ever called the Writs department. Maya and Jack were actually friends. On many occasions after happy hours where Jack had one too many drinks to be counted on to safely take a cab, Maya had driven him home to his wife (also a Public Defender—the long suffering type…).
“Listen, maybe after you’ve put his mental state into issue, which can never—NEVER!—happen before you’ve gotten discovery, less yet before the prelim.”
“Why’s that Jack?” she ventured to ask.
“Because you don’t have to decide your DEFENSE strategy until after the DA has given you notice, which means all the discovery!”
Maya cut him off, asking, “Is that that case that came down a few years ago?”
“Bastards in the state capital voted it into the evidence code last year after the bastards in the state supreme court said it was okay.” He cited the code section and case name to her, sounding almost like a lawyer.
“So, Jack,” she asked in turn, “can I just go ahead and cite it to the Court as the ‘Bastards’ case?” She imagined him smiling on the other end of the phone, but was relatively sure he wasn’t. After a moment, she went on. “So they don’t get it today, though, right?” Maya grinned.
“Well isn’t that what I’ve been telling you this whole time?! Of course they don’t get it! You just go in there and tell them that they don’t know Jack!” He ended with what had become his signature sign-off line, uttered in [mock] parody by generations of Public Defenders. Parody was probably necessary. Jack, of course, knew what he was talking about—no questions about that from anyone. But damned if you couldn’t say his name in the hallway and three people wouldn’t spontaneously break into shouts of “They don’t know Jack!”
“Love you Jack,” Maya said, phone snug up to her ear now. “You going to happy hour this weekend?”
“No, I’m trying to cut down. Doctor told me to…I’m retiring next year, and I don’t want to drop off, dead, the day I leave this godforsak—”
“Godforsaken place?” Maya finished the word for him. “Who’s going to answer my questions when I call here? You know, if you’re gone?”
“New guy here—Marcus. I’m sure you’ve met him—nice kid, good with computers. He can look up case law faster than I ever could. Well, anyway, you’ve always known that I just kept most of this stuff up here.” Maya imagined him tapping his head. “Anyway, Marcus, he just needs some, er, you know—seasoning. I’m trying to take him under my wing, to teach him before I leave, but it doesn’t seem to be taking.”
“How do you know?” she asked him.
“Because everyone still likes him,” Jack answered back. At that, Maya heard Jack laugh, the first time in a long time. It made her happy, and she laughed with him.
“Well, there’s still
time. Take care of yourself, okay Jack?”
Maya finished the call, smiling. The tension from the DA’s ambush had melted away. She had the full case cites and statutes safely written on a piece of paper, to take back to court in a couple minutes.
For all his bluster, and his ear-shattering decibel level, Jack was, at least, cathartic.
She headed back down to court. Waiting for the elevator, the thought occurred to Maya: there’s nothing like being screamed at—complete with case law and statute cites—to relax you!
Experience had taught her that, armed with case law, and a 15 minute break, the most likely thing that would happen as soon she got back to the court is that the whole thing would just kind of fizzle away.
When she got back to the courtroom, the clerk told her that the judge was ready to call the case again. Gevorkian, apparently, had sent word through another DA that he had been called away. The other DA (who knew nothing about the hornet’s nest Gevorkian had made of Maya’s morning) stood in, and the judge simply continued the case. The whole thing just kind of fizzled away. No drama, no impassioned legal arguments. Just—meh. Maya never even had a chance to mention the case cites she’d spent the time getting from Jack. To any outside observer, it would look like nothing had happened.
But something had happened. Just below the hmmmpphhh, hidden away beneath the ‘thank you Your Honor’, Maya flared in anger. Not because Gevorkian had brought up the issue—she’d expected that. Not because she had been itching for a fight—she’d expected that to go away. No. Underneath, Maya raged because she was tired of constantly having to prepare for battles that almost never actually happened. Lingchi. Another paper cut to my soul. I should have kept track of them from the beginning. Probably close to a thousand by now, Maya thought.
