Spirit Invictus Complete Series

by Mark Tiro

  And then she went right on with her day, without giving any of it a second thought.

  13

  “Hi David, how are you doing today?” Maya asked as David settled into the chair opposite her in the visiting area of the jail lockup.

  “Thank you for asking Ms. Lee. I’m just—”

  “Maya, remember?” she said, cutting him off. “Anyway, please just try to relax the best you can. I know how stressful your case can be, how it can wreak havoc on your mind. Some people even start hearing voices when they’re in your position. I get all that, I really do.”

  “I’m fine Maya,” David told her. “I just—”

  “Well you don’t look fine. The whole left side of your face looks like it’s been put through a grape press to make red wine.”

  “Huh?” he was just able to get the word out when she started talking again.

  “David, one half your face doesn’t move with the other half. It’s still attached though, so I guess that’s a good sign.” From there, Maya launched into a canned speech she gave clients in these types of situations.

  A few minutes later, she stopped and asked, “Do you understand what I’m talking about, David?”

  “I am fine Maya,” he said again, slower this time, for emphasis. “I was beaten up a little. I know it looks bad, but nothing happened. Not in reality, at least. But there are some things we should talk about.”

  She was on a roll now. She didn’t hear a word he’d said.

  “Listen, I got the report back from the accident-reconstructionist I had appointed on your case. Not sure it changes much. Same conclusion as the police report. Our reconstructionist says you veered into the middle wall on the freeway, ended up spinning around. Your little girl probably would have been okay, if it hadn’t been for the truck behind you. The truck couldn’t stop. It plowed into the back of your car, and crushed her against….” Maya’s voice became quiet as she realized the words coming out of her mouth probably weren’t the easiest for David, as a parent, to hear. Maya stopped then, and took a deep breath. In the silence, she ruffled uncomfortably though the file, and then figured she may as well just keep on talking.

  “I’ll have to give him a call—the accident-reconstructionist that is—to make sure that’s everything. But for now, it looks like it is. That still doesn’t get them to first degree murder though. It doesn’t say why the accident happened in the first place. Just describes an accident. No different than any other accident that happens every day, except for, maybe your daughter…”

  She stopped herself again. Be kind, Maya thought, mentally scolding herself for the coldness of her legal analysis.

  “Anyway David, they need something else in your case. Some reckless indifference on your part—the easiest one would be drugs. Alcohol or drugs. No jury likes either one of those. I’ve seen murder convictions where someone runs a stop sign—not even over the limit—and by accident kills someone. If the person had even one drink, what should be a civil negligence case for the insurance companies to deal with ends up with some sad sack doing life in Pleasant Hills.”

  Maya was referring to the Pleasant Hills Institute of Corrections. It was, of course, anything but pleasant. Maya realized later that she had forgotten to explain that to David. Oh well, I’m sure he’ll figure it out from one of his bunkmates, she thought. They must be fast friends by now, she thought, oblivious that David had been beaten and left for dead not so long ago by those same bunkmates.

  “But Ms. Lee, er, Maya, I hadn’t been drinking or taking any drugs.”

  “I know David. You hadn’t been drinking, and there were no drugs in your system. That much we know from the reports. Toxicology is the first thing they do on these kinds of cases. Your tox screen from the hospital came back completely clean.”

  Leafing through the file as she talked, Maya looked up at David, who sat quietly now. He probably figured that it was hopeless for him to try to get in a word with her.

  “There’s your statement, of course—the one you gave to police. That’s the crux of it right there, isn’t it David? That’s what the DA’s going to use to argue that you were trying to kill yourself, and your little girl right along with you.”

  “But I wasn’t—”

  “I know that David. That’s why I had the psych appointed to talk to you. Once we get Dr. Lehner’s report back, it will be easy enough to deal with your statements to the police,” she told him.

  “All in all, if I had to guess—and it’s still early in the case David, but if I had to bet money—I’d say that we have a real good shot at proving that you’re not responsible for your daughter’s death.”

  “But I am responsible Maya. I am responsible for her death,” David said in a quiet, steady voice, loud enough that Maya stopped at last and gave him a chance to talk.

  “You see, Maya,” he started slowly, pronouncing her name with a steeled emphasis. “I am responsible. I was driving. I crashed into the wall, and my baby died. Who else would be responsible?”

  Now it was David’s turn to talk. Maya sat silently, if not patiently, and listened.

  “I’ve driven that way a thousand times,” he said. “Maybe not a thousand times, but you know what I mean. That’s how I go to work each day. I could do it in my sleep, all the turns, which exit to take. I could do it with my eyes closed.”

  “Well, I hope you didn’t do it with your eyes closed,” Maya said.

  “Of course not. I wasn’t tired. But I do take the same route to work every day, so I don’t need to worry much about taking a wrong turn. I figured as long as I stay in my lane and don’t crash into the car in front of me, it’d be fine.”

  “Stay in your lane and don’t crash into the car in front of you? You know David, you could make a haiku out of that.”

  “You have my permission to write it down then,” he quipped. “But really, how much effort does it take not to crash into the car in front of you? In any event, I would do this sort of relaxed breathing thing—calm my mind, focus on the road. To let my mind sort of sink below all the usual, day-to-day thoughts.”

  “David—are you telling me you were meditating while driving down the freeway?!?” she asked him, her voice emphatic now.

  “Of course not. Driving meditation? That’d be ridiculous. I’d describe it as more of a mindfulness thing. I’d keep my eyes open, of course. But then I’d try to let my thoughts sink down, below all the noise about what I have to pick up from the store, what bills I have to deal with, what’s going on at the office. Below all the mind wandering.”

  “And that’s what you were doing when the accident happened?”

  “That’s what I was doing before the accident happened Maya. And usually it’s fine. Slows me down. I focus on this relaxation while I’m driving. I don’t speed. I don’t weave in and out of traffic. I’m not trying to get in the gaps between cars.”

  “So what happened?” she asked him. “If you drove that way every morning, did that wall you crashed into just jump out in front of your car?”

  David smiled slightly at that. It was one of those barely-there, wry smiles you might miss if you weren’t expecting it. But it was a relief to Maya. When talking to people looking at spending the rest of their lives behind bars—sarcasm was almost never a good thing.

  “That morning,” he went on, “everything was the same as usual. I had just gotten on the freeway, same as always. My daughter was in the back, in her car seat like every day. I had started thinking about what I had to do when I got to the office—that’s the mind wandering thing I was telling you about. But quickly enough, I caught myself, and gently let my mind sink past all those thoughts.”

  “Why are you going into all this with me?” Maya asked him. “A thought is just a thought, right? What does it matter—one thought’s the same as the next.”

  “These mindless thoughts all have the same purpose as the world.”

  “Which is?”

  “A distraction. To keep you focused on them—or the
world around you. To keep you focused on anything at all… anything as long as you’re looking outward. Sure, your real thoughts are still there, underneath all the noise. It’s just that they’re out of your awareness.”

  “Well, whatever I think is my own business. My private thoughts—even if they’re just a chatty voice in my head—I have the right to think whatever I want!”

  “Of course you do. Of course. Still, the reality of it is that there are no private thoughts,” David said gently. “What you think of as your private thoughts are just the mindless clutter that clouds your mind. These are what we use to stay walled off, separate and apart. These are the clouds we use to keep from remembering our real thoughts.”

  “You mean my real thoughts I’m not even aware of—the ones underneath my private thoughts that aren’t really?” she snarked. She was definitely sarcastic this time, but it was the best she could do. What she had really wanted to say to him was, ‘You’re crazy,’ but she thought better of it.

  He smiled at her gently, but otherwise didn’t say a word. After a little silence, David went right on with what happened.

  “Anyway, that day I was driving. Like I mentioned, I’d been practicing this for a while. For years actually.”

  “No, you didn’t mention it. Actually. Practicing?”

  “Well, if you wanted to become better at playing the violin, or the piano, you’d practice, right? You practice your math, when you’re a kid, and then you get good at it. Anything worthwhile—you wouldn’t think of it as weird to practice, right? So if it’s inner peace you want, or meaning in life or to stop the pain and the depression or the anger—if that’s what you’re looking for—wouldn’t you want to practice? Maybe you’d think it was worthwhile, giving a few minutes here or there to your mind training?”

  “Mind training?” Maya repeated.

  “Mind training. Practice. You practice law, right?” he asked quietly, no sense of irony.

  Hmmmpphhh! Practice law! she fumed silently.

  “Of course I practice law David. And it’s not practice. It’s serious!” she erupted back. “This is what I do. It’s not some game. I do important work here. Important work in the world! I mean, your life is hanging in the balance here.”

  But Maya was tired now. She wanted to go home. Switching over her brain to autopilot, Maya did her best imitation of a prosecutor, mindlessly asking him, “So what happened next?”

  “I crashed into the wall. I was driving, and then I crashed into the wall. That’s what happened next.”

  “Well I know you crashed into the wall. My fault for asking a stupid question. Sorry. What I want to know though, is this: What happened between when you were doing this mind practice thing—when everything was going just swimmingly—and when you crashed into that wall?”

  David drew himself up in his chair, and he looked Maya straight in the eye. Cutting through her impatience, he answered her matter-of-factly: “I had a revelation. I saw God.”

  14

  “Seriously? Driving down the freeway?” Grace asked Maya as they waited.

  Maya had decided to stop at a small sushi bar in Little Tokyo to pick up takeout on her way home. She had thought (or maybe hoped?) that by stopping at one of the usual watering holes on a Friday night on her way home from visiting David in jail, she might run into one of her PD friends. Maya hadn’t been disappointed. She’d hoped to talk about David’s case, but as a lawyer Maya was bound by ethical rules that meant the only other people she could discuss it with were other lawyers in her office. Because David was a Public Defender client, all lawyers in the Public Defender’s Office shared the same legal relationship and ethical obligations with him as Maya did. Meaning she could talk about his case with Grace.

  Grace had been waiting with a throng of people for a seat at the restaurant next door to the one where Maya was waiting for her takeout. It was the city’s second or third best ramen place, and had a line out the door to prove it. In Los Angeles, ramen had gone from simple comfort food eaten by Japanese immigrants to something of a religious experience for Maya’s generation.

  “I don’t get it either Grace. I’ve never had a client like him. He tells me that one minute he’s driving down the road and a car cuts him off, so he forgives the driver.”

  “What does that even mean? Forgives the driver? Are you sure he’s not just crazy?” Grace asked Maya, as the host called out names off the ramen waiting list. None of the names were hers, and she turned back to Maya.

  “He probably is crazy,” Maya said. “He thinks there’s no difference between being mildly annoyed and raging anger.”

  “Try to sell that one to a jury.”

  “I know, right? He means—at least I think he means—that mild annoyance has the same effect on your peace of mind as violent, raging anger. Have you ever had a client like this Grace?”

  “Uh, no. But yes—he is crazy. Will you stay and have ramen with me Maya? You can take that sushi you’re waiting on from next door home and eat it for breakfast tomorrow.” Grace smiled, then seemed to get serious, “But if you’re going to get all religious on me, I’m gonna need a drink.”

  “Amen to that sister,” Maya smiled, as they found chairs on the corner of the patio and sat down to wait for their names to be called for a table.

  “Let’s get a bottle of sake.”

  “Done. But cold. For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would take perfectly good sake and heat it up.”

  “The Jewish fraternity at my university did that at their parties,” Grace said. “It started out as a gimmick, I think. They’d do just about anything to get Asian girls to come to their parties. But then, when we’d show up—none of them could hold their liquor. We’d just drink them under the table.”

  “Well, Koreans drinking with Jews. That’s kind of like bringing a gun to a knife fight—it’s just not fair.”

  Grace burst out laughing. They both did.

  Once they were quiet, Maya turned serious again, and went on telling Grace about her day… and her client.

  “He kept talking about repression and denial, Grace. And projection. Repression and projection—that you can’t see what you’ve denied directly, because it’s forgotten. ‘Unconscious, by definition,’ he tells me. And that the way to peace of mind is to look at what you project… ‘To forgive,’ he kept calling it, but he kept describing it as looking at the block, and then choosing to over-look it.”

  Grace’s table for ramen wasn’t ready yet, but Maya’s take-out sushi order next door was. They got up and walked over to pick it up.

  “I’m not sure about eating this sushi for breakfast Grace. I mean, it might be bad by then.”

  “Oh toughen up girl,” Grace said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  Maya thought she felt a slight rumbling in her stomach. Or maybe that was just in her mind. Either way, she didn’t want to think about it. And in any event, she was preoccupied now, thinking about her crazy client. David.

  Except that Maya wasn’t convinced that he actually was crazy.

  “‘Forgiveness opportunities,’ he called them. I think. I don’t know—maybe next time, I should ask the judge to sign an order letting me bring in a recorder so I won’t have to kill myself, trying to scribble out my notes while he’s talking.”

  “True dat,” Grace shot back. “So what was his point?”

  “I think it was his practice. He said he practiced on whatever made him angry, or depressed, or mildly annoyed—see there’s that again.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I think ‘forgiveness’ was his schtick—how he released the unconscious blocks. Or so he says.”

  “Oy vey,” Grace grinned. “Yiddish now? Are you sure you don’t like a little hot sake inside you… once in a while at least?”

  Maya laughed again. She thought back to the disproportionate number of Jewish boys who’d fallen for her over the years.

  “A little hot sake inside me, Grace? How about a big hot sak
e instead?” Maya grinned. “Once in a while, I’ve been known to have a hot sake or two inside of me. Once in a while…”

  Grace threw back her head in a knowing laugh.

  The sushi was ready. Maya paid, and the server packaged her sushi into the to-go bag, together with wasabi and some ginger, and a few little soy sauce packages.

  “So was he talking about enlightenment then?” Grace asked, as they walked back over to check their place on the waitlist.

  “Well, he never used that word Grace, if that’s what you’re getting at. ‘Enlightenment’. The word just sounds so egotistic, you know? And he wasn’t like that at all. Actually, it was almost like he was whatever the opposite of ego would be.”

  While they waited in line to check the waitlist, Maya went on. “I think the car accident—that’s what he’s charged with the murder for, where his daughter died—I think he said it was his ‘last forgiveness lesson’. Or something like that.”

  “Well, I can’t even imagine the pain he was going through—he must have wanted to kill himself,” Grace said. “Or just crawl in a hole and die. But his ‘last forgiveness lesson’? So let me get this straight—you have a client who’s forgiven his last bit of unconscious guilt and has become an enlightened master, like Buddha or Jesus?”

  Maya stared at Grace and just blinked. If it hadn’t been for the music coming out of the karaoke bar down the block, Grace might have heard the sound of crickets behind the blank look on Maya’s face.

  “Never mind,” Grace told Maya, who clearly was ready for a drink of her own. “Anyway, tell me about this revelation business. Driving down the road?”

  “Oh—so where was I?” Maya replied, trying to remember where she’d left off. “Wait, I remember now. So, he’d said he’d forgiven this car for just about running him off the road. And then he felt a love building up in him. Honestly, he wasn’t making a lot of sense. Something about overwhelming love flowing through him. That’s where he lost me… well one of the places he lost me.”