“When I was a kid, about ten or so, we were burned out of a building. In Brownsville. Nobody was hurt, but we lost everything. I can remember my mother crying into her apron. Over the lost photograph albums of her family. She said it was as if they’d been put in the gas ovens all over again.” He cleared his throat. “For the first time in my life, I was face to face with the kind of work I was really doing. And I hated myself for doing it.”
“What did you do?”
“Won the case,” he said simply. “Then I threw up in the toilet and left the job for a while. I was pretty messed up. Started doing some crazy things—” he trailed off. I had the feeling he wanted to say more, to tell me something even more personal. But I could only wait until he was ready.
The hummos arrived. Nathan tore a piece of chewy pita and dipped it, stirring the orange-colored oil into the paste and lifting the bread to his mouth. Hungry as I was, I didn’t follow his example. Instead I sat back expectantly, waiting for him to finish his thought.
“I came back,” he told me, “when I realized that it really doesn’t matter so much what you do in life as how you do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a Zen story,” he began.
“Oh, no. Not another Zen story, Nathan, please,” I begged. Zen stories are the Oriental version of Christian parables, only more obscure. “You’re plucking my last nerve,” I joked, quoting Lily, Nathan’s secretary, whose last nerve was plucked at least once a week.
“There’s a Zen story,” he repeated insistently, but with a smile. “However, I’ll skip the details and go straight to the punch line. The point is that you must bring two things to whatever task you set out to do in life—concentration and compassion. Concentration on the thing you’re doing and compassion for the people whose lives you affect by doing it. That’s what it’s all about, for me anyway. Doing my job the best way I know how but never losing sight of the fact that I’m dealing with people, not just cases.”
“What if you don’t want to do that job?”
“But that’s the whole point, Cass,” he answered. “You can’t go through life picking and choosing: I’ll walk through this part of life, but I’ll give myself heart and soul to that part. You either give all you’ve got to whatever you’re doing at the moment, or you’ll find you have nothing left to give when the ‘right’ thing comes along.”
“That’s crazy!” I retorted. “You mean in order to be a good photographer I have to be involved in law?”
“Involved is involved,” he shrugged. “Do you realize you’d be one hell of a lawyer if you ever decided to stop holding back and go for it?”
The waitress brought our main dishes. I started eating my lamb stew, partly because I was hungry and partly to forestall further conversation. It didn’t work. Nathan asked me a question.
“Why did you go to law school?” He asked it conversationally, like a guy coming on in a singles bar. Then, before I could answer, he said, “Because you wanted to save the whales, end the war, and stop pollution, all in your first year of practice?”
“Something like that.” I smiled in spite of myself; it had been exactly like that. “After the shootings at Kent, which the legal system did nothing but cover up, I decided to learn the language, get my union card, and do what I could.”
“Funny,” he said. “You went to law school to be a more effective rebel. I went to law school to get respectable. My old man was a Communist. Really,” he added, as I gave him a skeptical look. “Guys in long black cars followed us around. He took me to party meetings all the time. Even as a kid I could see that half the people there were poor deluded schmucks and the other half were FBI agents. It made me sore, what a schlemiel he was, believing in the glorious revolution. I went to law school to get away from that, to get into something normal.”
“You’re saying that’s a better reason?” I challenged.
“I’m saying it set up fewer expectations,” he replied. “When I came back to law after my hiatus, I could set limited goals for myself. I couldn’t save the world, but I could get, maybe, one kid into a program and on the right track. I try to do what I can and forget about what I can’t.”
“What’s this got to do with my becoming a photographer?” I asked.
“Same thing,” he said. “I get the feeling photography for you is an escape. Taking pictures at block fairs on weekends. But nobody makes a living doing that. Can you accept the idea of becoming a working photographer—the kind who does weddings and takes high school graduation pictures?” He smiled. “Or is it Ansel Adams or bust?”
I smiled back, a little ruefully. “Berenice Abbott or bust.” Then I sighed. “I get the point, Nathan. I don’t like it, but I get it.”
“Sorry for the lecture, Cass,” he said, though he didn’t look sorry. “I just hate to see you putting yourself through this. If you could work things out, I think you’d be a lot happier.” He took my hand. “And I’d like to see you happy.”
Then he looked at his watch. “Back to the salt mines.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “Salt mining is a clean, wholesome occupation next to being a Legal Aid lawyer.”
We walked along State Street in silence. In spite of the damp cold, there were kids hanging out in front of the St. Vincent’s Home for Boys. The stars that seemed to twinkle in the pavement were really hundreds of shards of broken glass. In the distance, the red hands of the clock on the Williamsburg Savings Bank pointed to ten o’clock. Three more hours of night court. My stomach knotted up, and I shivered, not entirely from the cold.
THREE
“Hey, lady, you my Legal Aid?” the kid with the huge Afro demanded.
“Ain’t you got my name on one of them files?” his buddy asked, pointing to the stack I was carrying.
“I gotta see you about my case, and I mean now.” This from a black man with dried blood caked on his face and shirt.
I held up my hands. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can, okay?” I was back in court, in the holding pens, interviewing prisoners. It was like working in the dog pound, trying to decide which hungry puppy to feed first. I felt as though dinner had never happened. For them, of course, it hadn’t. While I’d been eating lamb stew and drinking white wine, they’d had stale bologna sandwiches and watery soup.
Dick, the bridgeman—the court officer responsible for calling the cases—gave me the court papers on an ROW from New York County. When a guy gets returned on a warrant—which means he failed to show up in court when he was supposed to—we don’t get the usual defense papers. In fact, the court doesn’t have papers either. So nobody knows anything about the guy’s case. In this instance, neither did he. He sat on one of the stools in an interview booth, rocking back and forth, singing a tuneless tune. I tried to ask him some questions, but he waved me away, still singing, his wrinkled white hands flapping like dying butterflies. Even in the fetid pens, his smell stood out. He hadn’t bathed in months.
He was clearly a loony tune. They’d 730 him—send him to Kings County Hospital to be examined by psychiatrists. But that’s all. Just examined. Not treated, except for pumping him full of thorazine. Then he’d be sent back to court to face the charges against him. Whatever they were.
I put the wacko’s file at the bottom of my pile and looked for my next client. Nathan sat in one of the booths talking to a middle-aged white guy who looked like a defrocked cop. The guy was hunched over, his face distorted with intensity. That wasn’t unusual; most skells have an exaggerated sense of their own importance. What was unusual was that Nathan, nodding solemnly, seemed to share that sense. I wondered what was so special about the case.
I called out a name: “Thomas Boynton.” A short black man with the name “Tom” embroidered in red over his shirt pocket stepped forward. Mechanic, I guessed. His hands were balled into fists and held rigidly at his side. I motioned him into the booth next to the one where the 730 candidate sat, still rocking. You could smell him faintly even in this boo
th.
“I ain’t had no gun.” He punctuated his words by pounding one fist into his other open hand.
“Calm down, Mr. Boynton, I believe you.” I did, too. I’d seen it before. Common-law divorce. A woman wants her man out of the house. He won’t go. The cops are no help, Family Court is no help. So she has him arrested for something the cops will take seriously—like a gun. The judge usually gives the guy an ACD, which means the charges will be dismissed in six months, on condition that he moves out. If he doesn’t, the charges are restored. If he does, everybody’s happy. Except that the whole thing’s been a lie and he’s spent a night in jail for a gun he never had. Justice, Brooklyn-style.
I gave Boynton the spiel about staying away from his wife and told him I’d probably be able to get him an ACD. He relaxed visibly, unclenching his fists and flexing his fingers. “I surely do hope so. I’ll lose my job for sure if I’m not there tomorrow morning. I can’t let that happen.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll do my best.”
I had one more file. “Digna Gonzalez.” A thin young girl with dark circles under her eyes raised her hand as though I were her homeroom teacher. She was charged with possession of a weapon. It was a big night for guns.
“Who’d you shoot?” I said it lightly, to break the ice. She wasn’t charged with assault, and the idea seemed incongruous, like asking a rabbit if it ate wolves.
Her eyes filled with tears. She whispered, “I try to shoot myself.” I felt rotten, irrationally angry that the complaint had given me no clue. Once it would have. Once trying to kill yourself was illegal.
“Why?”
“My husband, Ramon, he leave me and go back to Puerto Rico. That is bad enough, because I have no money and the Welfare, they will not help me. But then Ramon brother, he come in the middle of the night and take los ninos, my childrens, to go to Puerto Rico with their father. I cannot live without my childrens, my babies.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll get you out of here.” I was sure Di Anci would let her go. She had no record, and her story would melt a stone.
Big deal. I could get her out of jail, where she never should have been in the first place. I couldn’t get her back to Puerto Rico or on welfare, or get the kids back. Or stop her being poor and young and helpless.
That was it. Nathan and I had interviewed everyone in the pens. I stepped out to put my finished cases on the table and glanced at the clock at the back of the courtroom. 11:25. Another hour and a half and we’d be sprung.
Nathan was before the bench, pleading out a driving-while-impaired, a Puerto Rican with a blue-around-the-edges look of a chronic alcoholic. The defrocked cop was next. He looked panicky, clutching at Nathan’s sleeve just as Nathan moved to approach. I was surprised at his nervousness; I hadn’t figured him for a virgin.
While I waited for my turn at the bench, I dry-shot a portrait of a young junkie nodding out, a trail of mucus dripping from his nose past his slack mouth onto his T-shirt. I squinted to read the words printed on the front. Then I had it. “I looted this T-shirt.”
I came back to attention when I saw Di Anci suddenly fly off the bench. He didn’t even call a recess, just took off.
I looked inquiringly at Nathan, but he only shrugged back, then came over to the table, tossed his files in the box, and sat down. Picking up one of the files, he took his little spiral notebook from his jacket pocket and began to make notes.
“Another special project?” I asked him, teasing a little. He looked up and smiled. “I think maybe I can get this kid into Hope House.”
“Which kid?” I asked. “Not the tall, skinny one who ripped off his sister’s TV for dope money?”
He nodded. “All he needs is to kick dope. He’s not a hard-core criminal.”
“What are you?” I laughed. “A lawyer or a social worker? You can’t get all of them into programs.”
“Maybe not,” he shrugged. “But, Cass, you know as well as I do that just keeping them out of jail isn’t enough.”
“Hell, Nathan, I’ll settle for that. But I see what you mean. I just think you go too far. Having clients come to your apartment isn’t the smartest thing to do.”
“I don’t do it often. But the office isn’t open on weekends, and sometimes that’s the best time to get a kid and a program together.”
“Have you had much luck?”
“Had a case recently. Di Anci,” Nathan gestured toward the now-empty bench, “was going to put my kid in for six months. Horrible probation report. The worst. But I convinced him to let me work on a program.”
“Found one yet that’ll take him?”
“No, but at least the kid’s out of jail while I look.”
“Until he gets busted again.”
“Cynic.”
“Bleeding-heart.” We both smiled. It would have been a moment to end with a kiss if we’d been alone.
Di Anci burst back into the courtroom, took the bench, and said, “All right, let’s go. Haven’t we wasted enough time?” Dick, the bridgeman, gave him a sour look; it hadn’t been his idea to take a break. Then he called my 730. It took less than thirty seconds to convince Di Anci that the guy was a wacko. The cop took the guy back inside to wait for the padded wagon. He was still singing his little song.
Boynton came out next. The little man looked even smaller flanked by a court officer. He was trembling, his hands in fists inside his pockets. The court officer behind him said nastily, “Take those hands out of your pockets.” Boynton jerked them out as though his pockets were on fire and let them hang at his sides as if they belonged to someone else. I whispered to him to be cool and stepped up to the bench. I started my pitch for an ACD, told Di Anci he’d move out and leave his wife alone, the whole bit. Then the little D.A. piped up, “Your Honor, this man had a gun. I don’t intend to reduce this case unless he gets jail time.”
Di Anci gave me a bland look. “Ms. Jameson, what do you have to say to that?”
I was pissed. The D.A. was being serious in her dumb way. She just didn’t know the score. But Di Anci was playing games, and it was late and I was tired. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Judge, there was no gun. The cops never recovered one. All his wife wants is for him to move out, and he agrees to do that. Give him his ACD.” I knew it was a mistake the minute I’d said the words. I’d made the same dumb move the D.A. had made earlier—telling Di Anci what to do.
“Ms. Jameson, it is not necessary for you to talk to this court as though I didn’t know what was what.” Di Anci’s face was rigid with anger. “I understand a lot of things you don’t, like the fact that this man put his wife in fear of her life. Now step down and address yourself to bail.”
I knew Di Anci’s mood had shifted against me, but I wasn’t sure how far he’d take it out on Boynton. The D.A. pulled out all the stops. The wife was “adamant” about prosecuting. Boynton had a “long record.” He faced “substantial jail time.” The usual litany.
Finally I got a word in. I pointed out that Boynton’s record was all several years old, that he had a job now, that the gun hadn’t been seen by the cops. It cut no ice with Di Anci. “Bail one thousand dollars.” Boynton sucked his breath in sharply and turned to me, panic on his face.
I tried another tack. “Judge, this man works. He could lose his job. Can we have a cash alternative?”
“Cash alternative is one thousand dollars, Counselor.” He said it as though he were talking to a child, as though it wasn’t obvious.
Boynton burst out, “Your Honor, I can’t make no thousand dollars. If I don’t be at work tomorrow morning, I won’t have no job. Please don’t lock me up.” The man was near tears. If that didn’t move Di Anci, nothing would.
It didn’t. “You had a gun, Mr. Boynton. You used it to threaten your wife.”
Boynton was crying now. “I never had no gun, Your Honor. Not since I left the army.” He was sobbing as they led him away to the back, to make his own phone call to raise the thousand bucks.
I was furi
ous. Because Di Anci was mad at me, everybody would lose, even the woman who’d brought the charges. She wanted Boynton out of the house, not unemployed. I wished I could convince the D.A. that her little victory would mean no support payments for the very woman she thought she was protecting by locking Boynton up.
Given Di Anci’s mood, I dreaded Digna Gonzalez’s case. She came out. I went up to the bench with the D.A. I tried to keep my voice steady as I told Digna’s pathetic story, trying to keep out of my mind the image of Digna behind bars.
Di Anci raised one arm as though it held a violin and with the other dragged a mythical bow across it. Hearts and flowers. “Don’t break my heart, Counselor. This woman had a gun, and guns are dangerous. Aren’t they, Miss Hagerty?”
The D.A. looked uncomfortable. “Actually, Judge, my office has no opposition to ROR in this case.” I gave her credit. It took balls to refuse Di Anci’s obvious hint to ask for bail.
Di Anci gave her a look of disgust. “Step down, ladies.”
We did. I was ready for a strong bail argument, but Di Anci started talking first. “Let the record reflect that we have had a bail conference at the bench.” This wasn’t true, but I let it pass, figuring I’d get my chance later. “I am constrained to disagree with the assistant district attorney’s position that release on recognizance is appropriate here. Having a gun is not to be treated lightly. This woman has only been in Brooklyn nine months. That gives her an excellent motive to flee the jurisdiction.” He finished, “Bail two thousand five hundred dollars.” It might as well have been a million.
I was opening my mouth to begin my argument, when Di Anci stood up, tossed the court papers at the clerk, and proceeded to walk off the bench. I was stunned. I had an absolute right to make a record, and I was going to do it if he held me in contempt. My voice shook as I asked, “Judge, may I be heard?”
He stopped, bowed ironically at me, and stood with his arms folded, waiting.
Dead Man's Thoughts Page 2
