Rose-colored Glasses

by Downing, John

  ROSE-COLORED GLASSES

  by

  JOHN DOWNING

  Published by John Downing

  Copyright © John Downing, 2015

  Ebook Formatting by Guido Henkel

  This is a work of fiction. However, many locations throughout this book are real. The names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person’s, (living or dead) or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  In memory of my brother, Bill

  January 1982

  Twenty-five years and he looked the same. Not that he looked young now, but that back then he had already looked aged beyond his years.

  For nearly a minute after the iron door had clanged shut behind him, he just stood there in the falling snow. Savoring his first taste of freedom in a quarter century? Or bucking up to face a world he scarcely knew?

  He was dressed in the regulation ill-fitting suit prisoners received on their release. No topcoat or hat. Snow stuck to the shoulders of his jacket, to his hair. He appeared not to notice. At last he started down the path toward the street, where Langley was sitting in his car.

  Reaching the sidewalk, he paused as though undecided which way to go. At length, turning to his right, he started walking up the street. Langley watched him diminish into the distance. In less than a minute the snow had swallowed him completely.

  CHAPTER 1

  May 1956

  “Not Guilty.”

  After seven years as a trial lawyer, Langley knew what to expect when the foreman of the jury read the verdict. One side of the courtroom would erupt in cheers; the other, in hoots of derision. Sometimes one faction would have a slightly larger rooting section than the other. In those cases the smaller camp could usually be counted on to compensate for their lower numbers by making more noise. On rare occasions one side would overwhelm the other in both numbers and volume. Even then you could usually depend upon some member of the losing side to do something‌—‌even if it was throwing a punch‌—‌to signal his displeasure with the verdict. Never, in Langley's experience, had the reading of the verdict found consensus in the courtroom.

  Until now. Beginning with the “not” and even before the foreman of the jury was able to add “guilty,” the gallery erupted. From the left side of the courtroom and from the right, from the people sitting in the front rows and from those in the rear, rose cheers, wave after wave of them. Not a single voice was raised in contradiction. The prosecutor, who might have wished to disagree, had already said his piece during the trial. Now, mutely, he began to gather up his papers and stuff them away in his briefcase.

  The judge spoke a few words formally dismissing the charges against Gregor Mylong, and then officially it was over. Well-wishers swarmed forward to offer congratulations. Mylong's wife embraced him; they kissed. Friends and relatives waited patiently for a chance to shake Mylong's hand. When he had received them all, he turned to Langley and took Langley's hand in both of his own. He was one of those people who seem to feel one's sincerity is measured by how hard he can squeeze the other guy's hand.

  “How can I ever thank you, Owen?”

  “Pay my bill on time, Gregor,” Langley said.

  One and all laughed. Mylong put his arm around his wife.

  “We're going to have a little celebration, Owen. You'll join us?”

  Did he say “celebration”? Langley told him he'd be delighted.

  On the way out, the prosecutor, a young A.D.A. by the name of Willoughby, stopped to congratulate Langley on the job he had done.

  Which made it unanimous.

  ***

  It had been Langley's first murder trial.

  Gregor Mylong was a small businessman, the owner of two luncheonettes, with dreams of becoming the next Howard Johnson. It was in those dreams, the prosecutor claimed, that the seeds of Mylong's troubles began, troubles that would lead ultimately to a decision to commit murder. In the process of expanding his “chain” of luncheonettes from one to two, he had overextended himself financially, to the degree that, short of selling both businesses (and perhaps his home), he might never have got out of debt.

  Around this time‌—‌with premeditation, the prosecutor charged (coincidentally, Langley countered)‌—‌Mylong took out a large insurance policy on the life of his only child, his six-year-old daughter, Myra. Three months later‌—‌the result of an act of murder (a tragic accident)‌—‌the little girl was dead, drowned when she was pushed (fell) off her father's boat.

  Surely, it was coincidence. The idea that Mylong had taken out the insurance policy intending to sacrifice his daughter was… unthinkable. Unthinkable that with his own hands he had picked up his child, tossed her into the sea and watched her drown. That had been the core of Langley's defense: the “unthinkableness” of the act. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, who could do such a thing? From all the evidence Langley had been able to procure, every scrap of which he waved under the noses of the jurors (none of which the prosecutor had been able to refute), Mylong had been a doting father to his daughter. Can you, ladies and gentlemen, believe that any man, but especially a man such as my client, is capable of killing his own flesh and blood‌—‌for money? Would his wife (who was ostentatiously pregnant with Myra's soon-to-be sister or brother) continue to stand by him if he was guilty? (She had, the prosecutor implied, steered the boat while her husband did the dirty deed.) Would all these people, his neighbors and relatives and friends, have agreed to testify as to his character if there was even the chance of a chance that he was guilty? The only one who believes that, ladies and gentlemen, is the prosecutor, and maybe even he doesn't believe it. That was what Langley told the jury. It was what he told himself.

  And yet there were people who murdered their children, for much less reason than $50,000. Langley had seen Mylong up close, the sort of closeness the average person may never experience; the sort of closeness that exists only between a man and his confessor/analyst/lawyer. In their many private discussions, he had heard Mylong express not one word of grief for his dead daughter. Plenty of words of pity for himself, words of anger at the prosecution, words of indignation and protest and rage, all of which were understandable. But surely, Langley thought, there was room for both: for concern for his own predicament and for sorrow for his lost child.

  And no room at all for a “celebration.”

  ***

  Mylong had clearly been prepared for the verdict. From the courthouse he and his supporters repaired to The “21" Club. You didn't walk into such a place with an entourage of thirty or forty people without having reserved ahead.

  Nor had he been kidding when he termed it a celebration. Champagne flowed like water. There was good food, and lots of it. People talked loud and boisterously, their conversation sprinkled with much laughter. A patron sitting at one of the other tables could not have been blamed for wondering what accomplishment‌—‌what triumph‌—‌was being feted here.

  You could judge people, in Langley's view, only by putting yourself in their shoes and then asking yourself what you would do in their place. In Mylong's shoes, with his little girl dead, himself falsely accused, and only within the hour cleared, of murdering her, the only thing he could think of doing was to go home with his wife and have a quiet cry.

  He watched Mylong, head tilted back in laughter, the champagne spilling from the glass he held in his hand, and Langley didn't su
spect, or surmise, or wonder. He knew: Mylong was guilty.

  At that moment Mylong looked his way. Had he guessed what Langley was thinking?

  Mylong stood. Raising his glass, he called for a toast.

  “To Owen Langley,” he said. “The best damn lawyer money can buy.”

  Wasn't that exactly what he had set out to be?

  ***

  Amazing, Langley thought, how drunk you can get on champagne. When he left the Mylong party a couple of hours later, he was more than a little unsteady on his feet.

  It was one of those sublime late-spring days, temperature in the seventies, white clouds scudding across a sky so blue it didn't look real. No business awaited him at the office. Partly to clear his head and partly to enjoy the day, he decided to walk back to Brooklyn. He headed for the Manhattan Bridge, which he favored over the Brooklyn because its pedestrian walkways were on the outside, putting you right up close to the river.

  He had gone about a mile and was passing the Flatiron Building when someone spoke his name. The sidewalk teemed with people, mostly tourists, Langley thought, judging from the bright-eyed way they looked about them. (Native New Yorkers, he had observed, tended to walk with their eyes fixed straight ahead, seeing nothing.) He saw no one who looked familiar. Then from the crowd of faces emerged one he recognized‌—‌sort of: he had known a younger version of it.

  “Terry?” he said.

  Terence DeBrough extended his hand. “How long has it been, Owen? Ten years? Twelve?”

  Fourteen. They had graduated Columbia together in '42. So, fourteen years. More, really. He hadn't seen DeBrough at the graduation, hadn't seen him other than in passing in the three years prior to that. There was a time during their freshman year when they had been pals of a sort, but it hadn't lasted.

  “Have you got time for a drink, Owen?”

  His walk had cleared a few of the feathers out of his head, leaving enough room, he decided, for one drink, if he nursed it carefully.

  ***

  “What do you do for a living, Owen?” DeBrough asked.

  Langley told him.

  “I seem to remember your wanting to be a writer.”

  He was surprised DeBrough remembered that. He'd all but forgotten himself. Writing had been his first love, but he had decided the prospect of earning a living at it was too chancy to justify the investment he would have to make, both in money and in time. And so, after graduating Columbia, he had turned to Law. Lawyers, like morticians, never went out of demand.

  “A passing fancy,” he said.

  He didn't ask DeBrough what he did for a living. He wasn't sure that DeBrough did anything. People in his social class didn't have to. His full name was Meredith Terence DeBrough-Burden. The “Meredith” he had inherited from his maternal grandmother's side of the family. As soon as he got to college, he dropped it. Also the “Burden”; whether he didn't like the sound of the name or whether he had no use for his father, Langley didn't know. Anyway, the name went. For a time, he tried calling himself M. Terence DeBrough, but that was too easily shortened to M.T., and so the “M” went, too. He became just plain Terence DeBrough; “Terry” to his friends.

  He had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. As the only son and heir apparent to the DeBrough family fortune (the DeBroughs had made their money in the early days of broadcasting), he was assured that one day the whole place setting would be his. Until that glorious day came, he could amuse himself at whatever caught his fancy. In college he had passed his time boozing and chasing girls. These days, Langley supposed, his work (nominally at least) was to further the fortunes of the DeBrough empire. Rumor had it that he was entertaining the idea of running for Mayor in '57. A nice little diversion if you can afford it.

  In contrast, Langley's background was strictly working class. His mother died when he was twelve. His father was an auto mechanic, who operated his own garage. It was a foregone conclusion that his son would join him in the business after he completed high school. Langley had other ideas. When he approached his father with the news that he had won a partial scholarship to Columbia, he was sure his father would bend. He was wrong; his father remained unyielding in his insistence that he come into the business as his assistant/apprentice. Langley went on to college anyway, without his father's blessing. It didn't spark a rift between them, but he could never shake the feeling that his father was disappointed in him. And that hurt, because in his own mind he was doing something praiseworthy (not that it didn't also have its selfish side) and he felt his father should be proud of him. He looked forward to the day when he would receive his degree, making him the first in his family to have graduated from college‌—‌Columbia, yet‌—‌certain that finally his father would relent. It never happened. By the time he graduated his father was three years dead.

  Even with his partial scholarship, Langley's financial situation had been tight throughout his college years. To earn the money he needed to get by, he worked evenings and weekends and holidays. He didn't have the time to chase girls or the money to buy more than the occasional beer. Which left little common ground on which to build a friendship with someone like Terence DeBrough. It was, of course, the difference in their social backgrounds that led to a parting of the ways; but indirectly. It came down to a question of attitude, of expectations. DeBrough's upbringing had fostered the development of certain conceits; specifically, his belief that as a DeBrough he had it all coming to him as a matter of course, and if it didn't come to him legitimately, well then he'd get it some other way. No short cut was too short; the idea was to win, always and at any cost. To Langley, the next worst thing to losing all the time was winning all the time. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction in life was reaching a goal after having worked long and hard to get there. DeBrough and he never discussed these notions. To begin with, they were never that close. And then they didn't speak the same language. No, Langley thought, that wasn't it. If two people speak different languages, they can always find a translator who speaks both languages to bridge the gap between them. The problem with DeBrough and him was that they spoke the same language, but certain words didn't have the same meaning for DeBrough as they had for him. And for that particular conundrum Langley knew no solution. Inevitably they had drifted apart.

  “Are you married, Owen?” DeBrough asked.

  “Engaged.” Langley corrected himself. “That is to say, I'm working up to popping the question.”

  “You must be pretty sure of the answer.”

  “I know she's what I want. I think she'll say yes.” In fact, he had been putting Fay off for several months now. But then, he kept telling himself, marriage was a big step. “What about you, Terry? Are you married?”

  “Going on fourteen years. I married right out of college. A Radcliffe girl.”

  “Mine went to Fairfield,” Langley said.

  A long silence followed his attempt at self-deprecating humor. Had they run out of topics to discuss already?

  “What kind of lawyer are you, Owen?”

  Back to that again. “I practice criminal law,” Langley said.

  “Between cases?” DeBrough asked, obliquely probing why Langley was doing nothing in the middle of the day.

  Langley didn't reply at once, not sure how deeply he wanted to discuss his business with someone who was really a stranger. But then he thought, Why not? He hadn't seen DeBrough in fourteen years, might not see him again for another fourteen. It would be like talking to a stranger you've met on a train, except that you know a little bit about this particular stranger. He could talk to DeBrough of things he wouldn't dare mention to another lawyer for fear he would be laughed at, things he could not in a thousand years discuss with Fay.

  “I finished up a case this morning.”

  “What was the verdict?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Congratulations,” DeBrough said, lifting his glass in a mock toast. “Was he?”

  “Was he w
hat?” Langley asked.

  “Not guilty.”

  “Everybody's guilty‌—‌of something,” Langley said, quoting a bit of philosophy he had learned from Professor Steadman, his teacher at Michigan Law and his mentor. For openly stating the same in his lectures, Steadman was considered a bit of a heretic by his colleagues on the faculty, who in their own lectures talked of abstractions like fairness and justice. But Steadman was preaching concrete and, as Langley was to learn, practical lessons. He didn't think he quite believed Steadman at the time. Surely, he had thought in his idealism (i.e., naiveté), some defendants are innocent, if only one in ten, or one in a hundred, or even one in a thousand. But when he started practicing law, reality intruded very quickly and thanks to Professor Steadman's preparation he was able to adjust far better than he would have otherwise to the sad fact: all of his clients were guilty.

  Which, when you stop to think about it, is only to be expected. The courts, common sense tells you, do not indict and prosecute someone on a whim. There are all sorts of safeguards to protect against the possibility of the Law ensnaring an innocent person. Innocent people do not get arrested, and in the rare cases where they do, they do not get prosecuted. If a man is put on trial for a crime, he is almost certainly guilty. After seven years of practicing law, Langley had yet to meet one who was not.

  “What was your client ‘not guilty’ of?” DeBrough asked.

  “Murder,” Langley told him.

  “Really?” DeBrough raised an eyebrow. “That must be the ultimate satisfaction,” he said. “To beat The System like that.”

  That was DeBrough all over. Langley had always been suspicious of people who flaunted their cynicism, regarding them as imposters. At heart, he believed, they were actually idealists decrying a world they wished was a better place. True cynics knew the world for what it was and knew there was no point in wishing it otherwise, so why bother even talking about it? DeBrough was the exception to the rule: his cynicism was both flamboyant and genuine. He was the exception in another way, too. In Langley's experience, cynicism‌—‌the real kind‌—‌was, like hardening of the arteries, a function of aging. But even in his youth, when the rest of his classmates were starry-eyed, DeBrough was already an Olympic-class cynic. Precocious, Langley guessed you would call him.