Love In The Time Of Apps

by Jay Begler

  “Okay,” the Judge said, “I’m choosing the Plaintiff’s counsel.” He paused and looked quizzically at the little ball that had Goodwin’s attorney’s name on it. “I’m sorry. This ball is very difficult to read. Let’s see, I can make out a D.”

  Goodwin tugged at Schnell’s sleeve. “It has to be Dershowitz. Thank God.”

  Let’s see. There is an E.”

  “I knew it, Schnell. Dershowitz is my man!”

  “W.”

  “W? Does he spell his name Dewrshowitz? Could have fooled me.”

  “ARS. That’s it, The Dewars Brothers, the Alcoholic Advocates.”

  “Who?” Goodwin yelled out of control. “Who are these guys? I never heard of them. What kind of firm is called The Dewars Brothers?”

  Lazar obviously delighted with the choice said: “Actually the firm is named Dewars, Dewars, Dewars, and Manischewitz.”

  “Manischewitz?”

  “They wanted a Jew in the firm.”

  “Manischewitz?”

  “No, the third Dewars.”

  Lazar was elated, and said, “Don’t worry. This is better than I had hoped for.”

  A voice from the television monitor said: “Now, let’s go directly to the offices of the Dewars Brothers who we understand have an average PPR of 11.”

  Goodwin had his head buried in his hands, but was lurched by Schnell who said, “Look look.”

  The voice continued. “To do this, we go directly to Rockefeller Center.” The television monitor revealed an exterior shot of Rockefeller Center. The off camera voice continued: “We have not met the Dewars firm, but its location, the penthouse suite of 75 Rockefeller Center, the prestigious building behind the Center’s skating rink, suggests that it is a firm of great substance.” Goodwin lifted his head slightly.

  Moments later, the screen depicted a television reporter standing in front of an impressive oak door bearing the initials D, D, D, & M. The camera followed the reporter into a large and gorgeous reception area. This was clearly a power law firm. As he approached an elegant and stylishly dressed receptionist sitting behind a very expensive desk she said in an upper class British accent, “Hello, may I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m with Divorcing With The Stars and we are here to meet your partners.”

  “Of course. I believe that they are all in the conference room.”

  Goodwin was sitting up. The camera followed the receptionist and reporter down a long hallway, whose walls were covered with expensive art, into a conference easily twice the size of that of the Justice firm. Schnell tugged on an elated Goodwin’s sleeve.

  “Hello. We are from Divorcing With The Stars. I assume you know that you’ve been chosen to represent Philip Goodwin in his divorce trial.”

  The most senior attorney, who was every bit as impressive as Justice, replied, “Thank you very much, but there must be a mistake. We don’t litigate at all.”

  “But, the initials on the door, D D D & M?”

  “That’s right. We are the firm of Drizzle, Dampness, Dew, and Moisture.”

  “Oh, my mistake. Sorry. So what does the law firm of Drizzle, Dampness, Dew, and Moisture do?”

  “Actually, we’re rainmakers. I think that you must be looking for the Dewars firm.”

  “That’s right. Do you know where they are?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. They used have some space in back of the One Hour Photo Shop on the lowest level of the shopping concourse, but I think they were evicted. Sorry I can’t help you. I don’t believe they left a forwarding address.”

  The camera cut to Lazar who again addressed the television audience. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be some first trial. On one hand we have one of the most formidable team of attorneys in our pool, known for their great ability, guile, know-how, and skill as advocates both in and out of the courtroom. This fine team is pitted against four alcoholic attorneys, disbarred in several states for incompetence, attorneys having received their law degrees from an Internet law school located in Macao, which they only got into by using some pull and possibly bribes. So it’s a firm with a PPR average of 28 versus a firm with a PPR average of 11. You may ask yourselves, how can a Cinderella team like this win? And the answer is, “I don’t have a clue.” But it does answer the question of why the Dewars Brothers had to leave Rockefeller Center. It no longer permits tenants with a PPR below 15.”

  The totality of the last eight months and the full realization of what was happening to him seemed to crash down on Goodwin. He fainted. Lazar had sensed Goodwin’s distress and more importantly an opportunity to add drama to the series. He signaled a director who immediately focused two cameras on Goodwin, who was regaining consciousness and gasping for air.

  Lazar continued to speak as the television cameras held tight shots of Goodwins face. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that Mr. Goodwin has not taken his selection of counsel very well. Let’s watch the action unfold.” The camera focused on the Judge who said, “Anyone have a paper bag for Mr. Goodwin? If you place a paper bag over his head, the hyperventilation will stop. No? Okay, we have to improvise. It looks like there is a large and ancient looking briefcase under Mr. Goodwin’s table. Funny, I never noticed that before. Mr. Goodwin, put it over your head. That’s it.

  The American Public was now watching Goodwin being interviewed with his head entirely covered by a very old and worn briefcase that had the odor of a dank cellar. Goodwin was unaware that cameras were focusing upon him.

  “Feeling better, Philip?” Lazar said into the microphone.

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, can’t hear you, got to speak up.

  The briefcase covering Goodwin did not arrest his hyperventilation, which accelerated when he heard Wang say to the Two Sheilas, “I have Mr. Justice on my cell phone. He wants to reiterate how pleased he and his team are and that they are already putting together a rock solid case. They will be in New York to start working round the clock and more importantly he and his team will be appearing on your behalf on a whole bunch of shows.”

  Lazar said, “Don’t worry, that’s just a psychological ploy. Here, call your attorneys on my cell phone. I think it will fit underneath the brief case.

  “I’m sorry, but the number you have called has been temporarily disconnected,” said the electronic voice of Ms. AT& T.

  “Hmm,” Lazar said, “That’s odd. Let me get right on it.”

  Goodwin heard, “That’s a wrap,” the shuffle of feet, and doors closing. After a period of 15 minutes, he sensed that everyone had left the courtroom, but did not want to remove the briefcase. “It’s nice in the dark like this,” Goodwin thought, “maybe I should just stay here forever.” Sitting on the courtroom’s floor his head within the briefcase’s protective confines, Goodwin knew that with the choice of the Dewars Brothers as his attorneys he had absolutely no hope of winning the case and that he would lose everything he owned. In the end, he would be made even more of a joke than he was before. “If they were going to give an award to the shmuck of the century,” Goodwin thought,” I would certainly be the clear front-runner.” His greatest disappointment, however, was that he probably would not be able to help his fellow Low Lifes.

  There was a light tapping on top of the brief case. “Yes, who is it?” Goodwin asked, as if responding to someone knocking on his door. A security guard answered. “Excuse me, sir, but you have to move out of the courtroom. It’s rented for the Fine’s wedding ceremony.”

  Goodwin removed the briefcase from his head and as he did so a small scrap of crushed and brittle piece of paper, yellow with age, fell out of it. He guessed that it could have been over 70 years old. The writing was obscure but he managed to decipher what it said, “Dear Julius, keep all of your important papers in here. Happy days ahead. And always remember our vows, no secrets from anyone. With love and great trust, Ethel.”

  Lazar greeted Goodwin as he exited the courtroom. “Good news. I’ve located your law firm. Sorry for the mix-up. They
were moving to new quarters. That explains the phone being disconnected. Just go down town to 120 Pine Street and you’ll find them. I’ve called ahead and one of the Dewars Brothers will be waiting for you. They are all pretty excited about the case and are anxious to represent you.”

  “I don’t know,” Goodwin responded despondently

  “Come on, Phil. Cheer up! You’ve got to be optimistic.”

  Goodwin could well have asked, “Why?” The word “offices” was a misnomer. His counsel’s space consisted of a rather meager back room of a pub called “Dewars Digs.” One of the bar’s booths functioned as a desk. Their law library consisted of two “law” books, “The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure For Dummies” and “The Federal Rules of Evidence For Dummies.” The walls of the pub were covered by photographs of the original Dewars and his not so illustrious progeny Hiram Walker Dewars, Jim Beam Dewars, Johnny Drum Dewars, and Pablo Dewars Senior. Goodwin noticed with some degree of alarm, but with no surprise, that each of the Dewars in the photographs held a glass of scotch.

  A young attorney approached Goodwin and introduced himself as Pablo Dewars Junior, the nephew of one of the Dewars on the letterhead, Pablo Dewars Senior, a man he described as one who “gave up private practice of law for higher pursuits.” Goodwin thought that he was better off not asking why he gave up the practice of law or for a description of the nature of those higher pursuits. Pablo apologized for not being available earlier and explained that his firm was evicted and they had been looking for a temporary office until they got their financial act together. This introduction was not the confidence builder Goodwin needed.

  “Listen,” Pablo said, “I know I’m very young and inexperienced, but I’m very interested in this case and I’ve cleared my entire calendar for the next month to work on your behalf.”

  “Well, what was on your calendar that you had to clear?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said suspiciously, “but trust me. I’m going to work on this like a beaver. Now, tell me everything you know about the Two Sheilas. And don’t worry how long it takes. We bill by the hour.”

  Goodwin accommodated his request and for about six hours told Pablo Dewars Junior, in whose hands his future now rested, about Sheila. Dewars took extensive notes and at the end of Goodwin’s story began to weep.

  “I’m impressed, Pablo. You’re very empathetic. That’s good.”

  “That’s not it, Philip.”

  “What then?”

  “I’m scared!”

  “I’m dead, dead, dead,” Goodwin thought.

  “As it turned out, “I’m scared,” was part of a quartet of expressions used by young attorney Dewars when he was confronted by members of the press. Also forming part of his four-pronged emotional state was: “I’m frightened,” or “I’m too frightened to talk,” and “I’m petrified.” All of this played well in the press who had now treated Pablo and by proxy, Goodwin, as a joke. Pablo was soon dubbed the “Squeamish Solicitor” and “Cowardly Counselor” by the press. One paper carried a photo of Pablo with the cruel notation, “Goodwin’s Greatest Joke.” Thus, while Mr. Justice and his team were all scoring big with the press and the media and no doubt the American public, Pablo simply admitted to being scared, frightened, or petrified.

  “I never wanted to be a lawyer,” young Pablo confessed in an interview, “but it’s a family tradition. I’m not cut out for this litigation stuff. Heck, I get nervous if I have to watch Court TV. Perry Mason used to give me nightmares.”

  At the Persona Non Gratta bar where Goodwin was downing glasses of Dewars, a brand he selected for its pure irony, he said to the bartender with a slight drunken slur, “It’s over my friend. With my featherweight lawyer, I don’t have a prayer. You know what happened when Lazar took him to the courtroom to see the television set up, Pablo apparently said ‘So this is what a courtroom looks like’ and then he threw up.”

  Despite Goodwin’s sentiments, he didn’t give up. In the past he had made a point of avoiding appearances on television shows. Now, mostly out of desperation, he appeared on every show he could in an effort to sway what he knew was an unswayable public opinion. His appearances, however, did more harm than good.

  Typically, whenever he was interviewed on a show to press his case in the overcrowded Court of Public Opinion, he was greeted aloofly by the host and asked harsh and often antagonistic questions. Goodwin was considered by all talk show hosts to be something of a pariah, a pariah who boosted their ratings, however. The very mention of his name seemed to automatically raise the hackles on the necks of the most otherwise objective hosts. One iconic senior reporter, who actually removed her hackles with a depilatory, known to be one of the most professional and fair- minded people in the business, told her co-host and the television audience after her interview with Goodwin that she thought he was a “putz.” The co-host shook his head in agreement and said to the television audience: “Putz is a pretty strong word.” The woman agreed and replied in a voice reminiscent of Forest Gump, “Putz is as Putz does.” The television audience didn’t know what she meant, but since she was a television icon, they assumed it was profound and true.

  The day following his “putz” interview, Goodwin appeared on an early morning news show. Before the first question was posed, the show’s effervescent host, an even tempered woman without a mean bone in her body, rose from her chair, approached him and said to the camera, “Before I speak with Philip Goodwin, there’s something I have to do; something I just need to get off my chest.”

  He had expected the usual litany of hard questions and verbal attacks; so common in his interviews that he no longer flinched when such an onslaught began. Instead, she stood up, walked over to Goodwin and slapped him hard across his face. Returning to her chair, crossing her legs, letting out a sigh and brushing her hair back slightly, she said: “I’m sorry. I just had to get that out of my system. I feel much better now.” Her apology was not directed towards Goodwin, however, but to members of the television audience. The host received kudos from all who saw the slap and was even nominated for a specially created Emmy for “Action Reporting.”

  A week after they met, Goodwin could no longer reach young Pablo because the Board of Health closed his office/pub. Alone in his room and thoroughly depressed, Goodwin was perusing the Internet for inexpensive steamer fares to places like Borneo. The only thing that held him back was his assumption that CNN probably would have carried his story and photograph to that country. He gave up and was walking out the door when his cell phone rang.

  “Sorry to reach you so late in the day, but I think we have some problems. Can you come right over? The Board of Health re-opened the restaurant.”

  When Goodwin arrived, Dewars said to him, “So, Philip, I’ve read their papers, the complaint against you, the affidavits of all the witnesses, the videos, the 4000 pre-marked exhibits prepared by Mr. Justice’s team, the photographs, the forensic charts, the experts’ reports, the DNA analysis, the diaries of the Two Sheilas, the diary of the Original Sheila, and the Diary of Ann Frank which mentions a Herr Philip Goodwin, a Nazi collaborator, audio tapes of you threatening your two wives and hate notes you’ve written to them.”

  “What hate notes? I didn’t write any hate notes.”

  Young Dewars handed a note to Goodwin. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

  To The Two Sheilas,

  You’ve ruined my life. I know I’ll never win the divorce trial and that I will lose everything. Know this; I will spend the rest of my life getting even with you. I hate both of you.

  Philip

  “But, that’s not my handwriting,” Goodwin protested. “The letter is a total forgery and a bad one at that. We need to get a handwriting expert.”

  “I’m way ahead of you Mr. Goodwin. I’ve already retained a handwriting expert and she’s at one of the booths analyzing the handwriting on the letter against your actual handwriting samples. If we can prove that this letter is a forgery, it will affect the credib
ility of the Two Sheilas and maybe we can turn this case around.”

  Goodwin felt a slight sense of relief. Perhaps this young attorney wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe, this scared routine was to throw his adversaries off stride. Several moments later, Pablo returned with an older woman who he introduced as Zelda de Montebello, “a handwriting docent.”

  She did not speak directly to Goodwin, but just outwardly into the room, as if she were giving a tour. “Welcome to the analysis of the alleged handwriting of one Philip Goodwin. I’m Zelda de Montebello and I will take you on a tour of this rather tawdry letter. I have divided the letter into four parts, the upper, upper middle, lower middle, and bottom, which we in the profession call “rooms.” Now, if you enter the first room the key word is ‘ruined.’ Notice that the “e” and “i” of this word both lean to the left. This indicates that the writer is a sadist. In the second, third and fourth rooms we find the words “trial, getting, and hate” You will notice that within these words each “t” is crossed in a manner resembling a crucifix, a very clear sign of a highly religious person with a deranged mind.

  “But, is the letter a forgery?” Goodwin stammered.

  “I have no idea. I analyze personality traits from handwriting. You need a forensic expert.”

  “Whoops,” said Pablo. “I guess I should have looked further down in the yellow pages. But that’s the least of our problems. Look at the video they are offering into evidence.”

  The video showed Philip dressed in black leather dancing at a leather bar called the Sado Masochist Relais. This was clearly an altered digitized tape, one in which his face was electronically put on the body of someone else.

  “I know its phony,” Pablo said, “and I did try to get someone who was an expert in videos, but all he could do is fix my VCR. And besides, they have an affidavit of the leading video expert in the world, a former FBI and CIA video tape expert, who now teaches video tape alteration at the New School. The man stakes his professional reputation on the fact that the tape was not altered.”