The Magician

by Sol Stein

  The nurse came in to see if everything was all right and to tell Gil he’d have to leave soon.

  “Before the army,” said Gil, “I couldn’t understand all the stuff you read about violence. I mean, I know about Hitler and all that, and assassinations and muggings, but after living with those guys for a couple of months, I wonder how come there isn’t more violence, you know what I mean?” Gil studied the insignia on his cap. “Hearing what happened to you makes me wish I’d had the nerve to head for Canada.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t do any good. I’d wind up in jail surrounded by the same types. Well, look, take care, will you?”

  He wrote on a piece of paper for Ed. “That’s my address for mail. I promise to write when your letters catch up with me.”

  He stood up. “Maybe I can get transferred to some USO-type outfit, doing magic. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  Ed held up the book, thanking him again for it.

  “Take care,” said Gil.

  Going out the door, he looked very military, not just the uniform, but the way he walked. Ed hoped the army wouldn’t kill him.

  Chapter 10

  The courtroom had fourteen rows of seats on both sides of a wide aisle for the townspeople to observe the administration of justice. The seats were usually empty. The walls, paneled with walnut veneer, gave the chamber a dark, brooding solidity. The one touch of color was the American flag, which drooped on its stand beside the black-robed judge. Some years earlier a village trustee had suggested that a quiet electric fan be hidden behind the bench, tilted upward at the flag so that it would seem to be waving, but the justices dismissed the notion as undignified.

  Urek stood in front of the bench, no longer in handcuffs because his lawyer had assured the policemen that he wouldn’t try anything funny. George Thomassy did not want to plead for low bail for a client under physical restraint.

  Judge Clifford, a proud man, spent a good part of his time on the bench trying to control a human affliction: he had the habit of swallowing air and subsequently burping, which, though he had learned to burp quietly behind a hand held in front of his lips, disturbed him because it seemed inconsistent with the dignity of his office. Once, in the course of a prolonged and unruly trial, the affliction had distressed him so that he visited a doctor, who told him that air-swallowing was not an uncommon nervous habit among people; the less fortunate could expel their intake only through flatulence. The judge thought himself lucky because the indignity of passing wind in court would certainly exceed what he suffered as a burper.

  The point at which the judge most tried to control his affliction was when a defendant first came before his view. The judge had developed a personal ritual of considering each defendant as if he were an employment applicant. During his initial study of a defendant’s appearance, a moment that would last anywhere from five to thirty seconds, the judge’s hands, pressed together before his lips, served not only the purpose of burp concealment but gave most defendants a sense that they were being studied by God in an attitude of prayer.

  To Judge Clifford, Urek’s face did not seem to be American, that is, clean-cut, short-haired, near handsome, with a look of innocent honesty. On the contrary, he looked markedly Slavic. The judge was also disturbed by the deep scar that ran vertically along Urek’s right cheek and almost onto the ear. When he saw such scars on Negroes, he assumed them to be the result of knife fights, but in the case of this Slavic boy, perhaps it had been a spill from a bicycle. He wouldn’t, of course, ask. The boy’s hair had been plastered down in a way that betrayed uncustomary effort. Still, he was wearing a white shirt, with a striped blue tie, and his suit was pressed. The judge did not like to believe that he was influenced by dress, which could be contrived for occasions, as indeed Urek’s had been by the lawyer who had brought the dress-up gear to the jail, but so many young people he saw these days just had no regard for their physical appearance.

  Thomassy argued that his client was known to him for many years (true), that he lived at home with his mother and father (true), that he had not been in serious trouble before (false), and that bail should be nominal, considering all these points and the defendant’s youth.

  The police sergeant described the seriousness of the injury to Japhet, the smashed windshield, the fracas in the school auditorium, the difficulty in making the arrest, and the danger the police had been put in just in trying to get this young fellow to come along.

  No mention was made of the fact that Urek’s small, feared organization controlled the student body at the school more than the principal or the teachers could be said to do.

  Judge Clifford decided that Thomassy was doing his duty in making Urek out to be a nice boy, and that the police sergeant was once again emphasizing the strain and danger of police work. As happens in smaller communities, the judge had Thomassy before him fairly frequently; in fact, at a mutual friend’s party recently, Thomassy and the judge had gone off in a corner to discuss the recent Supreme Court obscenity decisions for a good part of the evening. Thomassy was probably the smartest trial lawyer in the community, articulate and charming in private, really knowledgeable about the law, and tough and earthy in front of a jury. The judge felt himself fortunate. Examinations of witnesses were never boring if Thomassy was defending somebody.

  As for the police sergeant, the judge knew his opinion of adolescent kids. Their rock music late at night brought nuisance telephone calls to the police station. The kids broke street lights. They’d take the name shingle in front of a driveway and exchange it for another stolen somewhere. Always creating work for the department, then ending up with the parents coming down and saying, “Look, it’s only kids having fun. It won’t happen again.” Of course, it always happened again; somebody’s kids somewhere in town pranking, or smoking pot. The sergeant shouldn’t feel that harassed. It was his job to deal with nuisances.

  Taking his hands away from his face, Judge Clifford set the bail at five hundred dollars.

  Thomassy felt relieved. Urek started to say something; Thomassy squeezed his arm hard to keep the boy silent.

  The Yonkers bondsman Thomassy dealt with was very tough about going along with high bail for irresponsible kids. Five hundred dollars was okay. The kid lived at home, and he didn’t seem to be the long-haired sort that might take off for Greenwich Village. The bond would cost Urek’s father seventy-five dollars, and he’d probably have to sign the guaranty. The father wouldn’t want to be stuck for five hundred. He probably didn’t have five hundred. Paul Urek, Thomassy thought, would see to it that the kid didn’t run off somewhere.

  Almost as an afterthought, Judge Clifford said to Urek, “Remember, son, bail is a promise to return.”

  Back in his office, Thomassy sat Urek down on the leather couch. “You stay there,” he said.

  Thomassy hung his jacket on the back of his chair, revealing half-moons of sweat under each armpit.

  “Be back in a minute,” he said, heading for the men’s room down the hall. This was his test. If Urek made a break for it, that was the end. He could break laws but not defy Thomassy. If Urek went for anything on the desk, or tried to relieve the jacket on the back of the chair of any of its contents, he was finished. A client had to realize that Thomassy was above all else immune from anything the client might do to the rest of the world.

  Urek hadn’t moved off the couch. Good sign.

  Thomassy stretched his arms in front of him, fingers intertwined. Then he stretched his lanky frame, watching Urek all the time. This was Thomassy’s silent treatment. Some clients filled the vacuum with talk. That kind was dangerous on the witness stand.

  The boy was looking everywhere, except at Thomassy. Would he speak? Thomassy waited, thinking.

  He had gone straight from the dean’s list at NYU Law to Pritchard, Hutchinson, Batsford, & Morgan—but not before trying a little mischief: he had applied to Sullivan & Cromwell, been offered a job, then turned it down. He had been interviewed at Debevoise, Plimpton, & MacLean; they told h
im the salary they were considering starting him at, and he told the interviewer a day later it wasn’t the salary, he didn’t want the job. He did the same thing when he was offered an associate’s position at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Thomassy wanted Pritchard; they were the only firm of the bunch without a single non-Wasp name on its letterhead.

  But he told Mr. Pritchard, who insisted on interviewing each successful applicant personally, of the offers from the other three firms. Pritchard liked the young man’s nerve, raised the offer by a thousand dollars, and hired him as an associate. At the next partners’ meeting, Pritchard made much about their having snagged that quick-witted Armenian who had turned down Sullivan & Cromwell, Debevoise, and Cravath. Within three years Thomassy had become the best tactician on the litigating side of the firm, when he was told by Pritchard personally that he’d have to resign.

  “You might say,” declared the seventy-year-old Mr. Pritchard, “that you are being fired for excessive competence. You’re obviously the most valuable associate we’ve got. We can’t promote any of the other associates into partnerships unless we promote you first, and we’re not about to have a Boston Irishman, a Jew, or an Armenian in the senior ranks. They may be breaking ground in some of the other firms, but not here, not till I’m dead, anyway. Never mind, I’ll give you a letter of recommendation that’ll fix you up as house counsel at any American corporation you name at a higher salary. Good luck.”

  Thomassy didn’t shake Pritchard’s outstretched hand. He cleared his desk, said good-bye to no one, didn’t wait for a letter of recommendation. In two weeks he was working a fanatical sixty-hour week at the American Civil Liberties Union, getting the guilty as well as the innocent off the hook. He started getting his name in the papers, became a master of press conferences as well as a crackerjack courtroom lawyer. Every year he sent old Mr. Pritchard a birthday card, his way of saying you’re living too long, drop dead.

  Finally, when civil-liberties cases became routine for him, Thomassy decided to devote himself to private criminal practice, with one intention: winning every time. He set himself up in the suburbs. Ossining had Italian lawyers for the Italians, Jewish lawyers for the Jews, Wasp lawyers for the majority, and so Thomassy concentrated his early practice on the miscellaneous ethnics who didn’t have a lawyer in town.

  Paul Urek was his first client. His television set had been repossessed by the finance company. Thomassy not only got him his TV back, he filed a claim against the finance company for removing the set in the full view of neighbors when the overdue check was already in the mail. They settled out of court for more than the television set had cost. Paul Urek spread the word: this new lawyer wasn’t just good, he was great. Soon Thomassy was getting all the business he could handle, not only from the miscellaneous ethnics, but from Italians, Jews, and finally Wasps as well. The word was: if you want to win, get Thomassy. Defending Paul Urek’s kid was something he had to do successfully.

  During the silent treatment, Urek had kept quiet. Or was he about to talk now? Thomassy studied Urek’s strange face. He saw the surface of animal agitation, an actual tic in one cheek, eyes that were never still, and behind them a feeling of lava. Urek, though still in his teens, reminded Thomassy most of a thirty-year-old anti-Semitic hooligan from Queens who had been accused of defacing the ark in a Queens synagogue. Somehow the case had gotten to the Civil Liberties Union instead of the Legal Aid Society. During his first interview with the man Thomassy had uncovered the fact that he was guilty not only of the charged offense but of several similar incidents in the past for which he had not been apprehended. Having defaced several synagogues without getting caught, he had gotten careless and taken too long on the inside, where he was seen through the window by three Jews, who waited for him to come out. They did not seize him but observed him carefully for identification purposes, followed him home, then reported the matter to the police.

  At the trial, Thomassy showed that the black enamel used for the desecration could have been bought at any hardware store. The same for the brush. True, when the man was picked up by the cops, his hands, which had been thoroughly washed by then, still smelled of turpentine. But you couldn’t convict a man on turpentine smells—not if Thomassy was defending him. When the three Jews testified, he tore their credibility to pieces by the use of easy law-school tactics. Everything was much too circumstantial for the judge, who let the man off with a warning to get rid of all the hate literature that had been found in his apartment. Thomassy had even objected to the warning, and the judge had withdrawn it.

  Thomassy felt pretty good about that case. He surmised that the man had probably been guilty of a great deal throughout his disordered life. Something must have gone irretrievably wrong early, but you couldn’t lock people up for life just to keep them in line. Society had to take its chances, and Thomassy was the instrument for protecting people like that from vengeance.

  An expression of discomfort wrinkled Urek’s features in what seemed to be the beginning of laughter.

  “Listen, kid,” Thomassy stabbed a finger at Urek. “You’re in more trouble than you think. What’s so funny?”

  “Nothin’,” said Urek.

  “I don’t want you discussing anything that happened with anyone from now on. That goes for your father and mother, too. Just shut up. You’ve said too much already. You got to get some facts straight. Japhet’s father is a schoolteacher. That’s in his favor. Your father is a millhand and a part-time gas-station attendant.”

  He wasn’t getting through. Explaining such distinctions to Urek was pointless.

  “They say you smashed the windshield of Japhet’s car with a chain. If you did, that was stupid. That’s property damage of an insured item. If the insurance company went after you, you’d be licked.”

  Thomassy rocked back on his heels. “Fortunately, there’s a hundred-dollar deductible, and the amount that’s over might not be enough for them to get excited about. How else did you damage the car?”

  “Well,” said Urek, uneasy.

  “It’s okay, you’re telling me, not the judge.”

  “Well, I smashed one of the suitcases against the back fender. The other suitcase was done by one of the other guys.”

  “Did you dent the fender?”

  Urek shrugged. He didn’t know.

  “Let’s hope you didn’t. We don’t want the insurance company in this, right? Now, bodily injury. People damage. You jumped Japhet’s kid and the girl friend.”

  “I didn’t do nothing to the girl. I mean, I twisted her arm, but she didn’t get hurt.”

  “That could be assault. In our society, we don’t like women to get assaulted. Fortunately for you, the only witnesses on their side are the boyfriend and the boyfriend’s father, and if she has no injuries that required medical attention… Are you listening?”

  “Sure,” said Urek, twitching his nose. “What about the guy in the hospital?”

  “He’s going to be the chief witness against you. He’s going to be asked to tell every detail of what he did and what you did, especially what you did to him. You damn nearly killed him.”

  Whatever Thomassy said from that point on washed over Urek, who was thinking he didn’t like the idea of that Japhet superkid yakking about him on the witness stand. A few more seconds. If only he hadn’t let go when the school janitor shone his flashlight, yelling. But there was Japhet’s old man pounding his back, hurting.

  “You’re not listening,” said Thomassy.

  “You know somethin’, that kid’s father beat me.”

  “He what?” asked Thomassy.

  “I didn’t touch him. And he beat me.”

  “Very interesting,” said Thomassy, making a note.

  *

  The woman at the hospital switchboard was very near retirement age. She had put in seven of her eight hours that Monday, and was looking forward to her relief. She mustered her strength for the last hour because she felt that in her job she could account for so many kindnesses if she
handled each incoming call just right.

  “Ed Japhet?” asked the caller.

  “Would you spell the name, please,” said the operator, immediately sorry she had given this stock response, because the caller seemed flustered. “Is it ‘f-f or ‘p-p’?” she asked, then answered her own question, because she had just minutes before received the slip taking Japhet, Edward’s name off the intensive list.

  “Hold on, please. He’s been assigned a room.”

  She always kept her Rolodex up to the minute, and there the card was, not keeping the caller waiting long at all.

  “Room four-oh-two,” said the switchboard operator proudly.

  She was surprised that the caller did not ask to be connected. Urek, who had been released in the custody of his parents, did not even thank her before he hung up.

  Dinner consisted of meatloaf and frozen corn on the cob. Urek watched his father put margarine on the corn. He could tell the old man was sore.

  “What did ya get in a fight for?” he said at last.

  Urek said nothing.

  His father munched on the ear of corn, then wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “Thomassy costs money. What’d ya get arrested for, are you gonna answer me?”

  “Let him eat his supper,” said Mrs. Urek.

  “He can rot in jail, that’s what I think.”

  Urek left his dinner on the plate. He went upstairs, saying he was going to listen to some records and then go to sleep. He put the record player on a long-play with the volume not too loud so that his father wouldn’t come barging in, then fixed the record-player arm so that the record would be replayed again and again. Then he put on a sweater and went down the drainpipe as he had on many previous occasions.