The Magician

by Sol Stein

  “And then what happened?” asked Mr. Metcalf.

  “We came out of the building. The drifts were knee-deep, and the bags were heavy. We were nearly to the car when I saw that it was occupied.”

  “Your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “By whom?”

  “By that Urek boy and three of his friends.”

  The sound of Thomassy letting his pencil fall to the table top was enough to attract the judge’s attention.

  Judge Clifford said, “May I, Mr. Metcalf?” He turned to Mr. Japhet. “We are trying to establish facts, informally it is true, but it is important that you try to discipline yourself to stick to what you actually saw. Did you know that it was the Urek boy at the moment that you saw your car was occupied, or a moment later, or when?”

  “Later, I think.”

  “I see,” said the judge. “Then how did you know the other three were his friends?”

  “Well, they’re all part of a gang at the school which—”

  “Your Honor,” said Thomassy, approaching the bench. “I can’t in good conscience let this pass. Whatever Mr. Japhet knows about any gang goings-on at the school is probably hearsay and shouldn’t be developed here, any more than it should be allowed at a trial.”

  “I respect your view, Mr. Thomassy,” said the judge. “Any evidence concerning a gang at the school must be developed by questioning of a police officer or school officials and connected to this assault, unless Mr. Japhet knows about this gang firsthand.”

  “I know about it from my son and from other students and from faculty members, we’ve talked about it, and the principal has talked to all of us about it.”

  “I’m afraid,” said the judge, “that’s what we call hearsay. Could you go on with what you yourself saw that evening.”

  “Urek smashed the suitcase, one of the suitcases, with the magic equipment up against the fender, the rear fender of the car, and then he attacked Ed and Lila—”

  “He or one of the others?” asked Metcalf.

  “No, I’m quite sure it was him. When he was on top of Ed choking him, I remember beating on his back or doing something to make him stop.”

  “Did you stop him?”

  “Yes, but not before Ed was pretty badly hurt. It was a brutal beating. That boy has caused more

  trouble at the school….”

  Mr. Japhet stopped himself. He looked at the judge, Metcalf, and Thomassy. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” said the judge.

  “What happened when Urek let go of your son?” asked Metcalf..

  “He smashed the windshield of my car.”

  “How?”

  “With a chain.”

  “What kind of a chain?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. It must have been a strong chain because I believe the windshield smashed with the first blow.”

  “And then?”

  “The janitor appeared in the doorway of the school building with his flashlight, yelling.”

  “What did he yell?”

  Mr. Japhet thought for a while. “I honestly don’t remember.”

  Mr. Japhet saw Thomassy grin and despised him for it.

  “Then what happened?”

  “The four boys ran off. Lila and I got Ed into the back seat of the car—he insisted on taking the suitcases with us though I was anxious to get him to the hospital.”

  “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “It was a terrible drive, the windshield was open, there were glass shards all over the front of the car, the snow was coming in.”

  “Did you drop the girl off on the way?”

  “No, no, my son was badly hurt, and we had to get to the hospital right away.”

  Metcalf knew enough to quit when he was ahead.

  “Your Honor,” he said, “I have finished my examination of this witness. I’d like to call the girl.”

  “Do you have any questions you’d like to ask the witness, Mr. Thomassy?”

  Thomassy put his hand on Urek’s shoulder. It looked like a consoling gesture, but in fact it hurt a bit, and was intended to keep Urek looking down. Then Thomassy stood and very slowly approached the witness chair.

  “Mr. Japhet, did your son at any time hit the defendant?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so, they were fighting—”

  “I see. Do you know why the defendant and your son were fighting?”

  “He was attacked!”

  “Mr. Japhet, please try to understand that we are not interested in your characterization of what you saw. Just tell us what you saw. My question was, do you know why the defendant and your son were fighting?”

  “My son was defending himself.”

  “Against all four boys?”

  “Against Urek.”

  “Did Urek fight with you and with the girl, or only with your son?”

  “He went after the girl and then my son.”

  “Not you?”

  “No.”

  “But you attacked him?”

  “I was trying to defend my son, to get that boy off—”

  “Urek didn’t hit you, you say, but you beat your fists on his back, that’s clear. Now, for the third time, will you answer—if you know—why did your son and Urek fight?”

  Mr. Japhet felt he was being a terrible witness. If only he remembered what Ed had told him Dr. Koch had said in detail. But he couldn’t speak that, could he, that would be hearsay.

  “The question is, why did your son and Urek fight?”

  Mr. Japhet hated saying it, but what else could he say? “I don’t know.”

  “Your Honor,” said Thomassy, “I think Mr. Metcalf had better call the girl.”

  Chapter 17

  Lila was called from the adjoining room. She entered, nodded in the direction of her mother and father, saw that everyone else was watching her as the policeman led the way to the stand. She did not like being conspicuous.

  The judge thought she was a very pretty girl, not one of those that ironed her hair straight and affected jeans and beads. She looked like what he still thought of as a nice girl, and he hoped that she would testify straightforwardly.

  The judge told Lila to put her left hand on the Bible and asked her to raise her right. “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Metcalf began his examination.

  “Please tell the court your name and occupation.”

  “Lila Hurst. I’m a student at the high school.”

  “You’ve undoubtedly heard others discuss the events of January twenty-first. May I caution you that you are not to use anyone else’s recollections as your own, but to say independently what you saw and heard.”

  “Okay.”

  Mr. Metcalf covered the ground between the time Mr. Japhet picked her up and dropped her and Ed at the school. Then quickly he asked, “After the dance, what happened?”

  “We were going toward Mr. Japhet’s car—”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Mr. Japhet, Ed, and me.”

  “All right, continue.”

  “The snow was kind of deep, and I had this long dress on so I wasn’t looking up. I was watching where I was going, and I didn’t see the boys in the car until Mr. Japhet saw them.”

  “Did you recognize any of the boys?”

  “Not right away.”

  “When?”

  “Well, Urek just before he grabbed me.”

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “He was being smart aleck with Mr. Japhet and Ed, and then he rushed at me and twisted my arm behind my back and pulled my hair until Ed made him stop, and that’s when he whipped the chain against Ed’s face.”

  “Chain?” asked the judge.

  Mr. Metcalf spoke to the girl in quiet tones. “The court is interested in what you said because, under the law, fighting with hands or fists is very different from using a deadly weapon.”

  “Your Honor
!” said Thomassy, on his feet.

  “Yes, I know, Mr. Thomassy, but this is an important piece of evidence. I don’t remember a chain being mentioned in the police depositions attached to the information. Mr. Japhet merely testified that one was used to smash the windshield, not against a person. You can develop whatever you like after Mr. Metcalf is finished with the witness.”

  Thomassy, pricked, sat down.

  “Miss Hurst, what happened when Urek produced the chain?”

  “Well, he didn’t produce it, I mean, he had it wrapped around his fist from the beginning,”

  “I’m not sure I understand. Could you explain?”

  “Like this.” She made as if she were wrapping something around her fist.

  “Exactly what was Urek doing?”

  “He was pulling my hair with his left hand. The chain was on the other hand.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “It hurt when he pulled my hair.”

  “And when he twisted your arm?”

  Thomassy scraped his chair back as if he was about to stand.

  “Mr. Metcalf,” Judge Clifford said, “I think you’re leading the witness. Would you let her tell it her own way, please?”

  “I’m sorry, your Honor.”

  “Just go on.”

  “I was glad he had let me go, but then I saw the terrible blood on Ed’s face. He knocked Ed over and he was choking him.”

  “With his hands?” Metcalf corrected himself. “I mean, how did he choke him?”

  “With his hands. He still had the chain in one hand, but both hands were around Ed’s throat, and he was beating Ed’s head against the ground and choking sort of in spurts, like this.” She demonstrated with a squeezing motion of her hands.

  “What did you do?”

  “I screamed. I guess the janitor heard me.”

  “Let’s not jump ahead. When did the Urek boy stop choking Ed?”

  “Well, Mr. Japhet was trying to get Urek off, but it wasn’t till the janitor appeared in the school door that Urek let go of Ed. You see…”

  “Yes?”

  “The janitor said he was going to call the police. I think that did it.”

  “Think a moment. Have you left anything important out?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Your Honor, I have no more questions of this witness.”

  “I have one,” said the judge. “Young lady, what you saw—would you describe it as a fight?”

  “Well, they were fighting.” She looked at the judge and felt she wasn’t being helpful. “Ed was defending me, I suppose. That’s why he punched his arm.”

  “Punched whose arm?” asked the judge.

  “Ed punched Urek’s arm, to get him to let go.”

  “Was that the first blow between Urek and Japhet?”

  Lila felt very uncomfortable. “Well, my back was sort of to them, but Ed was trying to get Urek to let go of me.”

  “By punching?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I think so’?”

  “I didn’t see the punch or anything. I think that’s what happened.”

  “All right,” said the judge. “Are you ready for cross, Mr. Thomassy?”

  “Your Honor,” said Thomassy, “some of the answers given by this witness require me to bring some physical objects to the court. I wonder if I might have fifteen minutes? I need to shoot down to Main Street and pick up a few things.”

  “Which are necessary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, court is recessed for half an hour. I don’t want you to get a speeding ticket, Mr. Thomassy.”

  Lila’s parents came over to her when the recess began, but she wanted to be alone. She put on her coat and went for a walk, her hands stuffed deeply into her pockets. It was cold. She heard the footsteps in the snow behind her.

  “You have to be back in the courtroom when the recess is over,” said Mr. Hurst.

  Lila looked at her father, his face red from catching up to her, his breath visible in the cold. Mr. Hurst, who had wanted to be a doctor or a dentist, had been beaten down by the depression, and had settled for becoming a dental technician, a craft that had plagued Lila all through school because kids sometimes wanted to know what your father did, and if she could have said “dentist,” that would have been that, but “dental technician” sometimes made them laugh, and so Lila anticipated their laughter by saying, “He makes teeth,” but she never got used to it. In fact, Mr. Hurst had built up quite a business and now had ten or twelve dental technicians working for him in three locations, but to Lila he was a boring man. He bored her mother and her with small, technical talk about improvements in his trade, new ways of making bridges and things. He never seemed to talk about anything that mattered. Nevertheless, she loved this large, red, puffing man in front of her, anxious to help.

  “Want to walk with me, Dad?”

  “Not too far.”

  “Just around the block.”

  They walked side by side.

  “It’s crazy,” said Lila after a while. “I mean, it all seemed so simple what happened, but their way of looking at it in court is so different. They made me feel as if anything I say might be a lie, and I’m not lying, Dad.”

  “I know you’re not, Lila.”

  They went on in silence for a while and then he said, “I think we’d better turn back.”

  Thomassy arrived at the front doors of the courthouse just as they did, carrying two loaded paper bags. He stepped aside to let Mr. Hurst and Lila enter first.

  In a few minutes the hearing was reconvened, and Lila resumed her place up front facing the spectators, still shivering from the cold outside.

  “Proceed with the cross,” said Judge Clifford.

  “With your Honor’s permission,” said Thomassy, “I would like to develop a point that involves some characterization by this witness. I think it essential to understanding her testimony, but most important, I think it speaks directly to the purpose of this hearing.”

  “Well,” said Judge Clifford, “we’ll make allowances. Either Mr. Metcalf or I will stop you if it’s nonproductive or prejudicial. Please go on.”

  Thomassy walked away from the witness stand so that he’d have to speak his questions louder. He doubted the girl would project the same way, which fitted his intentions perfectly.

  Thomassy turned to face her. “Would you say that a gun was a dangerous weapon?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said quietly, uncomfortable at the distance between herself and her questioner.

  “Would you say that a knife was a dangerous weapon?”

  “What kind of a knife?”

  “Any knife.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  Thomassy went to the table and took an object out of the paper bag. It was a rolling pin.

  “Would you call this a dangerous weapon?”

  It seemed as if everyone in the courtroom laughed, including the judge.

  “No,” she said. “Well, I guess you could get hurt if someone bashed you with it.”

  “But if you saw this, would you think of it as a dangerous weapon? Would you call this”—he reached into the bag again—“a dangerous weapon?”

  “No.”‘

  It was a screwdriver.

  “No.”

  Judge Clifford ahemmed. “I’m not sure I’m following what you’re trying to develop, Mr. Thomassy.”

  “One moment more, please, your Honor.” Once again he took an object from the bag, a garden trowel made of green metal with a wood handle.

  “Would you call this a dangerous weapon?”

  “No.”

  Quickly Thomassy reached in for the last object in the bag and showed Lila a bicycle chain.

  “Would you say this was a dangerous weapon?”

  She said “No” almost as a reflex, then quickly said, “Yes.”

  “Well, which do you mean, yes or no?”

  Lila was silent, hoping the judge or Mr. M
etcalf would say something.

  “I’ll rephrase that. What makes a chain any more a dangerous weapon than a garden trowel or a screwdriver or a rolling pin?” He didn’t wait for an answer to his rhetorical question, but asked the judge, “Your Honor, in your determination as to whether the charges against the defendant should be quashed or tried as first or second or third, the question of whether a dangerous weapon was involved is important.”

  “I agree,” said the judge.

  “Well, your Honor, this witness thinks correctly that a gun or a knife is a dangerous weapon but says that household or garden articles in common use are not dangerous weapons….”

  Mr. Metcalf interrupted at last. “Your Honor, we are supposed to be gathering firsthand facts from the witnesses, which the attorney for the people has tried to do. The attorney for the defendant has a right to question the witness about anything I questioned her about—”

  “Well,” said the judge, “in this hearing, he really has a broader latitude—”

  “Not to bring a hardware store in here and—”

  It was the judge who noticed that the witness was in tears. “Gentlemen,” he said, “please let us remember that the witness is a young girl—how old are you, Miss Hurst?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Thomassy was excited to the bursting point. “Your Honor, the defendant is sixteen years old. The Japhet boy is sixteen, too. Sixteen-year-olds, whatever their responsibility under the law, are adolescent children who laugh and cry and fight, yes fight, with each other, and these things cannot be seen in an adult context. May I ask the witness a few questions?”

  Metcalf was flabbergasted. He didn’t know how to stop Thomassy.

  “Are you and Ed Japhet good friends?” Thomassy asked.

  “Now, wait a minute!” Metcalf was losing his temper.

  “I’ll wait as long as Mr. Metcalf likes, but the line of questioning I’m developing now is extremely pertinent.” To the girl, “Are you and Ed Japhet good friends?”

  Lila nodded.

  “Please speak up.”

  “Yes,” she said, the word filling her throat.

  “How good?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?” She was on the verge of tears again.

  “Why didn’t you go directly home after the dance?”

  “Mr. Japhet was giving me a lift.”

  “And while you were waiting for Mr. Japhet to come, were you being good friends?”