Reversible Errors

  “Are you enjoying this job?”

  “Well, I’m happy to be working. It’s regarded as a privilege in prison. And it turns out it is. I saw an ad and thought it might be a good place to start.”

  The job had actually seemed like fun, although her interest in fashion had never been completely lighthearted. Over the years, she’d heard a thousand sayings about the world of style that struck her to the core, like pieces of perfect wisdom plucked from the Gospels or Shakespeare. ‘Fashion is close to the quick of the soul.’ ‘Fashion is as much a part of life as sex.’ For her it was this simple: at least look good. It was part masquerade, part child’s play, part vulnerability to the judgment of others, and, more than anything else, the delight that came from molding those opinions. It made no sense—any more than the ridiculous and repetitive little-boy behavior with balls and sticks in which men obsessively engaged—but so many women, whether tethered by culture or instinct, craved beauty and assessed one another in terms of their efforts. These days, she had retired from competition. In comparison with the splendid young women who came from their health clubs to her counter, Gillian was now a ‘former beauty,’ words carrying the same sad undertone as ‘former athlete.’ But dealing with her customers, she was relieved every day to be so much less dominated by vanity, which she had taken to be an element of her demise.

  “I take it this strikes you as superficial, Arthur.”

  “Well—”

  “You can say it. That’s the word. It’s cosmetic, by definition.”

  “I suppose you could say I don’t relate. I mean even unattractive people have instincts, but you have to come to terms with yourself.”

  “Oh, come on, Arthur!” She often found Arthur’s abased view of himself wrenching. “Attractiveness for a man after a certain age has nothing to do with what it meant as a teenager. Big success, big salary, nice car. We all know how that goes. There’s no such thing as a badlooking man with a fat wallet.”

  “That doesn’t seem to work for me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Probably because I’m immature,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “I am,” he said. “I still want my fantasies.”

  “Which are?”

  “Somebody sleek and smart—1 mean it’s stupid, right? I want somebody who’s everything I’m not.”

  “A young girl out of a magazine?”

  “I’m not that immature. A grown-up would be nice.” Arthur half averted his face. For a second he seemed dazzled by the sun, then added in a muted tone, “Someone like you.”

  “Me?” In panic, she faced about, hoping the conversation had not taken the turn she feared. “But someone more your age?” At forty-seven she had, by her best calculation, a decade on Arthur.

  Arthur laughed once. “Oh, you’d do fine.”

  “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

  “Please.”

  “Your aunt.”

  “‘No’ will do, Gillian,” he said mildly. “I’m used to it.”

  “Ar-thur,” she said. “Arthur, I am a mess that no one can or should want to clean up. That’s the truth. In candor, I don’t say yes to anyone. That’s not part of my life.”

  Jest had still not entirely left him, but he frowned and briefly lowered his head, allowing the open spaces in his scalp to reflect the strong light. Then he summoned himself to grin again.

  “Forget it, Gillian. I was just kind of illustrating the point.”

  Some sisterly kiss on the cheek might have been in order, but that had never been her style. Instead she smiled in a way she hoped was a trifle less remote and promised to see him tomorrow. Raven smiled as well, but he went off at a plodding pace, his briefcase dragging by his side. In her midsection, the rot of guilt set in once again. The man in triumph, who perhaps had dared an unfamiliar boldness, was gone now. With a few words, she had vanquished him, returning Arthur to himself.

  17

  JUNE 13, 2001

  History

  ERNO ERDAI was being held in a locked ward at Kindle County General Hospital. As the marshals pushed him into the courtroom in a wheelchair, which Erno did not appear pleased to be using, Larry came over to see if he could help. With the deliberation of the elderly, Erno stood, and Larry and the deputy marshals eased Erno and his oxygen tank up to the witness stand, where his cross-examination would shortly commence. Although Erno had pointedly refused to grant Muriel an interview in advance of his testimony, now that he’d finished blindsiding them Larry suspected Erdai would be happy to chat with him, copper to copper, as Erno was still likely to think of it. While the marshals retreated and Erno adjusted his nosepiece, Larry lingered with his arm on the dark walnut rail, admiring the Ceremonial Courtroom, where judicial inductions and citizenship proceedings were held. He loved all the bygone craft that was preserved in the old courthouse, even though he remained hostile to almost everything else about the federal system.

  “So lung cancer? You smoke, Erno?”

  “As a kid. In service in Nam.”

  “And how long is it that you’ve known you had this?”

  “Cut the crap, Larry. I know you’ve been all over my file by now.”

  The file had been bootlegged out of Rudyard last night and driven up here. But half the personnel in the Warden’s and P.A.’s Offices could be sued if Larry admitted that. Besides, it had been Muriel’s responsibility to review the medical information. They all had been dashing around until nearly three, digging up whatever they could about Erdai.

  Larry asked Erno how his family was doing.

  “The wife’s had better days, what with the paper this morning.”

  “And your kids?”

  “No kids, Larry. Never could make ’em. Just my nephew. How’re your kids, Larry? Two boys, right?”

  “Right,” said Larry. He described Michael’s and Darrell’s exploits, but he’d taken Erno’s point about who’d paid better attention years ago. Larry remembered some things, though. He reached into his pocket and offered Erno a toothpick. Erdai made no effort to contain his pleasure and placed it at once in the side of his mouth.

  “Don’t see many of these inside. Bet you didn’t think of a toothpick as a deadly weapon, Larry.”

  “Inside, it probably is.”

  “Inside, somebody’d pick out your eyeball with one, probably.”

  “How’s a white former cop make do down there, with all the fun and games?”

  “You make it, Larry. You got no other choice. I don’t get in anybody’s way. The one advantage I had is I knew you can live through unbelievable shit—I did as a kid. People in this country, Larry, they feel entirely too safe. You’re never safe. Not how folks here want.”

  Larry filed that one away. He already had a few tidbits from this conversation that he’d share with Muriel once she got here. Erdai asked him how he was doing.

  “Well, Erno, I didn’t sleep much last night. You know why?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “What I can’t figure is what kick you’re getting from making all this shit up.”

  Erdai gapped his mouth for a second around the toothpick.

  “I understand you’d think that, Larry, but if you’d come down to Rudyard when I wrote you, I’d have told you, just like I told them. This is on the level, Larry. I’m sorry it makes you and your girlfriend look bad, but I’m not the first fella who wanted to tidy things up before he kicked.”

  You and your girlfriend. Larry took note of that, too. Erno had heard a lot hanging with the coppers at Ike’s over the years. Mildly provoked, Larry let the pretense of congeniality pass and settled a dark look on Erdai, which he seemed to be expecting. Inscrutable and unflinching, Erno refused to turn away. Larry had never figured Erdai right. He’d missed how deep the iceberg went. He hadn’t recognized Erno as a guy who could go off in a barroom, or lie for sport. But he was onto him now. The world was full of angry guys like Erno, who’d want to get even with anybody they could until their cof
fin was hammered shut.

  When Larry turned back, Muriel had just bustled into the courtroom. Tommy Molto, who’d tried the case with her years ago—her boss at that time and now her lieutenant—was in tow, and so was Carol Keeney, an appellate lawyer, who’d been on the file for years, as the case meandered along. Tommy was fat and harried-looking, the same as he’d always been. He was starting to develop the droopyjowled mug of a bulldog, but Larry had always liked Molto, who never stopped doing his best. Carol, on the other hand, appeared absolutely terrified, her thin lips grimly sealed. She was a slim blonde, a third- or fourth-year lawyer who should have ferreted out what this was about when Arthur filed his motion, instead of simply dumping it on Muriel’s desk and telling her that she’d probably have better luck with Judge Harlow. Everyone would tell Carol to forget about it, but Larry knew her future in the P.A.’s Office was basically a black hole.

  Raven, who’d entered with his pretty blond associate, reached Muriel at counsel table, a step or two before Larry. Muriel was unpacking her heavy latched transfer case, while Arthur yammered about a witness he had outside. Muriel had probably slept no more than an hour or two, but she appeared invigorated by the challenge ahead, despite the fact that she’d been incinerated in the morning papers and on TV. The Reverend Dr. Carnelian Blythe from the South End, who seemed to regard every indignity suffered by an American black as equivalent to slavery, had already laid claim to Squirrel and was leading marches and giving press interviews on the courthouse steps this morning, using Gandolph to reinforce his never-ending lament about the brutal character of the Kindle County Unified Police Force. Blythe probably hadn’t even known Rommy’s name before yesterday.

  “I don’t care, Arthur,” Muriel said now. “I’ll stipulate that she received the stupid letter. You don’t have to call her.”

  When Arthur turned, Larry offered his hand, which Arthur accepted happily. The old prosecutors always regarded their time as P.A.’s as their glory days, because it was before they started whoring for money.

  “The offers pouring in from Hollywood after last night?” Larry asked. Arthur had been all over the tube, pretending in every interview that he more or less expected Muriel to arrive in court this morning and beg Rommy Gandolph to forgive her. Arthur appeared to enjoy the joshing, but headed off in a moment to find his witness.

  “What’s Arthur on about?” Larry asked Muriel.

  “Gillian Sullivan. He subpoenaed her to authenticate Erno’s letter, in case he needs it on redirect.”

  “So that’s who it was!” Larry had actually seen Gillian in the corridor, but she was so far gone from memory that he’d blanked on everything except that he knew her. She hadn’t looked bad, especially considering where she’d been, still thin and pale and coolly attractive. In the P.A.’s Office, people always compared Gillian and Muriel, the office stars in succeeding generations, but in Larry’s mind it was never a contest. Gillian was cerebral and disconnected; she lorded it over people, even if they’d known her or her old man since she was in parish school. Muriel had a common touch, a sense of humor, and time for people. The end of the story, with Muriel up and Gillian down, conveyed what Larry regarded as a fitting moral.

  And he was confident Muriel would once more reward his faith. He watched as she set her files out on the table precisely, even details that trifling already worked out in her head. She was in court far less often these days, but Muriel remained the best stand-up lawyer Larry knew. Best in court. Best in the office. Maybe the best lay of his life, and probably the only woman he’d met who seemed to hear and feel all the same rhythms he did in the rumbling world of courts and cops and crimes where they lived most of the time. The end of his thing with her might have been the very low point of his adult existence. He couldn’t imagine she’d been real happy to have to call him, and he’d been twice as bummed to hear her voice. What he hadn’t understood when he was younger was the beauty in a settled life.

  ARTHUR HAD FEW ILLUSIONS about his talents in court. He was organized and sincere, occasionally forceful but seldom electrifying. Yet he could not imagine living any other way. He never tired of the rush of big cases, when anticipation tightened through him like an instrument string and raced in the voices of the spectators filling the courtroom benches. Nowhere else were the events that shaped the life of a community determined as swiftly, as openly, as in court. Everyone—the lawyers, the parties, the onlookers—entered understanding that history was about to happen.

  Much as he enjoyed this, there was a relief in leaving his anxiousness behind momentarily, crossing the quiet corridor to the small witness room. With a knock, he pushed inside. Gillian sat by the window, looking abstracted, as usual, as she peered out. Her purse was in her lap, and her legs, in white hose, were neatly crossed at the ankles. Her attention might have been drawn by Reverend Blythe on his bullhorn in the square below. Arthur was scheduled to meet Blythe this evening, when the Reverend, bald-headed and brilliant, a man of massive achievements and even larger ego, would undoubtedly attempt to manipulate Gandolph’s case to Blythe’s own advantage. Arthur dreaded the appointment, but it was far from his mind now.

  At the sight of Gillian, he felt a distinct surge within. It had excited him for several days after their trip to Rudyard to settle in the BMW and detect her scent. Despite the shameful hash of things he’d made in front of the doors of Morton’s yesterday, the sense that he had actually entered into some kind of relationship with this woman, even if it existed only in the currents of the law, remained a thrill. Gillian Sullivan!

  “Arthur.” She smiled pleasantly as she came to her feet. He explained that Muriel had agreed to stipulate that Gillian had received Erno’s letter. Her testimony would not be required. “You’re done,” he told her. “I can’t thank you enough for everything. You’ve been very courageous.”

  “Hardly, Arthur.”

  “I’m really sorry about the way you got knocked around this morning in the papers.” Both the Trib and the Bugle, the leading suburban daily, had seized on Gillian’s conviction and her known drunkenness to further question the outcome in Rommy’s case. Although Arthur had held the same thoughts himself last month, he’d let them fall from mind in the process of sharing her company and had actually felt offended today for Gillian’s sake.

  “It was a few lines, Arthur. I was prepared for worse.”

  “I feel like I set you up,” he said, “and it never crossed my mind.”

  “It would be entirely unlike you to try to take advantage, Arthur. I would never think that.”

  “Thank you.” They both smiled somewhat timidly. Then he of fered his hand. For an instant it actually pained him to release her from his life again, but there was hardly a choice. Rather than shake, Gillian studied her ivory-toned handbag as if it contained not merely the odds and ends of female existence but the solution to something Delphic.

  “Arthur, may I say a word to you about what came up last night?”

  “No,” he answered at once. In the lunacy of triumph, he’d cracked open the dank toy chest of his fantasies. By now, he could barely stand to remember that. The utter privacy of his wild hopes was all that allowed him to maintain them. “Forget it. I was out of line. It was unprofessional, frankly. I mean, I’m inept. At that kind of thing. That’s the truth. There are reasons somebody’s alone at thirty-eight, Gillian.”

  “Arthur, I was alone when I was thirty-eight. And will be at forty-eight. You needn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “You’re alone because you choose to be.”

  “Not completely. I’m inept in my own way, Arthur.”

  “Stop, Gillian. I’m doomed. I know I’m doomed. The world is full of people like me, who can’t connect. It won’t change. So don’t try.” He offered his hand again, but she frowned deeply.

  He explained that the judge was due on the bench any second, and they left the witness room. In the corridor, Gillian asked him if Erno was ready.

  “We’ve prepared the hell out of
him,” Arthur said, “but you never can tell until they’re under the spotlight. You know that.”

  For a second, she peered through the small windows in the courtroom doors.

  “It will be very dramatic,” she said.

  “You’re welcome to watch,” he said. “If you have the time.”

  She drew back at the thought.

  “I’m quite curious, Arthur. I’ve often regretted not listening to Erno down at Rudyard. Perhaps it’s the papers, but more and more, I feel as if I have a stake in this. But won’t it be too unorthodox, if I’m in there?”

  “I’ll ask if anybody cares.” He opened the heavy, leather-clad door and motioned to the bailiff to indicate Gillian was with him, so the of ficer would find her a seat.

  As Arthur expected, Muriel had no concerns about Gillian. It was part of her courtroom macho, in any event, to pretend that she would be unaffected if God and His angels were here to watch her cross. When Judge Harlow sprang onto the bench, Arthur asked to be heard at the sidebar. Harlow was tall enough to simply scoot his chair over and lean across the side rail, while Arthur asked if there were any issues raised for the Court by the presence of Ms. Sullivan, the original sentencing judge, as a spectator. He explained how she’d come to be here.

  “Gillian Sullivan, is it?” asked Harlow. He looked out at her, squinting through his heavy glasses. “One and the same?”

  Arthur nodded. The judge asked Muriel if she had any objections.

  “I object to the fact that we weren’t informed when she got the letter, but I don’t care that she’s here. She has no role in these proceedings.”

  “Guess she wants to see for herself,” said Harlow. “Can’t say I blame her. All right, let’s get moving.”

  The judge shooed the ring of lawyers away, but as they returned to their places, Arthur was aware that for the moment, all of them—Muriel, Tommy Molto, Carol Keeney, Larry, who’d tagged along, even the judge, and surely Arthur himself—were staring at Gillian, who sat, perfectly groomed and largely expressionless, along the aisle in the very last row. It struck Arthur that she had been correct. She did have a stake here, a more genuine one than most of them. For she, in some senses, was the accused. The question at hand was whether a decade ago she had, for whatever reason, rendered judgments afflicted by reversible—and fatal—errors. Gillian endured their scrutiny without shirking, while they all awaited the answer.