"He wasn't saying he was a murderer."
"I don't know what he was saying. It was pretty strange. He seemed to be warning me about something."
We are stopped at the foot of the Nearing Bridge, where three lanes go to two and rush-hour traffic stands still every night. Years ago, I had a friend who claimed to know about the theory of relativity and who said that every living thing constantly sheds an image. If we could ever figure out how to get ahead of light, we could wind time back and witness any moment in the past, like viewing a three-dimensional silent movie. I often wonder how much I'd give to do that, to just watch what unfolded in my parents' house in the thirty-six hours after Anna and I left. I try to conjure it now and then, but the only thing that comes to me is the figure of him sitting on that bed.
"Sandy still thinks my dad is innocent," I tell her now.
"That's good. How do you know?"
"I asked him. We were prepping for my testimony and I asked what he thought. Of course, what else do you tell the client's son?"
"You don't tell him that if you don't believe it," she says. "You mush-mouth and avoid the question." Anna has been a practicing lawyer barely over two years, but I accept her authority on these matters as absolute. "It has to mean something to you that the people who know the evidence best still have faith in your father."
I shrug. "Sandy's got the same ideas as you about the DNA in the first case." I know from what I've heard previously that Ray Horgan, who was single at the time, was dating the woman who was killed. He has to be the logical suspect, if it's not my dad, especially when you consider that he turned on my father and testified for Molto back then. But you would think my dad would have realized that. Instead he patched it up with Ray, who's pretty much been my dad's bitch ever since, trying to make it up.
I keep all this to myself, though. It's never good when I mention Ray or what went on between Anna and him. Now and then I consider the fact that my dad was having his own fling during the same period. Along with all the other half-baked crap that floats through my brain, the timing has actually made me wonder once or twice if I missed the boat and it was my father Anna was seeing, until I sort of come to and realize Anna and I wouldn't be together, headed over this bridge or anywhere else, if that was what had happened. Instead, I simply try to fathom what happens to men in middle age. Apparently, their brains give out at the same time as their backs and prostates.
"Thanks for doing this," I tell Anna when we've arrived at the door of my parents' house.
In reply, she gives me a little hug. She has joined me on a number of these visits. Being here tends to creep me out totally--the scene of the alleged crime, where all the truth is somehow buried in the walls. The shades are drawn to hinder the prying cameras, and the air, once we are inside, smells like something was fried a few hours ago.
For Anna and me, the trial has been hard. In fact, everything has been hard in the last nine months, and sometimes I'm a little amazed we're still together. I drift off to never-never land with regularity and go through evenings when I can't or won't talk, and our frequent conversations about my dad and the trial often put us at odds. She is generally quicker to defend him, which means I sometimes end up pissed with her.
Not to mention the routine hindrances of life. Things are still slow at the firm, but she remains in high demand among the partners for what work there is. There are spells when days pass without my seeing her and I know she has been home only because I can see her form pressed into the bed and remember bumping up against her in the middle of the night. But she loves all that and tells me constantly that because of me, she is even clearer that she is doing what she wants. And you can tell. I cherish the moments when I'm going to meet her and catch sight of her before she sees me. She strides down the Center City streets with so much purpose, looking beautiful and brilliant and fully in charge.
I, on the other hand, am totally at sea. I don't know from one day to the next whether I will be working. I still sub now and then at Nearing High, but not while the trial is going, and I have been able to put off a number of decisions about my legal career, since I am a lot richer than I ever thought I'd be, with the bucks my Bernstein grandparents left behind having passed to me after my mom's death.
We mount the stairs and linger outside my parents' room, at the door to the little study where my dad's computer sat before it was captured by Tommy Molto.
"That sounded really bad today," I tell her, nodding inside. As happens frequently, I have been far too elliptical for her to get it, and I have to explain how the browser searches about phenelzine and the deleted e-mails played in the courtroom.
"I thought Hans and Franz are going to testify that maybe there weren't any e-mails deleted," she says.
'Hans and Franz' is our nickname for the two computer experts Stern hired to counter Dr. Gorvetich, the computer science prof who is working for the prosecution. Hans and Franz are Polish guys in their late twenties, one tall, one short, and both with hedgehog hairdos. They speak unbelievably fast and still have pretty strong accents and sometimes remind me of twins who are the only people on earth who can understand each other. They think Dr. Gorvetich, their former professor, is a total tool and take some relish in mocking his conclusions, which is apparently not hard to do. Nonetheless, from their offhand comments I get the feeling that Gorvetich is probably right that shredding software was downloaded to remove certain messages.
Anna shakes her head while I explain.
"I don't really believe any tests that come out of Molto's office," she says. "You know, it was pretty well established that he messed with the evidence in the first trial."
"I can't believe they'd do that."
Anna laughs. "One of the few worthwhile things my mother-in-law ever said to me was, 'Never be surprised when people don't change.'"
In the bedroom, we have some chuckles looking through the ties in my dad's closet. There must be fifty of them, all basically the same, red or blue, with little patterns or stripes. The violet tie he asked for stands out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I find some tissue paper and a bag downstairs and we fold them on my parents' bed.
"Want to hear something that will weird you out totally?" I ask Anna. One thing about my girlfriend: There is no chance she would say no to a question like that. "When Paloma and I were in high school, we'd sneak home to do it while her folks were working, and for whatever reason, she thought it was a total turn-on to do it in her parents' bed."
Anna smiles a little and wags her head. Apparently it doesn't sound so bad to her.
"Well, it freaks me out now just to think about it," I say, "but you know, you're seventeen, it's like you want to do it everywhere. But of course one day we ended up over here and she had this notion to get it on in this bed. That was too much. I mean, I couldn't perform. It was zero."
"Is that a challenge?" Anna asks, and comes close to me and goes right for it. I feel mini-Me stirring at once, but I pull away.
"You are a freaky, freaky girl," I tell her.
She laughs but comes back toward me. "Should I say I double-dare you?"
My mom's death ended that blissful period when we were fucking all the time and began the blissful period when we are fucking most of the time in spite of everything else. There is a connection and oblivion in sex that has sustained us. In January, we both got the flu and were home from work for three days. We were each pretty wretched, both with high temps and a lot of annoying symptoms, and we slept most of the time, but every few hours, we'd find each other and go at it, the two overheated bodies sticking to each other like plastic wrap and the intensity and pleasure seeming to be part of the fevered delirium. That trance state somehow has never quite ended.
Whatever Anna's off-center desires, making love in the bed where my mother died is more than I can handle, but I pull her down the hall into the room I slept in for twenty-five years. That bed is kind of home field for me as far as sex is concerned, the place where I had my first orgasm, in m
y own company at the age of thirteen, and where I first got laid--actually with Mike Pepi's older sister, who was nearly twenty--and we have a great time there. I am considering round two when Anna sits up abruptly.
"Jesus, I'm hungry," she says. "Let's go." We agree on sushi. There's a decent place on the way back into town.
We grab the ties and are out the door in a few minutes. Back in the car, I feel the weight of everything settling on me again. That's the problem with sex. No matter how long you make it last, there is still an afterward.
"I wish you could come for my testimony," I tell her. "Stern could ask the prosecutors, right?"
She thinks about it only a second before shaking her head.
"That's not a good idea. If I'm there and you end up talking about what happened that night, somebody's bound to bop over from the prosecution table and ask me what I remember."
From the start, Anna has dreaded saying something that would make things worse for my dad, and the truth is almost anything could do it. Just the little bit that came back to her tonight about my dad pouring the wine at the dinner table or offering my mom the tray of appetizers loaded with tyramine would be greeted by Brand and Molto with an entire brass band. Everybody--Stern, Marta, my father, Anna, and me--has agreed that we're better off if she remains one of those witnesses both sides fear calling, unable to predict who will come off better for it.
"One thing Sandy told me tonight is that he didn't want my dad to testify."
"Really?"
"He was afraid it would help Molto connect the dots in front of the jury. And he thought there was an outside chance that Yee might change his ruling about the affair and let Molto get into it. Which he tried to do."
"You're kidding!"
"I couldn't even sit there and listen to the argument. You know, I'm still like 'Fuck him'--my dad?--every time it comes up."
She takes her time, treading carefully. Generally, we see this subject differently, because, in a few words, he's not her dad.
"It's not my place," she says, "and it's not like I haven't told you this before, but sooner or later you have to get past that."
This is an old discussion by now. It always comes back to my stubborn conviction that the affair had something to do with my mom's death.
"It was just so fucking stupid," I say. "And so fucking selfish. Don't you think?"
"It was," she says. "But here's what I really think. The guy I met and fell in love with. That guy?"
"A super-awesome dude," I say.
"Totally," she answers. "Well, that super-awesome dude was a law clerk on the state supreme court. Which just happened to be an office his father was running for. And that super-awesome dude used to show up for work in the supreme court with weed in his pocket. Even though if he got caught, it would have been on page one. Even though he would have lost his job. And his law license for a while. And maybe the election for his father."
"Okay, but I was feeling really fucked up for a while."
"So was your father, probably. So was the girl, for all you know. And I understand your dad disappointed you. But we all do weird, unbelievable stuff once in a while and hurt the people we think we love. If someone does that kind of crap all the time, then you have every right to hate their guts, but we all have our moments. You don't want to hear about all the stupid sexual stuff I've done."
"That's for sure." A couple of Anna's stories have been enough. She spent too much time looking for love in all the wrong places. "There's still a difference between the fucked-up stuff you do when you're young, and the fucked-up stuff you do when you really know better."
"That's pretty convenient, don't you think?"
"I don't know what I think," I answer. I've had enough by now. The lights, twinkling on the Nearing Bridge, blear. I am going to cry. I get to this point every day, when it all overwhelms me and I'd give anything just to be able to hit fast forward and deal with a certain future. "I hate this. I hate this whole fucked-up situation."
"I know, baby."
"I hate it all."
"I know."
"Let's just go home," I say then. "I want to go home."
CHAPTER 30
Tommy, June 23, 2009
Another day in the courtroom. The defense was clearly mobilized. Despite the pasting Rusty took yesterday, he arrived looking well composed, even wearing a new tie, a sporty violet number that seemed to boast that his spirit was undimmed. Sandy was issuing instructions from his chair, as if it were a throne, and Marta and the rest of the Sterns' staff were hustling about.
Marta stopped over at the defense table. Age favored some people, and it had clearly done well by her. When Marta Stern started practicing with Sandy, she was like a teapot on the boil, shrill and constantly stirred up. But something about becoming a wife and mom had calmed her. She could still get in your face, but usually with a reason. After the last baby, she dropped about thirty pounds, which she had managed to keep off. Despite being a dead ringer for a not-so-good-looking father, she was actually kind of attractive. And a hell of a lawyer. She was not the same showman as her old man, but she was smart and steady, with a lot of Sandy's instinctive judgment.
"We're going to want to use Rusty's computer," she told Tommy. "Probably this afternoon."
Tommy waved his hand nobly, like it was nothing to him, as if the defense and their shenanigans were annoying, but only in the trivial way of gnats. When she turned away, though, he made a note on his pad, "Computer???" and underscored it several times. Given how devastating the evidence of the deleted messages and the Web searches was, the prosecutors made a point of bringing Rusty's PC to court every day in the pink shrink-wrap in which it had been encased since being recaptured from Judge Mason last December. It sat on the prosecution table all day, right in front of the jury.
Jangling like a passing train, Brand arrived with the trial cart, Rory and Ruta, the paralegal, behind him.
"Who the fuck is she?" Brand whispered when he got to the defense table.
Tommy had no clue what Jim meant.
"There's some dumpy Latina out in the hall. I thought maybe you'd seen her." Brand motioned Rory over and asked her to find out what she could. As Gissling departed, Tommy mentioned the computer.
"They want to turn it on?" Brand asked.
"She said 'use it.'"
"We need to talk to Gorvetich. My impression is turning it on messes everything up."
Tommy shook his head in disagreement, but Brand wasn't happy.
"Boss, it's not supposed to be done that way. Even pushing the on switch makes changes on the hard drive."
"Jimmy, that doesn't matter. It's his computer. And we put it in issue. Yee would never listen if we told him they should have to do a simulation. If they want to show the jury something on the machine, we can't stop them from making a demonstration with the actual evidence."
"To demonstrate what?"
"I didn't get that memo," said Tommy.
Gissling was back with a card, and the four of them huddled over it. Rosa Belanquez was the customer service manager at the First Kindle branch in Nearing.
"What's she gonna say?" asked Brand.
"She claims she's only here to testify about records," answered Rory. That made no sense to any of them. Almost all of the records from the bank, which Rory dug up last fall, had been excluded from evidence because they related to Rusty's affair. The one exception was the cashier's checks Rusty sent to Prima Dana. Brand looked at Tommy. It was just like Tommy said last night. Stern was up to something.
"How about we try to scare her off?" Brand asked. "Tell her that testifying violates the ninety-day letter."
"Jimmy!" Tommy couldn't dial down the volume quite enough, and across the courtroom, Stern and Marta and Rusty's son all stared. But Brand's idea was dangerous and stupid. The first thing Rosa would do would come ask Stern, who would then go to the judge and accuse the prosecutors of obstruction. With some point. Testifying had nothing to do with the ninety-day letter.
> As the trial wore on, Brand had gotten more intense. Victory was in sight, and the fact that they might win a case that seemed like a bad bet to start had revved Jimmy up in an unhealthy way. It was Tommy's future, Tommy's legacy, that was at stake. But Jimmy was a samurai who regarded Tommy's interests as more important than his own. That part was touching. Yet Brand's greatest weakness as a lawyer was his temper, and it always had been. Tommy waited until Brand, as ever, came back to himself.
"Sorry," he said now, and repeated the word a couple of times. "I just don't know what Stern is up to."
The bailiff yelled out, "All rise," and Yee came charging out the door behind the bench.
Tommy patted Brand's hand. "You're about to find out," he said.
CHAPTER 31
Nat, June 23, 2009
My dad picks out the violet tie and knots it, looking in the men's room mirror, then faces me for approval.
"Perfect," I tell him.
"Thanks again for making the trip." For a second we stare at each other, as unspoken misery floats through his face. "What a fucking mess," he says.
"You see the Traps last night?" I ask.
He moans. "When are they going to get a closer?" That's an eternal question. He considers himself in the mirror another second. "Time to rock and roll," he says.
Ever the formalist in court, my father waits until Judge Yee has asked him to resume the stand before he takes his seat beneath the walnut canopy, so the jurors can watch him do it. Stern and Marta and Mina, the jury consultant, all thought they'd gotten a pretty good group. They wanted black guys from the city and suburban men who'd identify with my father, and nine of the first twelve seats are occupied by males of the two categories. I watch to see if any of them are willing to look at my dad after the beat-down he took yesterday. That is supposed to be an indication of their sympathies, and I'm heartened to notice that two of the African-Americans, who live within a block of each other in the North End, smile and nod at him minutely as he is settling in.