The Laws of Our Fathers

  News. Movement in the jury box. In the bench book, I make my first note: 'Prints?' The harsh sibilance of whispers continues throughout the courtroom, and is brought to an immediate conclusion by another walloping smack of Annie's gavel. She scans the space with a menacing look. Tommy, in the meantime, has paused, and wiggles his shoulders about, appreciatively absorbing the impact he has made.

  'Indeed, Judge, Mr Trent's testimony about this will be corroborated not only by fingerprint evidence but by telephone records showing a long pattern of communication between Nile Eddgar and him, including a page to Mr Trent twenty minutes before this murder took place.

  'And you will hear the details of this murder plan, not only from Ordell Trent, from Hardcore, but from a young female gang member, a juvenile named Lovinia Campbell. Ms Campbell, Judge, is fifteen years old, and you, Judge, you will hear evidence that Hardcore told her that at Nile Eddgar's request -'

  Hobie has again taken his feet. 'Objection.'

  'Grounds?'

  'That is most emphatically not what the evidence will show. Mr Molto's engaged in argument.'

  'Overruled. I wouldn't know if it's argument or not. Mr Molto, I'm sure you recall your obligation to merely describe the evidence.' I smile, a gesture which Tommy finds momentarily confusing. Hobie resumes his seat, satisfied that he has tagged the issue.

  'Ms Campbell will tell you that Hardcore described the plan to her. A plan in which the evidence will show - he turns briefly toward Hobie - 'Nile Eddgar's name was in fact mentioned. The plan, Judge, was for Ms Campbell, a member of Hardcore's narcotics operation, to meet Senator Eddgar. She would be there when Senator Eddgar drove up to the agreed spot. As the car approached, she would make a cell phone call giving a code word. And then she would greet Senator Eddgar. She would tell him she was going to get Hardcore. And she would exit that area. And as Senator Eddgar waited in his white Chevy Nova, a rider on a bicycle would come around the corner and sweep Senator Eddgar's car with gunfire from an automatic weapon. Ms Campbell would then approach the car, ostensibly to aid Senator Eddgar, to see if he was alive, and in reaching over the body, Ms Campbell, according to the plan, would plant a packet of drugs in Senator Eddgar's hand. And the story afterwards would be that Senator Eddgar was a white drug buyer, that his visits to the area were for drug reasons, not political reasons, and that he was killed randomly, in a drive-by shooting by a rival gang.' Tommy waits again to let the details, the horror, the cleverness of these calculations sink in. He knows it sounds right. The bicycle has become the murder wagon of today - maneuverable where cop cars cannot go, easily ditched behind a bush, and not identified by license plates.

  'That was the plan, Judge. It did not work out. Senator Eddgar was not able to make it that morning. Other commitments in the state house had come up. And unfortunately, Judge, Mrs Eddgar was here. She lives in Marston, Wisconsin, Judge. Lived. But although Dr Eddgar and she divorced many years ago they remained close and she was here visiting him and her son. She came to the Tri-Cities often to do that, Judge, she was often in the county, and on this morning Senator Eddgar, when he was called away to his other business, he and the decedent, he and Mrs Eddgar agreed that she would drive down to Grace Street. As I said, Judge, Senator Eddgar's acquaintance with Mr Trent had political aspects and he did not want to offend Mr Trent by missing this meeting. He could not reach him by phone and so June Eddgar agreed to go down and apologize in person for the senator.

  'And so she went, Judge,' says Tommy, 'and so she died. The evidence will show that when June Eddgar arrived in the area, when they realized that it was her in the car, not her husband, everyone - Lovinia Campbell and Ordell Trent - they tried to get her to leave quickly, but it was too late, Judge, to stop this plan that Nile Eddgar had put in motion. The zip bike came and it arrived too fast for the rider to see Ms Campbell's signals to stop. Ms Campbell was shot herself, Judge. And June Eddgar was killed. And I'm sure, Judge - it really isn't disputed - that Mr Turtle will tell you that Nile Eddgar didn't intend to kill Mrs Eddgar. Indeed, Judge, we'll offer a statement he made to the community service officer who came to inform him of his mother's death, in which Nile Eddgar all but admitted he intended to kill his father instead.'

  'Objection!' Hobie booms. Both arms are raised. ' "All but admitted"? Your Honor, that's argument, clearly argument. Defendant did no such thing.'

  I strike Molto's comment.

  'Sorry, Judge,' he says before I can reprimand him further. Molto's tiny, darting eyes shy away, knowing he was caught. 'The point, Judge, is we acknowledge that the defendant has lost his mother, Judge, which undoubtedly has caused him some anguish and some grief. But that, as you know, is no excuse in the eyes of the law.'

  With this, my attention falls again to Nile. I felt a momentary kinship with him this morning as I arrived on the bench, thinking about my mother and a childhood lived in the shadow of political commitments. But I'm struck now by a more distant perspective: Nile is simply odd. For the moment, he is occupied with his notepad. Defense lawyers often try to find a focus point like this for their clients, knowing that they are best off showing no reactions at all to the proceedings. But my sense of Nile is that he's beyond the grasp of any plan or discipline. There is an abiding ungainliness about him. He's potbellied, and when he walks he moves from the balls of his feet, in a loafing, dopey Alley Oop gait. Indeed, for someone who made his living in these courtrooms, he appears remarkably baffled. When he stood before me this morning, his head bobbed about like a barnyard hen's, and he is clearly uncomfortable in his go-to-court clothes. His tie knot is too large and askew, and his shirt collar will not stay in place. Yet Nile is my riddle to solve. What did he do? What did he intend? The most basic tasks in judging, they seem in this case frightening and enormous. Molto is winding up.

  'What the evidence will show is that Nile Eddgar planned to murder, took substantial steps in furtherance of that plan, and that a murder resulted. That is the People's evidence, Judge. And once you have heard it, we expect you to find the People have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant Nile Eddgar is guilty as charged of conspiracy to commit murder.' Tommy nods to me politely, convinced he has done a good job, which he has.

  Meanwhile, in the jury box, another conspiracy is afoot. Several of the journalists are huddled, trying in hasty whispers to reach their usual consensus about the parts of Molto's presentation which are newsworthy. By striking this accord they ensure that no editor can complain that his reporter was scooped or missed the mark in her story. I can imagine what they're asking one another: What do you think about this stuff about the father and the gang guy having some political deal? What about the fingerprints on the money? I wonder myself. I make a few more notes.

  'Again, Mr Turtle, the defendant will reserve?'

  Hobie nods from his chair, then stands and nods again. We agree to begin the evidence tomorrow. Molto promises to have a witness to fill a couple of morning hours before my Tuesday motion call commences. With that agreed, Annie smacks the gavel once again. The first day of the trial of Nile Eddgar is over.

  *

  'See you got to renewing acquaintances,' Marietta says as I pass through her small office outside my chambers. The space here is subsumed by her desk, shiny mahogany and nearly as large as mine, which angles into the room to allow for a small matching filing cabinet. Beside the blotter, pictures of her children and grandkids repose in a Lucite frame, under a brass lamp. A fake philodendron, bedded on woolly hummocks of sphagnum moss, rests on one corner of the desk, next to a tiny plastic Christmas tree, one foot high, mold-formed with icicles and candy canes, which has been added in the last week. On her blotter, Marietta has propped a tiny portable TV, on which the screen, no larger than a compact, moves with color. She listens to the soaps throughout the day when she is here, literally with one ear, a black wire running from the set and disappearing amid the dense dark curls on her left side. We have not spoken since she burst into the courtroom this morning, but the ca
lculating sidewards glance she briefly permits in my direction is enough to establish the subject.

  'Really, Marietta,' I say. 'All that running in and out - what was that supposed to be about?'

  ‘I just needed some files, Judge,' she answers. ‘I meant to tell you I seen him out there, only how you arrived so late, Judge, there wasn'tany chance.' With mention of my tardiness, Marietta's full brown eyes again rise adroitly, retaking the advantage. 'Looks like you got to old times anyway.'

  'It wasn't old times, Marietta. It was very brief. He apologized for heckling Turtle and I explained that I can't really talk with him now.'

  She's astounded. 'You - all gotta talk,' she says. 'Marietta, he's close to Hobie. They've been best friends since childhood.'

  'Lord, Judge. "Knows the defense lawyer." There's no rule like that. Judge, that happens all the time. Everybody in this building knows everybody else. They're all cousins and husbands and girlfriends and boyfriends.' Being technical, she's right, of course. But in this case I'm already walking on eggshells. And ethics are hardly what Marietta has in mind. I see how this is. Marietta's constructed the entire drama in her head. It's just like the sudsy fare on her TV. Some Rhett Butler rides back onto the scene explaining he's been a prisoner for the last twenty-five years.

  'Marietta, you've got the wrong picture. He's married. He's been married forever. I know his wife, too, by the way. She was also in California.'

  Shaking her head emphatically, Marietta insists I'm wrong.

  'Marietta, I read the column every day. He talks about his wife all the time. He mentioned Lucy to me this morning.'

  'Nn-uh,' says Marietta. 'People or one of them - I think he's getting divorced, I read.'

  'I'm sure it was the Star, Marietta. Maybe the Enquirer. Right after the articles about the two-headed baby or George Bush contracting AIDS.'

  Stung, Marietta pouches her lips and returns her eyes to the ‘I V. Feeling both provoked and rueful, I creep across the threshold into my chambers.

  'You gone end up with a cop,' she says in a low voice behind me.

  'What?'

  'You heard me. I see it comin. I've been around this courthouse twenty-five years, Judge. I've seen half a dozen gals just like you, can't be bothered no way, and every time it's some cop, just don't take no for an answer.' She begins her list. Jan Fagin, from the State Appellate Defenders, and Marcie Lowe, the PA. I feel like screaming. Some people, many people, manage cordial relationships with their staff that don't include advice to the lovelorn. Whatever happened to boundaries? But I'm far past the point where I can cut this off with Marietta. I have spent too many hours eagerly soaking up the tales of Raymen's latest infidelity to restrict our intimacies now.

  Even as I am ready to rebuke Marietta, some image of Lubitsch rears up, one of those dark mountainous men, like Charlie, who

  I always thought in former years was my destiny, and I'm paralyzed by fear, the very stuff of superstition, that this will prove to be one of those dumb, chance remarks that in some way, as yet unknown to science, becomes fate. When I discovered boys, or vice versa, when my acne passed and late in high school I found myself suddenly attractive to males, one of the things that shocked me was that I liked so much to be embraced, surrounded. The men I envisioned were all dark and large. Even if they were, in fact, somewhat fair and bony, like Seth, that was how I saw them - one more reason I was doomed by Charlie.

  'Marietta, you're pushing my buttons.'

  'I'm just sayin, Judge.'

  'That's enough saying for the moment. All right?'

  Her jaw rotates in discontent, but she nods in a way. We've had this row a hundred times. Contentious by nature, I cut to the quick: Does she think a woman needs a man to have a meaningful life? Arguing this point, we stand across the chasms of social class. The feminist verities I regard as fixed as the rules of physics do not seem to apply on Marietta's side of the divide. As she lectures me, Marietta's round forms - the full circular do, her soft figure - plump up with disdain. 'Oh, I heard all of that, Judge. But are you really sayin you'd mind if some fella just loved every inch of your skin?'

  It's more complicated than that, I always answer. I escaped from my marriage with no lasting disdain for men. In fact, before Nikki was born and I became so often soothed by the succor of other mothers - their helping hands, their reassurance - I had secret moments when I suspected I was one of those women who are more comfortable with males, with their badinage and rivalries. Even now, I wonder if it wasn't some of that which carried me into the law and the roughhouse of trial practice.

  Yet, in some ways, I haven't begun to think of myself as unmarried. Not that I feel the remotest connection to Charlie. But I cannot willingly take up the striving and the anxiety that sometimes go with being unattached. Riding the bus into the

  Center City, I observe with almost scientific distance the younger females who are single and still so focused on the details: the eyeliner and the base just right, the hair combed and piled and sprayed with sculptural precision, the hem, the seams, these women who you know look through the stores for clothes for at least an hour a day and are still in every sense presenting themselves. It's such a relief to be uninvolved with that, not because you've sworn some oath, to which you cling in the unreasoning way of religious faith, that a woman shouldn't let herself be judged on that basis (a credo which, after all, hasn't persuaded these young women), but because you're at another stage, another place, a different plane, where your connections are known, fixed, where you're not, like these girls, some atom waiting to be part of a molecule. Done with Charlie, I'm nonetheless unwilling to go back to that, like some upsetting grudge that has finally been forgotten.

  Besides, I've found the idea of being a single mother and dating mutually exclusive. Assuming I had time to meet a man, when would I see him? The evenings and the weekends are all I have with Nikki. My few half-hearted efforts have generally been guilt-racked and uncomfortable. Living without sex, which never seemed an especially inviting or necessary prospect, is frankly far easier than I imagined. I am moved to oldfashioned thoughts - that abstinence must be easier for women than men. Still, at moments, especially on the bus, when I am often at close quarters with strangers, there are instants of longing that have the profound purity of music.

  'Let's talk about tomorrow, Marietta. What have you been doing with the call?'

  She checks the computer screen. If we start early, at 9 a.m., we'll get a couple of hours of testimony before I have to go on to the mid-week status call. Although I hear bail motions and other emergencies each day, routine matters - sentencings, progress calls, arraignments, guilty pleas - are scheduled on Tuesdays, in the morning or afternoons, so that trials can proceed on other days without constant interruptions.

  'I think Molto's got a custody comin’ over,' she adds. 'That little girl - one who was supposed to put the drugs or something.'

  'Tommy made a good opening,' I tell her. Marietta makes a face. 'Tommy's not your style?'

  'He's one of those trippin-over-his-own-feet-type guys. Like this morning. What good did all that do him?' The leak to the Trib, she means, not just a low stunt, but a stupid one, since I was so unlikely to let him get away with it. Clearly, Marietta does not believe for a second Tommy was not Dubinsky' s source.' Besides,' she adds, then thinks better of whatever she was going to say. Marietta, who intervenes cheerfully in my personal life without invitation, is too much of a pro to express herself on pending cases. I invite her to go on, but even at that, she seems to take a moment to choose her words.

  'Judge, he's sayin the boy was tryin to kill his father. Wasn't it the father, Judge, who posted Nile's bail? Wasn't that in the court file? We had a long bail report and then there wasn't any motion filed, cause the father put up his house. Remember?' I hadn't until now. 'What kind of sense does that make, Judge?' asks Marietta. 'Have his son try to kill him, then pay to get him out? Most folks think awhile 'fore they do that. That boy killed his momma and the father h
ad him on bail in twenty-four hours. Why'd he be doing that?'

  Because he doesn't think Nile's guilty. That's the logical answer, I suppose, but I keep that to myself and respond, more circumspectly, that perhaps we'll hear about this from the defense.

  'What'd you make of Hobie, by the way?' I ask. 'Smooth, huh?'

  'Oh, he's hot stuff, that one. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Now, how'd this go, Judge? You know him, too?' 'Him, too.' I shake my head once in bleak wonder. 'Rich boy, idn't he?'

  'Hobie? Richer than I was.' That's rich in America: someone who has more money than you. His father, if I recollect, owned a pharmacy.

  ‘I can tell,' says Marietta, ‘I can tell every damn time. Feet don't even touch the ground. He's marchin round that courtroom. "How you doin, girl?" Like he gave a good goddamn how I ever done. Just hopin nobody notice what kind of good time he's havin when he gets up in court, talkin like he's white.' She nods to cement that judgment. I think what I always think: God, they can be hard on each other. 'And you ain't seen him in years either, Judge?'

  'No, you know how that is, Marietta. Once you give up the guy, you tend to lose his friends, too.'

  A second passes. 'And why exactly was it you give the guy up, Judge? He do you bad? Must have been somethin like that if you haven't been talkin for twenty-five years.' Her eyes train on the glowing screen, but we both know we have arrived once more at Marietta's favorite subject. Wary of hurting her again, I toss my head vaguely. 'Wasn't the other way, was it?' she asks.