"The best angle, the best and most successful defense."Tell me."
"The irrelevance of your guilt in a court of law."
The double murderer, smiling goofily, waves his hands before his eyes. "Shoot."
Nathan blinks through his grin at his new friend, superimposing upon him images of a man and woman lying in a briny pool of blood and vomit on a ragged carpet, the man's leg twitching, an ice pick quivering like a flag planted for God and country in the woman's heaving chest. The black sits, knees up against the wall, humming at the ceiling. As though beneath a tree on a hot summer's day, not a care in the world. Glad to be rid of her, glad to lighten the load. My successes, Nathan knows, are society's failures.
A young kid grasps the bars of the window, hauling himself up, his arms shivering with the strain. All he can see is the same wedge of sky with the same plane as Nathan. Feet anchored against the wall, he heaves himself up higher and he freezes. Nathan can tell he's caught the same slice of Yankee Stadium, maybe a glimpse of tarpaulined field. Beyond that the low rubble of East Harlem, which the kid beams at as if he's spotted a beach, a woman spreading out a towel and stripping off blouse and skirt in the wavy gas of heat. Her arms raised, pinning back her hair-
A man has straddled the bowl overhead, his pants shackling his knees. Nathan rolls away just in time, gathering his blazer and finding himself against the opposite wall squatting beside the axwielder. The murderer smells of swamp and unholy death. But then Nathan compares favorably the cuts and scratches on his own arms with his neighbor's and turns aside to dream old dreams of Sid Frankel's face as he led a prosecution witness to stand the truth on end, to look for all the world like confusion and certain acquittal.
The kid hanging from the window bars holds on as long as he can then drops to the floor. "Man, that's beautiful."
His name is sounded and he rises and enters the wrong end of the arraignment hall and sits on a bench, his face hidden from the gallery like a game-show mystery guest. Shoulder to shoulder with wife batterers and car thieves, weekend warriors, others who may have done worse. No one has done nothing. At his back, he knows, is the matinee audience of mothers and sisters. The dignitaries in the front row, the private lawyers and Legal Aid catching cases, nod Nathan's way and whisper among themselves. The court officers are smugly amused at this little soap opera, a ripple in their days of sodomizers and pickpockets.
"Mr. Stein." It is a small voice at the end of the bench. Possibly the voice of conscience, he believes, a voice he had spent his life drowning and refashioning in the guise of Puccini and Coltrane. But Nathan leans, just to be sure: Regina Nunez, Amparo's peasant cousin, sits at the end of the same bench holding her swollen belly in her hands. His face heating with embarrassment, Nathan gives her a little wave.
"Amparo-" the girl begins to explain, her expression dark, full of foreboding.
"I wanted to help you today," he tries to explain.
In through the crack in the door flood commitments and forgotten pledges, but they are too much and so amount to nothing, easily forgotten. Nathan offers no defense. Briefly, he considers a plea. Then he simply leans back, out of the girl's peripheral view, ending his torment.
Claire, though, can't be far away, he knows. He peeks over his shoulder, and there, in the front row, in her nimbus of virtue and decorum, sits his own counsel, Ruth, in black dress and pearls, a manila folder in her lap. But she is too stiff, too indignant, as if she's stonewalling someone's gaze. And as Nathan untwists he catches in the corner of his eye a flash of red hair. A stack of manilla folders and yellow legal pads clutched to her chest like a shield, Claire is staring at him, her face blank with disbelief.
Nathan grabs the back of the bench and begins to stand. Two court officers half rise, hands on the stocks of their pistols, and he lowers himself, clutching his own thighs, surprised to find them sinewy, atrophied.
At the bridge officer's call, four of Nathan's neighbors rise. Boys with round faces, hands clasped with contrition and eyes filled with mischief. Four attorneys-friends, colleagues, sworn enemies of Milton-meet them elbow to elbow in the middle of the floor and escort them like groomsmen to the table and face the black-robed judge and the calendar Scotch-taped to the front of her bench. A dozen women in the first rows of the gallery lift their chins to hear. Their hair teased and their faces freshly painted; their church clothes unearthed and pressed for their brothers and sons. Five court officers rise together, hands poised near their guns, covering the angles between the suspects and the gallery.
At his lectern, a rookie assistant district attorney with slick blond hair reads from a manila folder a harrowing tale of a posse of young men roaming the subways, leaving a trail of fear and broken ribs and empty pockets. These four young suspects surrounded a couple and threatened them with box cutters. Removed from said couple's possession: one radio, one watch, one wallet containing thirteen dollars cash. The audience utters not a sound. One attorney after another, feverishly picking over the files-some of them, Nathan knows, for the first time-speaks in reverent tones of his client as a community asset, of his rock-solid family. Two of them work as stock boys in a warehouse. At 2 A.M. they were merely returning from work, your honor. They were imploring the alleged victims for change to make phone calls home, nothing more, they were late, their mothers-all present, your honor, to show their support-were worried. Panhandling at best. The box cutters not weapons but tradesmen's tools, evidence of their willingness to work for their families' survival. The whole thing was a misunderstanding, an overreaction. You honor, everybody is worked up over the case of the Riverside Drive jogger. These men are not animals. We're all a little tense, all a little trigger-happy.
Nathan would like to laugh. He could have done better.
The judge, grim-faced, does not lift her eyes. Bail is requested at $10,000 each by the assistant district attorney. A collective gasp rises from the women relatives. The judge grants the A.D.A.'s wishes without hesitation and the women begin to wail. They reach over the partition. They hug each other. The victimized boys glance back, all innocence and light. The court officers hold their ground as the women exit weeping.
Nathan hears his name and immediately rises. And immediately the floor seems to fall from him. He watches his feet cross the floor. Ruth grabs his elbow smelling of flowers and country nights, of the perfumed nylons that contain her thighs. Nathan, for a moment, shuts his eyes.
"Are you going to be all right?" Ruth asks.
He stands rocking from side to side before a judge he has danced with in court often enough and eviscerated just as often outside of it. He's made fun of her pocked face and heavily painted lips, her floppy jowls and buoyant hairdo. But she's no joke now. She levels at him a scrutinous glare, as though consid ering all the battles she's lost and all the directions she can now go. Sweat traces the back of his head.
Ruth leans in to whisper: "The disciplinary committee called."
Nathan waves his hand.
"It's not just not filing 1099s."
"They have nothing."
"They have fraud."
"They have nothing."
"They have larceny by false promise."
"It's nothing."
"Trickery by deceit."
"The burden of proof is too high. The disciplinary committee is not reasonable doubt. It's moral certainty."
Ruth shifts on her feet. "They have it, Nathan. They have moral certainty."
Nathan presses his lips together like a prig. "Moral certainty," he says, and lowers a brow at her, as though to say, Don't be dramatic, what is that?
The bridge officer states: "Docket number ending 483. The State of New York vs. Nathan Stein. If the attorney has not yet appeared before the court."
"Ruth Gutman appearing on behalf of Nathan Stein."