The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  “What you need to understand,” Levy said, “you will never understand. Talking today is a sin. It can wait until tomorrow.”

  Levy sat quietly, his lips moving, concentrating on his lap as if he were afraid to make eye contact with her. Maybe he was, Maddie thought, or maybe he considered her so contemptible that she was not worthy of eye contact. She counted to herself, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippis, three-Mississippis, how many Mississippis before he looked up. She studied his face. He did not flash the desperation of someone falsely accused. He seemed indifferent as if he believed his fate was predestined. Murderers did not act this way. Most crowed their innocence; some boasted their guilt; a few pissed their pants. Would his indifference support an insanity defense? Not in her experience.

  After the twentieth Mississippi, she asked, “How did your skull-cap end up on the floor of the library at Capablanca?”

  “It’s a yarmulke. I wear it as a sign of my respect to Hashem.”

  “Hashem?”

  “He whose name may not be spoken.”

  “God?”

  “Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh. The tetragrammaton. Too sacred to be spoken.” Levy pushed his yarmulke around his head until hair fell over his eyes. “My father of blessed memory gave me twelve for my bar mitzvah. I told you that before. Don’t you pay attention?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Maddie said. “Not me. Who have you been talking to? Someone from the DA’s office? What else did you say? Were your statements voluntary? Was an attorney present?”

  Levy ignored her. “I didn’t know one was missing until I was arrested.”

  “Answer my questions, damn it. Your case may turn on whether you waived your Fifth Amendment rights.”

  “I didn’t know one was missing until I was arrested.”

  “The immaculate disappearance. Is that what you’re saying? Can’t build a defense on that.”

  Levy’s statement troubled her both because of what he said and how he said it. It was simple, declarative, not accusatory the way the guilty who feigned innocence talked. On the other hand, the tone of his voice–flat as if he were reading names from the phone book, his body language, his demeanor–reminded her of a study of fanaticism she had read in college which posited that fanatics who murdered in furtherance of their worldview believed so strongly they had not committed a crime they exhibited no signs of guilt when they lied. Truth serums and lie detectors were useless. Cross-examination could not break them down. She had never defended a fanatic. She didn’t know anyone who had. Yet, in her meeting with Rabbi ben Reuben and Moskovitzky, they had not hinted Levy had a dark side. Had wishful thinking blinded them to reality?

  “I want you to copy something for me.” Maddie withdrew from her file one of the photocopies of the last page of Bumper’s spiral notebook she had made in Michelle Furey’s office. She studied Levy’s face for a change of expression, a hint, a clue, as to whether it was his handwriting or not, but his eyes remained as blank, as dead as Bumper Sullivan’s had been before the diener lowered Bumper’s eyelids.

  “It is forbidden to write on the Sabbath.”

  “Could you at least tell me if it’s your handwriting?”

  Levy closed his eyes. His lips moved faster. Piety or fanaticism, Maddie wished she knew what his refusal meant. Clients who refuse to cooperate were a lawyer’s worst nightmare; but Levy was unlike any uncooperative client she had ever represented. She hoped she hadn’t thrown away that study of fanaticism when she weeded out her college course books, or, at least, kept her course notes. She would settle for finding the syllabus with the reading list. Thank God for the Boston Public Library.

  She waited, doodling in the margin of her yellow legal pad, cartoons without captions, people standing before a judge, a cop chasing a robber, a politician with arms flailing addressing a rally. She had met Jews at bar association functions, several in law school, a few at college. Loser Larry Gingold, her colleague at SCLS, was the only Jew she had extended contact with. She didn’t know him any better than any other office buddy, but she knew him well enough to hope he was not an exemplar of his people. Levy was not like those Jews. He reminded her of the boys at Holy Name who graduated to the seminary rather than college or the armed forces or a job because they were afraid of life. She could not stomach those kids; no one could but the priests who labored so hard to scare them into the priesthood.

  “The handwriting, will you at least look at it?”

  “They call me Christ killer,” Levy said, his eyes still closed. “The guards threaten to throw me in with the other prisoners.”

  “I’ll draft an affidavit.”

  He opened his eyes. “I can-not swear an oath.”

  “It’s a civil oath, swearing to tell the truth under the pains and penalties of perjury.”

  “I will affirm, but I will not swear an oath.”

  Another refusal. More doubts of his innocence. “Tell me about the yarmulke.”

  “They won’t serve me kosher food. Rabbi ben Reuben brings me one meal a day.”

  “Charles Sullivan died because someone drained the blood from his body. At the crime scene, the police found syringes and plastic tubing, both wiped clean of fingerprints, and your yarmulke under a nearby chair. A possible chess match with the victim for the night of the murder was on your pocket calendar. Now tell me about the yarmulke. How did it get there?”

  Sprinkle in one or two expletives, fucking pocket calendar, fucking yarmulke, Maddie’s impacted rage urged. Scream them as loud as you can. She lowered her hands below his line of sight and clenched her fists, then opened her hands so she could grip the legs of the chair. Berating clients rarely worked and she knew that berating this client would only cause him to retreat deeper into his shell. She needed him outside his shell, at least with her. At least with her.

  Levy said something, in Hebrew she assumed. The tone of his voice startled her, the voice of a beggar, not one seeking alms, but one beseeching God. “Am I accused of the blood libel?” He paled as if the souls of every Jew who had faced that accusation poured into him from across the centuries. “Pray for me.”

  Clients had gone holy on her before, usually immediately after screeching their innocence. Going holy made them appear sincere and sincerity bred credibility. Juries would rather convict an innocent atheist than a guilty believer in God. Defendants with street smarts rehearsed going holy. For someone going holy, Levy seemed too in awe of the accusation. Was he suppressing his fanaticism? Was his piety an act? His withdrawn personality an act? Only a fanatic whose eyes were gouged out by true belief would commit a blood libel. Levy appeared to lack the fire. Unless he believed he was doing God’s will. Did he drain Bumper’s blood because he believed he was doing God’s will? She wished she knew. Was that his handwriting in Bumper’s notebook? She wished she knew. Which Levy was the real Levy, the pious rabbinical student or the fanatic, or was he both? She wished she know. What was the answer to Trish’s why? She wished she knew. Maddie crammed the file into her brief-case and rapped twice on the door to summon the guard.

  On the street, the heat assailed her.

  -5-

  Maddie sat alone in a back-corner pew of St. Elizabeth of Portugal Catholic Church. She had driven to New Bedford, almost two hours, far enough away, she hoped, that she would not be recognized. The few parishioners who took note of her reacted because she was a stranger, not because she was Maddie Devlin. She felt like a stranger, not in the sense of being a foreigner, but in the sense of being estranged from herself, from her life.

  Maddie had not planned to go to Saturday Mass. She had been sleeping so poorly that not having to wake up early on Sunday morning held little attraction, but Levy had left the taste of garlic in her mouth and she hoped the ritual of the Mass would cleanse her. She believed in the comfort ritual provided, not in its religious symbolism. Ritual she hoped, would provide this cleansing.

  Anyone who felt aggrieved by Mayor Charlie or persecuted by society could have murdered Charles, but only a
n insane madman or a fanatic to advance a political or religious cause would have drained his blood. If Levy were that madman or fanatic, she doubted an insanity defense would succeed. He clearly knew the difference between right and wrong. Worse, the preparation for his choice of the wrong proved it was clearly premeditated. For that reason, the irresistible impulse variation of the insanity defense was inapposite because of the methodical nature of the crime. While he might be insane in a clinical sense, he seemed to fall outside the legal definition of insanity.

  Levy qualified for a psychiatric workup, but she doubted he could afford to pay for one. Would the rabbi or Moskovitzky pay? If they did, she would not have to disclose any adverse conclusions. If they did not and she persuaded the court to order the Commonwealth to pay, she risked the court appointing a neutral whose report would be available to both sides. She risked the neutral concluding that the crime fit the accused and the accused fit the crime. And if the neutral concluded otherwise, she doubted it would matter. The opinions of a thousand psychiatrists would not trump the physical evidence. The most rational and dispassionate of juries would be warranted in dismissing the blathering of a shrink as so much mumbo-jumbo and convicting Levy based on the skull-cap and the inferences drawn from his personal effects. The criminal defendant-friendly justices on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court would have no choice but to affirm. Only prosecutorial error would save Levy and a good defense attorney never went to trial on the wing and prayer of prosecutorial error.

  Maddie rose and joined the line awaiting Communion. Passing through on my way down the Cape, she would say if the priest remarked that he hadn’t seen her before. In all her years representing defendants in criminal cases, she had never asked whether they had done it. Experienced attorneys never did that. Only mob or gang attorneys with their outhouse morality and bulging bank accounts were completely indifferent to the foreknowledge of their client’s guilt. Her temptation to ask Levy if he murdered Bumper Sullivan was not a sin; that was black letter Catholic dogma. No, her ambivalence on whether he answered yes or no, her wisp of a wish he would confess his guilt to her, those were the sins, sins of the heart.

  So, why am I still here? she asked herself as the priest placed the Host on her tongue. She felt overwhelmed by the parade of “what-ifs” which forced her to focus on possibilities that should be overlooked while distracting her from the facts. But for this parade, she would be convinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. She had handled cases where she thought her clients innocent even though the facts were stacked against them. In those cases, her skepticism was rational. In this case, it was an irrational rationalization. Either I’m insane, she concluded, or my subconscious is still poisoned by hatred of Trish and lust for revenge. I wish, Maddie thought, it was nothing more than this infernal heat.

  The Mass concluded, Maddie made the sign of the cross, then stepped out into that heat.

  -6-

  Maddie made time for a light supper and a shower before going to Michelle Furey’s. As the hot water stung her face and bounced off her shoulders, she struggled to remember whether there had been a similar invitation years earlier when the Elizabeth Fund was incorporated. If there were, it had been hidden inside a hint, a hint she had been too afraid to recognize. She did remember visualizing what it would be like to be in private practice with Furey. Then, as now, she knew little of wills or trusts or probate, only what she had learned in law school. In law offices with two or three or four attorneys, it was common for attorneys to specialize in different areas of the law. It created synergy. In a law office of two, it would have been a different kind of synergy.

  Tonight would be a test to see if they could get along on a person-to-person level, a necessity in a two person law firm. If they did, she would broach the subject of practicing together on a second or third date. She laughed at her use of that word, “date,” but it was appropriate. When attorneys considered whether to form a partnership, it was like a courtship. Maddie wanted to be courted.

  She dried herself and dressed. Wanting to play the polite guest, she stopped at a package store for a six pack of Guinness–what else to drink with Irish soda bread?–and rang Furey’s doorbell within minutes of the appointed time.

  “Welcome,” Furey said. Her smile radiated a warm welcome even in the unseasonable heat.

  Furey lived within walking distance of Cleveland Circle in the garret of what once had been a grand mansion gut-renovated and subdivided into condominiums. Her kitchen, the maid’s room when a Gilded Age family lived in the mansion, was outfitted with granite countertops, appliances with doors of brushed silver, and a window that looked out on a carriage barn that once housed several horses and carriages but which had also been converted to condominiums. Furey’s circular living room faced down Beacon Street toward Fenway Park. It had four floor-to-ceiling windows and one solid wall on which hung a framed print of Francis Bacon’s ‘Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ or “The Screaming Pope.” “It talks to me,” Furey said in reply to Maddie’s gasp.

  “What does it say?”

  “That even the Holy Father doesn’t always believe.”

  In the kitchen, Maddie opened the first two bottles of Guinness. The granite, cool to her touch, gleamed as if it had been polished. Maddie wondered if drafting wills and trusts, probating estates, was so lucrative or whether Furey enjoyed the good fortune of a noble birth or generous inheritance. Maddie doubted that. What Irish immigrant not named Kennedy did?

  “Shall we?” Furey said as she measured four cups of flour into a mixing bowl, added two tablespoons of sugar, one teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of baking soda. “Care to whisk?” she asked. While Maddie whisked, Furey measured four tablespoons of butter. “People say use an electric mixer, but muscle power provides the secret ingredient.”

  “You mean the sweat?”

  With a damp cloth Furey wiped sweat from Maddie’s forehead, cheeks, and neck.

  “Feels good.”

  Furey sipped her Guinness as if it were champagne. “Perfect.” She led Maddie to the sink where they washed their hands, sharing the stream of water, the soap, the hand towel. “Now, we work in the butter by hand, tablespoon by tablespoon, until it resembles a coarse meal.” Beneath the surface, their fingers rubbed against each other, then became tangled. They both laughed as their fingers slipped free. “Now the raisins,” Furey said. “One cup. It took me years of trial and error to decide one cup was the correct proportion for four cups of flour.”

  “I thought you said this recipe was in your family since the time of the sagas.”

  “A girl’s allowed a bit of exaggeration. Another Guinness?”

  “What about the nibbles you said you ate while you bake?”

  “We’re in the mixing phase. Baking comes later.”

  Furey washed her hands again, then cracked a large egg into a small bowl and stirred in fourteen ounces of buttermilk. After several stirs, the ingredients coalesced into a liquid of uniform color. Slowly she poured this liquid into the flour mixture. With a wooden spoon–once part of her grandmom’s trousseau, Furey explained–she mixed the liquid into dough until it was stiff, then excavated a well in the center of the mixing bowl. “When I was a young lass helping my grandmom, digging out the opening was my favorite part. I loved dipping my fingers deep into the mixing bowl, scooping out the batter, licking it off my fingers. Want a taste?”

  Gently, Maddie grasped Furey’s wrist and guided Furey’s hand toward her mouth, closing her lips around Furey’s fingers one by one, little finger, index finger, the other fingers, filling her mouth with the batter. Slowly, she withdrew Furey’s fingers. “Yum.”

  “If you think it’s yummy now, wait ’til it’s baked. Want another taste?” Her eyes sparkled like droplets of water reflecting the sun at its zenith. She scooped up a dollop of batter on her finger and offered it to Maddie.

  Before Maddie could indulge, the phone rang. Furey depressed the speakerphone button.
/>   “Attorney Furey? Maud O’Donnell calling from Dublin, like you asked.”

  “Thanks,” Furey said. “I’m with Maddie Devlin. We’re baking Irish soda bread.”

  “Mary Ann? Michael’s granddaughter?”

  Maddie remained silent.

  “I’ve wanted to make this call for a long time,” O’Donnell said.

  “You could have picked up the phone.” Maddie bit her tongue. Why did every conversation turn into a cross-examination?

  “They called me Clancy’s whore. Who’d ever believe a whore?” Maud’s voice sounded old, cracked as if parched by time, as she told the story of a young and foolish school girl who succumbed to the blarney of a married man who filled her head with promises about the life they’d live when he divorced and inherited his grand da Patrick’s homestead. Divorced in a nation where divorce was against the law. Her voice fluctuated from whispers barely audible to shouts strong and full throated, easily heard.

  “Patrick left the homestead to my grand da Michael,” Maddie said.

  In the background a bell tolled. “Fifteen minutes to early Mass,” Maud said.

  Furey dusted her hands with flour and gently kneaded the dough just enough to shape it into a sphere.

  Maud’s voice trembled as she described how Clancy never spoke to Michael again, how overnight, Clancy became a different man, bitter, angry, withdrawn, living for his next drink and nothing more.

  Furey patted down the dough, smoothed out its surface.

  Maud cleared her throat. “One morning he showed up with a bottle of vintage Bushmills. Bushmills was distilled in the north and, well, people on the Republic side of the Troubles didn’t drink Bushmills. I asked where he got it. He refused to say. We argued. He tried to force himself on me. I cracked him one with a skillet. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but after the ambush, the execution, I realized what Clancy had done.”