Attorneys moved in clusters of three and four to the right as the judge uttered each new category of requests for additional time or for leave to file something out of time.
“Is that it?” the judge asked Watson and the one other attorney left standing next to him, a stout man in a yellow tie and a gray suit.
“Judge Stang,” the lawyer said, taking one step toward the bench.
“Did I ask you to approach the bench?” Judge Stang demanded.
“Sorry, Judge,” the lawyer took a large step backward. “Judge, I represent the Klaxon Corporation, and we’ve had a default judgment taken against us because—”
“Because you missed a filing deadline,” hissed the judge, his face swelling and purpling with rage, “and now you’re seeking leave to file a late answer. Over there!” he bellowed with the authority of Minos sending a damned soul down to the lowest rung of Hell.
Joseph T. Watson tucked the folder containing his motion to withdraw under his arm and tried to meet the apocalyptic stare of Judge Whittaker J. Stang. Watson’s throat locked up, his palms were slick against the folder, his heart fluttered like a bird with a broken wing.
“What are you here for, Counselor?” asked the judge.
“I’ve … I’ve been appointed by the court in the case of U.S. versus Whitlow,” said Watson.
“U.S. versus whom?” asked the judge.
“U.S. versus Whitlow,” said Watson. “The defendant’s name is Whitlow. James Whitlow, he … or, I mean, the government is saying he committed murder.”
“And you’re seeking leave to withdraw from the case,” said the judge.
“Well, yes, actually, I am,” said Watson. “I don’t know if perhaps Mr. Mahoney phoned ahead from Stern, Pale?” asked Watson. “Never mind. The partners of my firm have decided that I am not going to be doing trial work. Uh, I’ve never been to court. This is my first time. I do computer research mainly. In addition, it seems the defendant, or the alleged defendant, I mean the alleged suspect, the accused was … We went to the same high school. He was a year behind me at my high school, and so he was an acquaintance of mine, which my partners feel creates at least the appearance of impropriety.”
“Approach,” said Judge Stang, with a single flap of his hand.
Watson kept his knees from buckling and approached the bench of the most senior federal judge in the Eastern District of Missouri.
“I have one question I want to ask you in your capacity as an officer of this court,” said the judge. “Was this man a friend of yours?”
Judge Stang stared down with a face beyond human. It belonged to the Overman, an oracle, a force of nature, an ancient Greek god who had heard all the lies of everyone who had ever lived, including lies formulated by the best, most highly compensated liars in the history of Western Civilization.
“Technically,” said Watson, “no, Judge. He was not a friend, per se. But he was my high school classmate, in the sense that we went to the same high school, and therefore I believe use of the term acquaintance is warranted in the papers I have to file in this court. I believe my firm is concerned about the appearance of impropriety.”
“The appearance of impropriety?” asked Judge Stang, recoiling slightly, as if he had already eaten one dish of his least favorite vegetable for dessert and was being served another. “Mr. Watson, at my age everything has the appearance of impropriety. I am only surprised when those appearances are deceiving, which happens infrequently these days.”
Judge Stang grabbed the two-by-four from its place on the bench and handed it to Watson.
“Your motion has the appearance of impropriety, as well as the odor of impropriety, about it. I want you to take this piece of lumber back to your office and chew it into sawdust. Very fine sawdust. I don’t want to find any chunks in there when you’re done. And I’m going to weigh the whole mess when you bring it back to me in a few weeks with all of the pretrial materials you’ll be filing in your murder case. Do a good job now, because next week some other lucky lawyer is going to be coming along behind you and rechewing your sawdust, understand?”
The judge faced the mass of lawyers on his right and spread his arms like Charlton Heston doing Moses.
“All the requests for continuances, all the requests for additional time and for leave to file out of time, are hereby denied.
“Lord,” he cried, looking up into the sunlit vault overhead, “send my white head down to the netherworld with grief!”
Then he looked down again at the lawyers.
“If you want a written order,” he said with a grisly smile, “see the docket clerk!”
CHAPTER 5
On the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, Watson held another Post-Dispatch in his trembling hands. A typical American adolescence spent imagining fame had done nothing to prepare him for the shock of seeing headlines for the first time from the inside out. It did not say, FAITHFUL HUSBAND KILLS WIFE’S LOVER. It said, HATE CRIME CHARGED IN SLAYING OF DEAF MINORITY.
The sensation of being a person’s lawyer was also new. Judge Stang had spoken, and Watson had a client. Instead of doing legal research and writing for Arthur Mahoney, instead of summarizing deposition transcripts for PizzaFax, managing documents for ChipsMacro, or playing Greek SlaughterHouse for Subliminal Solutions, Inc., he would be defending a human being in mortal peril. The Post-Dispatch and most of St. Louis had already tried, convicted, and sentenced his client. And the prosecutors wanted the penalties doubled or tripled under statutes that punished not only the loathsome crimes, but also the alleged bad attitude with which they were committed. Now, this forlorn citizen’s only hope was Joseph T. Watson, Esq.
Photos of the victim, Elvin Brawley, showed him performing his poetry in American Sign Language on a stage for deaf children at a Festival of Language on the Hands. A sidebar featured examples of his computer-generated artworks. In another frame, captioned “A Tireless Advocate of Using Technology to Overcome Disabilities,” Elvin Brawley held up a pocket-size VTD—Voice Transcription Device—for the hearing-impaired—a handheld computer capable of displaying spoken words on a liquid crystal screen. He was eulogized as a deaf poet, an “enabler and proponent of empowerment … a leader capable of transcending race and disability.”
Next to the deaf poet, the photo of James Whitlow captured the requisite spitefulness of the accused—his eyes glowering in the slits of a major frown. (“I’ll make you a deal,” Watson imagined the photojournalist saying to the officer escorting the defendant. “You tell him to fuck himself and keep the baby, and I’ll take the picture, OK?”) Whitlow looked mean and scrawny, as if instead of working out he burned fat with a daily regimen of energetic hatred.
Great, thought Watson—the victim was St. Francis, and my client looks like John Dillinger.
Over a million people would see this despised felon’s photo. In the safety of their kitchens and offices, they would sample another lurid newsprint episode of human depravity, savor the usual blend of horror and intrigue with sips of morning coffee. If Watson hadn’t been holed up in the firm conspiring with Arthur to find a way out of the case, he probably could have appeared in the photo with his client, over the caption “The accused, James Whitlow (left), with his lawyer, Joseph Watson.” His daydream vanished at the thought of Arthur opening the front page to find a photograph of his associate in the same frame with an accused murderer. As it was he had to make do with a glancing reference in the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph: “District Judge Whittaker Stang has appointed Joseph Watson to represent defendant James Whitlow, who is indigent.” The publicity would be a big hit with the firm’s partners. And what about Sandra? The kids? “Sandra,” people would say, “why is Joe defending that hate killer?”
He read his own name again and realized that while everyone else would be reading about gore and musing over photos of the alleged murderer, Watson would be interviewing his client and meeting the creature himself—in the catbird seat, the public would think, able to
find out what they really wanted to know:
1. What went through your mind when you aimed your gun at the victim’s chest and pulled the trigger?
2. Have you spoken to your wife since the night of the murder?
3. What does it feel like, knowing you’re going to watch a needle poke a hole in your vein and fill you full of death?
Once in his Honda, Watson grabbed his firm-issued communicator—a combination handheld computer, fax/modem, PIM, and cellular phone—known among the associates as “the tether.” It allowed any lawyer in the firm to contact any other lawyer in any of the firm’s twenty-five offices all over the world just by entering their initials, or a three-digit ID. He rarely got to play with the communicator out in the field, because he was usually logged on to Westlaw doing computerized legal research at his desk. He was spending so much time on the computer that when he found himself behind the wheel of a car, his first instinct was to look for the keyboard and the pointing device. “How much memory we got in this thing? Where’s the operating system?”
“Arthur?” he said, after being shuttled from voice mail over to the operator, up to Arthur’s secretary, and in through the back door on line three. “I guess you didn’t get ahold of Judge Stang.”
“Tried to, Joe,” said Arthur, “but his clerk said he was on the verge of anaphylactic shock triggered by an allergic reaction to lawyers. After that, one of my old law school classmates who represents the Klaxon Corporation called to tell me you’re becoming a lumberjack.” He chuckled.
“Paul Bunyan, Esquire,” said Watson. “I’m taking a two-by-four to lunch, and then I’m going to the Des Peres County Correctional Center where they’re housing my client.”
“You’ll need to get some kind of story from him before too long,” agreed Arthur, “but I want you back here first. I have an expert witness on her way down who might be able to help us.”
“What kind of an expert?” asked Watson. Perhaps he should risk insolence and just tell Arthur: “I’ll get my own expert if I need one. Thank you.”
“Have you thought about a medical angle?” Arthur asked. “I mean, what if there’s some mental incapacity? A mental disease or defect? That might give you some leverage in bargaining a plea with the government.”
“I—” began Watson.
“She’s from an old St. Louis family,” continued Arthur. “The firm’s done their trust and estate work for decades. She went to Harvard. She may be able to help you with the new behavioral testing and some of these scanning technologies. She’s a forensic neuropsychologist, a neurologist. It’s easier to say what she’s not,” he said, “but I’ll let her do that. Stop by when you get back.”
“I was headed over to see my prisoner,” Watson said.
“Well, don’t,” said Arthur. “Come back here first.”
Watson punched the phone’s END button and felt the despair of indentured servitude mollified by the thrill of being a real, road-warrior lawyer. Pretty soon, he’d be getting twenty or thirty calls a day on his car phone from people willing to pay his hourly fee plus the tab for both ends of a cellular call, just to talk to him sooner rather than later. He had half a mind to pull over and celebrate his first day as a real lawyer by plugging his laptop into his cellular phone and sending an important legal memo back to his own desktop PC at the office via time-sensitive E-mail. To: Joseph T. Watson, Esq. From: Joseph T. Watson, Esq. Re: Important Legal Matters.
He pulled into an ATM for some cash, wincing when he read the balance, $2,489.26. Just enough to cover the automatic withdrawal for the mortgage payment, not counting any checks Sandra had written in the interim, with ten days to go until the next paycheck and two weeks to the semiannual bonus. Instead of staying in the rented two-family in South St. Louis, Sandra had insisted on overbuying in Ladue, where the schools were better and the houses bigger. Money. If he didn’t make more of it quick, she would start threatening to go back to the accounting firm. Her newest project was getting the gravel driveway paved, not in asphalt but in concrete, like the rest of the upscale neighborhood. And if she went back to work? No mother at home for the children. No wife at home for the lawyer.
Instead of hastening to his needy client’s side, Watson obeyed Arthur and the note-holder on his mortgage, and returned to the firm’s parking garage.
He snagged the latest batch of Arthur’s memos from his in-box. As usual, Arthur’s explicit verbal instructions looked slightly different when confirmed by way of his ubiquitous memos, which quaintly still arrived typed on paper, transcribed by his secretary from Dictaphone tapes.
TO: JTWatson
FROM: AFMahoney
RE: US v. Whitlow
As per our discussion Friday morning, you are to provide this client with the best possible service and representation. Acquit yourself and our firm to the best of your abilities pursuant to the district court’s orders. Please explore settlement while keeping a vigilant eye on the interests of your client.
AFM
To the uninitiated, the discrepancy might seem duplicitous. The difference between “Plead him out” and “provide the best possible service and representation” was more than mere semantics. But Watson barely noticed. Arthur’s memos were simply good lawyering, five-hundred-dollar-an-hour ass-covering. Remarks, verbal instructions, comments, oral promises, spoken threats, questionable suggestions—like pressuring an associate to plead an appointed client to murder one—vanish as soon as they leave a person’s mouth. They are as insubstantial as wishes, dreams, and Freudian slips. Memories fade, people remember incorrectly. Years later, if accusations surface, or if blame needs to be apportioned in a particular matter, the first thing lawyers do is retrieve the files from storage. The files contain tangible evidence—like Arthur’s memo showing he specifically instructed his associate to vigorously represent James Whitlow, never mind his privately expressed wishes.
The last in-box memo had a yellow sticky attached that said: “See me. AFM.”
His boss seemed incongruously cheerful.
“I sent your memo on decapitations to Ben Verruca, the in-house counsel at Subliminal Solutions,” said Arthur. “He loved it. He thought your analysis of the scorekeeping similarities was right on the money.”
“Virtually the same in both games,” said Watson. “I’m glad he liked it.”
Arthur smiled. “You told me about the scorekeeping, but I’m not remembering,” he said, with a wave at the stacks of documents and correspondence on his desk.
“Of course,” said Watson. “In Greek SlaughterHouse, there’s a puckish, Till Eulenspiegel–ish prankster who follows the game protagonist from room to room in the Castle of Skulls, keeping score by stabbing freshly decapitated heads with a pikestaff and depositing them in a seabag slung over his shoulder. After each new head is collected, the prankster turns, winks at the gamer, and paints a red hash mark on the screen with a bloody finger. It’s virtually the same in CarnageMaster, except the head collector is a satyr or faun type, with goatish horns and bedraggled hindquarters, who turns, winks at the gamer, and paints hash marks with a bloody, caprine hoof. Same pikestaff. Same seabag. Blatant rip-offs.”
“I remember now,” said Arthur. “Fine work.”
Whew. One more crisis averted in the daily triage of career-threatening disasters that erupt in the life of the lowly associate. Subliminal Solutions was a huge client, and Ben Verruca was one of Arthur’s old law school pals. For years, SS was just another also-ran in the multimedia gaming industry, with a couple hundred-thousand sellers called Tower of Torture and Anthrax Avenger. Then one Sunday in Lent, 1998, gamers all over New Mexico and Arizona witnessed what one of them decided was the Blessed Virgin Mary appear midway through Tower of Torture, version 3.11.
The site of the appearance was Hans the Headsman’s turret in the Tower of Torture, where Hans did his bloody executioner’s work, decked out in spiked and ringbolted black leather armlets, a ventilated cast-iron jockstrap with worms poking their heads through the mesh h
oles, and jackboots covered with scorpions and roaches. The graphics work on Hans’s upper body had won the gaming industry’s coveted Styx Award because it was so anatomically precise that, with a video driver capable of delivering 65,000 colors at a screen resolution of 1024 by 768, gamers could actually pick out the origin and insertion of every one of Hans’s bulging muscles. Phat graphics. Anyway, beginning at 12:01 A.M., Mountain Time, on that fateful third Sunday of Lent, gamers also claimed to see the face of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the polished reflection of Hans’s dripping, bloody broadax.
The scene featured Hans, known to gamers for years, as a Headsman who approached his work so zealously he usually peeled skin off of his victims or jammed his thumbs into their eye sockets before beheading them. But in version 3.11, Hans’s workday included the task of decapitating the ravishing, nubile, buxom Princess Althea—condemned to die, alone in the tower, under Hans’s ax. When Althea bent her gorgeous head of marcelled blond locks over Hans’s chopping block, her breasts (billowing and heaving with sobs) spilled forth from the neckline of her sackcloth garment. At this point in the program, according to the user-market surveys and the real-time, live-site studies, 37 percent of male gamers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine clicked on the pause button and studied Althea’s lissome frame all bent over the chopping block. Survey results indicated that most of the pause-mode gamers lingered to consider whether—with Althea all bent over and due to be executed forthwith—wasn’t there a way to find a silver lining in this dark cloud of death? At screen right, a pixel’s toss from Althea’s breasts, an ad-box applet for Zap high-capacity storage drives had a click-through rate of 14 percent, yielding some 178,000 visitors to the Zap Web site from its connection with the Hans/Althea Tower of Torture scene.
It was a hot site even before the Virgin Mary sighting. Once that happened, Cyber Hour did a special. Then Night On-Line. Live footage showed what devout gamers claimed was an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing in the blade of Hans’s broadax, as well as supposedly actual teardrops beading up on their computer monitors, blood oozing from the seams of their joysticks, and the soothing voice of what gamers were now calling Our Lady of Multimedia, audible even though their sound systems were turned off! When the computer code was disassembled and debugged, an instruction set showed a subroutine calling the image of a feminine face, but the Subliminal Solutions programmers had remarked-out the code so that it was nonfunctional. The designers claimed they had originally planned to have the estranged head of Althea reflected in Hans’s broadax, but now the line of code was plainly inoperative.
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