Brain Storm

by Richard Dooling

  Tower of Torture sales took off, then the mania spread to Anthrax Avenger, and later to Greek SlaughterHouse, because gamers nationwide were inspecting the blades of all the weapons for hints of other avatars and incarnations. Subliminal Solutions’s stock doubled, split three for one, then doubled again, despite a price/earnings ratio of 127 to 1. SS was now one of the hottest companies in the burgeoning multimedia gaming industry, and Arthur was perpetually anxious about losing the account because of his own dearth of technical computer expertise. Enter new law grad Watson, who was comfortable talking pixel density, dot pitch, MPEG, MMX, Ultra QuickTime for Windows, VRAM, and video drivers.

  Keeping Subliminal Solutions happy was important, because keeping Arthur happy was important. In a huge outfit like Stern, Pale—one of the biggest law firms in the country—associates like Joseph T. Watson are fair game, hirelings, who can be summoned to work for any partner, anytime, doing the most tedious research known to the profession—unless they are protected. Watson achieved protected status by working primarily for Arthur Mahoney and by doing such a good job that Arthur in turn made sure his associate’s time was not squandered doing document productions or flying to Newark to do some due diligence on a struggling fertilizer concern. Intrafirm patronage. Not that the work he did for Arthur was any more meaningful or fulfilling than flying to Newark, but it was predictable and manageable, kept him at home with his family, and involved dealing primarily with machines instead of obnoxious lawyers and demanding clients.

  Arthur’s intercom beeped; he motioned for Watson to stay put.

  “Yes, yes. We’re just wrapping things up. Have one of the receptionists show Dr. Palmquist back here.”

  “Your appointed case,” said Mahoney, switching off his intercom as his eyebrows converged in a frown. “The Business Committee met this morning. They’re concerned about the amount of time these appointed cases are consuming. Yours came up by way of example.”

  “I don’t have much choice about it now,” Watson said. “Do I?”

  “Well, as I mentioned, I’ve been busy with contingency plans.”

  Watson tried to think of a polite, respectful way to tell Arthur that he would prefer handling his own appointed case. And the district court’s local rules were on his side—appointments are made to individual lawyers, not firms.

  Arthur smiled again. And Watson smiled back, until he realized Arthur was smiling right past him at someone standing in the doorway behind Watson’s head.

  “Come in, Dr. Palmquist,” Arthur said, rising from behind his oversize desk and opening his arms.

  Watson stood up and jumped in his clothes at the sight of a woman who looked as if she’d been assembled in the lobby by a team of health and beauty experts. A wife, two kids, a Catholic’s fear of adultery, and an early apprenticeship in sexual harassment litigation had endowed him with a reflexive aversion to attractive women, especially in the workplace. Back in his single days, he would have tagged this one with a field-programmable microchip tracking device, so he could chase her down and explain his uncontrollable impulse to be with her, to know her. But those days were long gone, and those drives subordinated to hearth, home, family, spouse, God.

  When he helped himself to another view during Arthur’s introduction, he was alarmed to discover that she looked even better up close. Black tresses raked around to one side and swept up in a French twist. Steel rims, sheer coral lipstick, same color on the nails. The hint of darkness under her eyes suggested sleeplessness and made him want to solve the mystery of what was keeping her up at night.

  When she and Arthur pecked cheeks and talked of family friends, Watson studiously suppressed the gawking reflex and busied himself with the books and papers that had been in his lap when he stood to meet her. Then he looked past his reading materials to suede pumps, nylons somewhere between pearl and nude, hem a notch below provocative, and up, his eyes ascending the shapely lineaments of Dr. Palmquist—“Rachel,” to Arthur.

  Not normally one to notice clothes, Watson kept noticing hers: The nylons, which indeed turned to nude when she moved them; a lustery blouse that heaved with competitive archetypes in full bloom. A thin, rainbow-colored mist of refracted light clung about the nylons and the sheeny blouse. He trained a gimlet eye between the lapels of a royal blue double-breasted silk suit, where the blouse was just sheer enough for him to make out the ghost of a floral motif on whatever she was wearing underneath.

  Married, he thought. Gotta be.

  “I still see Jim,” said Arthur.

  “I don’t,” she said, with a shrug.

  “Good,” said Arthur, taking her hand up in both of his. “It’s for the best. And things have ended as we thought they might. Remember—we predicted this?”

  Watson felt a pang at all the physical contact Arthur was getting out of the deal. He was reminded of another path not taken in his undergraduate studies. He spent a semester or two absorbed in anthropology, primatology, evolutionary psychology—any epistemology that studied protohuman behavior, humans illuminated by way of monkeys, apes, lawyers, and so-called “primitive” peoples, primal motives played out on a parallel stage. He recalled a passage about male vervet monkeys he had read in a book—How Monkeys See the World—assigned to him by his Evolutionary Psychology and Primate Science professor, a man who had been his idol and mentor for all of three months, until Watson found out what associate professors make a year: “Once he has entered a new group, a male interacts with other males primarily in the context of competition for access to sexually receptive females.” For young human males, Watson had concluded, the observation could be altered to advantage by changing “primarily” to “exclusively.”

  He might need to see her again. She was some kind of expert in a field he might need to know a lot about. And it was fun watching Arthur—a heavy hitter who bowed to no one—fawning at the altar of physical beauty.

  “We were discussing weighty legal matters relative to the subject of beheadings,” said Arthur with a half laugh, motioning her into a chair and summoning Watson to join them.

  “Frequently a symbol for castration, according to Freud,” she said, wrinkling an eyebrow and mocking her own erudition with a lilting chuckle. “The eyes stand in for the testicles, or so the psychoanalysts say. I once wrote a paper on it. I think you should hire me as an expert on beheadings. I’m quite knowledgeable on the subject.”

  “You don’t say,” said Arthur, retreating to the safety of his desk and lining up a few pencils that were already lined up. “How about that, Joe?” Arthur joshed. “An expert on beheadings and castration.”

  “Very Oedipal,” said Rachel. “Freud gets into it with the usual Greek myths. Oedipus rips out his eyes instead of castrating himself, because he has seen the forbidden sight of his mother’s genitals, Medusa’s head—that which no man may look upon and live.”

  Watson held in a smirk and watched Arthur become nonplussed at the discussion of maternal genitals. She had a dreamy, vacant look about her, until she opened her mouth and made like Dr. Knowledge. And her limbs seemed to be loose in overlubricated sockets, off on their own, until she needed them. Head? Eyes? Watson had heard them called everything from Big Sam and the Twins to the Devil banging two bowling balls on the gates of Hell, but this cephalopeniform, oculotesticular eyewash was a new one on him. She was having the old guy on, and Arthur didn’t even know it.

  Another gander at the nylons made Watson a little goosey and short of breath. Under orders to kick in his own doors and arrest himself for discrimination of any kind, he knew he would never inventory the wardrobe of any male professional he met in the course of a day’s business, which meant—what?

  “Astonishing,” Arthur said. “We were just discussing Medusa’s beheading the other day. But in the context of these blasted computer games.”

  “Greek SlaughterHouse?” said Rachel. “Are you guys into Greek SlaughterHouse? My nieces and nephews love it.”

  Arthur looked from Rachel to Watson and ba
ck again. “You see what an old man misses when he won’t sit down in front of a computer.”

  Watson mentally ticked off the forbidden categories to which she did not belong: she was not a secretary, not a client, not a Stern, Pale & Covin associate. He was the one mired in forbidden categories: marriage, commitment, wife, son, daughter; at least this was happening in Arthur’s office, so he wouldn’t have to show her a photo of the wife and kids.

  He knew his boss and the firm well enough to know that Arthur would immediately segue out of the discussion of Greek SlaughterHouse, even though the chance of a breach of client confidentiality was minuscule. It was part of the Stern, Pale code. (“You get paid well for your legal skills,” Arthur had once advised him. “You get paid very well for keeping your mouth shut.”)

  “Enough about games,” said Arthur. “Just now our problem is defending a young man whose own head sits somewhat ticklishly on his shoulders because the federal government, speaking figuratively, wants to cut it off.”

  “I’ve read the papers,” said Palmquist. “And the materials you sent me.”

  “What materials?” Watson asked. It was his case! What was Arthur doing sending his client’s shit to people without asking him first?

  “The police reports came in,” said Arthur, without looking away from Dr. Palmquist. “I faxed them to her,” he said, with a single glance at Watson.

  “I’m sorry,” Watson said, “I must have been distracted by the précis on castration. What is it you’re an expert in?”

  “I’m a neuroscientist,” said Dr. Palmquist.

  “She’s a brain scientist,” said Arthur.

  “Oh,” said Watson, wondering how she went about studying brains.

  “I’m especially interested in forensic neuropsychology. In criminal cases we are sometimes called to testify at sentencing hearings as mitigation specialists, or sometimes at trial we are expert witnesses on the subject of the behavioral implications of neurological disorders. I’m part of a team. Have you heard of the Gage Institute? Ignatius University Medical Center Campus? We study the neurophysiology of violent criminal behavior. We are trying to find out if there are anatomical, neurochemical, metabolic, magnetic, or electrical differences between the brains of violent criminals and normal brains.”

  “She called me,” inserted Arthur.

  “I did,” she said. “A so-called hate crime presents certain issues of motive and intent, or what you lawyers call mens rea, the mental state necessary to find a person guilty of committing a crime, issues that are of particular interest to neuroscience. I can send you abstracts from some of the studies we’re doing on automaticity, neuropathologies, violence, and neural networks.”

  “Suppose your boy has a mental defect of some kind,” urged Arthur. “Seizures, schizophrenia, psychosis, or some other organic malfunction. Suppose Rachel could find something like that for you. Wouldn’t that operate in his defense?”

  “The defendant has a history of impulsive behavior, if you believe the newspapers,” she said with a smile. “We don’t know if there’s a history of drug or alcohol abuse. If we’re lucky there’s a history of epilepsy or seizure activity—which sometimes manifests itself in impulsive or violent behavior. There’s a report that he’s had at least one episode of antisocial behavior in the past, for which he received psychiatric counseling.”

  “What report?” blurted Watson.

  “But it’s the hate business that’s earning him a death sentence,” interrupted Arthur.

  “We don’t know if we have deliberation or premeditation,” said Rachel. “And then there’s the question of the hate motivation.” She nodded at Arthur. “The government seems to be trying out a mixed-motive argument. They want to enhance the penalties here because the defendant was motivated in whole or in part by ill will, hatred, or bias because of the race or disability of the victim. So proving the defendant was enraged by sexual jealousy doesn’t help us. Under the law, they have the burden of proof, but in fact we do. We’re forced to prove a negative. That he was not also motivated by bias, despite his remarks. If he is a bigot, we have to prove that he was not motivated in whole or in part by bigotry in committing the crime.”

  Watson hadn’t been a lawyer for very long, but he had deposed enough doctors to recognize Palmquist’s syndrome: She was a doctor whose favorite hobby was being a lawyer.

  “Isn’t a question like that beyond the realm of medical science?” asked Watson. “I mean, are you suggesting you can test the guy and tell us whether he’s a bigot?” He laughed.

  “No,” she said, without smiling. “But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the prosecution tried just that. They have a brand-new Bias Crimes Unit set up over there—investigators, hate psychologists, prosecutors, expert witnesses—just waiting for cases. The new testing techniques combine standard behavioral testing for automaticity and unconscious bias with functional neurological scans to produce a personality and neurofunctional profile of the defendant. Then you combine the profile results with all the other evidence of bias—comments at the scene, membership in hate organizations, earlier threats against protected minority groups—and you make a case that the crime was bias-motivated.

  “It used to be that these neurological workups were used mainly in the sentencing phase. Lately, both sides have been trying to sneak them in at trial, either to prove a mental defect, or to suggest to the jury that the defendant is a remorseless bigot and an incorrigible criminal. In this case, the charge has more to do with the U.S. Attorney’s mental state than your client’s. Black votes for next year’s Senate elections. African-Americans are sick and tired of seeing these bias-crime statutes used on people of color who intentionally pick white victims. Remember the U.S. Supreme Court case of Wisconsin versus Mitchell?” she asked.

  Arthur stared blankly.

  “I wrote an article about that case,” said Watson. “Wisconsin doubled the sentence of a black kid because he intentionally picked a white victim and assaulted him.”

  She nodded. “And here’s a chance to get a white guy for using the n-word during a violent crime.”

  Her neurolegalistic bafflegab was impressive, but he remained skeptical; he took notes and tried to get enough of it down, so he could look it up in the privacy of the library or find a relevant Web site. He wrote “Wisconsin v. Mitchell” “automaticity,” and “neurofunctional profile” on his notepad.

  “You get a full, free medical workup on your man,” said Arthur. “The newest and best scans. Have you seen the pictures they’re taking of the brain? Why, you can almost reach out and touch it. Rachel tells me these devices are so sensitive and sophisticated—it’s to the point where she can scan you and see if you’re full of hate or sexual deviance.”

  “Arthur,” she said with a laugh.

  “I’m not saying your man is full of those,” he continued. “What if he’s schizophrenic? Suppose he has some kind of malignant, hate-bias, antisocial deviation syndrome?”

  “Suppose he has,” Watson said, perhaps a bit too curtly. He wasn’t sure he could stomach another enthusiastic denunciation of his client from Arthur. He wanted to suggest that he meet with Dr. Palmquist somewhere outside of the firm and away from Arthur, where he could maybe learn a little bit more about sexual deviance.

  “Try this,” she interjected. “You stop by the lab next week, and I’ll show you what we do, and the potential relevance of a workup for your client’s defense. If you don’t like the looks of it, or if he doesn’t want to try us, then forget we ever met.”

  Not likely, he thought. “I’ll stop by,” he said.

  “Excellent,” said Arthur.

  “I know you gentlemen are busy with decapitations,” she said playfully, “and I’ve got to get back to the lab and study some heads which are still attached to bodies.”

  Arthur reached for another pencil. Watson took another eyeful and wondered how she got interested in brains, and if heads are penises and eyes are testicles, then brains are—what?
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  Serried, leather-bound spines loomed behind her. Her chest expanded and shimmered with another laugh. Against the backdrop of inert volumes filled with symbols, the flesh of her face and hands seemed at once transcendent and delightfully corporeal.

  Arthur came out from behind his desk—a little boy seeking more affection, a look of sad longing at the last glimpse of her leaving. His phone trilled.

  “Uh, Doctor,” said Watson, deciding to make a move while Arthur was admiring her exit and feeling for his phone.

  She turned on a heel and smiled.

  “This report you mentioned,” he said, continuing to move past her and leading her out of Arthur’s office. “And the history of impulsive behavior. Is that from a medical report? What kind of impulsive or antisocial behavior are we talking about?”

  She laughed as they moved down the hallway. “You’ve been reading the Post-Dispatch,” she said. “If you want unreliable dirt in St. Louis, you need to read the River City News. They claim that your client had a few run-ins with the law and was tossed out of college five years ago after he painted a swastika on a water tower in southern Missouri. Sounds like a fraternity prank, but unfortunately it also fits right into his hate crime résumé.”

  They stopped outside Watson’s office, where she noticed the name plaque. “Your place?”