“Then I get arrested for hating niggers,” said Mary, challenging her with another look.
“Nah,” Myrna said. “If they get on your bad side, they lose the only witness who can put an Order of the Eagler away for life? No. I think it goes this way, ‘Nigger?’ asks the field officer. ‘Who used that word? Surely you didn’t use that word, did you, Mrs. Whitlow?’ ” Myrna said, glaring at Mary Whitlow. “ ‘Why, that kind of word makes us wonder if this was a hate crime. Yes, that’s right. Extra penalties, big ones for a hate crime, but only for criminals who have committed some other separate crime, like shooting a black man or a disabled person. So you were saying? Who said nigger? Was it the bastard dickhead who said it? Think back. Did he say it at any other time just before the crime was committed, or maybe while the crime was being committed? Because if he did, that would be serious, indeed. Did he say anything about Mr. Brawley’s disability?’ ”
“Fuck you, lady,” said Mary.
“I’m getting warm,” said Myrna, “don’t you think, Joey? I gotta talk to my receptionist about an appointment I got waiting. Can you two hold on a sec? Unless Mary Whitlow has somewhere to go?”
Myrna nodded hard at Joe, motioning him into the hallway. Once outside her door, she said, “In case you’ve never done this before, it’s called Mutt and Jeff, OK? You go back in there and tell her I’m a ruthless, crazy bitch from Hell and there is no telling what I will do. I might call Harper on her. I might hand over the Eagle Eye newspapers to the government. I might get her charged with tampering or blackmail. Nice touch trying to stop me going after her. Brilliant. You got real instincts. Try and get her to confide in you. Tell her you can help her figure out what to do. She’s sweating. She’s got the Eagles after her and the government. She is trapped and terrified. Use her fear.”
She pushed him back through the door into her office and closed it.
Mary Whitlow craned her fat neck around.
“Ms. Schweich has a client she needs to speak with momentarily,” said Watson, taking the chair opposite Mary and putting his hands on his knees.
“Yeah,” said Mary, “maybe she’ll fall and break her neck on the way.”
Joe watched her fingers shake as she lit another cigarette.
“I … guess … you don’t know what to do now,” said Joe. “If I can help …?”
“Fuck you,” said Mary.
“I was appointed to be your husband’s lawyer,” said Joe. “I’m just trying to help him. If you have a message for him that you think will help him. Or maybe help you—”
“You fuck around?” she asked suddenly.
His mouth opened and he looked at her white face, now rigid with hatred. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard her right, or if his own obsessions were leaking out again and infecting the world. She puffed and regarded him with a fixed, squinted gaze, pointing with her cigarette at the wedding band on his left hand. “I said, do you fuck around?”
“What?” he asked, feeling blood rushing under the skin of his face.
“I thought so,” she said. “They all do. And after they fuck around on you. They lie about it.”
“Ms. Schweich wanted me to ask you about—”
“You Catholic?” She glanced at him again. “You went to that Jesuit high school with Jimmy—ain’t that what the paper said? Jimmy made me turn Catholic, too. Said I had to or he weren’t gonna marry me. Then he went on and on about how adultery is a mortal sin, right up there with murder,” she said, tamping her ashes in midair and watching them fall to the floor. “Fucker.”
The medical reports Palmquist had given him scrolled by in his imagination as if on a ticker at the bottom of the screen called consciousness: “Patient stated she could not possibly have … a sexually transmitted disease, because she had never had sex with anyone except her husband.”
“Jimmy told me that if I ever fucked around on him, he would shoot me in the head and blame it on a nigger.”
“And according to your statements, you did fuck around, didn’t you?” asked Watson, deciding the best policy was to try and meet her at her level. But having mustered the courage to look her in the eye and confront her with her own story, he knew instantly that he could never go where she was. She gave him a killing look—a hockey mask from a horror movie. He could hear air being sucked into her nostrils. Her black eyes shone with fevered loathing. Maybe Othello looked like this the night he strangled Desdemona. Black vengeance come from hollow Hell, her bosom full of aspics’ tongues, a big toad-woman living upon the vapors of dungeons. But Othello wasn’t real, he reminded himself. No, it was like a verbal video game for hip literary types. A cartoon of emotions fossilized in print. And Othello had only a purloined hankie for hard evidence—imagine if Desdemona had given him a dose? Mary Whitlow was sporting the real item.
She drew a deep puff from her Kent and blew it at Watson, then clenched her teeth and said, “Jimmy never did say what would happen if he fucked around on me.” Her eyes glinted. She took another puff and rolled the cigarette in her fingers, dyed black and orange from print and tobacco. “I guess he knows now.”
CHAPTER 24
Watson quietly neglected to invite Myrna to the Voice Transcription Device party. Instead he had the machine dusted for prints at a private lab the next day. Then he called VTech Industries, the local distributor, and arranged an appointment with John Crowell, the senior VTech service representative. By phone, Crowell explained that the VTD operated at maximum accuracy only if it contained the speaker’s vocal profile—a list of approximately one hundred sounds spoken aloud and stored in the machine’s memory—which in the best of cases enabled the program to recognize and transcribe an individual’s voice into printed words. With the profile in place, transcription accuracy ranged between 80 and 90 percent, with frequent errors, especially for homonyms (to, two, too; some, sum). Without the profile—for example, when the speaker was a casual acquaintance or infrequent visitor—transcription was a hit-and-miss affair, averaging 40 to 60 percent accuracy.
Crowell explained that voice recognition technology still suffered from the same inexactness and inaccuracies that had bedeviled the computer industry’s quest for handwriting transcription and pen-based computers. VoiceType technology had been developed by IBM back in the mid-1990s, and by 1996 had begun showing up in operating systems such as OS/2 Warp 4. VoiceType dictation was the first office application, followed a few years later by handheld VTDs—assistive devices for the deaf—intended to display reasonably accurate transcriptions of spoken communications on the liquid crystal screen of the VTD. Most of the devices also contained a keypad, so the deaf person could then quickly type a response on the screen and show it to a hearing person. Or even play it for them, using the device’s voice synthesis features. But so far, according to Crowell, practice lagged behind promise: Errors were still frequent and egregious.
When Watson told his would-be expert that he needed someone who could testify about the device and whatever was stored in its memory, Crowell was cautionary. Using a VTD to prove what someone said or didn’t say in any given session was probably not possible. But, he added, if Elvin Brawley was using the device to type messages to whomever he had been talking to in any given session, the machine’s memory should contain an accurate record of what he had typed. Trying to prove what Mary Whitlow said or didn’t say would be a different matter.
Watson drove out Highway 40 to an office park in Chesterfield, where he met Crowell, a tall, stoop-shouldered, fifty-ish technician with a jeweler’s loupe mounted on the frames of his bifocals. Crowell showed Watson into a workshop lined with folding tables and stacked with gutted electronic equipment, disemboweled chassis sprouting spangled, multicolored wires, unmoored circuit boards leaning in cross-hatched heaps.
“Have you used one of these before?” Crowell asked, sitting at a circular table under a hooded row of fluorescent worklights and showing Watson a chair next to him.
“No,” said Watson.
“Let’s
play with another one before we boot yours up,” he said. He rose from the table and fetched another VTD, setting it between them. “It’s an 880,” he said, “same model as your victim’s machine.” He pivoted the device and pointed the LCD panel at Watson. “Microphone,” he said, pointing at two tiny slits in the corner of the cover.
Crowell pushed a button and powered on the device. “READY” flashed on the LCD. Then Crowell pushed another button, and the message “BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION, LISTENING …” appeared on the screen. Crowell began speaking in a clear, distinct voice, with a slight pause between each word.
“When I put it in transcription mode, it attempts to translate every vocalization it receives into printed words. Period. Punctuation is absent unless the speaker provides it by saying period, comma, and so on.”
Watson watched as Crowell’s words, or rather, something like Crowell’s words appeared on the LCD screen: “When I pudding transcription mode it contempt too translate aviary vocalization it release into print words. Punch your station is absent unless the speaking provides it by saying., and so on”
“You see?” said Crowell. “Pretty rough.”
“You see pretty Ralph” appeared on the screen.
Then Crowell spoke even slower with more emphatic pauses. “It does better if you speak carefully and use simple words. Period.”
Watson watched the machine display: “It dozen better if you speak careful and used simple words.”
When Crowell began speaking normally again, the screen filled with near gibberish. He turned off the device. “It also only recognizes words in its database of common speech. It does not transcribe profanity, slang, esoteric words, and the like. Watch.” He powered the unit back on. “Fuck you, asshole.”
“Frog you gas hole” appeared on the screen.
“Our customers who lease these provide them for their deaf employees to help satisfy the reasonable accommodation requirements of the handicap laws. And the technology does help deaf people communicate with hearing people who don’t know sign language. When attempting communication with someone who knows no sign language, deaf people get most of their information from lip-reading and from the speaker’s facial expressions. This device really provides them with just another uncertain set of clues to help them guess what is being said by a hearing person. Watch my lips,” he commanded. “What’s that big loud noise. What’s that big loud noise.
“Now, watch my lips again,” he said. “What’s that pig outdoors. What’s that pig outdoors. See? To a deaf person, they look exactly the same on the lips. Now …” He powered on the VTD.
“BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION, LISTENING …” said the screen.
“What’s that big loud noise,” said Crowell. “What’s that pig outdoors.”
Watson watched the screen as “What sat big loud noise what sat pig outdoors” appeared.
“See,” said Crowell. “It helps, but it’s far from accurate.” He powered off the machine and returned it to the shelf.
“The technology depends on very sophisticated hardware and software. Skeptics would say it has been just around the corner for three decades, and still not here. Every time a CEO or a lawyer or anybody else who dictates for a living hears about it, they want it, because they think it will replace their secretary and save them from learning to type. Unfortunately, the proof isn’t in the pudding. Yet,” continued Crowell, with a wry smile, “because it’s still just around the corner. Until then, if the thing is being used for dictation, somebody must go back and edit the transcription. You can appreciate the hurdles in speech transcription if you imagine a device capable of accurately transcribing a Boston accent, a North Carolina drawl, and Jamaican Creole. It’s all English, but tough to teach a computer.”
Crowell snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and removed the back of Elvin Brawley’s machine. He installed a fresh battery pack, then pushed the power button. Watson held his breath and watched the LCD come to life.
“AUTOSAVE ON SHUTDOWN,” said the screen, “THE SESSION DATED 14 JUNE 2002 WAS SAVED AT 17:45 ON SHUTDOWN.”
“That’s it,” said Watson. “The day of the … The day it happened.”
“Somebody turned the machine off before the battery died,” said Crowell.
“PRESS ‘Y’ NOW IF YOU WANT TO RETRIEVE THE TRANSCRIPTION SESSION TIME AND DATE STAMPED FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2002 AT 17:45.”
Crowell touched Y.
“Looks like the only saved session,” he said, “which isn’t unusual. The system resources required to store and run the program itself don’t leave much room for storing multiple long sessions. Users are encouraged to offload to their PCs if they want to save multiple sessions.”
“But we do have at least one session?” asked Watson.
“Looks that way,” said the technician, as they watched the screen fill with characters:
14 JUNE 2002 17:41
BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION. LISTENING …
Got it set up
Got my voice
OK
When I told you the lessons are too expense if
YOU FIND BETTER LESSONS FOR CHEAPER THAN BUY BETTER LESSONS
“His should be the caps,” said Crowell. “The caps should be what he is typing back to her in response to her comments.”
The session continued scrolling by on the screen:
Maybe we will buy lessons from somebody else
Then is last lesson one less they tell me different
I DON’T MAKE MORE LESSON BUT THIS LESSON YOU STILL WANT?
FOUR FOR ONE? THE SAME AS ALWAYS?
14 JUNE 2002 17:42
Yes for for one I have the money
YOU SAID YOUR HUSBAND GO?
Gone yes
YOU SAID YOU WANT ME TOUCH YOU?
Yes
YOU WANT ME TOUCH YOU?
Yes and I will too
14 JUNE 2002 17:45
James help me vinegar is common anthony
Help me he’s gone crazy
Vinegar is common anthony help me
AUTOSAVE, CLOSING SESSION.
Watson and Crowell replayed the session.
“That’s it?” asked Watson. “Can we print it?”
“Sure,” said Crowell, turning in his chair and grabbing a bubble jet printer from a nearby table, then cabling it to the VTD.
While Watson waited for the printout, he imagined Mary and Elvin in her living room. Her saying something like the lowercase words. Elvin typing the uppercase ones. And Whitlow, who was outside with a nursery monitor would hear—what? Only whatever Mary was saying, and not what Brawley was typing. In other words, when Elvin had typed: “YOU SAID YOUR HUSBAND GO?” Whitlow would have heard only “Gone yes.” When Elvin had typed: “YOU SAID YOU WANT ME TOUCH YOU?” Whitlow would have heard “Yes.”
Watson looked at the time entries printed in the margin of the sheet. “Would the times be accurate?”
“Should be,” said Crowell. “Probably the most reliable information on the screen.”
Watson studied the three time entries. The first, lengthy series of comments about expensive lessons apparently took about one minute, separated by 17:41 and 17:42, which seemed about right if one factored in lags for doing the keypad work and reading the screen.
“Would they be sitting together turning the thing back and forth? The way we are now?” asked Watson.
“Probably,” said Crowell, “especially since he’s typing back to her.”
The second batch of comments was about one third the length of the first, but it began at 17:42 and ended at 17:45, when, according to the machine, Mary Whitlow said repeatedly: “James help me vinegar is common anthony.”
“Why does the long series of comments take one minute and the second short one take three minutes?” asked Watson.
Crowell looked at the printout. “Well, during the second session, they were either communicating really slowly,” he said, noting the time discrepancies with a pencil, “or, judging from the first patch, they communicated for half a
minute with two and a half minutes worth of silence in there somewhere.”
Watson imagined Elvin and Mary sitting at the table looking at his VTD screen: YOUR HUSBAND GO? And Mary says, “Yes.” And Whitlow, sitting out in his Ford Taurus with the nursery monitor hears his wife say, “Yes,” and thinks, Maybe he asked her for a light? He does not hear: YOU WANT ME TOUCH YOU? Only “Yes” and “Yes and I will too.”
For the first time, Watson considered Elvin. What about Elvin? What would Elvin hear?
“I can send you lists of the most likely near hits on these words that don’t seem to fit. Vinegar, common, anthony. She probably said something else. Sometimes it helps to look at others in the same phonic spectrum. For instance, common gets mixed up with come on, coming, calm down, and so on. Maybe that would help.”
Watson looked down at vinegar and felt sick to his stomach. Two minutes of silence after Mary said she wanted him to touch her? And what would Elvin hear? What if he couldn’t even see her face? What if he was busy touching her, or she was busy touching him, and not looking at the VTD? Elvin would hear nothing. And unless he could see her face or the VTD, he wouldn’t even know she was talking.
Vinegar is common anthony.
For no apparent reason, he suddenly recalled one of the articles retrieved by his Internet spider named Rachel: “Are Animals Capable of Deception?” The answer: an emphatic yes, as evidenced by Frans de Waal, who observed subordinate male chimpanzees after they had furtively sought and obtained sexual favors from adult females who “belonged” to dominant males. If the alpha males discovered their subordinates in flagrante delicto, the young bucks covered their erect penises and made nice. Just talking, Boss. Watercooler stuff. No big. Watson could vividly imagine himself covering his penis with his hands if Arthur, R. J. Connally, Judge Stang, or his faithful father caught him at the portals of Palmquist’s pearly pink gates. “No, really, I was just looking out for the interests of my client.”
Brain Storm Page 39