Brain Storm

by Richard Dooling

  Harper appeared in the doorway.

  “Come in, Mr. Harper, we’re going over our Latin lessons.” He crooked a finger and pointed it at Watson. “Prius vitiis laboravimus, nunc legibus,” he said. “That’s what old Judge Short welded into the dog collars.”

  “ ‘First vices we labored with,’ ” stammered Watson, “ ‘now legis—’ ”

  “Close,” said the judge. “ ‘We labored first with vices, now with laws.’ Mr. Harper, write that down.”

  Harper’s hand went to his shirt pocket for a pen.

  “Well, Mr. Harper, you’re back, and I trust it took you so long because you’ve gotten authority to settle every case in the Eastern District of Missouri. While you were gone, I stood Mr. Watson here up in front of an open grave and got his bottom line, and now I am going to do the same for you. Do you have full authority for manslaughter?”

  “I do,” said Harper, “but only because I assured Mr. Donahue that you would not—”

  “Do you have FINAL, FULL, and COMPLETE authority for manslaughter?” yelled the judge.

  “I do,” said Harper.

  “Good,” said the judge. “Because Mr. Watson is so young and crazy and inexperienced, he thinks he’s got a defendant’s verdict here and the beginnings of a glorious career as a criminal defense lawyer.”

  “With all due respect, Judge,” said Harper. “A person was murdered. A disabled person of color.”

  The judge closed his eyes and touched his silver temples.

  “Mr. Harper,” said the judge, becalming himself, “your little hate pigeonholes are gone! We don’t need to hear about them anymore. If you mention race, disability, or hate again, I will dump this ashtray on the floor, I will pronounce your sins out loud, and I will make you write them in the ashes. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Judge,” said Harper, glancing once out the window at the sunlight.

  “Now,” the judge said, lifting the lid of his humidor, “I know we have a murder victim, that’s why this is called a homicide case. But as we go along here, it seems that maybe the government’s gone after the wrong perp. What if the wife pulled a nasty on a nasty husband and set his white ass up? You can’t turn around and come after her, can you? Because you’ll look like legal village idiots and your only witness will become a codefendant. ‘Whoops, our mistake. Wasn’t a hate crime, it was a marital dispute.’ The press would examine your entrails on page one.”

  “Judge,” said Harper, squirming and shifting his weight.

  “I’ll tell you when I’m ready to hear your arguments. I am having Ida draft up a settlement agreement in this case. The defendant will plead guilty to a single charge of voluntary manslaughter. Mr. Watson has some other incidental language on the medical treatments and the inclusiveness with regard to evidence found at the scene and taken from the defendant’s car. I’m sure he has his reasons. It’s being typed up now on your letterhead. I foresee that you will be signing it.”

  “Judge, there is no possible way I can agree to a single charge of manslaughter. Mr. Donahue will—”

  “You don’t have to sign it,” said Judge Stang. “We can do it the old-fashioned way by having a trial on Monday morning with that antic, fun-loving jury who acquitted your drug dealer last week.”

  “Judge, I—”

  “Hold your arguments,” said the judge, pausing to light his cigar. “It’s a long way from here to Monday morning.” He swiveled back around in his recliner and sighed, luxuriously taking in another view of his river. “And we have a beautiful day taking shape out the window. Makes a fella wanna chuck it all and head out to the club for a gin and tonic. Would you care for a chair, Mr. Harper?”

  Watson looked at Harper, who suddenly noticed that Watson was sitting in a chair. “Actually, Judge,” said Harper, “a chair would be very nice.”

  “Well, let me know when you’re ready to sign the plea-bargain agreements, and I’ll have Ida bring them in with a chair.”

  Harper irritably looked at the top of the judge’s bald head. “I apologize, really, I do, Judge, but manslaughter is out of the question in this case,” he protested.

  “Mr. Harper, I hope you are not in a hurry, because I have a few matters to go over with you and Mr. Watson. And I want to conclude these matters before I entertain your arguments about how you can’t offer a plea on a single charge of manslaughter.

  “In the car on the way in this morning, I said to Doris … Doris, that’s my wife, she drives me these days because of my cataracts. Maybe you know her?”

  “I confess, Judge, I …” said Harper.

  “Well then, you’ve no idea what a keen interest she takes in all the court’s business. Why, every evening for going on forty years now, I usually stagger in the door behind her and sit down at the kitchen table, and Doris typically takes one of those big, elegant, long-stemmed white wine glasses with a gold band around the top that we got sixty years ago at our wedding, and she fills it to the brim with Jack Daniel’s for me, and then she says, ‘Well, Whit, did you receive any amended or supplemental pleadings dealing with joinder or pendent jurisdiction of state claims today?’ And I say, ‘No, Doris, we don’t do a goddamn thing in that courthouse any more, except drugs, guns, and civil rights.’ And she’ll say, ‘Well, Whit, were any of those poor pro se prisoners deprived of their constitutional rights today or were any of those jailhouse lawyers filing habeas corpus petitions today, or how about some of that collateral estoppel or res judicata stuff we used to pillow-talk about for half the night?’ And I’ll say, ‘Not anymore, Doris. Time was, if a prisoner didn’t get two aspirins on time, we’d have a three-week trial on our hands, but now it’s drugs, guns, employment discrimination, and hate crimes.’

  “ ‘Well, then,’ she says, ‘has the federal government discovered any more substances they don’t want people to take for fear it will corrupt their morals and turn them into people of amorality?’ She takes a very keen interest in substance abuse,” said the judge, nodding vigorously. “Very keen, because she realizes the importance of the government being in control of the chemical makeup of its citizens’ bloodstreams.”

  “Judge,” said Harper, despairingly, “we didn’t … This isn’t a drug case. We aren’t here to …”

  “Oh,” said Judge Stang, staying him with the flat of his palm, “I know your mission is on an altogether different plane than mere drug abuse. Your mission is to abolish murder and hatred. And you may be just the lawyer I am looking for. You can see that Doris cares very deeply about the administration of justice in these hallowed chambers, so I said to her this morning, ‘Doris, I can just feel it in the marrow of these old bones, something different is going to happen today. I’m having a settlement conference this afternoon with two lawyers in that erstwhile hate crime case, which has now become a manslaughter case. And I just know something different is going to happen.’ And she said, ‘Why, Whit, whatever do you mean? You loathe settlement conferences. You always say it’s the same old shit from the same old bulls. What could be different?’ ”

  Harper sighed and lifted his eyes over the judge’s head and out toward the window, where white flocs of cumulus clouds were in full sail against a brilliant blue sky.

  “ ‘Doris,’ I said,” the judge continued, “and tears formed, right here, in the windows of my soul.” The lawyers could see his elbows as he apparently pointed at his eyes with his index fingers. “And I said, ‘Doris, this afternoon I just know I am going to a hear a brand-new argument from a new breed of lawyer. I am going to hear the most stunning elucidation of fundamental human truths since Aristotle peripatetically paced about the Lyceum and discoursed on metaphysics. This lawyer has impeccable qualifications. He is full to the brim with integrity and oozing ethical punctiliousness from his pores. He is an attorney from the United States Government. His name is Michael Harper, Esquire. He is an Assistant United States Attorney. He is always eager to do the best possible work in my courtroom because he knows if he doesn’t I will simply clusterf
uck every case he brings before me for the rest of his natural life. Doris,’ I said, ‘I am going to break my back trying to get the lawyers to agree to manslaughter, but Mr. Harper won’t go for it. Instead Mr. Harper will say, That is impossible, Judge, and here is why.’ ”

  The judge puffed twice on his cigar.

  Harper opened his mouth.

  The judge continued talking, “ ‘And then,’ I told Doris, ‘Mr. Harper will tell me why. But before he does, my chambers will fall silent. Awe will break out everywhere like the calm before the rash, I mean like the balm before the storm, like the hush that will settle over all Creation before the Second Coming. And Doris said to me, ‘Oh, Whit, stop being so dramatic! Get to the point!’ And I said, ‘No, Doris. You don’t understand! Forty years I’ve waited for the kind of argument Mr. Harper is going to make to me. Forty years I’ve wandered in barren deserts of legal dust and sand, parched by duplicity and desiccating deception. Forty years I’ve waited for a messiah! I want to behold the promised land of the new jurisprudence! And Mr. Michael Harper is going to show it to me. He will be my Moses. I am distressed! Only Michael Harper can comfort me. And when death comes for me, Mr. Harper can nod his head wherever he is and say to himself, ‘I did right by Judge Stang.’ ”

  Two more puffs on his cigar, and a longer interlude of silence.

  Harper again drew a breath to speak.

  “ ‘Then and only then,’ I said, ‘will Mr. Harper speak. And as he speaks, my heart will beat faster, my eyeballs will fall out of my head, because I will hear an argument from Mr. Michael Harper that will restore my faith in jurisprudence and renew my belief in the fundamental goodwill of mankind. In a single stroke this argument of his will unite social policy with the dignity of the human individual, and it will bring the high concerns of the Constitution together with the lowest municipal ordinance. This argument will be so ingenious, profound, and aglow with particles of sweetness and light streaming forth from the beacon of Reason, that I will stagger out of my recliner and fall to my rickety knees. Sir William Blackstone, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Learned Hand will walk out of their graves and fall to their knees right next to me! I’ll bathe in the light of Mr. Harper’s stunning insight and marvel my fool head off that a lawyer and officer of my court is destined to take his place forever as one of history’s greatest jurisprudential scholars.”

  He stopped, placed both of his gnarled hands on the arms of his chair and waited.

  “I want to go home and tell Doris I was right. I want to sit down at my dinner table tonight and say, ‘It happened! I heard a legal argument that has justified the last forty years of my life.’ ”

  Harper set his briefcase on the floor and put his hands over his ears.

  “I’m offering a single count of manslaughter,” he said.

  CHAPTER 29

  When Watson left Judge Stang’s chambers, he was no longer a law school graduate with an appointed case. He was a Colossus bestride the Courthouse of the Future. He marched along the corridors of power, down gleaming hallways paneled in limestone and textured marble—a gladiator triumphant in the Coliseum for the New Millennium—the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Federal Courthouse. He didn’t see any other prosecutors—they were all probably cowering in little bureaucratic cubbyholes, lest the mighty Watson crush them under his heel. Maybe I’ll give old Gerry a call and let him know how the settlement turned out, he thought. If Myrna were here, she’d fetch him a wheelbarrow and help him hoist these two big fleshy cannonballs banging around between his legs. Major wood. Instrument of domination.

  He entered an elevator and leaned against a cloth panel framed in cherry mullions, sharing his enlarging personal space with other lawyers, courthouse personnel, jurors, and the like—commoners who still had no idea who was standing in their midst. He had to stop himself from clearing his throat and announcing to the group, “Do you realize I just vanquished the government of the United States of America!? Took them to school! Facial humiliation. By myself!” He felt like the young Bill Gates leaving one of those fateful meetings with IBM executive James Cannavino. Big Blue, eviscerated by a twenty-four-year-old college dropout and turbo geek. J. Random Hacker triumphant. Kicked their ass! With authority. Eat flaming death, Government Warlords! I am CarnageMaster! Best of all, it was not multimedia with MMX goggles and Active-X plug-ins. It was real. Blood, flesh, bone, and Real Money was looming somewhere on the horizon, he could smell it. His brain was thinking maybe it should insure itself with Lloyds of London.

  In the main lobby, he began humming some giddy combination of the Emperor concerto and a tune from his high school days, “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” by Camper Van Beethoven. He took a right and headed for the shuttle elevators and the parking garage. He glanced up and saw the snack bar and newsstand concessions where he had paused that fateful day for “refreshments,” as Arthur had put it. His former boss now seemed a diminutive, mediocre sort of lawyer, lost in Watson’s new long shadow, and it seemed a fitting bookend moment to stop in for another Coke—hoist a beverage in honor of victory and in memory of bondage forsworn.

  The same blind cashier was settled on a stool behind the counter, his fingertips skimming another Braille manuscript, his long white cane against the wall.

  “Afternoon,” said samurai Watson, selecting a twenty-ounce Coke and setting it on the counter. “Coke,” he said. “A big one.”

  Once that bonus comes around, he thought, I should maybe pick up a hundred shares of Coke. He could check with R.J. about that, make him proud that his working fool son-in-law was looking to invest some seed money.

  The blind man punched buttons on the register keypad.

  Watson hoisted his wallet—swollen with twenty-dollar bills from Buck and his lawyer. He pulled out a nice, new starchy one and handed it to the blind cashier, who took it, rubbed it with his fingertips, and paused.

  “I’ll take some cashews, too,” said Watson, snagging a tubular bag near the register and plopping it on the counter.

  The blind registrar frowned and rubbed the bill again, while Watson looked over the magazine racks—Esquire, Glamour, People, George—all plastered with glossy photos of busty women in slinky dishabille. Babes built for comfort, with billowy bosoms on willowy frames. Elegant enchantresses and spellbinding voluptuaries. Watson heard a beep, but paid no attention because he was soaking up high-tone female flesh by the eyeful.

  Ain’t it funny how the men’s magazines and the women’s magazines both have half-naked babes prominently displayed on the covers? Call your sociology professor. Probably means something. Not that he cared what it meant. He only knew that most of these bedizened silk foxes probably wanted to mate with the kind of guy who got paid hourly wads of cash for stepping on the necks of federal prosecutors. “Alpha! We want you!” they seemed to be saying, displaying cleavages, pursing and pouting their parted red lips, cooching, all but presenting with lordosis. Then the magazine puzzle solved itself in one of those flashes to the new brain that his client was so fond of describing. The men want to mate with those alluring babes, and the women want to be those alluring babes. Heck of a deal. See Henry Adams, The Virgin & the Dynamo. See also Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.

  “Sir,” said the blind man, a troubled look on his face.

  “Yeah,” said CarnageMaster Watson. The warrior thirsts! What mundane complications could possibly obstruct the slaking of said thirst?

  “The machine is indicating that your bill is … defective,” the man said politely. “Do you have another one?”

  Watson took the bill back. It wasn’t wrinkled, or old, or dirty, or torn, like the bills you can’t get change machines to take. It was a perfectly good twenty-dollar bill. Rather than press the issue with a blind guy, he figured it would be easier just to fetch out another, and he did. He had plenty, for once—dozens right there in his billfold, not to mention ripstop envelopes with plenty more out in the back of the car.

  “Here’s another one
,” said Watson, placing the bill in the man’s hand. Then his eyes went foraging again among the glossy boobular magazine covers. He didn’t even hear the machine beep again, probably because the male visual cortex was orange or hot pink with activity, and auditory was cool blue or purple.

  “Sir,” said the cashier.

  “Yeah,” said Watson, tearing his optic nerves from a curvaceous straw-blond vixen on the cover of Esquire.

  The man was handing back the second bill, as Watson thought, That fucking machine needs service, man. If it wasn’t such a pain in the ass I might buy a few of these magazines.

  “Sir,” said the cashier politely, “the machine is signaling that neither of these bills is genuine, and I can tell you that they don’t feel genuine either. On the second floor, upstairs here in this building, there are Secret Service currency experts. They are part of the Treasury Department, along with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. They handle currency matters. If you take these up there …”

  Watson looked down at the wad of twenties from Buck’s lawyer that was fattening his billfold and went into system hang. THIS PROGRAM HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL ACTION AND WILL BE SHUT DOWN. PLEASE CLOSE THIS SESSION AND REBOOT YOUR MACHINE.

  “It happens from time to time,” the man explained in a kind voice. “These counterfeit bills get loose in circulation. The Secret Service will want to know about them. Just go down the hallway there to your right, and back up to the second floor.”