The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “What does your attorney say?”

  “I ’unno.”

  “Come on, son. Of course you know. You have an excellent attorney. He’s one of the best, Mr. Sonnenberg is. He has a lot of experience. You listen to him. He’ll tell you I’m right. This thing isn’t gonna go away, any more than cancer’s gonna go away.”

  Lockwood kept looking down. Whatever his lawyer and the judge and the D.A. had cooked up, he wasn’t buying it.

  “Look, son,” said Kovitsky, “talk it over some more with your attorney. Talk it over with your mother. What does your mother say?”

  Lockwood looked up with live hatred. Tears began to form in his eyes. It was very touchy business, talking to these boys about their mothers. But Kovitsky stared right at him.

  “All right, Counselor!” said Kovitsky, raising his voice and looking over toward Sonnenberg. “And, Mr. Torres. I’m postponing this until two weeks from today. And, son,” he said to Lockwood, “you think over what I told you, and you confer with Mr. Sonnenberg, and you make up your mind. Okay?”

  Lockwood gave Kovitsky one last flicker of a glance and nodded yes and walked away from the bench toward the spectators’ section. Sonnenberg walked with him and said something, but Lockwood made no response. When he passed the railing and saw his buddies getting up from the last bench, Lockwood began pimp-rolling. Outta here! Back to…the Life! The three of them pimp-rolled out of the courtroom, with Sonnenberg sauntering behind, his chin cocked up at a thirty-degree angle.

  The morning was grinding on, and so far Kovitsky hadn’t disposed of a single case.

  It was late in the morning when Kovitsky finally worked his way through the calendar and reached the trial of Herbert 92X, which was now in its fourth day. Kramer was standing by the prosecution table. The court officers were rotating their shoulder sockets and stretching and otherwise readying themselves for the arrival of Herbert 92X, whom they considered enough of a maniac to do something stupid and violent in the courtroom. Herbert 92X’s lawyer, Albert Teskowitz, appointed by the court, walked over from the defense table. He was a scrawny stooped man with a pale blue plaid jacket that rode three or four inches off his neck and a pair of brown slacks that had never been introduced to the jacket. His thinning gray hair was the color of dry ice. He flashed Kramer a screwy little smile that as much as declared, “The charade is about to begin.”

  “Well, Larry,” he said, “are you ready for the wisdom of Allah?”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Kramer. “Does Herbert select this stuff every day with the idea that it makes some kind of comment on what’s going on in the case, or does he just open the book? I can’t tell.”

  “I don’t know,” said Teskowitz. “I stay off the subject, to tell you the truth. Just mention it, and it’s an hour out of your life. You ever talk to a logical lunatic before? They’re much worse than a plain lunatic.”

  Teskowitz was such a bad lawyer, Kramer felt sorry for Herbert. But, then, he felt sorry for him, anyway. Herbert 92X’s legal name was Herbert Cantrell; 92X was his Muslim name. He was a driver for a liquor distributor. That was one of a number of things that made Kramer believe he wasn’t a real Muslim. A real Muslim wouldn’t have anything to do with liquor. In any case, one day Herbert’s truck was hijacked on Willis Avenue by three Italians from Brooklyn who had done little else for the past decade but hijack trucks for whoever was paying for hijacking trucks. They pulled guns on Herbert, tied him up, gave him a punch in the face, threw him into a Dumpster on a side street, and warned him not to move for an hour. Then the three Italians drove the liquor truck to the warehouse of their employer of the moment, a wiseguy liquor distributor who routinely cut costs by hijacking merchandise. They drove up with the hijacked truck, and the loading-dock foreman said, “Holy shit! You guys are in a lotta trouble! That’s one a our trucks!”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “That’s one a our trucks! I just loaded it two hours ago! You’re boosting stuff we just got through boosting! You just worked over one a our guys! You’re in a lotta trouble!”

  So the three Italians jumped into the truck and sped to the Dumpster to give Herbert 92X back his truck. But Herbert had managed to get out. They started driving up and down the streets in the truck, looking for him. They finally found him in a bar where he had gone to steady his nerves. This was definitely not the Muslim way. They came walking in to tell him they were sorry and that he could have his truck back, but Herbert thought they were coming after him because he had ignored their warning to stay in the Dumpster. So he pulled a .38-caliber revolver out from under his thermal jacket—it had been there all along, but these hard cases had gotten the drop on him—and he fired two shots. He missed the three Italians but hit and killed a man named Nestor Cabrillo, who had come in to make a telephone call. The firearm was perhaps a necessary item of defense in what was obviously a hazardous occupation. But he was not licensed to carry it, and Nestor Cabrillo was an upstanding citizen with five children. So Herbert was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, and the case had to be prosecuted, and Kramer was stuck with that task. The case was a study in stupidity, incompetence, and uselessness; in short, a piece of shit. Herbert 92X refused to accept a plea bargain, since he regarded what had happened as an accident. He was only sorry that the .38 had jerked his hand around so. So this piece a shit had now gone to trial.

  A door off to the side of the judge’s bench opened, and out came Herbert 92X and two corrections officers. The Corrections Department ran the detention pens, which were some windowless cages half a floor above the courtroom. Herbert 92X was a tall man. His eyes shone out of the shadow of a checked Yasir Arafat-style headgear that hung over his forehead. He wore a brown gown that came down to his calves. Below the gown you could see cream-colored pants, whose lapped side seams had contrasting stitching, and a pair of brown Tuczek-toed shoes. His hands were behind his back. When the corrections officers turned him around to unlock his handcuffs, Kramer could see that he was holding the Koran.

  “Yo, Herbert!” The voice of a cheery little boy. It was one of the children, up by the bar. The court officers glowered at him. A woman back in the spectator benches yelled out, “You come here!” The little boy laughed and ran back to where she was sitting. Herbert stopped and turned toward the boy. His furious visage dissolved. He gave the boy a wide-eyed smile of such warmth and love, it caused Kramer to swallow—and to have another small spasm of the Doubts. Then Herbert sat down at the defense table.

  The clerk, Bruzzielli, said, “The People versus Herbert Cantrell, Indictment Number 2—7—7—7.”

  Herbert 92X was on his feet with his hand in the air. “He called me out of my name again!”

  Kovitsky leaned forward over his desk and said patiently, “Mr. 92X, I explained this to you yesterday and the day before yesterday and the day before that.”

  “He called me out of my name!”

  “I explained this to you, Mr. 92X. The clerk is bound by a legal requirement. But in view of your evident intention to change your name, which is your right, and for which legal process exists, the court is content to refer to you as Herbert 92X for the purpose of these proceedings. That okay with you?”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” said Herbert 92X, still standing. He opened the Koran and began riffling through the pages. “This morning, Your Honor—”

  “Can we proceed?”

  “Yes, Judge. This morning—”

  “Then sid-down!”

  Herbert 92X stared at Kovitsky for a moment, then sank down into his seat, still holding the Koran open. Somewhat sulkily he said: “You gonna let me read?”

  Kovitsky looked at his wristwatch and nodded yes and then swiveled away about forty-five degrees and gazed at the wall above the empty jury box.

  Seated, Herbert 92X placed the Koran on the defense table and said: “This morning, Your Honor, I shall read from Chapter 41, entitled ‘Are Distinctly Explained, Revealed at Mecca’…in the name of the
Most Merciful God…This is a revelation from the Most Merciful…Warn them of the day on which the enemies of God shall be gathered together unto hellfire and shall march in distinct bands until, when they shall arrive thereat, their ears and their eyes and their skins shall bear witness against them…”

  The court officers were rolling their eyes up in their heads. One of them, Kaminsky, a real porker whose white uniform shirt barely contained the roll of fat that rode on his gunbelt, let out an audible sigh and spun 180 degrees on the soles of his big black leather cop shoes. The prosecutors and defense lawyers regarded Kovitsky as a holy terror. But the court officers were basic working-class line troops from the civil service, and they regarded Kovitsky, like practically every other judge, as outrageously and cravenly soft on criminals…letting this maniac sit there and read from the Koran while his children ran around the courtroom yelling, “Yo, Herbert!” Kovitsky’s reasoning seemed to be that since Herbert 92X was a hothead, and since reading from the Koran cooled him off, he was saving time in the long run.

  “…turn away evil with that which is better, and behold, the man between whom and thyself there was enmity shall become, as it were, thy warmest friend, but none shall attain to…” In Herbert’s doleful orotund reading, the words descended upon the room like a drizzle…Kramer’s mind wandered…The girl with brown lipstick…Soon she would be coming out…The very thought made him straighten himself up in his chair…He wished he had taken a look at himself before he came into the courtroom…at his hair, his tie…He tensed his neck and threw his head back…He was convinced that women were impressed by men with huge sternocleidomastoid muscles…He closed his eyes…

  Herbert was still reading away, when Kovitsky broke in: “Thank you, Mr. 92X, that concludes the reading from the Koran.”

  “Say what? I’m not finished!”

  “I said that concludes the reading from the Koran, Mr. 92X. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

  Kovitsky’s voice was suddenly so loud, people in the spectators’ section gasped.

  Herbert jumped to his feet. “You’re violating my rights!” His chin was jutted toward Kovitsky, and his eyes were on fire. He looked like a rocket about to take off.

  “Sid-down!”

  “You’re violating my freedom of religion!”

  “SID-DOWN, MR. 92X!”

  “Mistrial!” shouted Herbert. “Mistrial!” Then he turned his fury on Teskowitz, who was still seated beside him. “Get up on your feet, man! This is a mistrial!”

  Startled and a bit frightened, Teskowitz got up.

  “Your Honor, my client—”

  “I SAID SID-DOWN! BOTH A YOU!”

  Both sat down.

  “Now, Mr. 92X, this court has been very indulgent with you. Nobody is violating your freedom of religion. The hour grows late, and we’ve got a jury out there in a jury room that hasn’t been painted in twenty-five years, and the time has come to conclude the reading of the Koran.”

  “Say, conclude? You mean forbid! You’re violating my religious rights!”

  “The defendant will SHUDDUP! You don’t have the right to read the Koran or the Talmud or the Bible or the words of the Angel Moroni, who wrote the Book of Mormon, or any other spiritual tome, no matter how divine—you don’t have the right to read it in this courtroom. Let me remind you, sir, that this is not the Nation of Islam. We happen to live in a republic, and in this republic there is a separation of church and state. Do you understand? And this court is governed by the laws of that republic, which are embodied in the Constitution of the United States.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “What’s not true, Mr. 92X?”

  “The separation of church and state. And I can prove it.”

  “Whaddaya talking about, Mr. 92X?”

  “Turn around! Look up on the wall!” Herbert was on his feet again, pointing at the wall up above Kovitsky’s head. Kovitsky swiveled about in his chair and looked up. Sure enough, incised in the wood paneling were the words IN GOD WE TRUST.

  “Church and state!” Herbert cried triumphantly. “You got it carved in the wall over your head!”

  Heh heh heggggh! A woman in the spectators’ section started laughing. One of the court officers guffawed but turned his head before Kovitsky could spot him. The clerk, Bruzzielli, couldn’t keep the grin off his face. Patti Stullieri had her hand over her mouth. Kramer looked at Mike Kovitsky, waiting for the explosion.

  Instead, Kovitsky put a broad smile on his face. But his head was lowered, and his irises were once again floating, bobbing on a turbulent white sea.

  “I can see you’re very observant, Mr. 92X, and I commend you for that. And since you are so observant, you will also observe that I do not have eyes in the back of my head. But I do have eyes in the front of my head, and what they are looking at is a defendant who is on trial on serious charges and faces the prospect of a prison term of twelve and a half to twenty-five years, should he be found guilty by a jury of his peers, and I want that jury to have the time to tend the scales of justice…with CARE and FAIRNESS!…in determining the guilt or innocence of that defendant. It’s a free country, Mr. 92X, and nobody can stop you from believing in any deity you want. But as long as you’re in this courtroom, you better believe in THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MIKE!”

  Kovitsky said it with such ferocity that Herbert sat back down in his chair. He didn’t say a word. Instead, he looked at Teskowitz. Teskowitz merely shrugged and shook his head, as if to say, “That’s about the size of it, Herbert.”

  “Bring in the jury,” said Kovitsky.

  A court officer opened the door that led to the jury room. Kramer sat up straight in his chair at the prosecution table. He threw his head back to bring out that powerful neck. The jurors began filing in…three blacks, six Puerto Ricans…Where was she?…There she was, just coming through the door!…Kramer didn’t even try to be subtle about it. He stared right at her. That long lustrous dark brown hair, thick enough to bury your head in, parted in the middle and pulled back to reveal that perfect pure white forehead, those big eyes and luxurious lashes, and those perfectly curved lips…with brown lipstick! Yes! She had it on again! The brown lipstick, the color of caramel, hellish, rebellious, perfectly elegant—

  Kramer quickly surveyed the competition. The big clerk, Bruzzielli, had his eyes pinned on her. The three court officers were staring at her so hard Herbert could have taken a walk and they would have never noticed. But Herbert himself was checking her out. Teskowitz was looking at her. Sullivan, the court stenographer, sitting at the stenotype machine, was looking at her. And Kovitsky! Him, too! Kramer had heard stories about Kovitsky. He didn’t seem to be the type—but you never knew.

  To get to the jury box she had to file right past the prosecution table. She had on a peach-colored sweater, fluffy, angora or mohair, open up the front, and a ribbon-silk blouse with pink-and-yellow stripes, beneath which Kramer could detect, or thought he could detect, the voluptuous swell of her breasts. She wore a cream-colored gabardine skirt, tight enough to bring out the curve of her thighs.

  The hell of it was, practically every man on this side of the Bar of Justice had a fighting chance. Well, not Herbert, but his wispy little lawyer, Teskowitz, did. Even that fat court officer over there, that tub Kaminsky. The number of court officers, defense lawyers, court clerks, assistant district attorneys (oh yes!) and even judges (don’t rule them out!) who have humped (that’s the word!) juicy little jurors in criminal cases—God! if the press ever got hold of that story—but the press never showed up in the courthouse in the Bronx.

  First-time jurors in the criminal courts had a way of becoming intoxicated by the romance, the raw voltage, of the evil world they were now getting a box-seat look at, and the young women became the tipsiest of all. To them the defendants were not chow; anything but. They were desperadoes. And these cases were not pieces a shit. They were stark dramas of the billion-footed city. And those with the courage to deal with the desperadoes, wrestle with them, bridle
them, were…real men…even a court officer with a four-inch tube of fat riding up over his gunbelt. But who was more manly than a young prosecutor, he who stood not ten feet from the accused, with nothing between the two of them but thin air, and hurled the charges of the People in his teeth?

  Now she was in front of Kramer. She looked right back at him. Her expression said nothing, but the look was so frank and forthright! And she wore brown lipstick!

  And then she was past him and going through the little gate into the jury box. He couldn’t very well turn around and stare at her, but he was tempted. How many of them had gone to the clerk, Bruzzielli, and looked up her address and telephone numbers, at home and at work—as he had? The clerk kept the slips with this information, the so-called ballots, in a box on his desk in the courtroom, so that the court could get hold of jurors quickly to inform them of changes in schedule or whatever. As the prosecutor in the case, he, Kramer, could approach Bruzzielli and ask to see the ballot for the girl with brown lipstick or any other juror with a straight face. So could the defense attorney, Teskowitz. Kovitsky could do it with a reasonably straight face, and of course Bruzzielli himself could take a look anytime he felt like it. As for a court officer like Kaminsky, for him to ask to take a look fell under the category of…a wink and a favor. But hadn’t Kramer already seen Kaminsky huddled with Bruzzielli over by Bruzzielli’s desk, deep in conversation over…something? The thought that even such creatures as the fat Kaminsky were after this…this flower…made Kramer more determined than ever. (He would save her from the others.)

  Miss Shelly Thomas of Riverdale.

  She was from the very best part of Riverdale, a leafy suburb that was geographically part of Westchester County but politically part of the Bronx. There were still plenty of nice places to live in the North Bronx. People in Riverdale generally had money, and they also had their ways of getting off jury duty. They would pull every string that existed before submitting to the prospect of coming down to the South Bronx, to the 44th Precinct, to the island fortress of Gibraltar. The typical Bronx jury was Puerto Rican and black, with a sprinkling of Jews and Italians.