by Sol Stein
“Mrs. Fuller,” Roberts said gently, “I made a note that during the cross-examination, you referred to, and I quote, the three who slept over the night of the accident endquote. Did you mean to use the word accident?”
Thomassy was again on his feet. “Your Honor, I object. What the witness said on the record is on the record—”
The judge held up his hand to cut Thomassy off in midsentence. “Let the witness answer.”
Roberts said, “Did you mean to use the word accident?”
Leona Fuller looked not at Roberts but at Thomassy. “I should have used the word murder,” she said.
Thomassy moved for a mistrial. Judge Drewson dismissed the jury, then told both lawyers he wanted to see them in chambers.
*
Seated opposite the judge, Thomassy and Roberts listened to him say, “Gentlemen, I want you both to know I have every intention of seeing this trial through to a finish. Mr. Thomassy, I am well aware that you will be dropping little tidbits along the way in the hope that they will give you a basis for an appeal should you think that necessary at a later date. But since neither of you has tried a case before me, I think you should know that I will not tolerate digressions, nonsensical objections, forays into fantasy, or any of the other tricks of the trade unless they speak to the point at issue: the facts on the basis of which the jurors must determine whether the defendant is guilty or not.”
Thomassy was about to speak, but the judge raised his voice just a bit to cut him off. “I am well aware of your aim to demonstrate that others in addition to the defendant had access to the combustibles, which I have and will continue to allow. We operate under strict rules. I’m not interested in filling newspapers full of gossip. We’re trying a case of homicide.”
Again Thomassy tried to speak, and again was kept silent.
“Just a moment, Mr. Thomassy. Unlike some defense counsel, I don’t think the Grand Jury sits up there handing down indictments just because the district attorney presents a case. They must have reviewed sufficient evidence of the defendant’s potential culpability to warrant the expenditure of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ monies on this trial. Mr. Thomassy, would you mind telling us what you’re up to?”
“I moved for mistrial, Your Honor.”
“Denied. I’ll put it on the record when court resumes. Now answer my question.”
Thomassy coughed into his fist. “Your Honor, Mrs. Fuller was, I believe, a very convincing witness. When she uttered the word ‘murder,’ she may have irreversibly and irremediably implanted in the jurors’ minds that the event of April fifth was not an accident. I think it is fair to say that she doesn’t have any direct evidence to contribute to the supposition of murder, but her outcry may well be based on her knowledge of the danger her husband was in since he began that project. That is certainly supported by the watch that the federal government put on the Fullers’ home and Professor Fuller’s person. Therefore, Your Honor, I must introduce an expert witness who can speak to the point of who—and there might be many such persons—might have had a motive for putting a stop to Professor Fuller’s life if it was not an accident. I intend to subpoena as a witness for the defense a woman by the name of Ludmilla Tarasova, who, for more than two decades, I’m afraid, had a continuing intimate relationship with the deceased. I don’t intend to refer to that relationship unless I am forced to.”
He was looking straight at Roberts. Warning received?
Drewson tapped his fingers on the table. “To what specific end are you planning to introduce this testimony?”
“Your Honor, with all respect, I don’t think it is fair to the defendant for the trial to be conducted in chambers. My obligation is to advise the prosecution, as I have now done, that I intend to call a certain witness. What the witness will say under oath and in front of the jury may well not only jar the prosecution’s flimsy case against my client but may disturb a lot of other people who have not appeared in your courtroom.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the CIA, the FBI, the incumbent on Pennsylvania Avenue, and whoever is running things in the Kremlin these days.”
Thomassy stood up.
“Where are you going?” Judge Drewson asked.
“I thought the conference was over, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Thomassy, I’m running this trial.”
“Of course, Your Honor,” Thomassy said, and left Roberts and the judge alone together.
Judge Drewson had from time to time reflected on the difference between the reporters and himself. They were voyeurs. He was an observer. He knew exactly what Thomassy was doing, throwing the proof back into Roberts’s lap while forecasting trouble to come. Out of the broth of confusion came reasonable doubt.
“Mr. Roberts,” he said, “between us, if you were ever in serious personal trouble with the law, would you engage George Thomassy to defend you?”
Roberts, standing, looked at the still-seated judge.
“You don’t have to answer that,” the judge said, rising amid the swirl of his death-black robes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ed, getting a cramp sitting in the chair waiting for Thomassy to phone, thought I should take that clock off the wall. He felt as if he’d been doing time ever since Pope Sturbridge put up the bail. A hundred fifty thousand was crazy, except they knew he could afford it. Suppose I did take off? Ed thought. If it cost him a hundred and fifty million it wouldn’t make up for what he cost me.
Ed wanted to lie down on the bed, smoke some grass, drift. He wished he had resisted Thomassy’s order to get rid of his stash. Nobody was going to come looking here anymore. Thomassy said being out on bail would give Ed a chance to clean up his life. His life didn’t need cleaning. It needed Martin Fuller to say, “Never mind Sturbridge, genes are a retrogressive reactionary explanation that pleases the American fascist mentality. You are not like your father. You are shaped by your environment, namely me.” If Martin Fuller gives great head, the head is the source of talk, brain sparks, firestorms. But he never once put his arm around Ed.
That’s not true. Why had he thought that? Fuller put his arm around Ed the day they went to the Turkish bath.
Ed was amazed at how that skinny old man looked naked. His skin was tight against the muscles underneath. He had the spots of age, but his body, despite all the pills Ed knew he took, looked like it could live on for another eighty years. He saw Ed noticing the three inked numbers separated by dashes on the inside of his left forearm. My katzet numbers, he said, laughing, but Ed knew that Fuller had never been in a concentration camp. Katzet numbers had more numerals. These had to be the new first-of-the-month combination changes that Randall brought to him and that Fuller must have kept on his forearm till he was certain his faltering memory for recently learned numbers would not be betrayed.
Ed got up out of the chair, feeling the exhilaration he’d felt that day in the Turkish bath. Martin Fuller had let him see his body, and with it, the numbers on his arm. And then after the steam and the shiver-cold shower, they’d gone to eat in the small cafeteria downstairs, and on the last stair he had put his arm around Ed’s shoulders and turning him till Ed was facing him, his eyes unavoidable, said, “You are hungrier for affection than any human being I have ever met.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Ed was caught by surprise. Fuller so rarely was personal.
“You are better with the dog—both Leona and I have observed it—than anyone who has visited with us. You understand his needs. A human should not be so continuously needy, lest he become as vulnerable as a dog.”
Ed wanted him to understand he didn’t need the approval of faceless mobs like a dictator or an actor. He wanted Fuller to say that he was someone special in his life, the best of his students, not another body to be replaced in a year or two.
“Ed,” Fuller said, “you don’t appreciate enough what you have already accomplished. How many at your age have written a book that will live?”
Ed wanted to say tha
t the most important part of the book was its dedication page. To Martin Fuller, mentor and friend.
“You should leave the nest,” Fuller went on. “You don’t need me anymore. We will remain friends. We will see each other from time to time. Scott and Melissa have flown into each other’s arms under my roof, and they stay not because they need to anymore but because of the convenience. You are not bound. You need to fly.”
I will break my wings to stay, Ed thought.
“I envy you your youth,” Fuller continued, “take advantage of it. I envy the time you have left to do your work. Remember the affection you give your work is always reciprocated by the work itself.” He held Ed physically by the arms, as if they might threaten him if he let go. “I know, I know, one needs the affection of a woman. Some day you will meet one who will be to you as Leona has been to me, coworker, battler, a friend.”
Ed wanted to shout back at him, What about Tarasova? Everybody in the field knew about him and Tarasova. Man is a treasonous animal! You betrayed Leona. Where was trust between human beings? Fuller himself had said the revolution is a history of betrayal not just during but even more after, like the marriage he had betrayed. He would say Tarasova was part of his work, there is a need in the heart to be part of something with another to avoid the terrible anomie of working alone. Did at some point Leona desert him? Did she leave him alone in the midst of his battlefield?
Out loud Ed said, “Do people join people just as they join movements, to turn longing into belonging?”
“You and your aphorisms!” Fuller replied.
“And what’s wrong with aphorisms?” Ed demanded.
“They bend truth to appear clever.”
“Therefore I am a good student,” Ed said. “Having learned all of your aphorisms, I now invent some of my own.”
Fuller roared with laughter. He slapped Ed on the back. They went into the restaurant and sat down at a small table for two near the window. “I shouldn’t laugh so,” he said, laughing again. “Better stop before I have food in my mouth or you’ll be the death of me.”
Ed remembered staring at him when he said that as if he could read his mind. Thomassy, where are you, you said you would call. I’m counting on you now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thomassy got to his office long before Alice was due to arrive. He thought of the early-morning hours as his time of peace, when he could work undisturbed by the rest of humanity, having only himself to deal with, only the work he wanted to do before him. He knew there were people who felt alive in crowds, in theaters, casinos, at dances, in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Thomassy avoided crowds; they sapped his privacy. They used to say three’s a crowd. His answer was two’s a crowd when you’re looking for the still center, where communion begins. Was that why he’d been a bachelor so long, afraid to be cut back by another? The war was between you and crowds, you and the state, you and the first other person. Eve with the apple, and peace fled.
He put the newspaper under his arm so he could turn the key in the lock. It was the first issue of The New York Times in which the Fuller trial coverage appeared on page one. The George part of his name appeared on page one, followed by continued on Page 14 where Thomassy was the first word of the continuation. If his father were still alive, he’d have to phone him. Hey, Pop, guess what? And his father, who would never have known about the Times story in Oswego, would have said, That your name in the paper, George, not mine. My name Thomassian. You think I want show neighbors you change my name? The old man was dead. The dialogue continued.
The red light on Alice’s answering machine blinked, meaning messages. I saw Mr. Thomassy on television, can he defend my wife. She’s not a crook, she’s a kleptomaniac, she’s sick, she needs help not jail. Beep. I read about Mr. Thomassy in the Times. I want him on retainer in case I get into trouble again with the Liquor Commission. Beep. My son is in Attica with hardened criminals. He’s only nineteen. He swears he didn’t mean to shoot the gas station attendant. The gun wasn’t his. Will Mr. Thomassy try to get him out?
Fuck the messages. Publicity was supposed to be good for business, but he had all the cases he could handle without taking on associates and starting a school for baby lawyers.
Wrong, George, he told himself. Publicity gets you the chance to drop all the nickel-and-dime cases that can be handled by some jerkoff just out of Pisswater Law School or a well-meaning clunk from legal aid. Wrong again. Those are the guys who screw up the little cases. George, big-rep lawyers pick their cases. Big-rep lawyers make a lot of money.
What would I do with a lot more money, buy four more neckties?
This is my hour of peace, he told the blinking red light. It commanded: pick up.
He’d always been able to resist the command.
He picked up. It was Francine’s voice. If he looked up at the ceiling God would be sitting there, pulling the strings.
Alice, this is Francine Widmer. Please have Mr. Thomassy call me, at my home if it’s before eight-thirty, at the UN after nine-thirty. The earlier the better. If he calls from the courthouse, please have him try to get in touch with me during a break. It’s important.
At her home? Her home was his place until she deserted.
It’d been so long since he’d dialed her at her apartment he had to look the number up. Dialing it brought back the early days, when he’d be nervous about her state of mind.
Her sleepy voice said, “Hello.” That’s all it took to make his steeled heart turn back into a pump beating faster.
“You called?”
“George, where are you?”
“Office.”
“This early?”
As if nothing had happened.
“I can’t forget my other clients just because I’ve got a trial on. I need to get some paperwork moving. What’s up?”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m just wanting to get some work done.”
“My mother and father have invited us to dinner this evening.”
If you’re a trial lawyer, you lose the ability to take ordinary conversation at face value. The unexpected elicits suspicion.
“Do they know that we have semi-busted up?” He heard humming on the line. “This is a bad connection. Let me call you back.”
“No, you won’t call back. I don’t mind the humming. We have not semi-busted up. I needed air, space, to think about…”
“About?”
“About where we’re going. Or not going.”
“You’ve got a mighty circumspect way of referring to the unmentionable.”
“It’s the iffiness of what we have now, George. I feel like a transient.”
“Well, what’s going to happen at dinner? Am I supposed to act like you and I are strangers?”
“George, you’re hurting.”
The day he was twenty-one he had told his mirror while shaving that detachment was the key to adult life. Mama and Papa, the original governors, had not been in charge for years. The point was not to let anyone else take their place. There were three ways of standing: on someone else’s feet, letting others stand on your feet, or standing alone.
He had vowed never to be dependent on anyone. Wasn’t that what the women were demanding for themselves? Of course he was hurting.
“George?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s just dinner.”
“No ulterior motives?”
When she said “None,” he thought that’s not the answer she would have given under sodium pentathol. Francine was a great manipulator but a lousy liar.
“What time?”
“Eight okay?”
“It’s a lot more convenient to come straight from court. Or is that early too working class?”
“Eight. Please, George?”
You please George. You used to please George. George is not acquiescent by nature. With your voice on the line, where is his famous strength?
“I’ll be there,” he said, and hung up, no good-bye, no cha
nce for further chitchat. His fucking heart was going like a kid’s. He worked as if he were possessed.
*
When Alice came in that morning, he’d gone, but the number of tapes he’d left for her, including revisions of a lengthy memorandum of law, made her think he’d been there all night instead of just a few hours. She’d once had a fantasy about them working all night on some pressing matters, then toward morning, tired, coming together in each other’s arms.
She’d said to him, “I can get more money elsewhere.”
“Alice,” he’d said, “you’re not going anywhere. If you want a raise, why don’t you just ask for it straight out.”
And he’d given her one. But that wasn’t what Alice wanted.
*
When Roberts came up to him in the hallway just outside the courtroom, Thomassy had a feeling the meeting wasn’t coincidence. He saw Koppelman the Insidious drop behind.
“Just one question, George,” Roberts said.
That was the first time he’d called him George.
“I hear you’re planning to put the defendant on the stand.”
“I’m still thinking it through,” Thomassy said.
“Let me know when you’ve decided.”
“I’ll let the court know.”
“Mind if I ask a personal question?” Before Thomassy could respond, Roberts continued, “You’re first-generation American-born, aren’t you?”
“It was crowded on the Mayflower,” Thomassy said.
“How do you feel about defending a traitor?”
Thomassy felt his right hand tighten. “This isn’t a treason trial.”
“Maybe not for the defendant,” Roberts said and walked away, his leather heels echoing Thomassy’s rage all the way down the corridor.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Driving to the Widmer house, Thomassy couldn’t stop the debate with Roberts in his head. I let him get to me.