AHMM, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Incest!” Gladys Johnson gasped.

  "What about Julian?” Mother asked.

  "I can't believe it. Homer Nordquist?"

  "Poor Phyllis."

  "What about Alva? Do you think she knew?"

  "Oh, of course not."

  "Poor Alva. And they were going to Florida."

  "But what about Julian? How do they know—"

  Chief Munson came out, looked at the crowd, and shook his head. “Folks, why don't you go on home?"

  Nobody budged. Instead, a flurry of questions rose up, all of which he ignored, except my mother's: “What about Julian?"

  For once in his life, Chief Munson cracked a smile. “We have proof that Julian Sargent is innocent of any and all charges."

  And they did. When Julian turned himself in, preparatory to putting him in jail, they searched him and discovered that he was a woman.

  Alva and Phyllis Nordquist went to Florida and never came back. Mr. Nordquist got sentenced to five years: He got Judge Bolland who, for whatever reason, decided he couldn't give such a decent citizen the maximum of fifteen, and Homer ended up serving only three. When he got out, he moved. Nobody cared where.

  As for Annie and Mabel and Julian, they stuck it out in Laskin. For a long time no one would speak to Julian, though we couldn't help staring like crazy. But after a while everyone thawed, and soon Julian was again the life and soul of every function. He was just so much fun. And yes, we kept referring to Julian as “he,” just with implied quotation marks. Like I said, we've always prided ourselves on our sophistication.

  Copyright © 2007 Eve Fisher

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  SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER

  What he didn't get was how come no one else saw her eyes get that crazy gleam when she saw a spark.

  —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  From “Fumes,” AHMM, April 2006

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  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE YAM POTS THE ART WORLD WANTED by MARTHA B.G. LUFKIN

  It was a big day at the U.S. Supreme Court for people who cared about yam pots from Wazeer.

  The courtroom was filled with prominent art world personalities. There was the director of the New York Museum, which was fighting to keep its pots. Archaeologists had turned out to support the United States, which wanted to seize the artifacts as stolen property. And there was me, lawyer for the Republic of Wazeer, ready to argue that Wazeer owned the yam pots—if only I could remember why.

  If only, more specifically, I had not arrived here sleep deprived and jittered up on caffeine.

  But get a grip, Tilbury—get a grip! I was standing before the nation's nine highest judges, arguing my case, and one of the justices had just posed a question aimed to skewer me. I was fatigued, no question. The espresso Rum Jolt had put me on edge. But I was not going to disappoint Wazeer.

  "No, Your Honor,” I answered, “this would not mean enforcing the law of Wazeer in New York."

  "Yes, Your Honor,” I replied, as the next black-robed justice attacked, swiveling in his imperious chair. “All Wazeer wants to do is to use a U.S. law—the National Stolen Antiquities Act—to get back its pots."

  "Indeed,” I answered a third question, my voice reverberating through the microphone, “American museums will not lose all their antiquities and mummies merely because you give Wazeer back its five pots!"

  I rejoiced. The questioning was going my way. But don't show it, Tilbury, I told myself, you haven't won yet—and Fosbroke has yet to make his case.

  That's when Clement Fosbroke, art collector who admired the Wazeerian pots and attorney for the museum that wanted to keep them, made a strange cry at the lawyers’ table behind me, where he waited to speak. If I had only known what would happen next.

  But lawyers addressing the high court do not stop for a mere yelp. I kept talking.

  * * * *

  It had all started wrong anyway, I reflected later. The overnight train that left Boston late, the loud music coming from the next berth, the resulting deprivation of sleep, the flurry of TV reporters on the Supreme Court steps surrounding Justin Docker, the philanthropist who gave the museum the pots—and my mortifying nap in the courtroom, just before the justices walked in and the lawyers’ arguments began.

  How did that happen?

  I could hear Edith pose the question. “Mr. Tilbury,” she would say unsmilingly at my office door, “how could you?"

  My watch had said 9:38 A.M. I was sitting at one of the tables that are reserved for lawyers at the front of the courtroom, reading my notes. I distinctly remember wondering about my cat, Athena, whom I had stuffed into my office closet to be fed by Edith while I was here. Then my eyes glazed over. Some time later I was awakened by a nudge from Fosbroke.

  "Excuse me, Tilbury,” he said, in a gentlemanly whisper—for an opposing lawyer he was awfully nice about it—"I've been trying to wake you. You're in my seat!"

  "Your seat?” I said, not exactly comprehending. Fosbroke waited exasperatedly, his posture distinguished, his graying brown hair adding to his dignity. I heard loud murmurings. The courtroom was packed. It was the Wazeer case! And I had dozed off.

  "The justices are about to walk in,” Fosbroke hissed, just as the clerk called Oyez. “Never mind!” He took his big black litigator's briefcase to the other table and unpacked, glowering.

  Later I would remember that glare. But now it was me, the art world, and the Supreme Court.

  "Your Honors,” I told the justices, “this case presents a most important question of a nation's right to keep its ancient art.” I was doing fine! So what if Fosbroke, behaving most unbecomingly, had just disruptively called out again, further jarring my thoughts. Tilbury—stay on track! “Under the law of Wazeer, all archaeological discoveries found after 1926 belong to the nation. Even the pots,” I explained, “which the museum acquired years ago."

  I turned pages. I quoted quotes. I gathered steam.

  "The museum says the pots were used in fertility dances during the yam culture period around 2000 B.C.,” I said. “Yet why should the only five Wazeerian yam pots in the world be located in the New York Museum? Wazeer, as Your Honors undoubtedly know, is located exactly halfway between Melanesia and Hawaii, and its national scholars cannot easily study the antiquities here. We would like to put them back in Wazeer, for comparison with other known pots of that country."

  I was doing fantastically. Wazeer could not want better! It was the climax of my argument. I flipped the page. I clenched the podium.

  My chin quivered uncontrollably.

  O help! Do not, I told myself, dissolve out of control into laughter before the justices of the United States Supreme Court!

  But I couldn't help it. Because the espresso Rum Jolt had cataclysmically just worn off. Because I was on a speeding downward slide into fatigue. Because the song I had heard last night in the next train berth was now replaying itself loudly in my inner ear. Under all this strain, the notion of yam pots was ridiculous. Yam pots! The realization exploded like a laughing water balloon in my face.

  I disgraced myself, squealing. There was a buzz in the courtroom. Cries and gasps came from all sides.

  The gavel slammed.

  I sat down ruined. My career was over. Finished. The bar association would expel me. My client would sue me. The court was in pandemonium. What had I done? Court marshals were running. But not at me. No, at Fosbroke.

  He was slumped over the table, arms sprawling.

  "Dead?” the U.S. marshal cried. “He's dead?"

  "Call a doctor!"

  "What's that steam?"

  "Carry him out!"

  "Call a lawyer!"

  "All clear the courtroom!"

  "Oral argument,” said the chief justice, “is adjourned!"

  I stopped laughing.

  * * * *

  "What do you mean,” came Edith's voice on the pay phone, “you're in j
ail?"

  I explained succinctly.

  "You mean the Washington, D.C., police actually think you could kill,” she said, “Clement Fosbroke? How?"

  "Poison, they think."

  There was a pause. “Do you actually know how to do that?” Edith said.

  "I swear on a Wazeer yam pot,” I said, “I don't.” I lowered my voice. “Has anyone noticed the cat?"

  "She,” said Edith, “is hiding. It's that cheap store-brand cat food you left. She hasn't come out of your office closet once. Are you spending the night in jail?"

  "I detect, Edith,” I said dryly, “that you want me to."

  "If you won't be in tomorrow, I'll take the day off."

  "Bentley will have me out by seven this evening. He's called in the top criminal lawyer in D.C. Our managing partner,” I added, “is well connected."

  "Our managing partner,” said Edith, “has asked when your client Wazeer is going to pay its bill."

  I said good-bye, noting as I did so that Edith had never asked why the police arrested me.

  "Some of the observers,” the officer had said, “thought you acted a little delighted when Mr. Fosbroke keeled over."

  * * * *

  Despite a briefcase of work to finish on the Schatz case, I slept like a slab of petrified wood the entire train trip to Boston. Back at the office, I sent off a handwritten note to Fosbroke's widow—"excellent lawyer, compassionate human being"—and dispatched a wreath to his funeral. I then went to see Bentley, who had summoned me by voicemail at seven fifteen A.M.

  Bentley's office is on the forty-fifth floor of the Monarch Building and has a view of the financial district and Boston Harbor. He had just returned from a jaunt to Palm Beach.

  "Arsenic trioxide? That's the poison?” Bentley said, dismayed. He showed me a copy of the New York Daily Citizen, pointing to an article.

  I jolted. “What's arsenic trioxide?"

  "A chemical that the public generally can't buy,” Bentley said, reading through half lenses. “Sprinkled in powder form on the lawyers’ table at the U.S. Supreme Court. Fosbroke's hands were sweaty,” Bentley said, his forehead sweating in sympathy, “and without knowing it, he transferred the toxin from the table to his water glass. But why Fosbroke?"

  "The case will be reargued October 12,” I interjected, “with another lawyer from Fosbroke's firm arguing in his place."

  "It was probably related to some other case he had,” said Bentley, twiddling his thumbs. Bentley had very fat thumbs, and they seemed to fit him perfectly. He was a very rich, powerful, very stocky man, whose enjoyment of life was increased by every act of commanding the firm of Phinney & Broome. His corner office had a Ming vase that had been in the law firm for two centuries and oil paintings of Boston clipper ships out at sea. “Fosbroke got several death sentences thrown out by the Supreme Court. Maybe one of the victims’ families finally took revenge.” He tugged at his dotted bow tie, which told me he was edging toward a certain topic. “Of course, lawyers who take on death penalty cases generally work without pay, so I,” he said in relief, “don't do that kind of work. Meaning angry victims’ families won't kill me.” He plucked the pink and blue bow tie. “Now about your client Wazeer—"

  "I sent the Ministry in Wazeer a fax about the October court date."

  "You need to send a fax,” corrected Bentley, “demanding that we be paid. You are not to work for clients who don't pay promptly."

  "Yes, but—"

  How could I explain that the government of Wazeer went on holiday three weeks of each month? But Bentley wasn't listening. He'd pulled a BlackBerry from his breast pocket. “See this chart? It calculates how much each partner earned, up to this minute, for the firm today. You're lagging. By thousands of dollars!"

  He puffed an unlit cigar. His phone rang. It was a visiting senator calling him for lunch at the most exclusive steakhouse in town.

  I, George P. Tilbury, lawyer for Wazeer, would eat a plum jam sandwich at my desk.

  * * * *

  Back in my office, munching my meager repast, I pored over the New York Daily Citizen article.

  "The legal community is asking why anyone would topple a prime New York lawyer,” said the front page story,

  —a respected and well-known attorney who represented Japanese banks, Texas oil companies, insurance and investment firms and, lastly, a museum. And why suddenly, during oral argument in a case of minor import involving four strange-looking yam pots, a case which could hardly be called the peak of his legal career?

  I choked. So that's what the Daily Citizen thought of the Wazeer pots case! They didn't even get the number right.

  "It was hardly even the first time,” the article noted dryly, “that the oratorically skilled Clement Fosbroke was sent to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court."

  "Hmph! They say nothing about you,” said Edith, reading over my shoulder.

  Edith is what you might call sturdily self-assured. Today, she wore a brown blazer over a hefty brown skirt, which covered a hefty middle. She did not smile, and dark pockets puffed below her eyes. But though she was formidable in figure and consistently omitted whole paragraphs from legal briefs I gave her to type for court, she was, in a crunch, supportive of her boss. It might not be till the midnight hour, but Edith always came through.

  "Phone,” she observed.

  I waved her out the door.

  "Tilbury, Ben Hoyt,” came the U.S. Government prosecutor's voice from New York. In the Wazeer pots case, the United States and Wazeer were on the same side, and Hoyt and I had lived through the lawsuit together. “What's this I hear about Meerd being a suspect in the Fosbroke case?"

  "Meerd?” I asked.

  "A reporter from the Daily Citizen called me about the Meerd investigation and I told him I couldn't comment."

  "Meerd?” I said again.

  "The junior litigation partner at Nutchett,” Hoyt said, “Fosbroke's firm. Meerd was present the days that you and I took testimony from the witnesses. Remember? We questioned Docker, the man who gave the museum the pots, and the others."

  I burst into a sputter. “That's ridiculous!"

  "This reporter, Cluckberg or something, has it in his head that Meerd did it, with the motive that he'd get to argue the Wazeer pots case to the Court."

  "Will Meerd argue it now?” I asked.

  "This is the darnedest situation I've ever been in,” Hoyt said, frustrated. “We have to wait till October to reargue, meaning we have to rehearse all over again. Public sympathy is swinging in favor of the museum. Fosbroke was highly prominent in the art world, and New Yorkers liked him."

  "Yes, but the court doesn't decide based on—"

  "I just hope no one from Wazeer is mixed up in this Fosbroke thing,” Hoyt said.

  "From Wazeer?"

  "How desperately,” he asked, “did someone in Wazeer want the pots? Maybe the Interior Minister thought Fosbroke would win and didn't want the court actually to rule that the museum could keep them. Now we have a nice little delay, if the decision is that the museum keeps the pots, don't we?"

  "That's not sensible,” I countered. “If the court is going to let the museum keep the pots, it will rule that way anyway."

  "Maybe your folks from Wazeer aren't sophisticated enough to know that. Meerd, by the way, was the lawyer for Docker the day we took Docker's testimony about how he came to own the pots and give them to the museum,” he reminded me. “Docker got all hot about the dating, remember?"

  "The dating?” I asked.

  "You remember,” Hoyt said. “We were establishing the radio-carbon lab dates of the pots, to show they were antiquities. To be claimed by the Republic of Wazeer, they have to be true antiquities. Docker got very heated about that dating lab in California."

  "Yes,” I said, “but the California radiocarbon lab results were indisputable. The pots are from 2000 B.C."

  "Docker is one of those rich art donors who's not used to anyone challenging what he says. Museums depend,” he s
aid, “on wealthy people like him. In any event, that is the only time you or I saw Meerd. Well, good-bye, Tilbury."

  * * * *

  As the gray month of February dragged on, with high winds that rocked the forty-fourth floor, I dove into the Schatz vs. Tut lawsuit. But the New York Daily Citizen was a tantalizing distraction. Tea with dainties was served at Phinney & Broome at four o'clock in the library, where out-of-town newspapers could be perused. Spying a follow-up article in the Daily Citizen the following week, I snuck the paper back to my office and closed the door. Hoyt's information was confirmed. Cluckhorn, the reporter, seemed to be conducting the investigation single-handedly.

  Police will not comment, but according to Wall Street rumors, the investigation has centered on Anthony Meerd, junior litigation partner at Nutchett, Fosbroke's law firm, who was Mr Fosbroke's right-hand man on the yam pots brief. Mr. Meerd made no secret that he wanted to argue the Wazeer case before the Supreme Court to advance the controversial legal theory that museums are better keepers of historical artifacts than third-world nations.

  "Nonsense,” I said.

  "Read on,” said Edith, over my shoulder.

  Arsenic trioxide, chemists say, is a relatively rare substance and is almost impossible to obtain these days except for people working at chemical laboratories. A small dose of arsenic trioxide in vapor form kills relatively quickly. Fosbroke unwittingly created such a vapor when his sweaty palms transferred the substance to his water glass, causing him to inhale and drink it at once. Those nearby in the courtroom said that the attorney had grimaced and cried out after sniffing and drinking from the glass."

  "It's amazing people don't go around the city sprinkling more arsenic on lawyers they don't like,” said Edith.

  I glared at her. She handed me a fat file. “ABZ Corp. against Home Decorators in the lawsuit for twelve million dollars over the frazzled curtains. Your trial date, Mr. Tilbury, remember?"

  I remembered.

  I got to work.

  * * * *