Question of Consent: A Novel

by Seymour Wishman

  The question of emotional and moral responsibility for my actions was beginning to dominate my thoughts. I was concerned about the moral legitimacy of my own behavior in ways I had never even considered before. It was disturbing to think that the “rightness” of my actions depended somehow on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of my client’s actions.

  As I had imagined working on the case of the child-killer, I couldn’t help hearing, once again, those accusing voices, like my next-door neighbor, Stan, or even Jenny, who so frequently asked: “Don’t you take any responsibility for what you do? Don’t you feel guilty if someone you get off goes out and commits another terrible crime?” I was no longer able to answer no and brush the thought aside. “I was only doing my job” was beginning to sound like a Nazi affirmation, but the comparison should have been ridiculous: I did what I did because I still believed our legal system was better than any other I knew of. Bear would have told me that now, as he had so often when he was alive.

  But I couldn’t stand the prospect of helping a father who had brutally murdered his own daughter. What if I somehow got him off, and he went out and killed someone else? I had to accept the moral responsibility for my actions, even if legal ethics gave me permission not to. As long as I had been able to think of myself as a mere technician performing a surgical procedure (“What the patient did after the operation was not my responsibility”), I was able to pass off the responsibility onto a parent, a social worker, or a clergyman, or even onto some vague notion of “society at large.” I couldn’t do that anymore.

  “John, I’ve got to talk to you about that Williams case,” I said.

  “Yeah, isn’t that something?” John said.

  “It’s too much. I just can’t do it. The public defender’s got to find someone else to represent him,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear about it?” John asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “He was killed last night in the jail.”

  “What! No, I didn’t hear about it. How did it happen?”

  “They cut him. I don’t know how they got to him. It’s being investigated.”

  “The public defender said he was supposed to be in isolation.”

  “Ten stab wounds in the guy. I guess some defense lawyer is going to claim it was suicide.”

  “Pathetic.”

  “Not so pathetic. It’s just one less scumbag,” John said.

  “Let me talk to you about it some other time,” I said. It was clear that at this point neither John nor I gave a damn about the late child-killer.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow when you bring in the ballerina.”

  “Right.”

  I made my way to Jenny, and we slowly walked to our cars. She put her arm around me, comforting me.

  “It took me years to get over the death of my parents,” I said.

  “Michael, I don’t think you’ve ever gotten over that. You spent a good part of your life trying to protect them.”

  “I tried.”

  “And when they died, you somehow felt that you’d failed them,” she said.

  “I know. And I feel I failed Bear in the same way. I know it’s crazy. God knows how long I’ll mourn his leaving me.”

  “We all have to learn how little control we have over our lives,” she said.

  I stopped and hugged her. “You know, Jen, besides everything else, you’re really a pal.”

  “You mean you don’t want to kill me anymore for abandoning you?” Jenny asked.

  “Maybe only a little,” I said.

  Chapter 14

  THE DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL I was in my office. I told Sylvia to open a new client’s file for Lisa Altman.

  “I don’t think you should be taking on that case,” Sylvia said to me, the tone in her voice reminiscent of the way my mother would talk to me when I threatened to go outside in the rain without my galoshes.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Sylvia. I seem to have already made the decision to take it on,” I said defiantly. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “It doesn’t look right. The man she murdered was your client.”

  “That she killed, there’s no doubt. Whether she acted in self-defense will be up to the jury to decide.”

  “I still don’t think it looks right. There’s something wrong about it.”

  “Sylvia, you hate most of my clients,” I said.

  “Right. Most of them are bums.”

  “Well, I actually think Lisa is innocent. And regardless of whether she is or not, I’ve decided to represent her.” Actually, I had come to my decision that morning as I was driving to my office. Up to that point I had only committed to take her in for booking and the setting of bail.

  An hour later I picked up Lisa at her apartment. Parking downtown was always such a problem that I took a taxi. I had the car wait outside as I walked up the stoop of her building and pressed the bell to her apartment. A few minutes later Lisa came to the front door of the building. She was dressed in a brown silk suit and a navy blue blouse. She wore no jewelry and no makeup.

  “How do you feel?” I asked as she stepped outside.

  “This is not a role I ever wanted to play,” she said. “I’m in your hands now… again.”

  We walked down the stoop. I held open the door to the taxi and got in after her. We didn’t speak for the first few blocks as we headed downtown.

  “There shouldn’t be any surprises,” I finally said. “I’ve set it all up with the prosecutor.”

  Lisa nodded. She was clearly nervous, but I admired how much in control she seemed. “I saw the article in the newspaper,” she said.

  The day before, the day of Bear’s funeral, there had been newspaper reports of William Betz’s death, and how his body had been found in his apartment. The articles quoted the head of homicide as saying that an arrest was imminent. Someone known to the decedent was about to be arrested and charged with murder. It hadn’t said that Lisa was that “someone.”

  “It could have been a lot worse,” I said.

  “How?”

  “It could have mentioned your name as the suspect, and it could have said you were coming in this morning. Then we would have had a mob of reporters and photographers.”

  “You always look at the bright side?”

  “I try to. You’ll be going in without handcuffs. And you’ll sail through the whole process.”

  John had promised me he would meet us down at the courthouse and shepherd her through the fingerprinting and mug shots. John also promised me he would not oppose my application that she be released on her own recognizance, without having to put up any bail. I had explained all this to Lisa. She hadn’t seemed particularly pleased by what I told her, or particularly grateful, but that was probably because she had no idea how degrading and terrifying the procedure could be to someone who wasn’t a hardened criminal.

  We were traveling after the morning rush hour, and there wasn’t much traffic. We got down to the courthouse a few minutes before ten, the time I had arranged to meet John. Fortunately he was already in the homicide office and we didn’t have to wait. I was able to stay with Lisa while she was fingerprinted. The police officer held her fingers one at a time, moving each quickly from the black ink pad to the white cardboard and rolling the blackened finger in the appropriate box. The man in charge of taking the prints was very experienced, and he was gentle with Lisa.

  Lisa and I moved on to another cubicle for her mug shot to be taken. There a police officer arranged the letters of her name on a slate, then placed the beaded silver chain holding the board around her neck. He had her stand in front of a white screen. Out of reflex, I supposed, Lisa looked deeply into the camera and gave a slight smile as she was photographed.

  “These aren’t publicity stills,” I joked as the police officer removed the board with her name.

  “Well, you don’t want a bad image floating around,” she answered. She was quite cool about the process, but that was only possible because the cops we
re being unusually respectful.

  About an hour later, Lisa and I entered a large courtroom, one that was older and seedier than the room where Lisa had testified in Betz’s trial. Paint was peeling from the ceiling, and the walls were filthy. A number of people were sitting in the spectator seats. Six guards were standing in different parts of the room. The court clerk was seated at his desk in front of the empty judge’s bench.

  I told Lisa to take a seat near the front of the spectators’ section of the courtroom, then walked over to the clerk. “How you doing, Sidney?” I said.

  “Hi, Michael. We got a zoo here,” the balding, middle-aged man in the gray suit responded.

  “I’m sure you’ve got it under control,” I said.

  “I’m going nuts,” Sidney said. “The cage in the back is bursting.”

  “What’s the story?” I asked.

  “There was a Puerto Rican riot. We got three cops in the hospital. One of them’s serious.”

  I nodded. I walked to the right, opened the door leading to the holding pen, and entered.

  A floor-to-ceiling wire-mesh screen divided the back half of the large room from the front half, where guards and lawyers were milling about. Behind the screen, eight men were sitting on a bench in various frozen positions, and several more were standing with their fingers clutching the wire mesh.

  I walked up to the screen. Sidney was right—the cage was fuller than I’d ever seen it. A man was hunched over at the end of the bench; he turned to stare at me as I approached. He seemed terribly frightened. His badly bruised and swollen face looked like a bashed-in eggplant. One eye was hidden behind puffed-up flesh.

  If Lisa had seen the grotesque scene just behind the courtroom, she would have fallen apart. I turned and walked out of the room.

  I walked back to the clerk. “Sidney, can you do me a favor? Would you call me sooner rather than later? I’ve got to get back to my office.” The truth was that I didn’t want Lisa to have to witness the grinding, depressing parade of defendants who would be marched through the court that morning.

  “Sure, Michael. What do you got going here?”

  “A bail. There shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “Oh, really?” Sidney sounded dubious, because he knew there was almost always some problem.

  “The prosecutor’s got no objection to a release on her own recognizance.”

  “Sounds good. Don’t worry, Michael, I’ll take care of you. Oh, and I wanted to thank you again for what you did for my daughter.”

  “Don’t mention it. How’s she making out?”

  “She’s working at the rehab center now. And she’s been clean for over a year.”

  “That’s great. By the way, who’s on the bench?” I asked.

  “Milt Rice.”

  “That’s lucky,” I said. Milt and I had worked together in the prosecutor’s office over twenty years ago.

  I walked back to where Lisa was seated.

  The courtroom was more crowded than before. Lawyers and guards were standing around. Family and friends of the different defendants who’d be called were seated on the benches. A door on the opposite side of the judge’s bench opened. Judge Rice entered the courtroom.

  “All rise,” Sidney said. “All those with business before this honorable court come forward, and you shall be heard. Judge Milton R. Rice presiding.”

  Judge Rice moved up the two steps and took his seat on the bench, then looked around the courtroom and noticed me. He nodded at me, and I nodded back. We had always gotten along well.

  “Please call the first case, Sidney,” Judge Rice said.

  “State versus Lisa Altman,” Sidney called out. He looked over at me and winked. I smiled my thanks back at Sidney.

  I told Lisa to accompany me, and we walked over to the counsel table, where we stood side by side. John got up from his chair at counsel table, and we all faced the judge.

  “How are you, Michael?” Judge Rice asked.

  “Struggling with the elements, as always, Judge. It’s good to see you.”

  “What brings you to our humble lower court?” Judge Rice asked with a smile.

  I explained to the judge that although the charge was murder, the unusual circumstances of the case—the previous trial, Lisa’s reputation in her field, the fact she had come forward voluntarily—meant that there was no likelihood of her fleeing the jurisdiction and not showing up for trial. John, as promised, told the judge that he had no objection to releasing her without bail, a fact that particularly persuaded the judge.

  Lisa and I left the courthouse in less than an hour. It couldn’t have been easier. Lisa had no idea how awful it all could have been for her.

  Part II

  Chapter 15

  IT WAS THREE MONTHS later—three months during which I had seen Lisa several times a week; three months during which I had fallen in love with her. It had caught me totally by surprise. I was in love—passionately, childishly in love.

  At first, it had troubled me a little that she was only twenty-nine, fifteen years younger than I. But she was certainly a grown-up. If anything, she was more world-worn and cynical than most women twice her age. The only thing that betrayed her youth was her tight, hard body… and that thrilled me and made me feel young again.

  It was not entirely a comfort to learn from her that she had always gone out with older men.

  Feeling out of control was frightening for me, probably more so than for most people. But the madness, the emotional chaos of it was also exhilarating. I was sure that this first, real experience of wild, romantic love was also my last chance at it. It had occurred to me that my feelings might well have been heightened by the knowledge that what I was doing was wrong and dangerous. Wrong because the rules of legal ethics clearly stated that I should not be having an affair with a client. And dangerous because if anyone in the legal establishment found out about it, I could face disbarment. Bear would have been appalled. But for the time being, I felt I had no choice but to play it out.

  And not surprisingly, I had finally stopped thinking about Jenny—I had stopped being obsessed with her absence when I woke up, and I had stopped longing for her in the evenings. I spoke much less frequently to Jenny by phone and rarely saw her now when she would visit with Molly at my house. She was taking Molly at all the agreed-upon times, but I hadn’t been around for the pickups and deliveries, as I had in the past. Judith had been taking care of that.

  Not seeing Molly during this period as often as I had before I’d fallen in love with Lisa was a real source of guilt. I was still taking Molly every other weekend and making those times special: museums, the zoo, puppet shows. But I was away much more than I’d ever been before. I had convinced myself that my absences were just for the period until the trial was over, that then I’d make some decision to tell Molly about Lisa—once I knew what to tell her. In the meantime, I never brought Lisa to the house, and never spoke to Molly about Lisa. Maybe there was some other reason why I was reluctant to have Molly meet Lisa, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time. And Lisa had the understanding and sensitivity never to ask to go to my house or to meet my daughter.

  The three months had also been a time during which I became convinced that Lisa had killed Betz in self-defense. I was sure she was innocent of deliberately murdering Betz.

  Lisa had no idea what prison was like or what it would do to her if she were convicted, and of course, there was no point in frightening her by telling her. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get the nightmare of Lisa in prison out of my mind. I kept imagining her being terrorized there—being cursed at or beaten by the guards. I had a recurring memory of the Puerto Ricans in the cage behind the courtroom when I’d taken Lisa to court to set bail. I was glad she had never seen that.

  There was another risk if Lisa went to prison. Not being street-toughened like my usual female clients, she wouldn’t stand a chance of fighting off the inevitable sexual assaults by the other women inmates. If Lisa were convicted and sent to pr
ison, she would immediately be thrown together with a terrifying mob of dangerous criminals—some of whom had been my clients. I desperately wanted to protect her, to save her from the ordeal of a trial, to avoid even the risk of a conviction.

  During these three months, whenever we were together, we spoke only briefly about the case, and sometimes not at all. I had learned the basic facts of her background early on, in conversations that she later told me felt more like cross-examinations: she was twenty-nine years old; born in a small town in Iowa; had no brothers or sisters; had won a bout with polio by sheer grit and discipline. Her hardworking parents had somehow managed to pay for her early dance instruction, and scholarships and odd jobs had financed the rest of her training. She had never been married, never even lived with a man—and she had no interest in women.

  Learning what Lisa was really like occurred more slowly. We were not unlike each other in our reluctance or inability to reveal ourselves to another person—and that was one reason we were drawn to each other. I didn’t know when I had first admitted to myself that I loved her. It was probably pretty early on. She struggled with the fact that she needed me to defend her—it was about the only aspect of her life in which she wasn’t totally in command. Only when we were making love did I see the same vulnerability in her. In every other respect she was totally self-reliant and independent. The discipline she brought to her dance, a kind of tunnel focus, carried over to almost every other part of her life. It pained her to admit that she needed me. And that excited me greatly.

  I was in my office doing research on Lisa’s case, studying recent court opinions from around the country in cases in which women had defended themselves against men who had abused them in the past. Papers and law books were piled on top of my desk, and I was determined to process a lot of this material, to get down to the wood of my desktop. That was my goal: to see wood. I had just settled in when the intercom buzzed.