Sheepishly, yet with clear relief, Brad shook his head. “I love her,” he told Mickey. “I want to be with her as much as I can. But,” he added with a touch of sadness, “I know my limits. I know there’s things I can’t give her.”
“That’s why you need your mother, Brad,” Viola Ritchie cried. “Let me help you!”
“You know it won’t work, Ma,” Brad pleaded for understanding. “Me and you never could live together for too long. You know that.”
“That was in the past,” his mother countered. “This time it’ll all be different.”
The age-old cry, I thought. This time will be different. Brad shook his head. “No, it won’t, Ma.”
Ma Ritchie was down but not out. “What makes you think,” she asked, turning toward Mickey and me, “that I can’t take care of my granddaughter by myself? So what if my only son doesn’t want to live with his own mother?”
“Ma!” Brad protested.
“Mrs. Ritchie,” Mickey began.
Viola Ritchie rose in her chair. “We’ll see what the judge has to say,” she promised. Picking up her pocketbook, she fired a parting shot. “I’m going to get custody with or without my son’s help and that’s that.”
Her departure left a palpable, uncomfortable silence. It was Dawn who broke that silence. In a small voice, she asked, “Will I have to live with her?”
It was a good question. I opened my mouth to give my best legal analysis of our chances in court, but Brad Ritchie beat me to the punch. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said firmly. “You won’t have to live anywhere you don’t want to.”
The anxious frown left Dawn’s face, replaced by a grateful smile. For once, I thought, Dawn had found in her father the strength she’d been looking for. “Then if I can’t live with you,” she announced, “I’d like to stay with Aunt Marcy.”
If Marcy Sheldon had any feelings about being second best, she covered them with a broad smile. I answered the unspoken question in her eyes.
“I always thought,” I explained, “that Mrs. Ritchie’s best hope was for both Brad and Dawn to live with her. Since that’s not going to happen, and since Brad will support Dawn’s decision, our chances look pretty good. Bettinger’s one judge who pays a lot of attention to the wishes of the child.”
Marcy nodded, then stood and took the coat Mickey handed her. Dawn pulled on the new fawn-colored ski jacket, so different from the tattered pink one she’d worn that day in Family Court when Linda had walked out the winner. “I’m hungry,” she said with childish directness. “Can we get something to eat before practice?”
“Sure,” Marcy replied. Looking at me, she asked, “Is there a place around here you’d recommend?”
Even as I extolled the virtues of the Morning Glory, I was aware that something was missing. The big issues had been settled, even better than I’d hoped, and yet I felt no elation.
Then I noticed Brad Ritchie. He stood in the doorway, his leather jacket open, his face a study in indecisiveness. His eyes were fixed on Dawn. He looked forlorn, like the kid nobody wants to play with watching the others run and laugh.
I had a sudden idea. “Marcy,” I began, “did Dawn say she was practicing later?”
Marcy nodded, stopping her progress toward the door.
“How do you think she’d feel about an audience?”
“She’d probably love it,” Marcy replied, an indulgent smile on her face. “The truth is, she’s a little show-off.”
Dawn blushed and ducked her head, but she wasn’t displeased by the description. “Would you and Mickey like to come?” Marcy asked.
“We both have clients to see this afternoon,” I said smoothly. “But maybe Brad would like—”
“Daddy, yes!” Dawn gave an excited squeal. “Please come. I made a big improvement in my backhand since you saw me last. You won’t believe it.”
“If it’s okay with your aunt,” Brad mumbled, scarcely daring to look at the tiny woman.
I’d boxed Marcy Sheldon in as neatly as I had Brad Ritchie that day in Family Court. I had the same guilt level: practically none. It was true that Marcy couldn’t say no without putting out Dawn’s smile like a candle. And yet, Mickey had been right. All the adults in Dawn’s life were going to have to stop acting like kids and start working together. They might as well, I decided, start now.
Marcy rose to the occasion, inviting Brad to lunch with a gracious social lie. “I’d have asked you before,” she explained, “but I thought you had other plans.”
“Dawn’s tennis must take an awful lot of your time, Marcy,” Mickey Dechter said in a thoughtful tone.
“The understatement of the year,” Marcy laughed. “But it’s worth it.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if there was someone who could help you with all that? Someone who’d take Dawn where she has to go, and talk to her coach, and do all the little things that must be hard for someone as busy as you?”
It was a nice try, I thought wryly, giving my partner a grateful glance. But it didn’t look as though Marcy was going to buy it. There was a doubtful frown on her forehead; Dawn’s tennis had been so important to her for so long that it was hard for her to think of letting go. And yet, the hopeful look on Brad Ritchie’s face showed that he too could see where Mickey’s thoughts were taking her.
“It would make things easier,” I remarked. “Be honest.” Then I lowered my voice so that only Marcy could hear. “And be generous,” I urged.
Marcy Sheldon’s Cheshire-cat smile appeared, and this time it stayed for a while. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said warmly. “I can use the help, and it will give Brad and Dawn time together.”
The hug Dawn gave her tiny aunt nearly knocked her over, but it didn’t look as though Marcy minded very much. Brad Ritchie, too excited to stand still, walked over and put his arms around his daughter. “Let’s go eat,” he suggested. As they left the office, Dawn regaled her father with a ball-by-ball account of a match she’d won in Westchester the week before.
It took me a minute to realize that the sick feeling I’d had since Art Lucenti put the gun in his mouth was gone. The sun had finally broken through the clouds that enveloped me. I had done for Dawn what I’d set out to do; I’d given her back her father.
I smiled as I recalled the truth I’d learned at the Friday’s Child Day-Care Center: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Cass Jameson Mysteries
CHAPTER ONE
I was number eighty-four on the calendar, a one-case lawyer with nothing to do but wait. If I’d been in Criminal, I’d have had other courtrooms to cover, clients to greet, calendars to answer. But here on the Civil side, I was a stranger, as out of place as a Wall Street corporado in Brooklyn night court.
Other lawyers milled around, calling out names, looking for clients or opponents. “Anyone here on Thompson v. Powell?” a stoop-shouldered man with a bald spot asked everyone who came through the door.
“Who’s here for the Transit Authority?” a woman in a size-four black suit asked in a tiny voice.
“Who’d admit working for the Transit Authority?” the lawyer sitting next to me said under his breath. He was a young, upwardly mobile type with a Land’s End briefcase and a supercilious smile. Clearly the Brooklyn Supreme Court motion part was a comedown in his professional career.
It was oddly soothing, the lazily expectant atmosphere of the motion part. There was bustle; there were brisk clerks hauling tons of official paper; there were the Service “girls” who answered motions for absent attorneys. There were deals in the hallways, slaps on the back. Typical lawyer stuff. With one difference from my daily fare in criminal court. No one was here because she’d drowned her children in three feet of scalding water.
“Anyone here a notary?” The voice was unmistakable, though it had been a while since I’d heard it. East Bronx Irish, loud enough to cut through the din of legal chitchat but not so loud as to render the speaker unladylike.<
br />
Marla Hennessey. Sometime friend, sometime rival, sometime bitch. Which of her multiple personalities would be out today?
Before Marla got her answer, the bailiff called out, “All rise,” and the judge took the bench. Sixty lawyers stood, then flopped back down on the benches. Somehow, during the thirty seconds we were up, Marla substituted herself for the Land’s End briefcase.
“No, I’m not a notary,” I whispered, as the calendar call began. “How are you? Haven’t seen you in ages,” I went on, doing the Greeting Old Law School Friend number as though there had never been any bad blood between us.
“Can you come out in the hall for a minute?” Marla’s green eyes had a calculating look I knew all too well.
“I don’t dare miss the first call,” I whispered back. “I’ll be in this damned courtroom for the rest of my natural life as it is.”
As the clerk droned out the names on the calendar, lawyers jumped up and said, “Ready For,” “Ready in Op,” or as an occasional variation on a theme, “For the Motion.”
“Cass, don’t bullshit me.” Marla was one of the few people I knew who could shout in a whisper. “I checked the calendar. You’re number eighty-four. It’ll take two minutes to explain, you say yes or no. The worst thing that happens is you’re second-called.”
Second call is the civil court equivalent of the Chinese water torture. It meant waiting until at least noon. But such was the force of Marla’s personality—or the depth of my curiosity—that I followed her into the hall.
Once there, she lit a cigarette and began waving it in her hand, her huge hammered-silver bracelet riding up and down on her wrist.
She’d put on weight. She’d colored and cut her hair, wearing it in a platinum pageboy that fitted her head like a cap. Her clothes were silver and mauve, flowing garments that gave an illusion of soft femininity. As I listened, I reminded myself that it was only an illusion. Marla was as armored as if her clothes and hair were made of stainless steel.
I was so busy studying her that it took me a minute to realize she was talking about adoptions. About me handling an adoption, to be exact. I shook my head and started to protest.
“I don’t know anything about—”
“Cass, I’m telling you. It’s no big deal.” My neck stiffened. Whatever Marla Hennessey was selling this time, I was determined not to buy. Everything in life that was hard for me—getting through law school, finding and then losing boyfriends, starting my own law practice—came under Marla’s heading of “no big deal.”
“I’ve never handled an adoption before.” I said it flatly, as though that were the only problem.
“Adoptions are easy, Cass. A piece of cake.” Life to Marla was just one plate of angel food after another.
“It’s exactly the same as a closing,” Marla went on, her nicotine voice rasping, “except that instead of a three-bedroom co-op in Park Slope, you’re transferring title to a bouncing baby boy.”
Why were baby boys always bouncing? And when had Marla learned to reduce human life to “transferring title”?
“Jesus, Marla, that’s a humane way of putting it.”
“Well, that’s all adoption is. Legally speaking.”
Legally speaking. Our first day at NYU Law School came back to me in living color. The Torts professor handed around a yellow legal pad for us to sign in on. By the time it got to me, it contained more three-named individuals than a library of Victorian novels. Good old Sam the hippie had transformed himself into Samuel Lionel Ripnick. Ed Franklin, who still had acne on his chin, blossomed into E. Harrison Franklin III. And Marla listed herself as Marla Hennessey Schomberg, thus raising from the emotional dead her despised ex-husband. Anything for those elegant three names that spelled “Partner” to white-shoe law firms.
Except me. Cass Jameson, I wrote in bold black strokes, forgoing the middle name I’ve never liked anyway. Integrity above all. I was very young.
The funny thing was, nearly twenty years later, the three-piece suits with the three-name handles were doing pretty well, while I was always behind in the mortgage payments on my brownstone office-home. I doubted whether repainting the office window to read “Cassandra Louise Jameson” would help, but …
Could adoptions be all that difficult?
Could they be harder than standing before a judge and representing a woman who’d listened too long to the devils in her head and plunged two toddlers and an infant into near-boiling water?
What would it be like to handle a case with a real, live, unhurt baby? A baby with no cigarette burns on its legs, a baby who smiled at a kind world? Rojean Glover’s children had never known a kind world, even before their fatal bath-time.
“Tell me how easy,” I said with a sigh. Resisting Marla Hennessey in full thrust had never been easy. And part of me, a very strong part, wanted to atone for Rojean.
How can you represent those people?
It’s a question I’ve been answering in one form or another for all the years I’ve practiced criminal law. How can you represent a rapist? What if you know for a fact your client is guilty? What if your client told you point-blank she was going to lie on the witness stand?
The last one is easy; you get off the case. Guilty is one thing, perjury another. Try explaining that fine ethical distinction at a cocktail party.
If you’re going to practice in the criminal courts, you work out a philosophy that lets you answer the other questions. Answers like: I don’t know he’s guilty; I wasn’t there, was I? Answers like: The Constitution requires a fair trial, with lawyers on both sides doing their best; by defending my client, guilty or not, I maintain the integrity of the criminal justice system.
Good answers. Most of the time.
But they didn’t work when it came to Rojean.
I didn’t know, I told myself.
How could I know?
You should have known. The answer pounded at me, woke me up at two A.M. You should have known. Her Family Court history was right there; she’d been charged with abuse four times. Each time, the judge returned the kids after a few months of foster care. And then the cycle of poverty, frustration, and ignorance would start again. Tonetta had a broken arm; she must have fallen out of her high chair. Todd cut his head open when he stumbled against the radiator. Trudine fractured her leg on the monkey bars in the playground. Always an answer, always an excuse.
I represented Rojean Glover on a charge of endangering the welfare of her children by leaving them alone for two days while she struggled to get back on public assistance so she could feed them. Six-year-old Tonetta, the oldest, was left in charge. When a neighbor called the Bureau of Child Welfare, the children were found hungry, dirty, and scared, and were taken away—“put in protective custody,” in the bureaucratese of BCW. Shoved into foster homes, where at least they had more to eat than one box of Cap’n Crunch cereal with no milk.
It was a triumph of legal representation. I commissioned my own social work study to compete with the official probation report and convinced the judge that if Rojean went into a special parenting program and saw a counselor once a week, she could learn the parenting skills she’d never gotten from her own junkie mother. Not that Rojean was an addict—she’d seen enough of drugs in her childhood to keep her clean—but she’d never seen a healthy family, so how could she possibly raise one?
How can you represent those people?
By understanding them. By seeing them as people, not monsters, no matter what they’ve done. By finding the whole story, the one that appears between the lines of the official records. By listening instead of talking.
So why, two months into her counseling program, did Rojean listen to the voices that told her the kids were possessed by the devil and had to be cleansed in a scalding bath so they could enter the kingdom of heaven?
And why didn’t I know it was going to happen? Why didn’t I see the schizophrenia as well as the poverty and ignorance? Why didn’t I prevent it?
The newspapers
blamed the judge. A few mentioned my name in the last paragraph of the story. But the truth was that if a less conscientious lawyer had represented Rojean, those kids would be alive. In a foster home, but alive.
How can you represent those people?
I didn’t have any more good answers.
I came back to attention, realizing I’d drifted away while Marla outlined the ridiculous ease with which I could handle an adoption.
“I’ve got a horny white teenager about to pup. I’ve also got a desperate older couple who’d like to have a kid before they get their first Social Security check. So they’ve decided to bypass the adoption agency crap. They’re paying the girl’s medical expenses and a reasonable legal fee.”
“Where do I come in?” Marla wasn’t the only lawyer taking a smoke break. The air was blue and thick; I wanted this conversation over.
“Judge Feinberg—a real pain in the ass—says the girl needs her own lawyer. That it’s a conflict of interest for me to represent both the kid and the parents. As though every lawyer in the city hasn’t done it that way since God was a teenager. So,” she went on, exhaling a stream of smoke that matched her silver silk, “I need someone to meet with the girl, get her consent, and file the papers in court. Easy, no?”
“Sounds easy enough,” I conceded. I thought back to the one or two things I knew about adoptions. “What if the girl changes her mind? Doesn’t she have—what, thirty days?”
“God, Cass.” A drag on another cigarette was exhaled in an elaborate sigh. “Talk about looking gift horses in the mouth. The last time we had lunch all you could talk about was that broad who killed her babies, and now you want to open Pandora’s box on this adoption before you even take the case. Trust me, this girl’s not changing her mind.”
The holding pens at Brooklyn Criminal Court flashed before my eyes. Sitting eyeball to eyeball with Rojean, her head twitching, her voice guttural, her pupils needle points in her thin face. “Gotta get me out,” she mumbled, her hands working in her lap. “Gotta get me out to feed my babies.”
Where Nobody Dies Page 27