Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  However, the sort of "split personality" that occasionally entered into part of a schizophrenia diagnosis wasn't "a case of more than one personality, each taking turns at being 'up front,' so to speak, but rather ... mmm hmmm ... the deterioration of the one 'original' personality into a second personality, with no going back and forth." Nickles paused. "Am I making myself... ah, yes, mmm ... clear?"

  Several of the jurors nodded their heads, but the others looked confused. Karp leaned over toward Kenny Katz. "This is what you think we need our own shrink for?"

  "I already cried 'uncle,' what more do you want?"

  Lewis, who was watching the jurors for their reaction, turned back to the psychiatrist. "So if this version of 'split or multiple personality' is only one of many components of schizophrenia, what then is schizophrenia?"

  "Well, for that let us refer to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM for short, which ... ummm, hmmm ... is a handbook for mental health professionals listing various categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them, according to the American Psychiatric Association, of which ... ah, yes, umhmm ... I was a past president."

  Reciting from the DSM, Nickles defined schizophrenia as "a severe brain disease that... can make it difficult to know what is real and what is not. It can result in false perceptions and ... hmm umm ... expectations, in enormous difficulties in understanding reality, and in corresponding difficulties with language and expression."

  "Doctor, we've already identified a variation of multiple personality disorder as one of the symptoms of schizophrenia. What are some of the others?" Lewis asked.

  "Well, again referring to the DSM, the symptoms are quite wide ranging. They might include ... umm mmm ... psychotic manifestations, such as hearing voices, or assigning unusual meaning to an everyday event, or delusions, which are when a patient is convinced that... false personal beliefs are instead real."

  "And doctor, how severe can these symptoms be?"

  "Quite severe. They can totally impair ... aha, yes ... an individual's functioning in the world."

  Lewis walked over to the defense table and stood next to Jessica. "So doctor, you testified that after more than twenty hours of examination, your diagnosis is that at the time of the ... deaths of her children ... Jessica Campbell suffered from postpartum psychosis, specifically postpartum schizophrenia."

  "Um ... hmm ... that is correct."

  "And how did you reach that conclusion?"

  "Well, we may begin ... with the auditory hallucinations. She heard a voice, or voices, commanding her to perform certain acts."

  "A voice? Any particular voice?"

  "Umm ... yes, she believed that she was hearing the voice of God."

  "The voice of God?"

  "Yes, it was part of her delusions, which were also consistent with my diagnosis."

  "And what was God asking her to do?"

  "Commanding ... God was commanding her to ... ah, yes ... 'send' her children to Him."

  "Were there any other aspects to this delusional state?"

  "Yes." Nickles looked at Charlie Campbell. "She believed that this was necessary to ... mmmm hmmm ... save their souls from Satan, as personified by her husband."

  "Doctor, did this personification of Satan as Charlie Campbell have anything to do with your diagnosis?"

  "Yes. This is one of those instances in which there was ... a multiple-personality component... hmmm ... of schizophrenia. I mean, here we had a well-regarded professor of political science at New York City University, active in political ... and community activist circles, a good wife and ... ah, yes ... devoted mom, at least after treatment for postpartum depression following the ... births of her children. And yet this illness got progressively worse with each birth. Her ... mmm hmmm ... 'original' personality began to disintegrate until ... finally she was simply 'not herself.'"

  "Not herself," Lewis repeated. "Doctor, in your opinion, when she was 'not herself,' was Jessica Campbell able to understand the nature and consequences of her actions that day?"

  "No, I believe that... aha, yes, mmm ... Jessica Campbell was lost in her delusions. She was now a religious zealot performing a ritual that would protect her children from evil and give them to God for safe-keeping. And while that may seem ... um huh ... insane and wrong to you and I, it made perfect, moral sense to her. She was doing as ... ah, mmm, yes ... God requested."

  "Were her actions subsequent to the deaths of her children done to avoid punishment?" Lewis asked. "In other words, did she clean up the scene of the crime and hide the bodies because she knew that what she had done was wrong?"

  "Not at all. She was complying with the wishes of a higher moral authority ... God. And it's not as though she made rational choices to avoid ... mmm ... punishment."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Well, if she was really ... hmmm ha ... trying to 'get away with it,' she might have accused a stranger of breaking into the house and taking the children. Or said that she'd gone for a drive with the children and then ... hmmm umm ... somehow struck her head, developed amnesia and ... ah, yes ... couldn't remember what happened to the children. But instead, she told her husband ... mmm hmm ... that she'd sent the children to be with God, as if throwing it in his face. She'd thwarted his efforts to steal the souls of their children."

  The psychiatrist, pretending to be Jessica Campbell, swatted at the man sitting in the pews. "Take that, Charlie Campbell! Begone, Satan!"

  Jessica stopped drawing at the outburst. Lewis pointed to her. "Doctor, my client, as she sits here today, doesn't appear to be violent or dangerous. In fact, she doesn't seem to have anything wrong with her."

  Nickles shrugged. "She is being treated for her mental illness. I believe ... she has been taking quite large doses of... hmmm ... lithium, as well as anti-psychotic medication."

  "So is she cured?"

  "No. Her mental defect is treatable so that the ... umm, uh-huh ... symptoms are not currently present, but she will never be 'cured' as we think of the word."

  "Is she, in your medical opinion, a danger to herself and others?"

  "Well, she has been through a ... ha, yes... enormous trauma, and will need psychiatric counseling into the foreseeable future, as well as ... medication to keep her stabilized. I believe that she still ... hmmm ... manifests some suicidal ideation and will have to be watched carefully. However, that is ... related to the remorse she feels for what happened to her children now that she is able to understand ... hmmm umm ... that what she believed was real was actually delusional. But she does not represent a ... hmmm ... danger to others."

  "The state would like to see her incarcerated," Lewis said, turning toward Karp and Katz. "Does Jessica Campbell belong in prison?"

  Nickles shook her head so vehemently that she had to catch her glasses and push them back on her nose. "No, not at all.... That would be cruel and unusual ... hmmm ... As we all know, prisons have little help to ... hmmm aha ... offer the mentally ill. She would be at great risk for ... mmmm mnnn ... suicide and abuse by other prisoners. Jessica Campbell is a sick woman, not a criminal. Today she may seem fine, but in March, she had no idea what she was doing. She ... was not responsible for her actions. And therefore, she ... ha mmm ... belongs in a secure hospital setting, not a ... prison cell."

  "Thank you, Dr. Nickles," Lewis said. "No further questions."

  34

  About the time Niki Nickles was testifying inside the Criminal Courts building at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan, Marlene arrived several blocks south with her father and the twins at the corner of Broad and Wall streets. A railing and half a dozen security guards stood between them and the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange. She approached one of the guards and gave their names. "We're supposed to meet Eric Eliaso. He's with Gotham City Bank."

  The guard checked for their names on the clipboard, then used a cell phone to call Gotham City Bank's desk inside the building. "Yes, I have a Marlene Ciampi, Marian
o Ciampi, and Isaac and Giancarlo Karp here for Mr. Eliaso. Thank you." He turned to Marlene. "He'll be right out.... As a reminder, cell phones are to be turned off and remain off in the building. No knives, pepper spray, or weapons of any kind are allowed, and you are to remain with your sponsor at all times."

  As they waited for Marlene's cousin, Enrique "Eric" Eliaso, she noted the changes that had occurred since the last time she'd visited, which was well before 9/11. It started with the front of the neo-classical building. A huge American flag hung across the six massive Corinthian columns, a symbol of pride and resilience following the destruction of the World Trade Center. On the day of the attack, the building and those around it had been covered with a thick layer of gray ash. The flag said, "You took your best shot and we're still here." Yet there was no getting past the fact that the attack had changed the NYSE, like it had so many other "sensitive" institutions.

  Prior to 9/11, the line of tourists would have stretched around the building as they waited to enter one of the most famous icons of American financial might. But the general public was no longer allowed inside to stand in the visitor's gallery above the trading floor. Now the only visitors were those with official business in the building, such as the representatives of traded companies, banks, or trading firms, or those sponsored by someone who worked there—all of whom had to pass security clearances.

  Now tourists had to be content to snap their photographs from across Broad Street, which had been closed on that block to all traffic. Large cement flower planters and newly planted trees barricaded access to vehicles. Men in dark blue windbreakers with big yellow letters on the back spelling out "CANINE TEAM" cruised through the crowd outside the perimeter with their canine friends.

  Bomb dogs, Marlene thought, like the mastiff and Presa Canario pups we train at my farm on Long Island. Wonder if any of my former 'students' are working here?

  "Marlene! What's a hot babe like you doin' in a dump like this?" She turned at the sound of her name and smiled as her cousin Eric walked up to the security rail. He'd been quite the athlete "back in the day," a suave Italian quarterback with a full head of wavy black hair and the requisite good looks. He still had the smile that had charmed many a girl in their old Queens neighborhood, but there was scalp showing beneath the oiled-black hair and the six-pack belly had succumbed to pasta and red wine.

  Eric never lost his thick-as-a-brick Queens accent created by waves of immigrants, each of which added its layer to the multilingual sandwich. Nor had he graduated high school, receiving his GED instead during a stint at the not-so-well-regarded Flushing Juvenile Detention Center, though he'd since made good at the Exchange and was now a floor manager, overseeing other traders for his bank.

  The two cousins embraced, then Eric turned to Mariano. "Mr. Ciampi, how very good it is to see you."

  "Enrique," Mariano replied coolly. He'd never forgiven his first cousin's son for a joyriding escapade with his daughter, Marlene, in high school that ended up with both of them in the pokey. "The wonder of that boy is that he's working for a bank," he'd said on the taxi ride over. "Instead of robbing them."

  Eric didn't take the brush-off too hard. He figured the old man was probably right about him. He turned his attention to the twins. "Hey, look at you two wiseguys. Man, you're already almost as tall as me. You gonna play hoops like your old man?"

  The twins beamed. Although they only saw him a few times a year, they liked "Cousin Eric." He could be counted on to keep up a constant monologue on women, parties, sports, and the joys of being a man. On occasion, out of their mother's hearing, he'd talk about mob hits and gang fights "like they was in the old day ... none of this shooting each other shit....Doesn't take a man to do that....It was all about your fists, maybe a roll of quarters or the occasional knife. Guns are for removing problems, not earning respect." Eric looked around. "Speaking of His Majesty the DA, where's Butch?"

  "Couldn't be here," Marlene said. "He's in trial today."

  "Oh right, the nutcase who drowned her kids. Ask me, and I don't go for these baloney excuses. So what if I think Jesus wants me to off my neighbor? Wouldn't that be a nice thing. 'Hey, scumbag, I got a hangover and Jesus don't like the way you're mowing your lawn too early on a Saturday morning. KABLOOIE, you're dead!' Hope she fries. I'd have done it myself if she killed one of mine."

  "You don't have any kids, Enrique."

  "That you know of," he said with a wink.

  As they were walking up to the entrance, Eric stopped outside the building. "Okay, first off this area is the heart of the Financial District and is rich in history." He pointed to an old building diagonally across from the NYSE. "That there is the old Federal Building where in 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States. Those were the days when many thought that New York would be the nation's political home, instead of just its financial capital."

  On the back side of the NYSE, he said, facing Broadway, was Trinity Church. Built in 1843, it was actually the third version. "The first having burned down in the Great New York Fire of 1776 after the British routed American troops from the southern part of the island, and the second succumbing to snowstorms in the 1840s."

  The beautiful Episcopalian church, with its three immense bronze doors, Gothic revival flying buttresses, stained-glass windows, and vaulted ceilings, had literally stood in the shadow of the World Trade Center towers. "Yet it remained virtually unscathed as the skyscrapers crumbled. Its pipe organ filled with so much debris from the outside that it had to be replaced, but nothing much else happened to it. After the attack, the gates to the church were sort of an impromptu memorial where visitors left small notes and tokens in memory of the lives that was lost."

  And for publicity-seekers like Jessica Campbell to get on a soapbox, Marlene thought with disgust.

  "Okay, guys, take a look at the pediment on the Exchange," Eric said to the twins. "That's the triangular bit below the roof with the people carved in it. The scene is called 'Integrity Protecting the Works of Man.' The big-titted gal in the center is Integrity with her pals Agriculture and Mining to her left, and Science, Industry, and Invention over on her right. All of them together represent the sources of America's prosperity, and them waves on the sides are meant to show that the Exchange is important from coast to coast." Eric led them to the security entrance where he flashed his security badge, which got them into the barricaded area. As they walked to the entrance of the Exchange, Marlene noted the new security measures outside and inside the building.

  "Yeah, and it's too bad," her cousin replied. "We used to get a lot of visitors, which made it more exciting. Man, we'd get some high-class broads running around, wanting you to show them the 'real' Exchange." He sighed theatrically. "But 9/11 screwed that up. And those flower boxes you see all around the front? They ain't your mom's planters. No, sir, that's cement reinforced with heavy-duty steel bars, and the whole structure goes down eight feet below the street level. You couldn't go through one of them with a Sherman tank."

  Inside the doors of the Exchange, the little entourage was required to pass through a metal detector and have their belongings X-rayed. They signed into the "guest book," and then stood on little taped marks on the floor to have their photographs taken for visitor cards.

  As they gathered their belongings on the other end of the X-ray conveyor belt, Marlene watched as several police officers walked right through the metal detectors without bothering to remove their guns or other equipment.

  They, of course, set off the alarms, which were ignored by the bored NYSE security guards.

  Eric caught his cousin's look and chuckled. "Funny, ain't it?" he said under his breath as he led them to a door and down two flights of stairs. "All this big show of security, but then those guys just walk in, guns and all."

  "So security isn't as tight as it seems?" Marlene noted.

  "It depends. If you're some schmoe like me in a suit, you couldn't get past the front there with a bobby pin," he repli
ed. "But there's two ways of getting in here without nobody sayin' nothin'. One is if you're a dona bella with a lot of cleavage showing, then them guys working security ain't lookin' at nuttin' but your bazoombas. You could walk in here with a flamethrower, as long as you got tits. The other way you just saw. If you're in an NYPD uniform, you can waltz right in with guns and whatever. And while it might look like there's a lot of cops patrolling around here, what most visitors don't know is that a lot of these guys aren't assigned to the stock exchange, they're just here for the free lunch."

  "The free lunch?"

  "Yeah, literally. The bigshots that run the Exchange think that having all these cops around makes it look like there's a ton of security; so they let New York's finest know that they're welcome to free lunch in the cafeteria. They don't even have to be from the local precinct. Hell, there's guys coming over on the Staten Island Ferry or taking the subway from Uptown. You'll see when we get to the cafeteria, it can look like the Policeman's Ball in there from 11 to 2 or later sometimes. Guess the criminals in this city take the noon hours off."

  Marlene's cousin proved to be a jovial and informative guide, though some of his "insider" knowledge bordered on the pornographic. He started their tour in the farthest reaches of the basement, beginning with a large, otherwise non-descript room for office supplies—boxes and boxes of paper, notepads, pens, and whatever else the stock market required. Her cousin pointed out a couple of nooks and crannies out of the way of someone coming in the room just for supplies.

  "Back in the day, guys would come in here to sleep one off after checking in upstairs," Eric said, then added with a wink at Mariano and the boys, "or he might bring a girl in here for a little of the old badda-boom badda-bing. You dig?"