Presumed Innocent (24 page)

"This is Criminal Case 86–1246. Let me ask counsel to identify themselves for the record."

"Your Honor, I am Nico Della Guardia, on behalf of the people of the state. With me is Chief Deputy District Attorney Thomas Molto."

Funny, the things that get you. I cannot suppress the briefest sound when I hear my title with Molto's name. Kemp jerks my sleeve again.

"Quentin Kemp, Your Honor, of Alejandro Stern, P.C., on behalf of the defendant, Ro
at K. Sabich. I would request leave, Your Honor, to file our appearance."

Jamie's motion is allowed, and the court records now officially indicate that Stern and Co. are my lawyers. Jamie then moves on.

"Your Honor, the defendant is present in court. We would acknowledge receipt of Indictment 86–1246 and waive formal reading. In behalf of Mr. Sabich, Your Honor, we would ask the court to enter a plea of not guilty to the charge."

"Plea of not guilty to the indictment," repeats Judge Mumphrey, making a note on the court record. Bail is set by agreement as a $50,000 signature bond. "Is there a request from either party for a pre-trial conference?" This is the plea-bargaining session, usually an automatic, since it helps both sides buy time. Delay starts to speak, but Kemp interrupts.

"Your Honor, such a meeting would be an unnecessary waste of the court's time." He looks down at his legal pad for the words that Sandy wrote. When Kemp gets outside, he will read the same speech again live for the TV Minicam teams. "The charges in this case are very grave, and they are entirely false. The reputation of one of the city's finest public servants and attorneys has been impugned and, perhaps, destroyed with no basis in fact. In the truest sense of the words, justice in this case must be swift, and we ask the court therefore to set an immediate trial date."

The rhetoric is splendid, but tactics of course govern this demand. Sandy has emphasized to me that a quick disposition will avoid interminable strain on my shattered emotions. But disordered though I may be, I recognize the fundamental rationale. Time is with the prosecutor in this case. Delay's principal evidence will not deteriorate. My fingerprints will not lose their memory. The MUD records will not die. With time the P.A.'s case can only become stronger. A witness from the scene might appear. There may be some account of what happened to the murder weapon.

Kemp's request is a significant departure from form, since most defendants view delay as a second-best alternative to acquittal. Our demand seems to catch Nico and Molto short. Again, Della Guardia starts to speak, but Judge Mumphrey interrupts. For whatever reason, he has heard enough.

"The defendant has waived pre-trial conference. The matter will therefore be set over immediately for trial. Mr. Clerk," he says, "please draw a name." About five years ago, after a scandal in the clerk's office, the last chief judge, Foley, solicited suggestions on a method to ensure that the selection of a trial judge for a lawsuit was completely random. I came up with the idea that the draw be made in court, in front of everybody. The proposal — put forth of course in Horgan's name — was immediately adopted, and I believe was the touchstone for Raymond's belief that I had executive ability. Now wooden plaques, each bearing the name of a judge, are spun inside a closed cage, borrowed from a bingo game. Alvin, the clerk, rolls the bones, as they are known. He pulls the first into the opening.

"Judge Lyttle," he says. Larren Lyttle. Raymond's old partner, the defense lawyer's dream. I am lightheaded. Kemp reaches back and with no other movement squeezes my hand. Molto actually groans. I am pleased to see that up on the bench Judge Mumphrey for an instant seems to smile.

"The case will be set down to Judge Lyttle's docket for motions and trial. Defendant's motions to be filed in fourteen days, the prosecuting attorney to respond according to Judge Lyttle's order." Judge Mumphrey picks up his gavel. He is about to move on, but looks down at Nico for a moment. "Mr. Della Guardia, I should have interrupted Mr. Kemp, but I suppose this case is likely to inspire many speeches by the time that it concludes. I do not mean to endorse what he said. But he is correct when he observes that these are very serious charges. Against a lawyer who I think we all know has served this court with distinction for many years. Let me say to you, sir, simply that I, like all other citizens of this county, hope that in this case that justice will be done — and has been done." Ed Mumphrey nods again to me, and the next case is called.

Della Guardia leaves as he came, through the cloakroom exit. Kemp is straining to maintain a straight face. Jamie puts his pad in his briefcase and watches Nico go.

"He walks pretty well, doesn't he," asks Jamie, "with all that sticking out his behind?"

"I take it," Barbara says, "that you're very pleased about Larren." We are on the highway now, finally free of the downtown traffic. Barbara is behind the wheel. We have learned in recent weeks that my distraction is such that the world is not safe when I drive. There is a primitive relief with the cameras and the clamor behind us. The press pack followed us from the courthouse, down the street, snapping pictures, the huge video cameras lurching toward us like some monster's eyes. We walked slowly. Try, Stern urged us earlier, to look relaxed. We left Kemp at a corner two blocks on. If every day goes like this one, he said, Nico won't get past opening statement. Jamie by nature is a cheerful soul, but somehow his bonhomie conjured a shadow. Every day will not be like this one. Grimmer moments are ahead. I shook his hand and told him he was a pro. Barbara kissed him on the cheek.

"Larren is a good draw," I say, "the best probably." I hesitate only because of Raymond. Neither he nor Judge Lyttle would ever communicate outside of court about the case, but the presence of the judge's best friend as a witness is bound to have some impact, one way or the other, depending on the balance of Raymond's sympathies. I touch Barbara's hand, on the wheel. "I appreciate your being there."

"I don't mind," she says. "Really. It was very interesting," she adds, sincere as ever in her curiosity, "if you don't consider the circumstances."

Mine is what the lawyers call a 'high-profile case' — the press attention will continue to be intense. In that situation, communication with the eventual jurors begins long before they come to court for jury service. Nico has been winning the press battles so far. I have to do what I can to project a positive image. Since I am charged, in essence, with murder and adultery, it is important that the public believe that my wife has not lost faith in me. Barbara's attendance at every event the media will cover is critical. Stern insisted that she come downtown so that he could explain this to her face to face. Given her distaste for public occasions, her narrow suspicions of outsiders, I expected her to regard this as a taxing assignment. But she has not resisted. Her support in the last two months has been unfailing. While she continues to view me as the victim of my own follies — this time for having ever been enamored of public life and cutthroat politics — she recognizes that things have passed well beyond the stage where I am being served right. She regularly expresses confidence in my vindication and, without a word from me, presented me with a $50,000 cashier's check to cover Sandy's retainer and the later fees, which was drawn from a trust which her father left exclusively in her control. She has listened with fast attention to hours of table conversation in which I lambaste Nico and Molto or describe the intricacies of little strategies that Stern has devised. In the evenings, when I am apt to recede to a withdrawn vacancy, she will come to stroke my hand. She has taken on some of my suffering. Although she evinces bravery, I know that there are moments, alone, when she has cried.

Not only the stress of these extraordinary events, but the radical alteration of my schedule has added a new tempo to our relations. I journey to the library; draft notes for my defense; root pointlessly in the garden. But we are alone together now, much of the time. With the summer, Barbara has few responsibilities at the U. and we linger over breakfast after I drop Nat off for camp. At lunch, I go out and pick greens for our salad. And a new sexual languor has moved softly into our relationship. 'I was thinking we should do it,' she announced one afternoon from the sofa, where she was reclining with obscure reading material and Belgian chocolates. Thus, an afternoon encounter has become part of our new routine. It is easiest for her to come crouched over me, hunkered down. The birds sing outside the windows; the daylight seeps beyond the edges of the bedroom blinds. Barbara rolls around with my pin driven deep inside her, that muscular vortex at work, her eyes closed but rolling, her face otherwise serene as her hue increases and she works toward the point of release.

Barbara is an imaginative, athletic lover; it was not sensual deprivation which drove me to Carolyn. I cannot complain about hang-ups or fetishes or what Barbara will not do. Even in the worst of our times, even amid the upheaval that followed my idiotic confessions last winter, sex was not abandoned. We are of the revolutionary generation. We spoke openly of sexuality. When we were young we tended it like a magic lantern, and we continue to find its place. We have become expert in the physiognomy of pleasure, the nodes to press, the points to massage. Barbara, a woman of the eighties, would find it a further insult to do without.

For the time being, the clinical aspect which inhabited our relations for months is gone. But even now I find something desperate and sad in Barbara's loving. There are distances yet left to cross. I lie in bed in the sweet afternoons while Barbara dozes, the midday suburban quiet soothing and beguiling after years of downtown racket, and consider the mystery to me that is my wife.

Even at the zenith of my passion for Carolyn, I gave no thought to leaving. If my marriage to Barbara at times has been equivocal, our family life has not. We both dote relentlessly on Nat. I grew up knowing that other families lived differently from mine. They spoke across the dinner table; they went together to the movies and soda fountains. I saw them running, playing ball in the open fields of the Public Forest. I yearned. They shared a life. Our existence as a family, as parents and child, is the single aspiration of my childhood that I feel I have fulfilled, the only wound of that time I have healed.

And yet to pretend that Nathaniel is our sole salvation is too cynical. Pessimistic. False. Even in the grimmest period, we both respond to the inner commandments that find some value here. My wife is an attractive woman — extremely so. She minds the mirror carefully, assuming certain predetermined angles to be sure she remains intact: her bustline still peaked; the waist, notwithstanding pregnancy, still girlish; her dark, precise features not yet losing fineness in any gathering of adipose, or slackening from beneath the jaw. She could certainly find suitors; she chooses not to. She is an able woman. And on her father's death, $100,000 was placed in trust for her, so that it is not need which keeps her from departing. For better or for worse, there must be truth in the bitter words that she will sometimes hurl at me in the heat of quarrels: that I am the only one, the one person, save Nat, whom she has ever loved.

In the clement periods, as now, Barbara's devotion is apt to be extreme. She is eager to have me absorb her attentions. I become her ambassador to the outside world, bringing back to Nearing observations and stories. When I am on trial, I will frequently arrive home at 11 p.m. or midnight to find Barbara waiting in her housecoat, my dinner warm. We sit together and she listens with her intense, abstracted curiosity to what has taken place that day, much like a thirties child before the radio. The dishes clank; I speak with my mouth full, and Barbara laughs and marvels about the witnesses, the cops, the lawyers whom she sees only through me.

And for me? What is there? Certainly I value loyalty and commitment, kindness and attention, when they are shown. Her instants of selfless love, so focused upon me, are balm for my abraded ego. But it would be phony and hollow if I were to claim that there are not also moments when I despise her. The injured son of an angry man, I cannot fully master my vulnerabilities to her blackish moods. In her fits of lacerating sarcasm, I feel my hands twitch with the impulse toward strangulation. In response to these periods, I have taught myself to manifest an indifference, which, over time, has begun to become real. We stumble into a sickening cycle, a tug of war in which we are each maneuvering for position by forever stepping back.

But those times are far off now, and almost forgiven. We wait instead on the brink of discovery. What is it that holds me? Some yearning. In the languid afternoons, I seem almost to seize it, even while the doors and windows of my soul are thrown open to a fundamental gratitude. We have never been without momentary eruptions; Barbara is incapable of long-term serenity. But we have also made our trips to the brightest spots and highest places; with Barbara Bernstein I certainly have known the finest moments of my life. The first years were innocent, spirited, full of that clamorous passion and a sense of mystery that exceeds what can be described: I
long
at times, in transported recollection I pine, I perish with a groping sensation — I am like some misbegotten thing left at the end of science-fiction adventures which reels about with stumps outstretched, beckoning toward the creatures of which it was once one: Let me in again! Unwork time.