The Magician (9 page)
“Don’t try to talk,” said Gil. “They told me all about it. I brought you something.”
Even before the young soldier had unwrapped the present, it was clear it was a book, small, without a dust wrapper, and obviously much used. Ed took it in his hand. The gold printing on the cover had flaked off long ago, but the embossing of the title and author could be read. It was a copy of Jean Hugard’s little book of complex card tricks, the cornerstone of Gil’s library of perhaps three dozen volumes of books on magic.
Ed, overwhelmed, tried to say, “But it’s yours.” The tube made his words unintelligible.
“I didn’t have time to buy anything. Anyhow, I won’t be back for two years.”
Ed felt the cover of the book with the moist palm of his hand. “Thank you,” he mumbled.
Gil sat for a bit in silence, uncomfortable with the obligation of having to do all the talking.
“The gang that got you, are they the ones you told me about?”
Ed nodded.
“You know,” Gil said, “the army is full of guys like that. Rednecks, from every part of the country. Beer, bowling, hunting, car Simonizing. You should hear them talk about women, even their wives. Filling the old lady’s hole, is the way they think of it. These guys don’t even go to the movies, except drive-ins, and that’s not for the movies. Biggest thing they miss in the army is TV. Booze and poker, that’s it. I kind of keep to myself. If I weren’t tall, I think I’d be in fights all the time.”
The nurse came in to see if everything was all right and to tell Gil he’d have to leave soon.
“Before the army,” said Gil, “I couldn’t understand all the stuff you read about violence. I mean, I know about Hitler and all that, and assassinations and muggings, but after living with those guys for a couple of months, I wonder how come there isn’t
more
violence, you know what I mean?” Gil studied the insignia on his cap. “Hearing what happened to you makes me wish I’d had the nerve to head for Canada.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t do any good. I’d wind up in jail surrounded by the same types. Well, look, take care, will you?”
He wrote on a piece of paper for Ed. “That’s my address for mail. I promise to write when your letters catch up with me.”
He stood up. “Maybe I can get transferred to some USO-type outfit, doing magic. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Ed held up the book, thanking him again for it.
“Take care,” said Gil.
Going out the door, he looked very military, not just the uniform, but the way he walked. Ed hoped the army wouldn’t kill him.
Chapter 10
The courtroom had fourteen rows of seats on both sides of a wide aisle for the townspeople to observe the administration of justice. The seats were usually empty. The walls, paneled with walnut veneer, gave the chamber a dark, brooding solidity. The one touch of color was the American flag, which drooped on its stand beside the black-robed judge. Some years earlier a village trustee had suggested that a quiet electric fan be hidden behind the bench, tilted upward at the flag so that it would seem to be waving, but the justices dismissed the notion as undignified.
Urek stood in front of the bench, no longer in handcuffs because his lawyer had assured the policemen that he wouldn’t try anything funny. George Thomassy did not want to plead for low bail for a client under physical restraint.
Judge Clifford, a proud man, spent a good part of his time on the bench trying to control a human affliction: he had the habit of swallowing air and subsequently burping, which, though he had learned to burp quietly behind a hand held in front of his lips, disturbed him because it seemed inconsistent with the dignity of his office. Once, in the course of a prolonged and unruly trial, the affliction had distressed him so that he visited a doctor, who told him that air-swallowing was not an uncommon nervous habit among people; the less fortunate could expel their intake only through flatulence. The judge thought himself lucky because the indignity of passing wind in court would certainly exceed what he suffered as a burper.
The point at which the judge most tried to control his affliction was when a defendant first came before his view. The judge had developed a personal ritual of considering each defendant as if he were an employment applicant. During his initial study of a defendant’s appearance, a moment that would last anywhere from five to thirty seconds, the judge’s hands, pressed together before his lips, served not only the purpose of burp concealment but gave most defendants a sense that they were being studied by God in an attitude of prayer.
To Judge Clifford, Urek’s face did not seem to be American, that is, clean-cut, short-haired, near handsome, with a look of innocent honesty. On the contrary, he looked markedly Slavic. The judge was also disturbed by the deep scar that ran vertically along Urek’s right cheek and almost onto the ear. When he saw such scars on Negroes, he assumed them to be the result of knife fights, but in the case of this Slavic boy, perhaps it had been a spill from a bicycle. He wouldn’t, of course, ask. The boy’s hair had been plastered down in a way that betrayed uncustomary effort. Still, he was wearing a white shirt, with a striped blue tie, and his suit was pressed. The judge did not like to believe that he was influenced by dress, which could be contrived for occasions, as indeed Urek’s had been by the lawyer who had brought the dress-up gear to the jail, but so many young people he saw these days just had no regard for their physical appearance.
Thomassy argued that his client was known to him for many years (true), that he lived at home with his mother and father (true), that he had not been in serious trouble before (false), and that bail should be nominal, considering all these points and the defendant’s youth.
The police sergeant described the seriousness of the injury to Japhet, the smashed windshield, the fracas in the school auditorium, the difficulty in making the arrest, and the danger the police had been put in just in trying to get this young fellow to come along.
No mention was made of the fact that Urek’s small, feared organization controlled the student body at the school more than the principal or the teachers could be said to do.
Judge Clifford decided that Thomassy was doing his duty in making Urek out to be a nice boy, and that the police sergeant was once again emphasizing the strain and danger of police work. As happens in smaller communities, the judge had Thomassy before him fairly frequently; in fact, at a mutual friend’s party recently, Thomassy and the judge had gone off in a corner to discuss the recent Supreme Court obscenity decisions for a good part of the evening. Thomassy was probably the smartest trial lawyer in the community, articulate and charming in private, really knowledgeable about the law, and tough and earthy in front of a jury. The judge felt himself fortunate. Examinations of witnesses were never boring if Thomassy was defending somebody.
As for the police sergeant, the judge knew his opinion of adolescent kids. Their rock music late at night brought nuisance telephone calls to the police station. The kids broke street lights. They’d take the name shingle in front of a driveway and exchange it for another stolen somewhere. Always creating work for the department, then ending up with the parents coming down and saying, “Look, it’s only kids having fun. It won’t happen again.” Of course, it always happened again; somebody’s kids somewhere in town pranking, or smoking pot. The sergeant shouldn’t feel that harassed. It was his job to deal with nuisances.
Taking his hands away from his face, Judge Clifford set the bail at five hundred dollars.
Thomassy felt relieved. Urek started to say something; Thomassy squeezed his arm hard to keep the boy silent.
The Yonkers bondsman Thomassy dealt with was very tough about going along with high bail for irresponsible kids. Five hundred dollars was okay. The kid lived at home, and he didn’t seem to be the long-haired sort that might take off for Greenwich Village. The bond would cost Urek’s father seventy-five dollars, and he’d probably have to sign the guaranty. The father wouldn’t want to be stuck for five hundred. He probably didn’t have five hundred. Paul Urek, Thomassy thought, would see to it that the kid didn’t run off somewhere.
Almost as an afterthought, Judge Clifford said to Urek, “Remember, son, bail is a promise to return.”
Back in his office, Thomassy sat Urek down on the leather couch. “You stay there,” he said.
Thomassy hung his jacket on the back of his chair, revealing half-moons of sweat under each armpit.
“Be back in a minute,” he said, heading for the men’s room down the hall. This was his test. If Urek made a break for it, that was the end. He could break laws but not defy Thomassy. If Urek went for anything on the desk, or tried to relieve the jacket on the back of the chair of any of its contents, he was finished. A client had to realize that Thomassy was above all else immune from anything the client might do to the rest of the world.
Urek hadn’t moved off the couch. Good sign.
Thomassy stretched his arms in front of him, fingers intertwined. Then he stretched his lanky frame, watching Urek all the time. This was Thomassy’s silent treatment. Some clients filled the vacuum with talk. That kind was dangerous on the witness stand.
The boy was looking everywhere, except at Thomassy. Would he speak? Thomassy waited, thinking.
He had gone straight from the dean’s list at NYU Law to Pritchard, Hutchinson, Batsford, & Morgan—but not before trying a little mischief: he had applied to Sullivan & Cromwell, been offered a job, then turned it down. He had been interviewed at Debevoise, Plimpton, & MacLean; they told him the salary they were considering starting him at, and he told the interviewer a day later it wasn’t the salary, he didn’t want the job. He did the same thing when he was offered an associate’s position at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Thomassy wanted Pritchard; they were the only firm of the bunch without a single non-Wasp name on its letterhead.
But he told Mr. Pritchard, who insisted on interviewing each successful applicant personally, of the offers from the other three firms. Pritchard liked the young man’s nerve, raised the offer by a thousand dollars, and hired him as an associate. At the next partners’ meeting, Pritchard made much about their having snagged that quick-witted Armenian who had turned down Sullivan & Cromwell, Debevoise, and Cravath. Within three years Thomassy had become the best tactician on the litigating side of the firm, when he was told by Pritchard personally that he’d have to resign.
“You might say,” declared the seventy-year-old Mr. Pritchard, “that you are being fired for excessive competence. You’re obviously the most valuable associate we’ve got. We can’t promote any of the other associates into partnerships unless we promote you first, and we’re not about to have a Boston Irishman, a Jew, or an Armenian in the senior ranks. They may be breaking ground in some of the other firms, but not here, not till I’m dead, anyway. Never mind, I’ll give you a letter of recommendation that’ll fix you up as house counsel at any American corporation you name at a higher salary. Good luck.”
Thomassy didn’t shake Pritchard’s outstretched hand. He cleared his desk, said good-bye to no one, didn’t wait for a letter of recommendation. In two weeks he was working a fanatical sixty-hour week at the American Civil Liberties Union, getting the guilty as well as the innocent off the hook. He started getting his name in the papers, became a master of press conferences as well as a crackerjack courtroom lawyer. Every year he sent old Mr. Pritchard a birthday card, his way of saying you’re living too long, drop dead.
Finally, when civil-liberties cases became routine for him, Thomassy decided to devote himself to private criminal practice, with one intention: winning every time. He set himself up in the suburbs. Ossining had Italian lawyers for the Italians, Jewish lawyers for the Jews, Wasp lawyers for the majority, and so Thomassy concentrated his early practice on the miscellaneous ethnics who didn’t have a lawyer in town.
Paul Urek was his first client. His television set had been repossessed by the finance company. Thomassy not only got him his TV back, he filed a claim against the finance company for removing the set in the full view of neighbors when the overdue check was already in the mail. They settled out of court for more than the television set had cost. Paul Urek spread the word: this new lawyer wasn’t just good, he was great. Soon Thomassy was getting all the business he could handle, not only from the miscellaneous ethnics, but from Italians, Jews, and finally Wasps as well. The word was: if you want to win, get Thomassy. Defending Paul Urek’s kid was something he had to do successfully.
During the silent treatment, Urek had kept quiet. Or was he about to talk now? Thomassy studied Urek’s strange face. He saw the surface of animal agitation, an actual tic in one cheek, eyes that were never still, and behind them a feeling of lava. Urek, though still in his teens, reminded Thomassy most of a thirty-year-old anti-Semitic hooligan from Queens who had been accused of defacing the ark in a Queens synagogue. Somehow the case had gotten to the Civil Liberties Union instead of the Legal Aid Society. During his first interview with the man Thomassy had uncovered the fact that he was guilty not only of the charged offense but of several similar incidents in the past for which he had not been apprehended. Having defaced several synagogues without getting caught, he had gotten careless and taken too long on the inside, where he was seen through the window by three Jews, who waited for him to come out. They did not seize him but observed him carefully for identification purposes, followed him home, then reported the matter to the police.