I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (21 page)

“Excuse me, but are you here for Fantasia?” he finally resolves to ask.

“Um-hmm,” I say, distraught over the situation. I'm still holding my cell phone in my hand.

Then he says the wrongest thing he could ever have thought of saying.

“If you'd like to step in. And it might be best if you turn off your cell phone.”

I put my cell phone back in my pocket. I take one step toward him, and I stop just
this
far away from his face.

“What did you just say?” I demand point-blank, with blood buzzing in my ears.

Piece of shit that he is, he turns pale.

“Only . . . that . . . maybe you could turn off your . . . phone,” he stammers.

You know, I've had it up to here with the rules of etiquette invented by frustrated bureaucrats. I must have developed an allergy of some kind.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” I demand through clenched teeth. I wave him aside with a scornful gesture, then I walk into the office.

The preliminary judge senses a squall brewing, looks up from her file, and focuses first on me, then on her secretary, who's standing right behind me, still dazed from the way I body-checked him.

Burzone, too, turns around to look with some alarm.

“
Buon giorno
,” I say.

“What seems to be the problem, Counselor . . . ?” asks the preliminary judge, suspiciously.

“Malinconico,” I fill in the blank, satisfied that she recognized me as a lawyer; then, without measuring my words in the slightest, I come to the point.

“The problem is that this idiot”—and I point out the idiot in question by tipping my head in his direction—“had the gall to tell me to turn off my cell phone.”

The secretary turns red, but he keeps his mouth shut. Burzone gives me a glance of mixed respect and concern over how things might turn out for him at this point. I just stand there, in the middle of the room, proud as punch and completely unrepentant.

The preliminary judge removes her reading glasses and looks up at me. She has a long, vaguely masculine face, pronounced cheekbones, a slightly off-center nose. She so strongly resembles Anjelica Huston that I have to make an effort not to tell her so.

“What?” She pretends not to understand. I'd bet thirty euros that she actually liked my entrance.

“I said ‘idiot,' your honor.”

“Moderate your language, Counselor.”

If that was a smile that looked like it was trying to get onto her lips, she was very good at concealing it.

“I beg your pardon, judge. I'm mortified at appearing before you for the first time in such a, shall we say, informal manner.”

She thinks that over.

“We don't allow cell phones to remain on during a hearing, Counselor.”

“You are perfectly right about that, your honor. But in point of fact, the hearing had not yet begun. My cell phone rang outside, before I ever set foot in your office.”

She looks at me. She looks at the idiot. She inhales. She exhales. All through her nose.

“Take a seat, Counselor. Let's get started.”

I take a seat, beaming. Burzone too looks like the cat that ate the canary. The idiot sits at the right corner of the desk, bowed over the transcription form. Without bothering to glance at him, as if she were talking to a spinning tape recorder, Anjelica Huston begins dictating the elements of the hearing, and he takes down every word.

The ADA, as I expected, hasn't bothered to show up. For that matter, when the presence of one of the parties isn't required, why on earth go to the trouble of attending? He must have sent his written conclusions on confirmation of detention and, no doubt, a request for continued detention in prison. Nothing seems more likely than that this hearing will be over in ten minutes, or even less, with Anjelica Huston accepting the request of Mr. Cool by issuing a lovely decree of cautionary detention, Burzone going back to doing pushups on his cot, and me without a clue of what to do next.

I begin to resign myself. And I weep inwardly, thinking that I've spent my whole life waiting to see how things turn out.

The preliminary judge acknowledges the presence at the hearing of Burzone, she acquires (that's the way they say it) to the official case file my appointment as Burzone's fiduciary representative, and then she proceeds to interrogate Burzone, stating his first and last name, place of residence, marital status, certificates of study (completed junior high school), profession (“Currently unemployed”), real property (“None”), prior criminal convictions (“None”: an entry that sounds even less likely than the preceding one): all information that she garners from the record of his arrest and which she dictates to the idiot in a totally flat voice, with the exception of his monicker (or, shall we say, his pseudonym). That she asks Burzone himself to confirm with measured (and just slightly bitchy) irony.

Burzone looks at me, I nod my head yes, and he confirms. I expect La Huston is going to want to have some fun by asking him the origin of his nickname; instead, to my relief, she skips over that detail.

“Well, now,” she says, having gotten through the introductory ceremonies of the hearing, “we have here a case of disposal and concealment of a corpse.”

Okay, I think to myself. That much I know.

“Would you care to tell me, Signore Fantasia, just what happened and how you come to be here?” she asks, crossing her forearms on the desk. It's a pose that I must have seen in at least four hundred movies. Okay, I know I'm repeating myself, but it really is incredible how we fail to realize how completely clichéd the poses that we continually strike really are. We ought to pay closer attention to it, I believe. For instance, now that I think about it, I seated myself in a very uncomfortable way, with my back rigid and my legs crossed without the slightest suppleness or relaxation, making an enormous effort to keep my shins aligned, and in fact my calves hurt now. In general, when I sit down, it's not anything like that.

Burzone shoots me another ocular request for authorization to answer the question. I nod yes again.

“Your Honor, what can I tell you? It was my daughter who wanted to get the dog, and she was going to drive me crazy if I didn't make her happy. What do I know about where the creature gets to and what it brings back home?”

“So you're saying that you have a dog that likes to collect souvenirs, Signor Fantasia?” La Huston observes.

“Sooveh-whats?” asks Burzone; he even leans over toward the secretary and tried to peek at the minutes, like a little boy trying to copy off the student at the next desk over. In these situations, you have to admit, his timing is impeccable. The preliminary judge, in fact, has an uptick of embarrassment, or really, a paralysis of embarrassment, and is rendered speechless.

“Listen, Your Honor,” he resumes, taking advantage of the interval, “I told the assistant district attorney the same thing: I saw a little pile of dirt in the yard, I went out to take a look, I did some digging, and the next thing I know I'm in trouble. I don't know anything about the object that was in the hole, I swear it on the head of my baby daughter.”

“The object,” Anjelica Huston repeats, as if the generic nature of the expression had offended her intelligence; then she looks at me to make me feel guilty about representing him. It's a form of investigative racism that I've quickly become accustomed to, luckily for me.

“Your honor, excuse me,” Burzone shoots back, “but are you saying that if someone comes to your house and finds a handgun, then that means it's yours?”

“Why, if they find a handgun in my house, who should I accuse, my next-door neighbor?” the judge retorts.

“Exactly,” says Burzone, then falls silent; as if the preliminary judge had just confirmed his theory, instead of demolishing it.

Here the preliminary judge stumbles, doubting her own logic. She looks into the middle distance, probably doing her best to remember what she just said. Burzone sits there, with a face oozing good faith, as if the matter was all taken care of now.

Madonna, what a clever son of a bitch.

“I'd have to agree with your observation, judge,” I break in, in a frantic attempt to hijack the interrogation from the ridiculous morass it's sinking into, “but, if you'll allow me the point, it is precisely when we come to the concept of
home
that the detention that I'd imagine the ADA has certainly asked you to uphold is most clearly baseless and false.”

“Oh, really?” she tells me with her expression.

I go on, since by now I've got a running start.

“The
hand
, because what we are talking about is a hand, you're quite right on that point,” I take a moment to lick her ass, because if you want to cover your own you've got to lick someone else's, “was found in Fantasia's backyard. And what is a backyard if it is not a virtual extension of an enclosed space, a sacred domicile, an unwalled piece of property?”

I take a breath. It strikes me that Anjelica's nose has gotten sharper. I continue.

“Inasmuch as it reproduces a greenery whose general lack is felt keenly in our modern world, a backyard is a bridge between the open air and the enclosed interior. It lies vulnerable to the intrusion of any and all passersby. It negates the concept of the home, even though it is at the service of the home. The master of the house is the master only when he is inside the house: the backyard strips him of that role. It is an architectural alternative to the claustrophobia of private ownership. It gratifies a desire for exposure. It's mine, and yet I allow the rain to muddy it, the wind to dishevel it, the stranger to enter it. And that is exactly why we cannot reasonably state that the limb in question was
in my client's home
.”

Here I break off. I have the feeling that Burzone, even though he hasn't understood a word, is dying to slap me on the back. Anjelica Huston listened to me the whole time with an expression hovering somewhere between “How about that?” and “Okay, okay, we get your point” and “What the fuck does this have to do with anything?”

I'm pretty satisfied with my own performance. A couple of lines I'd planned out at the drawing table, truth be told, but the rest was improvised. It's times like this when I think I can understand jazz.

“So you're of the opinion that the ADA has requested a confirmation of detention,” the preliminary judge comments. “I wonder how on earth you found out such a thing. In any case, your definitions of
premises
and
property
are quite evocative. You really ought to be a writer, you know that?”

Burzone and I exchange a glance.

“I have a novel in my desk drawer, but the publishing houses keep sending me rejection letters,” I reply.

La Schnozzola makes a superhuman effort to keep from bursting into laughter. Look at her, she's turned all red. That'll teach her to crack funny with lawyers she doesn't even know. Burzone also acts as if he's stifling a laugh, but I'm pretty sure he didn't even get the joke.

“Anyway, I'd like to know what you think of my observations about the backyard,” I continue.

Hey, being a criminal lawyer is starting to look like fun.

“I'll tell you in my decree, Counselor, don't worry about that.”

“It was out of interest, not worry.”

“Well, then. Now, Signor Fantasia, you have stated that you know nothing about this object, as you call it, that was found in your backyard, and you believe that it might have been the dog that picked it up who knows where and then buried it, again, in your backyard.”

“Eh.”

“Would you mind answering ‘yes' or ‘no'?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I need to hear him give the answer, Counselor,” the preliminary judge sets me back on my heels. But from the way she scolds me I can tell she likes me.

“I apologize,” I say. She nods, but with the simulated scolding that women use when they seem to be trying to convey to you that you have an account to settle, a reckoning to be made, I don't know if I convey the idea. I wonder why it is that for the past little while it seems as if women are aware that I exist.

“Yes,” says Burzone, “that is, no, it's not that I believe it: I'm completely certain that it was the dog, and in fact, you found the dog's collar in the hole along with it, didn't you?”

“True,” admits La Schnozzola, very seriously.

Whereupon I have a strange presentiment. Strange in the sense of positive.

“Your dog visits some eccentric places, Signor Fantasia,” Anjelica resumes.

Burzone is about to say something, but I intimate silence with a wave of the hand.

“Why won't you let him speak, Counselor?”

“I didn't hear a question, judge.”

She slumps back in her swivel chair.

“Okay,” she says, giving me that point.

She puts on her glasses and lowers her head over the file. She turns to the idiot and resumes dictating rapidly.

“There's no point in my informing you of the ADA's recommendations, since the counsel for the defense has informed us that he is already privy to that information; I would imagine that counsel, in view as well of the lack of a criminal record on the defendant's part, would like to request that he be freed or, subordinately, be given house arrest. Would you concur, Coun­selor Malinconico?”

She looks up from the file and gazes at me.

“Quite right,” I confirm, concealing my utter surprise, since I had forgotten or never known that at some point in the course of the hearing I might be expected to put forth a request or a demand myself. If not, what in hell was I even doing here, for that matter? Aside from explicating my theory of the backyard as an illusory negation of private property, of course.

The preliminary judge nods in her secretary's direction, and the secretary takes down her words fairly promptly.

“Okay,” she concludes, “you can have a seat in the other room. It'll take us a moment to prepare the decree.”