Middle Age (60 page)

Not ‘Justice’ Clarence Thomas. The ‘exceptions to the rule’ are like brand

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names, logos, the ruling class can point proudly to. ‘These minority folks have done O.K. in our capitalist-consumer culture, why not the rest of them?’ Like female ‘leaders’ they can point to pretending this is an egali-tarian society and not a sick-masochistic society in which women and girls are raped, battered, and murdered twenty-four hours a day.” Roger, driving, staring at the rushing pavement before him, had a vision of a mam-moth Wal-Mart store open twenty-four hours a day for such violent purposes.

Roger was certain he hadn’t laughed, or indicated any sign of dissen-sion, yet Volpe snapped, “If you’d been born with a cunt, Mr. C., you’d
know
.”

“With a—what?”

“You heard me.
A cunt
.”

Roger winced. He resented it that, if he used a word like “cunt” he’d be vulnerable to a sex harassment suit, while fierce little Naomi Volpe with her ferret-eyes, spiked hair, and nose ring could shoot off her mouth as she wished.

Seeing Roger’s expression Naomi said, with mock deference, “Hey, sorry, Mr. C. I should’ve said, if you’d been born female, and not white privileged male, you’d know.”

“Know what, Volpe?”

Roger was losing the thread of their conversation. Talking with the paralegal was like playing Ping-Pong while driving a car: dangerous. Volpe said, “What it is to be mute and marginal. To be in sexual thrall.”

“Somehow, Volpe, you don’t strike me as ‘mute.’ And you don’t strike me as a woman in sexual thrall to anyone or anything.”

“Is that an accusation, Mr. C., or a threat? Or a come-on?”

But she was smiling.



R      than to become involved even casually with any woman with whom he worked. And yet.

In a rat’s nest of a law office in Somerville, New Jersey, Roger and his assistant Volpe met Elroy Jackson’s court-appointed attorney for his 8

trial: Reginald “Boomer” Spires, an obese, doughy-oily, uneasily smiling individual of moderate height who must have weighed three hundred boneless pounds. “H’lo, come in. Wel-come. Not what you’re accustomed
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to, I guess? Sor-ry.” Roger, glancing about the cramped, cluttered office, was appalled. Even Volpe with her deadpan expression and jockey-swagger seemed taken by surprise. “Boomer” Spires thrust out his hand to be shaken, moist and clammy and the size of a catcher’s mitt, and Roger had to resist the impulse to shrink away, for could a handshake be infectious? With the air of one making an elaborate joke Spires apologized to his visitors for the fact that there was practically nowhere to sit in his office, unless you shifted stacks of documents off chairs, which he hadn’t gotten around to doing, and which he was reluctant to do since the floor was in use, too—“See, I share this space with another p.d. whose specialty is clients with psychiatric disturbances.
There’s
a good time.”

Spires laughed wheezily. Neither Roger nor Naomi Volpe joined him.

“Excuse me, folks, my knees are bad, have to sit down,” Spires said, collapsing back into his swivel chair, “—hope I’m not being rude.” Roger perceived that Spires didn’t at all mind being rude but he, Roger, said civilly, “Of course not, Mr. Spires. ‘Boomer.’ We won’t take up much of your valuable time.”

Spires had promised to assemble for them material from his files on Elroy Jackson, Jr., but he had only a few court documents, material already in Roger’s possession. It was impossible to gauge if Spires was genuinely concerned with Jackson’s fate, or whether, for the purposes of this awkward meeting, he was pretending. As they talked of the case, Roger tried not to stare at Spires; but he’d never seen so repugnant a specimen of humanity, let alone a fellow lawyer, close up. Spires’s body seemed to consist of layers of fat, oozing oily-fat. Slabs of fat at the back of his head, a puffy round ball of a face, sausage-fingers. Roger could not have said what offended him the more, that Spires was nominally male, as Roger was male, or that Spires was a lawyer, a member of the professional class to which Roger belonged, dubious in Naomi Volpe’s scornful eyes as in Robin’s.

What’s to be proud of ?
On a wall, just visible behind a stack of papers, was a diploma from Rutgers Law School. Roger would have liked to ask this character what the hell had gone wrong in his life, how did a man who’d earned a law degree from a good, solid, second-rank school like Rutgers wind up in this sinkhole of an office, wheezing and exuding the stink of failure, bloated as a drowned corpse? Roger shuddered.
It could happen to
you, pal
.
Never too late
.

He’d committed an illegal act, after all. He’d forged a dead man’s signature. He’d entered into a conspiracy with another party to perpetrate a

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fraud (no matter it was a beneficent fraud) upon the state.
Grounds for disbarment
.
You knew the risk
.

“Boomer” Spires was doing his best, which wasn’t very inspired, to convince the skeptical visitors from the National Project to Free the Innocent that yes, he’d worked damned hard to defend Elroy Jackson, Jr., but no, truth was he hadn’t much time to prepare, his client had been wounded by police fire, hadn’t been “one hundred percent mentally” and had looked “pretty God-damned guilty” in the eyes of the mostly white jurors, see, it was one of those trials where you didn’t have a chance. “Hello, folks, this is Hunterdon County? ‘Guilty till proven innocent.’ Things you folks in New York City pass off like misdemeanors, a little jail time and parole, over here in Jersey we go for the jugular. See, the death penalty here is popular as TV wrestling.” Spires spoke with explosive mirth, shaking his fatty jowls. His eyes shifted furtively in their sockets, like melting Jell-O. The lawyer was crafty enough to know that Roger and his assistant weren’t in Somerville for friendly chitchat and he was beginning to get defensive. Roger estimated that Spires was in his late forties—Roger’s own age!—yet retained a puckish juvenile air, a fat boy hoping to be spared the ignominy of competing with adult men. His hair was scattered follicles in a white scalp. He smelled not only of nervous sweat but of those cardboard boxes in which pizza is delivered. Roger was particularly disgusted that Spires was wearing a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt and polyester trousers that ballooned around his hips. As if Elroy Jackson, Jr., incarcerated on death row at the Rahway State Maximum Facility for Men, scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in seven months, didn’t merit at least a display of sobriety. Roger, examining the transcript of Jackson’s trial, began to question Spires more aggressively. “Why didn’t you insist that this ‘co-defendant’ take the stand? So you could cross-examine him?

The man was lying, obviously. He’d cooked up a deal with the DA. Why didn’t you object?”

Spires, shifting in his swivel chair, protested, “It was, what, a long time ago, in my lifetime, I’m a busy, busy man, and Jackson was one of an awful lot of ‘disadvantaged’ clients, you might call them. Like, blacks and Hispanics? Which there aren’t that many of population-wise in this county, you’d think, but of the ones there are, mostly in Somerville, it’s Boomer Spires who has the good luck to represent them, see? That’s been more or less my career, Mr. Cavanagh. Just to explain our different perspectives, see?” Roger said coldly, “I’ve been going through this transcript and court
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records and frankly, ‘Boomer,’ I’m appalled. Back in 8 you didn’t put much effort into this case, did you? A capital case! You had plenty of cause for objections and you didn’t object once. Here’s this alleged co-defendant with a record of armed robbery, prison time, and your client Jackson with just petty stuff, and the original police report says there was no ‘physical evidence’ linking Jackson to the shooting, he’d gotten into trouble running from a crime scene when police called for him to halt, and he winds up shot, and charged with felony murder, and convicted and sentenced to death. What the hell were you thinking of?” Spires mumbled sullenly,

“Ask me! How many hundreds of cases like this you think I’ve taken on, I don’t mean death penalty but clients like this Leroy, Elroy, since the early eighties when I moved to Somerville?
You think I want to be in Somerville?

See, folks, you have the advantage of hindsight. ‘Hindsight ain’t foresight.’

See, you walk in here and think you can insult me—” Spires was working himself up, trying for moral indignation. The swivel chair creaked alarmingly beneath his bulk and his Jell-O eyes glared. “See, I’m not a partner at Abercrombie & Fucking Fitch. I don’t make five hundred bucks an hour.

What d’you think the hallowed State of New Jersey pays guys like me? I’m lucky if I get five hundred a
week
.” Naomi Volpe, who’d been listening in silence, taking notes, suddenly turned fierce in Roger’s defense. “Back off, you! Mr. Cavanagh is volunteering his time on this case you fucked up.

His fee is zero bucks per hour.”

By degrees Spires caved in. You could see he was a man who enjoyed caving in, at his own pace. A man throwing himself on the mercy of the court. O.K., he admitted he hadn’t spent much time on the Jackson case because he hadn’t had much time, the State of New Jersey Public Defender’s office worked him and his colleagues like beasts of burden and if they didn’t like it, they could always quit. “Plus I’d gotten into the mind-set, I’m reluctant to admit it, but why not be frank, maybe you can sympathize, see, when I’d more or less started to assume my clients were guilty?

Because mostly they are? Somebody’s got to be committing the crimes out there, holding up -Elevens and gas stations for chump change, dealing drugs on the streets, right?—so who’s it likely to be except guys like Jackson? I don’t mean one hundred percent, for sure the Jersey cops are racists to the extent, like all cops, they can get away with it, there’s a willing pop-ulace supporting them, see, this ‘racial profiling’ is just the tip of the ice-berg. Well, I know that. That I know. You’re looking at me like you don’t approve but you’d have to be blind and your head in the sand not to know

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that. So there’s guilty clients, plenty of them, and psychotic. Did I say psychotic? Does a fish swim? Yes? A psychotic is a helpless individual but not an individual you much want to help, see. It’s human nature. Not like the clients you deal with, Mr. Cavanagh. Over in Salthill, New York. Jackson might’ve been one of these, the cops shot him and possibly beat him and extracted a confession, you know how cops are, and this is Hunterdon County not Manhattan, see? His mental processes were interfered with.

And now you’re coming in, twelve years after the fact. ‘Hindsight ain’t foresight.’
I
had your hindsight, if it was foresight, I’d be a lottery winner.

Sure as hell I wouldn’t be here. O.K., Mr. Cavanagh, there’s things I didn’t see at the time, you want to hang me? O.K., Jackson got a lousy deal.

Think he’s the only one? Like getting hit by lightning, these guys on death row. Jackson’s just one.
You
wouldn’t know about that, would you, Mr. Cavanagh, getting hit by lightning?” Spires spoke in a childish whine. Roger could see that through his adult life “Boomer” had escaped punishment by pleading incompetence. He’d made a racket out of humility. His honesty was such, you wanted to punch him in the gut for not having the decency to fabricate. Roger was saying, “As a result of your incompetence, Mr.

Spires, an innocent man has been locked away on death row for twelve years. He’s had a stay of execution a half-dozen times. Sure, the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence and the judge was prejudiced but that’s them, and you’re you,
you
were being paid to represent Elroy Jackson, Jr., in a capital case, an innocent man, and you did a fucking lousy job of it.

You should be disbarred.”

“Disbarred!” Spires was both scornful and alarmed. His lurid T-shirt had darkened with sweat beneath the armpits and across the swell of his belly. Behind his head, a grimy window overlooking Somerville’s Main Street seemed to glower with derision. “Hey, look, friend, I do my best.

Maybe it ain’t great by your big-city standards but it’s Boomer’s best, see? They dump these shit cases on my lap, it’s like paddling a canoe up the river with just bare hands, what can I do, easy for you to judge! If you—” Roger cut into this self-pitying bilge, saying, “One of the complaints the Project has filed says you ‘nodded off ’ in court. This was Jackson’s complaint and it was corroborated by others. I see in the transcript where the judge says, ‘Wake up, Mr. Spires. You’re not home watching TV.’ ” Spires protested, “I never fell asleep in court! I
do not
.

Maybe I rest my eyes, I have headaches, I need to rest my eyes, that’s a crime? That’s moral turpitude?
You
try it. In my shoes. In that courtroom. You’d ‘nod off,’ too. The both of you. Looking at me like I’m dog
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shit. I wasn’t asleep
per se
and whoever says I was, judge or whoever, that’s fucking
slander
.”

“Your closing argument reads as if you were asleep when you gave it,”

Roger said. “It’s rambling and repetitive. You never touch upon the central point: that Jackson was an innocent man, and his ‘co-defendant’ lied, implicating him and getting himself off with a lesser charge. You didn’t examine prosecution witnesses. You didn’t call any witnesses of your own.

You let all these things slide by. What did you do to earn your fee?”

Spires said, “It’s easy for you, sure, to criticize another lawyer, after the fact, O.K. where were you in 8? When this guy needed a hot-shit defense? Why didn’t you volunteer your precious time then, Mr. Cavanagh?

And the appeals, what about the appeals, where were you then?”

Naomi Volpe cut in sharply, “You! You fat asshole. If I were you, I’d cut my throat. I’d give up practicing law and save clients like Elroy Jackson the death penalty.”