The frog eyes dilate and the fingers snatch the transcript from the desk. There’s silence as Bill reads the testimony, then he starts laughing. “Jorge got a little carried away with himself, didn’t he?”
“He’s very charming,” I reply.
Bill puts down the transcript, picks up the regulation and reads it. “He won’t be so charming when he finds out you outfoxed him in the deposition,” Bill says. “I’m glad to see you know how to handle men like that… By the way, I’ve seen the statue he’s talking about; I went to Santiago when I represented the grape growers in the cyanide case.”
“You handled that case, too?” I ask, always amazed at Bill’s remarkable legal career. I was in college during the public scare over red Chilean table grapes being laced with cyanide; when the news stories broke warning people not to eat them, my dorm roommate promptly started snacking on them by the bunches. She hated red grapes but her boyfriend had just broken up with her; she said she didn’t have the courage to slit her own wrists and figured grapes would be the easier way to go.
“I thought you only represented plaintiffs back then, not defendants,” I say.
“The growers were the plaintiffs,” Bill replies. “There was no cyanide. The scare was a hoax but the Chilean farmers lost everything-thousands of tons of fruit was embargoed and destroyed. Jorge’s father, Professor Mijares, asked me to take the case; the Mijares still own vineyards in Chile. We sued the government to lift the embargo and we sued the insurers to pay the claims.”
Outside the window beside Bill’s desk, the morning sun strikes the bright yellow fall leaves of a maple tree, making the tree appear as though it has burst into flame. A small sparrow lands on a branch, risking immolation.
“There’s an interesting myth behind that statue,” Bill continues. “Legend has it that when the princess was a young girl, the king forced her to eat her vegetables. To spite him, she shoved the arm she used to hold her fork under a millstone and it was crushed. Now she pleads with the heavens for forgiveness.”
I consider this strange tale for a moment. “I think the heavens should plead for her forgiveness,” I say.
Bill arches his bushy eyebrows. “The king only made her eat her vegetables, Brek; he didn’t force her to marry the old pervert running the kingdom next door.”
“What law says she has to eat her vegetables?”
Bill smiles and shakes his head. “Let’s have this conversation again when Sarah turns six.” He waves the regulation at me. “Any cases on point?”
“None,” I say, but I’m unwilling to drop my defense of the one-armed princess just yet; I know how much she’s suffered and how she’s been judged by every person who sees her, because it’s human nature to assume that another person’s misfortune must be some form of divine retribution. “You know,” I say, “maybe it had nothing to do with eating vegetables. Maybe her father was ignoring her and she was just trying to get his attention.”
Bill doesn’t respond and an awkward silence follows. I realize I’m rubbing the stump of my own right arm and he’s watching me. The bird in the maple flies away having survived the inferno.
“When can you finish the brief?” he asks.
“Rough draft by Tuesday.”
He puts down the regulation and starts in on one of the files in front of him. “I’ll be in court all afternoon and then I have a board meeting,” he says. “Have a nice weekend.”
“Thanks. You too.” I gather my materials and get up to leave.
“It’s a creative argument,” he says without looking up. “Few lawyers would have thought of it.”
“Regulation U or the princess?” I ask.
“Both.”
I turn to leave but stop. I’m gratified by the rare compliment but suddenly remorseful about the outcome. “So, Alan Fleming keeps five hundred thousand dollars that don’t belong to him because of a technicality?”
The frog’s mouth frowns as if the insect it has just swallowed tastes bitter. “Yes, and with any luck this afternoon I’ll put an arsonist back on the street. But next week I’ll have an innocent man freed on the same technicality, and a legal technicality will win an injunction against the landfill that’s discharging dioxin and killing all the bass in Raystown Lake. You can’t have one without the other, Brek; justice wears a blindfold because she isn’t supposed to see who’s loading the scales.”
“Or with what.”
Bill ignores my wisecrack and goes back to his work.
“See you Monday,” I say.
4
I return to my office and begin outlining my summary judgment brief on a legal pad, stopping to look outside at the pale green film of the Juniata River dappled with the reflection of scarlet and jasmine leaves on the trees, each a unique frame of autumn. Bill’s right. I’ve done nothing wrong; in fact, I’ve done my job perfectly. The system is working exactly as designed, which is more than can be said for the system that maimed the princess in Santiago-or the system that allows someone like Piper Jackson to do weather forecasts. Which reminds me to telephone Bo at the studio.
“Hi,” he says. “I was just getting ready to call you.”
I yawn, rather loudly and unexpectedly. “Wow,” I say, “sorry about that. It’s been a long morning… So what’s the latest? Did they ever catch that samurai warrior who attacked the northern coast of Japan? I heard he did a lot of damage.”
“Very funny,” he says.
“Sounds like he really sakéd the coast.”
Bo groans. “I’ve heard that one three times already this morning-interestingly, all from women. You people can be so jealous and mean-or you just love making puns out of rice wine. How did Sarah’s drop-off go?”
“You people? Jealous and mean? She’s a babbling idiot! How can you stand her?”
Bo hesitates, pretending he’s trying hard to find a reason. I know he likes her even though she’s an embarrassment. Finally he says, as though helpless before an irresistible force: “Well, she does have beautiful…weather forecasts.”
“You’re a pig, Boaz,” I respond. He hates it when I call him by his first name. His parents named him Boaz after King David’s great-grandfather and the American soldier who rescued his mother’s family from the Nazis during World War II. “With all the money the little weather tart is bringing into the station, you’d think they could find her some clothes that fit and maybe arrange to give her another shot at elementary school since the first time didn’t seem to take. Sarah was fine. She spilled formula all over my suit.”
“She loves doing that. I’m on my way to Harrisburg. Holden Hurley is being sentenced this afternoon. They want me to cover it since I broke the story.”
My secretary, Barbara, sticks her head in to tell me Alan Fleming’s on the line. I tell her to take a message. “When will you be home?”
“Around six unless things get crazy,” Bo answers. “I should still be able to fix dinner.”
“What are we having?”
“Any requests?”
I start glancing over the outline of my summary judgment brief again and don’t hear his question.
“Hello?” he says. “Food? Any ideas? I can tell you’re working on something.”
“What? Yeah…the brief in the Fleming case. Sorry. No, I can’t think of anything, whatever you want.”
“Hurley’s skinhead buddies from The Eleven will be protesting at the courthouse. Did you shave yours this morning?”
“No, but I’m very cute bald,” I reply. “You’ve seen my baby pictures.”
“You know,” Bo says, baiting me because Bill and I are members of the American Civil Liberties Union, “I value free speech as much as the next guy, particularly because I’m a reporter, but rallies advocating the subjugation of ethnic groups go a little too far, don’t you think? Why should they have the right to use public property to incite hatred and violence?”
I lose my train of thought and have to go back to the top of the outline.