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The Tracker

The boys had a hockey tournament in Madison over last weekend. I must say that I’m visiting places that I have never been before. I suppose that’s a good thing. I wasn’t able to go to the Michael Feldman radio show that is on NPR on Saturdays because the boys were playing. I don’t even now if the show was in Madison Saturday. Didn’t check because of the game situation.

The boys’ team won two games, which was a surprise, according to the coach, one game despite the fact that my sweet goon, Kevin, picked up 32 minutes in penalties, none of which, of course, were the least bit legitimate. That’s 32 minutes in a game that has three 12-minute periods. He scored in the first 16 seconds of the game on a slap shot from just inside the blue line, but retaliated against the guy who slashed him after the shot was away. That was two minutes for the slash back and 10 for the punch. Then he picked up two when he went back onto the ice. Took a face-off and took a roughing when he knocked the other kid on his ass – I think it was the size differential there. Oh, you're hearing the hockey father in me coming out? Damn it. Don't want to be one of those.

I won’t recount the entire unsavory affair of the rest of that game. Sam played a few shifts over the weekend, which was nice. It’s nice to see his improvement each week.

And this week … I decided I better get some work done. I did an estimate for a deck … get this, he wanted to know if I could get it done in the next month – he’s paying for the heater. I started it Wednesday.

I promised myself that I’d keep going with this story – that’s how I have to look at it now. It can’t be fact. It must be a fantasy because what happened after Frank Morton, vampire, left the office was more bizarre than what Morton was laying on me, whioch was a bunch of crap as far as I was concerned.

I was supposed to see Walker Wallace the Fourth, who was sent by Morton. If this was not a set-up by Morton, I don’t know what is. At the time, who knew what was going down and how crazy reality would become?

I opened the conference room door, and his back was to me. In the far corner of the room, a thin white plastic pole was taped together about three-quarters of the way up with gray duct tape. An orange flag hung limply from the top of the white pole, and the same kind of tape held the white pole to the top of a white construction helmet, the name "TURNER" emblazoned in blue across the abbreviated brim of the hat. He wore a blue-and-gray madras sport jacket and didn't turn around as I closed the door behind me.

I walked around the table to face Walker Wallace IV, leaving smudged fingerprints at the corners of the polished conference room table. Hi spindly fingers drummed the table. Now, the annual art show & crafts fair at the high school brought artists and artisans from all over Ohio, western Pennsylvania, southern Michigan, and eastern Indiana. Jerry Newfield from Fly, Ohio, brought his dolls dressed in the garb of various Indian tribes that populated southern Ohio in the 1700's. The faces were carved apples, sun-dried brown, with deep wrinkles, crooked, hooked noses, and exaggerated chins. I was face-to-face with Walker Wallace IV, a human-Jerry-Newfield doll, sparkling-brown eyes in deep-set sockets within a rugged, wrinkled, weathered face and a chin that hurt like hell if he dug it into your back during a childhood fight. I stuck out my right hand, which he ignored. I was left standing stupidly across the table with my hand extended. He remained sitting.

Good start. I pulled out the burgundy-leather-seated arm chair and sat down across the table from the wizened old man and asked him what I could do for him. He stared at me, sizing me up apparently. I poured a glass of water from the silver-plated insulated pitcher into one of the cut-glass goblets. He declined my offer to pour him a glass, and I asked him what he wanted more bluntly this time. I took a sip of water and waited for him to talk. He smiled, his lips seeming to curl around to touch his long, hooked nose. His right forefinger uncurled to its full length. It looked like it stretched halfway across the table. The fingernail was dull black and ground to a point.

He finally spoke, telling me I needed some information, except that he had a lisp so that he said I needed “thumb informa-thin." Then he told me that Frank Morton was a vampire. Then he looked at me, shiny brown marbles set deep in his tunnel eye sockets, waiting for me to say something. I could sit and wait, or I could say something. Of course, this is what Morton would have done – to set me up. Whatever. I wasn’t in to playing the game. This guy gave me the creeps, and a shiver ran up my spine. It was the kind you shake off, but I couldn't with Wallace sitting there, staring at me. Then he said that he knew a lot more about Morton that could be useful to me. His finger, pointed at my heart, seemed to stretch a little more over to my half of the table.

So, I told him that I wasn’t playing games. I had a client charged with first-degree murder and I couldn’t play any games. He blinked for the first time and told me again that Morton was a vampire. And then he asked me if I knew how Morton got his supply of blood. Wallace didn’t wait for me to tell him I didn’t want to know and lisped that Morton was a phlebotomist, explaining to me that Morton drew blood from people for testing, like I didn’t know what a phlebotomist did for a living.

Wallace went on a soliloquy, explaining that Morton worked at Charity Hospital three times a week for about four hours a day. How did he know this stuff, he asked me. Because Wallace worked there, too, in the toxicology lab. Morton brought the blood he drew for testing into the toxicology lab. Wallace saw him drinking blood from test tubes, like someone at a bar drinking shots of whiskey. Wallace’s right hand curled into a loose fist and he brought it to his lips. He threw his head back like he was knocking back a shot of whiskey at the local bar. His lips curled into a handlebar smile once more, and there couldn’t be one more crease in that already-infinitely-lined face.

So, that, Wallace said, was that – proof positive that Morton was a vampire. I considered that for a moment and then decided to tap my vast reserve of vampire knowledge, asking the shriveled, old lab technician that Morton couldn’t be a vampire because he was working in the middle of the day

"It's B.S.," he lisped at me, the pitch of his voice rising. He pointed that long twig of a finger with the sharpened, blackened nail at my face. "It’s all B.S. A vampire can be out during daylight. No problem at all. This is real life, not the movies. I’m surprised a man of your education would fall for the B.S. put out by Hollywood propagandists. I believe that one or two of them were vampires."
I started laughing. Morton. Morton put him up to it, I was sure of that. Planted. The headlines in several papers called the murder a "vampire killing." There were a number of articles on the history of vampirism. Lunatics came out of the woodwork to talk about their experiences. So, he had an outlet now for his lunacy; and it was time to cut the interview short. After all, the mental hospitals couldn't hold everyone in need. Then he told me he was a vampire tracker, from a long line of vampire trackers. Oh, yeah, he was quite mad.

I called him on it. I pointed out that he lied to the receptionist, telling her that Morton sent him to see me. He said he saw my client drinking blood, and I told him that I was inclined to believe that was a lie, also. Now, the vampire hunter thing, like a Japanese cartoon.

He exploded, "Vampire tracker, there's a difference, you know!" He babbled on about how he didn’t make the kill; that the hunter, not the tracker, made the kill. His job was to find the vampires, to track them down. The smile curled on his face, the wrinkles becoming deeper.

I had enough right there. I picked up the telephone handset and punched a couple numbers. He started to go on about how much danger I was in and about some kind of catalogue he kept and how I was in over my head. I should have listened, I guess, but that was then and I really didn’t care what this lunatic was driveling on about. His long forefinger quivered and stretched to within inches of my nose.

I got Mitch Hilliard on the phone an asked him to come down to the conference room. Mitchell Hilliard, a second-year law student at Cleveland State University law school, was the newest clerk at Goldman & Epstein. He spent seven years on the defensive line of the San Francisco 49'ers and called it quits while he was still able to walk. The 49'ers didn't appreciate that at all. He called the firm and asked if there were any law clerk positions open. There weren't; but the partners hired him anyway without an interview, testimony not to their appraisal of legal talent, but to their desire to rub elbows with professional athletes. Ironically, it turned out to be a good acquisition, legal-talent-wise.

Wallace tried to tell me what was in store for me. I can’t argue with that. He told me I couldn’t ignore what he was telling me. He tried to convince me that the danger was all around me and that I just did not want to see the truth. Yeah, the truth – what that is, who knows?

Mitchell poured into the doorway, filling it with his light gray suit. He wore that suit once a week, and nobody had the nerve to tell him to lose the black shirt and white tie -- the partners talked about it every time Mitchell wore the ensemble. And I’m sure they complained every time I wore blue jeans and a T-shirt. Mitchell extended his meaty right hand to Wallace, which Wallace ignored. I started to walk out and Wallace tried to convince me that he wasn’t crazy and that he was telling the truth and that I was in great danger and that these people were ruthless and would stop at nothing to “perpetuate their race” and that I was making a huge mistake and that there was “death in the air.”

Choices. Every time you turn around, there are choices to make. Which ones will affect you for the rest of your life? Which ones aren’t important? Only time tells.

So, here we go. Therapy.

I raced down to the building, parking in front. I found Eric Waters in my office. Turns out it wasn’t blood, but the place was a mess – some kind of blood substitute from the movies or something like that. I had Mendelsohn clean up his office and flush the shit in his desk. He tooted before he flushed. He was sky high. I called a cab and got him out of there before the police came.

The telephone in my office rang. It was my private line. Eric walked into my office and picked up the handset from the cradle and pushed the lighted extension button. Eric murmured a hello, then turned suddenly and looked at me. He told the other end of the line who he was and his relationship to me, he listened, then said, "Yeah, very close, why?" then he paused, listening intently, then all expression drained from his face. He looked at me, eyes wide, "No, that's impossible." He closed his eyes. His hands were shaking.

I asked him what was wrong, but he wasn’t listening to me. He was getting information about where “they” were. It was Scott Seipel. I'd known the police chief for years. When we moved into our house, he stopped by to introduce himself. Jane thought it was a nice welcome; I thought he was checking us out. Since then, we had become good friends. For the last few years during the winter, we got together every Thursday night at about ten at night to watch a movie, eat a pizza, and talk. And he finally admitted he was checking me out that first day we moved in. Eric handed me the handset.

He said I should calm down and that they took Jane and the boys to North Coast Hospital. I knew Jane was dead, just from his voice. It was the slight pause to catch his breath after he said "Jane" and the slight quiver. I'd known him too long. We didn't talk sports or crime on Thursday nights -- we talked about things that made our voices quiver and eyes overflow. He told me I needed to come to the hospital and that the boys were in surgery.

I asked him about Janie, knowing he knew I knew, and knowing he knew I didn't want to know just at that moment. It wasn't something you told your best friend over the phone; so, he told me that she was in surgery, too. He lied. He said he talked to her on the way to the hospital. Another lie, but I hoped not. A cold wave blew over me, goose bumps rising on my legs, back, and arms. And I hoped that he wasn’t lying to me.

I asked about the boys. I asked, but I didn’t want to know. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I'll be right there," I said, closing my eyes, trying to figure out what the buzzing feeling was rising up inside me. All my nerve endings were screaming. Eric said that he would drive me to the hospital. He grabbed the phone handset. Eric didn't know they were dead. He believed Scott. I thanked him and told him that I would be okay, sniffing. I felt Eric’s hand squeezing my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked at Eric, my vision blurring. It was strange how I was aware of Eric talking to Scott, telling Scott he'd make sure I was all right. Eric said, "Oh," dully. He looked at me, his lips in a thin line, eyes filling up with tears. He knew. I walked out.

Two police officers, a woman and a man, crossed the threshold of the elevator as I reached the reception area. They looked my way, and the woman asked me who I was. I didn’t answer, but rushed into the elevator. The paunchy male cop said something to me like “Hang on there, buddy.” I was hanging on by a thread that was unraveling quickly.

The doors opened onto the spacious ground floor lobby of the Key Tower. My car was still parked on the street. The police cruiser was parked behind my black Chevy Cosworth Vega. Jane telling me to get a new car streaked through my mind. Both Kevin and Sam whined their "No, Dad." I was panicking. A chill wind blew in from Lake Erie and whipped through the open plaza known as The Mall and around the Key Tower. A shiver shot up my spine as I opened the driver's side door and fell into the bucket seat. I turned the key with the clutch in and the engine roared. I clunked it into first and went into second making the left onto Ontario. I ignored the lights, only a couple of them were red, heading for the entrance ramp to I-90 to go west. A police cruiser sitting in front of Gund Arena at the Gateway complex didn't bother to give chase. I was all alone. The roar of my old Cosworth Vega wasn’t as loud as the roar filling my head. I should have said “Yes” when she suggested that everyone go along with me down to the office. I was the one who was supposed to be careful.

How was I supposed to know what was going to happen? How was I supposed to know they’d come after my family? What was I supposed to do?

North Coast Hospital. Jane had been there before. She was hooked up to an I.V. with Pitocin dripping into her veins. One nurse said those babies come shooting out once you're hooked up. Yeah, right. It wasn't working. I was sitting down at the end of her bed talking to Dr. Weinberg about the medical malpractice crisis, taking his side that the lawyers were to blame, not only for his high insurance premiums, but for most of the world's ills. Blood suckers, vultures, and worse. You're right, doc; you're right. Hell, he was going to go home to get some dinner and be back when they called him. Sure, doc. No problem.

"Dr. Weinberg," Jane said, looking as if someone beat her face to a pulp. Her face was reddish-purple and puffy. She said she felt "okay." Janie had grown up with Jerry Weinberg as her ob-gyn. He wrote her first prescription for birth control pills when she was sixteen. Made me quite happy as he 16-year-old boyfriend. "I think my water broke," Jane interrupted.

We both glanced over at her at the same time. The bed pad she was laying on was bright red. My throat clamped shut. My mouth dried up. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. Weinberg looked at me, eyebrows up. "Yep. Look's that way, Jane," he said, pulling the pad out from under her and throwing it in the waste basket next to the bed. "We're gonna take you to the O.R.," he said calmly, "and get your baby out."

Jane asked if that was blood on the pad, to which he calmly replied that there was a small bloody show when the water breaks. Nothing to worry about, he told her, as he pulled the bed toward the door. An orderly slipped around Weinberg and grabbed a side rail. And what did serious bleeding look like, doc, was my question.

One of the nurses pulled the bed pad from the waste basket and pointed out that the blood on the pad didn’t look normal, that it looked like an awful lot of blood to her. He sharply told her that it looked like that at times. He looked at me with hopeful eyes, lips pursed together in a tight line. "Drop that and grab the bed." You dumbass, he wanted to add.

She let go of my hand. "See you later, honey," she said, the drug the nurse pushed into her I.V. already taking its toll on her consciousness.

Tears tracked down my cheeks, and I wondered what Kevin was doing at my sister-in-law's house right then. And I wondered whether I could raise him alone. I tried to put that thought out of my head, but ... A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and I knew that, but ... An abrupted placenta. The placenta tears away from the womb, causing bleeding, sometimes massive, into the womb, depriving the baby of life support, depending on how bad it was. Many times, the baby didn't make it. At times, the mother didn't make it.

We were lucky we were at the hospital when it happened. Jerry Weinberg wheeled the portable incubator over to the lounge himself. "Here he is," Weinberg said. "Sorry you had to wait so long. He's fine. Just have to keep him warm. Jane'll be fine. We were really lucky -- near-total abruption. This little bugger wanted to get out so fast that he plugged the opening. If we weren't here, we might have lost them both." I looked at my son. He looked me in the left eye -- yeah, they say that the silver nitrate burns and he couldn't focus, but he stared at me; he could see me. And he knew who I was. And he smiled at me -- yeah, they say that babies can't smile, but he smiled at me.

Now, what? The emptiness had returned. Tears tracked down my cheeks. I wasn’t going to be so lucky this time. She was in the house when it detonated. Didn’t know what hit her. That’s what they said. That’s what they always say to try to make you feel better. But by then, you don't feel. Numbness invades. And it doesn't leave. That was that. Scott Seipel couldn't talk to Jane on the way to the hospital. He lied to me. The truth of the matter was that they didn't find enough of Jane to even take her to the hospital.

Kevin and Sam, on the other hand, were out by the pool. They knew what hit them, though. Kevin was alive when he was thrown into the pool by the blast, but he was unconscious. He would have drowned, except one of our neighbors, Laura, who had known them since they were born and was their babysitter, somehow hurdled on a dead run, her mother told me, what was left of the four-and-a-half foot tall fence, dove into the pool, and pulled Kevin out. She gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and was there when he regained consciousness.

They lost Sam once in the ambulance. Spears of cedar siding from the house blew through him. Unconscious when it happened, said the doctor. I didn't believe him. Sam told me he saw Kevin fly past him. And that he couldn’t breathe right.

He died, but the paramedics in the ambulance didn’t quit. Sam came back.

“Dad, I saw Mom,” he said to me one night. “I walked toward the light, and she was there. Two men were there with her. One of them said he was Joseph, Dad. Who’s Joseph, Dad?”

I squeezed his hand. Kevin yelled from the other room, “Is he talking about Mom and that Joseph guy, again? I told him who Joseph was, Dad. He doesn’t believe me.”

Sam yelled back, “He wasn’t God, you idiot. He was one of the angels. That’s who he was. He was one of the angels taking care of Mom. That’s what Grandma said, and she’s right.”

“Grandma’s right, Sam; but God was there with her, too. Maybe he was the other guy.” I said.

“Yeah, that’s who that was. I couldn’t really see his face. Maybe that wasn’t even a man. Kevin’s right, too,” he said; then he yelled, “Kevin, you’re right. One of them was God. I’m sorry I called you an idiot.” Kevin said it was okay, then, Sam said, “Mom told me to go back. She told me that I would see her later. She told me to take care of you. She told me that you needed me. She said she loves us. Dad, do you think I’ll remember what she looks like when I see her again? Sometimes it’s hard to remember what she looks like, then, I look at her picture in my wallet. Then it’s like she’s there in the room with me. Is it like that with you, Dad?”

“Yeah,” I croaked, tears running down my face. It had been, what, four months at that time. I still expected her to be there when I rolled over in bed. That feeling didn’t go away for a lot longer. I could smell her, taste her.

It just takes a while – putting this into black and white was easier than I thought it would be. It’s the fear of the unknown, I guess. I should go back and fill in the big empty space in the time line.

Google

Ah, I hae made it to the big time of the blogging world. I was found through Google.

What were the search words, you ask? "vlad the impaler and crazy, killing lunatic," of course.

It's good to know that people are out there searching for crazy, killing lunatics. And here I am, writing about them.

Depression Rules

Therapeutic, my ass.

Okay. The weekend’s over. We had a hockey tournament in Minneapolis, well, I guess that’s Minneapolis-St. Paul. It’s two cities together. Never been there before. I was talking to other parents, and we have another tournament scheduled in March in this area. It seems like a long way to go – I didn’t really think that hockey would be this serious a thing. Everyone is telling me that the boys have good hockey sense and are excellent hockey players for their ages. There was no way I could not have them on the same team – I couldn’t be in two places at once; so, Sam is playing “up.” He’s in a higher age level, on Kevin’s team, but Sam is big for his age and can take care of himself. Lord knows he’s been through more than any of these kids. They ooooh and aaah in the locker room about the scar from the gunshot wound in his front and back, he’s said. And he tells them that he got shot by some maniac and that his dad put his fist into the hole in his back and saved his life. So matter-of-fact. No parent has asked me about it, but I get the glances when I have my arm around Sam’s shoulder and we’re talking to one of the other parents. They wonder. I don’t say much.

And I don’t think he’s told anyone what happened with his mom – they know she is dead. That’s really all they know. I’m going to fast forward ahead – skip past some stuff. I’ll fill it in down the road. Jane died. You read the name – Joseph Butcher. Well, the story on Butcher was that he was the leader, the suzerain they called him, of the one group of “vampires” who were out to “get” Frank Morton.

While I’m sitting here writing about this stuff, a Kurt Vonnegut novel, Mother Night comes to mind, and its moral: You are what you pretend to be, so be careful about what you pretend to be.

Maybe that’s a true statement.

How did she die? We were in the pool, relaxing. The mist rising from the warm pool waters into the cool, clear, spring-night air reminded me of horror movies; but Jane had different thoughts -- the mist was mysterious, but romantic. She had me pinned against the side of the pool, face to face. The boys were down at the shallow end, playing out the latest adventure with the G.I. Joe action team.

By this time, and I’m getting way ahead of myself here, but who cares, Morton had been killed, and the case was over with. I mentioned Bronx Murallo, a lawyer, before. Janie said that he had called her and said that I was still in danger, even though Morton was dead. She told me this, pressed close, water warm and getting warmer. Bronx thought I was involved with some kind of a cult and that they were nuts, which worried Jane.

The telephone rang. Kevin grabbed the waterproof cordless phone. He said it was for me and swam on his back, left hand holding the phone in the air. Eric Waters, a lawyer at the firm, was on the phone. I should talk about Eric, not his real name; although, he said he didn’t care if I used his real name – that’s how he is. The boy has been a faithful friend. He interviewed with the firm and turned down an offer from a large firm in town to do trial work with me. Flattering, to say the least. He calls me almost every day to see how I’m doing. He got married last year. I was his best man at the wedding – I tripped and almost fell on the steps going to the altar. He sent me a DVD with the view from four cameras that were rolling. Very athletic, staying on my feet. Of course, it was a good laugh.

I have played this out every day for the last seven years – it was the last time I saw Janie. It’s never enough – you never know when you’re going to lose the one person that was made for you. I guess that is why you need to be on your best behavior at all times. You need to act like each time you are walking out the door to go to the store, to go to work, to take the kids to the doctor, that it might just be the last time that you’ll ever see the person you’ve made your life with. Time moves so imperceptibly in the moment, but so quickly in retrospect. It isn’t quite fair.

Eric’s voice was strained when he told me to come down to the office. Something had happened there – you know the voice after a while. He told me that he stopped by to get some files and found that my office had been ransacked. He was calm, but his voice was definitely strained. He was suppressing the panic you feel rising in your chest when you realize you're in over your head -- in a big way.

Jane wanted to know what was going on, but I am acutely aware right now that I didn't acknowledge her, which is something that stabs at my heart even now. Eric said that there were papers and files all over, chairs and my couch slashed up, and that I oughta get down here. I told him to call the cops and have them come over, but he thought I should come down there before he did that.

There was nothing in my office that could cause a problem, then I recalled the cocaine that was in the top drawer of Marty Mendelsohn's desk. He was a partner. I walked in on him one day, and he was setting up lines on his glass desk top. I pushed the lock button on his door and closed it on my way out without saying a word. Mendelsohn never said a word about the incident. He probably had a stash of pot, too. I saw him selling a few bags to the night doorman in the garage one night that I stayed late. So, I told Eric to call Mendelsohn and to tell Mendelsohn that the cops were gonna come into the office. I told Eric that he should tell Mendelsohn that I suggested he come down to the office to see if anything was taken from his office. I figured he’d be there within minutes to cleanse his office.

But that wasn’t what had alarmed Eric. He said, voice shaking, almost losing it in a panic, that there was blood everywhere. Pictures taken in a bedroom of a murder case I handled came to mind, and the queasiness returned. Eric was losing patience and control. He raised his voice, something he never had done to me before, and yelled at me to get my ass down there. The earpiece clicked as he slammed down the phone. I took it away from my ear and set it down on the concrete walk surrounding the pool; and Jane looked at me, her eyebrows close above her eyes. The pool light shimmered across her face as it reflected off the ever-rippling water. I couldn't see her eyes clearly, but I knew the look -- how bad was it?

I told her that I needed to go into the office and that there was blood all over my office and someone wrecked it. She asked if I wanted her and the boys to come along.

I pushed off the bottom toward the ladder, grabbed hold of the chrome pipe, hoisted myself onto the first rung, and climbed up. I padded around the pool, picked up one of the large beach towels and pulled it around me. And I told her, "No. I don't know how bad it is. I don’t know how late I'm gonna be.”

Jane popped out of the pool by grabbing onto the brick edge of the pool and pulling herself up, muscles in her arms rippling. I caught a glimpse of the white of her breasts below her tan line. The shiver I felt wasn't from the cool night air. And I remember thinking that I didn’t really have to go to the office. I looked at my wife -- and grabbed her.

She whispered in my ear, "You okay?"

I said, not really knowing at that moment what was going to happen, that time was at an end, "I think so. ... I love you."

And she told me to be careful. She kissed me. I held onto her, longer than I should have, but not as long as I wanted to. She wouldn't let me go. And I shouldn’t have let her go. Funny how writing this brings back the smell of her right at that moment. And a shiver. And she whispered, “Kind of like magic, isn't it," pressing against me hard. "Still works. Oughta use it more often," she said softly. True. That was the last time I saw her alive.

And that’s all I can do now. I need a break.

I lived in Cleveland for a while. It was small, but not too small with amenities of bigger cities, world-class orchestra, world-class museums, major league sports teams, a number of universities. Now, living in this backwater place, I’m wondering about Kevin and Sam – they’re not getting exposed to this stuff – time to move, I think.

Anyway, getting back to murder and mayhem, Morton left the office, probably not a happy camper. I grabbed a Coke out of the little refrigerator I had in my office. I caught one of the partners filching my stock one evening – he thought I was gone for the day. Cheapskate bastard. I didn’t think I was drinking on the job that much – He stays out now after I told him that I would be asking for reimbursement from the firm.

I had a bottle of Coke, one of those little 8 ounce glass bottles, holding it against my forehead – instead of aspirin, I guess, looking out of the window down on Public Square, I thought Morton’s case would be relatively straight forward if we advanced the insanity defense, but the guy was adamant in his denial of the killing. Have to admit that he killed her to plead insanity, but he said he didn’t do it. Not like I hadn't heard that one before. It was really about what kind of deal that could be cut, not whether he did it. The stakes, life and death, were too high, but it was premature to judge where we could go with the case without seeing what the evidence really was. Tangentially, you get involved in legal and constitutional issues, but most of those issues are used as leverage to cut the deal. And in most cases those issues don't come up. This isn't law school. You're representing real people who go to real prisons or to the electric chair.

A flock of pigeons flew away from me, as I watched, toward the Terminal Tower. Not too many years ago, Cleveland's Public Square was dominated by the Terminal Tower, built by the Van Schweringen brothers in 1932 in the neo-Gothic style. Now, the BP Building, nearly as tall but more massive than the old Terminal, and the Key Building, zooming more than 100 feet above the Terminal Tower, dominated the scene, contrasted with the parking lot bounding the northwest quadrant of what is truly a square. Two banks merged -- only needed one building. Ground that was broken for a new building was covered with asphalt and yellow lines for parking. Progress, I guess.

I spotted Frank Morton way down below, walking south on the wide sidewalk along Ontario Street, reaching the crowd waiting to cross Superior Avenue, the intersection at the center of Public Square. The traffic, both east and west, was bumper-to-bumper on Superior through the intersection of Ontario. Two busses northbound on Ontario pulled into the intersection, and only the curb-lane traffic of east-bound Superior yielded. A UPS van stuck in the intersection dared the busses to move closer. The busses stopped short. Morton threaded his way across Superior through the knotted traffic with the rest of the mob of pedestrians.

A black Pontiac Firebird, golden outline on the hood shimmering through the heat, tried to turn right from Superior onto Ontario. A skinny guy, wearing a white construction helmet with a long, whippy rod ending in an orange flag, crossing Superior, pounded on the Firebird hood with a white-gloved hand. A hand shot out the window that glided down, only the middle finger visible, pointing to the sky.

Morton passed the orange-flagged man without looking at him and veered to the left toward the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. One of the cannon atop the monument was aimed at me, the dirty greenish-bronze soldiers trying to load it. The man with the orange-flagged helmet crossed the northeast quadrant of Public Square. He tossed something into the fountain that filled that quadrant.

Drizzle started to come down, funny how the rain looks from up high. I laid down on the couch in my office, feet hanging over the end. Closed my eyes. I didn’t know how long I was asleep, but the phone beeped once, twice, three times. I slid off the couch and got over to my desk and hit the ICM button for the intercom. Ginny, the receptionist, announced that Walker Wallace IV was there to see me. Never heard of the guy. Didn’t have an appointment. Ginny told me that Frank Morton sent him in and that it was important that I talk to him, relaying what Walker Wallace IV stated.

I told Ginny to put him in a conference room. I thought he might be one of Morton’s “vampire” alibis – what a mess this was going to be.

When I started this blogging thing a couple weeks back, at the suggestion of a friend, I didn’t know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. And by “good” and “bad,” I mean helpful and not so helpful to me. It has been painful, but the last few years have been pain-filled.

Putting these thoughts into a written form has made me think that we have very little control over the direction our lives have taken. Maybe we’re not on a path at all, a path as Robert Frost, the American poet, believed. Maybe we’re in a torrential river being swept along; and yes, we have choices as we are being swept along. We can grab for that tree root sticking out of the bank and try to grab fast and hold on; and if we should be lucky enough to hang on, things may change; but the torrent of water erodes the hand-hold and what progress we think we’ve made and we are carried away again, buffeted and beaten down by the debris created by all of the others in the river.

Oh, if only we were walking in a peaceful yellow wood. But we’re not.

And I had this paranoid delusional murderer sitting in my office. And as it would turn out, that 100 g’s that he paid wouldn’t save him and could never be a measure of my loss. As I said, we are carried along by the torrent of life; and it is only when we look back that we believe that we had choices that we could have made that would have made a difference, but that is only because we have realized an outcome. The if-only-I-had-done-that statements come after the fact, after the outcome. The events became “choices” only in retrospect, when at the time, prospectively, there weren’t any choices to make. At the time, we go with the flow or we do our jobs or we do what we have to do. Two roads might diverge in the yellow wood, but who can say that the outcome would have been different if Frost had taken the other road instead of the road less traveled.

So, moving on. Enough of the philosophical mumbo-jumbo, for now. That was the therapeutic part of the blogging experience. I was dealing with a well-dressed, gap-toothed gentleman accused iof killing his high society wife who believed himself to be a vampire.

Of course, vampires were the fodder for pulp fiction. Count Vlad of Hungary was the model for the vampire tales, or so I recall from reading it somewhere. Vlad the Impaler, I think. I’d do a search on Google, but I don’t feel inclined to delve into the origin of vampires. I have had my fill.

No. I didn’t believe him. That was the bottom like, and he didn’t appreciate my lack of faith; so, he had to explain. Explain. Someone had a lot of explaining to do about his socialite wife on a long white table, so cold, so bare, and so dead; but he wanted to yammer on about vampires and such. And I wanted to get rid of the guy. I needed to meet with the prosecutor out in those parts, talk to the detectives, get to work on his case. But he was talking, I noticed, and explaining about vampires.

He said that whether we admit it out loud or not, we think about vampires when we’re alone on a dark night and we hear that little something we can’t identify or we see that something out of the corner of our eye. “People out there,” he claimed, waving his hand toward the window 48 stories up and overlooking the Public Square, “believe. More people than you could ever imagine.”

I watched his second chin jiggle as he spoke. Was I supposed to admit that I got scared at night when I was alone; that, after I raided the refrigerator at three in the morning, I’d race up the steps, hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, chills running up my spine? Was I supposed to admit that my 35-inch, 34-ounce, Louisville Slugger with my name burned into the barrel was ever-ready, at hand just hiding out of sight, but not out of reach, under our bed? No way was I going to do that.

I found myself looking at those pools of black in his eyes, pools of black that reminded me of black holes, drawing all matter near them into the void. A thin-lipped smile cut across his face, but the black pools remained deep and lifeless. “You are one of those who won’t admit it, but you believe. You have believed since you were a child. Your grandparents, perhaps, spoke of ancient rituals to rid their small towns of vampires. You’ve read about the exhumations and how the priests drove stakes through the hearts of the dead. You know the stories. But you see, it's simply a hereditary thing. Like hemophilia -- a sex-linked, recessive gene causes it. Very, very rare. There are about 25 of us left in the States and about 35 of us world-wide. There are only three females left in the U. S., though; and that's the problem." I thought he was crazy. This statement just added to his lunacy. But he was right. There were people out there that believed – there are people out there who still believe. There are those who have their teeth filed down by dentists into fangs and who knows what else to emulate the living dead. Geez, I could have charged admission.

He didn't look like Bela Lugosi's Dracula and, obviously, couldn't touch Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu. I think he had a problem, but only three females wasn’t the problem. He then, without waiting for me to ask him just what the problem was, explained that there was a group that wanted to breed -- to insure survival of his race. I guess that meant that 32 guys would be looking at only three females. He said that he was being forced to breed with the three females, but that he was part of a small group opposed to, how did he put it … forced arrangements.

He was talking about this breeding bullshit like I was all interested in it, when what I really wanted to know was how he was surviving in the daylight. I mean, what the hell? That was the question I had on my mind at that point. Why hadn’t he burst into flames like in that John Carpenter movie, which I thought was pretty damn cool.

I checked out the twinkling lights on the telephone. All of the lines were in use. David Goldman, one of the names in the law firm’s marquee, would be complaining about the phone system at the partners' meeting set to start at about sunset, when all good vampires awaken and leave the sanctuary of their coffins to search for sustenance. Inquiring minds wanted to know, "It's daylight," I said. "Why are you out during daylight? Aren’t you in going to burst into flames and die?” I admit that I laughed when I asked him that. Who wouldn’t? This guy was trying to be serious here about being a vampire – he was trying to convince his lawyer that he was insane, and his lawyer was laughing. I don’t think Morton understood that he had made his point and that his lawyer was, indeed, convinced.

And do you know what Frank Morton, Vampire with a capital “V,” said? He said, “That's the movies. This is real life." He raised his left eye brow.

Yeah, right. Forgot. Real life. I took a deep breath, exhaling long and slow. I looked at him. Earning the fee the guy had paid was going to be difficult enough without having to listen to this story, but I was stuck. Captive audience, so to speak. It turns out that the daylight thing was a myth, a legend. The pasty complexion I saw him wearing at that moment belied the notion that it was a myth. It looked like his skin hadn't seen the light of day -- ever. The he said that it was a genetic disorder. He claimed that – and he couldn’t make being a vampire too difficult, could he? – he went to sleep when he was tired, just like me and you; but that he didn’t get as tired as quickly as “humans,” though. He required a few hours of sleep every three or four days.

Morton was calm, more relaxed. Confession was good for the soul, I guess. Morton chuckled and smiled, saying, "I see you are getting a bit more comfortable with the idea."

The Idea. Figured. He was running his “Idea” past me to see if it could fly. The newspapers had already given him the Idea – “VAMPIRE KILLER!” was the headline of the Register -- so he'd play it out and spend a couple years in the state hospital and walk away. The Idea. I stood up and, courtesy be damned, took the few steps to stand at my bank of windows, and looked out over the quadrangle known as Public Square, my back to the man.

The Cleveland Indians were playing a day game and a group of six, seven, eight people wearing Indians’ hats scurried across Superior Avenue. One of them carried a baseball glove. Unlike Anne Rice, this was my first interview with a vampire. This was better left to the shrinks, but I was curious. The little blank on the intake form for his date of birth bothered me. So, I asked him how old he was supposed to be, pointing out to him that perhaps he had lied about his true age on his driver's license. I was still watching the street scene below me, and a bum bent over near the fountain on the northeast quadrant and picked up something, maybe a cigarette. I turned around and looked at Morton. And I had a question. Was Morton looking at my neck? He was looking at my neck. I put my hand up to the side of my neck, covering the spot he was looking at. No. Couldn't be. He couldn’t have been looking at my neck.

He didn't let on that I thought he was staring at my neck, wanting to nibble a bit – snack time or something. He told me, "I was born in 1725.” He waited for my reaction of disbelief.

He got it. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe this fucking shit,” I said in a low, steady voice. And he shook his head at me and smiled, teeth showing. The truth was often hard to face is what he said to me at that point. He told me that the myths and legends were based upon facts, and that the years had distorted the facts. And the years had distorted his mind, too. And immortal? No, a life expectancy of 700 years. They die; it just takes a little longer. His father died at the Battle of Gettysburg, he said – shot in the chest; but where do you expect a vampire to be? Lots of blood in a battle.

That part, the drinking blood part, was not a myth. "Yes, that part's true," he said, looking at me with his dull, black eyes, ignoring my sarcasm and poor attitude. "They killed her and drained her blood as a sign to me," he said, without emotion.

"I don't mean to sound stupid, Mr. Morton," I started. "But it seems to me that they went about this all wrong."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Why would they want you in some insane asylum when they just could have kidnapped your wife and held her captive while you did what they wanted you to?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said curtly. "How am I supposed know?"

"I’ll set up an appointment with a psychiatrist," I said, having had enough for one day. "He'll give you a call to give you the particulars."

"I'm not crazy," Morton said.

"But you'll do it," I added.

And that was it. Just plain crazy.

Fact ot Fiction. I wish it was a dream and that I would wake up in bed next to Jane with Kevin and Sam arguing over the Nintendo game they were playing, but that won’t happen. I wish. I wasn’t much of a father for a few years after she was killed. I played that self-medication game for a couple of years, which didn’t work out. What were shrinks going to do – I went on an anti-depressant for a couple years – but therapy was a joke. I finally decided I needed to get on with my life – I stare into that pit of depression still, but I’m not going to fall in. Can’t. I thank the powers at Conrail that the fucking train didn’t come that day.

I’m working. Building decks. Some furniture – the four-poster bed is popular enough that I have orders to fill through the winter.

But you can believe the story or not. I lived through it. Whoever said that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction was probably making a delivery to the office the that first day Frank Morton was there – standing outside the door and hearing Morton tell me he was a fucking vampire. That’s right. A vampire. I had to bite the back of my hand to keep from laughing when he said that so matter-of-factly. Fucking lunatic. I had my defense of the murder case right there. Didn’t have to make one up. And he said it like he really believed it. That was the thing. I knew some weird people – I represented a couple people who thought they were Jesus Christ. Well, one of them thought he was the Second Coming, the other thought he was just plain ol’ Jesus Christ. Of course, the latter guy had risen from the dead. Again. So, a vampire? Okay. Like I said, he was a lunatic; or so I thought.

I wish I could laugh about it. It would be a good story – just that part of it. It sounds funny when I read it back, but what happened to him wasn’t funny. And it was weird, sitting there across from him, listening to him whining about how he loved his wife and how he didn’t kill her. And he said he had an alibi. He was with a few people when she was killed. That’s what he told me before he let me in on his little secret.

Alibi was a matter of timing, I told him. We needed witnesses to establish the time he was with them and then we needed witnesses, maybe the medical examiner, to establish the exact time of death, which would be difficult, given the fact that there was very little blood in the body. I won’t get into the science of lividity and body temperature and shit like that. But he seemed to know what I was talking about. I did tell Morton that it was premature to talk about alibi because I didn’t know what the prosecutor had in the way of evidence, other than what I read in the paper. "We don't want to be hemmed in by an alibi theory without knowing what evidence the prosecutor has and the witnesses she'll be calling" is what I told him, as I recall. He wasn’t happy at that point because I wasn’t doing what he wanted me to do and wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear.

So, to give him his money’s worth, I told him I needed to know who he was with and where he was the entire day, and that once I had a list of the prosecution witnesses, I'd need to know if he knew them before I contacted them. He wanted me to get sworn statements from his witnesses, explaining to me that the prosecutor would dismiss the charges. I shot him down on that notion. I shouldn’t have written that – indelicate. I told him that his friends would end up testifying at the trial, unless he agreed to make some kind of plea bargain.

"They won't testify. You said they have to testify," he told me. He tugged at his collar and then pulled the tie down and unbuttoned the top button. The gold collar pin skittered across my desk, and I caught it before it fell to the floor. The reflexes were still good.

He was shaking when I told him that I would talk to them and that they would testify. And then I told him that talking about an alibi was premature at that point in the proceedings, but he was agitated nonetheless. He muttered, shaking his head, right hand rubbing just above his right eyebrow. I asked Morton, "Why not?" He knew them, I didn't.

He looked at me. He chewed on his lip for a few seconds, then wiped his face with his pudgy right hand. He shook his head, closed his eyes, then cut the silence. "They're vampires."

Oh, yeah, ri-i-i-ight. That’s what I was thinking. But it was going to get worse – or better, depending on how you looked at things. I was thinking better, actually. I had a shrink who would love the guy – delusional system – insane, no prob.

“They're vampires," I repeated back to him. Morton's manicured nails glistened. His fingertips came together then, like he was praying, but the fingers were spread apart. He touched his lower lip with the tips of his index fingers.

He closed his eyes and lowered his head. His pink scalp shined, just like his fingernails. The small hairs on his head were almost invisible. His head bobbed in the affirmative. He took a deep breath and then shook his head. He grabbed the point of handkerchief that stuck out of his breast pocket, pulled it out, and dabbed at his eyes as he raised his head. Morton manipulated the handkerchief into a pentagon shape with his sausages and stuffed it into his breast pocket. He arranged it so that the point was now peaking out of the pocket. He brought his hands back together in a ball under his chin. The index fingers unfolded into a church steeple. He rested his upper teeth on the tip of the church steeple.

So, I figured what the hell at that point. The guy was a loon – I told him that what this was very unusual and would be hard for people to swallow – only I used legal talk. I told him that I had a hard time swallowing his story whole and that I needed him to see a shrink so that I could prepare a proper defense for him.

Tears welled up in Morton’s eyes. "Then they win. I'll be found insane, get put in an asylum for a few years, and be right back in his clutches."

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him, "Whose clutches?" This was better left to a shrink to sort out. He was a nut -- paranoid delusions. His reality was the netherworld -- better to stay away from it. I had no business making a foray into this territory.

"Joseph Butcher," Morton said, his hands clenched now. He took a deep breath and shook his head. He grabbed the point of handkerchief that stuck out of his breast pocket, pulled it out, and dabbed at his eyes once again.

Well, hell, what was I to know? This was far stranger than anything I had ever encountered; and at that point, I should have just shut down the whole thing and shipped him off to a shrink. The case was a dead-bang winner on the insanity defense; in fact, I marked on the file NGRI – that was the plea I heeded to file – Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity.

But instead of doing that, I asked one question too many. Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. Sometimes, that’s good advice for asking questions in everyday life. "Do you think you're a vampire?" was the question I should not have asked.

Morton let out a raspy laugh, like the dog in Saturday morning Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He threw his head back. His double chin disappeared. His whole body shook. Tears rolled down his cheeks. The sausage fingers on his right hand reached again for the white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. He coughed into the handkerchief. He took a couple of wheezing breaths. "Oh, my, my, my . . ." he said, trying to catch his breath. One last raspy, wheezy laugh flew up from Morton's diaphragm and shot across the room. "Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink," he quoted from Coleridge. "I met him once."

I looked at Morton, my eyes squinting, my question unasked.

"Coleridge. I met him on the street. It was about 1820, '21, somewhere in there. Opium addict. Did you know that? He wrote Rime of the Ancient Mariner while he was on drugs. Kublai Khan, too. The '60's had nothing on him. In fact, he was probably reincarnated as Jim Morrison of The Doors."

The comment asked: Fact or fiction? Well, obviously, either Morton was making up an elaborate story to aid in his case – an insanity defense – or he was living in this paranoid delusion he called life where vampires were out to get him – whatever.

Anyway, he wasn’t done. "Yes, I'm a vampire." Morton's gaze fell upon me. He gave me a thin-lipped smile.

I should have bailed. But there were 40,000 reasons the partners would tell me to fuck off. And 60,000 more on that little pink check. I should have quit.

At Hockey Practice

The guys are on the ice, hockey practice. We drive forever to get here, but I brought my lap top along. I don’t know if I should let them know that I’m recounting parts of their lives on the World Wide Web. Nobody really reads the stuff anyway. It’s therapeutic, right. I don’t think I’ll tell them right now – maybe in the future.

Anyway, Morton wanted to hire me; but Morton, with his yacht club clothes, didn’t bring enough money with him. He pulled out two banded bundles of one hundred dollar bills from each of the two inside pockets of his suit and set them down on the scarred oak table in front of me. Forty thousand dollars. He came somewhat prepared. I sent him downstairs to the bank for the rest of the 100 grand I quoted as a retainer.

While he was down in the bank, I called the court to let the judge know I was going to represent Morton. I got Mary Ellen in the assignment office, who was really the one in charge of setting up cases for hearing and moving them forward for hearings and trial. She was a good person to know to get things done in this court. I told her who I was, and she cheerfully greeted me, which was more a function of her personality than of the person who was calling. She told me that the judge signed the dismissal on the contempt charge that started this whole mess; so, that saved me some potential problems and money and that she set up a pretrial conference for the Morton case for Wednesday of the following week.

In most cases, criminal lawyers can't really do much for a client. Rarely do the police get the wrong man, and the job is to make sure the cops have dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's. I don't ask them if they did the crime. I don't want to know. Easier on the conscience? No. It's not my job to prove whether the client did it; that's the prosecutor's job. The prosecutor must produce the evidence of guilt. If the prosecutor can't do that, the client is not guilty.

Well, okay … yeah, it is easier on the conscience. You got me there.

With what I knew from the newspapers, a conviction for something along the lines of manslaughter or unpremeditated murder was what we would have to shoot for. Four-to-fifteen years – acceptable, I thought.

Morton was back from the bank. He looked at me with those piercing, but dull, black eyes. He put his right elbow on the arm of the burgundy wing-back chair facing me across my desk top and pulled his hand up to his face, stroking the slight cleft in his real chin with his sausage index finger. He tucked his other chin onto his chest and tugged on the end of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. His head popped up -- what could be so tough about the question I asked him?

And he told me that he usually didn't tell anyone his real birth date. Fucking weird-o. I wasn’t into playing his game; so, I told him to give me what was on his driver's license. Then, I wondered why I was even asking for his age. It didn't really matter point if he was eighteen or eighty; he wasn't a juvenile delinquent, but old habits die hard. And I had a space on the client information sheet I made up a long time ago for the date of birth, so it must have been important at one time. Yeah, I had to fill out the damn form.

Then Morton said the Magic words that he thought would make everything better, "I didn't kill her." Was that some kind of spark I saw in those dead-black eyes? His eyebrows moved close over his eyes, like rain clouds moving in. He closed his eyes, eyelids quivering slightly. I noticed a jagged purple line in his left eyelid. "I loved her. Why would I kill her." His voice trailed off. Typical.

I didn't say a word. I waited. And waited. The tears might come if he was a good actor.

He finally said something like, "I never loved anyone before Denise Marie. I mean there were plenty of women, of course, but I never fell in love with any of them." Then he opened his eyes and looked at a spot somewhere behind me -- or some time beyond me. His breathing seemed to calm. He didn't cry. That was a surprise. They usually cried. I waited, looking into one of his black eyes, but there was no figuring out why people who kill do what they do. It’s been my feeling all these years that they’re all crazy – maybe not “insane” according to the legal definition, but just plain fucking crazy. Unless the person is a hired killer – then you got real problems.

I checked the client information sheet I had on the desk for Frank Morton. Nothing special about this one. There was no line to write in that he didn’t do it. And this guy would never understand that it didn’t matter that he says he didn’t do it. So, I asked him again what his date of birth was to complete the form. It’s like the hockey registration materials – if you don’t fill out the form all the way, the secretary of the league or the team manager calls and says that the form wasn’t filled out – same thing here – someone will tell me that I didn’t get all the info, like all of it is important.

He handed me his driver’s license, and I remember this just like it was yesterday because it’s one of those moments where you wish you could go back and just not be there – and Morton said, “I expect you will find the date on there hard to believe, just like it appears you don't believe I didn't kill Denise Marie."

He was waiting for a reaction. I looked at the license. The picture was actually quite good for a driver's license. The "DOB" box on the license read "3/27/09." This was before Y2K – they didn’t print the four numbers for the year. I looked at him, and I realized I was chewing the inside of my mouth. It was a nasty habit I was trying to break, but it felt too good to stop. My wife would grab my cheeks between her thumb and forefinger when she caught me doing it, but I was safe here.

People tend to try to fill the silence in conversations. There was silence.

Finally, he said, "You don't believe me, do you." And he looked at me, wanting an answer, so I told him that it really didn’t matter what I believed. That sounds so disingenuous now when I put it down in writing – what I believed didn’t matter. Of course, it mattered. I didn’t believe it. He was pretty well-preserved for being older than ninety-nine percent of the population. I always have had a hard time estimating how old people were from their looks, but he looked to be about thirty-five or so. Maybe more. Maybe less. Whatever, but not 90 years old.

His eyes grew wider. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but decided not to. Then he repeated back to me that it didn’t really matter what I believed, then, he said, "I don't understand what you mean by that."

I remember glancing at the pink check on my desk. I could see the raised bumps that the check-printing machine made. The little pinpricks forming the "6" and the first "0" were red, and the "000" after the little red comma was black. That was a lot of fucking money there and there was 40 grand more in bundles in the top drawer of my desk. Big incentive to lie and act like everything would be fine. Take two aspirin. Everyone will live happily ever after. That’s what they want to hear – that I could get them off. They all did it, but they wanted to get away with it. Why is that? They got an excuse. Hooked on drugs, sleeping with another man, needed the money, whatever. I look back on it and wonder what the fuck was I was doing there.

Rambling – I’m rambling. And they’re getting off the ice. And we got the whole day ahead of us. Up at 4, two hour drive, practice for an hour, two hour drive back. Good thing they can sleep in the car. It hasn’t been too bad lately. They’re older. The nightmares still come – for me and for them. That’s why I look back and I wonder what the fuck I was doing. The one woman I was really comfortable with, who I loved, dead. My kids … our kids fucked up – I’m only here because they are. I live for them. When they are on their own, I think I’ll pack it in. And y’know, it’s not like you can make an argument against it.

The Client

I’m back. This Frank Morton guy, who was referred by the deputy sheriff I knew in Erie County, came into the office and sat himself down after introductions and hand-shaking. I worked for a lawyer when I got out of law school – one of those office-sharing arrangements where I got his overflow and experience – he never, ever shook hands with clients. He’d tell me that he never knew where the hand extended to him in business or friendship had been – he was right. He died recently – 93 – no communicable diseases.

Morton sat there and then reached toward me with his right hand and touched a black, plastic box on my desk.

"I haven't seen one of these things in years," he said quietly. He always spoke quietly, I would find out. Never got real excited – at least I couldn’t tell. He pulled his right hand back, put it in his pants pocket, and pulled out a quarter. "Do you mind?" he asked, showing me the quarter. I told him he wouldn’t get it back, me being a lawyer and all.

He stood the quarter on edge in the small slot on top of the black box. The motor whirred, the box shivered on the table, and a small hand shot out of the top, grabbed the quarter, and pulled it into the box. The kids loved the thing. I always wanted one for as long as I could remember. I went into one of those teenage traps with the black lights and rotating beacons and loud music and found one. Made me a happy man.

Morton smiled. His teeth were perfect, except for the small gap in the uppers smack in the middle. Then he started on me. He was told by a few acquaintances that I was one of the best criminal lawyers around. As if I was supposed to dispute or confirm that with him or something, he stared at me, silent, apparently waiting for an answer. He hadn't asked a question, so I didn't answer. Listening in this situation was best anyway. Finally, he said, "You are not what I expected, Mr. Largent." And, again, he was silent, to which I asked him what he had, in fact, expected.

"Brooks Brothers suit, Rolex, gold wrist bracelet, thin, smoker, hairpiece, fifty-ish, diamonds," he said, describing some of the flashier criminal lawyers in the country.

At least I didn't wear my other pair of jeans, the ones with the hole in the right knee. I asked him if he was disappointed at all.

He smiled again, and the fold of skin under his chin shook a little, like he chuckled under his breath. "One acquaintance, she said you were out of the ordinary. Those were her words. Out of the ordinary. She was right. And are you as good as she says you are?"

I found myself leaning back in my chair and scratching an itch on the right side of my jaw. I had forgotten to shave. I could say that now, as if it was yesterday, because most days I forgot to shave, but I remember this day. I recall this meeting. It started a fall into a deep hole with crumbly sides – where I couldn’t stop the fall, or break the fall. I told him that I wasn't handling criminal cases anymore. Which was kind of a lie – let’s say that I dabbled in them.

"She said you would say that, too," he replied. I waited for him to go on, but he didn't. I guess I had to say something to keep things going -- or not.

I said, "I'm good," not putting emphasis on either of the words. I stood up and walked around my desk past Morton and plopped down on the couch behind him. He stood up, properly buttoned his jacket, easily picked up the burgundy-leather-covered armchair, and turned it around so that it was facing the couch. He sat down, unbuttoning the jacket with his Bob Evans sausages as he did so. I threw my cowboy-booted feet onto the old oak coffee table in front of me, adding the kind of scratches that would make the table worth a lot more in about thirty years, if it would last that long. I have no idea where it is now. It looked like an antique back then; and maybe it was, but it was an interesting, old, battered piece for the office that didn't look out of place.

He asked if I was a partner in the firm. I wasn't a relative, so there was no chance of that happening, but I didn’t give him the sarcastic answer. I just answered in the negative; and he asked me why I wasn’t. Being interviewed by a potential client was always a pain in the ass because it didn’t matter if you were good, bad, or mediocre, the client picked the lawyer for some weird reason. Like I was wearing jeans and a Timex – definite turn-off. I used to say fuck it then and that goes double now.

So, it didn't matter what I said, so I remember telling him, "I've only been with this firm for three years. If you want to know about me, I've been in private practice for almost 20 years. For the first sixteen, seventeen years, I was by myself. I practiced criminal defense and handled everything from murder to disorderly conduct. If you want some references, I can give you some names. I don't claim to win every case that goes to trial. I don't make guarantees about the outcome of cases. I don't tell you only the things you want to hear; I tell you everything so you can make an informed decision. You may not like what I tell you, but that's part of my job. I tell the truth. I don't make any promises other than that I'll do my best to get the best possible result for you. Without knowing anything about your case other than what I've read in the newspapers, the best possible outcome may be keeping you off death row . . ."

He interrupted me, which is bad form. I was on a roll. "The newspapers, they are not being fair to me. I ..."

Tit for tat, man. It was my turn to interrupt. And then I educated him about the business of selling newspapers, not reporting the truth, and how newspapers were never fair. I told him not to read them and not to talk to anyone about the case, his wife, his family, or anything else. It’s hard telling someone that explanations don’t mean shit to anyone else at this stage of the game.

He claimed that he didn’t do it, and I remember him looking me directly in my right eye. He probably practiced that before he came in to see me. I remembered Witness for the Prosecution, where Charles Laughton flashed the sunlight off his monocle into the eyes of his potential client to decide whether he or she was guilty or innocent. Didn't work for him. Looking into the eyes of Frank Morton wouldn’t work either.

So I told Morton that it didn’t matter what I believed because I wouldn’t be the one who would decide whether he killed his wife. His eyes widened, and he told me that I had to believe he was innocent to defend him.

"The prosecutor's the one who has to prove you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You have to understand that it's the evidence the prosecutor has that's the most important thing here. I've had clients who were probably guilty, but the prosecutor couldn't prove it. They're free men. The police rarely get the wrong man -- the question is whether they can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt."

He was nodding. I didn't know if he was nodding off or if he was really listening to me. He pointed out that I didn't really care if he did it or not, which was true.

He shook his head. He started to get out of the chair, to button his jacket, telling me the arrangement wasn’t going to work out and that he had an appointment with Jerry Edelstein. He thanked me.

"Jerry Edelstein," I recall saying to him. "Good lawyer." For a divorce, but I didn’t say that part out loud. Edelstein was Brooks Brothers suits; and he was in his fifties, for sure, although he tried to hide it with a hairpiece. He probably had a Rolex. He drove a little Porsche sports car – red, this year.

"You think something's funny?" Morton challenged me. I must have been smiling. Can’t think that I would have been laughing out loud, although maybe I was. I think I told him that I didn’t think that it was funny and that I knew he didn’t like my attitude. Probably preferred Brooks Brothers. I told him he wasn’t on some TV show and that he better get a lawyer who knew what he or she, for that matter, was talking about. I told him to call Bronx Murallo, who didn’t wear Brooks Brothers suits, either. I didn’t bother telling Morton that Bronx was black. Why make it complicated for the guy?

He sat back down; so I thought he wanted me to continue talking; so, I told him, “Somebody must think you killed your wife. There must be some evidence right now that points to your guilt. That's not to say that you killed your wife, Mr. Morton. I'll believe you, but what I believe doesn't matter and can't affect my evaluation of the evidence. Like I said before, I have represented clients who did the crime, but the prosecutor couldn't prove it. Do you understand?"

He reiterated to me that he was an innocent man and didn’t kill his wife. He sat, not moving. I guess there was no reason other people, like the police, thought he did it. The facts that he had an argument with her, chased after her in anger, and had some stuff that might be used to draw blood apparently were not facts.

I changed the subject. "We have to discuss fees, if you want me to represent you," I said. "You posted bond. How much?" I hoped the judge hadn't bled him dry. He said he put up the house instead of $250,000 cash.

Good news. It turns out that the partners of Goldman & Epstein would sleep well.