Judging Time

11

Mel Auschauer glanced at the figure retreating through the kitchen door of Liberty's apartment, then attempted to lean forward in a conspiratorial manner. His anxious eyes darted around the room as if to make sure no one was listening who shouldn't be listening. Then he tried again to sit up and bend in closer to his host. Mel's midlife belly, fed for many years with the very best of Manhattan restaurant offerings both at business lunches and social dinners, had a different plan. It listed to the left, pinning his bulk to the soft down cushions and giving him the distinct appearance of a beached whale. Still, his message was chilling.

"Rick, have you thought about getting a lawyer?" Mel said softly, darting more glances at each of his other partners.

Mel and Daniel Rothhaus, the two men with most authority at James Dixon, the brokerage house, sat on the section of white sofa in front of the windows overlooking the Park. Rick Liberty and a third partner, Christopher Richardson, sat on the section that curved into the room. Beside them was a huge Dogon mask with a raffia skirt.

"A lawyer?" Rick was taken aback.

Rick had been watching Mel's eyes follow Patrice as he went into the kitchen for more desserts and coffee and didn't like what he saw. But he knew he was particularly sensitive to nuance at the moment. His whole body hurt as if he had been in a rough game and just had a ton of linebackers use him for a playing field. His flesh felt bruised in places he hadn't known existed.

But maybe the bruises didn't exist. Rick couldn't tell. All day he had had trouble identifying the sources of his pain. This was new. As an athlete, he had had to know where it hurt so he could compensate and go around the end zone of his physical weak spots. Now he couldn't tell whether the pain he felt came from his body or his mind, which made it difficult to know how to handle it. He had that queasy feeling that came after a really crippling migraine, when his clarity of thinking had returned but he was aware that some crucial period of consciousness was missing. At such times, he wasn't exactly sure what had occurred when the system broke down, and he was afraid nausea might make him vomit without warning, or crash out again.

He kept turning to Merrill, wanting to tell her how awful it was without her. He couldn't believe she wasn't coming back in a minute, breathless and apologetic for taking so long. But she wasn't coming back. Someone had killed her. Someone had reached into the very center of his life and ripped his heart out. The police said Merrill had been stabbed in the neck. It was inconceivable. It made him sick to think about it. He couldn't imagine how such a thing could happen. He just couldn't envision a situation in which Tor was not in control. Tor had been in control of everything. Rick had seen him in tight spots more than once. The threat of a mugger, even one with a gun, would not have caused Tor to lie down and die. There had been no mention of a gun, or a struggle. Why not? Something was wrong, and they weren't telling him the real story. But why not? Rick didn't get it. He felt dead, destroyed—and yet he was alive—dazed and puzzled at the same time.

Jokingly, Merrill used to tell him that dazed and puzzled were the two reactions actors had when stinking reviews came in. He and she had received some pretty stinking reviews when they got married, but the hate was never murderous, never struck at the heart.

Snide remarks on either side of the color line were like graffiti on city walls. It was everywhere. They saw it, they didn't like it, but it wasn't going away. So they'd had to get used to it.

They had told each other having to defend their reasons for being together made them stronger. What had made them vulnerable was the inability to have children, for which no doctor could find a medical reason. That flaw in their life was what had kept them from feeling normal, from feeling right as a couple. Rick had believed it was his fault; Merrill had believed it was hers. Now they would never see their love mirrored in other faces. Al Merrill's battles were over. Rick thought about that as his partners stared at him with disbelief.

"Don't you know what's going on? Haven't you seen the news?" Mel echoed incredulously.

Rick shook his head. Two cops had given him the news at four in the morning. He didn't need to hear the uninformed versions.

Chris Richardson, a man who had his suits and everything else including his underwear made at Sulka and who trained in a gym for three hours every day after the market closed, was still slim enough to bend at the waist. He leaned forward and put a hand on Rick's knee. "This is going to get ugly," he said ominously. "Really ugly."

Dan Rothhaus was a small wiry man with intense blue eyes, curly white hair, and a long thin nose the nostrils of which he constantly teased with a pinkie. Rothhaus radiated anxiety. Rick shot him an inquiring look, then stared at his other two partners as if he had never seen them before. Both were wealthy, well-fed men whose only adversities were having to endure spoiled first and second wives, spoiled and aimless children, and frequent turbulence in national and world markets.

Now the three men were galvanized with what they seemed to see as a real problem, were catching each other's eyes and isolating him with their concern. Rick took a few moments to get a grip on himself. It was going to get ugly? It was already ugly.

He drifted back into his own thoughts. Earlier in the day, Patrice had given him the feeling Merrill's murder hadn't been a random act. Now he was distracted by the word "ugly," and other, familiar irritations like the way his partners made a point of waiting for the restaurant staff to leave before saying anything of importance. All four men in the room had a stake in Liberty's Restaurant—all had a part ownership. But the other three considered it Rick's thing. They considered some of the patrons, and all of the staff, aliens, from another planet. Rick had the feeling that secretly they believed blacks were Martians. He had to stop thinking about that.

He thought about Merrill's face when he'd gone to identify her body. It seemed to rebuke him with its emptiness. Her eyes and mouth were permanently closed, had no comment about what was going on, couldn't tell anyone what happened to her. Now, hours after he had left her there, he found himself trying to remember something else about Merrill other than her color.

For the first time, her color seemed an unbearable offense. She had been frighteningly white at the medical examiner's office, as were the walls of the closed viewing room that he hadn't been allowed to enter. Rick had seen his dead wife through a window and was shaken by how white and alone she was. When he touched the window, that, too, was cold.

"I want to go in," he'd said. He didn't want to leave her there with no crowd of mourners, to be dissected alone. It was so cold, so very cold. He was shaking all over.

"Is that your wife?"

He didn't look to see whose voice was asking, could not have said afterward which cop it was. He just knew the white corpse on the table wasn't his wife. No. his jaw and fists clenched. He looked at her for a long time. No, it was not his wife. Not Merrill. Then, finally he nodded.

He did not encounter Daphne Petersen, was not shown Tor's body to identify. He felt as if the two were set apart somehow. He wanted to see Tor but was afraid to ask. No police person told him what really happened last night. Rick wondered if they would ever tell him. It hit him at that moment that he would not be able to rest until he knew exactly what happened. And then he was hustled out. They wouldn't let him go in and say good-bye to Merrill. Someone said something about everybody's having to suit up before getting anywhere near the dead these days, wear masks with respirators, as if all corpses carried the AIDS virus or TB, or something even worse. Or were they afraid death itself was catching?

And everything had been white. A white sheet was tucked up around Merrill's ears so he couldn't see any more of her than her face, white under the harsh lights, unmarked in any way, frozen in an expression he'd never seen. It almost felt as if she'd been killed by whiteness itself, bled of her spirit, bleached into nothingness. He noticed that the large diamond studs she always wore were not in her ears. He had heard that the police stole jewelry, watches, and money of victims, also the property of people who were arrested. But Rick didn't think to ask about Merrill's diamonds.

He was too shaken, for white had never been the color of death to him. He'd seen the dead, many dead in his childhood. His mother, grandmother, sister, and he used to visit all the families of the dead in their congregation. They'd prayed over the dead in church and sung them into heaven. The women probably still did. The dead went to heaven in golden chariots, sung there by the choir. They crossed the river to the other side. They were sung all the way on their journey to Jesus, who'd always loved and cherished them no matter who they had been or what they'd done with their lives. The lives may not have been very precious, but the souls were golden treasures to Jesus. That was what they believed. And the treasures were always black. Rick had never seen a dead white person until he saw his wife on—he couldn't even tell what she was lying on. She was covered with a sheet, and there was another sheet under her, draped to the floor.

He admitted the body was hers, but nothing about the thing he saw through the window was like the Merrill he had known. And what was there was not going to heaven in a golden chariot. Merrill was going to be cut up with saws and scalpels and her tissues examined under a microscope. Sitting now with his partners in the borne he had shared with Merrill, Rick's body was tense, but his eyes hid his fury. It was already very very ugly.

"Listen to me, Rick," Chris said earnestly. "You have to focus. Do you know what they're saying on TV? Do you know what's going on downstairs? Downstairs there are half a dozen of those vans with star wars on top. Two of those crews almost knocked me down, fighting to get a microphone in front of my face."

It's never too late for salvation. Sing for Jesus, sisters and brothers. Rick had no congregation now, no one anywhere near to sing for Merrill. "Lord save us," he muttered.

Merrill's family was waiting for her body so they could have a funeral. They wanted the funeral in Massachusetts where she'd grown up, and he'd agreed that was best. His family was on the way. After her body had been cut up and examined, they would take her back to the New England town she came from and bury her there. He sucked his breath in, trying to keep control.

"What?" Mel said, cupping his ear.

Rick shook his head, not replying.

"Rick, I know you don't want to think about this right now, but you never know which way these things are going to jump. It's a madhouse out there."

"What do you mean 'jump'?"

Christopher looked apologetic. "You know how Tor was. Who knows what sort of garbage these fucks will come up with?"

"What do you mean jump?"

Chris jerked his chin, irritated. "Don't make me spell it out for you, Rick."

"I'm slow," Rick said evenly. "Spell it out for me."

"You're a celebrity."

"So?" He knew what they were getting at and still he couldn't help pushing.

"So, you've lived with publicity. You have to manage the situation all the time, present your own image. They see what you tell them to see. You have to do that now big-time, you know that. You're an expert." Chris scowled at Dan, prompting him to pitch in.

"Yeah." Dan finally opened his mouth. "You've always been great at managing them."

"So what does managing the press have to do with getting a lawyer?"

Mel shifted his stomach. "You know how we feel about you. We want you protected in every way. We don't want you getting hurt."

Rick stared at the three men, his partners. He was already hurt. "Are you worried about the firm?" he asked softly. "Are you scared I'll taint the firm?"

"No, no," Dan shot back angrily. "You don't get it, do you? The vultures are going to tear at your life, pick at your bones—schadenfreude. You know what that means?"

Rick shook his head, but he got the picture.

"It means taking pleasure from other people's troubles. Joy and pleasure from eating you alive," Dan persisted. "This is going to happen. It's guaranteed to happen, and we want to control it."

Mel threw his two cents in. "We don't want to see it get out of control here, you know what I mean?' '

Rick clenched his jaw. "They won't find anything to pin on me, if that's what you mean."

Dan shook his head. "Don't be a stupid fuck, Rick. They always find something. You—"

Abruptly he stopped as Patrice pushed open the door and bore down on them with a tray of rich pastries and a sullen expression. Rick turned to him, frowning, and their eyes locked.