The Judgment

Two

The Larkin case. As soon as I was reminded of it, I remembered everything, all of it; the way the women who worked in the courthouse went out of their way to let me know what an awful thing she had done; the rigid certainty that she was guilty; the vexation that whatever sentence she was given would be less than she deserved. Perhaps part of it was because she looked so much like they did, a plain, scarcely noticeable woman who seldom wore makeup and thought nothing of wearing the same dress two days in a row. Most of it of course was because her husband had already confessed to having done with their daughter what she was accused of having done with their son.

That was perhaps the most intriguing thing of all, and even now I cannot pretend to understand why the reaction against her was so much more ferocious than it was against him. He had been having sex with his own daughter for three and a half years. Not his stepdaughter, his own flesh and blood. It is difficult to imagine anyone doing anything worse, yet from the time his wife was first accused of having sexual relations with their young son, she became a monster of depravity and he became, well-nothing.

He was a part of the background, a bit player, someone who had done something unspeakable, but something no different than the unforgivable acts of a thousand other men. The blame that attached to what he had done to his daughter had, as it were, been diffused by the frequency with which such things had been done before. Edward Larkin was a sexual predator who would be dealt with in the normal course of the criminal law; what Janet Larkin had done was beyond anyone’s experience. No mother had sex with her son; it was an unnatural act outside the boundaries of not only every convention but every instinct. It was the ultimate taboo, and for that reason it had to be true. It was not the kind of thing someone, especially a child, would just invent.

I got the case for no other reason than that it was my turn. I was still doing court-appointed work, and when Janet Larkin was called for arraignment and announced she could not afford to hire a lawyer of her own, my name was next on the list. It is strange how often the most important things that happen to us are matters of chance, and how often we don’t understand it at the time. I certainly did not. When I went to the district attorney’s office to pick up the discovery in the case, the clerk, a tall woman in her late forties with long dangling brightly colored ear-rings, suggested I come up with a reason to get out of it.

“Have you heard about the book?” she asked, shaking her head in disgust. “It talks about having kids in the same bed with their parents. That’s really sick,” she added, as she turned away.

Just as I got to the door, Spencer Goldman grabbed my arm.

Short, with a bristling brown mustache and wiry hair, he talked the way he moved, in sudden, explosive bursts.

“There’s not going to be any deal in this case,” he announced with ill-disguised hostility. There was a look of triumph in his eyes, as if he were certain that he had just inflicted a mortal wound. We had had cases together before, and he knew I was not shy about going to trial. I took every case I could to trial-

that was the whole reason I became a lawyer: to try cases. He was not trying to scare me; he was trying to show me just how confident he was that Janet Larkin was guilty and that he was going to be able to prove it. There was something else as well, a sense of moral outrage about what had happened. Others, of course, had the same feeling, but I believe that he felt it perhaps more than anyone else.

“It was his case,” Asa suggested by way of explanation.

“It was more than that. It was personal. Not between him and me,” I added quickly. “Between him and the boy. He believed him, believed every word of the story the boy had told. Goldman didn’t have any doubt-none-and it was, really, the most extraordinary story you’ve ever heard.” Pausing, I stared down at the table, remembering the look of defiance on Goldman’s face when he told me he knew the boy was telling the truth. “I suppose we believe what we want to believe, or what we think we’re supposed to believe. Whatever the reason, he believed him, and he came to believe that the only chance the boy had to recover from the awful thing that had been done to him was to let him know that everyone believed him. The mother had to admit what she had done, or there had to be a trial to prove to the world that she had done it. He wanted to punish the mother, all right, but he mainly wanted to save the child.” I shook my head. “The child! He was smarter than anyone else involved in the case.

There was no question he was his father’s son.

“Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that Edward Larkin, the father, never got caught. He had been abusing his daughter for years, and no one knew. The girl never told a soul. Once, it is true, she tried to tell someone-a girl she went to school with-but she pretended she was talking about someone else. She could not bring herself to admit the truth. It was a secret, and it might very well have remained a secret, if her father had not decided to talk about it himself.

“Try to imagine, if you can, what happened to Edward Larkin.

For years he had been having sexual relations with his own daughter. I can’t tell you that he felt guilt, or remorse, or had any kind of regret about it at all. I can’t even tell you he thought it was wrong. Of course he had to have known that other people thought it was wrong; he had to have known that it was the kind of thing people get into very serious trouble about. It is certain that he never breathed a word about it to anyone. Then, one day-or so he claimed-he saw a television show, a discussion about incest, and he decided he had to talk to somebody. I don’t know. It may be true. It’s easier to admit you’ve done something when it’s something other people do. And it’s easier still, if it’s something that can be considered a disease, something that isn’t your fault, something that can be cured. He began to see a psychologist, and the psychologist convinced him that he had to see the police.

“Larkin told them everything. Charges were filed, but because he had come forward voluntarily, and because he was already in therapy, he pled guilty to one count of sexual abuse and was placed on probation. And because he was in therapy, the rest of that family had to go as well. Obviously, the girl needed help, and the mother, who had just learned what her husband had been doing with her daughter, needed it as well. The boy, it was thought, required counseling to help him cope with what had happened to everyone else.

“Gerald Larkin was eleven years old, and all of a sudden his whole world had been destroyed. Before anyone else could tell him what had happened, his father told him, though precisely what he told him no one ever really knew. But it would have been natural for the father to suggest that what he had done was not all that serious, or all that blameworthy, to spare his son as much pain as he possibly could and to tell him that at some point everything would be back to normal.

“Two months after he began seeing a counselor, the boy revealed that at the same time his father had been abusing his sister, his mother had been abusing him. He did not bring it all out at once. At first he remembered only being touched by someone’s hands. Then, gradually, under the questioning of the therapist, he was able to recall more of what had happened until, finally, he had a clear recollection of everything. His mother, he insisted, had repeatedly forced him to have sexual intercourse.

“Everyone believed him, the psychologist, the police, the district attorney’s office. It explained certain things. How could the father have been doing these things with the daughter without the mother knowing anything about it? The answer of course was that the mother did know, but did not care. You can see why everyone thought she was a monster. And then, of course, it seemed to explain the meaning of that book. It was nothing more than the simple proposition that it was better to let children crawl into bed with their parents when they felt afraid or insecure, than force them to stay in their own room alone. Whether that is good advice or not, I would not know, but there was nothing sinister in what it intended to teach. You could not tell that to anyone who had only heard about it, however. As far as they were concerned, it was a manual of depravity, written by the devil himself, instead of something you could find in any bookstore.

“Everyone knew she was guilty, and her continued insistence that she was not seemed only to prove her contempt for decent behavior. Not satisfied with ruining her son’s life by repeated acts of incest, she was determined to make him a public spectacle by dragging him through the indignities of a jury trial. Janet Larkin inspired something close to universal hatred, and because I was her attorney, much of it was directed at me. Nearly every day a new batch of letters was delivered to my office expressing in language laced with obscenity the moral outrage of their anonymous authors. Even people I knew began to look the other way when they passed me in a hallway of the courthouse. I decided that in the best interest of my client I had no choice but to ask that the trial be moved as far away from Portland as possible. I filed a motion for a change of venue. It was the first major mistake I made.

“I was of course a lot younger then, and it was early in my career. Still, it’s hard to believe I was ever that naive. Jeffries was already the presiding circuit court judge, and he could have had the case assigned to any judge he wanted. He assigned it to himself. He wanted that case, and he was not about to let it go. The motion never had a chance, but the price I paid for filing it had nothing to do with that.

“Someone once said that chance rules the universe. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that there are occasions on which it can completely change your life, and this, like the fact I was given the case in the first place, was one of them.

I drafted the motion and then put it in final form. Normally, I would have had it sent to the court by registered mail or simply dropped it off at the clerk’s office. But I was in a hurry. I wanted a hearing on it as soon as possible. I did not want to wait while it was sent through all the usual bureaucratic channels. I took it directly to Jeffries’s office.

“No one was there. The outer office, where his judicial assistant had her desk, was deserted. It was not quite one o’clock, and assuming that she was probably on her way back from lunch, I took a chair and waited. Not ten seconds later, the door to Jeffries’s chambers opened, and she emerged from the darkness inside. Barefoot and disheveled, she was pinning her hair up in back when she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye.

Flushed with embarrassment, she froze in her tracks. I walked from the chair straight to her desk, pretending that I had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Laying the motion down in front of her, I gave a brief, formal explanation of what it was. She glanced at the document and, without breaking her silence, looked back at me, a question in her eyes, not whether I knew what she had been doing-no, she was certain of that-but whether I was someone who was likely to talk.

” ‘I’d like to have a hearing on this as soon as the judge has time on his calendar,’ I said, maintaining the fiction that there was nothing in my mind but the motion I had come to deliver.

” ‘Is someone out there?’ I heard Jeffries call as I turned and left.

“There are few things that make us feel more vulnerable than the suspicion that someone knows something about us we don’t want them to know. It was not a feeling that Jeffries enjoyed, and the first chance he had he let me know that it was within his power to give me that same feeling a dozen times over. It happened during the first day of trial.

“The motion for a change of venue was denied. There was no hearing, no oral argument, nothing, just a two-sentence order that read: ‘Defendant has moved for a change of venue. Defendant’s motion is denied.’ The trial started a few weeks later, on a Thurs-day afternoon. As soon as Jeffries took the bench, I renewed my motion.

” ‘That motion was denied,’ he replied.

“I was incorrigible, and worse yet, rather proud of it. ‘If it had not been denied,’ I retorted, ‘there would not be much point in renewing it, would there?’

“Jeffries stared hard at me. ‘Denied again.’

” ‘Why don’t we have a hearing on it first,’ I suggested with an arrogance that not even my youth could excuse. ‘That way, after you have listened to the arguments on the motion, you might be able to accompany your ruling with a reason.’

“Raising his head, he twisted it slightly to the side as he studied me intently. He took a slow, deep breath, and as he did so his nostrils flared and the corners of his mouth turned downward.

For a long time, he did not speak a word.

” ‘You will do well to remember, Mr. Antonelli,’ he said finally,

‘that you are here to try your case, not my patience.’ His voice, never deep, was more high-pitched than I had heard it before, as if only by an effort could he keep it from becoming a shriek.

‘And, yes, Mr. Antonelli,’ he went on, ‘I do provide a reason when I rule on a motion, but only when the reason isn’t obvious on the face of it, and only when the lawyer who filed it might actually be able to understand it.’

“There was nothing I could do. I had gone too far as it was.

Retreating behind a mask of rigid formality, I played the lawyer, hiding my resentment while I nodded my acquiescence in every harsh word he lavished upon me. ‘Thank you, your honor,’ I said when he was finished, mindful that of all the tyrannies ever established on earth, a courtroom is the only one in which abuse is always to be followed by an expression of appreciation.

“I thought that this was the end of it, but it was only the beginning. I had barely begun questioning the first juror on voir dire when he was on me again.

” ‘That question is not germane to whether or not this person is qualified to be a fair and impartial juror,’ he instructed me. I had asked the woman what grades her children were in. ‘The juror questionnaire tells you how many children she has and how old they are. That’s all you need to know about them.’

“It was the same with the next question, and the one after that. Nothing I asked was right; everything I asked was wrong.

He interrupted me so often that I started to hesitate halfway through a question, waiting for him to do it again. He was making me look awkward, indecisive, someone who did not know what he was doing. He was making me look like a fool in front of the very people who had to trust me if I was going to have any chance to win. And he was doing it on purpose. Somehow, despite his constant badgering, his incessant corrections, I kept going. Then I asked the eighth juror the question I should have been asking all of them, the question I’ve asked every juror in every criminal case I’ve tried since: ‘Even if you’re convinced the defendant is probably guilty, will you still vote to return a verdict of not guilty if the state fails to prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?’

“Jeffries practically jumped out of his chair. ‘That question is not permissible. You are not allowed to ask a juror how they might vote on the ultimate issue in the case. You will not ask that question again, Mr. Antonelli. Not of this juror, nor of any other juror. Understand?’

“It was late on the second day, Friday, and I had been beaten on long enough. I turned back to the same juror, and more slowly than I had before, asked the same question again.

” ‘This will be a good time to end for the day,’ Jeffries announced before an answer could be given. ‘We’ll resume Monday morning at nine-thirty.’

“He waited until the last prospective juror left the courtroom.

His eyes were cold as ice. ‘You were told not to do that. I told you that question was not allowable, and yet you immediately asked it again. You deliberately flouted the authority of this court, and I have no alternative but to hold you in contempt.’

“I had expected it, and if the truth be told, had almost looked forward to it. I was in contempt, not of the court, however, but of him and the way he was trying to destroy my ability to put on a defense. I stared back at him and kept my silence.

” ‘I sentence you to three days in jail.’ He nodded toward the bailiff to take me away. ‘You can be released Monday morning, in time for the trial,’ he added as he gathered up his books and papers from the bench.

” ‘Your honor,’ I replied, trying to stop myself from screaming,

‘you can charge me with contempt, but I can’t be put in jail for it-not under these circumstances-unless I’m found guilty after a trial.’

“He knew I was right, and we both knew it did not matter.

The bailiff had his hand on my arm, warning me under his breath not to say another word, while Jeffries rose from the bench and disappeared into chambers.

” ‘He would have added more time,’ the bailiff explained. ‘I’ve seen him do it often enough before. You look cross-eyed at him, he throws the book at you.’

“I was delivered to the county jail and learned what it was like to become one of those who no longer exist. They took my wallet, my watch, my car keys, everything I had in my pockets, and looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if I could keep my briefcase. Apparently concerned that I might use my tie either to strangle someone or hang myself, they made me give it to them. Then they took my fingerprints, grabbing each hand and pushing down on it as they rolled each fingertip onto the paper sheet. When that was done, I stood on a taped line, looking straight ahead into the camera, and then with a quarter turn, gave them my profile. They now had my prints, my photograph, and all the possessions I had brought with me. Most important of all, they had me, and I did not like it one bit.

“I was a model of diplomacy and tact. When they finished processing me, one of the deputies grabbed my shoulder and shoved me ahead. I caught my balance and turned on him.

” ‘You lay a hand on me again, you son of a bitch, and I’ll have you in court for the rest of your natural life.’

“He was a large, bulky man, with small fat hands. I would never have believed he could move as fast as he did. Before I knew what was happening, my face was flat against the cinder block wall and both my arms were pinned behind my back. I felt the cold metal around my wrists and then the clicking noise as he locked the handcuffs tight.

” ‘You’re not in court now, counselor,’ the deputy reminded me.

He grabbed the same shoulder he had before and with one hard push sent me flying. He walked at a steady pace, and each time he caught up with me did it again until we reached a windowless metal door. I braced myself when he opened it, ready for the push that would send me tumbling inside. Instead, he turned me around, and unfastened the handcuffs.

” ‘Nothing personal,’ he said.

“He had that kind of stupid grin that you imagine on the face of the schoolyard bully after he has just flattened some scrawny little kid with thick glasses and a stutter who can’t hit back. It was the first time I had ever actually seen that look. A coward from the cradle, I had learned to avoid that kind of trouble. I suppose it was the fear of being found out for what I really was that made me do what I did next. With both hands, I shoved him in the chest as hard as I could. He did not move, not so much as an inch. I might just as well have tried to move the wall. He stared at me, a blank look on his face, as if he did not quite comprehend what I was doing. Then, in an instant, the heel of his hand came up under my jaw and I was knocked backward into the cell, and the door slammed shut behind me. I was locked in a room, six feet by four, the only furnishing a wooden bench suspended from the wall on two metal chains. There was no window, no source of light, except a single dim light bulb that hung high overhead inside a wire mesh screen.

“Without any means to measure it, time came to a stop. After I had been there for what I knew could only have been a few minutes, I felt as if I had been sitting there, staring into nothingness, for hours. I stood up and started to pace back and forth, three small steps each way, counting out loud. It gave me a strange sense of satisfaction, the sound of my voice tolling off the passage of time, tangible proof that I was not imprisoned in a permanent present. It was a way of protecting myself against the fear that had already begun to gnaw at the edge of my conscious mind, the incipient panic at being shut away in a small confined space, the sense of terror that had always accompanied the thought of being buried alive.

“After a while I stopped counting and began to concentrate on the trial. I tried to think about what I was going to say in my opening statement after we finished selecting the jury. I sat down on the hard bench, and studied as carefully as I could the remembered faces of the jurors with whom I had already talked, and thought about which ones I should keep and which ones I should let go. There was a sound at the door. It swung open and a different guard motioned for me to follow him down another corridor. I asked him for the time. I had been in the cell for less than fifteen minutes.

“I assumed he was taking me to eat, or perhaps to change into the clothing of an inmate. He stopped, opened a door, and I found myself squinting into a glaring light. I was on a kind of stage, standing next to four or five other men in front of a wall with odd markings on it. From somewhere in the darkness on the other side of the light, a voice told us to turn to the left. Then I knew. I was in a lineup.

“As soon as I realized where I was and what they were doing, I became convinced they were looking for someone who had committed either murder or rape, and that their witness would mis-takenly pick me. I was certain of it, and I tried to look like someone else. I rolled my shoulders forward, until I was as bent over as someone who does stoop labor in the fields. I dropped my head and let my chin sag down onto my chest. I knew nothing about the crime and yet I thought I had something to hide.

When it was over, and along with the others I was led out of the room, I almost felt as if I had gotten away with something.

“Instead of taking me back to the small cell, I was led down another corridor and put in what we used to call the tank. It was a large room, perhaps thirty feet by twenty, with benches on each of the four walls. On one side, two dirt-covered windows, so high up you could not reach them, much less see out of them, let in a gray, dismal light. Thirty or forty men were crowded together inside. Most were hunched over, staring down at the cement floor, or leaning back against the wall, their hands lying listlessly at their sides, or locked around an upraised knee, gazing straight ahead, an absent look in their eyes. Several were lying on the floor, arms crossed in front of them, sleeping off a drunk. The air was stagnant with the fetid smell of urine and sweat. Stepping carefully over the bodies on the floor, I found a place on the bench directly under the window. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I made out the figure of a man crouching low in the corner. It took me a minute before I realized that his pants were down around his ankles and he was squatting over the one toilet everyone was supposed to share. I turned away, disgusted. Then, convinced I must have been wrong, I looked again. He was sitting there, black hair matted down on his head, with a thick neck and huge fleshy arms, masturbating. In an instant, I was on my feet, moving across the room. Stumbling over the body of a drunk who woke up just long enough to swing his arm at my legs, I made it to the door and banged on it as hard as I could.

” ‘How long are you going to keep me in here?’ I demanded when the guard opened the peephole.

” ‘Be quiet,’ he shouted back as he closed it in my face.

“I beat on the door again, yelling for the guard to come back, though I knew it was nothing more than an empty gesture of defiance. No one was going to help me, and the only thing I could do for myself was accept my situation without further complaint.

“I spent that weekend-three nights that seemed like three years-surrounded by drunks, derelicts, people who could barely function, men who had lost the capacity to distinguish between what happened forty years ago, before they had become addicts and alcoholics, and what was happening right in front of their eyes. They were the victims of their own self-inflicted madness.

“On the bench next to me, a bleary-eyed old man scratched the gray stubble on his cheek, trying to remember where he was.

He opened his toothless mouth and, glancing up at me, began to talk in a rapid senseless monotone. At best, I could make out every third or fourth word as he rambled along, stopping every so often to ask, in a sudden burst of lucidity, ‘Don’t you see?’ He would wait until I gave some sign, a nod, a shrug, a smile, something that showed him that I understood, that I sympathized with what he was telling me, before he lost himself again in his own incoherence.

“He babbled on and on, stopping every once in a while to see if I was still listening, an endless monologue that had meaning only for himself. Gradually, his voice grew fainter, as if he was slowly drifting away. ‘Don’t you see?’ he asked, suddenly alert.

Then, without waiting for my response, he closed his eyes and a moment later began to snore. His shoulder slid up against my chest until the back of his head, greasy gray hair matted to his whitish skull, was directly below my chin. Careful not to let him fall, I got to my feet and left him slumped on the hard wooden bench, a harmless old man who, when he was not crawling into a bottle, was being shoved into a cell. I found myself wondering what stories he thought he was telling me in that torrent of unintelligible speech.

“I found a place on the other side of the cell, as far away as I could get from the stench that emanated from that shit-splattered toilet. The windows high above were black with the night and the dim gray yellow illumination from the single electric bulb lent a spectral quality to things that even in the clear light of day would have been troubling enough. How was it possible that human beings could of their own volition have been reduced to this? How was it possible that the only thing we could think to do about it was to take them, throw them in jail for a few days or a few weeks, and then put them back out on the street to do the same thing all over again? That old man I had left lying on the bench somewhere in the darkness would spend the rest of his life either drunk or locked up and no one seemed to think a thing about it. That was the first time that I began to think that the law itself could be the worst crime of all.

“I became aware that I was being watched. A few feet away from me, sitting straight with his back against the cement wall and his hands extended to his knees, a gaunt figure was staring at me. As soon as he saw me look, he came over and without a word sat down next to me the same way he had been sitting before.

” ‘Thank you for coming, Mr. Steelhammer,’ he said, his eyes focused straight ahead.

“Ignoring him, I started to move away. ‘We have an appointment, Mr. Steelhammer,’ he said, turning his head toward me.

‘I’ve been waiting for you since yesterday when my wife called you.’

“I shook my head to let him know he was making a mistake.

” ‘You’re my lawyer,’ he insisted. ‘The trial starts tomorrow.’

” ‘I’m not Mr. Steelhammer. I’m not your lawyer.’

” ‘Just a minute,’ he said, quite serious. ‘I’ll ask my wife.’ Squinting his eyes, he started moving his lips, noiselessly, like someone forming the words they are reading from a book held right in front of them. His lips stopped moving, and his eyes opened wide.

‘Yes, now I understand.’ His gaze raced from one side to the other.

Then he leaned over and whispered, ‘She told me that you didn’t want to use your real name in here. What shall I call you?’

” ‘You just talked to your wife?’ I asked. ‘Where is she?’

” ‘In Rome. She’s a nun,’ he replied. ‘She’s the Pope’s daughter,’ he added, eager to share this proof of his own importance.

“Madness has a logic of its own, and there was nothing to be gained by insisting on the rules of reason that every normal person follows without a conscious thought.

” ‘I’m not your lawyer. I was sent here to make sure you were all right. Mr. Steelhammer will come tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. In the meantime,’ I cautioned him as if it were a matter of the gravest importance, ‘you are not to talk to anyone about this.’ He followed every word with obedient eyes. ‘Silence is the key,’ I insisted.

” ‘Silence is the key,’ he repeated, nodding to himself. Without another word, he went back to his place on the bench, stretched his hands out to his knees, and, perfectly content, started once again the endless wait for someone who would never come.

“If I slept at all that night, it was only for a few minutes at a time. Chased by nightmares, men cried out like children, lonely and afraid, or woke up with a start, screaming obscenities or throwing wild punches at anyone they thought had disturbed their rest.

“I stayed in that holding tank-that dungeon-all weekend long, living a slow-motion death. They never moved me to a cell of my own; they never let me shower or change my clothes. Monday morning they let me go, but not until nine o’clock when, as the jailer reminded me when he gave me back my briefcase, I had only thirty minutes to get to court.

” ‘Why wasn’t I let out two hours ago? That’s the normal time, isn’t it? Seven o’clock?’

“He was reluctant to answer, but finally relented. ‘It wasn’t up to me,’ he explained as he emptied out the contents of a manila envelope. I picked up my keys and then my wallet. ‘Judge Jeffries signed the order.’ He hesitated, a question in his eyes. ‘You’re not really going to go to court like that, are you?’

“I had not shaved since early Friday morning. I had not brushed my teeth or even washed my face and hands. My hair felt like it was alive, infested with a million microscopic organisms on a feeding frenzy. I itched everywhere. My suit was in ruins, rumpled, wrinkled, soiled with sweat and God knows what else. My black wing tip shoes were dirty and scuffed. One of them was dis-colored with a stain left when one of those drunks sitting next to me had urinated down his leg.

“The more he looked at me, the more sympathetic the deputy became. He offered to help. ‘I’ve got some things in the back. A razor, an extra toothbrush.’

” ‘Thanks,’ I said, as I turned to go, ‘but I think I owe it to the judge to let him see me the way I am.’ “