The Laws of our Fathers

DECEMBER 7, 1995

Sonny

'The testimony is irrelevant,' says Molto, standing before the bench.

This guy. He has an unerring capacity to aggravate me.

'Mr Molto, you're the one who offered to bring in Tactical Officer Lubitsch. We had a discussion at sidebar and, as I recall, you ended it by volunteering.'

'Judge, we've had time to think. There was no polygraph. So there's no discovery violation. And the testimony is irrelevant.'

'Mr Molto, we've had sworn testimony that there was a polygraph, and if the witness is mistaken, I'd think the prosecution would be delighted to establish that fact.' I turn to Hobie, who's beside Rudy. 'Mr Turtle, do you still want to explore this area?'

Mum to this point, Hobie offers nothing but a solemn nod.

'Call the witness.'

'Judge -'

'Enough, Mr Molto.'

Tommy starts away, then wheels back. 'By the way, Judge, this business of not turning over scientific reports? He told us yesterday-' Tommy uses a finger to indicate Hobie; he's too aggravated to speak his name. 'He told us he was going to test that money for blood or gunpowder and have a report this morning.'

Hobie cuts him short, avoiding a diversion. 'There's no gunpowder, there's no blood. I'll give them the money back right now.'

'There's your answer, Mr Molto. No gunpowder, no blood. Who's putting on Lubitsch? It's your motion, Mr Turtle.'

Tommy, with his dark, beaten-up face, stares at me, sulkily. He's been doing this twenty years, but he still can't roll with the punches.

'We'll call him, Judge,' says Tommy. 'This will take one second.' He motions to Rudy.

Fred rolls in, spoiling macho attitude. He's wearing his cowboy boots and a huge silver buckle on his jeans, an open-necked print shirt, and a tweed sport coat. Word is he was really something when he was younger, always looking for it on the street, with that imposing physique that strains his uniform and a challenging eye. Among the State Defenders the rep lingers that he's a hitter, a cop who'll smack an arrested defendant around. But Marietta, the unimpeachable source, says he's different since he married. His wife, Angela, is another bodybuilder, whom he first encountered at one of those contests where they oil themselves up and pose. She was a champion, famous in those circles, and – Lubitsch boasts about her now and then in an openly admiring way I find endearing. They have one child. Like Marietta, I regard him as one of those people who has improved with age.

'Hey, Judge,' he says when he arrives before the bench. A bit too familiar.

'Do you swear to tell the truth?' I answer.

Fred's testified here before. Given the cultural limitations of police testimony – every defendant has received his Miranda rights, even though few do these days; every cop has seen whatever his partner has observed – Fred strikes me as more or less a truth-teller, less freewheeling than some others. As he takes the stand, I notice he has his reports rolled up in one hand.

Tommy waits for Lubitsch to settle himself, then Molto positions himself right before the bench. He goes for dramatic effect. A single question. Not even state your name. He lifts a reddened, nail-bitten hand.

'Officer Lubitsch, on September 12, 1995, or any other date, did you use a polygraph machine on Lovinia Campbell, either at Kindle County General Hospital or elsewhere?'

'No, sir,' he says.

Tommy heads back to the prosecution table. 'Excuse the witness,' he says over his shoulder.

I smile at the gambit. This is, in all phases, a game which two must play.

'Mr Turtle, do you want to cross?'

Hobie sits in his chair for quite some time, studying Lubitsch. His lips are rolled into his mouth, virtually lost in the grey-shot muff of beard. He's stumped. For the first time since these proceedings began, he does not rise to address a witness.

'Ms Campbell testified she had a polygraph. Did you know that, Officer?'

'I heard that.'

'And she's lying?'

'She isn't right, I know that much.'

'She's lying?'

'Objection,' says Tommy from his seat. He's fussing with his pad, but he reels off a number of valid exceptions to Hobie's question. Asked and answered. Calls for an improper opinion. Hobie stares at Lubitsch.

'Are you saying, Officer, maybe the witness made a mistake?'

'It might be.'

'She misperceived something?' 'Maybe.'

The courtroom is still. Hobie finally stands, taking the time to secure the front flap of his double-breasted suit jacket, a chalk stripe of soft grey wool.

'Did she think she was getting a polygraph?' Molto objects to Lubitsch testifying to Lovinia's thoughts. Hobie rephrases: 'Did someone tell her they were going to give her a polygraph?'

'Yes, sir, that coulda happened.'

'And who was "they"? Who told her she was going on the box?'

Lubitsch wiggles a bit in his swivel chair. ‘I believe I did.'

‘I see. But you didn't actually do it?'

'No.'

'But she changed her story anyway? I mean, that's what happened, right? This girl was tellin you one thing when you got there and something else when you left?'

'Sometimes with these people -' Fred stops. 'With an offender sometimes -' He wipes his mouth with both fingers. 'An experienced officer, sometimes I think I know pretty well when someone's giving me a line.'

'Yes?'

'We don't always want to take them down to the Hall for the box.'

'The lie box?'

'Right. Here we couldn't. She's laying there with tubes coming out of everywhere.'

'So what did you do, Officer?'

'We tell them we're giving them a box, only we don't' 'You created that impression?' 'That's it.'

'And how did you do that?' 'We put something on her head.' 'What?'

'Something we borrowed from one of the nurses.' 'What?'

'That strap-like, you know, for the heart test?'

'EKG?' 'Right.'

'And you put that around her head? So you could test what she was thinking?'

Lubitsch doesn't answer. His eyes roll up to Hobie and fix him with a dark look meant for the street.

'And was it just the pressure strap? Was that the entire apparatus?'

'No. It had a piece of telephone cord attached.' 'Attached to what?' 'The thing on her head.' 'And what else?'

'A machine.' Lubitsch looks hard at Hobie. Obviously there's no point. 'A copying machine.' 'A photocopying machine?' 'Right. We borrowed that from the nurses, too.' 'Then what did you do?' 'Asked a question.' 'And?'

Lubitsch shrugs. 'Then we pressed a button on the machine.' 'For what?' 'The answer.'

'You get the answer from the machine?'

'That's what we say.'

'Is that what you said to Bug?'

'Right.'

Hobie doesn't speak. Instead, he simply beckons for more with the back of his hand.

'See, we put a piece of paper in the machine before we start. Okay? Then when we press the button, it comes out and we show it to her. Okay?'

'And what was written on the piece of paper?'

' "She's lying." ' There is laughter, of course, a rippling chorus loudest from the jury box.

'So you had this young woman sitting there with a rubber strap on her head and a piece of telephone wire that was attached to a Xerox machine, and then you pressed a button and it produced a piece of paper that said she's lying and you showed that to her, right?' 'Right.'

'And she believed it?' 'Because she was lying.'

Hobie looks to me, without even bothering to voice the objection. I strike Lubitsch's last answer and Hobie expels a magnificent sigh of disgust as he walks back to the defense table, winding his head. Cops.

'Are we done?' I ask.

Hobie argues vociferously that Lovinia's testimony has to be suppressed. He calls the police 'deceptive' and 'exploitative,' as if the Supreme Court hadn't long ago decided to tolerate such conduct in the name of effective law enforcement. When Molto comes to the podium to respond, I greet Tommy with a dour look. He was running changes on me this morning. One of the iron rules of my courtroom, especially for the prosecutors, is that you pay the price when you mess with the judge. The P As will run you over if you let them, and as a woman, I feel the need to be particularly firm. I'm frosty enough with Tommy to scare him. But I deny the motion in the end. No right of Nile's was violated by what the police did to Lovinia. Bug, especially as a juvenile, would have a pretty strong argument that the statements she made to Lubitsch and Wells can't be used against her. In fact, now that I think about it, I see how Hobie persuaded Bug – and her lawyer – that she could ignore Molto's threats to throw out Bug's deal if she came off her prior statements. Given this monkey business, there's no way Tommy could risk reprosecution, since Bug might walk completely. Hobie, the pro, does not miss a beat when I rule.

'In the alternative, Your Honor,' he says, 'I'd like to make the officer's testimony part of my case. So I don't have to recall him.' Relieved, Molto ventures no objection, but says in that case he'd like to ask a few more questions of his own. He stands at the prosecution table.

'Officer Lubitsch, after Ms Campbell admitted she was lying -'

'Objection. He told her she was lying.'

'Rephrase the question.'

'After this mock-polygraph,' says Tommy, 'Ms Campbell made a statement, correct? And is it fully set forth in your report?'

Lubitsch testifies that each of his reports is an accurate rendition of what Lovinia said.

'And returning to September 12 in the hospital, did you ever tell Ms Campbell what Hardcore had previously told the police?'

‘I didn't know what Hardcore had said. It wasn't my case. Montague asked me to talk to Bug because I knew her. That's all. She told me a story, we did our lie-box thing, and she made her statement.'

'You didn't tell her what Hardcore said?'

'Nope. That's not my s.o.p.'

Tommy nods. He's just made up a great deal of ground. Sorting through it all, the critical issue in evaluating Bug's testimony is whether what she said to the cops in the first place was true. I could believe she told them what they wanted to hear, not so much because she seems easily cowed – even at fifteen she isn't – but because she's clever enough to deal that way. But if Bug didn't know what Core had said, there' s only one way, realistically, her sworn statements to Lubitsch could match Hardcore's version of events: because that's what happened out on the street. At least, that's the way I add it up. Tommy does, too. He's gone back to his seat with an unbecoming little swagger, enjoying the fact that he's finally put Hobie in his place.

In his chair, Hobie again is taking his time, his lips gummed over each other, staring at Lubitsch once more, puzzling something through.

'Officer, did you figure on testifying in this trial?' he asks suddenly.

'Huh?' answers Lubitsch.

'Did you have it in mind as this trial was coming up that you'd end up as a witness?'

'I don't know. I thought I might.'

'You did?' Hobie pushes through the mess of papers on the table. 'You weren't on the state's witness list.'

Lubitsch has an uncomfortable moment. His eyes briefly close, lizardlike.

'I saw Montague at Area 7 last week. He said the witness might be doing a spin, and if she did, I was going to have to come stand behind my paper.'

'Just a warning.'

'That's all.'

'You didn't go review your reports at that point?'

'No. I kind of live a day at a time, counsel. I woulda thought she was too smart to flip, but you live and learn.' That's meant as a jibe. He's clearly had an earful about how Hobie led the girl astray.

'And how did you find out you were going to have to come testify today?'

'When I come on the job at eight, at roll call, I got a message: phone Montague.'

'You didn't spend the day yesterday getting ready to testify?'

'I'm off Wednesdays. I was putting up sheetrock, if you want to know.'

'And when you reached Montague today, did he explain why you were gonna be needed in court this morning?'

‘I don't know,' says Lubitsch, vamping. 'Sort of.'

'Sort of,' says Hobie. 'Well, at some point today did someone – Molto, Montague, Mr Singh – did one of them explain that Lovinia had testified that in persuading her to change her story, you'd told her what Hardcore had to say?'

'I heard that.'

'And you realized, didn't you, that it would help the state if you could testify that didn't happen?' 'Nobody told me what to say.'

'I understand, Officer. But you've been around a lot of trials, haven't you? And you recognize the significance of your testimony that you didn't tell Bug, don't you?'

Lubitsch's eyes cheat just a trifle in my direction. I get the feeling that in somebody else's courtroom Fred might try a line, a dodge.

‘I have the picture generally.'

'Now, Officer, I want to hand you a copy of your report of September 12, marked as Defendant's Exhibit 1, and I'm gonna ask you to read out loud the part where it says you didn't tell Lovinia Campbell what Hardcore had said.'

Lubitsch sits a minute, staring outward. He has that look again: stop fucking with me. He bothers only with a bare glance at the report, which Hobie has laid on the rail of the witness box. He does not even touch it.

'It's not there.'

'It's not there,' says Hobie. 'So this is just something you remember?'

‘I said it's not my s.o.p.'

'It's not your standard operating procedure to tell one witness what another witness has said, correct?' 'Exactly.'

'And that's why you say you didn't tell Bug?'

'I say I didn't tell her that, cause I don't have any recollection that anything like that ever happened. That's why I say it.'

'Okay,' says Hobie. 'You don't have any recollection.' He's moving around again. By now, I know it's a bad sign for the state when Hobie starts roaming. If I were the prosecutor, preparing a witness for cross, I'd tell him, "Watch out. If Turtle starts moving, that means he has you on a roll." But Lubitsch doesn't know that and sits there, with his bulk and his attitude, still thinking he's doing okay. 'And it's fair to say, isn't it, that you haven't had a lot of time to review the reports or to get it firm in your mind exactly what went on in your interviews of young Miss Lovinia?'

‘I remember what happened, counsel.'

Hobie scratches his cheek. He is doing his best to remain mild, if not genial, in the face of Fred's hostility. Someone – Dubinsky, probably – has told him Lubitsch is a regular here, something of a favorite of mine.

'Well, let's talk about your visit to Bug's hospital room on September 12. You say Montague asked you to go over there because you know her, correct?'

'Not like we're pals. I arrested her twice.'

'But you had a good relationship with her as a result?'

' "Good relationship"? I don't know what that means.' He's reared back, then subsides a bit, aware perhaps of how contrary he's becoming. 'I'm not trying to be cute, counsel, but you'd say we had a professional relationship. She knew I'd be professional with her. The first time where she got cracked, we sort of caught them in the act – I mean, when we, you know Tactical, when we get in the area, this operation of BSD, they're very good at rolling things up. But this time I saw some car tearing off and Bug and me had a little foot race and I grabbed hold of her and I told her how it was and she was co-operative.'

'You "told her how it was"?'

'Usually, when these kids are out selling small stuff, usually they'll keep it up in their mouth. The seams. So they can swallow it if the Man comes on them. It's not enough to kill them. So they swallow. And I grabbed Bug and told her if she tried to swallow I'd have to choke her, or pump her stomach, and for her just to spit it out and she did.'

'And you made friends,' says Hobie. The delivery is droll, not quite disparaging, just enough to bring out the sad ridiculousness of the entire situation. He derives uproarious laughter from everyone, including me. Yet there is a homely truth here. There are probably two hundred kids in T-4 with whom Lubitsch and Wells have this kind of relationship. They know their mommas and cousins, their gang standing, maybe even in a remote way how they're doing in school. They treat them with some feeling. Fred has reason to be riled and he treats Hobie to an acid look.

'I didn't ride her, okay? It was a thousand feet of a housing project. I could have charged her as an adult. I didn't. We did it as a juvie beef, she did some home time, she got out.'

'You were fair.'

‘I try to be,' says Lubitsch and hitches his massive neck. 'And knowing you had been kinda fair to her in the past, Montague asked you to see her in the hospital?' 'That's the picture.'

'And you went with your partner -' Hobie starts through the reports. 'Wells.'

'You and Wells went and you told her to roll, to make a deal, didn't you?'

'That I remember.'

'And she told you what you took for a lie, namely that the shooting of Mrs Eddgar was just a drive-by by a rival street gang.' 'That's what she said.' 'Are there drive-bys in that neighborhood?' 'Plenty.'

'But you were confident she was fibbing?' 'Lying was my impression.'

'Even though this girl was more or less in your debt? Even though she'd been kind of co-operative with you before, you didn't believe her?'

Lubitsch permits himself a slight wise-guy smile. Grow up, he'd like to say.

'I didn't.'

'You remember why in particular?'

Lubitsch looks to the ceiling. 'Didn't hit me right.'

'Could it be,' says Hobie slowly, 'that Montague had already told you what Hardcore had said?' Hobie stops to watch Fred. This is where he wins or loses. Lubitsch takes a breath and once more lets his eyes rise in reverie. He teeters an instant on the brink of denial. But now the events have begun to come back to me. That was the day Wells and he were in my chambers calling the case a doozy. Fred said he was going to General. And he was gloating, because he knew all about it by then. He knew Hardcore had made Nile a suspect. "Fred," I want to say, "for Chrissake, Fred." Instead, with little conscious intention, I clear my throat. His eyes hit mine. The pupils seem to enlarge in that half-instant, he shrinks back in his seat, and it comes to him just as it has come to me. He almost nods, as if his obligation to tell the truth arises as a matter of personal allegiance.

'That makes sense,' he says.

'Do you remember that?'

'It rings a bell.'

'So you knew Hardcore had turned. And that you were going to this girl for corroboration, right?'

Lubitsch takes a long time to make sure there aren't any snares before he agrees.

'Now, Hardcore's in the gang, in BSD? Hardcore's what they call Top Rank, correct?'

'So I understand.'

'The younger ones carry out his orders?'

'They sell his dope. Yeah, he's important. What's the point?' asks Lubitsch, clearly out of sorts, as many coppers become when they lose control of the situation. Hobie takes advantage to move a few steps closer.

'Here's the point, Officer. Do you know of witnesses in gang cases being threatened and in fact even hurt or killed?'

'I've heard of it.'

'Often?'

'Probably.'

'And in your experience isn't that even more likely to occur when someone is offering testimony against a gang leader?'

Lubitsch sees the point then. He ponders what is coming next before saying simply, 'Yes.'

'Now, Officer, recognizing you came here on short notice, recognizing you didn't have much chance to look at your reports or to think about the events of September 12, recognizing that you ordinarily wouldn't tell a witness what another witness said, recognizing all of that, I ask you if it wouldn't have been a whole lot easier to get a homegirl to roll if she knew her shot-caller had already done the same thing, and if she wasn't going to hurt him by talking?'

Lubitsch's shoulders are sunk down and he is stewing in all of it, getting caught by this defense lawyer and having to tell him the truth. Again, his eyes, almost involuntarily, move in my direction before he answers.

'That makes sense.'

'And in order to convince her, you'd have had to reveal the details of what he had said. You'd want her to be sure you already knew the story she was going to tell you, right?'

‘I would have told her, I guess, some things. I'd have tried to hold back a little, you know, for a test. But I'd have to give her enough for her to know he'd turned over.'

'And if she says one of the things you revealed to her was that Hardcore had accused Nile of engineering the shooting of his father, you can't, as you sit here today, you can't say that's wrong, can you?'

Lubitsch actually makes a face. He winces in reflection. He waits one more second, his full weight taken on both ponderous forearms, which rest on the witness box.

'I can't completely remember. All right? That's the truth. She could be right, she could be wrong.'

'She could be right?' asks Hobie.

Lubitsch doesn't bother to respond. At the prosecution table, Molto is unconsciously probing his temple, staring vacantly at the oak rods that are mounted on the wall in front of him to baffle sound. Hobie has the center of the courtroom to himself. He smiles circumspectly at the witness, careful not to show Lubitsch up for telling the truth. But we all know he's had another high moment of lawyerly achievement. Bug's statements to the police now have to be regarded as no more than a loyal imitation of Hardcore. Core himself may prove a persuasive witness. There may be good corroboration for him, or other evidence of Nile's guilt. But for the moment, Hobie's done his job. Lovinia Campbell is gone from the state's case.

In the sheriff's office there are dressing rooms and showers. Basic fare. Rusted lockers, concrete floors, the reek of disinfectant. The judges, who have free access, refer to this area in irony as The Club. As a former cancer patient who has read all of the studies about the ancillary routes to health, I skip lunch at least twice a week and, in a raveled sweatshirt and leggings of Spandex – time-defying miracle fiber of the nineties – lumber off from the courthouse down Cushing Boulevard for forty minutes of intermittent power-walking and jogging. Rosario, the gatekeeper at the Judges' Entrance, a tiny fellow in the blue sheriff deputy's uniform, speeds me on my way, with his standard farewell. 'Go get em, Judge.' When I return, he will sweep the door aside and say, 'Welcome to Fen-tasy Island.' I have never been certain if he is mocking himself or the eerie atmosphere of the courthouse, where we are always rubbing shoulders with people whom, in other circumstances, you would cross the street to avoid – boys who shout too loud, who strut about with an abject, thuggish glower, surrounded by menace like a dark halo. The federal building was full of officious clerks and marshals, pumped up with the majesty of the United States. But in the Kindle County courthouse there is a humble geniality among the lawyers, the deputies, the clerks, a quiet need to reassure ourselves that we belong together to a community of decent folk.

I race along with Mahler on my headset, my heart kicking as I twist down the pavement to avoid the jurors, attorneys, and families on their way to lunch. A couple of the lawyers, whose names I don't recall or never knew, wave to me in an eager way as I shoot by. 'Hiya, Your Honor.' It's one of the last decent days of the year. The light is weakening and dismal winter clouds, heavy as quilting, move randomly from remote quarters of the sky to momentarily darken the day with the awesome suddenness of a primitive curse. But the sun returns periodically and the air is bearable, pushing 40. Soon Mother Nature will prove she is at heart an angry witch. Winter in the Middle West. You're never quite ready.

Not far from the exit, I hear my name, 'Sonny,' more or less yodeled, carried to me on the sharp wind. Pushing back the earphones, I expect to greet another judge, but it is, instead, Seth, trotting to catch up. 'Oh, for Chrissake,' I mutter beneath my breath. I'm the one who started this yesterday, who crossed the moat, but this is starting to feel like junior high school. In the same blue sport coat and scuffed shoes he's worn each day, Seth arrives with a self-aggrandizing smile. The fringe of hair above his ears, going colorless, is fluffed up by the wind.

‘I was afraid I missed you. Your secretary, Marian? She said you'd come out here.'

'Marietta?' Slow death, I think, Chinese tortures – I am truly going to kill her. I stand there, jogging in place, toe dancing in my Sauconys and sweatshirt, and give him my loftiest judicial manner, all walls. 'What can I do for you, Seth?' He draws back, with a wet-eyed, wounded look that seems somehow typical of him these days.

'I'm holding you up,' he says at last. 'Come on, I'll run with you.' He moves a few paces ahead and motions for me to join him. In his street shoes and blazer, he leads the way along the avenue with a practiced gait. 'I'm only going to bother you for a second. I just wanted you to know something. You asked me yesterday about Hobie and Dubinsky? And I thought about that all night. And I think I get it? I think I know why you asked?'

'Forget it, Seth.' I see what's coming. He had dinner with Hobie and they planned a response. Seth's here as a guided missile. This is just the reason I vowed to have nothing to do with him. 'We're not having this discussion.'

'No, I want you to understand. I don't know what Hobie's doing. I love him, but take it from me, Hobie T. Tuttle can be a treacherous fellow. So whatever he cooked up, it's with Stew, not me. I'm not part of it. Hobie and Nile, neither of them are even talking to me. Okay? That's all.'

'That's enough.' One more line, one more word, and I'll have to do something, stop and shout for the police. But he allows me to proceed in silence, galloping heavy-footed down the walk. We have reached Homer Park, which boasts a circular tarred walkway. In times past, the Park District was a notorious tub of grease, with patronage jobs and no-bid contracts, the haven for no-nose politicians like Toots Nuccio, who sometimes carried his tommy gun to city council meetings in his clarinet case. These days, as the city grows poorer, so do the parks. The programs that brightened my life as a child, the crafts classes and summer camps, are gone. Even routine maintenance has failed. In this park, for reasons I have never figured out, the trees have all been topped. They ring the tarmac path like amputees, barkless, knotted. The lawn, dying in the early winter, is bare in many patches, strewn with trash and leaves. It is a safe haven though in the daylight hours. Latino moms in their cloth coats wheel their bundled babies. Pedestrians bound for Center City cross the park to transfer bus lines. Like a river running through a canyon, U S 843, with its thrum and fumes, is a block away and 200 feet down.

As Seth remains beside me, easily keeping pace, I am engaged in reassessment. 'Hobie T. Tuttle can be treacherous.' 'He and Dubinsky cooked something up.' It's hard to imagine Seth as Hobie's emissary and bringing those messages. I'm even briefly tempted to ask what he thinks Hobie's up to, but better sense prevails. With Seth, I have to maintain a firm grip.

'Jesus, it's cold out here.' He's attempting to ease the silence with a joke and rubs the open expanse of his scalp. 'No natural protection,' he says.

'Seth, am I supposed to feel sorry for you because you're bald?'

'Going,' he says. 'Going bald. Forehead-challenged.'

'Let me tell you the truth, Seth. A woman after forty has to worry about everything. Top to bottom. Her chest sagging. The onset of menopause. Bones going soft. If she's had kids, her back end isn't likely to fit the jeans from twenty years ago, and maybe her bladder's weak, too. So it doesn't really break my heart that men go bald. In fact – and I'm not usually like this – I'm glad they have something to worry about. And to top it off, the truth is I don't think it looks all that bad. It makes a guy appear mature, which, frankly, is a rare quality in a lot of men. So I'm not sorry for you, Seth.'

'Holy smokes,' he says. 'What's got you so cranky?'

'Come on, Seth. You're following me down the street, on one of my two free hours in the week. And frankly, every time I talk to you, there's this lament. As if I'm supposed to pity you, when the fact is I've got a job to do. Which I've already explained.'

Oddly, he does not offer the defenses I would have expected. 'Right,' he says instead and his eyes fall to his shoes. I realize suddenly – guiltily – that I've been trying to drive him off by picking a fight. His face, in the interval, remains buffeted by strong feeling.

'My son died,' he says then. 'You asked what was dramatic for me. Yesterday? That was dramatic'

He has tried, it seems, to strike the tone of historical distance we maintained about our lives a day ago. But the edges of his voice do not hold up. I stop at once while he flies on another twenty paces, so completely unable to look at me that it's that long before he notices I'm not beside him. We've reached the tarred oval and he trudges back to me, against the backdrop of the tortured amputee elms, his posture withered by the questions he knows are coming next.

How long ago? I ask. Almost two years, he answers.

'My God. Was he sick? Was he chronic?'

'He was just a little boy. Seven years old. I mean, kind of a difficult little boy if I'm completely honest. He died in a traffic accident.' He waits a moment and searches the pewter sky for the sun, where the dark accumulation of clouds has temporarily milked the daylight of everything vital. ‘I was driving.' 'Oh God.'

'It wasn't my fault. That's what everybody says. This guy was drunk – just out of his mind, four times the legal limit, and he ran a light. He hit a curb and came careening right at us. I saw him, you know, maybe out of the corner of my eye, I was trying to move the car forward, it had started forward, but he had the angle on us. It like sheared the car in half. One second I'm sitting there telling Isaac to mind his fingers in his nose, and – Afterwards, the one thing I was grateful for was that I didn't have to hear him scream, and yet, Jesus, how can your child die without even making a sound?'

By now, my arms have closed around my sides to cope with the rampant pain. I try a few words of consolation, but his palm rises at once, and I realize this must be one of the worst parts, listening to people grope for words, in hopes of expressing an agony so much his, not theirs. Even then, I can't help saying the same thing again and again. I'm sorry. So sorry.

‘I had no idea, Seth. Your life seems so exposed in your column. There hasn't been a word, has there?'

‘I hate talking about it. I'm rotten with self-pity, as it is. You see it. Everybody sees it. I'm just a running sore.'

I find I have taken his hand. Sweat has trailed down beneath his watchband and the sleeve of his dress shirt. His other hand is against the bridge of his nose, in an effort at self-control.

'And the guy who hit you? Is he in prison?' Dumb question, I think at once, stupid, trying to press the whole thing within my own horizons, because the thought of what he's been through so frightens me.

'Oh, sure. He got fifteen years. He had a record, a big record. Some poor fucked-up black guy. Stolen car. The whole shot. He pled guilty. I never even had to look at him again. Lucy went to court for the sentencing. I guess she cried and carried on. I just -

I mean, what's the point? I never think about him, the guy. I think, you know, if I'd moved faster, if I'd pressed the accelerator harder. If, if, if.' He scans the park. A thirteen-year-old, hat on backwards and smoking a cigarette, whizzes by us on roller blades. 'We're going to freeze out here,' he says. He starts to jog then and I follow, walking fast. He slows to keep my pace.

'And Lucy? Is Lucy crazy with it? Is she -'

'She's crazy. Not that I'm in any position to talk. We're both out of our minds. But in different ways.' This is what's between Lucy and him, I realize. It must be. We travel half the oval without words, but he can tell what I've been thinking. 'It's not like she blames me,' he says. 'At least, not the way I blame myself. But like this? Running? Six months ago, we started jogging together before dinner. We'd take the dog. We bought these lights you wear on your elbows? We had matching suits. But how can you enjoy it? You can't. You think this is not how our life is supposed to be. We're supposed to be at home. We're supposed to be tied down. We're supposed to be yelling at Isaac to turn off the TV, to start on his homework. It's not bitter with us. We just can't find a way to move on.'

'I wouldn't imagine Lucy knows how to be bitter.'

'Not a clue.'

'Still incredibly good-natured?' 'Incredibly.'

'I assume she found a career beyond astrology?'

'Yeah. But she still believes in it. And reincarnation. And ethical shopping. And the music of the spheres. You'd call her New Age.' He marvels at her with a toss of his head. For the past year, he says, Lucy has been the director of a local soup kitchen in Seattle. He draws an ironic picture of her, on a first-name basis with all the losers, junkies, drunks, and nuts to whom she extends a helping hand. Lucy is a person of boundless generosity, a collector of strays, mother to anyone in need, whether it's a bird with a crippled wing, her beautician who needed English lessons, or their cleaning lady, for whose eldest daughter Lucy, by dint of an eight-month crusade, won admission to Bellingham Country Day, where Seth's own children were not accepted.

'Do I sound like I resent this?' Seth asks.

'Maybe,' I answer.

'Then I'm striking the wrong note. I'm amazed – that her heart goes out so fully to people she barely knows, while I'm always in this muddle, trying to find a way to feel enough for the people I'm supposed to care about.'

‘I hope it works out for you, Seth.'

‘I do, too. It's a mess now. You've been through it. The friends. The house. I mean, all of a sudden nothing belongs to you anymore. Stuff that was yours forever. People see you coming and they have this look on their face like you goosed them. I'm glad to be out of there for a while.'

Charlie's pals were at the U. Ray Napue was acerbic, terribly funny about everyone but himself. Carter Melk, another poet, was gentle but wordless. I miss both of them, but not the university, with its intense, secret rivalries, reminiscent of a medieval court.

'So what did your chump do?' he asks.

'Charlie? Why's he a "chump"?'

'He let you go, didn't he?'

'I left him. Finally. We took turns over the years. But I got the last curtain.'

Charlie! something within me shrieks. The thought of him remains impossible. It's like some trauma I can never fully recall – a bad fall, a beating. With Charlie, what I can't recollect is what I ever saw in him. I remember as a fact, like the capitals of the fifty states, that for many years I felt under his spell. But he was a cad. Autocratic. Self-absorbed. I reestablish that point a hundred times each day. This morning, waking up, I had a clear memory of how often I was scratched by his toenails in bed at night. No matter how reasoned my appeal, he refused to cut them.

'And what did he do?'

'You mean to irritate me?'

'No. That's a short list, right? Guys are so predictable: he didn't love you enough, he didn't pay enough attention, he got hung up on someone else.'

'Right, right, and right,' I say.

'No, how'd he make money? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?' 'A poet.' 'No way.'

'It's true. He didn't make much money. He's got a teaching appointment at a university near Cincinnati now. But there was a long period while we were together when he refused to teach. He had a feud at the English department. He was a mailman then.' We've made a full circuit of the walk. Three blocks from the courthouse and the depleted south rim of the Center City, the lower shapes of a struggling residential area rise up: mercados, taverns, shingle-sided frame houses, the wonderful gilded church spire of the Serbian church, notched like a key to the gates of heaven.

'So he hooked up with a rich lawyer, huh?'

I laugh at the idea. 'No, Charlie never approved of my legal career. Rules. Forms. Those are the kinds of particulars he always thought were trivial. "The detritus of living." That's from one of his poems. Even when I was a prosecutor, he didn't see the point of what I was doing.'

'He wanted the guilty to go free?'

‘I think he just would have preferred to banish them. Ship them all elsewhere. Make it go away. That was Charlie's usual approach to a problem.'

I had always thought I saw life more or less Charlie's way and was shocked to discover that the law was the sort of thing for which I had some gift. A few times in my last term of law school, I went to court. I was working with the State Defenders Office, allowed under local procedure to stand up in court on little misdemeanor cases. Once, afterwards, I went to the food store from the courthouse, and there as I was looking at the shining clustered heads of a pint of blackberries, I realized that what I had been doing a few minutes before, my ease in addressing a judge, begging mercy for the wretched and the weak, was quite beyond Charlie, who was anguished with words, not merely in his poems, but even in contemplating what might be spoken in his classroom to eighteen-year-olds who for the most part wanted no more wisdom from him than some surefire way to get through English I. Somehow this thought of our relative abilities had never come to me in precisely that fashion. I was accustomed, in fact, to thinking of Charlie as possessed of something empyrean and magical, the stuff, if not of genius, at least of art, but now, in the grocery, I suddenly took heart from my moment at the rostrum, from my exchange of sharp words with the grubby prosecutor and the dutiful wag of the judge's head, granting my forlorn client a generous sentence of ninety days' probation. And the thought had followed then, part of an inevitable sequence, that in a certain worldly way I was stronger than Charlie, I was hardier, the better survivor. And all that seemed remarkable was how unsurprising it was; I had known this always, and none of it, I recognized, had occurred unwillingly.

'Was your breakup bitter?' Seth asks.

I just make a sound at the recollection. Across the oval, I recognize another runner, Linda Larsen, Judge Bailey's clerk, and I wave.

'I'm bitter about Charlie. But not my marriage. I'm actually beginning to see it as a useful phase for both of us. It got Charlie away from Rebecca. His first wife. No one should be stuck with Rebecca. And it got me through my illness. He proposed to me when I had no hair from the radiation.'

'You had no hair and he had a wife?'

'Exactly.'

'Modern,' he says.

'Post-modern,' I answer. 'Sometimes, when I'm in the dumps about it, I wonder of course.' 'About what?'

'About whether I meant to leave Charlie all along. You know, did I always know my marriage was doomed?'

He appears confused.

'I mean my mother,' I say. 'Okay? I was raised by this woman alone. And here I am doing the same thing. And I wonder if I didn't feel a certain destiny there. The older I get, the more like her I'm afraid I am.'

'You're nothing like her, Sonny. Nothing.' Even as we continue moving, he reaches across and grips my wrist urgently, much as I gripped his. His green eyes are enlarged. 'She was cra-zy.'

As if pierced by an airborne spear, I am suddenly revisited by the pain of that – remembering how weird everybody thought Zora was. I could never stand to say it to myself, that Zora was not ordinary, not right. Tiny, walleyed from a childhood accident with firecrackers, she spoke with urgency and volume, always regaling me with memorized quotations from writers of leftist spirit, Walt Whitman through Maud Gonne, and free-association gossip about figures from the labor movement. She was on a thousand obscure quests. She prowled junk shops and used-book stores seeking treasures – apothecary bottles, button boxes, squared-off paperclips with little wire curlicues, writings that were lost: a rare translation of Ruben Dado's Songs of Life and Spirit; George Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical. She always addressed me in lavishly endearing terms – 'my precious darling,' 'my treasure' – and at the best moments – often! – it was true. To be the object of all of Zora's galvanic passion was to stand at the center of the world. But there were other times when she was, in the perfect phrase, carried away.

She once lost me in the maelstrom she provoked at a local P ‘I A meeting, where she had appeared to rail against the inclusion of the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance. In that era, when men didn't baby-sit and working women were not expected to spend their earnings on child care, I was often in tow, at organizing meetings, steering-committee debates. I played with dolls beneath the dining-room tables and was comforted with nickel Cokes, while my mother and the others furiously argued doctrine and smoked unfiltered cigarettes. But on this night Zora was not among friends. Instead, alone but for me, she confronted the neighborhood of lunch-pail tradesmen in which she'd been raised in Kewahnee. I was a thin, dark child in my cousin's cast-off cardigan and skirt, clutching a rag doll and some hem of my mother's apparel. Zora gestured wildly, her unraveled voice emerging with expectorant pops at ear-splitting volume as she screamed into a microphone. Ultimately, she was hated from the room: 'Get out, you little Polack nut. You godless Commie bitch. Go back to Moscow.' Amid the brandished fists, the agitated throng, I was suddenly alone, pushed along, but uncertain Zora had even noticed I was missing. The moment went on and on. I stood there shrieking, Mommy! Then I was retrieved, almost absentmindedly, snatched up by Zora as she turned heel to reply to someone with foul-mouthed invective.

That's what Seth and I saw in each other, though neither of us knew it then. We both had come of age with parents who weren't in the swing, exiles from the mainstream.

'Tell me about your daughter,' he says eventually. That is always pure pleasure. We talk at length. Her costumes. Her moods. The glories of kindergarten. Heading back, we cross the arc of the concrete overpass above the highway and jog through the little Italian neighborhood, where there are still bakeries with dark awnings and sub shops with a crucifix or Sacred Heart over the tables. At this hour, the row of restaurants – Jenna's, Mama Sesta's – are full of a bustling pack of lawyers and courthouse employees. A few tables will remain occupied by men and women who, by whatever whim of fortune, can drink the afternoon away. A grey-haired man, wearing a short-sleeve shirt despite the cold, stands on the walk before his tiny home, suspiciously eyeing everyone and enjoying a cigarette.

A few doors down, there is a wonderful greengrocery, Molin-ari's. In this season, Jocko has beautifully pyramided the citrus. Space heaters glow, running on extension cords right out here on the street. We each buy mountain water and a gorgeous Granny Smith apple.

'Jesus, look at me,' says Seth as we leave the store. His shirt is soaked through and even his sport coat is dampened in a semicircle beneath one arm. He'll have to return to the Hotel Gresham, he says, turn his jacket over to the concierge. We walk back toward the courthouse.

'You sound awfully heroic about everything,' he says. 'It's got to be tough. The divorce, the cancer. Single mom. You're pretty resolute.'

'The divorce,' I say, 'was a necessity. And Nikki is my joy. Being sick was terrible, but I think I've pretty much left it behind. Every six months or so, I have nightmares, and then there are a few hours when I'm back to scratch. But most days I'm – what did you say? Resolute? Resolved. Not heroic. What I'm gladdest of – proud of – is that I didn't become the disease. You know that starts in the hospital. They act as if you don't have a name. They identify you by the procedure. "You're a mastectomy." "You're a colostomy." It's so easy to think that this illness that's threatening your life is your life. And I got past that. I had my baby. I took this job. Eventually, you say it happened,' she says. 'Bad things happen. Cancer or divorce. They happen. You know?' I mean it, I believe it. And yet the stress of these cataclysms still rebounds. I must have learned more about myself later than most human beings. The last dozen years, the point when my friends from college seemed to have a collection of habits and chosen reflexes they called a life – for me the same period has been like a bombing run, one explosive surprise after another. Getting sick. Getting back together with Charlie. Finishing law school. A baby. Divorce. The bench. When? I wonder, considering it all, when, when will I come to rest, be in a place of comfort, or at least repose?

'Bad things happen,' Seth repeats, and I recognize only now what was contained in his observation about being resolute. I feel unconscionably dull, even though my aching for him continues to engird me, as if my rib cage had been irradiated.

'It takes a long time, Seth.'

'People say.' He catches my eye. He's heard it all. I begin to apologize, but he interrupts. 'I wasn't going to mention it,' he says. ‘I really hate -'

'Oh, Seth. I just -' It would break my heart to think that any old friend, any person who had so much of my life might isolate himself with something like this. And what is it that looms up so large? Life, I'd say. To my amazement, I find, although I'm not a teary person by nature, that I am suddenly crying. He briefly throws an arm around me and I dry my nose on the sweatshirt sleeve from which various threads are hanging. Blessedly for both of us, we are behind the courthouse again, where we started.

'So you got your exercise,' he says for lack of anything else. I can only smile. 'Do you ever bring Nikki down here? I'd love to see her.'

It's an innocent request, but like all else at the moment, it knocks my heart around, thinking about what the sight of friends' kids must be to him, both the torment and the reassurance.

'Come by sometime. When you visit your father. It's 338 Grove.'

'It would make the trip worthwhile. Almost,' he says. He looks at me. 'You better think about it.'

'It'll be okay. You're on good behavior and so am I.' 'Maybe this weekend?' 'We're in and out both days.' 'Whenever.'

I hug him quickly. Half a foot shorter than he is, I face him. I know now I was right when he initially stood up in the courtroom and I thought I detected depletion of some kind. Wreckage. Pain. At the Judge's Entrance, I leave him with a slogan of our foregone times.

'You're a good man, Charlie Brown.'