Let the Great World Spin (41 page)

All morning long he wheeled and bartered and crimped and cringed.

—Is there an outstanding warrant or not?

—Tell me, are you moving to dismiss or not?

—The request to withdraw is granted. Be nice to each other from here on in.

—Time served!

—Where’s the motion, for crying out loud?

—Officer, would you please tell me what happened here? He was what? Cooking a chicken on the sidewalk?! Are you kidding me?

—Bail set at two thousand dollars’ bond. Cash one thousand two hundred fifty.

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—Not you again, Mr. Ferrario! Whose pocket was picked this time?

—This is an arraignment court, counselor, not Shangri- La.

—Release her on her own recognizance.

—This complaint does not state a crime. Dismissed!

—Has anybody here ever heard of privilege?

—I’ve no objection to a nonjail disposition.

—In exchange for his plea, we’ll reduce the felony to a misdemeanor.

—Time served!

—I think your client was overserved in the narcissism department this morning, counselor.

—Give me something more than elevator music, please!

—Will you be finished by Friday?

—Time served!

—Time served!

—Time served!

There were so many special tricks to learn. Seldom look the defendant in the eye. Seldom smile. Try to appear as if you have a mild case of hem-orrhoids: it will give you a concerned, inviolable expression. Sit at a slightly uncomfortable bend, or at least one that appears uncomfortable.

Always be scribbling. Appear like a rabbi, bent over your writing pad.

Stroke the silver at the side of your hair. Rub the pate when things get out of hand. Use the rap sheet as a guide to character. Make sure there are no reporters in the room. If there are, all rules are underlined twice. Listen carefully. The guilt or the innocence is all in the voice. Don’t play favorites with the lawyers. Don’t let them play the Jew card. Never respond to Yiddish. Dismiss flattery out of hand. Be careful with your hand exerciser. Watch out for masturbation jokes. Never stare at the stenographer’s rear end. Be careful what you have for lunch. Have a roll of mints with you. Always think of your doodles as masterpieces. Make sure the carafe water has been changed. Be outraged at water spots on the glass. Buy shirts at least one size too big in the neck so you can breathe.

The cases came and went.

Late in the morning he had already called twenty- nine cases and he asked the bridge—his court officer, in her crisp white shirt—if there was any news on the case of the tightrope walker. The bridge told him that it was all the buzz, that the walker was in the system, it seemed, and he McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 261

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would likely come up in the late afternoon. She wasn’t sure what the charges were, possibly criminal trespass and reckless endangerment.

The D.A. was already deep in discussion with the tightrope walker, she said. It was likely that the walker would plead to everything if given a good enough deal. The D.A. was keen on some good publicity, it seemed.

He wanted this one to go smoothly. The only hitch might be if the walker was held over until night court.

—So we have a chance?

—Pretty good, I’d say. If they push him through quick enough.

—Excellent. Lunch, then?

—Yes, Your Honor.

—We’ll reconvene at two- fifteen.

—

t h er e wa s a l way s Forlini’s, or Sal’s, or Carmine’s, or Sweet’s, or Sloppy Louie’s, or Oscar’s Delmonico, but he had always liked Harry’s. It was the farthest away from Centre Street, but it didn’t matter—the quick cab ride relaxed him. He got out on Water Street and walked to Hanover Square, stood outside and thought, This is my place. It wasn’t because of the brokers. Or the bankers. Or the traders. It was Harry himself, all Greek, good manners, arms stretched wide. Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that it was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar. But Harry could also make a steak sing, pull a trumpet line out of a string of spaghetti. He was often down in the kitchen, slinging fire. Then he would step out of his apron, put on his suit jacket, slick back his hair, and walk up into the restaurant with composure and style. He had a special inclination toward Soderberg, though neither man knew why. Harry would linger a moment longer with him at the bar, or slide up a great bottle and they’d sit underneath the monk murals, passing the time together. Perhaps because they were the only two in the place who weren’t deep in the stock business.

Outsiders to the clanging bells of finance. They could tell how the day was going in the markets by the decibel level around them.

On the wall of Harry’s, the brokerage houses had private lines connected to a battery of telephones on the wall. Guys from Kidder, Peabody over there, Dillon, Read there, First Boston over there, Bear Stearns at the McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 262

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end of the bar, L. F. Rothschild by the murals. It was big money, all the time. It was elegant too. And well mannered. A club of privilege. Yet it didn’t cost a fortune. A man could escape with his soul intact.

He sidled up to the bar and called Harry across, told him about the walker, how he’d just missed him early in the morning, how the kid had been arrested and was coming through the system soon.

—He broke into the towers, Har.

—So . . . he’s ingenious.

—But what if he had fallen?

—The ground’d hardly cushion the fall, Sol.

Soderberg sipped his wine: the deep red heft of it rose to his nose.

—My point is, Har, he could’ve killed someone. Not just himself.

Could’ve made hamburger of someone . . .

—Hey, I need a good line man. Maybe he could work for me.

—There’s probably twelve, thirteen counts against him.

—All the more reason. He could be my sous chef. He could prepare the steamers. Strip the lentils. Dive into the soup from high above.

Harry pulled deeply on a cigar and blew the smoke to the ceiling.

—I don’t even know if I’m going to get him, said Soderberg. He may be held over until night court.

—Well, if you do get him, give him my business card. Tell him there’s a steak on the house. And a bottle of Château Clos de Sarpe. Grand Cru, 1964.

—He’ll hardly tightrope after that.

Harry’s face creased into a suggested map of what it would become years later: full, sprightly, generous.

—What is it about wine, Harry?

—What d’ya mean?

—What is it that cures us?

—Made to glorify the gods. And dull the idiots. Here, have a little more.

They clinked glasses in the slant of light that came through the upper windows. It was as if, looking out, they might’ve seen the walk re- enacted up there, on high. It was America, after all. The sort of place where you should be allowed to walk as high as you wanted. But what if you were the one walking underneath? What if the tightrope walker really had fallen?

It was quite possible that he could have killed not just himself, but a McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 263

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dozen people below. Recklessness and freedom—how did they become a cocktail? It was always his dilemma. The law was a place to protect the powerless, and also to circumscribe the most powerful. But what if the powerless didn’t deserve to be walking underneath? It sometimes put him in mind of Joshua. Not something he liked thinking about, not the loss at least, the terrible loss. It brought too much heartache. Pierced him. He had to learn that his son was gone. That was the extent of it. In the end Joshua had been a steward, a custodian of the truth. He had joined up to represent his country and came home to lay Claire flat with grief. And to lay him flat also. But he didn’t show it. He never could. He would weep in the bath of all places, but only when the water was running. Solomon, wise Solomon, man of silence. There were some nights he kept the drain open and just let the water run.

He was the son of his son—he was here, he was left behind.

Little things got to him. The mitzvah of
maakeh.
Build a fence around your roof lest someone should fall from it. He questioned why he had bought the toy soldiers all those years ago. He fretted over the fact that he’d made Joshua learn “The Star- Spangled Banner” on the piano. He wondered if, when he taught the boy to play chess, he had somehow in-stilled a battle mentality? Attack along the diagonals, son. Never allow a back- rank mate. There must have been somewhere that he’d hard- wired the boy. Still, the war had been just, proper, right. Solomon understood it in all its utility. It protected the very cornerstones of freedom. It was fought for the very ideals that were under assault in his court every day. It was quite simply the way in which America protected itself. A time to kill and a time to heal. And yet sometimes he wanted to agree with Claire that war was just an endless factory of death; it made other men rich, and their son had been dispatched to open the gates, a rich boy himself. Still, it was not something he could afford to think of. He had to be solid, firm, a pillar. He seldom talked about Joshua, even to Claire. If there was anyone to talk to, it would be Harry, who knew a thing or two about longing and belonging, but it wasn’t something to talk about right now. He was careful, Soderberg, always careful. Maybe too careful, he thought. He sometimes wished he could let it all out:
I’m the son of my son, Harry, and
my son’s dead.

He lifted the glass to his face, sniffed the wine, the deep, earthy aroma.

A moment of levity—that’s what he wanted. A good, quiet moment. Some-McCa_9781400063734_4p_04_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:39 PM Page 264

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thing gentle and without noise. While away a few hours with his good pal.

Or perhaps even call in sick for the rest of the day, go home, spend an afternoon with Claire, one of those afternoons when they could just sit together and read, one of those pure moments he and his wife shared increasingly as their marriage went along. He was happy, give or take. He was lucky, give or take. He didn’t have everything he wanted, but he had enough. Yes, that’s what he wanted: just a quiet afternoon of nothingness.

Thirty- odd years of marriage hadn’t made a stone out of him, no.

A little bit of silence. A gesture toward home. A hand on Harry’s wrist and a word or two in his ear:
My son.
It was all he needed to say, but why complicate it now?

He lifted the glass and clinked with Harry.

—Cheers.

—To not falling, said Harry.

—To being able to get back up.

Soderberg was beginning to swing away from wanting the tightrope walker in his courtroom now: it would be too much of a headache, surely.

He would have preferred to just fritter the day away at the long bar, with his dear friend, toasting the gods and letting the light fall.

—

— c r imina l c our t a r r ai g n m e n t Part One- A, now in session. All

rise.

The court officer had a voice that reminded him of seagulls. A peculiar caw to her, the tail end of her words swerving away. But the words demanded an immediate silence and the buzz in the rear of the court died.

—Quiet, please. The Honorable Judge Soderberg presiding.

He knew immediately he had the case. He could see the reporters in the pews of the spectator section. They had that jowly, destroyed look to them. They wore

open-

neck shirts and oversize slacks. Unshaven, whiskied. The more obvious giveaways were the notebooks with yellow covers jutting out of their jacket pockets. They were craning their necks to see who might emerge from the door behind him. A few extra detectives sat on the front bench for the show. Some off- duty clerks. Some businessmen, possibly even Port Authority honchos. A few others, maybe a security man or two. He could even see a tall, red- headed sketch artist. And that meant only one thing: the television cameras would be outside.

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He could feel the wine at his toes. He wasn’t drunk—nowhere near it—but he could still feel it swishing at the edges of his body.

—Order in the court. Silence. The court is now in session.

The doors creaked open behind him and in slouched a line of nine defendants toward the benches along the side wall. The usual riffraff, a couple of con men, a man with his eyebrow sliced open, two clapped- out hookers, and, walking at the rear of them all, a grin stretched from ear to ear, a slight bounce in his step, was a young white man, strangely clad: it could only be the tightrope walker.

In the gallery there was a stir. The reporters reached for their pencils.

A slap of noise, as if a liquid had suddenly splashed through them.

The funambulist was even smaller than Soderberg had imagined.

Impish. Dark shirt and tights. Strange, thin ballet slippers on his feet.

There was something even washed- out about him. He was blond, in his mid- twenties, the sort of man you might see as a waiter in the theater district. And yet there was a confidence that rolled off him, a swagger that Soderberg liked. He looked like a small,

squashed-

down version of

Joshua, as if some brilliance had been deposited in his body, programmed in like one of Joshua’s hacks, and the only way out for him was through performance.

It was obvious that the tightrope walker had never been arraigned before. The

first-

timers were always dazed. They came in,

huge-

eyed,

stunned by it all.

The walker stopped and looked from one side of the courtroom to the other. Momentarily frightened and bemused. As if there was way too much language in this place. He was thin, lithe, a quality of the leonine to him. He had quick eyes: the glance ended up on the bench.