The Other Shoe (31 page)

“Yes.”

New mom's smile had a fixed quality; her eyes swung between the judge and her incompetent lawyer.

“You consulted the statutory requirements for such a petition, counselor?”

“I did, Your Honor.” The judge would mince and preen. Giselle would, needs be, genuflect.

“What about the child's assets, then? The child's assets are supposed to be set forth.”

“It's this child, Your Honor.”

“Yes, I'd taken judicial notice, believe it or not.”

“She's a week old. She has no property.”

“Then that is what the petition should say. Leaving that item blank in the petition is not the same as specifying that the child is without assets. Is it?”

“No, Your Honor. May I simply aver for the record that the child is without assets?”

“Do you think that's good enough?”

“Your Honor, these folks have traveled from the other end of the county with this . . . ”

“Oh, I'll sign your order, Giselle, but you'd better have an amended petition to me by Friday. And I mean
to
me, not in the mail.”

The judge, as if he'd originated the whole idea, signed the baby into the Olds' legal custody, and there was more shaking of hands, and Mr. Olds said thanks so much, and Mrs. Olds blew kisses around the judge's chambers, and as the small party trailed back out into the hall Mrs. Olds gushed, “Oh, Daddy,” and she rose up on her toes to press her miraculous bundle an inch nearer heaven. Giselle Meany, who had served pro bono just to reach this nice moment, found that she was a little stony within the celebration, and she thought, too late, that maybe mom would be too much mother for this poor unsuspecting little spawn of unprotected love.

All that morning, until just moments before she was to appear in the adoption, Giselle had been trying to get in to see Henry Brusett; she'd been three times to the jail, and each time balked by a wheezing
old jailer who'd been too overwhelmed by breakfast and other matters to ever bring the meeting about, and now, at a quarter to ten, she was minutes away from arraignment, still without knowing her client's mind. She excused herself from the Olds family to wait at the top of the staircase where they'd be bringing Henry up from the jail, but the court reporter tracked her down again and shyly led her back to the judge's chambers where Judge Samara and Meyers were talking boy talk, property law, and something about natural gas.

“Giselle,” said the judge, collegial now, “you've got to get these pleadings right, and I've got to call you on it when you don't.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“It happens that there are wealthy babies. It is not unknown. Some of them probably far wealthier than we could ever dream of being. I'm sure you can appreciate that.”

“The judge,” said Meyers, “has called us in to talk about the arraignment.”

“Not
about
it,” the judge corrected. “I don't want to hear much of anything from either counsel without Giselle's client present. But there are a couple of pieces of information, just procedural things, that I think you should know. The bail is going to remain as is, Giselle; go ahead and make your motion for the record, if you feel you need to, but the bond is already pretty liberal, I think—
very
liberal—considering the charge.”

“You may change your mind, Your Honor, when you've seen him.”

“No,” said Carbon Samara, “I won't. Now, if you two can find any way to untangle this, then God speed, and I can tell you that the court would favor some creativity and cooperation, if that's what it takes. But right now the man is charged with murder, and that comes with a stiff bail. Usually a lot stiffer than this. So, that brings us to point two: I haven't got an opening in my trial docket for five months,
not even for a man in custody. If you plan to do any jockeying at all, any motion practice, you could be a long, long way from trial. I'm very busy these days over on the other side, so, Giselle, your guy could sit a long while, assuming he doesn't make bond. Or if you don't come to terms with Hoot.”

“I'm just waiting,” she said, “for the state to make us an offer.”

“I offered her the sun and the moon,” Meyers protested. “Offered her deals too good to reduce to writing. They're still on the table.”

The judge leveled a look at them. “This case appears like it has a lot of potential for turning ridiculous. I'll remind you both that no one ever benefits when that happens. Let's see about a simple solution, shall we?”

While Giselle Meany and Hoot Meyers were with the judge in his musky chambers—a very long and hollow period it seemed to them—the old jailer led Henry Brusett into the courtroom and had him sit in its foremost bench, and he planted himself at parade rest nearby; Karen Brusett came in at another door to sit near the aisle on the very back bench and finger her seamless pearls like prayer beads. Timidly and unsuccessfully, she tried to get her husband's attention; Henry was careful never to look her way. A farmer and his lawyer, both in antique leisure suits, were there to quiet title to a piece of the farmer's pasture; a girl awaited her first divorce, two toddlers on her knees requiring constant jollying; Valley Bank's attorney had come to seek a small herd of llamas in satisfaction of a loan. Meanwhile in chambers, the judge carried on with another highly detailed story from his hallowed tour of duty with the judge advocate general's office in Turkey. The judge talked, and as he talked, the court reporter and the clerk of court stationed themselves in the courtroom, beside and below the bench; the reporter from the
River Register
wrote impressions of Henry Brusett into a notepad: lopsided, subdued, haggard. Kook?

At last Judge Samara said, “So east is east, and west is west, and, as we used to say in Ankara, the Middle East is neither here nor there.”

They got free of him just four minutes before Judge Samara would take the bench. Giselle Meany, who had a cold, made a pass through the women's room to blow her nose and pee, and as she was washing her hands, her briefcase, which had cost little more than a cheeseburger and was of Chinese origin, tumbled from the edge of the sink and burst on the floor, and files slithered onto the sticky tile. She reassembled it all, but the latch was ruined, and so she held it as a schoolgirl holds her books, pressed to her chest, and she strode out into the hall, and down it, and came to the front stairwell of the courthouse and encountered there one of her clients, Sean Mobius, who happened to be groping the supple flank of Cindy Holter as he sought her minty gum with his tongue. This was the very girl, the very violation, who kept sending him to jail.

“Sean, get a move on. You're late for court. She should stay outside. In fact you should go. Fast as possible. Go. Please.” Giselle Meany, hoping to instill some different and more appropriate urgency in her client, stamped up the final few stairs, and as she gained the landing outside the courtroom, her modest heel collapsed under her right shoe, and she twisted her ankle. She dropped the briefcase, which exploded again. She sat on the horrible carpet and determined for certain that she could not restore the heel to her shoe, and that, if she were to shed a single tear just now, her life, her professional life at least, would not be worth living. The lovers looked upon her plight but never released each other. She collected herself again, heel in the pocket of her blazer, files scraped up and back into the sprung case, and very emphatically she stood. “Sean. Come
on
now.” He was like the pet one wishes to return to the Humane Society, even if it is to be euthanized there.

She pushed through tall, heavy doors and into the courtroom, and she banished the rebuke then forming in Judge Samara's mouth by
manfully limping down the aisle. The first case was called, and she was late for it; Henry Brusett and the jailer were already standing at counsel table awaiting her. Karen Brusett rose up as she flew by, seeming to want a moment, just a moment, just a word. But Giselle flew by.

“Giselle Meany, Your Honor, for the defendant.”

“Catch your breath, counselor. Do you need a moment?”

“If I might just . . . I'm having a little trouble finding the correct, uhm, file. Oh, okay. Here it is. It's more or less. Yes, here it is. No, Your Honor, I'm fine.”

“You've seen a copy of the information, Mr. Brusett?” asked the judge. “They spelled your name right?”

“Yes.”

Giselle Meany sensed that her client intended to face someone's music today, and she didn't think he could afford such a disaster. Seamed and beaten, he sat beside her, the good boy resigned to his medicine.

“I have before me an advice-of-rights form with what appears to be your signature at the bottom. Is that signature yours, Mr. Brusett?”

“Yes.”

“You understand that you're charged with deliberate homicide?”

“Yes.”

“You know the maximum and minimum penalties for that crime?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Meany has entered an appearance, so you are represented by counsel.”

“Yes,” said Henry.

He seemed to like this easy answer. Eventually, though, if he kept giving it, he might corner himself with it.

“Then you know what you can do about it? You've talked about that?”

“Your Honor,” Giselle interceded at last, “I'm afraid that—could the court please rephrase the question?”

“You've got three options now, Mr. Brusett. You can plead guilty, or not guilty, or, if I consent to it, nolo contendere, or no contest. You've talked about all this with your attorney, Mr. Brusett? She's advised you of this?”

“Yes.”

“She's explained all the terminology?”

“She did.”

“Possible consequences?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should also know that you can defer entering your plea if necessary.”

“No,” said Henry. “Now is fine.”

Giselle Meany's stomach soured and dropped. She found Mr. Brusett's ankle with her toe. She had failed him. “May I have a moment to confer with my client, Your Honor?”

“You're supposed to do that on your own time, counsel, not on the court's.”

“The unexpected comes up, Your Honor.”

“Not for the well prepared. Confer. Briefly.”

She made a small megaphone of her hands and pressed the belled end to Henry Brusett's ear, and hissed into it, “Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. Please. You can always change it later.” She pulled away to see Henry's answer, as he would not speak it. His face was full of apology. For what?

“Ms. Meany, may we please get on with it now?”

“Not . . . ” she said. “Your Honor, my client will be entering a plea of . . . ” She glanced at Henry for any encouragement, and Henry was having none of it. “Not guilty,” she said.

“Is that your plea, Mr. Brusett?”

Giselle pressed steadily down on the arch of his foot, and under a pretended attack of sniffles breathed, “Nooh . . . no.”

“Oh, I . . . no,” said Henry.

“This is not going well. What
is
your plea, Mr. Brusett?”

“I'd have to say I'm . . . ”

“Judge,” said Hoot Meyers, rising to it, “the defendant appears to be very heavily medicated this morning. The state wonders at the enduring validity of any plea he might make in this condition.”

“If he's too goofed up, Mr. County Attorney, to even enter a plea, how do you propose to prosecute him? Mr. Brusett, do you understand me? We got a little sidetracked, but in the course of these things, I usually ask the defendant if he's taking any medications. Are you taking medications, Mr. Brusett?”

“Yes.”

“Do they affect your ability to know what's going on? Do you know what's going on here?”

“I've got an idea.”

“Do you know why you're here today?”

“Here to say I'm guilty?”

Giselle Meany felt her legs inflate, her bowels melt entirely. She was letting him dig himself a hole in the record. “Just because he says . . . someone who's impaired is, by definition, not the best judge of their impairment, or of . . . ”

“If you had concerns like that, counsel, you should have made a motion to that effect—that you wanted him assessed. Is that your motion, Ms. Meany?”

“Yes,” she grasped at it. “Defense moves for an order for the defendant to be evaluated for fitness to proceed and suspending all other matters pending that determination.”

“Prepare the order for my signature.”

Having survived the bad detour, Giselle Meany pressed her luck. “In the meantime, Your Honor, about the bail . . . The state is not opposed, and now that the court has actually seen Mr. Brusett's, uhm, situation, Your Honor . . . ”

“Counselor, if your client is found unfit to proceed, then I'm probably required to have him locked up somewhere until he regains fitness. So, with that in mind, you're asking in practically the same breath for a mental evaluation and a reduction in bail? Is that what you're leading up to?”