What We Are (33 page)

“Pretty impressive,” I say.

“We'll see.”

“I'm used to standing.”

“I'm used to DAs. Can't have it your own way all the time.”

“I feel you.”

“Stop stalling.”

I smile, say, “Been some time, man.”

“You'll be okay,” he says, and raps on the tabletop for me.

“Well, here goes,” I say. “In the mid-nineties, we purchased a good sold by the Wilson administration. They told us it would apply to the irredeemable worst: repeat murderers, rapists, et cetera. We good sheep of California, given to the romantic notion that the law, once erected, is unshakable, did not appreciate that the law, like a reef, is a living organism in a constant state of flux. It moves by case precedence, which is to say it moves by stories, officialized into existence by the cracking echo of the gavel. The three-strikes law, with thirteen years of momentum, has now grown to include that most heinous of felon, the petty thief, the most demonic of maniacs, the piss-test flunker, the parole violator, the reefer addict, the domestic disputer, perhaps one night it'll even snag a wicked jaywalker. By now, fewer than half of “violent” third-strike lifers are even violent the last time round. Shear not this sheep, ‘cause I smell a sham. I hear, Madam Justice,
a tedious argument of insidious intent
. Your floor.”

He knocks fast, too fast. I'm a little worried, already thinking ahead to my next platform. “Make no mistake about it. The law has been successful. Overwhelmingly. Crime rates have dropped since inception, this despite a tremendous population boom occurring over that same period. That is against the law of averages. Virtually ahistorical. If people out there are afraid of the three-strikes law, it's the right people who are afraid. Your floor.”

The Samoan lady is now turned in her seat, watching us.

I tap on the tabletop with one finger, looking her in the eye until she looks down, and then proceed. “We've made American history, all right: we incarcerate the most people in the world. Now that's a statistic to be proud about. Of course, this is done by economic design. AT&T has a multimillion-dollar contract with the California Department of Corrections. The correctional officers' union is the strongest in the state; the Austrian bodybuilder in Sacrameento bows in deference to their will. Their salaries rival or eclipse street cops, firemen, and of course lowly teachers. Our new saviors of society are now legally state police. Can carry guns on the street. I am afraid. We all should be. Of them. Your floor.”

He spins in the seat. The Samoan lady is nodding her head, chewing her sandwich, like,
Wow. He's a good talker. What kind of criminal is this?

My attorney says as much without turning to her. “Aces, isn't he?”

“Stop stalling,” I say.

Then he inhales, nods, says, “The common complaint against the current state of the penal system is that our recent prison growth speaks to a nefarious campaign of revitalizing a stagnant economy. Crossing into the golden state, a visitor might wonder why the greater majority of these facilities congregate in the central valley. I'll answer a question with a question: What, precisely, is nefarious about employing over forty thousand people, the greater majority of whom have families, in a region that was otherwise unilaterally agrarian and thus seasonally infertile? You turn the badness of criminality into the goodness of jobs. Sounds like socially responsible capitalism to me. A true rarity, we all realize, which makes my case all the stronger. Your floor.”

The Samoan lady's clicking with her tongue, squinting approval at the way we're throwing around ideas. Suddenly I come from a good family.

She's on the second sandwich, awaiting my response.

I knock three times, close my eyes, say, “The question for the three of us to consider is rather one of comparative absurdity.” I open my eyes. “In punitive terms. Any American of any political persuasion would denounce the Indonesian practice of chopping off the fingers of thieves, agreed?” Here I pause. The Samoan lady thinks about it, shivers, nods. My opponent doesn't, but I didn't expect him to. “In fact, in this modern world it is considered nothing short of absurd. Why is it, then, that a thief we incarcerate for life would offer up not only a finger but an entire arm as a bonus limb in exchange for a removal, or even a reduction, of his sentence? Wouldn't he, by the law of what is civilized, prefer the punishment that we, the civilized, render? The answer, of course, is of course not. And the reason for this is that it's more absurd—more draconian, I should say—to strike someone out for petty theft than to chop off that person's finger. What more need be said? When limbs are offered as punitive recompense, you've reached immoral critical mass. Your floor.”

He looks at me, smiling. Nods, says, “Not bad, Mr. Lincoln.”

I smile back, nod back.

“Let's go,” he says, smiling at the Samoan lady. She now likes me, will maybe even throw up a not guilty vote. “I'm gonna get Nguyen in chambers before we start up again. Bet I can get him to make it a half day.”

“And the case?”

“Jesus. Faithless. I told you:
Don't worry
”

We get back to the courtroom, take our seats beneath the looming eyes of the jurors, and rise at the order, “All rise!” when Judge Nguyen reemerges from his courtroom office. As he's regally adjusting into his seat, my attorney says, “Would it trouble the court for a sidebar, Your Honor?”

The judge looks over at Mr. Weil, who's fumbling with his electrical equipment, and says, “Is this necessary, Mr. Choi?”

“I'd say so. Could save us a lot of time, Judge.”

Still looking at the pyrotechnics of the prosecutor, Judge Nguyen says, “Any objections, Mr. Weil?”

“No,” says Mr. Weil, his glasses falling to the tip of his nose. His sound system lets out a screeching whine. Everyone in the courtroom, including the judge, winces. I smile, squinting. The bailiff walks over, his keys rattling, and yanks at something under the table. The speakers pop and we have silence. The bailiff comes up with a plug which he stuffs into Mr. Weil's hand.

The DA mumbles, “Sorry, Your Honor.”

“All right, all right,” says the judge. “Is it off now?” I think I hear a “dammit” under the judge's breath.

“Yes, Your Honor,” says the bailiff, shaking his head.

Visibly concentrating, Mr. Weil says with as much bass as he can summon, “I'm sorry, Your Honor.”

The judge looks down at his watch and says, “Okay. Is it off, counselor?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Mr. Weil whispers.

“What we are going to do is end the day right here. We'll have everything in order by tomorrow. Each of us, myself included, is expected back here promptly at nine in the morning. You may check in at the office of the clerk where you will receive your instructions for the day.”

“All stand!”

Again we stand accordingly and watch Judge Barret Nguyen slip slowly off his seat into a standing position. He pays no attention to anyone or anything in his courtroom, and as I wonder if he's ever tripped on his gargantuan robe, I think,
A graceful exit gives the final stamp of authority to the story
.

When His Honor is through the door and back in chambers, the multinational jury disperses. Mr. Weil passes me head down and farthest from the table as if I—or, rather, we—were toxic. My attorney
says, “Here's where the game ends for you, John, twenty thousand dollars of a turntable to boot.”

Mr. Weil doesn't respond, and I say, “I actually feel sorry for that guy.”

“I don't,” says my attorney.

“So what's up now, man?”

“Now it's over. You may as well leave. And don't come back.”

“How?”

“He's got no victim, no witnesses. Unless the case is moved down to Chiapas.”

“They got deported?”

“Deported. Arrested. Hiding. Benefit of a brouhaha with illegals.”

“And what about the girl?”

“Athena Taj McMenamin of Monte Sereno, California?”

I nod. “That would be her.”

“You sure?”

“Who could forget Athena?”

“I thought she was Catwoman from the Blue Noodle Cabaret Club.”

“Nah,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. May not have been of age either. Turn of the century. Will be happy to look into it. Athena's at Mardi Gras in New Orleans right now. Probably see her on a
Girls Gone Wild
video by the end of the month. I'm sure her big cause isn't bigger than her reputation, to which I wouldn't mind putting a question or two.”

“You don't fuck around, do you?”

“If Weil wants to go to bat against me, I'm gonna k him in three pitches. Then I'm gonna beam him on the way back to the dugout. He isn't one tenth the attorney I am. I've got so many ears in his outfit I can't keep track. That's why you could've never been a lawyer, my friend. You'd try to be the next Atticus Finch: the loner, free of the filthy sleuth of his peers. That's only in made-up books, Paul. You'd quit before your first case.”

“Probably.”

“Definitely. This is a chess game where swindling is necessary.”

“That's what I was saying earlier.”

“I know you were.”

“Well,” I say, “we made a nice team for a minute, anyway.”

He nods, zips up his bag, says, “I'm off to meet my maker. Debate you later.”

I suddenly feel warmth toward the cat. As if he's a little brother on my heel. Trying for something, anything, I say, “I guess I'll stick around till you get out, Dong-hoo.”

“Suit yourself.”

The courtroom's now cleared out and it's just the bailiff and me for half a minute and then, with a nod that says,
Don't fuck around in my absence, lowlife
, the bailiff bounces too, grumbling something into the radio pressed to his ear. It's my trial, it's my ass, but I'm not privy to the hand jive that's going on right now “behind chambers,” so I put my face into my elbow instead and slobber into a dream about the proverbial ideal woman who has never existed, and never will exist, but who is eternal and worth dying for nonetheless, and before anything gets steamy between us, I hear the harsh words of coitus interruptus: “You're dismissed, Mr. Tusifale!”

I rub one eye open, then the other, and wipe at the spit dribbling down my chin. “Huh? Where's my friend?”

“There is no one remaining in my courtroom, Mr. Tusifale, except you and me.”

I slide up my seat, yet again recovering from an unfulfilled dream, and find a slip of paper tucked under my elbow. It's the official letterhead of the county of Santa Clara, office of Judge Barrett Nguyen, chief stenographer Ms. Dendela Dido, with the message,
Call me, Sexy, and let's make a leather sandwich
. Scribbled beneath that the digits: 393-0967. I ponder the possibilities and pass the prize to the judge, “Are you sure I have no friends, Your Honor?”

“Mr. Tusifale,” the judge says, finalizing his squarehood by depositing the hookup late-night bootie call in the nearest wastebasket, “I am hardly interested in joining the word game you and your attorney were playing during proceedings.”

“But you preside over the ultimate word game, Your Honor.”

“You were very lucky this time around, Mr. Tusifale. You are coy, yes, but unfortunately that is not enough in this life.”

“I know it.”

“Not everyone in your position would be able to walk away from this scot-free. I suggest you count your blessings.”

I've never had a talent for that. “I suggest you get the facts right next time.”

“Get out of my courtroom.”

“Gladly, Your Honor,” I say, nodding, standing to his eye level, then rising higher to full height. “Not another minute in your judgment.”

A
LL THE TALK
about incarceration yesterday has got me biking over to the handball courts at the Campbell Community Center. Tali left a message on my recorder about her man and me bonding. Somehow she manages to call when I'm not at the guesthouse. I understand. Why talk to someone who can aptly correct your facts and the false conclusions you draw from them? She wants to speak in that presumptuous older-sister tone where her advice is dressed up nicely without my interruptions: “I want you to be friends with McLaughlin. You need someone like him to show you other ways of dealing with things. He's got a good head on his shoulders, little brother.”

If only my sister knew the true setup between us. That McLaughlin—the follower—is all mine. A kind friend to many, yes, the subject of sympathy, but alas a liability. She couldn't handle the irony. McLaughlin actually believes that being around me—childless by choice—will make him a better father on two fronts: culture, manliness. He thinks that the blood of his son, which he himself lacks, might figuratively be borrowed from me; the same goes for what he calls “an abnormally high testosterone level,” which he
also lacks and wants from me. Well, anyway, this is what he thinks. What he doesn't know is that if I, as a half-breed, feel a genuine sense of cultural unbelonging, what will his son, a generation farther along in the dilution process, eventually feel, if he feels anything at all? He'll be lucky if the kid can pronounce his mother's maiden name. And what McLaughlin has conveniently overlooked about my “manliness” is that the testosterone has caused more than a good amount of strife. There have been hours, days, maybe weeks where I've been seized by the boot-stomping destructive vices of Genghis Khan. I'm always amazed at the number of lives I've left uncrushed over the years.

I pass the ladies speed walking on the track in their loose powder-blue cotton sweats and then the waist-high kids counting out jumping jacks in their huge helmets and way-too-wide shoulder pads. The former junior high school is divided equally to interested parties: Campbell Parks and Rec, Campbell Pop Warner, the theater town troupe, and John F. Kennedy University, one of those indeterminate Silicon Valley pop-up colleges that occupy in full capacity a class-room, a Xerox machine, a Pepsi dispenser, and a Web site-in-process. I wonder how our thirty-fifth President, that wily yet well-read Hahvuhd grad, would feel about his regal name being attached to an outfit of higher learning whose campus you can't see from the road or find on foot without a two-page pamphlet from the Campbell Center Info Booth?