I Will Fear No Evil (24 page)

The Judge shook his head and grinned. “No, sirree, Alec. You fetched them here, you’re stuck with them—at least until Court adjourns. Jake? Is Ned still fronting for you? Or will you speak for yourself?”

“Oh, I think we can both speak up from time to time, without friction.”

“Ned?”

“Of course, Judge. Jake can speak for himself and should. But I’m finding it interesting. Novel situation.”

“Quite. Well, speak up if you have anything to contribute. Alec, I don’t think we can get anywhere today. Do you?”

Alec Train stood mute. Joan said, “Why not, Judge? I’m here, I’m ready. Ask me anything. Bring out the rack and the thumbscrews—I’ll talk.”

The Judge again rubbed his nose. “Miss Smith, I sometimes think that my predecessors were overly hasty in letting such tools be abolished. I think I can settle to my own satisfaction whether or not you are the person known as Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, of this city and of Smith Enterprises, Limited. But it is not that simple. In an ordinary idertity case Mrs. Seward’s suggestion of fingerprints would be practical. But not in this case. Alec? Do Petitioners stipulate that the brain of their grandfather was transplanted into another body?”

Petitioners’ counsel looked unhappy. “May it please the Court, I am under instructions not to stipulate anything of the sort.”

“So? What’s your theory?”

“Uh, ‘Missing and presumed dead,’ I suppose. We take the position that the burden of proof is on anyone who steps forward and claims to be Johann Sebastian Bach Smith.”

“Jake?”

“I can’t agree as to the burden of proof, Judge. But my client—my ward who is also my client, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith—is present in court and I am pointing at her. I know her to be that named individual. Both of us are ready to be questioned by the Court in any fashion in order to assure the Court as to her identity. I was about to say that both of us are willing to be questioned by anyone—but on second thought I cannot concede that there is
any
interested party other than my client.”

“Judge?”

“Yes, Miss Smith? Jake, do you want her to speak?”

“Oh, certainly. Anything.”

“Go ahead, Miss Smith.”

“Thank you. Judge, my granddaughters can ask me anything. I’ve known them since they were babies; if they try to trip me, I’ll have them hanging on the ropes in two minutes. For example, Johanna—the one you called ‘Mrs. Seward’—was hard to housebreak. On her eighth birthday—May fifteenth nineteen-sixty, the day the Paris Conference between Eisenhower and Khrushchev broke down—her mother, my daughter Evelyn, invited me over to see the little brat have her birthday cake, and Evelyn shoved Johanna into my lap and she cut loose—”

“I did no such thing!”

“Oh, yes, you did, Johanna. Evelyn snatched you off my lap and apologized and said that you had a bed-wetting problem. Can’t say as to that—my daughter lied easily.”

“Judge, are you going to sit there and let that—that person-insult the memory of my dead mother?”

“Mrs. Seward, your counsel cautioned you. If you don’t heed his caution, this Court is capable of nailing you into a barrel and letting you speak only when I say to pull out the bung. Or some such. Squelch her, Alec. Suppress her the way they did in the trial in ‘Alice in Wonderland’—which this is beginning to resemble. She’s not a party to this; she is here only to give evidence in case the Court needs it. Miss Smith—”

“Yes, sir?”

“Your opinions as to the veracity of your putative descendants are not evidential. Can you think of anything that Johann Smith would know and that I would know or could check on—but which Jake Salomon could not possibly have briefed you on?”

“That’s a tough one, Your Honor.”

“So it is. But the alternative—today—is for me to assume that you are an imposter most carefully coached and then to question you endlessly in an attempt to trip you. I don’t want to do that. . . because final identification—now that the matter has been raised—will have to be by evidence as conclusive as fingerprints. You see that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I see it but I don’t quite see how.” She smiled and spread her graceful hands. “My fingerprints—and everything about me that can be seen—are those of my donor.”

“Yes, yes, surely—but there are more ways of killing a cat than buttering it with parsnips. Later.”

“Harrumph!”

“Yes, Jake?”

“Judge, in- the interests of my client I cannot concede that physical means of identifying this body are relevant. The question is: Is this the
individual
designated by Social Security number 551-20-0052 and known to the world as Johann Sebastian Bach Smith? I suggest that ‘Estate of Henry M. Parsons v. Rhode Island,’ while not on all fours, is relevant.”

McCampbell said mildly, “Jake, you are much older. than I am and I’m reasonably sure you know the law more thoroughly than I do. Nevertheless, here today, I am the Judge.”

“Certainly, Your Honor! May it please the Court, I—”

“So quit being so damned respectful in my chambers. You sat on my orals and voted to pass me, so you must think I know some law. Of course the Parsons case is relevant; we’ll get to it later. In the meantime I’m trying to find a basis for a pro-tem ruling. Well, Miss Smith?”

“Judge, I don’t care whether I’m identified or not. In the words of a gallant gentleman: ‘Broke don’t scare me.’ ” She suddenly chuckled and glanced at her granddaughters. “May I tell you something funny—privately?”

“Mmm . . . I could clear the room of everyone but you and your counsel; nevertheless you had better save any jokes until after we adjourn.”

“Yes, sir. May I address one irrelevant remark to my granddaughters?”

“Hmmph. I may strike it from the record. Go ahead.”

“Thank you, Judge. Girls—Johanna, Marla, June, Elinor—look at me. For thirty-odd years you have been waiting for me to die. Now you hope to prove that I am dead, else this silly business would never have come up. Girls, I hope you get away with it. . . for I can’t wait to see your faces when my will is read.” (You zapped ’em, Boss!
Look
at those expressions!) (I surely did, darling. Now shut up; we’re not home free.)

“Your Honor—”

“Yes, Alec?”

“May I suggest that this is not relevant?”

Joan cut in. “But I
said
it would be irrelevant, Mr. Train. Just the same, they had better start thinking about how to break my will, instead of this nonsense.” She added thoughtfully, “Perhaps I had better set up a lifetime trust that will make them slightly better off with me alive than dead. . . to protect myself against patricidal assassination. Judge, is ‘patricidal’ the right word? Now that I’m female?”

“Blessed if I know. Better make it ‘avicidal’—no, ‘avicide’ already means the killing of birds and has nothing to do with ‘avus.’ Never mind, Miss Smith, take up such matters with your attorney and let us return to our muttons. Have you thought of anything which Jake Salomon could not have coached you on?”

“It’s difficult. Jake has been handling my affairs for most of a generation. Mmm, Judge, will you shake hands with me?”

“Eh?”

“We had best do it under the table, or out of sight of anyone but Mr. Train.”

Looking puzzled, the Judge went along with her request. Then he said, “Be damned! Excuse me. Miss Smith—shake hands with Alec.”

Joan did so, letting her body cover it from spectators. Mr. Train looked surprised, whispered something to her which she answered in a whisper. (Boss, what was what?) (Greek. Tell you later, dear—though girls aren’t supposed to know.)

McCampbell said, “Mr. Salomon could not have coached you?”

“Ask him. Jake was a Barb, not a Greek.”

“Of course I was a Barb,” Salomon growled. “I had no stomach for being the exhibit Jew in a chapter that did not want its charter lifted. What is this?”

Train said, “Well, it seems.that Miss Smith is a fraternity brother of the Judge and myself. Mmm . . . ‘sister,’ I suppose. Judge, it’s easy to check this on both Johann Smith and Mr. Salomon. In the meantime I find it persuasive.”

“Perhaps I can add to it,” Joan said. “Mr. Train —Brother Alec—of course you should check on both Jake and myself. But look me up in our fraternal archives under ‘Schmidt’ rather than ‘Smith’ as I changed my name in forty-one. Which my granddaughters know. But you both know of our fraternal Distress Fund?”

“Yes.”

“Certainly, Miss Smith.”

“The fund did not exist when I was pledged—my senior year it was, after I made Phi Beta Kappa and because our local chapter needed a greasy grind and had an alumnus willing to pay for my initiation. The fund was started during World War Two; I helped augment it some years later and was one of its trustees from fifty-six until late in the eighties when I dropped most outside activities. Judge, you tapped the fund for fifteen hundred in the spring of seventy-eight.”

“Eh? So I did. But I paid it back, eventually—then donated the same amount at a later time, according to our customs.”

“I’m glad to hear it. The latter, I mean; you were off the hook before I resigned as a trustee. I was a hard-nosed trustee, Judge, and never okayed a loan until I was certain that it was a distress case and not just a convenience to a lazy undergraduate. Shall I relate the circumstances which caused me to okay your loan?”

The Judge blinked. “I would rather you did not, at least not now. Alec knows them.”

“Yes,” agreed Train. “Would have lent him the money myself if I had had it.” (What is this, Boss?) (Case of ‘rheumatic fever,’ sweet.) (Abortion money?) (No, no—he married the girl—and here I am digging up the skeleton.) (Bitch.) (No, Eunice—my granddaughters don’t know what I’m talking about, nor does Jake.)

“I see no reason to discuss it,” Miss Smith went on, “unless the Judge wants to question me privately—and if you do, Judge, do remind me to tell you a real giggle about the ancestries of my so loving granddaughters. Odd things happen even in the best families—and the Schmidt family was never one of the best. We’re a vulgar lot, me and my descendants—our only claim to prominence is too much money.”

“Later perhaps, Miss Smith. I am now ready to hand down a decision—temporary and conservative. Counsels?”

“Ready, Judge.”

“Nothing to add, Your Honor.”

McCampbell fitted his fingertips together. “Identity. It need not depend on fingerprints or retinal patterns or similar customary evidence. John Doe could lose both hands and both feet, have both eyes gouged out, be so scarred and damaged that even his dentist could not identify him—and he would still be John Doe, with the same Social Security number. Something like that happened to you, Miss Smith, assuming that you are indeed Johann Sebastian Bach Smith-though I am happy to see”—he smiled—“that no scars show.

“This Court finds persuasive the evidence of your identity brought out in this hearing. We assume, pro tern, that you are Johann Sebastian Bach Smith.

“However”—the Judge looked at Salomon—“we now get to the Parsons case. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court has ruled that the question of life or death resides in the brain and nowhere else, this Court now rules that identity must therefore reside in the brain and nowhere else. In the past it has never been necessary to decide this point; now it is necessary. We find that to rule in any other fashion would be inconsistent with the intent of the Supreme Court in ‘Estate of Henry M. Parsons v. Rhode Island.’ To rule in any other way would create chaos in future cases in any way similar to this one: Identity must lie in the brain.

“Now, Jake, I am in effect going to shove the burden of the proof over onto you and your client. At a later time you must be prepared to prove beyond any possible doubt that Johann Sebastian Bach Smith’s brain was removed from his body and transplanted into this body”—McCampbell pointed.

Jake nodded. “I realize that, Judge. A person who wants to cash a check must prove his identity—this is on all fours. But today we were taken by surprise.”

“So was the Court-and, Alec, I’m going to take you by surprise someday. . . with something better than a pie bed or an exploding cigar. Damn it, you should have warned Court and Counsel.”

“I apologize, Your Honor. I received my instructions quite late.”

“You should have at once asked for a continuance, not let this hearing open. You know better. Never mind, the hearing has been instructive. Miss Smith—Miss Johann Sebastian Bach Smith subject to remarks above—you were made a ward of this Court and placed under the guardianship of Mr. Jacob Salomon for one reason alone: You were at the time not competent to manage your affairs by reason of post-operative incapacity. Let the record show that neither insanity in the legal sense nor mental illness in the medical sense had anything to do with it; you were in an extended condition of unconsciousness following surgery and that was all. You are no longer unconscious, you appear to be in good health, and the Court takes judicial notice that during this hearing you appeared always to be alert and clearheaded. Since the sole condition—unconsciousness—on which you were made a ward no longer obtains, you are now no longer a ward and Mr. Salomon is discharged of his guardianship—what’s the trouble, Alec?”

“May it please the Court!—as Counsel for the Petitioners I must ask to have an objection entered into the record.”

“On what grounds?”

“Why, lack of expert witnesses as to, uh, ‘Miss Smith’s’ competence.”

“Do you have expert witnesses ready to examine her?”

“Of course.”

“Jake?”

“Certainly. Waiting on call.”

“How many?”

“Harrumph! One more than Alec has, however many he qualifies.”

“So I expected, and if we start qualifying expert witnesses now and let each one exercise his little ego, those fish in Nova Scotia would die of old age. Keep your shirt on, Alec. No expert witnesses were used to show this person’s incompetence; the gross condition of unconsciousness was stipulated—and now no longer exists. Alec, your objection goes into the record but I am putting you on notice that your claim of need for expert witnesses lacks foundation—and this time the burden of proof is on
you.
Petitioners will have to show something more than great anxiety to get their hands on the large sums of money at stake in this matter. Every citizen, every person, is conditionally presumed to be competent—and that means
everyone
—you, me, Jake, Miss Smith, Petitioners, and the illiterate who fills that bar and cleans out the empties. This Court will not set the extremely bad precedent of allowing you, or anyone, to conduct a fishing expedition into the matter of a person’s competency without proper foundation. However—Jake.”