Play Dead (3 page)

S
OMETIMES THINGS COME
together perfectly.

It doesn’t happen often; usually something can be counted on to go wrong. Murphy didn’t become famous by passing a bum law. But when everything goes right, when a plan is executed to perfection, it is something to be cherished.

The voracious twenty-four-hour cable, Internet, blogging media is onto Yogi’s story before Vince’s paper even physically hits the newsstands. The idea of a dog taking refuge in the abuse-excuse defense is just the kind of thing to push more significant news to the side, and it certainly does exactly that here.

I wake up at six a.m. and turn the television on. There on CNN is Yogi’s beautiful, pathetic mug, with the graphic across the bottom asking “Stay of Execution?” Their details are sketchy but accurate, having already gleaned from Vince’s story the main facts, including our legal actions.

The phone starts ringing, as I knew it would, and I find myself fielding calls from what seems like every media outlet in the free world. My standard response is that I will have a great deal to say on this later, and I arrange late morning interviews to take place at the animal shelter with the main cable networks. I have appeared on all of them as a celebrity legal commentator at various times during the past two years, so my involvement with this case provides a level of comfort for them to cover it.

I finally make it into the shower, and I spend the endless minute waiting for the conditioner to sink in, by happily reflecting on how perfectly this is going. In less than a day, I’ve made an entire country, or at least the media of an entire country, sit up and take notice.

I am Andy, the all-powerful.

The phone rings as I’m turning the water off, and I decide to ignore it. I’ve already done enough to reach saturation coverage, and I’m not going to have time for any more.

I let the machine pick up, and after a few seconds I hear a woman’s voice. “Andy, it’s Rita.”

The caller is Rita Gordon, the clerk at the Passaic County Courthouse, and the only reason that venerable institution operates with any efficiency at all. I once had an affair with Rita that could be characterized as brief, since it lasted only about forty-five minutes. But those were forty-five great minutes.

I pick up the phone. “Rita, sorry I screened the call. I thought you were Katie Couric.”

I don’t think Rita and I have ever engaged in a conversation that was not dominated by banter of some sort. Until now. “Andy, Hatchet wants to see you right away.”

That one sentence renders obsolete all my gloating about the perfection of my legal and public relations effort. “Hatchet was assigned this case? Is that what you’re telling me?” I ask.

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

Judge Henry Henderson has been called “Hatchet” for as long as I can remember. One doesn’t get nicknames by accident, and they are generally quite revealing. You won’t find demure librarians named Darla “the Sledgehammer” Smiley, or nannies dubbed Mary “the Exterminator” Poppins. And there won’t be many professional wrestlers with names like Brutus “Little Kitten” Rockingham.

Legend goes that Hatchet got his name by chopping off the testicles of lawyers who annoyed him. My belief is that this is just urban myth, but that doesn’t mean that if given the opportunity I would want to rummage through his desk drawers.

“How pissed is he?” I ask.

“I would say somewhere between very and totally.”

“When should I come in?” I ask.

“Let’s put it this way. If you’re not here by the time I finish this sentence, you’re late.”

By that standard, I’m late for my meeting with Hatchet, but not by much. I’m down at the courthouse and ushered into his chambers within a half hour of receiving the call. Since the courthouse is twenty minutes from my house, that’s pretty good.

Hatchet keeps his office very dark; the drapes are closed, and only a small lamp on his desk provides any light at all. If it’s meant to disconcert and intimidate attorneys, it achieves its goal. Yet if the stories I hear are true, I am less afraid of Hatchet than are most of my colleagues. For example, I haven’t pissed in my pants yet.

Hatchet etiquette requires letting him speak first, so I just stand there waiting for the barrage. Finally, after about thirty seconds that feel like three thousand, he looks up. “Do you know what time it is?” he asks.

I look at my watch. “Eight forty-five. I got here as soon as I—”

He interrupts. “Do you know how long I’ve been up?”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I have no idea.”

“Four hours. My wife woke me at four forty-five.”

This is a stunning piece of news. Not that Hatchet has been up since early this morning, but that he has a wife. Someone actually sleeps with this man. I find myself picturing a female leaning over in bed and saying, “Hatchet, dear, it’s almost five a.m.—time to get up.” It’s not a pretty image.

“I assume this is somehow my fault?” I ask.

“She woke me to say that I cannot kill some poor dog. I assumed she was talking about an attorney, until she showed me what she was watching on the television.”

“She sounds like a very compassionate person, who doesn’t sleep much,” I say.

Hatchet takes off his glasses and peers at me. “Are you trying to turn my court into a circus? A sideshow?”

“No, sir. Never. Definitely not. No way.”

“Then why are you representing a dog?”

“Because if I don’t, he’ll be killed. And that would be unjust. And it would make many people unhappy, including me and Mrs. Hatch—Henderson.”

If he is going to kill me, this is the moment. He doesn’t say anything for about thirty seconds; it’s possible he’s so angry that he’s unable to unclench his teeth. He finally speaks, more softly and calmly than I would have expected. “I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but I’m going to issue a stay of execution. I am scheduling a hearing in this court tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. It is a hearing that I do not want to take more than one hour, and I will be conveying that view to certain city officials. Is that understood?”

It’s completely understood, and I say so. I leave Hatchet’s office, my dignity and testicles intact, and head down to the shelter to conduct the television interviews.

This won’t be officially resolved until tomorrow, but I now know one thing with total certainty: Yogi and I have already won.

I say this because we have surmounted the only serious obstacle that was in front of us. Mostly through the use of media pressure, along with a creative defense, we have gotten the legal system to give us our day in court. In a normal situation, we would now have to defeat our legal adversaries.

But the reason we’ve already won is that we don’t have any real legal adversaries. Simply put, we want to win, and there’s no one who will want us to lose. Nobody gains if Yogi is killed in so public a fashion, and there isn’t a politician in Paterson, in New Jersey, in America, or on the planet Earth who would want to be responsible for it.

The afternoon media interviews are a slam dunk; I’m not exactly bombarded with difficult questions. This makes for a great story, and the press will willingly help me promote it. Besides, all I have to do is keep pointing to Yogi and asking as plaintively as I can why anyone would want to end his life.

The most interesting piece of information comes from one of the reporters, who asks if I’ve heard the news that the mayor of Paterson is at that moment meeting with his director of Animal Services to discuss this matter. I would imagine the “discussion” consists of the mayor screaming at the director to find a way out of this.

I’m not going to get overconfident and let up, but my guess is that by tomorrow, Yogi will be dining on biscuits at my house.

I wonder how Tara is going to feel about that.

K
EVIN MEETS ME
at the diner for breakfast to go over our strategy.

He also brings me up to date on his conversation with Warren Shaheen, the alleged owner and victim of the vicious Yogi. Shaheen told Kevin that he has been asked to be at court today by the animal control people, but Kevin doubts he’ll show. Mr. Shaheen is apparently not enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, and was clearly frightened when Kevin told him that when I latch on to his leg in court, it’s going to hurt a lot more than when Yogi did it. Faced with that prospect, he was more than happy to go along with whatever Kevin said was necessary to make it end.

We head for the courthouse early, and it’s lucky we do, because the media crush adds ten minutes to the time it takes to get inside. We still get to our seats at the defense table fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the hearing. My testicle-preservation instinct is not about to let me show up late in Hatchet’s court. I plan to make sure that my client remains the only neutered member of the defense team.

A young city attorney named Roger Wagner puts his briefcase on the prosecution table and comes over to shake my hand. He smiles. “Any chance we can make a deal?”

“What do you have in mind?” I ask.

“We keep Yogi and we trade you a German shepherd, a beagle, and a Maltese to be named later.”

I laugh. “I don’t think so.”

I sit back down. It’s an unusual feeling not to have my client present at a court proceeding, and I had briefly considered asking that Yogi be allowed to attend. The determining factor in my not doing so was my uncertainty whether Yogi was house-trained, or in this case court-trained. Taking a dump in Hatchet’s court would not be a productive legal maneuver.

Hatchet starts the proceedings by laying out the ground rules. The city will get to call witnesses, which I can then cross-examine. I can follow with my own witnesses, should I so choose, and then we will adjourn. There will be no opening or closing arguments.

“And there will be no theatrics,” he says, staring directly at me.

Wagner calls Stephen Billick, the Passaic County director of Animal Control. He starts to ask him about his education, work experience, and general qualifications for the job, but he barely gets two sentences out before Hatchet cuts him off. “That isn’t necessary. Mr. Carpenter will stipulate as to the witness’s experience and expertise. Isn’t that right, Mr. Carpenter?”

I had no intention of so stipulating, but I have even less intention of arguing with Hatchet. “Your Honor, that’s uncanny. You took the words right out of my mouth.”

Wagner proceeds with his questioning, which basically elicits from Billick the rationale for the policy of putting down dogs with a history of biting humans. It’s a public safety issue and one that is consistent in localities across the country. It would be irresponsible to send a dog like that back into civilized society, because of the likelihood that he could strike again.

Hatchet offers me the opportunity for a “brief” cross- examination, and I begin with “Mr. Billick, what happens if a dog bites someone, but the owner does not bring it to a shelter to be put down?”

“If someone reports being bitten and is treated by a doctor or a hospital emergency room, then the dog is quarantined either at a shelter or a veterinarian’s office for ten days, in order to make sure the dog does not have rabies.”

“So let’s say I had a dog that bit someone. I could keep the dog at my vet for the ten days?”

“Yes.”

“And after the ten days are up?” I ask.

“Assuming he didn’t have rabies, you could bring him home.”

“Wouldn’t that put the public at risk of the dog biting again?”

He nods. “It would. But you would have signed a document accepting future responsibility.”

“So I as the owner can have the dog back, simply by accepting responsibility for his future actions?”

“That is correct,” he says.

“What does it mean to be the owner of a dog?” I ask.

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, in the eyes of the animal control system, if I buy a dog, I then own it?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“And then that ownership means I have responsibility for it?”

“Yes.”

“What if I sell it?” I ask.

Hatchet cuts in. “Mr. Carpenter, do you remember my use of the word ‘brief’?”

I nod. “I do, Your Honor. I committed it to memory. I’m almost finished here.”

He lets me continue, so I repeat the question for Billick. “And if I sell the dog? Who owns it then?”

He seems confused. “Well, the person you sell it to.”

I walk over to the defense table, and Kevin hands me two pieces of paper. I then bring them over to the bench. “Your Honor, I would like to submit these two documents as defense exhibits one and two.”

“What is their substance?” Hatchet asks.

“Number one is a bill of sale, confirming that Warren Shaheen sold me the dog referred to as ‘Yogi’ yesterday afternoon for the sum of fifty dollars. Number two is my declaration of ownership and my intention to take full responsibility for Yogi as his sole owner.”

“So you are now the dog’s owner?” Hatchet asks.

“Yes, Your Honor. Under the terms of ownership as Mr. Billick has just defined them.”

Hatchet thinks for a moment, then turns to Billick. “Give the man his dog.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Billick says, smiling himself as the gallery breaks out in applause.

We’ve won, but I can’t help myself. “Your Honor, a dog’s honor was besmirched here. I would like to call a trainer to the witness stand, to testify that Yogi is a sweet and loving dog.”

“Mr. Carpenter…,” Hatchet says. He usually doesn’t have to say any more, but I’m having fun with this, so I continue.

“Your Honor, Yogi now has his freedom, but where does he go to get back his reputation?”

“Perhaps it would help if I held his lawyer in contempt,” Hatchet says. I’m not sure, but I actually may see a twinkle in his eye.

“Have a lovely day, Your Honor.”

With that, he slams down his gavel. “This hearing is concluded.”