The Bonfire of the Vanities (35 page)

“Ayyyyyyyyy,” said Kramer, dismissing mortal danger with a shrug of his shoulders and a distention of his mighty sternocleidomastoid muscles. “These characters are 90 percent show, although it’s a good idea to keep your eye out for the other 10 percent. Hah hah, yes. The main thing was, somehow I had to bring out Herbert’s violent side, so everybody could see it. His lawyer, Al Teskowitz—well, I don’t have to tell you, he’s not the greatest orator in the world, but that don’t—doesn’t”—it was time to shift gears in the third person singular—”necessarily make any difference in a criminal trial. Criminal law is a thing unto itself, because the stakes are not money but human life and human freedom, and I tell you, that sets off a lot of crazy emotions. Teskowitz, believe it or not, can be a genius at messing up the minds—manipulating a jury. He looks so woebegone himself—and it’s
cal
culated—oh, sure. He knows how to work up pity for a client. Half of it is—what’s the term?—body language, I guess you’d call it. Maybe just ham
acting
is what it is, but he knows how to do that one thing very well, and I couldn’t let this idea that Herbert is a nice family man—a
family
man!—just hang there in the air like some kind of pretty balloon, you know. So what I figured was—”

The words were just gushing out, in torrents, all the marvelous things about his bravery and talent for the fray that he had no one to tell about. He couldn’t go on like this to Jimmy Caughey or Ray Andriutti or, any longer, to his wife, whose threshold for crime highs was by now a stone wall. But Miss Shelly Thomas—I must keep you high! She drank it all in. Those eyes! Those glistening brown lips! Her thirst for his words was bottomless, which was a good thing, because she wasn’t drinking anything but designer water. Kramer had a glass of house white wine and was trying to keep from gulping it, because he could already tell this place was not as inexpensive as he had thought. Christ! His goddamned mind was double-tracking a mile a minute! It was like a two-track tape. On one track he was gushing out this speech about how he handled the trial—

“—out of the corner of my eye I could see he was about to snap. The string was pulled tight! I didn’t even know if I’d make it to the end of my summation, but I was willing—”

—and on the second track he was thinking about
her
, the bill (and they hadn’t even ordered dinner yet), and where he could possibly take her (if!), and the crowd here at Muldowny’s. Jesus! Wasn’t that John Rector, the anchorman of Channel 9 news, over there at that table up near the front, by the exposed-brick wall? But no! He wouldn’t point that out. Only space for one celebrity here—himself—victor over the violent Herbert 92X and the clever Al Teskowitz. A young crowd, a swell-looking crowd in here—the place was packed—perfect—couldn’t be better. Shelly Thomas had turned out to be Greek. Bit of a disappointment. He had wanted—didn’t know what. Thomas was her stepfather’s name; he manufactured plastic containers in Long Island City. Her own father was named Choudras. She lived in Riverdale with her stepfather and her mother, worked for Prischker & Bolka, couldn’t afford an apartment in Manhattan, wanted one badly—no longer could you find “some little place in Manhattan” (didn’t have to tell him)—

“—thing is, juries in the Bronx are very unpredictable. I could tell you what happened to one of the fellows in my office in court this morning!—but you probably noticed what I’m talking about. I mean, you get people who come into the jury box with their minds—how should I say it?—set in a certain way. There’s a lot of Us versus Them, Them being the police and prosecutors—but you probably picked up some of that.”

“No, actually I didn’t. Everybody was very sensible, and they seemed to want to do the right thing. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was very pleasantly surprised.”

Does she think I’m prejudiced? “No, I don’t mean—there are plenty of good people in the Bronx, it’s just that some people have a chip on their shoulder, and some very weird things happen.” Let’s move off this terrain. “As long as we’re being candid, do you mind if I tell you something? I was worried about
you
as a juror.”

“Me!” She smiled and seemed to blush clear through the makeup glow, tickled pink to have been a factor in strategic thinking in Supreme Court, the Bronx.

“Yes! It’s the truth! You see, in a criminal trial you learn to look at things from a different perspective. It may be a warped perspective, but it’s the nature of the beast. In a case like this one—you’re—well, you added up as
too
bright, too well educated,
too removed
from the world of a character like Herbert 92X, and therefore—and this is the irony of it—too capable of understanding his problems, and like the French say, ‘To understand all is to forgive all.’ ”

“Well, actually—”

“I’m not saying that’s fair or accurate, but that’s the way you learn to look at things in these cases. Not you—but someone like you—can be
too sensitive
.”

“But you didn’t challenge me. Is that the term?”

“Yeah. No, I didn’t. Well, for one thing, I don’t think it’s right to challenge a juror just because he’s—she’s intelligent and well educated. I mean, I’m sure you noticed there was nobody else from Riverdale on your jury. There wasn’t even anybody else from Riverdale on your panel during the
voir dire
. Everybody is always moaning over the fact that we don’t get more educated jurors in the Bronx, and then when we get one—well, it’s almost like wasting a resource or something to challenge one just because you think she might be
sensitive
. Besides…” Did he dare try it? He
dared
. “…I just…to be honest about it…I just wanted you on that jury.”

He looked as deeply into those big mauve-rainbow eyes as he could and put as honest and open a look on his face as he knew how and lifted his chin, so she could see the fullness of his sternocleidomastoids.

She lowered her eyes and blushed clear through autumn in the Berkshires again. Then she raised her eyes and looked deeply into his.

“I did sort of notice you looking at me a lot.”

Me ’n’ every other regular in the courtroom!—
but it wouldn’t do to let her know about that.

“You did? I was hoping it wasn’t that obvious! God, I hope other people didn’t notice it.”

“Hah hah! I think they did. You know the lady who was sitting next to me, the black lady? She was a very nice person. She works for a gynecologist, and she’s very sweet, very intelligent. I asked her for her telephone number, and I told her I’d call her. Anyway, you want to know what she said to me?”

“What?”

“She said, ‘I think that district attorney kind of likes you, Shelly.’ She called me Shelly. We hit it off very well. ‘He can’t take his eyes off you.’ ”

“She said that?” He broke into a smile.

“Yes!”

“Did she resent it? I mean, oh my God. I didn’t think it was
that
obvious!”

“No, she thought it was cute. Women like things like that.”

“It was that obvious, hunh?”

“It was to her!”

Kramer shook his head, as if in embarrassment, all the while pouring his eyes into hers, and she was pouring hers right back into his. They had already jumped over the moat, and rather effortlessly, too. He knew—he
knew!—
he could slide his hands across the table and take her fingertips in his, and she would let him, and it would all happen without their eyes leaving one another’s, but he held back. It was too perfect and going too well to take the slightest risk.

He kept shaking his head and smiling…ever more significantly…In fact, he was embarrassed, although not over the fact that others had noticed how possessed with her he had been in the courtroom. Where to
go—
that was what he was embarrassed about. She didn’t have an apartment, and of course there was no way in God’s world he could take her to his ant colony. A hotel?—far too gross, and besides, how the hell could he afford it? Even a second-rate hotel was almost a hundred dollars a room. God only knew what this meal was going to cost. The menu had an artless hand-lettered look that set off an alarm in Kramer’s central nervous system:
money
. Somehow he knew, based on very little experience, that this
faux
-casual shit spelled
money
.

Just then the waitress returned. “Have you had a chance to decide?”

She was a perfect confection, too. Young, blond, curly-haired, brilliant blue eyes, the perfect aspiring-actress type, with dimples and a smile that said: “Well! I can see that you two have decided
some
thing!” Or did it say, “I’m young, pretty, and charming, and I expect a big tip when you pay your big bill”?

Kramer looked into her twinkling face, and then he looked into Miss Shelly Thomas’s. He was consumed by feelings of lust and poverty.

“Well, Shelly,” he said, “you know what you’d like?”

It was the first time he had called her by her first name.

Sherman sat on the edge of one of the bentwood chairs. He was leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees and his head down. The noxious, incriminating copy of
The City Light
lay on top of the oak pedestal table like something radioactive. Maria sat in the other chair, more composed but not exactly her old insouciant self, either.

“I knew it,” said Sherman, without looking at her, “I knew it at the time. We should have reported it immediately. I can’t believe I’m—I can’t believe we’re in this situation.”

“Well, it’s too late now, Sherman. That’s spilt milk.”

He sat up straight and looked at her. “Maybe it’s not too late. What you say is, you say you didn’t know until you read this newspaper that you’d hit anyone.”

“Oh, sure,” said Maria. “Then how do I say it happened, this thing I didn’t even know happened in the first place?”

“Just…tell what actually happened.”

“That’ll sound
won
derful. Two boys stopped us and tried to rob us, but you threw a tire at one of them, and I drove outta there like a…a
…hot
-rodder, but I didn’t know I hit anybody.”

“Well, that’s exactly what happened, Maria.”

“And who’s gonna believe it? You read that story. They’re calling that boy some kinda
honor
student, some kinda saint. They don’t say anything about the other one. They don’t even say anything about a ramp. They’re talking about a little saint who went to get food for his family.”

The terrible possibility flared up once more. What if the two boys
were
only trying to help?

There sat Maria in a turtleneck jersey that brought out her perfect breasts even at this moment. She wore a short checked skirt, and her glistening legs were crossed, and one of her pair of pumps dangled off the tip of her foot.

Beyond her was the make-do bed, and above the bed there was now a second small oil painting, of a nude woman holding a small animal. The brushwork was so atrociously crude, he couldn’t tell what kind of animal it was. It could be a rat as easily as a dog. His misery made his eye hang on it for a moment.

“You noticed it,” said Maria, attempting a smile. “You’re getting better. Filippo gave it to me.”

“Terrific.” The question of why some greaseball artist might feel so generous toward Maria no longer interested Sherman in the slightest. The world had shrunk. “So what do you think we ought to do?”

“I think we ought to take ten deep breaths and relax. That’s what I think.”

“And then what?”

“And then maybe nothing.” ’N thin mibby nuthun. “Sherman, if we tell ’em the truth, they’re gonna
kill
us. You understand that? They’re gonna cut us up in little pieces. Right now they don’t know whose car it was, they don’t know who was driving, they don’t have any witnesses, and the boy himself is in a coma and it doesn’t look like he’s…he’s ever gonna come to.”

`You`` were driving, thought Sherman. Don’t forget that part. It reassured him to hear her say it. Then a jolt of fear: suppose she denied it and said he was driving? But the other boy knew, wherever he might be.

All he said, however, was: “What about the other boy? Suppose he shows up.”

“If he was gonna show up, he woulda showed up by now. He’s not gonna show up, because he’s a criminal.”

Sherman leaned forward and put his head down again. He found himself staring at the shiny tops of his New & Lingwood half-brogues. The colossal vanity of his bench-made English shoes sickened him. What availeth a man…He couldn’t remember the quotation. He could see the pitiful brown moon on the crown of Felix’s skull…Knoxville…Why hadn’t he moved to Knoxville long ago?…a simple Georgian house with a screen porch at one end…

“I don’t know, Maria,” he said, without looking up. “I don’t think we can outguess them. I think maybe we ought to get in touch with a lawyer”
—two
lawyers, said a small voice in the back of his skull, since I don’t know this woman and we may not be on the same side forever—“and…come forward with what we know.”

“And stick our heads in the tiger’s mouth is what you mean.” ’N stick uh bids in thuh tiguh’s mouth. Maria’s Southernism was beginning to get on Sherman’s nerves. “I’m the one who was driving the car, Sherman, and so I think it’s up to me to decide.”

I’m the one who was driving the car!
She had said it herself. His spirits lifted a bit. “I’m not trying to talk you into anything,” he said. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

Maria’s expression grew softer. She smiled at him in a warm, almost motherly fashion. “Sherman, let me tell you something. There’s two kinds a jungles. Wall Street is a jungle. You’ve heard that, haven’t you? You know how to handle yourself in that jungle.” The Southern breeze was blowing past his ears—but it was true, wasn’t it? His spirits rose a bit more. “And then there’s the other jungle. That’s the one we got lost in the other night, in the Bronx. And you
fought
, Sherman! You were wonderful!” He had to resist congratulating himself with a smile. “But you don’t live in that jungle, Sherman, and you never have. You know what’s in that jungle? People who are all the time crossing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, from this side of the law to the other side, from this side to the other side. You don’t know what that’s like. You had a
good
upbringing. Laws weren’t any kind of a threat to you. They were
your laws
, Sherman, people like you and your family’s. Well, I didn’t grow up that way. We were always staggering back and forth across the line, like a buncha drunks, and so I know and it doesn’t frighten me. And let me tell you something else. Right there on the line everybody’s an animal—the police, the judges, the criminals, everybody.”