The Magician (23 page)

Despite the cold wind, the sun shone. Out in the open, one could feel the chill, and then suddenly, in the lee of a building, surprising warmth. Thomassy, his raincoat collar up, hunched down into the coat when a street crossing brought him into the path of the wind, which he knew from the morning news was sweeping in from the northern Middle West, across New York, and out to sea, carrying London-bound planes to Heathrow in less than six hours.

He had been thinking of a quick trip to Europe all morning, no special purpose—why? To drop out for a fortnight?

He opened the door to his office and stooped to pick up the mail that had been put through the slot. The envelope he was waiting for was there, and he slit it open with a quick forefinger. The grand jury had indicted Urek for first-degree assault.

He picked up the phone to let the family know. It rang once, when he decided to hang up. He’d better do this piece of newscasting in person. On went the belted raincoat he had just hung up.

Marvin Cantor, the assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute The People
vs.
Urek, was disappointed in the assignment. Cantor, a gangling six-feet-four, looked a young version of Kenneth Galbraith, not handsome, but certainly not Jewish—a factor Cantor had always thought a big plus for his prospective political career. A lot of Jews would vote for him because of his name, and Gentiles would feel comfortable about him. As they had often let slip at cocktail parties, he looked, well, neutral.

People in groups liked Cantor; at a party, when he talked, it was not only his looming size that gave him a built-in podium, but his gentle voice had a way of carrying its richness to the far corners of a room without amplification. People listened, and paid him the compliment of seeing unintended depths in his comments on public affairs. But Cantor’s size, an advantage in crowds, made men avoid him in private. At twenty-nine, he did not have a single close friend. Once, just out of Harvard Law, he and a journalist named Henry Siller had seen a lot of each other, but Siller, then working as a desk man at
The New York Times,
had stopped his vertical ascent into manhood at five-foot-seven, and the two of them together looked ridiculous. It was not only the occasional cliché remarks of rude people; even when they talked alone, Cantor was conscious of looking down at Siller, just as he was certain that Siller was aware of looking up. Despite an easy rapport, the silly difference in height ultimately proved an insuperable obstacle, and they drifted apart.

Having passed his bar exams at twenty-five, Cantor had assiduously pursued his well-placed relatives and managed to become the youngest candidate ever to run for trustee in the Westchester village he’d grown up in. Running as a Republican in a Republican community, he thought, would make his first small step into the political arena a shoo-in, but his opponent kept referring to him as “the tall kid who’s running for my seat,” which made people chuckle. In a Sunday-night bandstand speech, Cantor had pointed out, he thought cleverly, that another Republican lawyer, Abe Lincoln, had been on the tall side. At the first opportunity, his Democratic opponent had labeled Cantor as “the tall kid who thinks he’s Abe Lincoln,” and that did it. Cantor went into a week-long depression when he lost.

Cantor gave himself three years to build his political connections, learn how to campaign, and develop a program that would mark him as an up-and-coming liberal Republican. In school he had suspected that he had the gift of wit, but was leary of using it often; being a head taller than your classmates was rough enough, he didn’t need the reputation of being a smart aleck. His fiancée, however, laughed at his verbal play, which encouraged him to take her seriously, and now that she was his wife, she encouraged him to develop his verbal agility as a public speaker. She even teased him with the possibility that he might become the kind of senator who didn’t need a speech writer. As for Cantor, he found himself thinking that if he ever got elected to Congress and then to the Senate, he might realize his most private goal: to become the first Jewish President of the United States.

During what Cantor thought of as his monkish period, he studied the early law careers of recent lawyer-Presidents and came to the conclusion that what he needed was a famous—or infamous—case to make his name known to the public beyond the courtroom. People
liked
to vote for someone famous. The D.A.’s office was a natural stepping-stone, but so far, the right case hadn’t come his way. The publicizable plums were taken by older men. Now, having reached twenty-nine, Cantor felt he was at the great divide. He had to make his second bid for office within a year.

He didn’t see the potential in the Urek case, but you never could tell how a trial like that might develop on the witness stand. He spent a weekend digesting the material in the large manila folder, taking notes, jotting down points to follow up, plotting tactics, checking out the judge with his colleagues, and, with a few discreet phone calls, getting a line on Thomassy. Sunday night he joined his wife on the love seat in front of the television set, and during the first commercial break told her he’d get a conviction.

Cantor started to build his case in the process of selecting the jury. He asked each prospective juror in turn, “If justified by the evidence, would you be unwilling to bring in a verdict of guilty just because the man on trial is sixteen years old?” Only two or three hesitated. In the end they all agreed they would not take the defendant’s age into consideration. Cantor knew some of them were lying. They were bored hanging around the jury room and just wanted to get on a case and get it over with.

In Thomassy’s questions to potential jurors he got in quite a few references to “this boy on trial” and once, even, “this schoolboy.”

The jury was picked in much less time than usual. Thomassy and Cantor went by the same unspoken rules: no professional men, no intellectuals, no one with a graduate degree except in accounting or engineering, no one accustomed to abstract thought or moral subtleties. They each wanted the same thing, a human orchestra to play.

Thomassy tried for a black with an Afro haircut, assuming him to be militant and hopefully someone who might hang the jury, but Cantor allowed color on the jury only in one sixtyish, retired Uncle Tom and one black woman who smiled her agreement even before questions were put. In addition they got a Finast manager, an unemployed steel worker, a building janitor, an insurance salesman, a childless housewife, a cemetery groundskeeper, the owner of a fruit and vegetable store, an oldish man who had been a bank teller and cashier in his working days, a crane operator, and a Sears, Roebuck stock clerk.

Thomassy took a liking to Cantor, even during the boring process of picking a jury. He enjoyed the young man’s style, and thought his height useful: in confrontations, though Thomassy was tall, the other man was so much taller, that the jury might like to see them toe to toe. He would cream Cantor when the time came. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to put him on edge a bit.

“You’re doing fine,” he told Cantor in a break.

“Thanks,” said Cantor. “They tell me you’ve got a lot of experience.”

“Just in winning,” said Thomassy, ready to move off.

“Winning what?” said Cantor.

Thomassy was going to answer him, then thought the better of it. He winked at Cantor.

Cantor knew the wink was meant to be condescending. And so, in return, he winked both eyes together.

Son of a bitch,
thought Thomassy,
this is going to be fun.

As a young lawyer Judge Brumbacher had quickly learned to have all of the boring research done by a subordinate, concentrating his own efforts on preparation, the strategy of a trial and the tactics of each day. He liked the actual courtroom work and was constantly surprised at how quickly a recess or adjournment came, and getting back to the courtroom was for him a welcome anticipation. He liked his work, and thought that only the justice on the bench, the referee and judge of all that went on before him, had a richer experience of the law at work. And so when he got his deserved judgeship, he was stunned to find at the end of the first week that he had committed himself for many long years to the most boring job of all.

Much that he did in the courtroom, his “style,” as lawyers would refer to it, grew out of his own desperate need to make the day pass with as much liveliness as he could summon. He kept adversaries on their toes by taking over the questioning from time to time. He made the sheriff’s deputies sit or stand at the back of the court, out of sight, so that spectators would feel that the defendant was not yet a prisoner.

Mainly Judge Brumbacher tried to enliven his life by being very tough and very fair, which helped to shape his calendar. Neither Thomassy nor Cantor had tried to get before another judge. They obviously had guts.
This might be an interesting case,
he thought hopefully, knowing that if it didn’t turn out that way, he’d wind up the trial fast, and as he sometimes said to his colleagues, go to review another play.

He struck his gavel to command attention and instructed Assistant District Attorney Marvin Cantor to begin his opening statement.

“Your Honor, members of the jury, I’ve been assigned to this prosecution by the Honorable Charles C. Lane, district attorney of Westchester County, to represent the People of the State of New York.”

Now that he had their attention, Cantor took advantage of his six-foot-four frame to tower over the seated jurors from as close to the box as he could get. “I have sworn,” he said, “to do my duty to society, as you have.”

That, thought Cantor, puts me and them on the same side.

“My first duty,” he continued, moving along the jury box, “is to tell you that the indictment charges Stanislaus Urek with four separate and distinct counts of assault in the first degree. That’s a felony. A felony means a major crime.”

Cantor paused just long enough to see if the judge would stop him.

“The people propose to show by clear-cut evidence that on January twenty-first of this year, at Ossining High School, the defendant Stanislaus Urek, without any justification or provocation whatsoever, did assault Edward Japhet, a high-school student, with intent to cause serious physical injury with depraved indifference to human life. He committed the assault with his fists and with a chain, a dangerous instrument, striking Edward Japhet about the head and body and choking him, injuring Edward Japhet so seriously that he required confinement in the intensive-care unit of Phelps Memorial Hospital, with a severely injured throat.”

He let that sink in. “Moreover, the People will show by evidence that at the same time and place, the defendant, Stanislaus Urek, did willfully and intentionally without provocation assault Lila Hurst, also a high-school student, and at the same time and place, the defendant, Stanislaus Urek, did commit assault against Mr. Terence Japhet, a schoolteacher.

“And that is not all. We will show you, as the fourth count of assault, that when this grievously injured boy, Edward Japhet, was a patient in Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown in this county, he was once again willfully assaulted by Stanislaus Urek, with intent to cause serious physical injury with a dangerous weapon, a knife, with depraved indifference to human life.

“Perhaps you will be able to determine a motive for these criminal assaults. I have been unable to.

“I expect to call as witnesses the injured boy and his father and Miss Hurst, all of them eyewitnesses. Also, as an eyewitness, the school custodian, Felix Gomez. Dr. Morton Karp of the staff of the hospital will testify as to the injuries inflicted. As to the fourth count in the indictment, the People will call nurses Murphy and Ginsler of the Phelps staff, eyewitnesses to the assault inside the hospital itself.

“The People seek justice. If, after listening to the evidence, you do not find that we have proved the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, I ask you to acquit him, but if we do so prove”—he took in every juror’s face, one at a time—“the People ask for a verdict of guilty.”

Cantor took a deep breath. “We live in a period not only of mounting crime rates and escalating violence, but one in which the laws that protect us from each other are derided and vilified and held in contempt. There are some who would say that the whole country is sinking into anarchy. This may be your concern as citizens, but, ladies and gentlemen, it is not your concern as jurors. You must keep from your mind everything but the facts relating to
this
defendant and the crimes of which he is guilty.”

Cantor sat down, pleased with his delivery and how he had managed to end with the word “guilty.” The jury seemed excited by the prospect of the trial, and that was what he wanted.

Thomassy got to his feet slowly. “Your Honor,” he said, “I would normally waive my opening statement in a case as ordinary as this, but in view of Mr. Cantor’s remarks, I have no alternative but to address the jury.”

“Please proceed,” said the judge.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Thomassy as he walked toward them, stopped in front of the jury box, and leaned both of his hands on the railing. His voice, in contrast to the assistant district attorney’s, was relaxed and casual.

“Please understand that Mr. Cantor is one of thirty-five assistants we’ve got in the district attorney’s office assigned to try to get convictions, and he’s just trying to do his job.

“You know,” he said with a light shrug, “they sometimes accuse the defense attorney of trying to win sympathy for the accused. Well, that’s wrong, of course. You’re here to find out if the facts stack up, to decide whether the accused is guilty or innocent. But I wonder if it isn’t also wrong to try to win sympathy for these young fellows in the district attorney’s office. Here’s this nice young lawyer attempting to make a track record, to please his boss, to work his way up. He talks fine, he tells you the country is falling into anarchy or whatever, and these fine fellows in the district attorney’s office are trying to keep that from happening by filling up the jails.”