The Touch of Treason (22 page)

Ed wanted him to understand he didn’t need the approval of faceless mobs like a dictator or an actor. He wanted Fuller to say that he was someone special in his life, the best of his students, not another body to be replaced in a year or two.

“Ed,” Fuller said, “you don’t appreciate enough what you have already accomplished. How many at your age have written a book that will live?”

Ed wanted to say that the most important part of the book was its dedication page.
To Martin Fuller, mentor and friend.

“You should leave the nest,” Fuller went on. “You don’t need me anymore. We will remain friends. We will see each other from time to time. Scott and Melissa have flown into each other’s arms under my roof, and they stay not because they need to anymore but because of the convenience. You are not bound. You need to fly.”

I will break my wings to stay,
Ed thought.

“I envy you your youth,” Fuller continued, “take advantage of it. I envy the time you have left to do your work. Remember the affection you give your work is always reciprocated by the work itself.” He held Ed physically by the arms, as if they might threaten him if he let go. “I know, I know, one needs the affection of a woman. Some day you will meet one who will be to you as Leona has been to me, coworker, battler, a friend.”

Ed wanted to shout back at him,
What about Tarasova?
Everybody in the field knew about him and Tarasova.
Man is a treasonous animal! You betrayed Leona.
Where was trust between human beings? Fuller himself had said the revolution is a history of betrayal not just during but even more after, like the marriage he had betrayed. He would say Tarasova was part of his work, there is a need in the heart to be part of something with another to avoid the terrible anomie of working alone. Did at some point Leona desert
him?
Did she leave him alone in the midst of his battlefield?

Out loud Ed said, “Do people join people just as they join movements, to turn longing into belonging?”

“You and your aphorisms!” Fuller replied.

“And what’s wrong with aphorisms?” Ed demanded.

“They bend truth to appear clever.”

“Therefore I am a good student,” Ed said. “Having learned all of your aphorisms, I now invent some of my own.”

Fuller roared with laughter. He slapped Ed on the back. They went into the restaurant and sat down at a small table for two near the window.
“I
shouldn’t laugh so,” he said, laughing again. “Better stop before I have food in my mouth or you’ll be the death of me.”

Ed remembered staring at him when he said that as if he could read his mind.
Thomassy, where are you, you said you would call. I’m counting on
you
now.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Thomassy got to his office long before Alice was due to arrive. He thought of the early-morning hours as his time of peace, when he could work undisturbed by the rest of humanity, having only himself to deal with, only the work he wanted to do before him. He knew there were people who felt alive in crowds, in theaters, casinos, at dances, in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Thomassy avoided crowds; they sapped his privacy. They used to say three’s a crowd. His answer was two’s a crowd when you’re looking for the still center, where communion begins. Was that why he’d been a bachelor so long, afraid to be cut back by another? The war was between you and crowds, you and the state, you and the first other person. Eve with the apple, and peace fled.

He put the newspaper under his arm so he could turn the key in the lock. It was the first issue of
The New York Times
in which the Fuller trial coverage appeared on page one. The George part of his name appeared on page one, followed by
continued on Page 14
where
Thomassy
was the first word of the continuation. If his father were still alive, he’d have to phone him.
Hey, Pop, guess what?
And his father, who would never have known about the
Times
story in Oswego, would have said,
That your name in the paper, George, not mine. My name Thomassian. You think I want show neighbors you change my name?
The old man was dead. The dialogue continued.

The red light on Alice’s answering machine blinked, meaning
messages.
I saw Mr. Thomassy on television, can he defend my wife. She’s not a crook, she’s a kleptomaniac, she’s sick, she needs help not jail.
Beep.
I read about Mr. Thomassy in the
Times.
I want him on retainer in case I get into trouble again with the Liquor Commission.
Beep.
My son is in Attica with hardened criminals. He’s only nineteen. He swears he didn’t mean to shoot the gas station attendant. The gun wasn’t his. Will Mr. Thomassy try to get him out?

Fuck the messages. Publicity was supposed to be good for business, but he had all the cases he could handle without taking on associates and starting a school for baby lawyers.

Wrong, George, he told himself. Publicity gets you the chance to drop all the nickel-and-dime cases that can be handled by some jerkoff just out of Pisswater Law School or a well-meaning clunk from legal aid. Wrong again. Those are the guys who screw up the little cases. George, big-rep lawyers pick their cases. Big-rep lawyers make a lot of money.

What would I do with a lot more money, buy four more neckties?

This is my hour of peace, he told the blinking red light. It commanded: pick up.

He’d always been able to resist the command.

He picked up. It was Francine’s voice. If he looked up at the ceiling God would be sitting there, pulling the strings.

Alice, this is Francine Widmer. Please have Mr. Thomassy call me, at my home if it’s before eight-thirty, at the UN after nine-thirty. The earlier the better. If he calls from the courthouse, please have him try to get in touch with me during a break. It’s important.

At her home? Her home was his place until she deserted.

It’d been so long since he’d dialed her at her apartment he had to look the number up. Dialing it brought back the early days, when he’d be nervous about her state of mind.

Her sleepy voice said, “Hello.” That’s all it took to make his steeled heart turn back into a pump beating faster.

“You called?”

“George, where are you?”

“Office.”

“This early?”

As if nothing had happened.

“I can’t forget my other clients just because I’ve got a trial on. I need to get some paperwork moving. What’s up?”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m just wanting to get some work done.”

“My mother and father have invited us to dinner this evening.”

If you’re a trial lawyer, you lose the ability to take ordinary conversation at face value. The unexpected elicits suspicion.

“Do they know that we have semi-busted up?” He heard humming on the line. “This is a bad connection. Let me call you back.”

“No, you won’t call back. I don’t mind the humming. We have not semi-busted up. I needed air, space, to think about…”

“About?”

“About where we’re going. Or not going.”

“You’ve got a mighty circumspect way of referring to the unmentionable.”

“It’s the iffiness of what we have now, George. I feel like a transient.”

“Well, what’s going to happen at dinner? Am I supposed to act like you and I are strangers?”

“George, you’re hurting.”

The day he was twenty-one he had told his mirror while shaving that detachment was the key to adult life. Mama and Papa, the original governors, had not been in charge for years. The point was not to let anyone else take their place. There were three ways of standing: on someone else’s feet, letting others stand on your feet, or standing alone.

He had vowed never to be dependent on anyone. Wasn’t that what the women were demanding for themselves? Of course he was hurting.

“George?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s just dinner.”

“No ulterior motives?”

When she said “None,” he thought that’s not the answer she would have given under sodium pentathol. Francine was a great manipulator but a lousy liar.

“What time?”

“Eight okay?”

“It’s a lot more convenient to come straight from court. Or is that early too working class?”

“Eight. Please, George?”

You please George. You used to please George. George is not acquiescent by nature. With your voice on the line, where is his famous strength?

“I’ll be there,” he said, and hung up, no good-bye, no chance for further chitchat. His fucking heart was going like a kid’s. He worked as if he were possessed.

*

When Alice came in that morning, he’d gone, but the number of tapes he’d left for her, including revisions of a lengthy memorandum of law, made her think he’d been there all night instead of just a few hours. She’d once had a fantasy about them working all night on some pressing matters, then toward morning, tired, coming together in each other’s arms.

She’d said to him, “I can get more money elsewhere.”

“Alice,” he’d said, “you’re not going anywhere. If you want a raise, why don’t you just ask for it straight out.”

And he’d given her one. But that wasn’t what Alice wanted.

*

When Roberts came up to him in the hallway just outside the courtroom, Thomassy had a feeling the meeting wasn’t coincidence. He saw Koppelman the Insidious drop behind.

“Just one question, George,” Roberts said.

That was the first time he’d called him George.

“I hear you’re planning to put the defendant on the stand.”

“I’m still thinking it through,” Thomassy said.

“Let me know when you’ve decided.”

“I’ll let the court know.”

“Mind if I ask a personal question?” Before Thomassy could respond, Roberts continued, “You’re first-generation American-born, aren’t you?”

“It was crowded on the Mayflower,” Thomassy said.

“How do you feel about defending a traitor?”

Thomassy felt his right hand tighten. “This isn’t a treason trial.”

“Maybe not for the defendant,” Roberts said and walked away, his leather heels echoing Thomassy’s rage all the way down the corridor.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Driving to the Widmer house, Thomassy couldn’t stop the debate with Roberts in his head.
I let him get to me.

He saw the red light late, jammed the power brakes. His tires screeched. Pedestrians looked at him,
crazy driver.

Roberts was doing to him what he always did to others. Get them angry so they can’t think straight.

The honking behind him made him see the light had turned green. Go. Starts like that use half a gallon of gas.

Maybe it was all Fuller’s fault. He was eighty-two, wasn’t he? Maybe he poured some of the wrong fluid in, a mistake. It could have been one of the others upstairs. God knows what the truth is, my job is to defend. Did a surgeon check to see who was under the anesthesiologist’s mask in the middle of an operation? He’d told the kids at NYU
You are not the law, you are a tool of the law. Every last son-of-a-bitch in the world is entitled to the best defense you can give him.
And that black-haired girl in the front row had raised her hand and asked
What about Eichmann?

He’d been cool with the kids.
It isn’t the dimension of the crime that matters. Mothers who bash their babies’ heads against the wall have a right to a lawyer.
The black-haired girl had persisted.
What if you’re sure the defendant is guilty?
He had answered
How can you be sure until you’ve heard every last word the jury hears, and even then?

Thomassy, who knew when a witness sounded unconvincing, was unconvincing to himself. He pulled off the road, onto the shoulder, hearing the gravel thrown up against muffler and tailpipe, stopping, taking out his handkerchief to mop his brow, and to let the hammer of his heart slow down.

*

When he turned into the splendid, curving driveway of the Widmer house, it was a quarter to eight. He didn’t want to kill time for fifteen minutes, but when he rang the bell, there was a delay as if his early arrival presented a problem inside.

Finally, it was Priscilla Widmer who came to the door, gave him a pleasant smile touched with frost, led him into the living room, where Ned rose and Thomassy saw the two others, Perry and Randall, the men from Washington. What the hell kind of family dinner was this? Where was Francine?

Thomassy the Pigeon shook hands all around. Was Francine in the kitchen, ashamed to have maneuvered him here under a pretext?

Mrs. Widmer disappeared as if on cue, and the lead man from Washington came right out with it. “Please don’t hold this meeting against any of the Widmers, Mr. Thomassy,” Perry said. “We thought it might be awkward to meet with you in your office or anywhere around the courthouse. If we’re ever asked about this meeting, it was a social occasion, unexpected by you, unexpected by us. It was very kind of the Widmers to provide the circumstances.”