Barely able to contain my excitement, I turn and walk to Carmen at the defense table. Since he can only speak about four words of English, I don't bother making sense when I whisper in his ear.
“All the while I'd be thinkin', I could be another Lincoln, if I only had a brain.”
I break out in a big grin and hug him. He figures something good must have happened, so he breaks out in just as big a grin and hugs me back. We are one happy lawyer-client team. Among the people who aren't quite as happy is Judge Kasten.
“Perhaps you would like to enlighten us as to what is going on, Mr. Carpenter?”
Smile painted on my face, I turn and walk toward the bench. “Sorry, Your Honor, but I thought my client should be the first to hear the good news.”
“And just what good news is that?” he asks.
“Well, I'm not sure why we had to learn about it this way …” I take the smile off long enough to stare a silent reprimand at Prosecutor Trell. “… but I've just heard a report that another man has confessed to the crime my client is being tried for. The media has the story. He is under arrest and is being held at this very moment.”
There is an uproar in the courtroom, or at least as much uproar as this scraggly group can manage. My eyes are on the jury, now fully awake and talking excitedly among themselves. “Can this be true?” they're thinking. “Does this mean we can go home?”
Carmen shakes hands and hugs everyone in sight; for a moment I think he's going to accidentally strangle the bailiff. My eyes are on the prosecution table, where one of Trell's assistants gets up and rushes out of the room, already drawing his cell phone out of his pocket as he goes. I watch him until I turn to the sound of an increasingly annoying noise. It's Kasten's gavel, and he's pounding it as hard as he can.
Eventually, order is restored, if for no other reason than to quiet that stupid gavel. Kasten turns to Trell, who is still looking befuddled.
“Mr. Trell, what is your information on this?”
Trell doesn't know what attitude to take, since he doesn't know if it's true. He plays it down the middle. “I'm having it checked right now, Your Honor.” He turns toward the doors in the back of the court as if to show Kasten where the answer will come from.
On cue, the assistant opens those doors and comes back in the room, holstering his cell phone as he does. He quickly goes to Trell and whispers in his ear. The jig, I am aware, is about to be up.
Trell nods vigorously, then turns back to Kasten. I think he so relishes what he's about to say that he's actually salivating. He uses his deepest voice. “Your Honor, I am told there is no truth whatsoever to this report.” Roosevelt spoke with less drama when he announced the attack on Pearl Harbor.
No sooner does Trell finish speaking than Kasten's head, as well as every other head in the courtroom, swivels toward me.
I shrug, as if I'm an innocent bystander. “I'm as surprised as you, Judge. The media in this town is getting out of hand.”
He, of course, is not buying it. “This is bizarre behavior even by your standards.”
Obviously he doesn't know my standards, but now is not the time to educate him. I shrug so hard my shoulders hurt. “Your Honor, surely you don't think-”
He interrupts me, which is just as well, since I wasn't quite sure how to finish the sentence. “Finish your summation, and then I'll want to see both counsel in chambers. The jury will disregard this entire incident.”
I walk toward the jury, shaking my head in amazement at this turn of events. Let's see if they disregard this …
“The second thing I wanted to talk to you about is reasonable doubt. If any of you believed, even for a few moments, that someone else had confessed to the crime my client stands charged with, then you must have a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.”
A cannon goes off in Trell's chair, sending him soaring to his feet. “Objection! Objection!”
He yells so loud that I have to yell over him to the jury, while I'm pointing to Carmen. “You cannot be absolutely positive about this man's guilt and at the same time be ready to believe that someone else did it!”
“Objection! Objection!” That Trell is quite a conversationalist. Meanwhile, Jean Valjean never pounded rocks as hard as Kasten is pounding the gavel.
“Bailiff, remove the jury.”
As I watch the jury file out, I know that Kasten is going to come down on me, even contempt is a possibility. I also know that I'm my father's son, and Kasten has too much respect and friendship for Nelson Carpenter to destroy his first and only born.
Besides, Carmen Herndez is going to be a free man within the hour, which makes this a very good day.
MY CHILDHOODIS FILLED WITH GREAT MEMO-ries, in fact, great ones are the only memories I have. I talked to a shrink about it, and we pretty much agreed that unpleasant things must have happened when I was growing up, but that I had just repressed them. I asked him how long I could go on repressing them, and he said maybe forever. That worked for me, so I left therapy before I could blow it and get in touch with my true feelings.
That was eight years ago. So far, so good.
But if one memory stands out over all others, it's my father and I going to Yankees games. We lived in Paterson, which is where I still have my office. The drive from our house to Yankee Stadium was eight miles on Route 4 to the George Washington Bridge, then the Cross Bronx to the Major Deegan to the stadium. Without traffic it's about twenty-five minutes, which means that in real life it takes about an hour and a half. But I never minded, because I knew at the end I was going to walk through the tunnel and out to our seats, and I would see the most beautiful sight in the world. The Yankee Stadium infield.
The green of that infield was and is unlike any color ever produced anywhere else. You could buy a box of half a million Crayolas and never begin to match that color. Set against it is the understated tan of the dirt part of the infield, which becomes a deep, powerful brown when watered by the groundskeepers. Their job, the job of maintaining the Yankees’ home field, is a heavy but rewarding burden that they shoulder flawlessly.
Today I'm going to get to see that infield, as my father and I have tickets to the game. As always, I pick him up at his house and head for the stadium. The drive there is just as glorious, just as filled with anticipation, as it was in my youth. The only difference is that I'm the one behind the wheel, which can't be right, since when we go to the games I'm eight years old again.
But we'll get there, we'll park in our special place, which gets us out after the game faster than anyone else, my father will become my “Dad,” and everything will be right with the world.
Today the Yankees are playing the Red Sox. I used to hate the Red Sox, just like I hated the Orioles, and the Indians, and the White Sox, and anybody else not in pinstripes. But I don't hate anymore, I'm too arrogant for that. To hate is to grant a level of importance that those teams don't deserve. We dismiss our opponents, we don't hate them. They are not worthy of that.
Our seats are field level boxes, third row behind third base. If there is a more perfect six feet of real estate, I have no idea where it is. I am sucking on a snow cone and wondering why food sold at the seats by vendors tastes better than the same items bought anywhere else, when my father nudges me and points to the scoreboard. He doesn't have to say a word; it's the fourth inning, time to start betting.
I don't know when this started, but I think it was in my early teens. My father and I bet on everything in the fourth inning. We keep track of the bets; at one point, I think I owed him a million dollars. It was a big burden for a high school sophomore, but I won it back and then some. Today he owes me forty-one thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars. I'm on a roll.
Trot Nixon steps up to the plate to face Roger Clemens. It's my father's turn to choose the bets because he's behind. His mind calculates the infinite possibilities as if he is planning a legal argument.
“I'll bet you five hundred dollars the first pitch is a strike,” he says with confidence.
“You're on,” I say unnecessarily, since every bet is on. Clemens throws a slider a foot outside. Good start for me, but I don't get cocky. The fourth can be a very long inning.
“Six hundred says he gets a base hit. You give me three to one.”
I just nod this time, he knows he's on. Nixon pops up to center, Williams calls off Knoblauch and handles it easily. I make a fist in triumph. “Yesssss.”
While we're waiting for Garciaparra to come up, my father says, “I was hoping Nicole would join us.”
