Running From The Law

I shifted position on the stool that had been my perch in the butcher shop since I was a kid. Grayish stuffing puffed out of a rip in the green vinyl cushion, exposing the top of a steel pole. I didn’t know which was making me more uncomfortable, the steel pole or my father’s silent treatment. Frankly, I’d rather sit on the goddamn pole.

“Dad, you’re not happy for me?” I asked.

Thwack! His stocky frame bent over a rack of fresh lamb and he separated two chops with a familiar cleaver and more vigor than necessary.

“I won four hundred grand, you know.”

Thwack! Thick steel-rimmed glasses slipped down his bulbous nose. Gray chest hair strayed from an open button on his white uniform. His bald dome bore a constellation of liver spots, like a planetarium.

“The jury was only out for an hour. An hour, that’s nothing.”

Thwack! No lamb deserved this kind of treatment. Neither did the meat.

“Dad, if you don’t talk to me, I’m going home to my boyfriend who doesn’t talk to me.”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t like it, what you did in court. It wasn’t right.”

“Why not? I won, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t raise you that way!” He brandished the cleaver at me but I barely flinched, I’ve grown so accustomed to my father threatening me with sharp objects. You name it-boner, slicer, butcher’s needle-I’ve had it an inch from my nose. It’s good training for litigation.

“How did you raise me?”

“I raised you to be a good girl.”

“Good girls make bad lawyers, Pop.”

“Hah!” He returned to his work, squinting as he positioned the chops on a wooden carving block. It was dark with blood at its concave center and knifemarks scored its surface. “Hah!” he said again, but didn’t elaborate. Thwack!

My victory champagne was wearing off. I crossed my legs in the offending suit, breathed in the spicy smells of the shop, and watched the sluggish traffic through the neon letters in the MORRONE’S MEATS sign, with its glowing orange pig. My father’s shop was in the Italian Market, a city district of stores and outdoor stands hawking fresh crabs, squid, and poultry alongside detergent, pantyhose, and sponge mops. Cars crept down Ninth Street, navigating between the stalls and debris like an urban Scylla and Charybdis.

“They should clean up here,” I said to no father in particular. “Pick up the garbage. Don’t you think?”

Thwack!

Wooden pallets and cardboard boxes were piled in the gutter; pictures of apples smiled from the boxes and the California oranges looked positively giddy. But the fruit pictures were the only thing smiling in the market lately. An arsonist had burned Palumbo’s restaurant to the ground, tearing the heart out of the neighborhood, and a Vietnamese jewelry store down the street was robbed at gunpoint last week. My father’s shop hadn’t been hit. He thought the crooks respected him; I thought they knew he was broke.

“Dad, when are you going to sell this place?”

Thwack! His glasses, owing to their weight, slipped to the bumpy end of his nose. His eyesight was worsening daily; he was becoming the Mr. Magoo of butchers. He’d knife himself someday, if somebody else didn’t.

“Come on, Dad. You’re not mad at me for the trial, you’re mad because of the Sullivan case.”

“Right.”

Vito speaks! “How long you gonna stay mad?”

“Forever.”

Such a reasonable man. “Dad, you want to discuss this rationally for a change?”

“Fine, Miss Fresh Mouth.”

My full name. Usually he shortened it to Miss Fresh. “Listen, Fiske Hamilton is a federal judge, one of the most respected on the bench. He needed a lawyer, so he came to me. What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re livin’ with his son.”

“Yeah, so?” I lived with Paul Hamilton without benefit of marriage. The fact still rankled my father, even though he didn’t like Paul at all. Just one of the many paradoxes that made up Vito Morrone.

Thwack!

“Dad?”

“Like I said,” he said cryptically.

LeVonne Bayson, who was sweeping up sawdust in the corner, smiled to himself. LeVonne was the shy black teenager who worked for my father. We all pretended LeVonne was there to help with the customers, but that wasn’t the real reason. There weren’t enough customers to keep even my father busy, or my Uncle Sal, who hung out in the shop from time to time.

“LeVonne,” I called out, “do you know what this man is talking about? Can you translate for me? Would you tell the butcher I’m very happy to be in his country?”

LeVonne smiled like someone on a TV on mute and continued rearranging the sawdust.

Thwack! “What? What’sa matter, she don’t understand English, Professor? Tell her it means ‘like I said.’”

LeVonne shook his head, showing the wisdom not to referee. His skin was smooth, he was on the small side, and his features were still boyish as he looked down over the worn end of the broomstick. He wore his hair cut close to his head and a sparse patch of black fuzz was beginning to sprout under his chin.

“Why don’t you just talk to me, Dad?”

“You shoulda said no. No. N-O.”

“Turned down the Sullivan case? Why? It’s the biggest sexual harassment case in the country, it’s once-in-a-lifetime.”

“That’s why you’re doing it?”

Partly. “Christ, what was I supposed to do? Say ‘Look, Judge, I know you’re in trouble and I’m a hot-shit lawyer and I’m practically engaged to your son, but can you just take your business elsewhere?’”

“Hmph.” He wiped the cleaver on his apron and dropped it into the slot beside the carving board. Then he grabbed a well-worn boning knife, sliced a sliver of spongy fat from a chop, and threw the fat into a dented bucket. “Rita, did you ever think the judge mighta done it? Huh?”

I had, but I rejected it. “Fiske Hamilton? He’s a class act, Dad. A Yale grad, a partner at Morgan Lewis for ten years before he went on the bench. He didn’t harass her. I asked him and he denied it.”

Milky brown eyes flared behind his glasses. “It said in the paper he was chasin’ her around the office, right in the courthouse. It was in the Daily News, did you see?”

“You gonna believe everything you read?”

“You gonna believe everything you hear?” He laughed, then looked over at LeVonne. “Mr. President, you like that one?” he shouted, and LeVonne smiled his secret smile.

“Dad, this woman’s asking for three million dollars in damages. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, the whole works. She just wants to make a quick buck, that’s all there is to it.”