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I never imagined I would have a partner. And then the realities of how painful the practice of law actually was bore down on me and forced a partnership to emerge from its own necessity. And after that it was mostly good. The economic realities of the business of law, like being a small dairy farmer pressed down on me. The intense amount of capital required to keep the business moving, how much the business was business and how little it was the practice of law. And although my law partner, like my life partner, was not close to being the person I would have imagined myself having as a partner. If you had asked me about who I would have chosen for a life partner or a wife I would have told you about an urban, articulate, somewhat aggressive woman who paid attention to her makeup and cared about how she carried herself in the world. And it is not as if that didn’t describe Marie, but she was also far more ego-less, far shier and more self-effacing a woman than I would have imagined. Yet she was kind, and calm, un-aggressive, gentle, subtly sexy and fiercely autonomous. She was a Lutheran, not Jewish, and that alone said a lot. And my law partner was also a surprise to me. A much younger man, with distinctly different political values, a liberal Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, a gun carrying, knife wielding, bespectacled suburbanite with two young kids, a beautiful wife who seemed to love him loyally, and a demeanor that just fit right in.

Anyhow, that Monday I woke up at five thirty, was out of the house and at exercise class before seven, was in the office, strapped into my seat by nine, and didn’t leave again until twelve hours later.

Our case is called. We waive the formal reading of the complaint. We plead not guilty. It is a capital case. The defendant has a history of defaults. Bail is denied. A pre trial conference date is set. Less than two minutes have passed. The next case is called.

The police have responded to a shooting. Vernald Jackson, aged twenty-two, sometimes pimp and full time punk is dead. three bullet holes in his back. His sneakers are untied. The homicide detectives at the scene think the loss of life is no big deal. It is finding the preps, fitting together the jig saw puzzle pieces, which turn them on. Find the bad guy. Get more scum off the street. Just doing their job.

The police find Yvonne at her girlfriend’s apartment. They take her downtown on “suspicion of murder.” They read her the Miranda warnings. They offered her a lawyer. They told her things would go better for her if she told them the truth. They told her they knew she wasn’t the one who shot Vernald. Then they turned on the tape recorder. They read her the Miranda warnings again. They told her she could have a lawyer again, that they would stop asking her questions any time she wished to. They asked if she knew she was being recorded and if she was giving her permission for them to record her testimony voluntarily, and freely, without threat, coercion, or promise. And she nodded her head yes. They said, “You have to answer audibly, Yvonne, because the tape recorder does not pick up your nods. Is you answer to my last question ‘yes’?” And she answered, “Yes.” The trap doors closed. Perhaps she didn’t remember my telling her not to talk to anyone.

The police ask Yvonne to tell them if she knows what happened to Vernald. And she tells them. Give them what they want. Her tape recorded statement seals her fate. This is what she said:

She had been at the apartment with Vernald and he was beating her. Not viciously enough to draw blood as he had, or to send her to the hospital as he had, just smacking her around, slapping her in the face, punching her in the arms, squeezing her breasts painfully. He kicked her in the ass. He hit her across the mouth with his backhand.

She had been up all night taking tricks downtown. Gave a guy a blowjob in his car. Went down for a guy in another car. Let some funny looking dude from the suburbs unbutton her blouse, unhook her brassiere, rub her breasts, lay his head on her breasts. She jerked him off. He was afraid of disease he said. She had a beer or two. A snort of cocaine. Nothing much. Just trying to pass the time. She worked alone. Came home at about five. Caught a little sleep but then Vernald woke up by eight and wanted company, and was playing the radio loudly, and just started messing with her. Was in one of his unfathomable rages. Told her “get outta bed, bitch,” and when she didn’t pulled her out naked. She wrapped the sheet around her. Held it to her with her arms tucked inside. Vernald hit her. Hit her again. Stormed around the apartment. Threw an empty beer can at her. Called her “cunt.” Called her, “whore.” Said she was a no good black bitch. Said she was holding money back on him. Opened the window and took all her clothing that had been lying on the side of the bed and threw it into the street.

She was pissed. Angry. Pulled on a pair of Vernald’s jeans, his floppy old gray sweatshirt and her high heels and was out the door. “Fuck you, Vernald, you bastard,” she said.

When she’d gotten out onto the to street she’d run into her brother, Allen.

“What the fuck happened to you, Yvonne,” he’d asked her and she told him.

“I’m gonna get my gun and scare the shit out of that fuck,” Allen said.

So Yvonne and Allen go down the street to where Allen’s gun is hidden. They go back to the apartment. They knock on the door. Vernald opens it. They go inside. It is an angry scene. Allen yells at Vernald who tells Allen to get the fuck out of his face. Allen takes out his gun and as Vernald tries to run into the other room Allen shoots him. Once twice I don’t know.

The tears are rolling down Yvonne’s checks as she speaks, you can hear them on the tape with her gasps for breath, her pain and terror.

“We ran away so fast out the back door of the basement, I don’t know that anyone saw us. He’s dead isn’t he?” she says.

“Do you know where Allen is now?” Rigdon asks.

Yvonne shakes her head.

“Then I’m just going to turn this tape off,” you hear Rigdon say and there is a click, like a key turning the cylinder of a lock to the cell they hope will hold her imprisoned forever.

I had been doing a feature for our six p.m. broadcast on local civil servants of note, you know, teachers, postal workers, school nurses, crossing guards, EMTs, fire fighters, policemen and women. It was an easy assignment. I’d interview people, they liked the stroke and were easy on camera. I’d follow them around for half a day with a cameraman, ask a few standard questions, and have a nice three minute segment for my Thursday “civil servant” spot. That’s how I’d met Drew. Meet your police chief kind of deal. We hit it off right away. He was smart and good looking and urbane in a way. He’d seen it all, or a lot of it, and had a real nice attitude. He liked supervising his troops, felt the responsibility for community safety, and liked being the intermediary between his department and the City Council, which was ultimately responsible for his budget. He had also been an officer in Desert Storm and liked that too. Just an all around good guy is how he first seemed to me. I’m so naïve. I try to be sophisticated and suave, but you just can’t take the girl and her small town mindset out of me.

He called me after the piece had aired and said he was flattered by my praise, although he though I’d made it seem like his job was all administration and no adventure.

“I go out on crime scenes when necessary,” he said. “I review case investigations with my chief of detectives. I still carry a gun.”

“Yes, but do you ever use it,” I teased.

“I don’t have to take it out for it to be a force to reckon with,” he said, and we both laughed nervously not fully sure what he’d meant or how it was meant to be heard.

“In any event,” he said, “I have to go to a meeting down at City Hall this Thursday late in the afternoon and I don’t know what your schedule is after the six o’clock news broadcast, but I thought maybe we could get together as a follow up to your civil servant segment on me and maybe I’d even give you a lead on another interesting story.

There was something obviously personal in his invitation. And there was no need for a camera crew when I could just bring my notepad. And I always follow up promising leads, personal and professional, so I said yes.

When he said, “We could have a snack if you’re free and interested,” I wasn’t surprised.

Mark has been working for me for three years now. I’d met him when he was an aide at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts in the fall of 1980. There were about a dozen aides who worked on the wards as trustees. All were men serving life without parole sentences for first-degree murder. All were let out of prison for six hours each weekday on an unpaid work release program.

Mark was born poor and grew up poor in Virginia, one of seven children. It really was no excuse. After high school he joined the Coast Guard where he was a bit of a misfit, inherently smarter than the other enlistees, but lost nonetheless. After the Coast Guard he began hanging out in Boston, where he met eager women, smoked a little weed, drank a little rum, and found himself with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Adrift, he and his best friend Curtis crafted a plan to rob the bar at the Holiday Inn on Massachusetts Ave. outside Central Square in Cambridge one November after midnight. It was ill conceived and more impulsive than well reasoned. They waited until the bar was empty. They nursed their beers. The bar tender served them a last round. Curtis pulled out a pistol, which Mark claims he didn’t know Curtis was even carrying. I find that part hard to believe. The bar tender also drew a gun and Curtis shot him, dead. The man had a wife and two young children. Mark was also shot in the exchange of fire and ran bleeding from the bar. They’d taken all of two hundred dollars. The FBI knew who Mark was immediately from his fingerprints on the beer bottle. He became a fugitive and was successful at it for five years. Traveled in fear but without incident. When they finally caught him, the County prosecutors offered him a second-degree murder conviction if he were to plead guilty and give them the name of his accomplice and best friend. Fifteen years to life seemed as long as a life sentence then. The disloyalty was too unbearable. He took the case to trial and lost, as he knew he must, there simply was no alternative. And in the end found himself in state’s prison for the remainder of his natural life without the possibility of parole.

He sat in his prison cell. He sat there for years. The mind plays tricks on the mind. Life in prison is life in prison. He passed the time with no hopes of freedom. One day, as if an apparition, the lead investigating state police detective appears in Mark’s cell.

“Had enough?” the officer asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean,” Mark replies.

“It means I want the name of the shooter, like I told you the last time.”

“And what do I get for giving you that name?”

“You get a second degree murder sentence, just like I told you fifteen years ago, and with credit for time served you walk.”

“Do I get that in writing? Are there any guarantees?”

“The answer to your first question is no. As to your second question I give you my word.”

And Mark gave him his best friend Curtis’ name. And Mark walked out of prison. And Curtis walked in.

David Cohen always an odd duck, a bit the outsider, an obvious New York Jew living in the woods of Vermont by way of the lower east side. A scientist, a recluse, and, a guy living on a commune where he didn’t quite fit in. But there he was, long salt and pepper gray hair by age thirty, never into the free sex scene swirling about him, never integrated into the community, but always seeking to be a part of it. He’d run a locksmith shop in Brooklyn, perhaps his father was a locksmith before him, and he was gifted with ideas about alternative technology, life extension services, Whole Earth Catalog things. And, of course, he was paranoid.

Was very heavily into cryonics and survivalism. Carried around with him a two foot by two foot sheet of plastic folded into the smallest square he could make it into, containing a fishhook, a wound up spool of dental floss, a dime, and a gold coin so that he could survive anywhere by opening the plastic and capturing rainwater or dew in the desert, by using the fishhook in any body of water, by using the dime for a phone call (before the era of calling cards), and the coin to bribe the border guards if the Cossacks or the Nazis returned. As to cryonics, he believed that the technology whereby people could be deep frozen immediately before their death and then unthawed when the technology permitted revitalization and DNA or genetic rejuvenation of the body, was not far away, and he was prepared to be frozen, had paid some money for it, maintained a connection with the folks who allegedly had the ice chests. He liked me and I tolerated him better than most.

At some point we simply lost contact though I heard he was estranged from the commune he’d lived on, that he had married, that he had children, that he was building a separate house for himself and his family on the commune land, that he was hostile and isolated, that he was trying to force a partition of the property. But I heard it all second hand and no more for perhaps twenty years.

Then out of the blue the phone rang in my office and it was Dave. In the early eighties he had been arrested on his land for growing pot, served a year in jail in the early nineties, thinks it was all a hostile plot by his former commune mates, anti-Semites, the attorney general of Vermont, and the trial judge to prosecute him. And now having basically exhausted his appellate remedies and acquired nearly three million dollars is looking for me to advise him on what if any further steps are available to him.

I’m happy to hear from him, even cautiously eager to hear his story. More than willing to help if I can. He is now living in California. Works for a company named Biotime, which freezes blood and harvested body parts. Tells me to buy stock in the company now trading at twenty-nine dollars a share, which I do, and it promptly runs up to over seventy dollars a share. What wonders are we humans.

I, Louie, brave hearted and six years old, stand barefoot on the linoleum floor in the kitchen and watch father hit mama in the face so hard that her cheeks turn a different color and her head spins sharply on her shoulders and she cannot hold back her tears.

“James, don’t,” she begs him, “Please don’t do this, James.”

“Shut the fuck up,” father says.

It makes no sense to me. Father pushes mother into the table. Hard. He is screaming and saying filthy words. Father has hit Louie of course, but Louie is a child needing punishment. Father had told Louie Louie had done wrong. He hit Louie and made Louie bleed: nose bleed, lips bleed. I talk funny when my mouth is puffy and sore. Mother puts ice on my lips. Cold ice, warm blood. But Louie has never seen papa hitting mama.

“Please Papa, don’t hit mama. Louie will be good,” I say to him.

“Damn right you’ll be good. You’ll be damn good.”

I’m not a superhero. Really. I just make believe. I am really a little boy who likes safe. Not boring, just safe. I don’t know much. I just know I can’t just stand here and watch papa hit mama. Mama is on the floor. Papa stands over her like a prizefighter. I pick up the big black scissors on the table. Father’s back is to me. I hold the scissors like a dagger. I raise my right arm and charge at him. I plunge the scissors down into his back, near his shoulder and neck, with the greatest force I am able.

“What the fuck,” he says.

He stands up and turns around to look at me. “You fucking little maggot,” he says. He puts his hand to his neck. The blood is spurting out forcefully. “You little maggot, prick,” he says. The color starts to change and lighten in his face. He takes a step towards me. He totters and then falls over backwards, directly onto the scissors.

Mother gets up. “Call the ambulance, Louie,” she says in a calm voice. “Call 911. Immediately. Tell them our address. Tell them a man is badly injured and bleeding and to send an ambulance right away.”

I get the phone off the wall and do what mother has told me to do as she goes quickly over to the sink, gets a dishtowel, and goes over to Papa. His breathing is shallow and the anger has left his face. Mother says, “You’ll be okay, James,” and presses the towel into his neck. Papa is just looking at the ceiling. Mother pushes on James’ left shoulder. She is straining and pushing with all her might as James’ body rolls over and mama pulls the scissors out. There is blood now everywhere. On mama, on papa, on the floor.

“Take the scissors and put them in the sink, Louie,” she says. “Wash them good. Put them in the dish drain. Wash your hands. Go to your room. Take all your clothes off and throw them in the hamper. Change clothes. Come back out here. Sit on the couch in the living room and do not say anything. You hear me? Not one word. Not ever. To anyone. Ever. Now go.” She smiles. She makes a kiss with her lips. “Now go boy, do it.”

And Louie does what he is told. I wash the scissors. I put them is the drain. I go to my room.. I hear the sirens. I put my clothes in the hamper. I walk back into the living room and sit on the coach. Mother gets up and walks to the sink. Papa’s eyes are closed. I see her take a clean towel, wipe the scissors dry, and put them in their drawer. The ambulance people arrive. They knock on the door and mama lets them in.

“What happened here.” they asked.

“My husband is badly injured and needs medical attention,” mama says.

The ambulance people look at Papa. One of them goes back out the door to the ambulance. The other one puts a needle into Papa. Then there is a tube running from a bottle into him. They cover papa’s mouth with a mask. They make phone calls on walkie-talkies. They put papa on a stretcher. More people arrive. Some are in suits. Some are in police uniforms. It is like on television. Mama is sitting on the couch with me. She is holding my hand.

“What happened here,” a policeman asks.

“I don’t know,” says mama. “I want a lawyer.”

“Ma’am you don’t need a lawyer, at least not yet, you just need to help us understand what happened here.”

Mama just sits there.

“What happened here, son,” the policeman asks me.

I see his uniform, his badge, his gun, his lips moving, the pool of blood on the floor.

“What happened here son, talk to me, I won’t hurt you.”

“Papa was hitting mama,” I say, forgetting what she told me.

“And then what happened boy.” But mama has squeezed my hand, real hard, and I remember not to say anything, to anyone, ever.

“Do we have a collar here Jim?”

“Looks that way. Call forensics, maybe the D.A., and let’s think about taking both the woman and the kid downtown.”

“I don’t want to go downtown,” says mama.

“You don’t really have a choice, ma’am, we’re gonna take you in for formal questioning.”

“I want to talk to a lawyer,” she says.

“You can do that at the station, ma’am, but right now we are taking you and the boy downtown.”

There are now six or ten police in our house, men and women police, police with guns and police with no guns, police with uniforms and police with no uniforms. Some are talking on phones. Some have cameras and are taking pictures. Louie is just sitting on the couch with mama.

“C’mon ma’am, we’ve got to take you downtown, and the boy too. What did you say your name was son?”

I say, “Louie.”

“And how old are you, Louie?” he asks.

But mama is squeezing my hand hard. And Louie knows he is six, but he says nothing. It is hard to say nothing and know I am six.

“How old are you,” he says again.

The police car is kind of cool, although I really want to be with mama. And I’m tired.