Invisible Boy (44 page)

“The boyfriend never even hit her, Kyle. She says he cut her in the arm once, but otherwise she just sat there and watched.”

“And they finished up with her today?” he asked.

“I guess. At least Bost’s go-round. The defense might bring her back for more, right?”

“Batting cleanup.”

“So does it make me a racist, that I hate this woman so much?” I asked.

“Maddie,” he said, “I come from a nice liberal Jewish family. When I told them I was giving up my white-shoe corporate gig
to become a prosecutor, my father gave me a ton of shit about how it meant I was going to be busting poor black and Hispanic
people, ‘for the man.’ ”

“What’d
you
say?”

“That he had it totally backwards: I was going to speak out on behalf of poor black and Hispanic victims—mostly women and
children. And take a seventy-thousand-dollar pay cut.”

I tried digesting that.

“Look, sweetie,” Kyle continued, “you’re angry on behalf of a three-year-old boy. How can that be racist?”

“Because I was born racked with guilt?”

“How is that even
possible
? You’re a goddamn Episcopalian.”

“Fuck if I know. Some sort of genetic mutation.”

“So go home, get some sleep. And pick up a copy of the
Times
tomorrow morning. You’ll probably know the outlines of Marty’s closing before you get on the subway.”

“Hey, Bunny,” said Dean’s welcome voice two hours later.

I was curled up on the sofa with the phone. Pagan and Sue were out for the evening.

“It’s so great to hear your voice,” I said. “I thought it was going to be Astrid again.”

I’d given him the new home number for the happy newlyweds out in New Jersey.

“Nutty Buddy getting you down?”

“I just wish she’d make up her mind. I mean, stay married or don’t, just stop whining about it, you know?”

“I can’t understand what her problem with Christoph is. He seems like a helluva guy to me.”

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” I asked.

“Could she be happy with
anybody
?”

“Probably not. Not even you.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Oh come on, you wouldn’t want to be married to a gorgeous titled Euro-chick? Imagine the possibilities.”

“Imagine Thanksgiving dinner at the farm,” he said. “Especially when my mother brought out the Jell-O salad.”

“I
love
your mom. Jell-O and all.”

“Of course you do. That’s why I married you.”

“And you told me it was because I’m such a buxom heifer.”

He laughed. “That too.”

“Ooo la la,” I said, and we told each other good night.

T
here was an article on page three of the next morning’s
Times
’s “New York and Region” section:

MOTHER TELLS OF BEATINGS THAT LED TO HER SON’S DEATH

In a whispered monotone, Queens resident Angela Underhill testified yesterday that her male companion had inflicted horrific
beatings on her 3-year-old son in the months before the boy’s death in 1989….

… The case has drawn wide attention because the lawyer for the child’s mother, Angela Underhill, 25, and advocates for battered
women contend that she also had been a victim of these assaults. The case has also raised questions about the response of
child-welfare authorities to a complaint that the boy was a victim of routine abuse.

Hedda Nussbaum rated three mentions. Teddy Underhill was called merely “the boy” throughout.

I figured Hetzler would be going for broke.

Cate was standing on the courthouse steps when I got out to Queens.

“I couldn’t get out of work yesterday,” she said. “You have to catch me up on what happened on the stand.”

We got in line for the metal detector and I ran her through the narrative each lawyer had conjured forth: how Bost teased
out the appalling choreography of both Teddy’s death and his mother’s nonchalance, Hetzler deployed Angela’s own harrowing
childhood as a get-out-of-jail-free card, and Galloway limned the proportions of a mendacious greed that was more powerful
than a locomotive and able to prove her own client’s innocence in a single bound.

Cate placed her purse in a plastic bin for the X-ray machine. “The Three Faces of Teddy’s Mother?”

“Angela Underhill: bitch, victim, or money-grubbing crack ho?
You
decide.” I dumped out a pocketful of nickels and subway tokens.

“All of the above,” said Cate.

“Yahtzee.”

I stepped toward the metal detector’s victory arch.

Cate and I sat down directly behind Bost once we got inside the courtroom. I gave her the article I’d ripped from the
Times
and then turned in my seat, trying to spy out its author. It had to be either the balding blond guy in a linty blazer or
the tweed-bedecked ringer for Trotsky, but I couldn’t decide between them. Both had notepads at the ready.

Bost had Teddy’s poster portrait back up on the easel as backdrop for her closing argument.

She looked at it for a long moment before saying a word. The jurors gazed along with her.

When she turned toward them, she let her hand rest along the top of the image.

“We’ve heard a lot of testimony in this room over the last two weeks,” she said. “Testimony from a variety of experts and
regular citizens who were drawn into the horrible, gut-wrenching circumstances of this little boy’s death, and its aftermath.”

She dropped her hand from the photo and walked toward the jury box. “We can tell you how Teddy’s body was discovered. We can
tell you how he was identified, and how the homicide investigation was conducted, once his identity was known. We can describe
the series of horrific injuries he suffered over the course of his three years on this earth—injuries so severe that their
impact is still literally
mapped
in his very bones, even after his death.”

Bost looked toward the defense table. “His mother described the beating which caused his death, and the indifference with
which she and Albert Williams treated his tiny, broken body when it was all over.

“Stephanie Keller told us what it was like to hear his screams. She could give us some sense of what it must have been like
to suffer the violent fury of a full-grown man for transgressions as slight as not finishing a bowl of cereal fast enough.”

She looked back to the jury. “What we cannot know is what it was like for Teddy Underhill to be
alive
. We cannot know what it was like to live in that much pain, and fear—wondering when the next blows were going to come, when
the next bones would be broken. He can’t tell us. He can’t tell us anything at all. Angela Underhill and Albert Williams made
sure of that, made sure he would never know anything more of life than his short, desperate glimpse of this earth as a place
filled with fear, and pain, and suffering.

“We cannot know what he dreamed of, the hopes he cherished…

what he might have become. The only things left to mark this boy’s short, horrible life are the photograph you see before
you, and his tiny, ravaged bones.”

She turned back to his picture once more. “Take a look at that little face, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. That moment
captured when he was overjoyed to be sitting on Santa Claus’s lap in a department store, smiling with gratitude because he
got to have at least one normal childhood afternoon—secure in the love of his great-grandmother, safe from harm for just a
few precious hours.

“What Angela Underhill and Albert Williams did to this child goes beyond homicide. They didn’t merely rob him of his future,
they took his
entire
life, stripping away all vestiges of his childhood even before he was so brutally slaughtered.

“Albert Williams’s lawyer would like you to forget the testimony of Stephanie Keller, who knew full well what sort of abuse
Teddy was suffering at her client’s hands. Keller, a medical professional with twenty years’ experience, knew exactly what
she was seeing and hearing. Stephanie Keller
fought
to live long enough to come here and tell us all that, in person, to prove that someone in this world cared enough about
Teddy to seek justice for him. She offered to help Angela Underhill save her son from this life of pain, and she did her best
to make sure the state would step in to protect him, if his mother wouldn’t. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen: a
stranger
cared more about the welfare of this child than his own mother did.

“But Albert Williams’s lawyer didn’t manage to shake Ms. Keller on this stand. She knew exactly what happened, and she told
her story clearly, and convincingly. Because of her, we know what sort of life Teddy was forced to lead, and we know the kind
of violence that ultimately led up to his death. We know that Albert Williams killed him, as Ms. Keller feared he would.

“And here’s the thing that’s most sickening, of all the sickening things you’ve had to think about, here in this courtroom:
none of this had to
happen
. There was a safe, nurturing place for Teddy to live, with a beloved family member who cared for this child and who loved
him dearly. Teddy’s great-grandmother offered him a home, but his mother was too selfish to let him go. Teddy’s suffering
was Angela Underhill’s ticket to independence—a free place to live, free food, no need to work. If only she could put up with
the nuisance of raising a child, she had no one to answer to. Ultimately, that free ride was worth more to her than her child’s
very life. And now that he’s gone, she’s got another meal ticket on the way, fathered by the same man who beat her little
boy to death.

“Angela Underhill’s lawyer will tell you that she was so damaged by the violence she saw in her own childhood that we could
not have expected her to safeguard the life of her son. He wants you to believe that she was not responsible for the actions
of Albert Williams, and that she was powerless to stop him from battering her child to death.”

She looked at the photograph again. “Take a look at this boy’s face and tell me that you wouldn’t have tried to save him from
a life of pain. Take a look at his great-grandmother’s face, here in this courtroom, and tell me she didn’t love him enough
to give him a loving home. Angela Underhill knew that full well, but she was too selfish to keep her child safe, or even to
keep him alive.

“We know how Teddy Underhill died: Albert Williams punched him in the chest a dozen times, until the damage to his tiny ribs
was so severe it stopped his heart. That is a horrible, excruciating, and absolutely sickening way to die. Teddy Underhill’s
life ended with fear, and pain, and suffering. And his mother sat on a bed four feet away watching television while it happened.
She didn’t protect him, she didn’t comfort him, she didn’t even get up off the bed to
look
at him once the beating had stopped. She sat by as Albert Williams stuffed her son’s body in a refrigerator. Then she spent
a week in the motel room with her son’s corpse, doing drugs.

“Her lawyer has argued that the only reason Angela Underhill is facing charges in her son’s death is that she’s ‘poor and
black.’ He’s argued that she feared for her life, and that her judgment was so distorted by an abusive childhood that she
was incapable of protecting her son. He’s argued—and I’m sure
will
argue further—that this means you should declare her not guilty on all counts.

“But I’m asking you, today, to think about the fate of Teddy Underhill when you weigh your decision concerning the guilt of
both
Albert Williams and Teddy’s
mother
, Angela Underhill. A three-year-old child is dead because of their cruelty, their selfishness, and their depraved indifference.
Nothing can bring him back, but it’s within your power to demand justice in his memory.

“Stephanie Keller came here at great personal cost, asking you to do just that. She battled cancer with tremendous courage
for a long, long time, and willed herself to survive long enough to testify before you.

“Stephanie Keller was a warrior. She fought to save the life of Teddy Underhill even as her own life ebbed away. She fought
to
make
us comprehend this little boy’s pain and fear and suffering, knowing full well it meant spending her
own
final hours in crushing physical agony. She fought to be wheeled into this room because
nothing
could stop her from asking all of us—with her
last
ounce of strength, her
last
breath of life—for justice.”

Bost dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment, hands clasped at the small of her back.

“I’ll say it again: Stephanie Keller was a warrior.” She looked up, taking a step closer to the box of jurors.

Cate said, “
Was?
” beside me.

I countered with an unvoiced “
Fuck
.”

Bost said, “When you think about Teddy Underhill, I want you to think about what this woman—a
stranger
—willingly sacrificed on his behalf.”

She turned, pointing toward the defense table. “Weigh
her
compassion against Angela Underhill’s cruel indifference…. Weigh
her
courage against Albert Williams’s cowardly brutality….”