Ed shook his head.“Did you know Mike turned down a teaching job at one of them big law schools, Harvard or something, to stay at the Court? He got a slew of offers from big law firms. He showed me ’em. Lord, they were talking money I can’t even believe.”
The pride in his voice was obvious.
“More power to him,”
Fiske said dryly.
Ed suddenly slapped his thigh.“What’s wrong with you, Johnny? What the hell do you have against your brother?”
“I’ve got nothing against him.”
“Then why the hell don’t you two get along like you used to? I’ve talked to Mike. It’s not on account of him.”
“Look, Pop, he’s got his life and I’ve got mine. I don’t remember you being all touchy-feely with Uncle Ben.”
“My brother was a bum and a drunk. Your brother ain’t either of those.”
“Being a drunk and a bum aren’t the only vices in the world.”
“Damn, I just don’t understand you, son.”
“Join the crowd.”
Ed put out his cigarette on the concrete floor, stood and leaned against one of the garage’s exposed wall studs.“Jealousy ain’t right between brothers. You should feel good about what he’s done with his life.”
“Oh, so you think I’m jealous?”
“Are you?”
Fiske took another sip of beer and looked over at the belly-button-high wire fence surrounding his father’s small backyard. It was currently painted dark green. Over the years it had seen many different colors. John and Mike had painted it each summer, the color being whatever the trucking firm Ed worked for had left over from its annual office repainting. Fiske looked over at the apple tree that spread over one corner of the yard. He motioned with his beer.“You’ve got caterpillars. Get me a flare.”
“I’ll get to it.”
“Pop, you don’t even like standing on a chair.”
Fiske took off his jacket, grabbed a ladder from the garage and took the flare his father handed him. He ignited it, positioned the ladder under the bulging nest and climbed up. It took a few minutes, but the nest slowly dissolved under the heat of the flare. Fiske climbed back down and stamped out the flare while his father raked up the remains of the nest.
“And you just saw my problem with Mike.”
“What?”
Ed looked confused.
“When was the last time Mike was down here to help? Hell, just to see you or Mom?”
Ed scratched at his beard stubble and fumbled in his pants pocket for another cigarette.“He’s busy. He gets down when he can.”
“Sure he does.”
“He’s got important work to do for the government. Up there helping all them judges. It’s the damn highest court in the land, you know that.”
“Well, guess what, Pop, I keep pretty busy too.”
“I know that, son. But — ”
“But, I know, it’s different.”
Fiske threw his jacket over his shoulder, wiped the sweat from his eyes. The mosquitoes would be out soon. That made him think of water. His father kept a trailer at a campground down by the Mattaponi River.“You been down to the trailer lately?”
Ed shook his head, relieved at the change in subject.“Naw, planning to go soon, though. Take the boat out before it gets too cold.”
Fiske rubbed another bead of sweat off his forehead.“Let me know, I might run down with you.”
Ed scrutinized his eldest son.“How you doing?”
“Professionally? Lost two, won two this week. I take that as an acceptable batting average these days.”
“You be careful, son. I know you believe in what you’re doing and all, but that’s a damn rough bunch you’re lawyering for. Some of them might remember you from your cop days. I lie awake at night thinking about that.”
Fiske smiled. He loved his father as much as he did his mother, and, in some subtle ways of men, even more. The thought of his father still losing sleep over him was very reassuring. He slapped his father on the back.
“Don’t worry, Pop, I never let my guard down.”
“How about the other thing?”
Fiske unconsciously touched his chest.“Doing just fine. Hell, probably live to be a hundred.”
“I hope you do, son,”
his father said with great conviction as he watched his boy leave.
Ed shook his head as he thought of how far his sons had drifted apart and his being unable to do anything about it.“Damn,”
was all he could think of to say before sitting down on the toolbox to finish his beer.
It was early in the morning as Michael Fiske quietly hummed his way through the broad, high-ceilinged hallway toward the clerks’ mail room. As he entered the room, a clerk looked up.“You picked a good time, Michael. We just got in a shipment.”
“Any con mail?”
Michael asked, referring to the ever-growing number of petitions from prisoners. Most of them were filed
in forma pauperis,
meaning, literally, in the form of a pauper. There was a separate docket kept for these petitions, and it was so large that one clerk was specially designated to manage the filings. The IFPs, as they were termed by Court personnel, were usually a place to discover either humor over some ridiculous claim or occasionally a case worthy of the Court’s attention. Michael knew that some of the most important Court decisions ever had resulted from IFP cases — thus his early morning ritual of panning for appellate gold in the paper piles.
“From the hand scribblings I’ve tried to decipher so far, I’d say that was a good bet,”
the clerk responded.
Michael dragged a box over to one corner. Within its confines was an array of complaints, penned miseries, a procession of claimed injustice of varying content and description. But none of them could be simply shrugged off. Many were from death row inmates; for them, the Supreme Court represented the last hope before legal extermination.
For the next two hours Michael dug through the box. He was very accomplished at this now. It was like expertly shucking corn, his mind scanning the lengthy documents with ease, effortlessly probing through the legalese to the important points, comparing them to pending cases as well as precedents from fifty years ago pulled from his encyclopedic memory; then filing them away and moving on. However, at the end of two hours he had not found much of great interest.
He was thinking of heading up to his office when his hand closed around the plain manila envelope. The address label was typewritten, but the envelope had no return address. That was strange, Michael thought. People seeking to plead their case before the Court normally wanted the justices to know where to find them in the rare event that their plea was answered. There was, however, the left side of a postal return receipt card affixed to it. He slid open the envelope and removed the two sheets of paper. One of the functions of the clerks’mail room was to ensure that all filings met the strict standards of the Court. For parties claiming indigent status, if their petitions were granted, the Court would waive certain filing requirements and fees, and even engage and pick up some of the expenses of counsel, although the attorney would not bill for his or her time. It was an honor simply to stand before the Court as an advocate. Two of the forms required to achieve indigent status were a motion for leave to file as a pauper, and an affidavit signed by the prisoner, basically swearing to the person’s impoverished status. Neither was in the envelope, Michael quickly noted. The appeal would have to be kicked back.
When Michael started reading what
was
in the envelope, all thoughts of any filing deficiencies vanished. After he finished, he could see the sweat from his palms leach onto the paper. At first Michael wanted to put the pages back in the envelope and forget he had ever seen them. But, as though he had now witnessed a crime himself, he felt he had to do something.
“Hey, Michael, Murphy’s chambers just called down for you,”
the clerk said. When Michael didn’t answer, the clerk said again,“Michael? Justice Murphy is looking for you.”
Michael nodded, finally managing to focus on something other than the papers in his hand. When the clerk turned back to his work, Michael put the pages back in the manila envelope. He hesitated an instant. His entire legal career, his entire life, could be decided in the next second or so. Finally, as though his hands were acting independently from his thoughts, he slipped the envelope into his briefcase. By doing so before the petition had been officially processed with the Court, he had just committed, among other crimes, theft of federal property, a felony.
As he raced out of the mail room, he almost collided head-on with Sara Evans.
She smiled at first, but the look changed quickly when she saw his face.“Michael, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
She gripped his arm.“You’re not fine. You’re shaking and your face is white as a sheet.”
“I think I’m coming down with something.”
“Well, then you should go home.”
“I’ll grab some aspirin from the nurse. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sara, I really have to go.”
He pulled away, leaving her staring worriedly after him.
The rest of the day moved at a glacial pace for Michael and he repeatedly found himself staring at his briefcase, thinking of the contents. Late that night, his day’s work at the Court finally completed, he furiously rode his bike back to his apartment on Capitol Hill. He locked the door behind him and took out the envelope once more. He grabbed a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and carried everything over to the small dinette table.
An hour later he sat back and stared at the numerous notes he had made. He opened his laptop and rewrote these notes onto his hard drive, changing, tinkering, rethinking as he did so, a longtime habit of his. He had decided to attack this problem as he would any other. He would check out the information in the petition as carefully as he could. Most important, he would have to confirm that the names listed on the petition were actually the people he thought they were. If it seemed legitimate, he would return the appeal to the clerks’mail room. If it was clearly frivolous, the work of an unbalanced mind or a prisoner blindly lashing out, he had made up his mind to destroy it.
Michael looked out the window and across the street at the cluttered line of row houses that had been converted into apartments just like his. Young disciples of government were honeycombed in this neighborhood. Half were still at work, the rest in bed, nightmaring through a list of uncompleted tasks of national importance, at least until the five A.M. awakening. The darkness Michael stared into was interrupted only by the wash of a corner streetlight. The wind had gained strength, and the temperature had dropped, in readiness for an advancing storm. The boiler in the old building was not yet engaged, and a sudden chill hit Michael through the window. He pulled a sweatshirt from his closet, threw it on, and returned to stare out to the street.
He had never heard of Rufus Harms. According to the dates in the letter, the man had been incarcerated when Michael was only five years old. The spelling in the letter was abysmal, the formation of the letters and words clumsy, resembling a child’s humorous first attempts at penmanship. The typewritten letter explained some of the background of the case and was obviously composed by a far better educated person. A lawyer, perhaps, Michael thought. The language had a legal air to it, although it was as though the person typing it had intended his professional — together with his personal — identity, to remain unknown. The notice from the Army, according to the typewritten letter, had requested certain information from Rufus Harms. However, Rufus Harms denied ever being in the program the Army’s records apparently indicated he was in. It had been a cover, Harms was alleging, for a crime that had resulted in a horrific miscarriage of justice — a legal fiasco that had caused a quarter century of his life to disappear.
Suddenly warm, Michael pressed his face into the coolness of the window and took a deep breath, the air frosting the glass. What he was doing amounted to blatant interference with a party’s right to seek his day in court. All of his life Michael had believed in a person’s inalienable franchise to have access to the law, no matter how rich or poor. It was not scrip that could be revoked or declared worthless. He comforted himself somewhat with the knowledge that the appeal would have been defeated via a host of technical deficiencies.
But this case was different. Even if false, it could still do terrible damage to the reputations of some very important people. If it was true? He closed his eyes. Please, God, do not let it be, he prayed.
He turned his head and eyed the phone. He suddenly wondered if he should call and seek his brother’s advice. John was savvy in ways his younger brother was not. He might know how to handle the situation better. Michael hesitated for a moment longer, reluctant to admit that he needed any help, especially from that troubling, estranged source. But it also might be a way back into his brother’s life. The fault was not entirely on one side; Michael had matured enough to comprehend the elusiveness of blame.
He picked up the phone and dialed. He got the answering machine, a result that pleased a certain part of him. He left a message asking for his brother’s help but revealing nothing. He hung up, and returned to the window once more. It was probably better that John had not been there to take the call. His brother tended to see things only in rigid lines of black and white, a telling facet of the way he lived his life.
Toward the early hours of the morning, Michael drifted off to sleep, growing ever more confident that he could handle this potential nightmare, however it turned out.
Three days after Michael Fiske had taken the file from the clerks’mail room, Rufus Harms placed another call to Sam Rider’s office, but was told the attorney was out of town on business. As he was escorted back to his cell, Rufus passed a man in the corridor.