Right to Die

standing around, but no judge, no jury, and no Nancy.
    I saw a court officer I’d met before and went over to him. “Carmine.”
    “John, how’re you doing?”
    “Fine, thanks. Where is everybody?”
    “Judge excused the jury for the day.” Carmine inclined his head toward a door near the bench. “He wanted to see counsel in chambers. Little talking to before the defense starts his case-in-chief.”
    The defendant, a sullen white male in his thirties, sat at a table, a court officer on each side of the chair. The defendant noticed me eyeing him and tried a hard-con stare. Couldn’t quite pull it off.
    I said to Carmine, “How’s Nancy doing?”
    A smile, the head this time inclining toward the defendant. “Lemme put it this way. Our boy was Bob Hope, his theme song’d be ‘ Walpole by Wednesday.’ ”
    “He’d better work on that look before he hits the yard.”
    “Or put a case of Vaseline in his letter to Santa.”

    “... and then the judge says to my opponent, ‘You’re going to have your man take the stand, then?’ and the defense attorney, who acted like he was on his first heavy case, says, ‘Yes, Your Honor.’ So then the judge turns to me—a twinkle in his eye, but the court reporter can’t dictate that into her machine—and he says, ‘Ms. Meagher, if I were fairly certain that perjury had been committed in my courtroom, what do you think I should do?’ And I can see the defense attorney losing what little color he has left in his cheeks, and I say, ‘Why, inform our office, Your Honor, regarding the perpetrator and accomplices, if any.’ And the judge says, like he’d never thought about it before, ‘Accomplices? Accomplices, yes, yes. Oh, my, yes.’ And the defense attorney coughs and says, ‘Uh, Your Honor, might I have a... uh...’ and the judge says, ‘A moment to confer with your client?’ and the kid says, ‘Yessir.’ So we go back to the courtroom, and the kid pleads the guy out ten minutes later.”
    “And so here we are.”
    Nancy and I were finishing dinner at The Last Hurrah, a restaurant in the Omni Parker House on School Street , halfway between the courthouse and the subway. Wearing a soft gray suit and a pearl blouse, she’d been doing most of the talking, embellishing a relatively small victory to fill the air. It felt as though Nancy still wasn’t over Saturday night either.
    I reached into my coat pocket and said, “Hold out your hand.”
    She did, and I dropped the two-inch-by-six-inch ribboned package into it.
    “What’s this?”
    “Open it.”
    Nancy tore off the gift wrap and pried open the box. Lifting the Angel Gabriel from enveloping cotton, she hefted him in her palm. “Kind of light for a paperweight.”
    “Look under the wings.”
    “Poor Gabe! He’s been disemboweled.”
    “By design, Ms. Meagher. He’s going to be on top of our tree.”
    Nancy canted her head, the table light dancing on her eyes like sunshine on a lake. “Our tree?”
    “Our Christmas tree.” I reached over and covered the hand that wasn’t hefting the angel.

= 9 =

    The poster at the doors said the debate would begin promptly at eight p.m. with a book signing to follow at Plato’s Bookshop. Two Boston cops routinely assessed me as I walked past them. One black and one white, both male and big. You can specify size if you’re expecting trouble.
    The Rabb Lecture Hall itself, carved out beneath the new wing of the Boston Public Library, would remind you of a particularly well-kept school auditorium. I wanted to be early enough to see most of the folks as they filed in. The metal chairs, upholstered with black cushions, were bolted onto a steep slope. All the seats faced the stage, someone having sashed off a section of the bottom rows. I sat on the aisle near the back right corner to give me the best scope for faces.
    The stage was spartan. A podium under a baby spotlight. To the left of the podium, a grand piano that probably was easier to ignore than to move. Behind the podium, one chair, positioned subserviently in shadow. To the right of the podium, a longish table in medium light with three chairs. On the table, a paper cloth, a pitcher of water, and three glasses.
    The hall began to fill up. A lot of academics and professionals. More black faces than you usually see outside the predominantly black neighborhoods. A smattering of students, some vaguely familiar from the class at Mass Bay that morning, others too young to be in law school yet.