“Is that the first time you heard The Defendant’s name?”
Woefully, I admitted, “Yes, Your Honor.”
“That right?” Judge Lambert murmured to himself, as though surprised to learn that there was something to this affidavit after all. He sat in contemplative silence a few moments while I felt like I was being burned alive.
“If I may say one last thing, Your Honor,” I said, and winced a little, sure I was about to be scolded for speaking before being spoken to. To my surprise, Judge Lambert only regarded me with an open and curious expression. “I think, if you have a chance to review my initial statement to the police, you’ll see that I was insistent about the fact that the man I saw at the front door was a stranger. I know I said that at first I thought it was Roger, but then I also said it was only a fleeting thought. And that immediately I came to my senses and realized I’d never seen this person before. And I was consistent in this statement to everyone I spoke to over the next thirtysome hours, well before I met Martina Cannon. My sisters, my boyfriend, even the alumna who hosted us at her house that evening. And then, even though Sheriff Cruso focused on Roger those first few weeks, I stuck to my guns. I insisted that it was not Roger I saw, though it would have made my life so much easier if I’d just caved to the pressure. And I think what I’m trying to say,” I said, flushing a bit because Judge Lambert’s eyes had glazed over by then—Judges appreciate brevity in testimony, a law school professor had recently cautioned—“is that I am not someone who is easily influenced.”
Judge Lambert trilled his lips in deliberation. “I’ll need a chance to review those statements. Speak to these people face-to-face. You’ll give the names of these corroborating witnesses to Mr. Pearl then.”
That hand again, this time with a fluttering of fingers. Too-da-loo, he might as well have said.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said in this pathetic, groveling way that haunts me still.
PAMELA
Miami, 1979
Day 542
In my hotel room, I went soft, looking out the window. There was a billboard for Our Winning Season, Dennis Quaid blotting out the view to the ocean, and for the first two days I took this as a good omen. But by day three, I realized members of the defense were also staying in this hotel, and who was to say it wasn’t their good omen? I started closing the drapes then.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed to leave. I could go anywhere I pleased so long as I didn’t mind missing a call from Mr. Pearl with an update. Once I did try and go for a walk, right around the time when court started, figuring it was unlikely the phone would ring then. But about half a block away, I remembered that The Defendant’s preferred method of showing contempt was through chronic lateness, and I turned around and sprinted back. I was so paranoid of doing anything that may taint my credibility in the eyes of Judge Lambert that I wouldn’t even let Tina bring me coffee in the morning before she left for court. Not even if I leave it outside the door? she asked through the closed door. Please, just go away! I hissed, worried someone from the press might overhear this exchange and write that the eyewitness whose testimony may have been influenced was conversing with the woman who was alleged to have influenced it.
Going soft is different than going out of your mind. In the seven days I spent in that Miami hotel room waiting for Judge Lambert’s ruling, I didn’t lose my grip on reality, but certain convictions began to rot like a bad back molar. It was with the same dull ache of an infected tooth that I began to question things I had previously labeled unquestionable.
That summer, I was externing at a big firm in the mergers and acquisitions department, unable to admit to myself that it wasn’t just that I hated my stink-faced supervisor, who took pleasure in reminding all the externs that we were being paid not for our brilliance but for our availability, that this was the sort of job that didn’t just affect your personal life; it would be your personal life. What I hated, what left me with an empty, almost nihilistic feeling, was the idea of a career spent representing companies and not actual human beings. Most people who went into corporate law, like my father, were drawn to the impersonality of it. The last thing they wanted to do was deal with a client in a crisis, someone going through a divorce, a custody battle, a bankruptcy. When I was growing up, my father always laughed about how god-awful that sounded, and I always vehemently agreed because I needed this, this one thing we had in common. But sitting in that darkened hotel room, forced to consider what it would feel like if the phone rang with the news that Judge Lambert had struck my testimony, all but ensuring the jury would find The Defendant not guilty, I was also forced to consider what that would feel like for Mrs. Andora, for Robbie’s parents, for Jill and Eileen and Sally, to have to see his smug smiling face in the paper, fist raised in triumph. How would I live with myself, should it go down like that? And I knew the answer wasn’t by making sure big wealthy firms remained in compliance with the law so that they could continue to be big and wealthy.