Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 35

The highway skirted the Palisades, and then we rose gradually through the foothills of the Shaw.a.n.gunks into the Catskills, past Tuxedo Park and Middletown and the Holiday Mountain Ski Area. Here, in another life, my grandparents had spent summer vacations, and not too far to the north, at Grossinger's, my mother and father had first met and courted. Now the snow was thick upon moonlit pastureland; the cold wind ripped past the car. This was famed speed-trap country so Toba was at the wheel-I didn't trust myself to keep within the 55-mile-an-hour limit. The heat in the car was stifling, but whenever I opened the window even a crack, needles of cold penetrated my trousers and chilled my flesh. I smoked a few cigarettes, until Toba said, "For G.o.d's sake, Ted, kill yourself if you insist, but give me a break. ..."

We had telephoned from the airport. When we b.u.mped down the icy dirt road outside Oakwood and spotted the ramshackle buildings of the therapeutic community, a flashlight beam shone out of the darkness. Toba slowed to a crawl. I opened a window.

"Dad? Mom?" It was Alan, bundled in a thick winter parka, waiting for us in the dark.

Inside the main building the heat pressed into my face like a hot towel. Alan looked grave, a little confused. He had lost a few pounds; he seemed leaner but healthy-looking, and certainly looked older. He embraced us. Behind him, sprawled in easy chairs, three T-s.h.i.+rted young black men and one young white woman watched us silently. Alan gestured at them with one hand.

"These are my friends, but they won't talk to me because I'm splitting. I mean, they're not allowed to talk to me. Bucky, and Richard, and Veronica, and Anthony. My parents."

They waved cheerfully. So did we. I remembered Bucky from my visit to the center at 104th Street and Broadway. "Where's your pal Jack?"

"Graduated." Bucky grinned. "You got a good memory, Mr. Jaffe."

Toba gazed at these boys as if they were behind bars at a zoo for aliens. Germaine Price, still frail and pale, bustled in from another room. "I have a few things to do," she said, "and I'm sure you want to talk to Alan alone. So I'll join you in ten minutes."

I had told her on the telephone that I was in the midst of trial, that I couldn't come any other time. She was breaking a number of the local rules by letting us visit at this hour of the night.

Alan led us upstairs into an office furnished with a sagging sofa, a bookcase filled with texts, a desk, and a single easy chair with, I soon found out, a broken spring. He finally smiled. "I pa.s.sed my GED."

"That's great." I shook his hand heartily.

"Well, this is what's happening," he said, easing himself onto the surface of the desk, legs swinging, hands folded across his chest. "This was the wrong program for me, but I knew I needed help, and I got it. Sticking it out here was the hardest thing I ever had to do. The thing is, I've run out of problems. And patience. So it's time to go."

"And they don't want you to," I said.

"They tell me I'll die. They scream at me. Not just the counselors, but the kids. They tell me I'm not ready. But I am."

And we couldn't stop him either, he said. He had fifty dollars he'd saved from his last job and deposited in the office safe when he'd first arrived here. He wanted to borrow a few hundred more from us. But if we wouldn't lend it to him, he was going anyway. He'd hitchhike out west, work along the way, survive. That was it.

"And what about your addiction?" I asked.

"I'll always miss smoking dope," he said. "And I don't promise I won't ever smoke again. But not for a long time, and never like I did before."

"What will you do when you get to San Francisco?" I asked.

"Study and work."

"What will you study?"

"Art, or maybe journalism."

"Have you been doing any drawing while you're here?"

"Not really."

"Is that a yes or a no?" In the end, there was something to be said for the heartlessness of cross-examination.

"It's a no," he muttered.

"And have you written anything?"

"No, but I'd like to."

I said nothing.

Germaine Price slid into the room. "What has he told you?"

Toba repeated most of what Alan had said, and finished with: "I'm impressed. I trust him. I think we have to trust him."

Germaine dropped into the one empty chair and gave a thin laugh. "Why? He's a lying junkie motherf.u.c.ker."

I glanced at Alan, who smiled nervously.

Toba's lips quivered; her cheeks brightened as if she'd been struck. "That was unnecessary," she said.

"A little rough," Germaine said, "but no less true." She took out a pack of Marlboros and offered them around. We all shook our heads.

"What do you mean?" Toba demanded.

"Mrs. Jaffe." Germaine lit her cigarette, then took a deep drag. "He wanted you to come up here. You understand that, don't you? Otherwise, why call you in Florida? He thinks of this as a prison, and it's a tough place, I grant him that, but I'm sure you've noticed that there are no walls or guards. If you look in the dormitories you won't find any bars. There's just peer pressure. If Alan wanted to, he could have taken off yesterday, the day before, anytime. So why did he wait for you to rush up here?"

"I don't know," Toba said.

"Of course you do," Germaine said.

Toba leaned back against the sofa, folding her arms. "You think it's money."

"I know it's money." Germaine sucked at her cigarette. "Didn't you bring it?"

Toba reddened.

"Without money," Germaine said, "he won't go. He can't go. You think he's a Mohawk who's learned to live off the land? He knows he's not. He'd freeze his b.a.l.l.s off in a ditch by the side of the road. And Alan doesn't want to die that way, believe me. He uses you. He's clever at it. So clever he may not even realize what's going down."

Alan sprang up and said to Germaine, "Will you please keep out of this?" He faced his mother. "Now, just yes or no, like Dad would say. Will you lend me the G.o.ddam money or not?"

I felt myself flush. "Watch your language," I cautioned.

Alan glared at me; I'd never seen that much anger on his face.

"I'd like to talk to you," I said. "Alone, if no one minds."

Toba and Germaine hesitated, then went out the door. I heard the wooden floorboards creaking, and then the stairs.

Maybe it was the strain of what was happening in that Jacksonville courtroom, maybe it was the stress of all the years of Alan's lies and half-truths. Acc.u.mulated feathers, says one Chinese sage, will sink the boat. The boat of my paternal stamina was sinking.

"Is it true that the only reason you called Mom was to get money from her?"

"Probably," he said, a bitter smile twisting his jaw to one side. "So what? I sure didn't ask her to come up here, and I sure as s.h.i.+t didn't ask you to come, either." He talked with wide sweeps of his arms, his body taut, his eyes glaring again. "I asked to borrow money. Big deal! Isn't money the big thing in your life and everyone else's life? What's so terrible about asking for it? Would you rather I tried to steal it or sold drugs to get it, like the people you're always trying to help?"

Alan had never lost his temper with us. He always tried to con us with amiable sweetness and apologies and promises-usually with some measure of success. I knew that other teenagers were more hot- blooded in the season of their rebellions, and for the most part I'd been grateful for Alan's softer nature. In that, I may have been shortsighted.

But that sweetness seemed to have fled.

"I'll tell you something else," he went on. "I've changed my mind about the f.u.c.king money. You can keep it, because I don't need it. Germaine's wrong-I won't freeze my b.a.l.l.s off in a ditch. I'll leave here tomorrow morning. I've got enough to take a bus to Binghamton and check into the YMCA, and I'll get a job was.h.i.+ng dishes or pumping gas and save money to get out to California. I'll be there by summer. On my own! So f.u.c.k her!"

His skin turned white as he clenched his fist. I think he wanted to blurt out, "And f.u.c.k you too!" I don't know what restrained him.

"Alan, I'd like to explain something to you-"

"I don't want to hear it," he said sharply, raising his open palm. "I want to finish."

I ground my teeth. It had been a long day, and it would be a long night before another long day dawned.

"A few minutes ago," Alan resumed with fervor, "Mom said she had faith in me-you remember? And Germaine said that was dumb, because I was a lying junkie motherf.u.c.ker. Well, I saw the look on your face, and I knew right away you agreed. And I could see that in some crazy way you were glad she believed that, because it proved you were right all along, and you did the right thing sending me to this h.e.l.lhole in Siberia. So I want to ask you, why don't you have any faith? Because you always think I'm going to mess up, unless I do it by the rules? Your rules? I say I want to study art and you think that's bulls.h.i.+t because I'm not already an artist, not already practicing. Well, maybe I need help to get started, did you ever think of that?"

I hadn't thought of that; he might have been right.

He kept going. "You think that way about me because I did mess up a lot. And maybe I'll mess up again." He shook now with rage. "But who cares if you're right? Give me a chance to be right! Or wrong! If I mess up, it won't kill me. You can't run my life anymore, that's the bottom line. Let me do it my way! You always do things your way, don't you? I'm getting out of here, Dad. Tomorrow."

I was a stubborn man. When I knew what I wanted, you couldn't stop me. That had certainly been proved in the past year. It began to seem that my son had inherited that trait. It had just taken a while to surface.

Yesterday, when the state had offered him life instead of certain death, Darryl had made a choice. He had turned down the offer and chosen to throw the dice, risking everything. That was a human being's final privilege.

My son's too. He was declining this sanctuary, which he hated, in favor of risk. And he had no advocate to argue for him. He had to do it all alone. I began to respect him.

"Do you want to come back to Sarasota?" I asked.

"No! I'm going out west. On my own!"

"Good luck," I said.

"I will!"

He was hearing words other than the ones I spoke. But we all do that.

I yawned and said, "Let's go downstairs. I'm bushed. I'm hungry too. Would you like to go into town and have a hamburger and coffee with us?"

He took a few deep breaths to regain his composure. He studied my face, looking for hidden motive, but there was none. I was just tired.

"Sure," he said.

"Is there a place that's open?"

"A diner on 17 outside the town of Oakwood."

"Will they let you leave?"

"You heard what the head jailer said. It's not a prison."

We drove through Oakwood and ate at the diner. Alan ordered scrambled eggs and a double ration of bacon, which he claimed he hadn't tasted in three months. After we ate I realized he didn't light up a cigarette, and hadn't done so in the office when Germaine offered him the pack.

"No," he said. "I quit."

"Why?" Toba asked.

"To prove something to myself, I guess, and because I always wanted to. It's a disgusting habit."

"I started again," I said glumly.

"Well, Dad, you always admitted you were a nonpracticing addict." He gave me a tolerant smile.

"I'm going to quit when this trial's over."

"How's that going?"

"It'll be over tomorrow," I said.

"Is this guy going to die?"

"I don't think so."

"I'll bet you feel good about that."

Alan had never made a comment like that before, or showed any interest in my cases.

"Yes," I said. "If he lives I'll feel very good."

Alan went to the men's room.

"What happened?" Toba asked. "He seems so calm. So sure of himself."

"I'll tell you on the drive back. Meanwhile I'm going outside to smoke a cigarette. While I'm freezing my b.a.l.l.s off in a ditch, give him a few hundred dollars. Insist on it. He'll take it from you, but not from me."

"But-"

"Let him throw the dice and do it his way, Toba, whatever that is."

I tried to sleep on the drive down to Newark Airport, but at one o'clock in the morning it began to drizzle, and then sleet fell in the mountains. My forehead pressed against the car window; it was like cozying up to the shady side of an iceberg. Toba skidded on a curve and I yelled, "Jesus!"

"Do you want to drive?"

"I want to sleep."

"I'm sure there's a hotel at the airport. You could take a nap for an hour or two."

"If we don't get killed en route."

She hit the brakes. "Drive, Ted!"