Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Lucy, have some sense,” Tran said. “Get on the motorcycle and we will go someplace quiet and talk. You must be hungry-”

“No! You see that policeman over there?” She pointed to where a blue-and-white was parked, its occupant out ticketing cars. “If you don’t go away, I will tell him I am a frightened little girl and you are the bad old man who has been following me and that you hit my face.”

Tran took in a startled breath, so long and deep that his nostrils pinched and whitened. Without another word he swung the machine away and roared off back the way they had come. Lucy watched him disappear, feeling empty. Really empty, for she was starving as well as spiritually desolate. She had no money for food, but she did have a subway token. She never left the house without one secreted in the little change pocket of her jeans. She walked to Wall Street and took a northbound train, intending to go to Canal Street and home, but at the Chambers/Centre Street stop, she jumped to her feet, impelled by a pressure she could not have described, but which could not be resisted, and left the train.

“So much for the organization of the office and what you can expect to be doing in your first months here,” said Karp. “I want to finish by telling you some stuff I wish someone had told me back when I started here, way back in the second Roosevelt administration.” This raised a polite titter from the fifteen young lawyers assembled in the jury box of a temporarily vacant courtroom. Karp stood in the well of the court facing them, incidentally demonstrating how to stand in the well of a court and talk to a jury, which it seemed to him some of these kids might not know how to do, so green were they.

“First of all, you all have something in common, besides being lawyers. Can anybody guess what that is?”

The group looked around at one another speculatively. Eight men, seven women, four black, two Hispanic, one Asian, the rest white, or white-ish. Nobody had a clue.

“I’ll tell you,” said Karp. “Every one of you participated in a competitive sport. Most of you are team athletes, but we have a varsity sprinter, a couple of state-level tennis players, two women’s varsity crew oars, and a junior chess master. This is not an accident. Prosecuting in an adversarial system requires the same kind of competitiveness, endurance, guts, mercilessness, and ability to play when hurt that’re necessary to succeed in sports. Just like sports, this game is about winning under a set of rules, but it’s not all about winning. It’s mainly about doing the right thing. Just do the right thing and don’t get all concerned about your won and lost record. Doing the right thing and keeping your integrity is important because you’re probably not going to contribute much to making the world a better place, not that you’re going to be able to see at any rate.” Here he paused and looked a selection of them in the eye, using his ever useful Severe yet Compassionate Look.

“This is a hopeless job,” he said vehemently. “Your work will not help make things better, because we don’t understand what causes crime, and it’s not entirely clear that punishment, which is what we mostly do here, helps the problem. It may even make it worse. This society, this city, is like a ship that’s hit a rock. We don’t get to steer it to safety and we don’t get to plot the course to avoid more rocks and we don’t get to evacuate the women and children. What we do get is a crummy little office in the bilge of the ship, where we work the pumps, keep the water level down, and prevent the ship from going under entirely. Right now the water’s coming in a little faster than we’re pumping it out, which sucks, so to speak, but on the other hand, if we stopped pumping, it’d be all over in a pretty short time. What I’ve just described is damned near the full extent of the job satisfaction: pump, pump, pump, and listen to that water slosh out. That’s the good part. The downside. .”-here he waited for the laughter to subside-“the downside is you may screw up and let someone out who should’ve been in the can, and he does something bad again, and it’s on you, he kills someone, say, and it’s on you .” He waited for that to sink in.

“Fortunately, there are ways around both these problems. It turns out there are some objective standards for doing this job, about how to prepare a case for prosecution, and you will find that preparing a case in this way is a source of real satisfaction. Once again, sports: it’s great to win, but sometimes the other guys are just better, so you have to be content with just playing your best. Justice and success are not defined by the vagaries of jury deliberations. The only issue for you is whether each case is a legitimate case to prosecute. Are you convinced a thousand percent that the defendant is guilty and that you had legally admissible evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? It’s a gem of a system, folks, but it can be corrupted by the people in it. Don’t become one of those people! Now, we will ensure that you prepare cases in the proper manner, and that you play your best, by yelling at you when you don’t. We have a large number of expert yellers on staff, and you’ll meet all of them as time goes on. If you really push at it, and you can take the yelling, you will learn how to prepare cases in such a way that the likelihood of screwing up is reduced to near zero. One final thing: it’s never personal. You’re doing the law, you’re not trying to get some guy. You start eating your liver on these cases, in a month you won’t have enough liver to make a decent chopped-liver sandwich. Oh, yeah, one final, final thing. You think what I just said is cynical. It’s not, it’s just hard-boiled. This is a hard-boiled outfit here. It’s also the best prosecutorial organization in the free world, because, by and large, it’s not cynical. I’ll tell you what cynical is. Cynical is saying, rules are made to be broken, and then breaking them. Cynical is drilling some poor bastard because you think it looks good in the press. Cynical is letting politics into your legal decisions. Cynical is rolling over for the cops because it’s popular and it makes your job nicer if the cops like you. Cynical is not trying because the Supreme Court has tied your hands with all these crime-coddling decisions. Don’t be cynical, guys. It’s not part of the job, and it’s not nice.”

Karp looked up as a short brown woman in a dark blue suit came through the door.

“Ah, here she is,” said Karp. “Folks, this is Rita Mehta, one of our fine assistant bureau chiefs. Rita helps run the Criminal Courts Bureau, where you’ll start your work here at the D.A. Criminal Courts handles the misdemeanors we cop felonies down to when we’re feeling cranky, and Rita here is going to teach you how to slap the wrists of hardened criminals.”

“Softened criminals, too, don’t forget those, Butch,” said Ms. Mehta.

The usual relief of nervous laughter. He had noticed some of the kids really listening, not being embarrassed, or just taking notes, as in law school. He turned the group over to Ms. Mehta, got the (also usual) nice round of applause, some worshipful stares, most of them from the women, and left the courtroom.

She was curled up on a couch in his office, reading a small blue book, and when he saw her face, he cried out, “Good God!” and felt a clench around his heart. He knelt down beside her, his face close, examining the bruises. “Lucy, what happened to you?”

“Nothing, I, like, got mugged,” said the daughter blandly.

“Mugged? Where? Did you report it? Did the cops bring you here? What-”

“Dad, settle down. I’m not hurt. It looks a lot worse than it is. But I have to talk to you, now . I think I’m in trouble.”