George Higgins - A change of gravity

She at first ignored Morrison's purposive approach and his gently regretful statement, "Fraid I'll have to ask you to come along now, Ma'am," instead yelling: "Oh sure, Turner, pompous old fart, calling Sal's goons to the rescue." Then she turned and snarled at Morrison:

"Get away from me, you jerk."

He extended his left hand toward her. "Intending," as he testified before Judge Cavanaugh a month later in Commonwealth v. Blanchard, 'since she had indicated that she would not come with me voluntarily, to place it firmly on her right shoulder, in order to lead her away."

She grabbed his wrist with both hands and bit him on the joint of the thumb and the fold of flesh between it and the forefinger, chomping down so that she broke the skin, tore the flesh and drew blood. After Morrison had subdued her with the help of an off-duty policewoman, Ptl.

Connie Foley, a recreational boxer, who piston-punched Blanchard hard three times in the solar plexus and placed her under arrest to be transported to the station and locked up, he was driven to the emergency room at Holyoke Hospital for nine stitches and a painful series of precautionary shots to guard against blood poisoning and infection.

"Not that we think she's rabid," the nurse with the big needle told him, 'but human bites're the worst kind, when it comes to infection."

"I've heard that," the cop said, 'heard that many times. I don't need to be convinced JesusmotherfuckingChrist! you hit the goddamn bone again. Is this your first time doing this or is it you don't like my looks?"

At trial, Officer Morrison further testified that doctors had told him he would have to wear the white plastic prosthetic device specially moulded to immobilize his left hand for at least six more weeks, in order to allow damaged cartilage to heal and see whether a torn tendon would mend without surgery. If x-rays showed that the tendon had mended, he could expect to spend between one and two months in rehabilitation. If the x-rays showed the tendon had not repaired itself, he would require surgery and rehabilitation and about a year to recover full use of his left hand.

Officer Morrison testified that since he was left-handed, the prosthesis prevented him from gripping his sidearm or baton, writing incident reports or using the two-way radio in his patrol car while underway, since to do so would require him to depend upon his unusable left hand to steer while operating the radio with his right. He said that as a result he had been on total disability ever since the incident and expected to remain off-duty for at least three more months.

After the trial, jury-waived, on a pretty afternoon in April, Iris Blanchard was found guilty by Judge Leonard Cavanaugh on charges of disrupting a public meeting; disorderly conduct; making an affray; assault on a police officer; assault and battery with a deadly weapon to wit: teeth; resisting arrest; and mayhem.

"These are very serious charges, Mrs. Blanchard," the judge said, Merrion having briefed him about what the cops were saying at the station and around the courthouse about noisy female politicians who bit cops to dramatize their advocacy of children's issues and their own obvious interest in creating new teaching jobs. "If you think there's something funny or endearing in what your lawyer's tried to minimize as this "feistiness" of yours, I assure you I do not. And if you should appeal this verdict, as you certainly have every right to do, my guess is any judge and jury you may get in the superior court will agree with me not you. Or your lawyer, either. Same when it comes to sentencing:

You've given any judge deciding what to do with you several excellent reasons to do as the police prosecutor here's suggested: send you down to Framingham for a year or so, to reflect on what you did.

"And in fact I am going to sentence you to the women's correctional institution," the judge said, 'not for a year and a day, as the prosecutor's recommended, but for five full years." Iris Blanchard had been striving to hide signs of secret amusement, trying to appear contrite; now she flinched visibly and gasped. Her lawyer, Maxine Golden from the Mass. Defenders, moved closer beside her and put a reassuring hand on her arm.

"What you did wasn't funny. And I've been very much concerned by your debonair demeanor, the way you've behaved in this court. Also by some rather light-hearted statements that your lawyer's made in questioning the witness," Golden's eyebrows lifted, 'suggesting to me that deep down inside you believe it was mischief you did, some sort of amusing prank.

"It was not. This was a bad and serious thing that you did. It was also extremely dangerous. For someone serving on a school committee, supposedly concerned with the education and development of children, you set one lousy example. You have to (I pay for your actions. Not literally, of course: there isn't any point in fining you a substantial amount, say several thousand dollars, as the statues would allow me; that would only be another way of sending you to jail, because you clearly couldn't pay."

Blanchard gasped again and then began to sob, putting her hands to her face. Golden put her arm around her. "So I'm in a dilemma, Mrs.

Blanchard, which I do not like, and I blame you for putting me in it. I think you need a severe lesson, but at the same time I'm aware you have young children and appear to be their only source of parental support.

So I know you've been under a lot of pressure, and I'm willing to take that into account.

"You have to understand that you've put someone else now under pressure, terrible pressure. Officer Morrison's also a young parent.

He and his wife have a new baby, who of course they both love very much. Just as much as you do your kids. And after what you did to him, to Officer Morrison, breaking the skin and causing him to bleed as you did, they both have to be very concerned of the possibility of very serious consequences.

"I'm talking about the HIV virus, the possibility that you may have given him AIDS."

Now thoroughly alarmed, Golden stared at the judge, then she looked at her client and mouthed the words: "Do you know if you have AIDS?"

Blanchard sobbed and shook her head, moaning: "No, of course I don't.

How could he say that to me? How could I have AIDS?"

Golden wheeled to face the judge. "I have to object most strongly to the court making that statement," she said loudly and as gruffly as she could. "Without any grounds whatever to make that allegation? That's an awful thing to do, in a public forum, absolutely shocking. My client doesn't have AIDS. How could you even suggest such a thing."

"Contain yourself, counsellor," the judge said. "Taking your client at her word, the most she can possibly say is that she doesn't think she has AIDS. As I understand it, when her no-good husband went to Louisiana and deserted her and their children two years ago, once and for all, it wasn't his first defection, just his last. He'd wandered off repeatedly before that, picking up women in bars. There'd been several previous separations, each followed by another unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation, during which she said he was always loving and tender. I assume that means they had sex.

"She doesn't know whether those other women, however many there may have been, were free of AIDS. Or whether one or more of those "women" might've been a man. All she knows is what her rotten ex-husband told her, and as we all know now, he was not to be trusted.

"So unless she's been tested, she doesn't really know whether he contracted the disease and passed it on to her during one of their lovey-dovey reconciliations, before he left her the last time and vanished into the mist. Therefore, Ms Golden, my question to you is:

Has your client been tested since her husband lit out for the territories, and if so what were the results?"