Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“Mr. Mack,” growled Judge Langley, huffing and puffing as if he had just ran a race, “I am going to hold you responsible for the actions of your witness and your client. If you cannot control them, not only will I have them bound and strapped to their chairs, but I will hold you in contempt of court. Is that understood?”

The whipped-dog expression on the young lawyer’s face was committed to the artist’s pad as he meekly replied, “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Velie,” Judge Langley continued in a strident, no-nonsense voice, “ you will ask your question of the witness.”

Scott Velie, who had been seated throughout most of the tumult and enjoying it, took his time in rising and then stood waiting for absolute silence before measuredly addressing the bench.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I withdraw the question.” And, fixing the witness with a look of monumental disdain, he added, “I have no further questions to ask the Reverend Pradesh!”

The courtroom sighed and recessed for lunch.

Brice Mack sat hunched over the platter of barbecued pork ribs, maintaining a sulky silence while his teeth tore at the fatty flesh, ripping cartilage from bone in quick, cruel bites. The need to tear into something, to rip and mutilate and deform was hard upon him, and Fred Hudson, the only member of the “team” to have joined him at the long table at Pinetta’s this bitter hour—having quickly gauged the boss’ manic mood—kept a wary and respectful distance between them.

Greasily sucking at a bone, Mack quietly observed Hudson and the empty chairs across and between them with eyes void of expression. He knew where the two lawyers were—still screwing around in the library, picking and scratching about in the books for precedential straws to grasp at, which at this point would be thoroughly useless. Professor Ahmanson, he knew, had gone to Washington Heights to collect James Beardsley Hancock, their next witness. Mack felt a small comfort that he’d had the foresight to order a limousine to cart the old boy down to the court-house to ensure his getting there on time. One more foul-up at this point, and Langley would throw the book at him. He was itching to do it.

Only Brennigan was unaccounted for. His last contact with the Irish sot was on Friday, just after the lunch recess, when he showed up with half a bag on and whispered to Mack that he was on to something. “Something,” he had cryptically added, “that’ll loosen Velie’s bowels, me boy.”

Slowly chewing and swallowing the crisp, pungent pork, the young lawyer’s thoughts veered back to James Beardsley Hancock, his last bright hope on a dismal and threatening horizon. Hoover’s adamant refusal to allow Marion Worthman to take the stand in his behalf had been reinforced by the Pradesh fiasco. Now only Hancock was left to lend his expertise to their case, a fact which not only failed to discourage Brice Mack, but sent an odd surge of renewed optimism coursing through him.

Having met and interviewed the old man on six separate occasions, Mack had finally come to know and truly to believe that James Beardsley Hancock would make an imposing study on the witness stand. At times, his look was Olympian; at others, Lincolnesque. His head could have graced a Roman coin or a Yankee postage stamp. His bearing transmitted respect; his leather-hard face and eagle-bright eyes conveyed honor, truth, and a fearsome integrity. In the courtroom he would seem to belong where the judge was sitting.

Recalling bits and pieces of their first meeting in the graceful sun room of Hancock’s house overlooking the Hudson River always had a tranquilizing effect on Brice Mack. It was a house that was bristling with historic markers and was reputed to have quartered George Washington and his staff during the Battle of Harlem Heights on the several occasions when his headquarters at Jumel Mansion was under British fire.

Mack had brought to that visit the inflexible mind of a skeptic in an attempt to test the old man’s power of persuasion on a jury and was shocked to find himself, after an hour’s worth of niggling questions and patient answers, completely taken in by Hancock’s soft-spoken scholarship, plied with the most delicate of trowels, speaking neither up nor down to his guest, but capturing and keeping the spark of interest at a constant flash point. Mack not only was enraptured, but refused to believe that the morning had long gone and that they had talked clear through the lunch hour.

Reflecting back on the substance of that first meeting, the lawyer attempted to reconstruct those points in Hancock’s talk that had so beguiled him. Instead of belaboring the issue of reincarnation with a scholar’s cudgel, the wise old man had made a game of it, accepting Mack’s skepticism and doubts and, on a number of occasions, seeming himself to be confounded, allowing Mack to help him with the answers.

At one point Mack had asked Hancock about proofs of reincarnation and whether or not he could cite specific examples to substantiate the concept that the soul had lived through many lifetimes. The old man gave the question serious thought before speaking.

“It’s never happened to me, unfortunately, but many people have told me of experiencing fragmentary recollections of former lives—moments of sudden recognition of people or places they had never met or been to before and that yet seemed familiar to them.”

Brice Mack had remembered several such events in his own lifetime and told Hancock how once, when he was a child, be had been sent to a free summer camp up in the Adirondacks and, one day, had become separated from his group during a woodland hike. Hopelessly lost, he had been forced to spend the night in this totally alien environment. He remembered how he had wandered, in tears, through the darkness until sleep overcame him and how, with the coming of dawn, he had awakened cold, frightened, and hungry to a sight that immediately calmed his fears and restored his confidence. It was the sight of a rocky stream vaguely seen through a density of trees, but so familiar a sight as to seem an old friend to him. He was stunned by his firsthand knowledge of the place and was able to describe every rock, rill, and overhanging branch to himself, knowing for certain that somehow he had witnessed the same scene before and not in a picture or a painting, for the very atmosphere, scented with pine pitch and morning dew, was also a distinctly remembered smell.

“Yes, yes.” The old man chuckled in delight. “You no doubt witnessed a scene that awakened memories of a past lying far back in the misty ages of a former lifetime. I am sure, too, that you were able to draw on that former experience to help you retrace your steps to safety?”

“That’s the strangest part of all,” admitted Mack. “At that point the whole woodland seemed familiar to me, and I was able to find my way back to camp without any trouble.”

After a moment’s sober reflection the old man had continued with a question: “Tell me, Brice, was your childhood a happy one?”

“Well—” the attorney grinned—“we were poor.”

“Were your parents gifted or unique in any way?”

Brice shrugged. “Not especially. They weren’t intellectuals, if that’s what you mean. They came from a long line of peasants and were honest, hardworking people.”

“The salt of the earth,” added Hancock with undoubted sincerity. “Isn’t it strange how often we see evidences of the ‘prodigy,’ the ‘youthful genius’ springing from such humble soil? Children possessing tastes, talents, predispositions, qualities that seem to spring from a deeper, richer loam than those of heredity and environment?”

Mack had felt himself blush. “Well,” he allowed, “I’m no genius.”