David Kessler - Mercy

Juanita was irritated by the fact that Nat was taking such a long break. She knew that she had been a long time too, but that was different. She had gone out to get sandwiches for both of them. He had gone just because he felt like a break.

Admittedly, at the moment she was just marking time, waiting for some of these lawyers or the medical center to get back to them. But it was as if he wasn’t pulling his weight.

But she knew that this was unfair. He had done a lot so far. It was just that it was lonely with Alex out of the office. It was silly, she knew. But the thought of a man’s life hanging in the balance and his fate in their hands was a strain that she would have preferred to share than to shoulder alone. It was an awesome responsibility and it frightened her. Juanita had always viewed the law as standing alongside science as the central pillar of support for human civilization: man’s social contract with his brethren to create and maintain a just society. But, for the profession’s practitioners — lawyers, judges, their staff and even jurors — it was an onerous burden to carry.

As if to emphasize the point, a ringing tone followed by several bleeps and high pitched tones told her that a fax was about to come through. It reminded her of the theme from the original Star Trek series.

She went over to the machine as the fax was coming through and tried to read it. But it was upside down and she had to wait for it to emerge fully and turn it round to read it, while a second page came through. It was a covering letter for an affidavit of service from the law firm in New York, confirming that the District Court order had been served on the airline company. The covering letter explained that they had served the order on the Chief Operating Officer of the airline; apparently he hadn’t been very happy about it.

She looked at the next page, the affidavit of service itself. It was a simple one-page affair stating that the order had been duly served at such and such a time on such and such a date. She took it out of the machine and was about to walk back to her desk to staple the pages together when another sheet started coming through. She waited for a second and saw that it was the journal: the automatic printout of the last twenty faxes that they had sent or received. She always filed the journals too, so she waited for it to print out.

Then she took it and walked back to her desk, glancing at the journal. She noticed that the last item was the fax from the law firm that had just come through, but it was the one just above it that caught her attention. It showed the time as 01:45 and the date as 15-08-2007. That didn’t make any sense. How could it have come in the morning and what on earth was the fifteenth month ?

Then, as she looked at the number — beginning with +44 20 — she realized that this was from England.

In England they put the day before the month! It’s from August 15!

But that’s tomorrow…

She looked at the time it listed. The fax had been sent at 01:45 AM London time. Now it all made sense. England was eight hours ahead of the west coast. She did a quick mental calculation and worked out that this was 5:45 pm Pacific Daylight Time.

But that didn’t make sense either. She was in the office at that time and she would have heard if a fax had come through. Then she remembered that she had heard a fax come through. But she had been too busy to look at it … the machine must have run out of paper!

A fax had been sent over from England! But where was it?

Before she could gather her wits, the front door swung open and Nat walked in, looking pleased with himself.

“Any news?” he asked.

“I don’t understand,” said Anita Morgan.

“It’s a biological law to do with the inheritance of physical characteristics. Things like eye color and hair color are all controlled by dominant and recessive genes. I don’t remember much of my high school biology, but I do remember that dark is dominant and blond us recessive. That means that blond parents must have two recessive blond genes. And that means that blond parents can’t have a dark-haired child. You must have faced a lot of comments over that.”

He was being deliberately offensive in the way he chose to phrase it. With a client on death row and the clock ticking away, he needed answers — fast . Ordinarily, offending a woman was the last thing he would do. But in the present circumstances it was a small price to pay for the answers that he so urgently needed.

“We didn’ t actually. The people we associate with are too well-bred to make such comments. But you’re right in your insinuation. Little Jimmy was not Edgar’s son.”

Although he had already figured it out for himself, Alex’s mind was reeling.

“So the son for whom he yearned … the son whose death he mourned and felt guilty over … wasn’t even his son?”

“That’s right. Rather ironic really.”

“And he never guessed?”

“Oh he knew .”

“How did he feel about it?”

“I … I’m not sure. I think he understood … in a way. I did it for him .”

“I don’t understand.”

“You see … As you said, Edgar always wanted a son. But he was sterile. We both had ourselves tested at a clinic and I — ”

“Clinic?”

Alex held his breath.

“Yes, a fertility clinic. Why?”

“Where was this clinic?”

“I don’t remember. Los Angeles, I think.”

He exhaled again.

“So it was definitely in the United States?”

“Yes, in California. I think it was LA.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please continue.”

“Well anyway. I got my results and it said I was okay. No problems of any kind. I never got to see his results and he brushed me off when I raised the issue. Basically, he was in denial.”

“So what exactly was it that you did for him? Artificial insemination with a donor?”

“Er no, it was rather more direct than that. You see Edgar was too stubborn to admit his … er … little problem. But I wanted children and I knew that he did too. So I had an affair with a mutual friend.”

Juanita was sitting at her desk, trying to remain calm while Nat hovered round.

Had Nat taken the fax? Destroyed it? What did it contain?

She debated whether to ask him about it, but she knew that she couldn’t. If he was up to something, anything she asked would merely alert him to the fact that she was on to him. With Alex out of the office, she didn’t like that idea.

She had never really felt comfortable with Nat. There was something about him that put her in a continuous state of unease. She had tried to mask her own feelings with humor, sometimes even flirting with him. That was just a defense mechanism that she had adopted precisely because she did feel so uncomfortable in his presence.

The phone rang.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Hi, it’s Lee Kelly here.”

Lee was a fifty-five-year-old career burglar and by all accounts a good one. Considering how prolific he was, he got arrested surprisingly little.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Kelly?”

“I’m calling from the Park Police Station on Waller Street. I’ve been busted and I need Alex to rep me at the arraignment.”

“Mr. Sedaka isn’t here at the moment, I’m afraid, and he won’t be available all day.”

“But I need him.”

“Mr. Kelly, I don’t mean to be rude but there’s no way Mr. Sedaka can see you today. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news but we have a client on death row and unless we can get a stay of execution he’s going to be fried at one minute past midnight. So I think you can understand that right now you’re very low on our list of priorities.”