Jeremiah Healy - Right To Die

As I reached the door, he said, "Oh, Mr. Cuddy?"

"Yes?"

"One more thing. Maisy is participating in a debate tonight."

"She mentioned it."

"You really ought to go. Get a sense of how she comes across in a public forum."

"Will you be there, Professor'?"

Strock smiled like a man serving his kids roast rabbit for Easter dinner. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

AFTER LEAV1NG WALTER STROCK, I PICKED UP MY BOX OF FILES from Inés Roja. By the time I got outside the school building, I realized the load was going to be too heavy to carry under one arm and too awkward to ferry in front of me under two. Since there were no cabs, it seemed to make more sense to find a place for lunch. Across the street and down from the school was Bandy's, a burger-and-beer dugout owned by another Vietnam vet in my student days.

Sometimes nostalgia is a bad emotion to indulge.

The interior was still dark and just a little dank. The floor was still tacky from spilled beer, the vinyl in the booths still taped at the seats. But instead of the Stones or the Doors, the speakers blared Grace Jones doing a bad Katharine Hepburn imitation as she recited rather than sang some lyric about walking in the rain. The barkeep had a purple Mohawk and more pieces of metal piercing his ears and nose than a shrapnel victim.

The only obvious holdover from the original Bandy was a television monitor above the bar, showing a video of a Celtics-Lakers game. Bird holding the ball on his hip, glaring at an official. Kareem. with shaved head and goggles, a praying mantis seeking just one more grasshopper before calling it a night. The screen jumped to a clip of the Lakers slaughtering some team you never saw play from a city that made you think of rodeos, not hoops.

I'd already lost my appetite when the Mohawk said, "Help you?"

I started to say no, then recognized one of the facial scars the artifacts couldn't quite hide. "Bandy?"

"Yeah. I know you?"

Maybe not from this incarnation. "John Cuddy. I went to Mass Bay a long time ago."

"Cuddy? Cuddy, sure, sure." He stuck out a hand. "Southie by way of Saigon, right?"

I rested the carton on the bar, and we shook. "Good memory."

"Wish I could say the same about business."

I tried to look encouraging as I surveyed the room, seeing only the backs of three other customers, one a woman, scattered over twenty stools. "Lunchtime's bound to be slow."

"Tell me about it. Gave the cook a week off because it just wasn't worth it, with Mass Bay out of regular session." He flung a hand at the nearest stereo speaker. "This punk shit's the only thing brings them in."

"I listen to their songs, but I just can't hear the music "

"Aw, some of it ain't so bad. There's U2, Talking Heads, Fine Young Cannibals. They got something to say."

"Oldies like you used to have just don't cut it?"

"Shit, no. Held on as long as I could, but you gotta be downtown with a big dance floor for the yups or out in the burbs with parking for the young parents. Around here it's new wave or no wave. But kids today, they can't read, we probably shouldn't figure they'll listen too good either. How's about a beer?"

I again started to say no when the female customer turned on her stool. Nina, the student from Strock's office. Lifting the box of files from the bar, I asked Bandy to bring us two drafts and walked over to her.

"Mind if I sit with you?"

She barely looked up. "Sit. Don't talk and don't touch."

I set the carton on the floor as the beers arrived. I paid Bandy and took one, Nina draining the mug she'd had in front of her.

"For you," I said, pointing to the second full one.

She looked at me a little closer. "You're the guy who was waiting to talk with Strock, right?"

"Right."

"I can pay for my own."

"I didn't mean to imply otherwise."

Nina cocked her head. "All right. Why does a man who knows the difference between 'imply' and 'infer' want to buy me a drink?"

I showed her my identification, which she had to hold up to the light as Grace Jones finished on a warbled high note and the radio station's deejay segued into a group called the After-Births.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about Professor Strock."

Nina closed the ID holder and handed it back to me. "You know a sergeant on the Mets named Nick Russo?"

Anywhere in Boston outside of sports bars and Fenway Park "the Mets" means the Metropolitan District Commission Police, a force that patrols major roads, parks, and waterways.

"Never met him."

"He's my father. Just so we know where we stand."

"Fine."

Nina Russo took at gulp of the beer. "Why are you interested in Strock?"

"I can't tell you."

She considered that, nodded. "Why should I talk to you about him?"

"Because you don't like him, and I won't tell anybody else what you tell me."

A tired smile. "Maybe I ought to cover the beer."

"You don't believe me?"

"Mister, law students get trained not to believe a lot of things. Especially things some stranger promises them in a bar."

"You know Lieutenant Robert Murphy, Boston Homicide?"

Russo perked. "No."

"How about Sergeant Bonnie Cross, also Boston Homicide?"

"No. Why, could they vouch for you?"

"Uh-huh. How about Officer Drew – "

"Enough." She took a little more beer, then rearranged her fanny on the stool. "Let me tell you a few things, okay? Then you can decide if you want to talk to me."

"Okay."

"I'm not the first person in my family to go to college, but a lot of them had to do school off-shift or weekends. I am the first one to go past college, which kind of makes me the center of attention that way. The flag bearer, get it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I want to specialize in Family Law, Domestic Relations. That means mostly divorce, but it also gives you adoptions, appointed work for abused kids, the chance to do some good for people who are in the worst time of their lives and really need the help. Strock teaches Family Law here. Before that, he was this big-time divorce lawyer. Doesn't talk about it, but I think he got tired of the hassle and decided to sort of retire to teaching. He maybe consults for some of the dom/rel firms in town, to keep his hand in, but mostly he's just a teacher and a… mentor."

"What kind of mentor?"

"The kind that can make or break your résumé."

"Like by who he chooses for research assistant?"

"And he chooses the assistants with a critical eye."

I was beginning to get it. "As in eye of the beholder?"

"The student who beat me out of the job is named Kimberly. She has long hair that I actually heard her call 'flaxen' once. If Strock's sitting down, she has to tuck some of that hair up and over her ear when she leans forward to look over his shoulder and glance at him sideways."

"Sexual harassment?"

"No. At least not the way you mean it. Kimberly was angling for the job more than Strock was angling for her, I think."

"But on the merits, you should have been picked?"

"Hands down. I know, that doesn't sound real modest, but I got the highest grade in his family law course last quarter and was the best performer in class."

I didn't say "as opposed to after class," but I did picture the couch in Strock's office. "All right, Ms. Russo. I understand the context. What can you tell me about the guy otherwise'?"

"Otherwise. Well, he's pretty insecure."

"In what way?"

"He's not a very good teacher – not just my opinion, by the way. Student evaluations as well as anecdotal comments by the other kids. He tries to get by on his reputation, but I don't think he's been inside a courtroom in ten years. He takes the simple law school administrative stuff and kind of blows it out of proportion. Probably makes him feel like a big man."