"A lady stopped to see you about John Quinn."
I grunted acknowledgement. Other things were on my mind.
I hadn't been in the office all day. I didn't even think:


"Who's John Quinn?"

"She said she'll stop back around 3:00."

I was past my secretary's desk by now and already dividing pink message slips into piles, deciding which calls to return immediately, banishing the less immediate pink slips to the right hand corner of my paper-littered ancient wooden desk for another day or for never. I didn't think of opening the blinds and by the time there was a knocking at my door I was dis­hevelled and talking to myself. I cared not at all that forty extra pounds flopped over my belt, that one tentacle had been long missing from my metal polychromed aviator glasses which hung lopsided from one ear or that my beard looked like some scraggled bird's nest abandoned in shame. I had other things to think about. Murderers, rapists, armed robbers. Prose­cutors, judges, juries. Briefs, motions, oral arguments. Phone calls, investigators, research assistants. It did annoy me that I'd burned a hole in another shirt. Fuck it. I stuffed the pipe, still smoldering, in my sport coat pocket. Three pipes in the right pocket, two in the left and one in the outer breast pocket. Almost enough to get me through the day and if it didn't I had racks full back in the office where I returned several times. My tongue felt like it had spent the day in pickling brine and then been cremated.

Althea Gibson was visually eloquent. I undressed her immediately, bent her across my desk and whoofed her down from behind. She knew it. The compliment Regis-tered,subliminally; she was used to it. It was only after the initial sexual eye play that I realized she was black. Dark no-kidding-around black.

"I want you to visit Quinn. He's been brought down from Jackson to the jail in Lansing." The name didn't mean a thing to me. "He said he wants you to represent him."

"Can he afford an attorney?" Most of them couldn't.

She opened her purse and handed me a stack of hundred dollar bills. "When you need more, let me know." There were thirty of them. I counted them after she left the office. "I haven't agreed to represent him."

"Just visit him and read this." It was the preliminary exam transcript.

By the time it was in my hands she was gone. I hadn't even reached for the phone to schedule a jail interview when the whole staff - secretary, researcher, partner were in my office.

"Going to represent him?" Tom said.

"I don't know. Who is he?"

Tom sneered. "Been out-of-town for the past month or two?" He knew I hadn't been out-of-town in three years. In fact I hadn't had a date, read a book, seen a movie, exercised or celebrated Christmas, for at least three years. Murder, Rape and armed robbery -- that's all there was. Janel, still my wife, had moved out long ago. I spent a rare random hour with her. She allowed me to visit unannounced but with apparent disinterest. She was the only person I knew who wasn't a felon or a lawyer.

Everybody else in Michigan knew who Quinn was. "Not presently insane and dangerous the jury found." Those were the only questions they had to 'determine: sanity, dangerous­ ness. They didn't know what he'd done to that waitress six years ago right there in the upper Peninsula of Michigan where she now laid buried beneath the dirt and snow. Rumors weren't admissible either so nobody would come in and say he'd run a school for hit men in Detroit. Untried crimes weren't admiss­ible so they didn't know he'd pushed two inmates over the rotunda balcony at Jackson Prison where they landed on concrete with too much breakage to put back together again. No sense trying him on those, spending more of the States money. He'd already been found guilty of one murder years ago -- guilty but insane -- and he'd been salted away in the nut wing of Jackson Prison the rest of his life anyway. That was better than a first degree murder conviction. It housed him with the screamers, and the droolers, and the feces eaters. No getting out of that one in 15 or 20 years. This guy was really salted away good.

The newspapers shrieked when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the hundred twenty some criminal loonies were entitled to jury trials to determine whether they were pres­ently insane and dangerous. If they weren't both - presently both -- it was out the prison door.

Quinn was one of the first to gain release. "Not pres­ently insane and dangerous" found the small town jury as the trial judge gasped and cringed and the sharpey rat faced Jew lawyer, Shelley, from Detroit snicker-snarled, thumping Quinn on the back hard and long\then throwing his arms around Althea who was there every day at the trial and who Shelley seemed to clutch overmuch and hold onto overlong. Long divorced from Quinn, even before his prison sentence, she kept him at physical distance but she was at the trial every day and she was always still there for him. Was what he would do predict­ able, inevitable? to her, the first wife?

The prison knew where Quinn wanted release and he was free to choose. With twenty-five dollars and a new pair of cardboard cheap shoes, the prison bus left him in Lansing where sat the Michigan Supreme Court who set him free, where Michigan State University coeds were warned he was out and where lived his wife -- not Althea -- his second wife. The community held its breath. And other communities waited warily as 120-odd more hearings would be held and a certain amount of oddball toxic prison effluent would be washed back to Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, Detroit and Ann Arbor -- into the communities from which they came to Jackson years ago.

I read the preliminary exam transcript of John Quinn's fourth murder. He'd been out of prison less than two full days. The wife that waited was dead. Victim four. I remem­bered now who Quinn was. The attorneys stipulated to the death for purposes of the preliminary exam. There was no medical testimony, no coroner, no autopsy. But I knew what those reports would read like now. Now, I remembered who Quinn was.

Maybe I was passing my prime.
I thrilled at the not guilty verdict for Guy Faulkner who emptied a shotgun from less than a foot into the face of "just some white guy." No need to pick the buckshot pellets out of that dead face. I felt a little less joyous about the sixteen year old who ass raped his sweet fat auntie, tied her to her 'own bed and set her home on fire. Not guilty. She had crawled to the front door dragging the bed but couldn't beat the smoke. Dead. Smoke inhalation. Lungs collapsed. Not guilty. Congratula­tions. Congratulations, Robert. Congratulations to me. Not guilty.

I wasn't anxious to visit Quinn but I'd read the prelimin­ary exam transcript now and I'd pocketed 3000 bucks.

The jail in Lansing is light brown 1950s cinder block. After the metal doors to the attorney visiting area close behind, you're left standing in front of the police desk. To your right are three visiting rooms.

"Quinn, visiting room" bellowed the on duty cop. He handed me the key.

Eight maybe ten feet across. Three feet deep. Closed in. No air. Claustrophobic. A metal bench ran the width. A table-like ledge three feet off the floor ran from wall to wall. Plenty wide but barely deep enough for my yellow legal pad. Thick plexiglas separated me from him, the kind of Plexiglas that gives you a distorted woozy view. I put my battered leather briefcase at my feet, leaning it against the gray metal chair leg.

His face was at me before I even sat down. It seemed to leap through the plexiglas smiling, leering, excited like some ravenous creature about to thrust his maw into a feast of new-felled carrion. The head sunk and rose and lunged. "I know you. I know who you are. I read 'bout you in the books. The lawwww books. Read all 'bout you." He was all teeth and mouth. You looked right in his face but there were no eyes. Just a hole. A gaping devouring mouth lunging like a snake head. Or those excited laughing ripping laughing angry teeth. "Goldstein huh, huh, Goldstein. You my lawyer. You the lawyer For me?" The face retreated from the glass. I could see eyes. still small black beads. They showed nothing. Dead eyes.

"Mr. Quinn, I'm really primarily an appellate attorney. I've done ... some ... trials ....”

"Goldstein, I know who you are."

"I'm not the best trial attorney in Michigan. I want to tell you that. You, you know, already had one of the best. Shelley won that sanity hearing for you. That wasn't exactly easy."

The 'mouth lunged through the plexiglas. It was through the plexiglas. There was no plexiglas, there was nothing between us.

"Shelley was good. He real good. No doubt 'tall. I love that man. I mean I looove Shelley. I love than man." I was inside the mouth now, a mouth without teeth. I was being swallowed, sucked down. "I love Shelley. What a fine dude. I love the man. I can't tell you how much. But I don't trust Shelley no more." I was being swallowed, inhaled like a rabbit engorged by a sucking, inhaling python-mouth. Absorbed. The room was hot, collapsing.

There was a gilt-edged purple envelope on my desk, center desk, at the office. All the other papers had been! Shoved aside to display it. There was a stemless rosehead on top, thirty more hundred dollar bills inside and a note.

Hope you liked John.

Call me ...

if you want:. 849-0886.

Althea

I didn't call her.

I called Shelley.

"Shelley? David."

"What's up, pal'?"

"I just visited a friend of yours who says he loves you."

"Oh."

"Out at Lansing City Jail... John Quinn."

"That's nice."

"Look, Shelley, anything I should know about. Quinn wants me to represent him. I'm thinking about it. Is there any reason I shouldn't represent this guy'? I mean is there anything you maybe want to tell me? Anything at all?"

"Nope. Can't think of anything."

"Shelley'?"

"No. Really, no. You should represent the guy. He needs a good lawyer."
I put Althea's card in the right hand corner of my desk. The police reports had arrived. I read the preliminary exam transcript again and outlined it, page by page. My secretary brought in the coroner's report and the lab reports. I knew what it would say. I remembered the newspaper articles. I remember what Quinn said:

"God damn lousy fucking doctors. Maniacs in white coats. They killed her. D.O.A. Bullshit. She went out my house alive. I called the am­bulance. Died in the ambulance. Bullshit. Those doctors killed her. She died in the hospital. My wife. Six years at Jackson and those fuckers kill her the first night I'm home. I made love to her. I love my wife. I loved that woman like a man loves. Like a man loves. And those fucking doctors.. killed her."

I picked up the autopsy summary.


Vagina: Mouth: Semen (recent intercourse)

Semen (recent intercourse)

Anus: Semen (recent intercourse)

Kidneys: Bruised; haemorrhaged

Lungs: One collapsed

Legs: Trauma

Trunk: Trauma; severe

Buttocks: Severe trauma

Back: Third degree burns (apparent scalding)

Vertebrae: Multiple breaks

Face: Multiple contusions; possible broken jaw

Blood Type: AB (from vaginal semen)

I picked up the lab report, looking for Quinn's blood type. AB. I skimmed the report. Clumps of hair were found in various places in the living room and bedroom. Some blood soaked. Eight teeth were found in the bathtub. Patches of skin and blood were found on various living room walls and the cops had duteously sent several wallpaper swatches to the crime lab, skin and blood intact. An arm was found in the bathtub along with the eight broken teeth. There was no evidence of cutting; the lab report concluded that the arm must have been ripped from its socket.

Partner Tom knocked on my door and poked his head in: "Good news. Pisoni's your judge in Quinn. Good luck, part­ner," he sneered. Pisoni. West Point. University of Virginia Law School. Conservative. WASP. Rigid. Dumb. Has a reputation as a smart judge, community leader. Sure. I'd reversed him four times. Some smart judge.

"More good news. He's issued an order impounding Quinn's assets."

"What? He can't do that. What is this crap?"

"Here it is, partner

The court order. Includes his monthly SSI disability payments. Guess he's not going to be paying you from now on. Lucky for you, you didn't file your appearance yet. Hey, maybe you can set Pisoni to appoint you now that Quinn's an indigent. I'm sure he wants the man to be competently represented." Tom laughed long, loud. "Pisoni's going to appoint you to represent Quinn the way Sella Abzug appoints Adolph Eichmann guardian of her children. You know, like, in case maybe she dies or something." I called Jeffrey in.

"Go look up whether Pisoni has the authority to impound Quinn's assets. Let me have a memo on it. Tomorrow. See if we can- get the asset question into Federal Court. We gotta be out of the state courts on this. I just can't see any state court ruling in Quinn's favor - on anything. Not after all the crap they've been taking in the newspapers about this."

West Point, up your ass. I called Pisoni's court. I wanted him to be sure he knew who the attorney was on this one. He was on the bench. I left a message for him to call me.

I wanted to light the joint in the elevator. I didn't. It was lit and in my mouth before I got out of the parking lot.. I drew deeply. Again and again and again. I needed Thelonious. Wasn't ready yet for Miles. I fumbled for the tape. Epistrophany. Escape to piano runs. I felt wonderful. I burst into laughter and pounded the plastic steering wheel with both palms. West Point, up your uptight military ass. Epistrophany filled the air. I neared the exit and I was all clear. Bitches Brew. Into the tape deck. Wildness took over the air. I kept pounding that steering wheel with my palms, beating away overpowering the eerie music, beating it to death.

I swaggered into the house. "Up your uptight military ass, I screamed bursting into laughter. Wild laughter releas­ing the bitches and the demons. "Up your uptight military ass," I screamed.

Then I was sitting on the front porch. Numb. Thinking. Of nothing. Stuporous. An occasional car drove by. A quiet summer evening in a quiet, pleasant summer town. stoned out of my mind. In the quiet. I felt myself speeding across town. I was here. Then I was there. I travelled the distance through invisible space, through invisible time. I sat but my mind saw it. I was across town. Back up. Pause. I was on the porch. But I knew if I stood up, time would be zero; space between here and there, nothing. Marijuan time and space Here. Then, there. Then, back up: here. I got up. I saw myself there and Janel, my wife -- we were still married - on the floor still. I carried no weapon in with me. I needed none. On her back, head tilted lying on the floor. Long ash blond, white blond hair I loved the first night I saw her, silent. still. Lie silent. She would be dead when I left her. I don't know how. I do know that when I got up off that porch and travelled through marijuana time and space I would kill her.

I started to rise.

A twinge of panic. I sunk back for a second against the. porch post to gather myself, to collect. I began laughing to myself inside my head. The laugh crept into the air. A car went by. Snap. A quiet small town evening. Mellow. Very mellow. I started to rise again.

I sank back. I sat.

I did not move. I was at peace. I sat motionless. On the porch. Through the night.

In the morning I got in my Fiat, top down, and drove. Drove. Drove. Drove. Drove. Disgorged westward. Califor­nia. Reguigitated to California. I reached the ocean. I parked and looked at the ocean. I just sat there in the car looking at the ocean. The play of it. Peaceful. Inscrutable. Violent. I was. Calm. I would never turn back. I would begin all over again. I stayed right where I was. I would begin all over again.

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