Part 5 (2/2)

In December I took my first semester exams. I thought I did well. Why not? With the exception of my one experience with Marion, I had, since Roland Andrews's visit, done almost nothing but study. In the week between Christmas and New Year's I got my grades: an A in criminal law, an A in torts, a B in real property, a B in contracts, a D in civil procedure.

As soon as I returned to school for the new semester I went to see my civ pro professor, a septuagenarian who always wore suspenders and a bow tie, a man whom I had no reason to believe knew me as anything other than a name on one of his cla.s.s rosters. We were in his office, just him and me, and I explained as deferentially as I could how well I had done in my other cla.s.ses, how equally well I thought I had done in his. He got out my blue exam book and spent no more than a minute glancing through it.

”Civil procedure is not an easy subject,” he informed me. I agreed. I told him that I enjoyed it.

He flipped the notebook onto his desk. ”The grade looks appropriate to me.”

I probably sputtered.

”Mr. Becket, I do not expect this D will ruin either your life or your legal career.” And then he looked at me knowingly beneath great white clouds of eyebrows.

If he had pointed out flaws in my reasoning, my citations, my writing style-one flaw, any flaw-I might have understood. If he had urged me to use this barely pa.s.sing grade as a springboard, a motivational moment, a learning experience, I might have accepted it. But instead I immediately began thinking of Roland Andrews and Josh David Powell.

I do not remember arguing with the professor; I do not remember thanking him for his time or his comments. I remember only staring at him with a feeling of utter betrayal, and him staring back at me with what I was sure was utter disgust.

MARION INVITED ME TO A PARTY. I was surprised. We had barely spoken since I had snuck away from her apartment. She had gone out with other guys, I knew. I had heard them talking. One had even bragged about what a fantastic time they had in bed. But she wanted to go out with me. I agreed because I had not had a date, a planned-ahead date, in about a year, not since I had gone to Palm Beach, and because I had some vague idea that I might be able to make up for sneaking out on her the last time we were together.

One problem was that I didn't have a car and the party was outside the district, in Old Town Alexandria, down the Potomac River and into Virginia a few miles. Not a problem, said Marion. She would pick me up in her car, which turned out to be an Audi coupe, a going-away present from her former husband.

We went and we had fun, partying in a townhouse that had been built before the Revolution and now belonged to a third-year student who had made a fortune at a private equity firm before he attended law school. We danced and drank. Marion knew everyone, and I knew almost no one, except by sight. I overheard one of the other women ask how she had managed to ”snag” me. I heard another tell her I was so ”mysterious,” and ask what I was really like. One woman actually said she and her friends thought I didn't like girls, but she was clearly drunk. I laughed and joked and danced with everyone who asked me.

When it was time to leave, I was the one who ended up with the keys to Marion's car. Her driving was not an option. She could barely walk. I helped her into the pa.s.senger seat, got her buckled up, and took my position behind the steering wheel.

It was necessary to drive three blocks west to Was.h.i.+ngton Street, turn right, and then just keep going straight until the road became the George Was.h.i.+ngton Memorial Parkway. From there we had only to go past National-or Ronald Reagan Airport, as they were now calling it-and continue on into the District. Even a drunk guy could do that. We made it a block and a half.

The red light came on behind us, accompanied by some otherworldly blipping sound. I immediately pulled over. ”Oh, Christ,” gurgled Marion, and she struggled to sit all the way up in her seat. She wasn't going to fool anyone. I still had aspirations for myself.

”Yes, officer?” I said, powering down the window.

The cop was middle-aged and portly, with bad skin. While I was looking at him his partner somehow managed to creep up on Marion's side of the car. The partner was a sinewy fellow, also middle-aged, and he was bent at the waist, his hand on the b.u.t.t of his gun, looking through the window from Marion to me and back again. Two middle-aged cops riding in a patrol car and performing traffic stops in a neighborhood like this did not bode well.

I asked Marion for the registration and she was unresponsive. I reached in front of her, intending to go into the glove box, but the cop next to me screamed in my ear, ”Freeze!”

I froze.

”Keep both hands where I can see them,” he said, his voice still louder than it needed to be, and somehow I knew that he, too, had his hand on his gun. ”I'm gonna open this door, and I want you to sidestep out with your hands away from your body.”

I was only part of the way out of the car when I heard the other officer opening Marion's door. I was not completely out when the cop on my side grabbed me by the back of the s.h.i.+rt and slammed me up against the side of the Audi.

”Put your hands behind your head, a.s.shole,” he said.

a.s.shole?

He was breathing hard as he put his foot between mine and kicked me on each instep. I gathered he wanted me to get my feet apart, and I tried to comply. He smacked me in the back of the head and told me not to f.u.c.king move.

On the other side of the car, the sinewy cop had Marion out of her seat but was unable to get her to stand up straight. Her hair, her one great vanity, was tumbling all over the place, covering her face like a veil. He tried to push her against the car the way my cop was doing to me, but she slithered down and he had to plaster her against the side with both hands. ”Roy, we got a problem over here,” he called out.

”Put her on the ground,” my guy told him.

With some effort, the sinewy cop got Marion lying facedown on a strip of gra.s.s between the road and the sidewalk. She lay there and didn't move. He then looked to see what he should do next, and the cop behind me told him to leave her alone, check the glove compartment, see if the registration was there. It took the sinewy guy about a minute, but he came up with a card in his hand. ”Lars Bjorklund,” he read. ”Darien, Connecticut.”

”That you?” my cop said. ”You don't look like a Lars. Guys named Lars are big guys with big heads and stupid looks on their faces.”

I had not seen enough of my captor to ascertain what would const.i.tute a stupid look to someone like him, but the whole event was taking on a surreal aspect. Why hadn't he asked me if I had been drinking? Made me walk a straight line, touch my nose, say the alphabet backward?

”Yeah,” the cop said, seeming pleased with his knowledge of Scandinavian physiognomy, ”you don't look like a Lars. You look like Prince Charles. Is that who you are? You some kind of prince or something?”

Why would he think that? What had I done besides drive someone else's car for a block and a half? I tried to tell him the car belonged to Marion, that I believed Lars Bjorklund was her ex-husband.

”So we find her license, it's gonna say her name is Bjorklund, is that it?”

I knew it wasn't. I couldn't remember what it was. Something Italian.

”And if we call up there to Dairy-Anne, Connecticut, they not gonna tell us this car's been stolen, are they?”

Before I could answer he grabbed me by the collar and the belt and manhandled me over to the strip of gra.s.s where Marion was lying, her eyes blank and unblinking so that I couldn't tell if she was seeing anything or not. ”Get down,” he said, and roughly pushed me first to my knees and then to my stomach. I was now staring at Marion from about two feet away and she still had not blinked.

There was a tremendous crus.h.i.+ng sensation in the middle of my back and I knew that Roy the cop was kneeling on me. I made some kind of noise from deep in my chest as air rushed out of my lungs, and then suddenly the whole area in which we were lying was lit up with headlights.

A car stopped, then another, then another after that. The cop bellowed at the cars to move on, but they didn't. Doors began opening, footsteps began sounding on the asphalt.

Roy was stuck then. He was surrounded by law students-six, eight, ten of them.

”Good evening, Officer,” said a calm, cheerful male voice. ”May we be of some a.s.sistance here?”

”You'll be in the back of a patrol car in two minutes, you don't get the h.e.l.l out of here.”

”I'm sorry, sir, but I'm counsel to these people.” The speaker did not say he was our lawyer.

The cop lightened the load he had put on me, giving me the chance to turn my head. The speaker was, of course, one of the partygoers, a third-year student, a guy people had been talking about as having already secured one of those coveted a.s.sociates' positions with one of the premier D.C. firms. Behind him, one of the other students was taking pictures with a flash camera. She took a picture of me, then took several shots of Marion lying on the ground, gla.s.sy-eyed, with the sinewy cop standing over her.

”Hey,” my cop shouted, ”you can't do that. Cyrus, get that camera away from her. And you, all of you, get outta here before I call for backup and have you all arrested.”

The third-year student held up his hand with such authority that Cyrus stopped moving. When he was sure he had Cyrus's compliance, he said to my cop, ”On the contrary, Officer, as long as we are standing back a significant distance and not interfering with the conduct of your official duties, we have a right peacefully to gather and observe the proceedings. People v. Baldwin. Supreme Court, 1984.”

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