Chapter 19

For days my consciousness remained suspended, protected by the consolation of work. In the mornings, the dry leaves would congregate on the edges of the sidewalks; I had no discourse with them. Passing the newspapers in their dispensers, the headlines attempted to scream but their sounds were muffled, my consciousness protected by detachment. In any event, I was certain that the headlines were not screaming about the faceless and the numberless.

For days I had been holding down my regular caseload and at the same time attending what seemed like endless training at the United States Attorney's Office. Though I had been litigating cases for a couple of years now, no one was a true prosecutor until he had trained with the Feds. And so I plunged into the dizzying details of opening statements, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, probable cause, search warrants, Miranda warnings, direct examination, hearsay, the exceptions to hearsay, drug test results, gun certifications, objections, preparing witnesses, impeaching witnesses, cross examination, and closing arguments.

Attorneys - by the time they become attorneys - have been thoroughly disassembled and reassembled by The Great Machine, that colossal, invisible system that sometimes goes by the inadequate term of "society." As such, they are ready with automatic expressions of sympathy when I volunteer information about my nose surgery, thus relieving them of using energy to look at my face and its nose splint nonchalantly. That energy could then be shunted to other productive uses, like parking their cars in the morning.

For days, the telephone would ring at my office with people on the other end who had things to say. One day, the telephone rang and an investigator introduced himself, explaining that he was assigned to my assault case. It was his job to develop a case, if any, against the nightclub in question. The irony - the leaves gossiped about this as I passed them once - was that armed as I was with prosecutorial weapons, the assailant would likely never be seen again. But the irony could not penetrate detachment. Thus, the energy of my interview with the investigator traveled along the telephone lines, igniting the awesome engines of Government as its great wheels began to creak and turn in the direction of the unsuspecting nightclub owner and his employees.