Before I could answer, Ned interceded. “Mick’s our best trial attorney. Relentless. Precise.”
“Plodding. Tedious,” I interjected. Everyone but Thatcher Gray laughed. I spoke a little bit about the case, sharing some details that had not yet been disclosed at trial.
Piper’s father studied me as I spoke. “You seem like a serious young man. And these days, that’s exactly what we need.”
I thought Piper’s father was talking about fighting crime, but I would later learn his remark was referring to his daughter’s dating history. Thatcher Gray believed she’d frittered away too much time on subpar men.
“Piper works right here at the museum, in the contemporary art department,” her father said. “She studied fine art at Yale. Spent another year at the Sorbonne.”
Piper rolled her eyes.
“Contemporary? As in Picasso?”
“And one or two others.”
“You could take Mr. McFarland on a tour of the collection right now,” Thatcher Gray suggested to Piper, whose smile vanished.
“That would give us a chance to talk,” Ned said, taking the tall lawyer by the elbow and leading him away.
“That was smooth,” I said to Piper as we took the hint and walked off. “Like they’ve done this before.”
“I love my father, but he’s a meddler.”
“Does that mean you won’t show me?” I asked. “The collection?”
“I’d be glad to get away from this reception,” Piper answered. “I only came because my mother bowed out, as usual. She hates these things. And I could hardly claim to my father that I couldn’t make it here because of work. But I’d rather not go back upstairs. Would you mind if we ducked out of the building altogether? Grab a bite in town?”
It was a pleasant fall night, and Piper and I walked the mile or so down the Ben Franklin Parkway to Center City. We decided to get something to eat at Mace’s Crossing, a tiny pub right on the Parkway.
We spent the next hour feeling each other out, sharing the CliffsNotes versions of our lives. I told Piper I’d gone to college at Penn State and law school at the University of Pennsylvania; that I was raised just outside of Lancaster, a small city about sixty miles west of Philly; that both my parents were dead; and that I had a brother. I didn’t tell her that Tommy was serving six years for aggravated assault at the State Correctional Institution in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Piper told me that her parents had raised her in Villanova. She’d attended elementary school at Agnes Irwin in Rosemont, then moved on to Episcopal, the same school David Hanson had attended. I already knew from Piper’s father that she’d gone to Yale and then studied in France.
I asked Piper what drew her to art.
She laughed.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Art is part of life. Asking someone what draws them to art is like asking what draws someone to air, or food. I can’t imagine a life in which art doesn’t play a major part.”
I thought about her answer. “And why contemporary art, specifically?”
“Because it’s still alive,” she answered. “Still evolving, growing.” Piper told me she appreciated the Old Masters, recognized their genius. “But when I look at a painting by Rembrandt or Da Vinci, it feels dead to me. Like I’m in an antique store, looking at a worn piece of furniture. That’s sacrilege, I know, and some of my friends at the museum would have a fit if they heard me say it. But art has to feel alive to me for me to enjoy it.” Piper talked on for a while, then she shared her secret pleasure: abstract expressionism. Artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko. Piper said she was entranced by the exuberance and frank aggression of their brushstrokes and the resulting intense imagery of their work. The nonrepresentational splashes of paint, which I’d always scoffed at, were, for Piper, liberating bursts of pure passion unconstrained by antiquated notions of form and structure.
When Piper had finished, we sat quietly for a moment. Then she asked me what drew me to law. I tipped back my second Guinness. “When I was in high school, I picked up a book about the My Lai massacre. That’s where a company of American soldiers slaughtered more than three hundred civilians in a village in South Vietnam. Mostly women and children. The book told the story of the young military lawyer who prosecuted Lieutenant William Calley, the only soldier court-martialed for the massacre. It told how the lawyer fought against the high-priced civilian lawyers brought in to defend Calley. How the lawyer took the court, step-by-step, through the massacre until, by the end of the trial, he’d laid out the overwhelming case that led to Calley’s conviction. When I was done reading the book, I decided that was going to be me. I was going to become a lawyer, go after the bad guys, lead my juries step-by-step through the crimes, build my cases fact upon fact, until there was no outcome possible other than a conviction.”
When I was done, Piper waited a moment and asked, “What happened to that lieutenant?”
“Calley was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was reduced, and he served only a few months in a military jail.”
Piper’s jaw dropped. “That’s outrageous.”
I nodded.
Piper thought for a minute, then asked if I’d ever lost a big case.
“One or two,” I answered. “But sometimes all you can do is fight the good fight.”
“Is that how it feels to you when you’re in court? Like you’re fighting the good fight?”
“Most of the time. Pretty much all of the time,” I said, though even then I had some doubts. “I’ve had a few cases where I wasn’t convinced that a jail term was warranted.” I’d seen many cases handled by other prosecutors where the state locked someone away it needn’t have. Like Tommy.
“So, are you as serious a man as my father thinks you are?”
I had crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. Piper laughed.
I watch Piper now, planting her plants. One of her favorite things to do. But I see no joy in her face. Today, the gardening is just work. Sweat and toil and the passing of time. Something to keep her distracted. I sigh, then clench my teeth, my heart tossed in a crosscurrent of fury and sadness. I close my eyes and lower my head. “Oh, Piper.”
4
MONDAY, JUNE 4