Avenger

"What happened?"

"Well, after the final conquest of the South in 1975, the real pogroms started. The Chinese. Two million were stripped of everything they possessed, either forced into slave labour or expelled, the Boat People. I objected and said so. Then the camps started for dissident Vietnamese. Two hundred thousand are now in camps, mainly southerners. At the end of 1975, the Cong Ang, the secret police, came for me. I had written one too many letters of objection, saying that for me, everything I had fought for was being betrayed. They didn't like that."

"What did you get?"

"Three years, the standard sentence for 'reeducation.' After that, three years of daily surveillance. I was sent to a camp in Hatay Province, about forty miles from Hanoi. They always send you far away from your home; it deters escape."

"But you made it?"

"My wife made it. She really is a nurse, as well as being a forger. And I really was a schoolmaster in the few years of peace. We met in the camp. She was in the clinic. I had developed abscesses on both legs. We talked. We fell in love. She smuggled me out of there; she had some gold trinkets, hidden, not confiscated. These bought us a ticket on a freighter. So now you know."

"And you think I might believe you?" asked' Dexter.

"You speak our language. Were you there?"

"Yes, I was."

"Did you fight?"

"I did."

"Then I say as one soldier to another: You should know defeat when you see it. You are looking at complete and utter defeat. So, shall we go?"

"Where had you in mind?"

"Back to the Immigration people of course. You will have to report us."

Cal Dexter finished his coffee and rose. Maj. Nguyen Van Tran tried to rise also, but Dexter pressed him back into his seat. "Two things, Major. The war is over. It happened far away and long ago. Try to enjoy the rest of your life."

The Vietnamese was like one in a state of shock. He nodded dumbly. Dexter turned and walked away.

As he went down the steps to the street, something was troubling him. Something about the Vietcong officer, his face, the expression of frozen astonishment.

At the end of the street, passersby turned to look at the young lawyer who threw back his head and laughed at the madness of fate. Absently he rubbed his left hand where the one-time enemy's hot nut oil in the tu

It was November 22, 1978.

10 The Geek

By 1985, Cal Dexter had left Honeyman Fleischer, but not for a job that would lead to that fine house in Westchester. He joined the Legal Aid Society. It was not glamorous and it was not lucrative; but it gave him something he could not have achieved in corporate or tax law, and he knew it. It was called job satisfaction.

Angela had taken it well, better than he had hoped. In fact, she did not really mind. The Marozzi family were as close as grapes on the vine, and they were Bronx people through and through. Amanda Jane was in a school she liked, surrounded by her friends. A bigger and better job and a move upmarket was not required.

The new job meant working an impossible number of hours in a day and representing those who had slipped through a hole in the mesh of the American Dream. It meant defending in court those who could not begin to afford legal representation on their own account.

For Cal Dexter, poor and inarticulate did not necessarily mean guilty. He never failed to get a buzz when some dazed and grateful client who, whatever else his inadequacies, had not done what he was charged with, walked free. It was a hot summer night in 1988 when he met Washington Lee.

The borough of Manhattan alone handles over 110,000 criminal cases a year, and that excludes civil suits. The court system appears permanently on the verge of overload and a circuit blowout, but somehow it seems to survive. In those years part of the reason was the twenty-four-houraday conveyor-belt system of court hearings that ran endlessly through the great granite block at 100 Centre Street.

Like a good vaudeville show, the Criminal Courts Building could boast "We never close." It would probably be an exaggeration to say that "all life is here," but certainly the lower parts of Manhattan life showed up.

That night in July 1988, Dexter was working the night shift as an oncall attorney who could be allocated a client on the sayso of an overbusy judge. It was 2:00 A.M. and he was trying to slip away when a voice summoned him back to Court AR2A. He sighed; one did not argue with Judge Hasselblad.

He approached the bench to join an assistant district attorney already standing there clutching a file.

"You're tired, Mr. Dexter."

"I guess we all are, Your Honour."

"No dispute, but there is one more case I'd like you to take on. Not tomorrow, now. Take the file. This young man seems to be in serious trouble."

"Your wish is my command, Judge."

Hasselblad's face widened in a grin. "I just love deference," he rejoined.

Dexter took the file from the ADA, and they left the court together. The file cover read: People of the State of New York v. Washington Lee.

"Where is he?" asked Dexter.

"Right here in a holding cell," said the ADA.

As he had thought from the mug shot staring at him from the file, his client was a ski

The accused was eighteen years old, a denizen of that charm-free district known as Bedford-Stuyvesant, a part of Brooklyn that is virtually a Black ghetto. That alone aroused Dexter's interest. Why was he being charged in Manhattan? He presumed the kid had crossed the river and stolen a car or mugged someone with a wallet worth stealing.

But no, the charge was bank fraud. So, passing a forged check, attempting to use a stolen credit card, even the old trick of simultaneous withdrawals at opposite ends of the counter from a dummy account? No.

The charge was odd, unspecific. The district attorney had laid a barebones charge alleging fraud in excess of ten-thousand dollars. The victim was the East River Savings Bank headquartered in midtown Manhattan, which explained why the charge was not being pursued in Brooklyn. The fraud had been detected by the bank security staff, and the bank wished to pursue with maximum vigour according to corporate policy.

Dexter smiled encouragingly, introduced himself, sat down, and offered cigarettes. He did not smoke, but 99 percent of his clients dragged happily on the white sticks. Washington Lee shook his head.

"They're bad for your health, man."

Dexter was tempted to say that seven years in the state pen was not going to do great things for it either, but forbore. Mr. Lee, he noted, was not just homely, he was downright ugly. So how had he charmed a bank into handing over so much money? The way he looked, shuffled, slumped, he would hardly have been allowed across the Italian-marble lobby of the prestigious East River Savings Bank.

Calvin Dexter needed more time than was available to give the case file his full and proper attention. The immediate concern was to get through the formality of the arraignment and see if there was even a remote possibility of bail. He doubted it.

An hour later Dexter and the ADA were back in court. Washington Lee, looking completely bewildered, was duly arraigned.

"Are we ready to proceed?" asked Judge Hasselblad.

"May it please the court, I have to ask for a continuance," said Dexter.

"Approach," ordered the judge. When the two lawyers stood beneath the bench, he asked, "You have a problem, Mr. Dexter?"

"This is a more complex case than at first appears, Your Honour. This is not hubcaps. The charge refers to over ten thousand dollars, embezzled from a blue-chip bank. I need more study time."