Part 1

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

BY FRANK RILEY

_What is a Man?... A paradox indeed--the world's finest minds gathered to defend a punk killer...._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Every pair of eyes in the hushed courtroom watched Jake Emspak walk slowly toward the prospective juror.

Around the Earth, and above it, too, from South Africa and Franz Joseph Land to the satellite stations adrift through the black morning, two hundred million pairs of eyes focussed on the gaunt figure that moved so deliberately across the television screen.

In the glass-fronted TV booth, where the 80-year-old Edward R. Murrow had created something of a stir by his unexpected appearance a few moments earlier, newsmen stopped talking to let the viewers see and hear for themselves what was happening.

Jake halted in front of the witness stand, both hands cupped over the gold head of the cane that had been his trademark, in and out of court, for most of a half century. The shaggy mane of white hair, once as black as the coal in the West Virginia mining country of his birth, stood out like an incongruous halo above the bone ridges of his face. The jutting nose, the forward hunch of his body accentuated the impression he always gave of being about to leap on a nervous witness. The magnificent voice, which could thunder, rasp, weep and persuade in all the registers of eloquence, now phrased his first question with disconcerting softness:

"What is a man?"

The prospective juror, a Bronx appliance distributor with sagging jowls and perpetual tension lines around his mouth, started visibly.

"I--I beg your pardon?"

Again Jake Emspak gently phrased his question:

"What is a man?"

The distributor, who could wake up out of a sound sleep and address a sales meeting of unhappy dealers, opened his mouth and closed it again. Jake waited patiently, rocking a little on the point of his cane.

Finally, the distributor said:

"I can't answer that--right off...."

"Thank you," Jake said mildly.

He turned to Judge Hayward and nodded his acceptance of the juror.

Up in the TV booth, Murrow smiled to himself and listened to his colleagues chew over the familiar questions: Why had Jake Emspak, the "million dollar mouthpiece", taken a cheap case like this away from the Public Defender? Who would possibly pay him enough to defend a punk like Tony Corfino--a bungling hoodlum who had killed two bystanders in a miserable attempt to rob a bank?

The Judge noted acceptance of the juror, then brusquely recessed court until 10 A.M. Monday.

The timing was excellent. Jake smiled with satisfaction, and his smile was like the slash of a paring knife across the skin of a dried apple.

He walked with Tony Corfino and the bailiff as far as the prisoner's gate.

"Don't worry," Jake said.

Tony's eyes were wide and bewildered, like the eyes of a confused child--or of an old man not quite certain whether he is awake or dreaming.

"I ain't worried," Tony replied. As he walked, there was the crackling sound of a bone twisting in a stiff joint.

From under his shaggy brows, Jake studied him carefully, and was content with what he saw. Tony could have been very young, or very old. Undoubtedly he was both, with a lot of in-between, Jake thought suddenly. The tangle of black, curly hair was the hair of youth. The cameo-smooth skin had the waxed perfection of an expensive doll. But the mouth and lips were still puffy, sensuous. And the eyes--Jake Emspak, for all his knowing, couldn't be sure about the eyes. Silently, he addressed a memo to himself: Check on the eyes.

At the prisoners' gate, Tony faced him.

"I ain't worried," he repeated. "It's just--well, I don't see why you're takin' my case--I can't pay anythin'...."

The thin smile slashed again across the wrinkled harshness of Jake's face.

"I'll be paid," he chuckled drily.

The District Attorney brought up the same question when Jake sat in his office two hours later. They had been studying each other across the desk, thinking of all the years that were gone, the good years dying with the new quarter of the century.

How many times had he sat here just like this, Jake wondered. How often had he come into this office to bargain and to deal, to cajole and plead--and always hovering like a hawk to pounce on any bit of information that could fit his case.

Now the D.A. was old, too. Older than Jake, if you measured a man's life by the inverse proportion of his distance from the grave. Even the limitless possibilities of medical science had about reached their limit with the D.A. He was heavier than Jake, and his skin was smoother, yet somehow it looked much older.

"I don't get it," he wheezed, with the shortness of breath that the latest bronchial replacement had not substantially relieved. "I just can't see Jake Emspak taking a case without a fee! Why, in the old days, you wouldn't defend your mother without a cashier's check in advance!"

Jake accepted the taunt without blinking.

"I'm touched by this solicitude for my fees," he retorted.

"Tony Corfino's guilty," said the D.A., moving up another pawn in the never-ending chess game between them. "He's a punk, and he's guilty. You know that, don't you, Jake?"

"Do I?"

"You know it--and damn well! I've got six witnesses who saw Tony walk into the bank with that sawed-off shotgun! I've got four more who saw him get panicky and start spraying lead! And there are a dozen others who helped load him on a stretcher after his getaway car went over the curve on the Parkway!... Hell, Jake, this is a two-bit case. Why are you taking it away from the Public Defender?"

"Now, Emmett," Jake mocked, "you know it's not ethical for me to discuss my client's case."

"To hell with your client!" The D.A. breathed deeply for a moment, then pressed ahead: "I don't care about that punk--I'm talking about you, Jake. What's this case mean to you?"

The chuckle started again, then died in Jake's throat.

"It means a lot, Emmett," he answered soberly. "For one thing, it's my last case...."

"What?" The D.A. looked stunned.

Jake nodded.

"I've been around the circle enough times for any man, Emmett."

Both of them absorbed this thought in silence, and the long years walked between them. The D.A.'s lips set, and the steel of his jaw showed beneath the soft folds of his skin.

"I guess it'll have to be my last case, too, Jake," he said quietly. Then he banged his fist on the desk. "But what a helluva case! What a helluva two-bit case! We've had some good ones, Jake--I've got the scars of them all over me! But why do we have to go out on something as cheap as this?"

Jake Emspak stood up, all six feet of him, and he brushed back his long white hair with a gesture that was fierce and strong.

"It's not a cheap case, Emmett! It's big--bigger than any case we've ever fought out!"

* * * * *

The reporters were waiting for Jake outside the D.A.'s office.

"Is it true you're retiring, Jake?"

"This is my last case."

"Why are you representing Tony Corfino?"

"You couldn't keep me out of a case as big as this."

"Can you tell us why it's so big?"

"I can, but I won't. Not until I get before the jury."

"Is robbing a bank and shooting two people so important?"

"Not particularly."

"What else did he do, then?"

"Nothing that I know of."

"Jake, this isn't some kind of a joke, is it?"

"It's the most serious case I've ever handled."

"Mr. Emspak, it was reported that you received $100,000 from your last client. Are you being paid for defending Tony Corfino?"

"I never discuss my fees."

"Would you object to a televised interview with Tony?"

"Certainly not. How about tomorrow morning?"

The reporters left, baffled and intrigued. That night, Jake Emspak sat alone in his apartment high over Central Park West, chuckling with satisfaction as he read the headlines in the first editions:

FAMED CRIMINAL LAWYER IN MYSTERY CASE

The other headlines were substantially the same. Jake grinned. Things were working out fine, just fine. Publicity was a wonderful tool, if a lawyer knew when to use it, and how. He showed one of the headlines to his wife, whose picture was in a mellow gold frame on the stand beside his window chair. Marge had been dead since '67, but he still found it a quiet comfort to share things with her. She didn't have to answer, because words weren't necessary after you'd lived and loved with a woman for forty-three years. His thin smile became warmer as he turned toward her.

"Mystery case!" he chortled. "Mystery! The only mystery is why someone hasn't tried a case like this before!"

He paused, looked across the park at the spangle of lights, and added softly:

"But I'm glad no one did."

Ed Murrow called just before Jake went to bed.

"Sorry you got into this?" Murrow asked.

"You know better than that, Ed. I'm deeply grateful to you for tipping me off on this case."

"Well, don't forget to tip me off, too, Jake! I'm not too old to appreciate a scoop now and then!"

"Don't worry, Ed...."

Next morning, Jake was rested and ready to meet the challenge of Tony Corfino's TV interview. He knew there was a danger Tony might say too much, but it was a calculated risk that had to be taken. The case needed build-up, plenty of build-up.

The interview took place in the open square between the towering cell-blocks of Manhattan's new jail. When Jake and Tony came out, the TV cameramen and reporters had already taken their places. The city's crack newspapermen were seated on folding chairs in front of the cameras, along with two men from the District Attorney's office who self-consciously tried to look like members of the working press. Jake sat down beside Tony and hunched forward watchfully over the gold head of his cane.

Bert Brown of the _Tribune_, whose pipelines into the D.A.'s office had brought him many an exclusive, shot out the first question. It came with a whiplash crack:

"Tony, are you paying Mr. Emspak to represent you?"

Tony looked uncertainly toward Jake, and when the old lawyer didn't answer, Tony said quietly:

"No--I'm not."

"Is the Syndicate paying Mr. Emspak?"

"I don't know why they should--I never got into the Syndicate." Tony's answer was expressionless, yet his voice had a strangely subdued quality for a Tenth Avenue kid who had grown up fighting for crumbs from the tables of underworld kingpins.

Cassidy of the Times interjected:

"Do you know who is paying Mr. Emspak to represent you?"

"Nope."

Now the sun broke through the morning overcast and gleamed on the polished perfection of Tony's waxlike skin. A woman reporter from the Mirror asked in an abrupt, mannish voice:

"Tony--what happened to your face?"

"The Doc says it's some new kind of plastic surgery. I got burned in that accident...."

"When you were driving away from the bank?" Bert Brown snapped out.

"Yeah."

Brown grinned in triumph. It had been a neat double play. The two investigators from the D.A.'s office scribbled furiously. Jake Emspak continued to stare into the TV cameras without blinking.

From the back row, a _Daily News_ man boomed out:

"Then you admit the shootings, Tony?"

Jake lifted one finger from the gold head of his cane. It was a small gesture, but it silenced Tony's answer and immediately commanded the attention of everyone present.

"My client," rasped Jake, "neither denies nor admits any connection with the crimes for which he is being tried."

Bert Brown grinned sardonically at him.

"Do you expect to win this case, Mr. Emspak?"

"We'll win it," Jake answered, in a voice so cold and certain and hard that the reporters involuntarily joined the TV audience in a collective gasp.

Jake stood up and motioned to the deputies. It was time to end the interview. Precisely the right time.

The reporters left without further questions. They knew from long experience when Jake Emspak would and would not talk.

By that evening, speculation--without the ballast of facts--was soaring to dizzy heights. Even the communist angle came in for its share of limelight. Was Tony Corfino somehow of value to the resurgent Red underground? Could Jake Emspak's fee be traced back to Peiping, new headquarters for the Comintern? But not even the most skilled commentator could adequately sustain innuendo on innuendo alone. Not by the grossest distortion of facts could any Communist connection be twisted out of Tony's record of juvenile delinquency, pimping, pick-pocketing, petty thievery, dope peddling, armed robbery, and--since the grain and sugar restrictions of '70--bootlegging.

But one of the more perceptive reporters had noted Tony's strangely quiet manner of speaking. Inquiries at the jail disclosed that Tony had apparently developed an interest in reading.

Here, indeed, was a fresh angle! By mid-afternoon, "Gentleman Tony" had been conceived and given birth. His sordid record was reinterpreted in a picaresque light, and he became something of a Tenth Avenue Robin Hood. A nation squeezed between the twin problems of mounting population and tighter food rationing took "Gentleman Tony" to its fancy. It was like a case of 24-hour flu.

In the midst of all this, as Jake Emspak sat in his office Sunday morning, behind a mound of microfilmed court records dating back to the mid-fifties, he received a more serious-minded interviewer. The visitor was John O. Callihan, well-publicized sportsman, art connoisseur, world traveler and No. 1 man in the Syndicate. His mistresses, and a few old friends like Jake Emspak, called him Johnno.

"Greetings, Jake," he said, easing his athletic, tastefully dressed frame into the chair in front of Jake's desk.

"Hello, Johnno," Jake rasped. "I'm busy."

"I know. That's why I came."

"I can't talk about this case, Johnno."

"I'm not asking you to."

Johnno lit a long, pencil-thin cigarette, and continued reflectively:

"Jake, I've given you some big cases, paid you well--and always let you handle them clean, in your own way. Right?"

"Right enough."

"This is the first time I've ever come for a favor, Jake."

"Yeah?"

"Who's paying for Tony Corfino?"

"Nobody you have to worry about, Johnno."

"No other Syndicate--or anything like that?"

Jake shook his head, and his caller stood up.

"Thanks, Jake."

"Now, will you get the hell out of here!"

"Sure, Jake--give my love to Marge."

Jake lowered his head to hide the mist in his eyes. Johnno had sent a simple corsage of blue violets to Marge's funeral. And he sent one every year, on the anniversary of her death.

Jake went back to Gould v. Gould, 243 App. Div. 589, and stayed with it until nearly six o'clock, when he turned wearily to People v. Gibbs. This looked like an interminable case, even on microfilm. His eyes were strained from staring at the viewer screen, and his big hand was stiff from spinning the reel crank. He opened his fingers, and the knuckles cracked. Jake stared disgustedly at them. You could take a boy out of the coal mines, but not the coal mines out of the boy. His hand was too big for such a small crank. Someday, he'd have to buy an automatic viewer, or even one of those electronic brains they demonstrated at the last Bar Association meeting. But then, he wouldn't need anything after this case. And besides, he didn't trust such impersonal help. Leibowitz had taught him a good lawyer should do his own preparation. Leibowitz! The Vera Stretz case.... That was forty years ago! Jake shook his head to chase away the memories, and started People v. Gibbs, patiently searching for points of law to help him prove that a punk named Tony Corfino....

* * * * *

When court reconvened on Monday morning, the weekend's publicity showed its results. A bailiff whispered to Jake that people had been waiting for the doors to open since five A.M. Thousands had gone home disappointed. The fortunate who did get seats filled the courtroom with babble and shrillness as they waited impatiently for something to happen. A new note of excitement sounded when Tony Corfino walked in beside a Sheriff's Deputy. Jake had insisted that Tony be carefully groomed and dressed each morning before coming into court, and the women among the spectators buzzed with appreciation.

Promptly at ten, Judge Hayward stepped out of his chambers and looked, gimlet-eyed, over the courtroom. The hubub quieted, then faded to stillness. Jake was glad to have Judge Hayward on this case. At forty-seven, he was the youngest Superior Court judge and least wedded to precedent. He was impatient with legal sleight-of-hand, painstakingly insistent on a structure of evidence. "Any mule can kick a barn down; it takes a good carpenter to build one," he had once told Jake.

Selection of the jury proceeded at a creeping pace, which court reporters had come to expect with both the D.A. and Jake Emspak in the same courtroom. In their last clash, they had meticulously examined one hundred and fifty jurors before accepting twelve. But this time, the District Attorney was responsible for most of the delay. Not knowing why Jake had taken the case, the D.A. proceeded nervously and cautiously in questioning each juror: What is your feeling about capital punishment? Would you credit the testimony of an eye witness? Do you believe that a criminal must be punished as decreed by law?

Jake's questions were fewer, and less orthodox. Sometimes he asked: "What is your attitude toward science?" Or, again: "Are you a religious man?" But most frequently he came without preamble to what seemed to be the key to his case:

"What is a man?"

And while this went on in the courtroom, Jake continued his tireless preparations. Research, subpoenas, talking to witnesses, taking depositions, then more research and more subpoenas. Bound the case on the east, the north, the south and the west. Lincoln had said that. Jake's stomach rebelled, and he took to eating a bowl of baby cereal before going to bed in an effort to still its growling and grumbling. Those who knew how hard he worked continued to ask: Where's the money coming from? Why is this important anyway?

Whenever speculation started to sag, Jake shrewdly needled it by leaking a fact here, a rumor there. From Los Angeles, the ebullient old television commentator, George Putnam, still indefatigable in his late sixties, reported that a noted brain surgeon had been subpoenaed to testify at the Corfino trial. In New York, Ed Murrow asked the probing, provocative question: Why has Jake Emspak personally invited one of our great religious philosophers to appear as a defense witness?

"I suggest," hinted Murrow, "that you won't find the gold in this case by panning the mainstream. Or, as Plato said...."

The D.A. and his deputies sat up half the night studying an air-check of the Murrow broadcast.

By the close of the fourth day, selection of the jury had been completed and the trial was ready to begin. That evening, Jake worked on his notes until ten o'clock, and then went out for his customary walk through the memories and quiet of Central Park. As he paused at a crosswalk to watch a satellite platform sweep like a new planet across the sky, a long, black car drifted silently to a stop beside him.

The door swung open, and the District Attorney's tired voice said,

"Get in, Jake."

Jake got in, and neither of them spoke for awhile.

"Couldn't sleep," the D.A. said finally. "Can't even sleep with them damn pills anymore."

Jake didn't say anything. He stared at the back of the chauffeur in front of them. What could you say when an old friend was wearing out?

"Look, Jake," the D.A. continued, "do you really mean this is your last case?"

"You know I do."

"Then, how about a deal--You cop a plea, and Tony gets off with life...."

"Why, Emmett?"

"I don't want to see you wind up this way, Jake--losing a penny-ante case like this!"

"You know how I feel about this case."

"No deal, then?"

"No deal."

The D.A. wheezed angrily:

"Then I'm going to whip you, Jake--and that punk's going to burn!"

Jake didn't answer, and they drove slowly along the endless, winding roads of Central Park. The tires of the great car murmured over the pavement like a boat in the ripples of a lake, and the silent motor gave them a sensation of floating through the night.

* * * * *

Anger still fired the D.A.'s voice when he made his opening address to the jury. His final words were brutally to the point:

"We've all heard rumors about what the defense may or may not attempt to prove in this trial, but let us not forget that in the law of our land there is no place for medical quacks, parole panderers or all the bleeding hearts who drip sympathy for a killer like Tony Corfino! The chair is the only thing he and others like him will ever understand!"

The courtroom stilled to breathlessness as Jake Emspak stepped forward to deliver his own opening remarks. He moved, then paused, with a great dramatist's sense of timing. Ghosts of a thousand courtrooms and fifty years of practice moved and paused with him. Impeccably dressed, his long silver hair artfully disheveled, he folded his blue-veined hands over the gold head of his cane and swayed for a moment in silence, thoughtfully contemplating the jurors. When he spoke, his voice had a quality of remoteness that was peculiarly compelling:

"I would like," he began, "to quote from a Supreme Court Justice who died before some of you were born. It was Benjamin Cardoza who said--'Law in its deepest aspects is one with the humanities and with all the things by which humanity is uplifted and inspired. Law is not a cadaver, but a spirit; not a finality, but a process of becoming; not a clog in the fullness of life, but an outlet and a means thereto; not a game but a sacrament'...."

He waited fully a half-minute before continuing, and not a person in the courtroom stirred.

"The defense," Jake went on quietly, "will rest its case on two major points:

"First, we will prove that the law has not kept pace with the progress of science and the forward march of human thought.

"Second ..." here Jake paused again, while he looked slowly from the jurors, to the judge and finally to the District Attorney. "Second," he continued, with a ghost of a smile on his thin lips, "we will prove that _Tony Corfino is not Tony Corfino_!"

Jake stood for a moment in silence. Then, with a slight, almost curt nod of his head, he turned away and walked back to his seat beside Tony Corfino. Tony stared at him wordlessly, with a look in his eyes that Jake had not yet fathomed.

The courtroom exploded into bedlam. Judge Hayward gaveled peremptorily for silence, and motioned to the District Attorney to begin presentation of the People's case.

If the D.A. was puzzled by Jake's opening remarks, he gave no sign of it. His marshalling of the evidence was grimly efficient. There was a quality of the inexorable about the way he moved up his witnesses one by one. It was like the maneuvering of a skilled boxer who seeks to take his opponent out, not with one punch, but with a carefully executed combination of punches.

Tony Corfino was not Tony Corfino? The D.A. smiled sardonically as he pointed to the pale defendant and asked the witness to identify him.

"And is this the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17?"

"Yes, it is," replied the nervous, overly plump young woman.

"Were you in a position to observe him closely at all times?"

"Yes."

"Where were you?"

"In--in the Note Window ... right next to where he--he came up and pointed his gun."

"Thank you."

With elaborate courtesy, the D.A. turned to Jake:

"Does the distinguished defense counsel desire to cross-examine this witness?"