Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [55]
“The Unabomber’s locked up, but I still wouldn’t be in a hurry to open this one.” Troy handed me the heavy package. “The grease stains don’t do much for my confidence.”
At least no wires stuck out. I checked the postmark. Oakland.
“But no return address,” the mailman reminded.
“If you hear a loud bang on your way out, call 911.”
“Well, have a great one.”
My karma conspired with coincidence. I see that now. If my author-for-the-day, a woman named Rosie Rune who wrote feminist fables for children, hadn’t been stuck in Chicago with a serious case of food poisoning, some other temp would have been in the office that afternoon. If Troy hadn’t joked about letter bombs, I’d probably have weighed Jess’s privacy against my curiosity, and dropped the envelope on Jess’s desk for her to open. But that day my skull-brain didn’t speculate on destiny and chance. My gut-brain dictated I grip the pull tab. My teeth did the gripping, and the ripping open. My face wasn’t blown off by any bomb.
The sender was a joker. Packed in the envelope that I wasn’t meant to open was a thin, poorly xeroxed stack of court transcripts about a murder trial, a couple of sheets of lined notepaper with diary-style entries handwritten in black ink, two syringes—the old-fashioned glass kind that Flash used to shoot up the enemy with deadly serums—tiny wooden matches in a box that had a picture of an elephant-headed man with a Buddha-like paunch, and a Post-It with the greeting: You are the fox, my love for you the bloodhound.
A poetry teacher like Mr. Bullock or a sicko loco like … Larry died, okay? I didn’t kill him … well, Mr. Bullock might have sensed connections; I didn’t. Which was why I scanned the transcript pages at random; which was how I discovered a part of Berkeley Ham had kept hidden.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: You admit that you are an unmarried woman?
APPROVER: Fuck your institutions, man! I pick who and when I want to ball.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: In addition, you admit, do you not, that you are an unmarried woman who is, however, not a virgin?
APPROVER: I’m a free spirit. I don’t have your bourgeois hangups.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Uh-huh! So you confess that you have carnal acquaintanceship of many men?
APPROVER: What kind of trip are you on, man?
JUDGE: You will answer to the point, please.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: I take the witness’s answer to mean that she is soliciting my esteemed colleague, the PP?
APPROVER: Dream on, buster!
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Did you have intercourse with the deceased male?
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: Please to specify per name and descriptive physical identification which deceased male since the witness has had many carnal satisfactions with many males.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Did you have intercourse with one Marcel Fallon, deceased tourist from Brussels?
APPROVER: I shared a cot with a Marcel Fallon in a Delhi youth hostel. I didn’t sleep with him.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Have you had intercourse with many males?
APPROVER: Many guys at one time? As in a love-in? Or do you mean orgies, porno films …?
JUDGE: It is a well-known fact that youths in America consume large quantities of drugs and alcohol, and engage in pre-marital sex. The point that the PP wishes to establish needs no further corroboration for establishment.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Thank you, Your Honour.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: But an unwitting corollary to that same point, Your Honour, is that my client, Sri Romeo Hawk, is only partially Western in origin. The more significant part of Sri Hawk is immersed in Eastern philosophy and ancient wisdoms. The PP is confirming what I have been arguing all along. The Accomplice-turned-Approver perpetrated sexual enjoyment on my client in order to coerce him into participating in her plot.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Your Honour, the evidence will show that Mr. Hawk, having in-born knowledge of the sexual appetites and proclivities of Western men and women, exploited that knowledge in order to despatch her to the late Monsieur Fallon’s room.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: I submit