Sacred Trust: May 2016

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Your Honor ?

Counselor . . .

Linda Levy paced nervously outside the courtroom in the Brooke Courthouse building. Boston was a great city but it was beginning to feel just a bit too close right now. She was thinking about jumping into her vintage mustang with her Northface dome tent and sleeping bag along with her climbing ropes and heading for Rattlesnake Mountain in Rumney, New Hampshire. There was nothing in the world more exhilarating than dangling 250 feet off the ground trying to beta-flash a new route. She may be pushing 50 but she could still play with the best of them.

When she was young her father would take her to the Shawangunks in New York. In those days the “Gunks” as they were called, were the premier climbing mecca in the Northeast. The Shawangunk Ridge is a backbone that extends across three counties in New York, mostly in the Catskill Mountains. Officially it is the long easternmost edge of the Appalachian Mountain chain running from Maine to Georgia. Her father had always warned her that pronouncing the name right was the difference between being treated like you belonged and being treated like an alien in these parts so she had learned to swish her way through the word as it was intended - barely noticing the “H” and both “A’s” so it came out more akin to Shwangunk”

Understanding the importance of the correct pronunciation of Shawangunk came in handy in New Hampshire too, where a raft of Indian names usually allowed the locals to distinguish other locals from Massholes and other flatlanders. The Kancamaugus Highway was the premier test in the North Country. Locals had been pronouncing it Kank - ah - mog - us for a few hundred years but the aliens seemed to be drawn toward calling it Kank-ah-may-gus which was a dead giveaway.

In fairness the “Kank” as it was fondly called by everyone, was almost as confusing for the locals. Over the course of the past fifty years the Department of Transportation had spelled the name of the road at least three different ways on road signs. In point-of-fact, there was probably no “proper” way to spell or pronounce the word. After all, the first hundred times the word was recorded in writing - at least by a white guy - it had probably been by some half-literate explorer or trapper or settler who couldn’t write much more than his name anyway. What was correct, what was truly right, could only have been recorded by a red hand and most of the ones in this area were without written language.

In the Shawangunk days, Rattlesnake was only a glint in the eyes of a few hardy pioneers of the sport including a fellow named George Wendall who was an old army buddy of her dad. Wendall had been trying to get her dad to make the trip to New Hampshire but with Linda in tow he always felt safer climbing where there was plenty of protection and support.

As a cop, Dad was big on protection and precaution. He had retired at 50 and his climbing continued for another few years until a fall on a particularly challenging pitch in Yosemite. By the time dad had hung up his pitons - about the time the rest of the climbing world had switched to chocks, cams and bolted protection with the sport diverging into Traditional or “Trad” climbing and Sport Climbing, Rattlesnake was just beginning to come into its own. Its proximity to Boston made it more appealing from a logistical point of view and in short order Linda had come to love New Hampshire. Well the Northcountry of New Hampshire at least, with striking mountains and lakes and folks that were cut from a kind of libertarian cloth whether they were conservative or progressive. She couldn’t get enough in fact and what she had quickly learned was that no matter where you came from in New Hampshire you drew your “New Hampshire identity” from the White Mountains. Rugged, individualistic, and tolerant of differences. . . a willingness to let a person live the life they chose as long as it did not impinge of the rights or others. It was kind of a corollary of the old saying that the “rights of my fist end at the edge of your jawline.”

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With Massachusetts just to the south and Vermont to the West providing ideological contrast, New Hampshire, for many years, had a reputation as a bastion of conservatism, but there was more to this place than met the eye. Sure there were a couple of nutty old cranks like William and Nacky Loeb who owned the only Statewide newspaper and Meldrim Thomson a governor who had suggested arming the national guard with nuclear weapons and who used a half mast flag to protest everything from foreign policy to the speakers that the University students brought to campus. Fearing, of course, that they would infect folks with new ideas. Yet, it was also the first state in the nation to expand rights for gays and lesbians and for years it had been on the forefront of the battle for transparency in government with its “Right to Know” law requiring almost all government meetings to be open to the public and to publish their proceedings and actions.

The more time she spent in New Hampshire the more convinced she was that it might just be her spot on the porch. In the long run anyway.

Straight out of college Linda chose to follow her father into police work. As a degreed candidate she could easily have slid into an administrative job in the Boston Cop Shop but she wanted to know the feel of the streets so she chose the more traditional route of attending the academy and bearing the brunt of a force that still put their rookies through a frat-like hazing.

Women were especially subject to that hazing, though over the years that had changed. At the same time she joined the force she also enrolled in Law School to get her JD.

There were no trust funds in the Levy house so she had accepted her father’s financial help for her undergraduate degree but she knew that getting a law degree was on her. So she shopped for the best deal she could get and ended up in a continuing education law program at Boston College where most classes were held during the day which meant that her “Cop Shop” hours were the hours classically referred to as the graveyard shift, midnight to seven am. Is was - at times - grueling when there was a required class that only met at 8am with no time for even a cat nap but somehow Linda muddled through on what turned out to be the five year plan.

She finished Law School just as she was starting to feel like a member of the squad and spent a tortured six months secretly applying for law positions while at the same time working in the Boston Police department. Finally, she accepted a job with a prestigious Boston firm where she was to do double duty, corporate law, real estate , mergers and acquisitions and - when needed - criminal law where her PD background provided the advantages of both knowing the players and knowing the game.

After another five years, try as she might, she could just not seem to get comfortable in her lawyer suit. She found herself still preferring the cop bars to the button down ones, and - while she loved the snappy repartee of certain colleagues - she’d rather hear the banter of life-long cops who mixed cynicism with the salt and pepper of the streets and just the right dose of skepticism to create a dialect that was as comfortable as an old favorite wool coat to her. So, at almost 40, she went back to full time policing . . . back to the streets.

In truth, she’d never been happier and more comfortable in her own skin than she was now, back on the force. Though there had been a personal price. Each step that she took to get to where she was today required a period of intense focus to excel. Proving herself on the force initially and establishing herself at the firm, all of the late hours, hurried meals, meetings and homework left very little time for a social life, much less a relationship. So Linda’s longest term male relationship (aside from her father) was Maxmillian a fourteen something Maine Coon cat who was big, bad and independent as hell. Half his left ear was gone, no doubt from an alley fight in the days before some animal control officer had netted him when the neighbors started complaining that Max was interfering with their right to enjoy their new fancy condominium.

On the day she brought him home from the shelter Max bit her. Not an auspicious start to their relationship. So she just put out some food and water, kept the windows and doors closed and settled in for the long haul - content to wait him out. It was - as it turned out - a whole lot easier than developing a relationship with a man. Max was aloof for the first few weeks, but around week five as Linda was sitting on the couch watching Syracuse play against Duke in the final four showdown and nibbling at a bowl of popcorn, Max casually walked across the ridge of the couch and dropped down and nestled himself into a soft afghan draped over her lap. Before long he was purring away and Linda was stroking his head and scratching behind his ears and he clearly decided that this was better than that wonderfully dirty old alley.

Maxmillian and Linda formed a bond but Max was not particularly helpful when it came to her social life. He had a nasty habit of planting himself in a chair in the bathroom when Linda had male company and when some unsuspecting male tromped into the bathroom in the middle of the night, scratching his balls and yawning, Max would give him a quick and painful swat on his bare ass, assuring that he would be fully awake as he cowered back to bed. If Max waited until the visitor was on his way BACK to bed the results could be even worse so Linda made it a point to warn him.

So male relationships were just not her strong suit. She got along great with her colleagues on the force and her professional relationships were great, with one notable exception - judges - and especially young male judges. No matter what their ages judges treated her in a condescending and arrogant way, bbut the young ones seemed to be the worst. They were already condescending enough with cops as it was, but there must have been something in the water in the Boston area because young and old and everything in between they didn’t give women cops a bit of credit for having a brain.

The door to courtroom 3 swung open as a bailiff with an unusually large ring of jangling keys pulled the key out of the lock and stood back to let the crowd of people flow into the courtroom.

“Oy ye, Oy Ye! Draw near!” Came the baritone voice of a male Bailiff calling the court to order as the judge swept in. Linda noted that he was a new one. Fresh out of Law school by the looks and she guessed that his balls were pinstriped under that robe the way he carried himself. Not a hair was out of place and he had that always wet look to his hair.

She wasn’t sure how they achieved that these days. When she was little her uncle Harry used Brill Cream but she did not recall seeing ads for Brill Cream in years. Harry was on the force too and she was pretty sure that he was not actually her uncle but had never bothered to ask. That would raise the matter of her mother who had gone out for gas one evening when Linda was three and never came home. She was not the victim of foul play - in fact Linda had a pipeline to regular information about her mother from her favorite aunt - her mother’s sister - who had recently recounted her mother’s six moves back and forth between upstate New York to Southern California in the last year.

The room continued to stand in deference to the judge who was wetting his bed when most of them were already adults, until the Bailiff told them to be seated.

Linda was here to testify on a drug and weapons arrest. Just last month as she was browsing facebook she came upon a selfie taken by one James Feniwick Harrison of himself standing in front of a car trunk filled with handguns and drugs ranging from weed to heroin and oxy. Harrison lived in Boston and his mobile delivery business took him all over the greater Boston area.

Fenewick was too cute by half because in his selfie he had covered half of the license plate for each of the three selfies. He was sure that no one could identify him, except that he had made the mistake of covering one side of the plate in one photo and the other side in the second photo, thus allowing the full reconstruction of the license plate and a no-brainer on probable cause. It was a classic in the Darwin awards category.

The bust had been clean and simple but Harrison had lawyered up and today his lawyer was attempting to quash the search of his vehicle. Today’s hearing on the motion to quash should have been a very simple matter. Should have been.

Dusk on the Rumney Town Common
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“Massachusetts v Harrison” the bailiff called out.

The Judge recognized the defense attorney to introduce his motion.

“Your honor, we move to quash the search of Mr. Harrison’s car. The officers had no probable cause to search the vehicle and without the search there is no violation of the law.”

Jim Evers, the assistant district attorney, a tall affable fellow with a Boston accent more from the North End than the patrician Beacon Hill crowd rose to address the motion.

“Your honor, we would like to call officer Linda Levy to testify on this matter. It was officer Levy who initiated this search and she can speak to the issue of cause.”

Linda was sworn in and seated herself in the witness chair.

Evers went straight to the matter at hand.

“Officer Levy, you were the lead officer in the bust that ended with the arrest of Mr. Harrison. Do you have any doubts that you had probable cause to make the arrest?

Levy responded, “This was probably the cleanest arrest I have ever made. You’d have to be brain dead to think otherwise.”

The Judge sneered a bit and said “I’ll be the judge of that and I do not see this as cut and dry as you appear to, officer.”

He was clearly itching for a fight.

The judge continued, “So officer, do you consider yourself an expert on search and seizure?”

Levy: Yes.

Judge (getting wound up now): So you know the law better than anyone in the courtroom.?

Levy: “Yes, it appears so. “

Judge: “More than the Court, officer?”

Evers was beginning to doubt his choice of Levy as the witness on this motion.

Levy: “Regretfully, yes.”

Judge: “How dare you insult the Court!”

Levy: “The record will reflect that I simply and honestly answered the Court's question.”

Judge: “You are close to contempt. I suggest if you want to be an attorney, you attend law school, and if you can pass the bar, spend the next few decades studying the framework of the law and the Constitution.”

Levy: “Thank you for the advice, but I have already done that.”

Judge: “Where? On graveyard patrol (chuckling)?”

Levy: “No, I was forced to work graveyards so I could attend classes during the day.”

Judge: “Classes? Community college classes?”

Levy: “No, law school classes.”

Judge: “Stop this nonsense. If you are an attorney, I am the Duke of Earl.”

Levy: “Should I address you as such for the rest of this proceeding?”

Judge: “I've had enough (smirking). If you can't produce a bar card in ten seconds, I will hold you in contempt. “

Levy, reaching into her pocket: “Bailiff, please pass this to the Duke, ahhh, my apologies, the Judge.”

Judge: (Examining the bar card) "The motion to suppress is denied. Officer, you are excused. I guess you're the one I've heard about."

Levy: “May I be permanently excused from this courtroom?”

Judge: (despondent). “Call the next case.”

Within fifteen minutes Linda Levy was headed north on I93 , top down, the Boston skyline in her rearview mirror and the White Mountains on her mental radar. Max was perched on the ledge of the back seat, wind blowing through his fur, looking content and ready for an adventure.