Keeping Faith Read online

  "Sir?" an associate asks. "Are we talking about Kansas City, Missouri, or Kansas City, Kansas?"

  "Where the fuck have you been for the past hour, Lee?" Metz asks. "Hunstead, fill in your anamnesis-challenged colleague as to what we've been discussing while he's been dreaming of Baywatch."

  "How about rental-car agencies?" Hunstead suggests. "If Fletcher was the one who provided the transportation, it should be in his name, or his production company's. Otherwise Mariah White would have just used a credit card."

  "Very nice," Metz says. "Go with it. I also want copies of local hotel registers."

  Two associates sitting to Metz's right at the chrome-and-glass conference table scrawl the directive onto their pads. "Lee, I want to know all the cases in the past ten years where custody's been overturned and given to the father. And I want to know why. Elkland, start scouring our list of experts for psychiatrists. We need one who's willing to say that once someone's a nutcase, they're always a nutcase." He glances up, palming an apple that's been sitting in front of him. "What do you call a lawyer encased in concrete at the bottom of the ocean?"

  The young lawyers glance at each other. Finally Lee raises his hand. "A good start?"

  "Excellent! You win the deposition this afternoon, with the court psychiatrist who's evaluated Colin White."

  "What are you going to do?"

  Metz laughs. "I'm going to fucking get down on my knees and pray to fucking Allah." He jots several notes while the younger lawyers scatter to do his bidding, then pushes the intercom button. "Janie, I don't want to be bothered."

  It used to be a joke between them; he used to say, "I don't want to be bothered unless God calls." What made it funny, of course, was that most people in the firm didn't discount that as an impossibility. But since taking on the White case, Metz has stopped using that tag line.

  He does not like Colin White, but then again he does not particularly like any of the clients he defends. He admires White, though, for the challenge the man presents. Metz has a golden opportunity here to show law at its best--something that has little to do with justice, and more to do with seduction.

  In a couple of weeks he will walk into a courtroom, take the life of a fuck-up like Colin White, and totally turn it around. He will do such a good job of re-creating his client that a judge and the press and maybe even the prosecutor will believe what he says.

  Metz laughs to himself. And they say surgeons have a God complex.

  He is not a religious man. In fact, the last brush with organized worship he can recall was at his own bar mitzvah. Metz remembers the red dress his mother wore, the boxy suit that hung on his frame, the surprising sound of his voice as it sang out the words of the Torah. He'd been so scared he nearly pissed his pants, and then later at the reception, when his aunts leaned over him in clouds of perfume to offer kisses and receive nachas, he'd come close to passing out. But it had been worth it when his father had come with him to the bathroom, stood beside him at the urinal, and said without meeting his eye, "Now you're a man."

  It was the first time Metz had used his words to remake a person. In that case, himself.

  He shrugs his attention back to the file before him. Colin White, Mariah White, Faith White. Those are the names on the legal documents; "God" comes up nowhere. And according to Malcolm Metz's interpretation of the law, that's as it should be.

  November 18, 1999

  In her entire lifetime, Kenzie has never been inside a temple. She knows that she is gawking at the richly decorated Ark, at the unfamiliar Hebrew prayer books, at the bema. "It looks just like a church," she says, and then covers her mouth in embarrassment.

  Rabbi Weissman grins. "We gave up dancing naked around a fire about a year ago."

  "I'm sorry." Kenzie meets his eye. "I don't have much familiarity with Judaism."

  "Apparently you can still be an expert." He gestures toward a pew. "So you want to know if Faith White's really having conversations with God. Ms. van der Hoven, I have conversations with God. But you don't see Hollywood Tonight! outside my office."

  "So you're saying--"

  "I'm saying that God, in His infinite wisdom, hasn't shown up in drag to play checkers with me." He takes off his glasses and polishes them on his shirt. "Wouldn't you be a bit suspicious if a little girl with absolutely no legal training suddenly announced she could and would sit as a judge?"

  "Is that the same thing?"

  "You tell me. So she's talking to God. So what. I don't see God telling her that the Israelites are going to cream the PLO. I don't see God telling her to keep kosher. I don't see God even inspiring her to come to Friday-night services. And I have a very hard time believing that if God did choose to manifest Himself in human form to a Jew, He would choose one who hadn't followed a code of Jewish living."

  "As I understand it, religious apparitions don't appear only to the pious."

  "Ah, you've been talking to priests! Look at the Bible. The people who've been lucky enough to speak to God are either extremely religious or positioned to do the most good for the religion. Take an example: Moses wasn't raised Jewish, but he embraced his religion after speaking with God. I don't see that happening here." He grins. "As comforting as it is for us to nurse the fantasy that God might buddy up to the average Joe who doesn't go to church or temple and prays only to secure Super Bowl bets, it's not realistic. God's forgiving, but He's also got a long memory, and there's a reason Jews have been following a pattern of life for five thousand years."

  Kenzie looks up from her notebook. "But I've met with Faith, and I don't think she's intentionally trying to take people for a ride."

  "Neither do I. Don't look so surprised. I've met with her, too, you know; she's a sweet kid. Which leads me to believe someone's putting her up to this."

  Kenzie thinks back to the moment in Faith's bedroom, when Mariah silenced her daughter with a single glance. "Her mother."

  "That was my conclusion, yes." He settles back against the pew. "I know Mrs. White isn't much of a practicing Jew, but some things stay with you. If repressed childhood traumas can come back to haunt you, why not religious practice? Maybe it was ingrained at an early age in Mrs. White--preverbally, even--and she's somehow communicated this to her daughter."

  Kenzie scratches her chin with the top of her pencil. "Why?"

  Rabbi Weissman shrugs. "Ask that fellow Ian Fletcher. God can be a very lucrative silent partner. The question isn't why, Ms. van der Hoven. It's why not?"

  November 19, 1999

  "You certainly raise a good point," Father MacReady says. He walks beside Kenzie on the grounds of the church, setting up small tornadoes of leaves with the toe of his cowboy boot. "But I can raise a good one, too. Why would a child--or her mother, as you suggest--choose to be a stigmatic?"

  "Attention?"

  "Well, there is that. But seeing God isn't nearly as big a draw as, say, seeing Elvis. And if you want to stick to Catholicism, I'd have to say that visions of Mary have always attracted a bigger, more emotional crowd than sightings of Jesus." He turns to Kenzie, the wind ruffling his hair. "Stigmatics are subject to intense scrutiny by the Catholic Church. Far as I know, if you commune with Elvis, you only have to answer to someone like Petra Saganoff."

  "It doesn't seem odd to you that a little Jewish girl is having a vision of Jesus?"

  "Religion's not a competition, Ms. van der Hoven." He looks at Kenzie carefully. "What's really upsetting you about this case?"

  Kenzie crosses her arms, suddenly cold. "I'm convinced Faith isn't lying. Which means that I can't help but believe that maybe someone else is putting her up to this..."

  "Mariah."

  "Yes," Kenzie sighs. "Or else...she's really seeing God."

  "And you have a problem with that."

  She nods. "I'm a cynic."

  "So am I," Father MacReady says. "Every now and then, even up here, we get a crying statue or a blind man who can suddenly see, but these things don't usually happen unless you're David Copperfield