Read Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy for Free Online Page A

shook her head. "I don't know."
    "Not acceptable, Ms. Queenan. That answer is not
acceptable in this class. You must always come up with a response to
an opponent's argument. Otherwise, the opponent has won. To close
this hour, let me make an argument you might have made, an argument
I'll be asking several of you to pursue next time. Mr. Zimmer?"
    "Yes?"
    "Mr. Zimmer, what if he dies?"
    "What . . . ?"
    "What if, in torturing the kidnapper, he has a
heart attack and dies before telling you where the girl is?"
    Zimmer opened and closed his mouth twice before
saying, "Then I broke the rule and got nothing for it."
    For the first time since she'd left the stage at the
beginning of the class, Andrus returned to the podium. "Did
you'? Or did you, and Ms. Queenan, find yourselves in a conflict
between rule and purpose, between the rule you use to protect society
and the purpose you had in mind in imposing the rule on society to
protect it. These conflicts will arise, and you must learn to reason
them through even if they present unattractive alternatives for
action. We shall see you next time."
    Andrus closed her own notes and exited the classroom
immediately. Manolo of the Pompadour jumped up and elbowed a male
student out of the way to follow her.
    A black woman sitting next
to Zimmer stood, clapping him on the shoulder. "Hey, Zim. Gonna
be a long season, I'm thinking."
    * * *
    With the change of class, more students were milling
around in the halls. By the time I found my prospective client's
office, Andrus was nowhere in sight. Manolo was sitting in the
anteroom, next to a desk with a little brass pup tent on it saying
Inés   L. ROJA. Eyes on me and palms on his knees, he pushed
himself to a standing position that blocked access to an inner
doorway behind him. Roja came quickly through the inner door.
stepping between us. Reluctantly, Manolo's face left me to look at
her.
    Moving her lips very slowly and using some kind of
sign language, Roja said, "He is here to help the professor."
    After watching carefully, Manolo moved his head up
and down once. More a wrenching than a nod, accompanied by an abrupt
hand signal. Simmering, he sat down, again palms to knees. Roja said
to me, "Manolo is very protective of the professor."
    "Is he armed?"
    "No. But helping her is his purpose in life."
    "And every life should have a purpose."
    Roja didn't seem sure I wasn't joking. "Yes, I
believe that." She reached to her telephone console and pushed a
button twice. "You may go in now."
    I opened the inner door and entered an office that
was awash in papers. Some were stacked haphazardly on tables and
chairs. Other piles had slumped against walls and onto windowsills.
Trapped in a corner was a computer that seemed accessible only by
helicopter. On the desk in front of Maisy Andrus several books peeked
out from a mass of yellow legal pads, pink message slips, and
dog-eared photocopies.
    Andrus stood and smiled in a receiving-line way. "Mr.
Cuddy."
    "Not 'male detective, gray suit'?"
    Shaking hands, the smile went lopsided. "Sit,
please."
    Back in her chair, Andrus fixed me with an
interrogation look.
    "You don't care for my teaching technique?"
    "That depends."
    "On what?"
    "On what level students you're using it with."
    Andrus picked up a pencil. "Would you explain
what you mean?"
    "It seems to me that what you were doing in
there was boot camp. Kind of tear them down before you build them
back up."
    "Let's assume you're correct. Therefore?"
    "Therefore I'd think it was something you'd do
with first-year students, not upper-level kids taking a short course
on ethics and society."
    Andrus tapped the pencil silently on the only corner
of her desk blotter visible under the mess. "You attended law
school, Mr. Cuddy."
    "Yes."
    "Where?"
    "Here."
    "But you never graduated."
    "That's right."
    "Are you curious how I knew these things?"
    "No."
    "No?"
    "Ms. Andrus, it's your nickel, so we can play
around as much as you'd like. I used the expression