Raphael took a deep breath and looked down into the courtroom. The two young women Frankie had warned him about had stopped writing and were staring at him with open hostility. “In time Flood was sent to a number of those exclusive and very expensive private boarding schools in the east where the wealthy dump their children. He developed a game-a very personal and vicious kind of game. He made a point of seeking out boys who resembled his cousin. He would befriend them-and then he would destroy them. Sometimes he planted evidence of crimes or expellable violations of the rules among their belongings-those were his earliest and crudest efforts. Later he grew more sophisticated, and his plots-if that’s not too melodramatic a term-grew more complicated. I’m told that this happened several times in various prep schools and during his first two years at college. It was at that point that I met him. We both transferred to Reed College in Portland from other schools, and we roomed together there. I’ve been told that I closely resemble Flood’s cousin, so I suppose his reaction to me was inevitable.”
The judge looked startled. “Mr. Taylor,” he interrupted, “are you implying that this man was responsible for your injury?”
“No, Your Honor. The accident was simply that-an accident. Flood really had nothing to do with it. I can’t be sure exactly what it was that he originally had planned for me. By this time he had refined his schemes to the point where they were so exotic and involved that I don’t think anyone could have unraveled them. I honestly believe that my accident threw him completely off. It was blind chance-simple stupid bad luck-and he couldn’t accept that.
“Anyway, after the accident, when I had recovered enough to be at least marginally ambulatory, I left Portland and came here to Spokane. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, and it took Flood five months to find me. He wasn’t going to let me get away from him, but my condition baffled him. How can you possibly hurt someone who’s already been sawed in two?”
“Your Honor,” the defense counsel protested. “I don’t see the pertinence of all this.”
“Miss Berensen, please sit down.”
The young woman flushed and sank back into her seat.
“Go on, Mr. Taylor.”
“When I first came to Spokane, I entered therapy. Learning to walk again is very tedious, and I needed a diversion, so I started collecting losers.”
“Losers? I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Taylor.”
“In our society-probably in every society-there are people who simply can’t make it,” Raphael explained. “They’re not skilled enough, not smart enough, not competitive enough, and they become the human debris of the system. Because our society is compassionate, we take care of them, but in the process they become human ciphers-numbers in the system, welfare cases or whatever.
“I was in an ideal spot to watch them. I live in an area where they congregate, and my apartment is on a rooftop. I was in a situation where I could virtually see everything that went on in the neighborhood.”
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, “I don’t want to interrupt Mr. Taylor, but isn’t this getting a bit far afield?”
“Is this really relevant, Mr. Taylor?” the judge asked.
“Yes, Your Honor, I believe so. It’s the point of the whole thing. If you don’t know about the losers, nothing that Flood did will make any sense at all.”
“Very well, Mr. Taylor.”
“It’s easy to dismiss the losers-to ignore them. After all, they don’t sit in front of the churches to beg anymore. We’ve created an entire industry-social workers-to feed them and keep them out of sight so that we never have to come face-to-face with them. We’ve trained whole generations of bright young girls who don’t want to be waitresses or secretaries to take care of our losers. In the process we’ve created a new leisure class. We give them enough to get by on-not luxury, regardless of what some people believe-but they know they won’t be allowed to starve. Our new leisure class doesn’t have enough money for hobbies or enough education for art, so they sit. I suppose it’s great for a month or two to know that you’ll never have to work again, but what do you do then? What do you do when you finally come face-to-face with the reality of all those empty years stretching out in front of you?
“For most of the losers crisis is the answer. Crisis is a way of being important-of giving their lives meaning. They can’t write books or sell cars or cure warts. The state feeds them and pays their rent, but they have a nagging sense of being worthless. They precipitate crisis-catastrophe-as a way of saying, `Look at me. I’m alive. I’m a human being.’ For the loser it’s the only way to gain any kind of recognition. If they take a shot at somebody or OD on pills, at least the police will come. They won’t be ignored.”
“Mr. Taylor,” the judge said with some perplexity, “your observations are very interesting, but-”
“Yes, Your Honor, I’m conning to the connection. It was about the time that I finally began to understand all of this that Flood showed up here in Spokane. One day I happened to mention the losers. He didn’t follow what I was talking about, so I explained the whole idea to him. For some reason I didn’t understand at the time, the theory of all the sad misfits on the block became very important to him. Of course with Flood you could never be entirely sure how much was genuine interest and how much was put on.”
“Anyway, as time went on, Flood started to seek out my collection of losers. He got to know them-well enough to know their weaknesses anyway-and then he began to destroy them one by one. Oh, sure, some of them fell by natural attrition-losers smash up their lives pretty regularly without any outside help-but he did manage to destroy several people in some grand scheme that had me as its focus.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow that, Mr. Taylor,” the judge said.
“As I said, sir, I collect losers,” Raphael explained. “I care about them. For all their deliberate, wrongheaded stupidity I care about them and recognize their need for some kind of dignity. Social workers simply process them. It’s just a job to all those bright young girls, but I cared-even if it was only passively.
“Flood saw that, and it solved his problem. He’d been looking for a way to hurt someone who’d already been hurt as badly as he was likely to ever be hurt, and this was it. He began to systematically depopulate my block-nothing illegal, of course, just a nudge here, a word there. It was extraordinarily simple, really. Losers are pathologically self-destructive anyway, and he’d had a lifetime of practice.”
“Your Honor,” Miss Berensen protested, “this is sheer nonsense. It has no relation to any recognized social theory. I think Mr. Taylor’s affliction has made him . . .” She faltered.
“Go ahead and say it,” Raphael said to her before the judge could speak. “That’s a common assumption-that a physical impairment necessarily implies a mental one as well. I’m used to it by now. I’m not even offended at being patronized by the intellectually disadvantaged anymore.”
“That’ll do, Mr. Taylor,” the judge said firmly.
“Sorry, Your Honor. Anyway, whether the theory is valid or not is beside the point. The point is that I believe it-and more importantly Flood believed it as well. In that context then, it is true.
“In time Flood insinuated himself into this group of bikers up the street. The gang posed special problems for him. He’d been able to handle all the others on the street one-on-one, but there’s a kind of cumulative effect in a gang-even one as feebleminded as this one.
Big Heintz came half to his feet. “You watch your mouth, Taylor!” he threatened loudly.
The judge pounded his gavel. “That will be all of that!”
Big Heintz glowered and sank back into his chair.
The judge turned to Raphael then. “Mr. Taylor, we’ve given you a great deal of latitude here, but please confine your remarks to the business at hand.”
“Yes, Your Honor. Once he became involved with the gang, I think Flood began to lose control. Crisis is exciting; it’s high drama, and Flood was pulled along by it all. He could handle the gang members on a one-to-one basis quite easily, but when he immersed himself in the entire gang, it all simply overpowered him. Being a loser is somehow contagious, and when a man starts to associate with them in groups, he’s almost certain to catch it. I tried to warn him about that, but he didn’t seem to understand.” Raphael paused. “Now that I stop and think about it, though, maybe he did at that. He kept after me-begging me almost-to move away from Spokane. Maybe in some obscure way those pleas that we get out of this town were cries for help. Maybe he realized that he was losing control.” He sighed. “Perhaps we should have gone. Then this might not have happened-at least not here in Spokane. Anyway, when I saw the gun, I knew that he’d slipped over the line. It was too late at that point.”