Pound the Table
What If…? Episode 1
What If…? Noa Schaefer had been a lawyer in DC instead of Marvel?
The phone rang, distracting me from the appellate brief I'd been working on
just long enough to mess up my citation. I cursed and hit the backspace button, endlessly thankful that I only needed to use the typewriter for those rare times I went before Judge Howard. I knew it was unfair of me to bitch about that rule, it wasn't his fault that printer toner gave him a horrible rash, but it was
remarkably inconvenient.
I picked the phone up, and looked past the frosted glass doors of my office to where I knew my secretary sat.
"Yes, Sophie?" I asked, and hoped that my annoyance wasn't audible.
"We just got a call from across the river, over in Gotham," she said, her voice sounding as put-upon as I felt upon hearing that.
"One of your clients is demanding to speak with you today, has refused a phone call, and wants it in-person."
"And let me guess: they said something else, otherwise you would have just scheduled them for as far out as you could manage," I said with a sigh.
"Fifteen hours paid up front, with every actual hour of billable work being paid out at double rate," she said, grumbling.
That… that was a lot of money.
"Aaaand which client did you say it was, again?" I asked, suddenly feeling much more eager.
Then Sophie told me, and all that energy disappeared in an instant.
"Fuck," was my only response. Of course. Of
course it would be him. That 'sweetening the pot' was purely so that I had a reason to go out there and humor him, wasn't it? "Did you at least ask Harvey if he could handle this before coming to me?"
"He's been at occupational therapy for the last hour, and is due to be there for another two," Sophie said.
"Plus I already asked Clarence, who told me he's already paged Harvey to follow up on three other clients after he's back."
Damn it. There went that option.
"Alright," I said. "Call ahead and let them know I'm coming, and to have a wrist dampener ready."
"I already told them that you have the complaint ready to file suit if they pull out a neck one, and it just needs a date."
"Good," I said. "Hopefully you won't need to talk me down from filing suit again."
"Still easier than what Clarence deals with," Sophie muttered. And I couldn't help but agree: Harvey may have been one
hell of an attorney to have on your side, but managing his triggers may as well have been a full-time job all on its own.
"Agreed," I told her. "Anyway, can you get the case materials ready for me?"
"I'll have it set for you to grab in fifteen," Sophie said.
"Excellent. Feel free to head out early once you're done with everything for today, I don't think I'm getting back to the city until after dark." With that, I hung up, and sat back down to work on my brief for another fifteen minutes. I couldn't stop thinking about what on earth it could be
this time, though, and so I didn't actually make much progress on the brief at all.
Fifteen minutes later, I grabbed my heels from under my desk, stopped by Sophie's desk to grab case materials, and made my way to the underground garage for my car. The VW Bug groaned a bit at me for not starting it for over a week, but a quick look at the gas tank showed me I was more than fine for this trip.
As I pulled out of the garage and into New York City traffic at a horrible 2pm on a Thursday, I groaned, and cursed whichever gremlin gave me the idea to get my law license in New Jersey as well. Why?
Because now, I had to endure a two hour drive into
Gotham fucking City, with a cassette deck that barely worked, and some of the worst radio stations in the country.
Driving through Gotham City is some of the most stressful, miserable driving in the entire country,
especially during daylight. Gotham was, paradoxically enough, safer at night than where I lived in Manhattan. The problem, though, is that it was orders of magnitude worse during the daylight. With Batman making nocturnal criminal activities dangerous to life and limb (while the man may have never killed, he has left people with wounds so severe as to render a normal life impossible), it was obvious, and even expected, that petty crime would turn to daylight hours instead. So while Gotham had some of the safest city streets to walk at night, you weren't safe on its streets in daylight unless in a group or in a fast-moving car.
I was in neither. This meant that the glorious late summer day that just
would not end left me on tenterhooks on my entire sojourn through the city. I'm pretty sure the only thing that scared off a couple of thugs two streets back is my obviously being a meta, and that was just
not worth the risk to them.
Fortunately, the end of my drive was in sight, and I pulled my car into a compact parking space in the outdoor lot.
Unfortunately, this is because I was walking straight into Arkham Asylum, the most obnoxious, ridiculous, convoluted
mess of a corrections facility to ever exist. I wasn't sure who was to blame, the lobbyists who some give credit for this obnoxious loophole, or the corrupt politicians who were probably already working on it behind closed doors. Or maybe it wasn't even self-interest, but purely laziness, as bureaucrats in Gotham's city hall did just enough for government work.
Or maybe there actually was something to those old rumors of an eldritch curse.
Regardless of reason, the fact remained that Arkham Asylum was somehow both a correctional facility
and a medical institution, but only beholden to one or the other's regulations at a time, depending entirely on
where in the facility you were. Ostensibly, the western half was a mental institution, and the eastern half was a correctional facility, with the dividing line being the center of the property line. Now, want to know the punch line?
The center of the property line didn't intersect the Arkham Asylum facility
at all. The
entire facility existed on the
eastern half.
Now, what did this mean? Generally speaking, it meant that Arkham only needed to even
pretend to be a mental institution when New Jersey's state hospital board was around, and that was assuming they didn't just… bribe the inspectors into going away.
Practically speaking?
My heels clicked on the tile as I walked through the front doors to Arkham Asylum's guest center, on the westernmost end of the building. One of the security guards, Mike, just tipped his hat and gave me a knowing look of commiseration. The other one?
"S-stop!"
A taser came out of its holster, and I knew even without having to look or listen that it was pointed straight at me.
"U-unidentified meta, p-p-put your hands on—"
"New here, huh?" I asked, interrupting the greenhorn before he could finish stammering through whatever it was he wanted to say. "Let me guess, first week, maybe second?"
"First week, ma'am," Mike said, tipping his hat. "Jenkins, put that damn thing away before we got a lawsuit on our hands." The new guard, Jenkins, gulped, then put his taser away, not taking his eyes off of me at any point in the process. "Sorry about that, Ms. Schaefer. Sometimes forget folks aren't as used to metas as we are."
"Don't worry yourself about it," I told Mike, waving off his concerns with a smile. "Anyway, down to business: Noa Schaefer here to see inmate number three-six-four-four-six-two."
"Patient," Mike instantly corrected, though he did chuckle a bit.
"You and I both know that's barely true, and mostly on paper," I responded as I reached into my briefcase and brought out my New Jersey bar association card, along with my driver's license, as proof that I was who I said I was. "Anyway, can I assume that my secretary sent my message along?"
"The warden weren't too happy about it, but he can go shove it," Mike said, taking both cards from my hand to inspect before giving them right back maybe three seconds later. "Alright, nothing looks amiss here. Ma'am, please extend a wrist for me."
As Mike asked, I offered him my right wrist, and rolled up the sleeve of my blazer so he could access it. A moment later, he fastened a metal bangle with a dull strip around the middle onto my wrist, and as the strip around the middle came alight in red, the world felt
duller. I reached for a sunbeam that came in through the window behind me, and when I failed to hook my fingers around it, both Mike and I nodded.
"Alright, the meta suppressant is working," he said, more for the new officer than for anyone else. Mike had done this too many times to be surprised when the cuff did exactly as it said on the LexCorp tin it came in. "Jenkins, watch the door. Ma'am, please follow me."
"Of course," I said, and let Mike lead me through Arkham Asylum.
The mental institution half of Arkham was
barely tolerable to walk through. It was filled to the brim with Hannibal Lecter-style 'cells', and obviously looked more like a prison than a mental hospital. Mike had explained to me one day that the classic 'padded walls' could be raised and lowered individually in every 'room' (he was very careful not to call them cells), and that it was easier to let security staff see everybody than to make them guess whether Harley or the Joker were waiting just behind the padded door with a contraband weapon.
And wasn't the former of that pair just a shame. I'd met Harleen before she went around the twist. Brilliant woman. Terrible taste in food, men, drinks, etcetera. But brilliant.
"Well, surprising to see you back here so soon."
Mike stopped in front of me with a sigh, and waved me off. Both of us knew things would be easier for the next day's staff if I stopped and said hello than anything else. Which is why I approached the cell just to my left, making sure to keep solid plexiglass between myself and the 'patient' at all times.
"Hello again, Pam," I said to my old friend. "Since you're here, I take it that you're still rather prickly to handle."
"Oh, you know me," Pamela Isley said, a wicked grin on her rose-red lips. "Always a troublemaker when trouble needs to be made."
"Trouble doesn't usually include a body count," I told her.
"And?" Pamela asked. "
You could have gotten me off."
"Do I need to quote the rules of ethics at you again, Pam?" I asked, already feeling drained by this whole encounter. "I
cannot represent you."
"That didn't stop you the first time, and you know it," she pointed out, crossing her arms with a huff.
"That was until…" I trailed off with a sigh. Until she got me into her bed, I'd been about to say. Again. "I'm sorry Pam, but as much is I'd like to talk with you more, I need to go. My client is waiting for me."
I gave Pamela one more look and ignored whatever else it was she said before returning to follow Mike. He didn't say a word until we'd passed through the body of the prison itself and out to the meeting rooms, which overlooked the Asylum's sprawling central courtyard.
"He's waiting for you in there," Mike said, pointedly ignoring… whatever that was with Pamela Isley just a bit earlier. "He's not a violent sort, and listed as a patient, so I'll be just outside. Knock on the door if you need anything."
"Of course," I said. "Thank you again Mike." I offered him a handshake, and took the opportunity to slide a hundred dollar bill into his hand. He gave a small nod of acknowledgment when the bill slid into his hand, and pocketed it without the cameras ever having noticed it.
Voila, the price I pay for safety and security inside of Arkham Asylum. Had I mentioned how much I hate Gotham City?
I opened the door to the meeting room, and saw my client sitting on the table, his back to the door. He had a handball, which he appeared to have been bouncing off the walls as he waited, if the little bits of green paint left behind on the rough cinder block were anything to go by. Somehow, he'd managed to swap out the usual mint-colored patient's scrubs for a darker evergreen, though he still had the long-sleeved mint undershirt beneath that.
"Good afternoon Edward," I told him as I entered the room and sat down at the chair set aside for me, endlessly thankful that Mike had sourced an open-backed one. Solid-backed metal chairs weren't just a pain to sit in, they also had nowhere for me to fit my tail, which left me barely sitting on the chair as opposed to just standing up. "I apologize for the delay, but traffic between Manhattan and Gotham is horrendous even outside of rush hour."
"Oh I understand full well, Ms. Schaefer" Edward Nygma said as he pushed off the edge of the table, turning to look at me as he leaned against the wall. "I truly
am sorry for subjecting you to that, by the way, but I had the most
incredible brainwave and I
needed to see you before it went away!"
Uh-oh. It was one of those days, wasn't it?
"Edward, have you been off your meds?" I asked, frowning. "You know you just need to call and let me know if the side effects are a problem. Getting you off fluoxetine only took thirty minutes, I'm pretty sure another change of medication would be even faster."
"No no no, it's not that! I've been on my meds, they're doing
wonderful work!" Edward pushed off the wall and paced around the table, a sort of manic energy in his footsteps. "Just yesterday, I actually had a
full conversation without needing to ask a riddle! Oh, it was so
freeing!"
Actually, now that he mentioned it… this was probably the first time I'd spoken with Edward that didn't start with 'riddle me this', wasn't it? I'd have to ask the guards if he'd asked any of them a riddle when getting word to the practice.
"That's wonderful, Edward!" I didn't even have to feign enthusiasm, because a result like that was
genuinely good. "But that's not why you asked me to come down here, is it?"
"No, oh no it is not, I am
so sorry, I got off track." Edward paced back towards his side of the table and took his chair, turned it around so he could lean over the back of the chair, and sat down, straddling the seat, arms crossed over the back. "Ms. Schaefer. Noa. Can I call you Noa?"
"As I told you the last twenty-seven times you've asked," I said with a sigh, "the moment you allowed me to call you Edward, you had my permission to call me Noa."
"Of course! Now then, Noa." Edward took one hand and drew his finger along the table in front of us, tracing out a fractal pattern that seemed like infinitely repeating question marks to me. "Do you remember how I was last arrested, eight months ago?"
"How could I forget?" I asked, letting myself gripe a little. "Edward, please. It's not often you get a call at
five in the morning that your client was found bound and gagged on the front steps of the police station, with a folder full of incriminating evidence safety-pinned to his jacket. It's just shy of impossible to forget."
"Yes yes, my apologies," he said, waving off my concern. "And of course you know it was the
Batman who left me in that sordid, sorry state!"
I sighed, and let my clasped hands rest on the table.
"Edward, we have been over this," I told him. "Batman's actions squeak through a loophole in the rules of evidence and criminal procedure, which specifically allows for the police to take a fortuitous finding and use it to their advantage. Moreover, there's the precedent from
New Jersey v. Falcone, et al. cutting against you: Batman is
not a recognized member of law enforcement, meaning that any evidence he manages to deposit into the hands of police is not Fruit of the Poison Tree. Five separate judges on three separate courts
all upheld the police's assertions of plausible deniability in situations like yours, Edward."
I could not understand Edward's fixation on this. Fruit of the Poison Tree was a legal principle that flowed out from the Unclean Hands doctrine. Unclean Hands was a doctrine which stated that a person could not legally benefit from illegal acts. Fruit of the Poison Tree, therefore, flowed out of this, stating that law enforcement officers could not use evidence that they had procured illegally. Forced confessions, illegal searches and seizures, backdating a warrant for a police raid… any evidence obtained in these manners, among others, was considered Fruit of the Poison Tree.
But the problem is… there were limits to this. And unfortunately, the courts had come down on Batman's side time and time again.
"Ah, but there is a wrinkle here!" Edward said, a wide smile on his face. "A certain something that makes this time different from all other times!"
"Please tell me you weren't making a Passover joke," I half-prayed to Edward, an utterly deadpan expression on my face.
"... I plead the Fifth?" Edward asked with a chuckle, to which I sighed. "Anyway! Tell me, when was I found on the precinct steps?"
"January sixth," I answered immediately.
"And when," Edward continued, his voice low, "did the President of the United States sign H.R. 5239, officially legalizing and adopting the charter of the Justice League?"
"That was—"
I stopped dead, rolling over the thought in my head. The Justice League charter essentially deputized any and all of the members of the Justice League to act as law enforcement, so long as they were doing so on American soil, and so long as the costs of any damage that was proximately caused by their actions did not exceed that of the foes that prompted Justice League action in the first place.
More to the point? This deputy status could apply
retroactively, meaning that a hero who signed onto the Justice League could use their signing to avoid lawsuit or criminal consequences from acting as law enforcement. But if signatories got the
benefits of being law enforcement, then that would mean—
"November twenty-fifth of last year," Edward filled in for me. "And since Batman is a signatory of the Justice League's charter…"
"Edward Nygma, you mad genius," I said, letting the excitement I was feeling bubble up onto my expression. "Are you suggesting what I think you are?"
"Oh, I most certainly
am," he said, his grin matching my own.
"In that case." I flipped open my briefcase, pulled out two legal pads and four pens, and slid half of the materials over to him. "Let's get started, shall we?"
"You've been working late."
"Oh
holy mother of—!" I flinched backwards and yelled just after opening the door to the firm, the orb of light magic I'd reflexively called to my hand dissipating as I recognized the voice. "For
fuck's sake, Harvey, turn on a
light!"
A half-smile crossed my partner's face—the right half only, unfortunately. Major reconstructive surgery had done a lot, but nerve damage was another thing entirely, and so my poor colleague would likely be dealing with a severe case of Bell's Palsy for the rest of his life. The medical eyepatch over his left eye, testament to his fifth corneal abrasion in two years, was testament to that.
"Heard from Sophie you had to go to the hellhole again," he said, flipping closed the file he'd been working on. "Who was it this time? Ivy? Quinn?"
"
Isley and
Quinzel, Harv," I gently corrected him. "You know what the psychiatrist said."
"I know, I
know," he said, voice slightly heated. "It's just – it's reflex at this point. Can't help it."
"It's okay," I told him. "Just… try at it. Oh, and before I forget?" I walked over to my office and unlocked the door, then held it open for him to join me inside. "It was Nygma, actually."
"Seriously?" Harvey followed me into the office. "What did that lunatic want
this time? And is he still fixated on saying his riddles can't be used against him in court?"
"No, actually," I said. "And for once, I think he has a point."
I spent the next half hour detailing everything I'd gone over with Edward. Both my and his legal pads came out, and I explained everything we'd gone over and explored to Harvey. Ridiculous as it sounded when I said it out loud, Edward Nygma might just have been
correct here. But despite my excitement, I could tell my partner was worried.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Harvey asked, nursing a glass of scotch that he'd poured for himself about ten minutes in. "Noa, this could undo everything Batman's done for most of a
year. Think of just how many people are going to be back out on the streets, how many people could get
hurt!"
"You know I have," I said, keeping my voice gentle. "But if this pans out, and someone else does it
first?"
"You want it to be you," Harvey said with a rueful chuckle. "Noa Schaefer, legal superstar." He favored me with his signature half-smirk. "That ambition is gonna get you hurt someday, you know."
"You said the same thing when I took your case," I told him. "See how that turned out."
"And maybe I'm the exception," he said. "Regardless. Are you
sure you want to do this?"
"Absolutely." I stood up from where I'd sat at the edge of my desk, and looked at the frames on my wall. Articles, accolades, awards… but the only bit of this office that felt like a proper
accomplishment was currently sucking down a glass of my Macallan 18 at a scary fast rate. "I think it can be done. And honestly? If we don't hold the heroes' feet to the fire, who will?"
"Who will indeed," Harvey said, looking at his glass. "Well. It'll make Wayne's Thanksgiving charity gala more than a little uncomfortable."
"Not like it wasn't already," I murmured, to which Harvey could only nod.
We sat in silence for about a minute longer. I caught a glimpse of the clock, and noticed just how late it had gotten.
"I should probably head home," I said, picking my briefcase up off the desk. "You okay to lock up?"
"Always am," he said. "And don't worry, this is the only drink I'm having."
"Good. I'll see you in the morning, Harv."
"And you as well, Noa."
With our farewells made, I left my office, dropped a few things off for mailing in the morning on Sophie's desk, and exited the firm.
The frosted glass door,
Schaefer & Dent, LLP emblazoned proudly upon its surface, slid closed behind me with nary a sound.
This episode of "What If...?" has been brought to you by
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