CASSIDY'S GHOST

It has been said that everyone has the makings of at least one novel inside them. Not a great novel, necessarily, or even a good one. Just a novel, presumably. No particular requirement of quality.

With modern technology, each of us must have, burning within us, then, at least a half dozen websites. Again, not great, or even good. Just several collections of bits, bytes, megabytes and mouse-clicks.

Inspired, recently, by the Muse, if any, that rules the art, if any, of website making (the term “web design” sounds too artistic), I decided to do a website so to inflict my legal insights, if any, onto an unsuspecting public. Of course, unless I could find something that would attract traffic to attorneybutler.net, the public might remain unsuspecting. I thought it might be a good idea to have some content that might be entertaining.

I had always been fascinated by old Detroit. The Guardian Building, Hudson’s, Belle Isle statuary, the Grand Circus Park movie palaces. I loved the architecture, but I really think that is was the grainy, black and white photographs of the era that attracted me. Daily, I saw many of the buildings shown in those photos in living color. But those old, fuzzy, pictures required me to provide the color, the definition, the focus and the movement to those scenes and so made me part of a world that existed long before I was born. Those photos were different every time I looked at them, and so were ever interesting and romantic. Modern digital, hi-def. photos are more dazzling, but less involving.

I decided to divide the site between legal ravings and historic ramblings. As I collected information on early 20th Century Detroit using the early 21st Century internet, I tried to remember what had first kindled my interest. Then, one night, while looking for some very light reading, I found the source on a basement bookshelf. Next to the cable TV, DVD player and video game system, I found Veritas, the issues of 1927 and 1929. These were the yearbooks of St. Theresa High School, Detroit. The bindings had long since dried and many of the pages were loose, but all were accounted for and in proper order. Group pictures of the grade school students were thrown in, and my father is a first grader in the 1929 issue. He is shown, sitting on the steps of the church, wearing a pair of knickerbockers. He is also wearing an expression on his face that Leo Gorcey of the Dead End Kids would have envied. Full of mischief he appeared then, and is still, bless him.

I must have looked through those pages a hundred times over the years, and I did again that evening.

One of my favorite parts of the yearbooks had always been the advertisements. “May-Trot Shoes—Are Different. It is a FEAT to fit your feet.” “Blue Valley Butter is Good Butter.” Probably no trans-fat, either.

Towards the back was this gem: “Compliments of Judge Frank Murphy of Recorder’s Court.” Frank Murphy, before he was Mayor of Detroit, Governor of Michigan, Governor-General of the Philippines, and Justice of the US Supreme Court. St. Theresa’s knew him when.

Then I came upon a very small ad, even further back. It read simply: “Compliments of Daniel P. Cassidy.” Nothing else. No title, no address and no phone number. It seemed familiar, but how? The ad was 80 years old. Then I remembered another book, the 1977 Detroit Bar Association Pictorial Directory. It was in our law library, and was used chiefly to show young secretaries and paralegals pictures of the older partners from back when they had huge sideburns, Fu-Manchu moustaches, and well, hair. We sometimes showed them the picture of Daniel P. Cassidy, because of the caption beneath. It read: “DCL ’03, Admitted ’03.” That was 1903, not 2003.

What made this really eerie was that I dimly recalled meeting the man. In the very early 80s, as a very new, ignorant young lawyer, I had been introduced to Daniel Cassidy, at some bar function my boss had dragged me to. My boss, a middle-aged Irishman, introduced me to Mr. Cassidy, and he was in person, as he seemed in his picture. A short man, elegant, courteous, composed and self-effacing. A man who looked every inch a lawyer, even though he must have been over one hundred years old at the time. He was very nice to me, though he had been a lawyer twenty years before my father was born. I was impressed by him, in a quiet sort of way. Unfortunately, I was too young to fully appreciate the experience, and the honor.

After that, the shear expanse of time and the coincidence involved, made me want to find out all I could about Daniel Cassidy. I assumed that he had passed away in the twenty-plus years since, and he wasn’t listed in the state bar directory. I called the state bar and they did still have him on the books, P number 11721. He died in 1984, and his last address was 415 Burns Dr. Apt. 603 in Detroit. After court one day I drove by the address with directions I pulled off Mapquest. It was the old Whittier Hotel, on the riverfront across Jefferson from Indian Village and looking onto Belle Isle. Two high rise towers are connected at ground level and with a huge two story high, red neon sign on top. I remember it being advertised on the radio, long ago, as Detroit’s premiere retirement residence. It had been vacant since 2001.

That was all I could find. Unsatisfied, I turned to that most modern of research tools, the Google search site. In a cyber-world where the word “splunge” (not a collection of letters found in the dictionary) yields 196,000 results, for Daniel P. Cassidy, Detroit attorney, there is not one entry. I thought about the man I had met briefly way back when, the lawyer who bought an ad in the school yearbook, without using it as an advertising opportunity, the man who spent his last years looking the river from his home in the heart of the city. I figured that Daniel P. Cassidy might not care if he wasn’t listed on Google.

As it turned out, he didn’t.

Last Friday night, Cassidy’s ghost came to call.

I had spent the preceding evening at a high school dads’ club meeting. It was the yearly award’s dinner, and the club was sending off several officers whose daughters were graduating. The departing president was a wine merchant by trade, and he supplied the evening’s drinks. When I arrived home, the rest of the family was already asleep. Contemplating the effort required to go upstairs, and get ready for bed, and not being equal to it, I plopped myself in front of the computer, and after checking out the latest sports scores, I embarked on a riveting series of solitaire games.

I must have dozed off in the chair. When I opened my eyes, I was not “become vaguely aware of a vaporous presence shimmering in the ether before me.” I did see, however, a very real-looking shortish man in a navy blue suit, with red tie, standing next to my right shoulder, studying the computer display. The cards moved among the piles on the screen, but the mouse remained motionless in my hand.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. You lost that last one, I’m afraid. Couldn’t uncover the two of Spades. Still an addicting game.”

My senses were still too dull to react. It felt like one of those dreams where you feel you need to run, but find you move only in very slow motion.

“I thought it might be too much of a shock if I was sitting at your kitchen table when you walked in. I did try to appear in a way you might recognize. But it is late, and you have had a lot of wine. But, I’m sorry. I’d like to do this properly. Good evening, Michael. It’s good to see you again. I’m Dan Cassidy.”

As he talked, I did recognize him. He looked as I remembered him, from the black and white photo in the ’77 bar directory. Only he was in color now, and his hand was warm as I shook it.

My first attempt at speech was not particularly brilliant. “Been waiting long?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve only been gone twenty or so years. Time really doesn’t mean that much now. You have a very nice family, by the way.”

I became a little alarmed. “Did they see you? Did you talk to them? Either? Both?”

“No. They’d probably still be awake if I did that. You haven’t mentioned me to them, have you?”

“No. Local history is one of the interests that the family tolerates in me by ignoring it. Besides, my wife doesn’t like it when I take field trips, like to your place. Sorry, I shouldn’t be referring to you as local history.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said, waving his hand. “We all become local history.”

“I guess,” I said, preferring not to think about it. I changed the subject. “Too bad the old Whittier is closed up. It looked like a grand old place.”

“Old?” He laughed. “I was older than you when the thing was built.”

“Oops. I don’t talk to one hundred twenty year old ghosts often. Now that I mention that, you are a combination of tonight’s wine and a heavy workload at the office, aren’t you? This one of those dreams I won’t remember when I wake up, right?”

“I have only been a ‘ghost’ as you call it, for a little over twenty years. By the way, we prefer the term ‘corporeally challenged’.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. You, know, I was actually considered a bit of a wit in my time. After the Crash, in ’29, life wasn’t quite so funny for the next fifteen years. So, I watched myself. Anyway, the wine and the work do make it easier for you to see me now, but I am real, and this is what we call an ‘unofficial visit’.”

“Does the ‘official visit’ come with a black robe and scythe?”

Cassidy smiled. “Ah, I see you are waking up. Official visits are not my department. Actually, I am still in my probationary period. It’s nice to be in a place where they still call you ‘kid’.”

“Well, is what you call an ‘unofficial visit’, what I might call ‘being haunted’?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Unofficial visits are what family and friends get, well, those you like, anyway. The ones you don’t like get something else.”

“Another department?” I asked.

“Another department. With you, at first I came down just out of curiosity.”

“You said ‘down’. So, heaven is ‘up’?”

“Well, heaven is mostly up.” I could have sworn he winked at me. “But who said I came from heaven? You know what they say about lawyers and the afterlife.”

“I am sure I have heard most of the jokes. But, I am betting you made it past the gates.” I was trying to suck up.

“Well, one doesn’t like to brag…”

I could have sworn I heard the distant rumble of thunder in the distance. Probably not.

Cassidy cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, aside from the grandkids, I don’t get too many signals from down here, except when a deed I drafted shows up on an old abstract of title. Your signal came in pretty strong, so I thought I’d try to find see what it was all about. I started nosing around a little.”

“So, you don’t see and hear everything, all the time?”

“Who can keep track of it all? Well, someone does keep track of it all, but, again that’s…?

I put up a hand. “Another department. I get it.”

“We do have a pretty sophisticated filtering system. A soul can’t respond every time its name gets mentioned. Take Abe Lincoln. If he had to take notice every time an appliance store had a President’s Day sale, he’d get nothing done. So they set a filter to eliminate some of what they call ‘static’. But I can’t get into that, trade secrets you understand.”

“Trade secrets? So there is work for lawyers in heaven?”

“Oh yes. Justinian just ran a seminar on condo agreements in black holes. He lost me immediately. Really, it’s the doctors who don’t have anything to do. They hate that.” Cassidy laughed again. He seemed to laugh easily.

“I understand that, I think. Well, how does this unofficial visit work? Are you here to tell me something, or do I ask you stuff. There are things I’d like to ask.

“Well, as I’m something of an uninvited guest in your home, how about you start. What do you want to know? No future events, mind.”

“All right. I have always wanted to know this one. Can God make a stone so heavy that He…”

Cassidy rolled his eyes. “He gets a visit from the hereafter, and this is what he asks?”

“All right,” Cassidy said, “my turn. Why did you bother looking for me?”

“It’s not often you meet a guy who practiced law at the beginning of the 19th century.”

“And I once argued a case against a lawyer who lost a hand in the Civil War.” He looked at me closely. “That’s it?”

“Well, I do remember meeting you, and I remember your ad in the ’27 Veritas. No address, no phone number. Didn’t even say you were a lawyer. I guess things have changed so much in the practice that I wanted to learn what I could about a lawyer who didn’t feel the need to advertise. Being a lawyer has changed so much.”

“I’ve been watching. Being a lawyer hasn’t changed at all.”

I was dumbfounded. “Are you serious? I couldn’t function without a computer, or a fax. It seems like everyone is at each other’s throats scrambling for business now. There’s a guy who runs commercials on TV every five minutes. There is no courtesy left.

Cassidy smiled at me like I was a slow child. “Pardon me, but you don’t know what you are talking about. When I started law school, there were no cars, no airplanes, no movies, TV, no radio, damn few phones. (Another rumble of thunder.) Sorry, dang few phones. The face of Detroit changed every ten years. You may get more stuff faster and clearer now, but we started not getting anything at all. New technology made our heads spin. But being a lawyer never changed.”

I shook my head. “But legal services are treated like commodities now, like they are car parts. Non-lawyers with computers think they know more than we do.”

He laughed again. “It is always the way. Being a lawyer has always been about serving your client and protecting from those who would take his rights, his property or his freedom. It may be the state, who wants to put him in jail. It may his neighbor who wants his property or wants to prevent him from doing business. It may be a person or company that has injured him, and taken from him his health and livelihood. The methods may be different, and the statute books thicker and more complex, but the principles of duty and reason, justice, honor and compassion don’t change. If you are looking for them, they are here and here.” He pointed to his head and his heart.

Again I heard the rumble of thunder, closer now. I looked closely at Cassidy. Was he taller now?

“Justice has always been and will always be threatened, sometimes in what seem very small ways and often by those who may think they are doing good. A lawyer’s duty has been and will always be, to make sure that individual justice is not sacrificed as the price of some temporary economic advantage, or some perceived sense of security.”

I could have sworn there was a flash of lightning through the blinds.

“Your duty is service to your client. Demand justice for him and you protect justice for every individual. Don’t worry about new technology. A man’s right to be treated fairly before the law transcends progress.”

Thunder and lightning now, everywhere. The lines on Cassidy’s face seemed to have faded away.

“And those who thump their chests, proclaiming that they are the saviors of the common man and the champion of justice. When the reporters are gone and the microphones are turned off, and the hard, unglamorous work needs to be done, day in, day out, you may sadly find them absent.”

There had been a twinkle in his eyes throughout our meeting, but now they burned bright. And the years fell away as I watched. He was quite a young man, now. The thunder and lightning was continuous now.

“Let everyone see your passion for justice in everything you do. Every day, quietly, even in the smallest task. We are part of a noble craft. Behave accordingly.”

The thunder and lightning stopped, and the stillness seemed almost as loud.

We’ll have this conversation again in a couple hundred years. If you make it.” He raised his eyes heavenward. He laughed again.

“You’ll see I’m right. I was very lucky. I figured out some of this out while I was still down here.”

There was a final distant groan of thunder.

“Got to go now,” Cassidy said. “Watch. The grandkids love when I do this.”

With that he turned on his heel, walked through the outside wall and was gone.

The next thing I remember was waking to WWJ at 5:30. It was Saturday, and I could turn the alarm off. As I reached for the clock-radio, I heard: “Meteorologists are at a loss to explain last night’s thunder and lightning out of a clear sky…”