Sonny
'Mr Trent,' Hobie says with somewhat sinister distinctness. He appears restored by a weekend's rest. He's had a crisp-looking haircut and lost the haggardness of a week on trial, the reddened, jumpy eyes, the runnels of sleeplessness. He strides to the center of the room to confront Core, who is still settling himself on the witness stand.
'Cuz,' answers Hardcore. A wayward note of black-on-black contempt. Hobie momentarily addresses him in silence, chin elevated, seeing how it is.
I have already passed an hour this morning with the attorneys in a lengthy chambers conference. Hardcore's lawyer, Jackson Aires, played stalking horse for the prosecution. He asked to limit Hobie's cross, claiming that Core should not be forced to incriminate himself about matters that go beyond his guilty plea in this case. In reply, Hobie railed about his client's constitutional right to fully confront the witness. To avoid poisoning myself with an endless rundown of Hardcore's grossest misdeeds, I ruled that the episodes would be taken up one by one during cross. Each event will be portrayed in generalized terms, and Aires and the trial lawyers then can argue about its relevance.
Aires now sits tensely at the edge of a folding chair, set about six feet behind the prosecution table against the low oak partition that runs beneath the screen of bulletproof glass. Well past sixty, Jackson, in his familiar burgundy sport coat, remains a figure of grace and ease, a long loose-jointed African-descended male with that snowball pomp above his forehead and a manner reflecting thoroughgoing contentment with his own views. In chambers, the discussion between Hobie and him became heated, due in no small measure to the fact, which eventually emerged, that Aires is one of Hobie's father's oldest friends and even employed Hobie for one summer during law school. Jackson, who has never encountered an advantage he was unwilling to use in a courtroom, repeatedly referred to Hobie as 'young Turtle' and told him more than once he had no idea what he was talking about.
Perhaps it is the stress of performing before his old mentor, or the procedure I've insisted on, which has altered the order in which Hobie wanted to proceed, but he seems fiatfooted almost from the start of his examination. The cross does not go well.
'You made a sweet deal with the prosecution, didn't you?' he begins. Hobie batters Core with various examples of how much worse things could have gone for him. As part of the plea agreement, the prosecution agreed not to charge Core with any of the narcotics offenses he committed daily. In the upside-down world of contemporary criminal law, a murder conviction often carries a lesser penalty in real terms than a drug crime, for which both parole and good time have been essentially abolished in this state. Core would do eighteen years if the same stretch was for selling dope. And had the prosecutors contrived one of their far-fetched arguments linking June's death to a narcotics transaction, they would have been obliged by statute to seek the death penalty.
Well rehearsed, Core admits matter-of-factly that flipping on Nile dramatically improved his sentence. More important, as Hobie teases out the details of the plea agreement, the inferences somehow mm against him. In one of those spontaneous audience reactions characteristic of the courtroom, we all seem to recognize together that Core' s credibility is actually enhanced by the deal he's made. A hang-tough gangbanger like Hardcore would go back to the penitentiary only because he had no other choice. Someone was going to burn him, if he didn't cop out first. And logically the person Core feared could only be Nile. After messing up, killing June, the mother Nile presumably loved, instead of Eddgar, the father he apparently hated, Core recognized a high likelihood that Nile, in grief or rage, would eventually roll over on him. That's how I add it up. I find myself somewhat shocked, much as I was on Friday, by the mounting nuances pointing toward Nile's guilt.
'Some women sold their bodies to buy your crack, didn't they?' Hobie asks, pointing out the gravity of what Core's gotten away with. 'Some folks stole?' Hardcore quarrels at points – he didn't tell nobody to steal – but acknowledges what he must in a well-schooled tone that insists, correctly, that none of this is news. Often when I sit up here, I attempt to imagine the outlaw existence of the hardened young people who come before me: getting up each morning with no real conviction that you're going to end the day intact. Someone may shoot you; you may have to slap-up some homie who has a knife you didn't see, or the Goobers may come by, slippin, and gauge you at sixty feet. Creature things must dominate. Heat and cold. Sex. Intoxication. Each moment is a struggle to maintain dominance or at least power – downtalking everyone around you, exerting strength, sometimes cruelly. And making no real plans. A vague shape to tomorrow, and no thought at all of a month, let alone a year. Survive. Make do. Life as impulse. And why not?
Having accomplished little thus far, Hobie reaches deeper. He leers across the podium and asks, 'Now, Mr Trent, would you mind telling us how many other people you've killed?'
Aires and both prosecutors leap up, all of them shouting objections. This is the kind of question we were arguing about in chambers.
'Is this for credibility, Mr Turtle?' I ask. He shakes his head yes and I shake my head no. 'I don't think it's necessary. Mr Trent has admitted he's a murderer for hire. Whether it's one murder or twenty, that acknowledgement of that sort of conduct gives me an adequate window on his character. I'll sustain the objection.'
Hobie, unfailingly respectful of my rulings until now, can't keep himself from raveling up his lips in pique. He repeats his bitter complaints about interference with Nile's constitutional rights to confront the witness. For the first time, he is clearly setting me up for appeal and even goes so far as to move for a mistrial – a claim that my ruling is so unfair, he'd rather start the trial again from scratch. It's routine defense hysterics – a sort of exclamation point for his objections – and I respond with a single word: 'Denied.'
Listening to this byplay, Hardcore displays a japing smile. For Core, this is head-up, street stuff, dude on dude, the kind of strife he's always known. He thinks he's winning. Studying him, I notice a teardrop etched beneath the corner of his right eye. He is dark enough that the tattoo barely shows, but it means he's killed with his own hands. There is probably not a Top Rank gangster out there who has not shot or knifed someone. Yet despite my glib assurances to Hobie, the sight – the reality – remains disquieting.
Hobie's next sortie is a series of questions about the crimes for which Core was arrested, but not convicted, as both a juvenile and an adult. I let Hobie explore a charge of deviate sexual assault that arose when Core, early in his career with BSD, lured a whore into a Grace Street apartment, beat her, and made her service dozens of young men, each of whom, under this arrangement, paid him instead of her. But as Hobie attempts to thumb through the catalogue of Hardcore's earlier thuggery – everything from truancy to zip-gun stickups – I begin to see the point of Aires's and the prosecutors' vehement objections. It's unfair to force Core to acknowledge much of this conduct, which has little to do with his honesty. Jackson Aires comes from his seat in back and stands before the bench to argue.
'Judge, I was the lawyer there for Trent here on all these cases,' Jackson says, 'and I can tell the court, Judge, there was somethin wrong with each of them.' On Core' s rap sheet there are twenty-two arrests which Jackson somehow beat. Sometimes he filed motions to suppress, or objected successfully on technical grounds like venue; more often – if the rumors are true – he agreed that the $1,500 pocket money Hardcore had when he was booked in Area 7 could be forgotten if certain incriminating details disappeared as well from the collective memory of the police. In Jackson's view, there's no reason black gangsters shouldn't take advantage of the same devices white ones have always employed. He'll admit that to you straight up, in the confidence of a barroom or a corridor, with a stern, humorless look daring you to tell him he's wrong.
By the time we return from the morning recess, a dazed air has come over the courtroom. The spectators' benches, thick at 9 a.m. with those awaiting a cross which the papers promised would produce theatrics, now have thinned. Hobie continues to look poised, but I know, having been there, that he spent the last ten minutes telling himself he is going to have to get Core now or, surely, lose.
'Let's talk about the shooting,' he says, ambling toward the door to the lockup. 'It was your homeboy, Gorgo, who actually gunned down Mrs Eddgar, right?'
'Sure 'nough,' Core answers. You would not call his demeanor mournful.
'And have the police asked you to help them find Gorgo?' Core thinks about it and shrugs. 'Cuz hit the wall, man. Ain no tellin where that mother gone.'
'Well, help me, Hardcore, I'd think you'd want to find Gorgo.
Isn't he one more person who could tell the police whether or not what you're saying is true?'
Molto objects that the question is argumentative, which it is, but given the constraints I've already imposed on the cross, I allow it.
'He ain goin 'gainst me,' Hardcore says with a faint smile. It's not clear if Core is asserting the truthfulness of his testimony or a reality of gang life. 'Sides, man,' he adds, 'nigger don't want to be found, you know? He ain just run from the po-lice neither. I git my dogs on that motherfucker, time I done, he be rankin out.' Begging for mercy. Core, feeling friskier as the cross goes on, ends his answer with another sneer in Hobie's direction. There is a scratchy something between them, a contest that goes beyond the courtroom. Bold and unruly, Core seems to assert at every pass that he's the real black man, poor, raised without refuge, full of the rightful indignation of the oppressed. Hobie, in Core's view, is a fake, someone who doesn't know the real deal, a challenge to which Hobie seems oddly vulnerable. That, perhaps, is what's sapped some of his strength.
'You're pretty angry with Gorgo?'
'Word,' answers Hardcore, and at the further thought of Gorgo gives he head a disgusted shake.
'Because he shot Mrs Eddgar while you were standing there, right? You and Bug? And that's how you got in trouble?'
‘I stand behind that,' says Core.
Turning away from the witness, I see Hobie smile fleetingly for the first time. Has he got something?
'Now, how close to Mrs Eddgar was Gorgo on this bicycle when he shot her?'
With his long nail, Hardcore describes the distance between Hobie and him. Close enough to kill. Core grins tautly at the thought. Hobie, catching the drift, smiles too.
'He could see it was a woman, couldn't he?'
Molto objects that Core can't testify to what Gorgo could see.
'Fair enough,' Hobie says. 'You could see it was a woman when you were twelve feet from her, couldn't you?' 'I ain dumb like he is.' Hobie absorbs that. Core fences well. 'Well, Bug was waving to Gorgo?' Thass right.' 'Trying to stop him?' 'Thass right' 'But you didn't wave?' 'Naw.'
'You didn't shout to him?' 'Uh-uh.'
'You hit the pavement?' 'Thass right'
Hobie has approached Core gradually. Now he dares to touch the front rail of the witness stand.
'You knew he wasn't going to stop, didn't you?'
' Shee-it, man.' Showily, Core waves the back of his hand inches from Hobie's nose. 'Listen how you get up on yo'self! Look that bitch-made nigger in the eye, man, you gone see that fool straight down to shoot. I like to seen that plenty.'
'Sir, you knew Gorgo was going to shoot anyway, didn't you, even though it was a woman standing there, and as a result you hit the pavement?'
‘I already answered that damn question.'
'Judge,' says Tommy, belatedly. I sustain the objection and Hobie retreats to his notes to seek another subject, once again short of success. Naturally, I've gotten the point – but it baffles me, as it has when Hobie's prowled this ground before. What earthly good does it do Nile, even if June, rather than Eddgar, was the target?
'Senator Eddgar,' says Hobie. 'Let's talk about him. You had one meeting with the Senator, is that your testimony?' 'Seem like one.'
'Seems like? One or more than one?'
‘In my lid, man, you know I got one.' 'It could be more?'
Core shirks it off. Hobie fixes him with a look, but decides, after an instant's reflection, not to pursue it.
'Now, Hardcore, to you, to T-Roc, this idea of getting Kan-el out of prison – that was very important, wasn't it?'
'Down for mine, man,' he says. 'Stomp down.' The credo. The gang, he means. Everything for the gang.
'And that's why you agreed to meet with the Senator. Am I right? Because getting Kan-el out, that's a thang with you. Right?'
'You with it, cuz,' he answers, and adds a quick simpering smile, mocking Hobie for trying to take up his lingo.
'And you told us, I believe, that when you found Senator Eddgar had this idea that BSD could become a political organization you were real angry – "deep"?'
'Man, what he were stressin, man, that shit ain real.'
Hobie nods, mulling as he strolls. Then he turns back abruptly and asks in a smaller voice, 'So why'd you think Senator Eddgar was coming down there?'
Core for an instant is dead silent. I see him look to Aires.
'Nile sayin get with his daddy. Thass all.'
'That's all? Let's set the scene, Core. We got two gangbangers. Top Rank. Black men. Both convicted felons, right? And we have an important white politician, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, who drives all the way down to the North End of DuSable and climbs in the back of a limousine with the likes of you-all, knowing you want nothing more in the world than to get your homie, Kan-el, out of Rudyard penitentiary. Now I ask you again, Hardcore, what did you think he was coming for? What did you think he was going to get out of this?'
Core stares, motionless, feral. Hobie's finally got him. 'Huh?' asks Hobie. 'You and T-Roc had this one checked out, didn't you?'
Core just shakes his head.
'You went there thinking you were going to bribe Senator Eddgar, didn't you?'
Aires unfurls his lanky form from his folding chair and raises his hand tentatively. 'Judge,' he says, ‘I have to be heard.' Suddenly -in one of those light-switch moments – it's clear what Jackson's doing here. He's not just protecting Hardcore. He's looking after T-Roc, Kan-el, his entire client base in B S D. I wave Aires to his seat and Hobie asks me to have the court reporter read the question back.
'No way,' says Core. 'You trippin.'
Hobie's nostrils flare in a sudden disbelieving exhalation. It's the first moment in which I know for certain Hardcore has been caught lying. Core and Aires have covered this one. If Hardcore acknowledged a conspiracy to commit bribery, T-Roc's supervised release would be in jeopardy. Worse, Core would have dimed out his own, not the way to commence a ten-year stay at Rudyard.
'So are you telling us, Hardcore, that you never offered or received any money directly or indirectly through Senator Eddgar? Is that what you're saying? Do you understand what I'm asking?'
'Nigger, I understand you fine.'
Hobie stands with paralytic stillness. The sole movement – an involuntary one – is the tip of his tongue sneaking forth between his teeth. The word, of course. The entire gulf of black life, that heritage of disrespect, stands between them for a moment.
'Read the question back,' he tells the court reporter, finally, without taking his eyes from Hardcore. It's my job to issue that instruction, but under the circumstances I do not intervene, just nod to Suzanne.
'No money, nothin,' Core says, 'ain nothin like that.'
'Nothing like that,' Hobie says. Standing over his notes at the podium, he takes a few more seconds to collect himself, shifts his shoulder, and rebuttons his handsome, green-toned Italian suit. Over in the jury box, in the journalistic dog pound, there is a steady murmur. Bribery! This case is too much, something great each day. I see Dubinsky and Stuart Rosenberg huddled together, but turn away abruptly when I sense Seth trying to catch my eye.
'Now, Hardcore, most of what you're saying about Nile -there's no kind of record of it, is there?'
'Record? What kind of damn record, man? I ain no D Jup here, man. Record,' he huffs.
'No documents. Nothing to prove what you're saying is true. For instance, this phone call you say you made to Nile the morning of the murder, after he beeped you. There's no record of that, is there? Not so far as you know?' The state has already stipulated to this. Hobie's on safe ground.
'They's the money, man,' says Core.
'Right,' says Hobie. 'The money. That's the only thing backing up your testimony, right?'
Hobie's correct, but it's an argument not a question and I sustain the prosecutors' objection.
'Well, haven't the prosecutors told you, Hardcore, how important that money is?'
'Money be money, man. Make the world go round.'
‘I think that's love,' Hobie says, over his shoulder. He's moving again, on the prowl, working his hands, his fancy alligator loafers scudding across the worn courtroom carpeting. 'You understood that bag of money you delivered to the prosecutors – you knew it was the key to corroborating your testimony, didn't you? You couldn't have gotten your sweet deal without the money to back you up, right?'
'Yo, man, chill. That wasn't no thang, man, cause I had the damn money, okay?'
'Oh, you had money,' says Hobie. 'How much money, Hardcore, did you make every day slanging dope – $5,000?'
Core equivocates. He doesn't know.
'Two thousand?'
Hardcore shakes his head.
'How many people did you say you had working for you? Did you say it was five? Wasn't it more like seventy-five?'
'Oh, no, man, no way. You sky-up.'
‘I am? Let's talk about your cars, Core.' Hobie takes him through it all. Jewelry. Houses. Women he supports. Hobie has the police reports from the Force narcotics unit – informant information and occasional surveillance. Core is clearly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
'Core, you have $10,000 cash dope money sitting around any day of the week, don't you?'
Aires is sitting forward alertly now. Hardcore, sensing he's being trapped again, flares up.
'Look, nigger, he gimme the money, Jack, so just get behind it.'
Hobie again comes to a complete halt. His eyes briefly flicker my way. Which is all the invitation I need.
'Mr Trent, the next time you address Mr Turtle in that manner, I'm going to hold you in contempt. Do you want to talk to Mr Aires?'
'That's all right, Judge.' Standing again, Jackson waves the back of his hand in a schoolmarmish way at his client. 'You behave,' he says across the well of the courtroom.
On the stand, Core lowers his head and mutters to himself. I make out a few words. 'Buster, man.' It's Hobie he's referring to. A drag, he means. Hobie goes back to the prosecution table for People's Group Exhibit 1, the money, divided in two clear envelopes, and the plastic newspaper bag it supposedly was delivered in.
'So it's your testimony that Nile Eddgar gave you this bag and $10,000 in late August this year?'
'They fingerprints, man.' Core snidely smiles. 'That didn't surprise you, did it?'
'Ain surprise, man, cause I knowed who dogged me the money.' 'But you expected the money and the bag to have prints on it, didn't you?'
Core shrugs. 'Maybe.'
'Sure you did. You kept this money safe, didn't you? You didn't even take it out of the bag, did you? Isn't that what you said?'
'Straight down.'
'You didn't spend any of it, did you?' 'Nope.'
'You had other money to spend, right?' 'Right.'
'You didn't let this get mixed up with any of your other money, did you?'
'Yo, you hear what I'm sayin? That the money he give me, man.' Core's been instructed. By Aires. By Tommy. The money's the case. He knows he can't come off it, not an inch.
'You kept this bag secure because you knew if something went wrong, you'd have a way to give up Nile? That you'd have his prints. That you'd have this to hand over to the po-lice. Right? Isn't that how it was?'
Hardcore considers the implications of the question at length. The weird yellowish fingernails, recalling some Chinese mandarin, appear as he scratches the incomplete goatee, and I see his eyes again drifting to Jackson. There's a trade-off here for Core. By acknowledging these nasty calculations he can explain why he had the cash to back up what he was saying. But in admitting he was prepared from the start to give up Nile, he's confirming the central tenet of the defense. Worse, perhaps, he's dissing his own character. The bangers, wild with the ravages of wounded ego, can rarely endure that. Yet across the courtroom Jackson's chin drops no more than a quarter of an inch, and Hardcore gets it.
'Could be,' he says at last. Hobie tries not to look as if he was hurt by the response.
'Sure. You had that thought, didn't you? "If I have this bag, if I have his prints, I have Nile? I'm always going to have something to give the laws, if worse comes to worse?" '
He shrugs.
'Yes? Is the answer yes?' 'Yessss,' hisses Core.
'It isn't the case, is it, Hardcore, that you took this bag and a few bills that Nile had handled and put $10,000 of your dope money in here and made up this whole story, is it?'
Core's head rifles back. He snorts, 'Get over yo'self, man. Just get over it.'
At the podium Hobie evens his stack of notes and closes his folder. He rests an elbow there.
'Now, Hardcore, I'm going to do something no good trial lawyer is supposed to do. I'm going to let you explain, all right, man? I'm going to be fairer to you than you've been to Nile.'
In the moment of suspense, Molto fails to object to Hobie's rhetorical flourish. Purposefully, Hobie strides up to the witness box, holding the three exhibits: People's 1, the blue bag and the two packages of bills. Facing Core, Hobie makes another long, melancholy inspection of him.
'Now, I want you to look at Judge Klonsky, and I want you to tell her why, if this is the $10,000 Nile Eddgar gave you in August, if this is the money you kept safe, if this is the money you never took out of this bag, tell the judge why the West Side Forensic Laboratory says there's a high concentration of cocaine residue on nearly all of these bills?'
Molto, Singh both erupt. Tommy screams, 'Oh my God!' and is halfway to the bench before I even catch sight of him. He's bellowing.
'Objection, objection, objection, Judge! Judge, I'm supposed to get the results. You said, Judge, that the People were to get the lab results. I never got those results. Judge, what is this? What is this?'
I find I have my hand on my forehead again. Hobie has remained before the witness, holding out the second package, the one which he sent to the lab, but he has turned my way with a sheepish, little-boy face.
'Your Honor, I didn't know if I was going to use it.'
'Judge! Oh my God, Judge,' yells Tommy. I point to Singh, ten feet behind Molto, and suggest Rudy calm him.
'Mr Turtle, am I supposed to believe that? The discovery rules are clear. And my order was clearer.'
'Judge Klonsky, they knew I was having the money tested. You allowed it.'
'Judge!' screams Tommy. ‘I asked him for the results. I was standing right there.'
'And I told you,' Hobie says. 'No blood. You mentioned blood. They didn't find blood. You mentioned gunpowder. They didn't find gunpowder. That's what you asked.'
'Oh, Mr Tuttle,' I say.
'What?' he asks, as if he didn't know.
Rudy, who's kept his wits, comes to the bench and moves to strike the question and exclude the lab results. I order a ten-minute recess and direct Hobie to turn over his lab report. Molto and Rudy are given permission to consult the witness. I broil a moment in rage. Lord, Hobie is a scoundrel! There are certain defense lawyers who become rogues with their clients, enjoying a commando existence, striking from the borderland beyond the rules. It's the one part of their job I knew I could never handle. What did Seth say about Hobie? He could have been more. Instead, he's just another courtroom tomcat. From the defense table, where he's sorted through the banker's box to find the chemist's report, Hobie approaches the bench with my copy. I hold my head aloft, unafraid to convey my dim judgment of him. A musing, philosophical look crosses his features in reply.
Nonetheless, I have to deal with the facts. In chambers, I study the lab report. Eighty-eight items of US currency from People's Group Exhibit iB, each identified by serial number, were examined first by washing, then by testing the residue with a mass spectrometer. Every item showed the presence of cocaine hydrochloride, with the residue on each bill weighing between 390 and 860 micrograms. No question, this is the result Hobie hoped for from the outset. It's why he wanted the bills tested. And he calculated well. The law, like everything else, plays its own game of ends and means. With warrantless searches, if dope is discovered the courts always think of an exigent circumstance justifying the intrusion. And Hobie's excursion beyond the rules has also produced its own excuse: Hardcore lied. Hobie caught him, he proved it. No one, even these days, would exalt procedural regularity over a defendant's right to combat prosecution perjury. When the finger-wagging is over, I will not exclude the lab report. And, when my anger subsides, I'll take in more fully what I already sense: that the state case, which hinges on the money, has been badly damaged. At a deeper level, I remain stuck on the question of motive. There's no reason Core on his own would want to kill Loyell Eddgar – or June, for that matter. It's likely Nile was involved somehow. But it may never be clearer than that. Hobie has taken a giant step toward raising a reasonable doubt.
When we reassemble, Molto urgently renews the state's motion to exclude the lab report. Cocaine traces have rubbed off dope money onto most of the currency in the US by now, he claims. That's true enough, but Hobie's chemist said the concentrations he identified were between fifty and one hundred times incidental levels.
'I'll reserve ruling,' I reply, 'until the report is offered in the defense case.' Hobie plays his part, wailing in anguish, as if he takes my threat seriously. Perhaps he does, but shamefaced groveling is part of the standard routine of the courtroom rascal. I offer the prosecution the chance to reopen their examination of Hardcore. They've had a few minutes together to account for the heavy cocaine residue on money Core claimed was never outside the plastic bag, but as Hobie anticipated, they have not been able to come up with much.
'Man, you know,' says Hardcore, when Tommy asks him to explain, 'could be I had some shit in that drawer over by Doreen's. Sides, man, I can't be figurin what-all Nile be doin when he kickin.'
Tommy nods, as if those responses were fully satisfactory, and concludes. Hobie stands at the defense table, for brief recross.
'You know you make a urine drop when you come into the jail, don't you?'
'Uh-huh.'
'And do you know that Nile's drop was clean for cocaine?'
Objection sustained. But Hobie's point is made. Both lawyers say they have nothing further and I call the luncheon recess. I stand on the bench, but on second thought motion to Suzanne, the court reporter, to remain.
‘I want to say one thing, Mr Tuttle. On the record. Any further violations of the rules of discovery and there will be two consequences.' I count off the warnings on my fingers. 'First, Mr Molto won't even have to bother with a motion to exclude. I don't care if the Pope is here as a character witness for your client, if he hasn't been disclosed to the prosecution, his testimony won't be heard in this courtroom. And second, there will be severe sanctions for you personally. And I'm not kidding.'
Hobie's whole substantial upper body sways obediently. 'Yes, Your Honor,' he repeats. I stare him down, even as he continues mumbling reassurances.
'What do we have next?' I ask Molto. 'After lunch?'
He blinks, taken aback that in the confusion of the morning I've forgotten.
'The Senator,' he answers.
Typically me. Most feared is last remembered.
In the meantime, the transport deputies in their brown uniforms have approached the witness stand to return Hardcore to the lockup. One of them, Giosetti, a large man with an unbarbered mass of grey hair, motions him down. Core rises to full height and, looming there, takes another instant to glower in the direction of the defense. Hobie catches him at it and, poised by the paper-strewn table, answers him with an unwavering humorless look. It's not so much personal triumph Hobie communicates as a lesson, a declaration of faith: My way is better. Don't you see, it's better? The moment goes on. In the end it's Hardcore, streetside master of a ruthless look of primal malevolence, who, with the excuse of the deputy's beckoning hand, turns away.
Marietta's TV is held fast before her as I enter her office. The grey glow of her noontime soap is broadcast on her cheeks, but her eyes nonetheless veer toward me an instant. 'What?'
She does not bother with an answer, but hands me a small striped gift box, with a note attached. Back at my desk, I open the envelope first.
Sonny -
Thanks again for dinner. I'd say more, but I don't want to break the rules.
I thought Nikki might enjoy these things. I hope they'll hold her for the time being. Please tell her that meeting her was the nicest thing that's happened to me in weeks. (I mean it!) Seth
P. S. The cops found my father's car. It was parked around the corner. There was no damage and the doors were locked. The cops interviewed a neighbor who knows my dad and said she saw him park in that spot three days ago. She's sure the car hasn't been moved. Apparently, he just got confused.
I guess I'm going to have to do something.
Seth. Like a blinkered pony, I've stifled an urge to glance at the jury box all morning. Even so, in this solitary environment, the thought of him forces up the warring feelings that have visited me occasionally for two days now, the adolescent zing of romance, and a stubborn dread verging on doom. Saturday night I found myself numbed by the madness of being kissed. I sat in the living room, in the pure white light of a long-armed halogen lamp, attempting to read. Every ten minutes or so I found my fingertips on my lips, from which I promptly removed them.
Inside the box Seth has dropped off, there's a large plastic tooth the size of an apple. It opens at the top, and within it are a number of dime-store items: those wind-up teeth that chatter and bounce along the tabletop, and a crude set of false buck teeth, like the ones on which Jerry Lewis based a career. Nikki will be thrilled.
'Where'd that guy go to?' she asked on Sunday morning, as if it made any sense at all to think he might still be around.
'He went home, silly. Did you like him?'
The whole head moved, the dark bangs fluttering. She bit her lip and did not speak momentarily, attempting to cope with the reality that he'd left her behind. 'He should make a beard,' she finally told me.
Maybe he should. I amuse myself with the thought of facial hair, last refuge of the balding. But sobriety returns quickly. I reach the same conclusion every time I think this through. Just let it go. That's adult life, isn't it? Small eruptions of insanity, and a regathering of forces for the long march of responsibility. Rereading Seth's note, I shake my head over his father, then I repack Nikki's gift. I use the back door so I can avoid Marietta on my way out for lunch.
All of us – Hobie and Seth and me – have been warped by time. Balder, fatter, altered in a way. But recognizable. The sight of Loyell Eddgar is shocking. I've seen photos in the paper on occasion, but they must have been taken more than a decade ago, when Eddgar first struck out on his career in local politics. Not for a moment had it occurred to me that he is now in his late sixties. His hair, naturally, is shorter, thinned, and preponderantly grey. He has gained, over the years, thirty or forty pounds and his posture is reduced. Eddgar, whom I never imagined softened, is softer.
He stands before the bench now, waiting for instructions. His mere appearance is intensely dramatic, the father his son purportedly meant to kill. The reporters are on alert; the gallery again is SRO. Behind the bulletproof pane, the anxious, curious faces seem as remote as figures on TV. Back by the doors, Annie has stationed another sheriff's deputy to keep order, directing the standees left and right, to make sure there is still an open lane for egress. Even Jackson Aires has returned, his duty done but his curiosity apparently high. He sits in one of the front-row seats generally saved for representatives of the PA's Office.
Eddgar stands on the worn greyish carpet at the foot of the bench, ill at ease as the focal point of lurid interest. A paper he has carried up with him is clutched in both hands. He is a smallish, stout man in a wool sport jacket. No one will be surprised when he answers that he was once a professor. He nods to me in a brief lapse into familiarity.
'Dr Eddgar,' I say aloud. Marietta then cries out her 'Hear ye's,' and I motion Eddgar to the stand. He takes a seat and extends his face to the microphone. He smiles tentatively in my direction, as if he holds some hope for protection. He's ready. Administering the oath, I take note of the eyes, still an astonishing blue.
'I swear,' he answers firmly and opens the button on his sport jacket when he sits again.
'Mr Molto,' I say, 'you may proceed.'
Tommy pouts when he stands. He does not look at his witness. The tone of the first few questions reconfirms my previous impression: Eddgar and Tommy, both zealots at heart, do not care much for each other. They are formal with one another, which ironically makes the direct especially crisp. It lends Tommy an element of cool control, something ordinarily lacking in his presentation.
'How are you employed?'
'I am the elected representative from the 39th state senatorial district.'
'Do you have any other employment?'
‘I have an adjunct appointment as a professor of divinity at Easton University.'
Eddgar describes his district, which comprehends the campus environs at Easton and an area of public housing, one of the first scattered sites plunked down on the border of Kindle and Greenwood Counties years ago on a former military base. He has been elected now to seven consecutive two-year terms and is the chair of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice. Funding requests for police and prisons pass through his committee, as well as certain appointments in the Department of Corrections. Four years ago, he won the nomination of the state Democratic Farmers amp; Union Party for state controller but lost the general election.
After quite a bit of this, we finally reach the first crescendo. 'Sir,' Molto asks, 'are you acquainted with the defendant in this case, Mr Nile Eddgar?'
‘I am.'
'How do you know him?'
'He is my son.' Eddgar does not make it through the answer. His composure, perfect to this point, vanishes as a quaver surrounds the last word. A sound, more hiccup than sob, erupts, though it may not be audible anywhere but up here on the bench. Eddgar braces himself on the front rail of the witness box. The courtroom is still, as we wait for him to recover.
'Do you see your son here this morning?' Tommy asks, turning to Hobie. After Hobie's stunt this morning the two are in the fullest throes of trial hatred, a state of mind fully akin to the one in which men at war shoot each other. Tommy wants Hobie to spare Eddgar the discomfort of having to point out Nile for the record. Instead, Hobie pretends to be busy in the big white cardboard banker's box on the defense table and never looks Tommy's way. He murmurs something to Nile, though, and Nile once more props himself on the arms of his leather bucket chair and begins to rise. He could not look any guiltier if he tried. He cannot even bring his eyes toward his father. He stares directly at the oak baffles on the wall in front of him. Eddgar attempts to lift his hand and instead covers his mouth. He begins to cry out loud. Throughout the courtroom, it feels as if no one can even breathe.
'Record will reflect identification,' I say coldly, gazing hard at Hobie. Has he lost his mind? How does this help? A man who misses nothing in the courtroom – he can probably tell you the level of the corner water cooler and how many steps from the lockup door to the witness stand – he continues feigning obliviousness, while his client, visibly whitened, crumbles back into his seat at Hobie's side. On the stand, Eddgar has his handkerchief out and pats his eyes. Tommy puts a few questions to him about Nile's upbringing, then changes subjects.
'Do you know a man named Ordell Trent?' he asks.
‘I do.'
'How did you meet him?'
'I was introduced to him by Nile.'
'And how did that take place?'
'I asked Nile to make the introduction.'
'Can you explain why?'
'Objection.'
'If it's a conversation with the defendant, I'll allow it. Is this something you told Nile, Dr Eddgar?'
'In various forms over the years. And we certainly discussed it after the meeting. Definitely.'
'Go ahead,' I say.
'Basically, I believed that street gangs, like Hardcore's, have done something no one else has, namely organize the poor community. And if that organization could be put to positive uses -particularly expressing the political will of the poor community – instead of the present unhappy ways those energies are employed, well, that would be a tremendous overall gain for everyone: the gang members, the poor community, and the city as a whole, which obviously would benefit in seeing a redirection of those efforts.'
Speaking in his mannered way, his voice still slowed by Southern cadences, Eddgar seems to have scored over in the press box. His answer, carefully spun for public consumption, is being dutifully scribbled into a number of spiral-topped notebooks.
Glancing over, I allow myself to look reluctantly at Seth. But for the first time since this trial started, I am beside the point. He is focused on Eddgar with an intensity suddenly reminiscent of the man I knew decades ago.
Tommy moves on to the meeting between Hardcore, T-Roc, and Nile. Eddgar has given the state a page from his Day-Timer fixing the meeting at June n, earlier than Hardcore seemed to recall it. In bare strokes, Eddgar describes the irritation and disbelief T-Roc and Core showed for his proposal to turn the gang into a political organization.
'How did you leave it?' Tommy asks.
'That they would get back to me, through Nile.'
'All right, sir,' says Tommy. Rudy waves him to the prosecution table, where he hands Molto a note. Tommy reads it, then leans down to his colleague. The two confer briefly, debating something, then Molto straightens up, drawing himself to full height in his frumpy suit. 'During that meeting in T-Roc's limousine, sir, did T-Roc or Hardcore, did either one of them offer you a bribe?'
'No,' says Eddgar. Tommy turns to Hobie to preen, and is still faced that way when Eddgar clears his throat and adds, 'They didn't actually offer me money.' Molto's head shoots around toward the witness, then he looks down to Rudy's note and shoves it back crossly to his trial partner. The PAs were taking a chance, having apparently forgotten, during the frantic rush of the lunch hour, to go over this subject with Eddgar when he arrived. Behind them, Hobie peeks up from his notes with a quick, cutthroat grin.
Tommy begins again. 'Calling your attention to the first week of September 1995, did you and Nile again have occasion to speak about Hardcore?'
'Yes, sir, we did.'
'Can you tell us where you were?'
'We spoke by telephone. I was at my home in Greenwood.' 'All right. And please tell us what was said and by whom.' 'He merely told me that Core wanted to talk to me again.' 'And how did you react?'
'I told him that was very good news, that I'd be pleased to meet him wherever he liked.'
'And how were the time and place of the meeting set?'
'Well, as I recollect, I was taking the approach that I'd go anywhere, anytime. Core wanted to meet at Grace Street, and Nile suggested that the very early morning would be the wisest time for me to go down there.'
'Nile suggested it?'
'That's correct.'
Score for the prosecution. Nile set up Dad. At the defense table both Hobie and his client appear calm. Tommy travels along a bit, beneath the courtroom lights. In the same stoical tone he has maintained, he asks, 'And who, sir, was June Eddgar?'
'My wife.' Eddgar takes a beat. 'My former wife.' Once again, he does not make it through his response and goes on, handkerchief in hand. Tommy politely sorts through the history of Eddgar's relationship with June: separation in 1971, an amicable divorce in 1973, continuing contacts and friendship. June remarried in 1975 to William Chaikos, a veterinarian in Marston, Wisconsin. That marriage ended in 1979. Thereafter, she periodically visited Greenwood County to help Eddgar in his political campaigns – in 1980, when he ran for city council, in 1982, when he was elected Mayor of Easton, and several times after that for his senatorial campaigns. Eddgar answers quietly, ignoring the occasional tears as best he can. I find his inability to fully contain himself touching. Twenty-five years ago he was committed to accepting the inevitable harsh mechanics of history. I think what I never expected to: He's changed.
'And did Mrs Eddgar visit you or Nile from time to time?'
'She did.'
'When did she visit Kindle County last?' He blows his nose and lifts his head to say she had come over Labor Day and had remained for a few days to shop in the city. 'Had Mrs Eddgar remained involved in your political career?' 'Her home was in Wisconsin. She preferred the country. But I always depended on her advice. She was up to date with most of my activities.'
'Did you discuss this anticipated meeting with Hardcore?'
Hobie objects – correctly – that the question calls for hearsay. Tommy moves then to the events of September 6 and 7, with Hobie making persistent hearsay objections, most of them well-founded. The reporters and onlookers seem baffled by the arcana of the rule which allows a witness to testify about what someone said she would be doing in the future but not what she said she'd done in the past. Eddgar is allowed to say he was needed by his State Senate Office staff on the morning of September 7, but he may not relate his conversations with his staffers, nor may he testify that he asked June to meet Hardcore in his place. I do admit in evidence the note found in her purse in which she recorded Eddgar's directions. Stained at the corner with a rusty brown I know to be blood, the slip of paper is handed up in its plastic jacket. There is a sloppy line drawing of the streets and the words 'Hardcore. Ordell Trent. 6:15.' in a somewhat erratic hand. Finally, because a witness is allowed to testify about his own state of mind, I let Eddgar explain why he asked June to meet with Hardcore, even though he can't relay his actual conversation with her.
'I believed,' says Eddgar, 'that she would recognize the potential importance of the meeting with Core and would understand it was critical that someone see him personally.'
'And why was it critical?'
‘I didn't want to insult him,' Eddgar answers. He rolls his lips into his mouth in a further effort at self-control.
'And this meeting you had with Mrs Eddgar at about 5:30 the morning of September 7 – was that the last time you saw her?'
'The last.'
Tommy waits an appropriate interval to allow the solemnity of death again to fill the courtroom.
'Now, on that day, on September 7, you were interviewed by Detective Lieutenant Montague. Do you recall that?'
'I do.'
'And, sir' – Tommy puts his file down and folds his arms -'were you fully candid with Lieutenant Montague when you spoke to him?'
‘I was not.'
'And in what manner were you not fully candid?'
Hobie objects. 'Mr Molto's impeaching his own witness,' he says. Lawyers in this country have been allowed to question the credibility of their own witnesses for forty years now. Hobie is simply trying to break Molto's collected rhythm, and I point him to his seat.
'He asked me,' Eddgar answers, 'if I knew why June had gone to Grace Street and at first I told him I didn't know.' 'And why did you tell him that?'
Hobie objects again. 'Now he's rehabilitating his own witness.'
'Do you intend to cross on this subject, Mr Turtle?' Hobie averts his face, looking for a dodge he can't find. 'Sure,' he finally says.
'Then you may as well hear the rehabilitation. Go ahead, Dr Eddgar.'
'I was very reluctant to disclose my political involvement with Hardcore. I realized it was likely to be controversial. And I didn't think it had any relationship to June's death.'
I'm sure Molto and he have worked on this answer for some time, but it's a good one. Political self-preservation, Eddgar is saying. He didn't want to be publicly allied with BSD. But no matter how artfully packaged, this is the first trace of the Eddgar of old. He was instantly capable of a cold-hearted decision: June was dead, anyway, why soil his skirts? Tommy walks along a moment, studying his shoes.
'Senator, let me cover one final subject with you. I'm sure Mr Turtle will bring this out, sir, but I believe you have told the police that you don't know of any motive for your son to do you harm – is that fair?'
'That's my view.'
Tommy nods equably, as if this is all right with him. 'Senator, let me take you back to the meeting with the gang leaders and Nile in the limo. Had you informed your son that you were going to suggest this plan to T-Roc and Hardcore for BSD to become involved in politics?'
'He claimed I hadn't. As I said, I've mentioned the subject to him often through the years, but I suppose he paid less attention than I imagined.'
'He told you afterwards you took him by surprise?'
'Right.'
'And what was his emotional state as he told you this?'
'He was put out.'
'Do you recall what he said?'
Eddgar has stiffened slightly. Apparently, Tommy didn't give him a preview on this line of questioning. ‘I believe he said I was using Hardcore.' 'Did you and your son argue?'
'Nile and I have always had our moments. We had a somewhat heated exchange standing there on the street, and then within a day or two we both calmed down.'
'But he was very angry at the time?'
'At first.'
'At first,' repeats Tommy. Hobie has ceased the note-taking and is watching Molto intently. Like Eddgar, he has seemingly been taken unawares. Beside him, Nile has lowered his face to the defense table as he twiddles with a rubber band. It's impossible to know if he's even listening.
'Now, you told us, Senator, that Nile introduced you to Hardcore. Correct?'
'Yes.'
'And whose idea was that?'
'Mine, I think. We were having one of these discussions about what Nile was doing, his work, how it was going, a father-son talk, I guess, and he mentioned this concern about Kan-el's parole and I said, "Nile, well, why don't you have him talk to me, I might be able to help." Something like that.'
'And how did he respond to that suggestion?'
‘I don't recall.'
'Did you bring up the subject again?'
Eddgar looks to the ceiling. ‘I believe so.'
'So you had to suggest more than once that it would be a good idea for you to meet Hardcore?'
'Yes. I'm sure I did. I had this notion about the gangs, that -Well, I've testified to that.'
Tommy takes a step closer. 'Did Nile talk to you about his work often?'
'All the time. As I said, the subject interested me.'
'Did Nile tell you he'd requested assignment to Grace Street cases?'
'Oh yes.'
'Do you happen to remember, Senator, whether you suggested that assignment to him?'
'I might have.' Eddgar nods serenely, but a certain calculating light has come over him. He's trying to recollect everything he may have unwisely admitted to Tommy in their many interviews. ‘I believe I did.'
'Now, his job as a probation officer, Senator- do you remember who suggested that line of work to Nile?'
'I'm sure I did.'
'You did?'
'Yes. Nile was at a point – Well, he was like many younger folks, he was casting about, and I suggested it, I said, "Go on back to school in social work, you like all that." '
'And how long did it take him to do the school work?'
'Eighteen months, as I remember.'
'Did he do a thesis?'
'He did.'
'What was the subject?' 'Street gangs.'
Molto looks at Eddgar. 'Yes, I suggested that to him,' Eddgar says. 'And you helped him get his job, too, didn't you?' ‘I made some calls.'
Tommy assesses Eddgar, straight on. 'And can I ask, Senator did you ever feel, sir, that Nile was undertaking these activities school, the job, the assignment, arranging the meeting with Hardcore – in any way because he was pleased by your interest in him?'
As Eddgar is deliberating, Hobie rumbles to his feet. 'Your Honor, I'm sittin here just wonderin whose side he's on anyway?' His hand, big as a paving stone, is directed at Tommy.
'Is that an objection, Mr Turtle?' Hobie, of all people, is hoping to cue Eddgar, who still seems to have little idea all this is coming at his expense.
'I'd say it's an observation, Your Honor. My objection is that Senator Eddgar can't testify to what the defendant felt.'
'Well, Mr Tuttle, I'd say, Keep your observations to yourself. The question is what the Senator believed. And I find the line of questioning directed at impeaching earlier testimony. Proceed, Mr Molto.'
Eddgar speaks enough of the lingo to catch the drift. Accustomed to being in charge, he swivels my way in the witness chair, looking both stumped and somewhat imperious. The question is read back.
'I'm not sure I ever thought about it in those terms.'
Tommy eyes him briefly before he nods in the same sage manner.
'Now, let me see if I get this, Senator. Your son had spent more than three and a half years following your suggestions about his education, his thesis, his job, his cases. And then, according to what he said to you, he suddenly found out as he sat in the back of that limousine that in everything you'd suggested to him, you had a political agenda of your own?' Tommy utters this question in a placid tone. He might even be said to sound somewhat respectful, but everything else in his manner is stone-cold. I see what's going on now. Molto is one of those grey men of the bureaucratic world whose whole life has been spent in service to the likes of Eddgar, the savvy pols with the winning public manner and the unrestrained private appetite for glory. For such men, Tommy has risen and fallen, with few of them bothering to look back to him in the dust. And now he has the opportunity to call one to account. In what may be the most bizarre moment yet in an entirely unorthodox case, Tommy Molto, prosecutor for life, stands before the bar, advocating the defendant's point of view and lacerating the crime's intended victim with the professional calm of a surgeon. In his emotional funk, Eddgar seems to be the last person in the room to recognize what has taken place.
'Oh, please,' he says suddenly, with a distinct echo of old-fashioned Southern hauteur, 'please. You are mixing apples and oranges. Nile was as interested in all of this as I was.'
'You said he became angry – very angry after you left the limo?'
'Briefly. For a day or two.'
'He said someone was being used?' 'Hard-core, he said. He said Hardcore was being used.' Eddgar shakes his shoulders to straighten his jacket. 'You really don't see this clearly at all,' he tells Molto.
‘I don't?' asks Tommy, and with that takes his seat.