Limitations

  “Just ask him.”

  “Yeah, right. How does somebody who’s supposed to be so brilliant grab that message with both hands about two hundred times? The only prints of value are his—and there were so many overlapping impressions we couldn’t even isolate most of them. I know #1 probably used latex gloves, but jeez Louise, give us a chance.”

  “He seemed pretty scared, Marina.”

  “I guess. But you should have heard him squawk about getting printed. What did he expect after that?”

  George can only imagine how many of Nathan’s phobias were activated by having his hands inked and pressed onto the cards. He must have lit up like a pinball machine.

  “That’s beef blood on the paper, by the way,” Marina says. “Guess Corazón learned his lesson about DNA.” She kicks back and perches a short leg, in the piped khaki trousers of her uniform, over an open desk drawer. “So you’re liking Corazón now?”

  “More. But do I get to tell the truth?”

  “Today’s the last time,” she says.

  “My divining rod still isn’t rattling on Corazón. Did you follow up on Zeke, Dineesha’s son?”

  “Best we could. Couple Kindle dicks made several home visits on Friday hoping to spend a little quality time with him. Turns out Zeke was in St. Louis. He’s got a new gig, in-store marketing for one of the cell phone companies. Says he did so good they made him one of the trainers. He does these day-and-a-half sessions Fridays and Saturday until noon.”

  “Cell phones, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I had the same thought. But he had his boarding passes, hotel bill, expense report, training manuals.”

  “Coppers believed him?”

  “About that? Pretty much. Can’t get on an airplane without a photo ID, Judge. I mean, he was in St. Louis.”

  Of course, Zeke could have had someone else, like his road dog Khaleel, text George from the stolen phone, realizing that a day when he was alibied made the perfect occasion for more hijinks. That’s the way the cops would think about it, and that’s exactly what Marina says.

  “Overall, though,” she adds, “they don’t think Zeke is our guy. But a couple things bothered the two that were talking with him. First off, Zeke knew why they were there. This big indignant routine that anybody would think he might do you wrong after all the help you’ve given him.”

  That’s the right line. But Zeke’s a capital liar, tied for the title of the best George has ever seen along with dozens of other former clients—and several attorneys.

  “Need I ask how he knew the police were coming?”

  “I don’t think so.” Marina crumples her chin in a hard-bitten smile. “And he was still sticking to that shit about needing the john when they pressed about why his buddy was cruising your corridor. But”—she shrugs—“he wasn’t the one who sent out that text, and he didn’t mail that letter to Koll either. Postmark is ‘Puebleocito’ Saturday morning.” She’s referring to the Tri-Cities’ largest Hispanic neighborhood, in Kewahnee, where Corazón’s set thrives. “That’s a lot for Zeke to put together from out of town. Corazón, Judge. That’s the better bet.”

  George shakes his head just a little, trying not to be irksome.

  “This letter doesn’t feel right to me, Marina. I’ve been getting e-mails for weeks. Why put Koll into it suddenly? Especially when it draws a line straight to Corazón?”

  “That’s Corazón, Judge. Why does a guy go out himself and beat up a woman and two babies with a tire iron when he can send three hundred other cholos to do it? ’Cause he’s the fearless, fucking Corazón. He sticks out his you-know-what and says ‘Do me something,’ and laughs himself to sleep when you can’t. That’s how he gets off.”

  George considers the point. “But up until now, #1 has been kind of a high-tech pain in the ass. Very smooth, very clever. A bloodstained piece of paper comes out of a 1950s horror movie.”

  “Worked on Judge Koll.”

  “So would an e-mail.”

  “I don’t know, Your Honor. Corazón had a visit with Mom two days before that letter flew.”

  “Monitored, though. Right?”

  “Sure. But hell, Judge, when they start yapping about Tío Jorge in Durango, what do we know? That could be code for anything. But let me hear it, Judge. What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe a copycat? Maybe somebody who’s got an ax to grind with Nathan and took a free shot.”

  She shrugs once more, doing her best to seem open to the possibility.

  “My old man always says you solve crimes with the KISS rule,” she says. “You know that one?”

  He does, but he lets her say it for the sake of amity.

  “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”

  * * *

  Back at his desk, George works until close to 6:30. Patrice returned to the office today and expects to be late, moving through the mountains on her desk, but Abel is pawing around out in the reception area, peeking in now and then. This duty keeps him well past his customary hour of departure. George had hoped to edit two more draft opinions, but he throws them in his briefcase. He’ll look them over at home tonight.

  “All right, Abel,” he calls, “saddle up.”

  Together they make their slow progress across the gangway into the judges’ section of the garage, Abel swinging his leg around his arthritic hip. As they approach the entrance, the two boys George saw last week are lurking once more. Their hairstyles mark them as gang members. The taller one has a do called a patch, close-cropped over his ears but grown long on the back of his scalp, borrowed, it seems, from American Indians. The other has a standard prison buzz. Despite the warm weather, both are clad again in hooded sweatshirts.

  Abel stares them down. “Don’t like the looks of those two,” he says. “What are they up to?”

  “Waiting for a ride home?”

  “Yeah,” Abel says, “in the car they’re gonna jack. They ain’t countin’ their rosary beads, Judge. Let’s get ’em on their way.” He reaches for the radio on his belt to alert the dog patrol.

  That’s the course of wisdom. In some moods, George might even call Court Security himself. On average, you could not go wrong thinking the worst about most of the young men you saw around this building. The best bet is that the two are baby Gs, gang wannabes not fully courted in, who are here to hold on to guns or dope so senior set members can pass through the metal detectors on their way to afternoon drug court.

  But George has always discouraged himself from taking those kinds of probabilities as the actual truth. The real George Mason was the source of the phrase, appropriated by his pal Jefferson, “All men are created equal.” The sentiments were noble, but George Mason IV was a slave owner notwithstanding, just like nearly every one of George’s Virginia ancestors. It is the most shameful of the many unhappy legacies George fled in his twenties, and he came here determined to be a man of more open inclinations. Throughout his life, he has made a disciplined effort to take human beings one at a time.

  “Leave them be, Abel. They’re not hurting anybody.” After his fight with Patrice on Friday night, he also feels duty-bound to resist the creeping fears inspired by #1. Better to be bold. “I saw them here a couple times last week. They didn’t seem to make any trouble.”

  As if it were a date, Abel escorts George all the way to the car. The judge triggers the engine and turns on the air, watching the old guy recede. George is not ready to go yet. As usual, he wants a minute to himself, in this case to think about the three lives of Lolly Viccino he was envisioning a few hours ago at his desk. He reclines in the cushy car seat, eyes closed. At the moment, it’s the second Lolly who preoccupies him, the contributor to the Mississippi child abuse fund. She has to be all right, someone with a stake in the community and the future. He imagines a Mississippi lady in a long pink dress, wearing a hat and gloves, but laughs at the notion. That would never be Lolly.

  George is trying to reconfigure his vision of her when he is startled by a sharp rap beside him. He snaps
up and sees two things: the silver barrel of an automatic lying solidly against the glass, and the five-pointed star of the Almighty Latin Nation tattooed below the wrist of the hand that holds the gun.

  14

  A VICTIM

  OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, the gun muzzle, a spot of total blackness, looms a few inches from the judge’s face. George notices eventually that the boy is motioning with the other hand, but he has no clue what the kid wants, and the young man bangs the pistol on the glass again in rebuke. This is how people get shot, George thinks. By failing to follow orders they don’t comprehend. And then, remembering Corazón, he realizes that he is going to get shot anyway.

  That thought pumps the harshest adrenaline rush yet through him. Inside his head there is a chaos of colliding ideas, each one as urgent as a scream.

  For all the years George has spent on the periphery of crime, he has never been on the receiving end of any violence. Everything he knows is secondhand from contemplating victims across the clinical distances of courtrooms, where he has tried to assess their credibility and, in his years as a lawyer, shake their stories. At trial, the suffering of the vics is often minimized; it’s irrelevant to proving whether a crime occurred or who committed it. They rarely get to say much more about what they felt than ‘I was afraid I was going to die.’ And oddly, in this instant, George sees the wisdom of that. Language, rules, and reason can never capture this moment; they are definitional only by their absence, just as absolute zero is the complete absence of heat.

  The boy’s free hand circles through the air again. At last, George realizes the kid wants him to lower the driver’s-side window, and he presses the button. But as the glass slides into the door, a faint outcry stirs inside him. It’s like slipping off his skin. He was already at the boy’s mercy, but with the last vestige of privacy gone, he knows he’s on the way to surrendering his soul.

  “’Kay now, puto,” the boy says. “Give it up, man.” ‘Men’ it sounds like in the boy’s trace accent.

  In his years as a State Defender, George cross-examined countless victims in armed-robbery cases. You always challenged the identification of the defendant the same way. By pointing out the obvious. ‘And you were watching that gun, weren’t you, Mrs. Jones? You never took your eyes off it, did you?’ And it’s true. He has not yet dared to raise his sight line. He has seen little more than the pistol, a small silver automatic, with a higher-caliber bore and black grips, and the hand that holds it, where the blue-black star of the Latin Nation is imprinted on the tan flesh just beneath the frayed gray sleeve of the boy’s sweatshirt.

  But when the kid speaks, George looks up compliantly. He already knows the boy is one of the two they saw on the way into the garage whom Abel wanted to roust. This is the taller kid, with that patch hairdo that always reminds George of a shaved radish. Now it is hidden under the hood of his sweatshirt, which is drawn around his face, the better to prevent identification. He’s lanky and cannot be seventeen yet, with dark, bumpy skin and jittery eyes. Mexican or Central American. He has the high cheekbones and aquiline nose of native blood. Seeing the two boys from a distance over the last week, George marked them from their unchanged, ratty clothes as poor—really poor, locked-in poor, kids who rarely have the means to get beyond the barrio. It would be a miracle if this kid has ever had a conversation longer than a minute with an Anglo in a two-piece suit.

  And realizing that he is largely incomprehensible to this boy, George considers what his chances will be if he puts the car in gear and tears away. Will the kid be too surprised to shoot? The idea comes, and he reacts to it. Some intermediate mental process has been evaporated by fear. George’s hand slides to the gearshift, and instantly the boy slams the gun down solidly on his forearm. The pain is intense, but George knows better than to cry out. It’s the boy who makes all the noise.

  “Fuck, puto!” he cries. “Fuck, man, you gonna get yourself so pealed, man. What’s up with you? Fuck,” the kid says and in pure frustration slams the pistol backhand again on the same arm, which the judge has withdrawn toward his chest. This time a cry escapes George, and he lies against the seat with his eyes closed for a second, contending with the pain.

  The boy is snapping his fingers.

  “Give ’em here, puto. Right here, man.” He’s demanding the car key. George’s right arm is too numb to move. He turns in his seat and slides the key from the ignition with his left hand.

  “Now give it up, man,” the boy repeats, circling the gun again. He wants George out of the car. They are not going to kill him here, George realizes. They are going to take him somewhere else, because they’re afraid the gunfire will attract the dog patrol before they can escape.

  The boy again tells him to give it up. George continues to rub his arm, acting as if he’s too preoccupied with the pain to listen. He considers various speeches: ‘I’m a judge.’ ‘You don’t understand how much trouble you’ll get yourselves in.’ But they might well make it worse. The last thing he needs to do is add incentives. To this young man, George’s killing is almost certainly a gang initiation, ‘blood in,’ as they say. Corazón would have kicked the job down several levels, so that the judge’s murder, a capital offense, will never trace to him. For a second, George considers Marina and Abel, both justified in all of their suspicions. They will be entitled to a moment of pained laughter at his expense. But George is pleased to discover that he doesn’t mind. He knew he was taking his chances. Principle always comes with certain risks.

  This instant of minute satisfaction ends when the boy punches the gun barrel into the judge’s temple to reacquire his attention. George recoils, and the kid grabs his shoulders and prods his neck with the muzzle. He can feel his pulse in the artery the cool steel is pressing against.

  “Yo, vato,” somebody else says.

  Afraid to remove his head from the pistol, George sweeps his eyes as far he can toward the passenger’s side of his sedan. The second kid he saw earlier is at the other door. He’s nearly a foot shorter than the boy holding the gun on George and younger. His arms are at his sides, but from the sheer drag on the right, George senses that he’s holding a firearm, too. The second boy rotates his chin.

  At the far corner of the garage someone else has entered from the opposite stairwell. Without moving, George catches a glimpse of dark clothes. He was hoping to see the khaki of Marina’s security forces, but it’s only somebody like him, another late departure from the courthouse, probably a deputy P.A. or State Defender working on a trial. The footfalls are a woman’s, her high heels rapping smartly on the concrete. George listens before concluding disconsolately that the sound is moving away.

  Scream, he tells himself. He has previewed this situation a thousand times through his career, looking up from a transcript or a police report and coldly assessing the victim’s options. If they are going to kill him but are reluctant to do it here, then screaming is the best choice. The boy with the automatic at George’s throat will be put to a decision. To run. Or shoot. Running would give him the best chance to get away. But George senses that he has exhausted the kid’s patience. He tried to escape once. Respect, the credo of the street, is likely to be the foremost issue. And there’s another problem. The judge is not really sure he can summon the voice for anything better than a meek croak.

  George has always known you can be so frightened it hurts. His right forearm is throbbing, and his temple is tender, but there’s also pain throughout his body. His muscles have spasmed below his armpits for some reason. And he’s damp inside his shirt.

  The boy has hunched down beside the Lexus while keeping the handgun against the base of the judge’s skull. An engine fires several rows over, and a car pulls away. As it rolls off, George feels a wave of despair. It was a mistake, he decides. He should have shouted.

  “Give it up, man,” the kid says again.

  George shakes his head.

  “Yo, puto. Get your fuckin’ ass out here, man, or it’s comin’ right through this damn window.”
The boy reaches in and takes hold of George’s necktie. He gives it a sharp jerk, smashing the judge’s cheek against the door frame, but he does not wait to see if George has changed his mind about cooperating. The kid does exactly as promised, using the tie as a leash and pulling George out the open driver’s window. Instinctively, George grabs for the seat belt hanging inside the door, but it pays out as the boy drags George’s entire upper body into the outer air. He is left gasping, with both hands at his collar. In whatever hissing voice he can muster, he has said ‘Okay’ a dozen times before the boy finally eases his grip.

  The kid slowly backs off from the door and watches George emerge. The other boy bounds to this side of the car now, waiting at its rear. George was right. He too has a gun.

  Standing, George feels his legs wobbling. He is afraid he’s going to topple, and he begs himself not to fall over, not so much out of pride as a sense that it will only enhance the danger.

  “Wallet,” the kid says. He takes George’s watch too, and his class ring from college, then makes George turn out every pocket in his suit and surrender the contents. After that, the two boys motion George away from his car. He backs off about ten feet, still rubbing his forearm. He has no idea what is happening and wonders if they are going to shoot him here after all, but that makes no sense. If they were going to do that, it would have happened by now.

  Instead, the first boy slides through the opened car door into the driver’s seat and triggers the engine. He nods to his companion, who has been holding his black gun, probably a .32, on the judge in the interval.

  Please, God, not the trunk, George thinks then. They are going to force him into the car. Not the trunk. And with that, he realizes he’s going to stand his ground. They can choke him here, or pistol-whip him, but he’s not going to submit. He’ll scream if he has to. The end, whatever it will be, is going to take place on this spot.

  His soul has compressed around that decision when he hears the second boy scampering away. He flees around the Lexus and into the passenger’s seat, and the kid driving throws the car into reverse. George realizes too late that he had a brief chance to run. Having backed the sedan out, the boy looks through the open window at George, who stands no more than two or three feet from him. The judge is not surprised at all when the silver gun reappears.