Against the Wind (28 page)

The most important things in your life: gone.

I OWN THREE MAJOR SUITS
, all Oxfords: a charcoal-gray, a navy, a medium-gray with a muted pinstripe. I’ll wear them for the next three days. By then, except for the deliberations, it should be over. In New Mexico the judge charges the jury before closing summations, so Martinez is going to take part of the morning, at least an hour, then Moseby will give his first closing. He goes first and last: the burden of proof is on the state, they have rebuttal. Then, probably after lunch, it’ll be our turn.

Today it’s standing-room-only in the courtroom, the fire marshals were turning people away before eight. I’ve been here early, the first lawyer to arrive. I love days like this, it’s what I live for. The slender wall between a defendant and annihilation. An awesome responsibility.

The others join me. Everyone’s nervous; we’d be crazy if we weren’t. A few minutes before nine Moseby and his team walk in, looking harried, preoccupied. I can’t believe he isn’t ready; but something out of the ordinary is going to happen, I make my living reading body language, his is not the language of a prosecutor about to try to send four men to their deaths.

The prisoners are brought in, seated. We wait. A couple minutes after nine the clerk calls for order, and Martinez comes from his chambers in the rear. He’s wearing a scowl.

“If there are no rebuttal witnesses,” he says, glaring at Moseby, “I’m ready to begin charging the jury. Any objections or additional witnesses?”

I stand for the defense.

“No objections, your honor. No further witnesses.”

Moseby rises.

“Your honor, the prosecution wants to present a rebuttal witness.”

“Objection!” I hear myself, Paul, and Mary Lou overlapping one another.

“Approach the bench,” Martinez barks.

I look at Moseby as we cross to the front. Bastard has something up his sleeve, that’s the reason for the way he presented himself this morning, and for the scowl on Martinez’s face. He must’ve been notified minutes before, in his chambers. No wonder Moseby was late.

“The defense was not informed of any rebuttal witnesses,” I say hotly. “He can’t pull this, your honor,” I add, pointing my thumb at the bastard’s gut, “it’s against the rules, plain and simple.”

Martinez turns to Moseby. Explain this, he’s saying silently, and you’d better do it well.

“Like I said on Friday, your honor,” Moseby says, “we’ve been looking for this witness for weeks without any success. That’s why we didn’t notify anyone. We just found him late last night. We had to charter a plane to get him here on time.”

“Hey, fuck this …” I start.

“Counselor,” Martinez admonishes me.

“I don’t care, your honor.” I’m disgusted, I don’t give a shit about decorum. “I’m not going to let this low-life pull this twice.”

“Listen …” Moseby says, his face turning pink.

I brush him off. “He already did this with the victim’s mother. It’s a circus, it’s unethical, we don’t have to jump through these hoops. It’s wrong, I don’t care who his witness is, I don’t believe he couldn’t be found and we couldn’t be notified. It’s a cheap trick, beneath the dignity of your court and the trial you’ve been conducting.”

Martinez steeples his fingers.

“Mr. Prosecutor,” he says, “your conduct is less than wholly honest in this matter.”

Inwardly I groan. He’s going to let Moseby present his witness.

“But,” he continues, “in the interest and compelling need for a thoroughly complete trial, I’m going to let him testify.” He turns to us. “Sorry, counselors. I can’t say ‘no’ on this one. It’s potentially too important.”

We sit down, determined not to let it bug us. Brace up, man, I inwardly pep-talk myself, just one more witness, you can handle it, you’ve handled all the others so far. Moseby hands the clerk a sheet of paper.

“Call James Angelus,” he reads.

Lone Wolf reacts like somebody just stuck a cattle-prod up his ass.

“What the fuck …” he says, loud enough to be heard by the jury.

“What is it?” I ask. “Who is he?”

“Nobody,” Lone Wolf shuts me off. “Just one dead motherfucker.”

I look at him closely. I’ve never seen him shaken like this before.

A man enters from the back of the courtroom. Maybe thirty, slender, his clothes slightly flamboyant for this neighborhood: definitely not from New Mexico, unless he’s one of the new breed who’ve moved here in the past decade from New York or Los Angeles.

“He looks alive enough to me,” I observe.

“He’s dead to me. Okay?” He’s got an involuntary twitch going now above his eye, and he’s gripping the table so tightly the blood’s left his knuckles.

It takes me a moment to figure out what it is about the witness that seems a bit off; he’s gay. He’s not swish, there’s no mince in his walk, no limp wrist. But he’s gay, to anyone who knows.

I look closely at Angelus as he takes the stand and is administered the oath, then at Lone Wolf, sitting next to me, still, like an owl watching a mouse crossing a field of snow, the little creature not knowing that in a few silent seconds he’ll be dinner; then back to the surprise witness.

“State your name.”

“James Anthony Angelus.”

He’s scared shitless. For one brief moment he and Lone Wolf lock eyes, then he turns away, shaking, the color draining from his face. My mind’s racing, is there something these bastards never told me, did they in fact have a connection with the victim? A homosexual murder, an eleventh-hour surprise homosexual witness, Lone Wolf’s reaction. If our clients withheld important evidence from us, that’s all she wrote.

“Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Angelus,” Moseby says.

The witness is mute.

“For the record,” Moseby continues, “are you related to any of the defendants in this case?”

“Yes,” Angelus answers before I can rise.

“Objection!” I shout it out. “This is completely immaterial and irrelevant.”

Martinez looks at me. He knows what’s coming.

“Over-ruled.”

“Which one?” Moseby asks.

“Steven Jensen. The one who calls himself Lone Wolf.”

“What is your relationship to him?” Moseby says.

“I’m his brother.”

It’s a story of love, and anguish, and fear, and ultimately utter rejection. Two brothers, abandoned early by alcoholic parents, drifting from one county home to another. Always managing to stay together. The older fiercely protecting the younger; the older a big boy for his age, a natural warrior, the little one smaller, more vulnerable, more overtly needy. Their love is both real and desperate; without the one, the other has nothing of flesh and blood, ceases to exist outside of paperwork.

One day, when they’re fifteen and twelve, a troublemaker comes up to the older brother and says the little one’s a faggot, he got caught touching another kid’s weenie in the shower room. The older brother thanks the troublemaker for this information by punching his lights out, inflicting permanent neurological damage. He gets sixty days in the county detention home. Before he’s taken away he confronts his little brother: did you do that sick shit? The little one swears on a stack of Bibles he didn’t. The older one believes him. He goes and does his time, the first of many.

He comes back to the home, to his little brother. Technically he’s old enough to bail out, he’s almost sixteen, they don’t even want him here anymore, but he won’t abandon his brother, so they let him stay. He gets a job, makes money, comes back to the home at night. His little brother is doing well in school, he has a shot at a future. The older brother will do everything he can to make sure he gets that shot.

Then it happens again, only this time the little one can’t duck it. He sucked off a kid. The older brother is beside himself with rage, shame, fear and love for his little brother. You got to stop this shit, he tells him, it’s sick, disgusting, you can’t do this to yourself. To me. The little one cries, he doesn’t want to, he can’t help it.

He’s lying, of course. It’s true he can’t help it, but he does want it, he wants it more than anything. It’s who he is, when he’s with a man sexually, even at this tender age of by-now thirteen, it’s the only time he feels alive, that he isn’t hiding. But he lies to his brother, there’s no girls around, he was confused. From now on he’ll just jerk off until he can get to meet some girls and have sex with them, the right kind.

That’s what the older one wants to hear, and he’s going to make it happen. Get rid of any taint of faggot sickness. That weekend he takes his younger brother out on the town. He has money, good money, he even has a car he’s bought, don’t tell them at the home, he warns his little brother, they’ll kick me out for good and then you’ll be alone. The little one doesn’t want to be alone, he won’t say anything to anyone.

They go to a whorehouse. It’s just a cheap apartment with some teenage runaway girls living in it, selling their pussies for ten bucks a throw, including sixty-nine, around the world, the works. The older one picks out the cutest and youngest one, gives her twenty dollars, tells her to show his brother a great time, make a man out of him, don’t come out of the bedroom until the deed is done, until you both have to crawl out. He frogs his little brother on the arm, go get her, Jimmy, he’s seen his brother in the shower room, for thirteen years old he’s got a good set, he’ll do great. Start a stud farm.

Twenty minutes later she comes back out alone, hands the older brother his twenty bucks. Save your dough, she tells him with contempt, the kind of contempt only a fifteen-year-old whore can have, his equipment don’t work, her jaw’s sore from trying to get him hard. Take him to the Greyhound station, find him a sailor.

He goes into the filthy bedroom, the come-stained sheets. His little brother is sitting on the edge of the bed. His eyes are red but he isn’t crying. I can’t help it, he tells his older brother, it’s who I am. If you don’t want to be my brother anymore it’s okay, he says, I don’t blame you. But don’t try to change me anymore, I can’t do it. I can’t be something I’m not.

But he’s still a kid, barely a teenager, he needs. He starts to cry again and turns to his older brother, the one who was always there for him, the only one. He hugs him. His older brother starts to cry, too. Then he pushes his little brother away. You’re a faggot, he says through his own tears, a goddam queer, I hate faggots. I hate you.

His little brother tries to hold on to him. He’s dying, his older brother is his lifeline. The older brother pushes him away again and this time it’s hard, he pushes the little one against the wall, and then he hits him, hard across the mouth, and then he hits him again.

The little brother is in the hospital for a month. He almost dies. When he gets out the older one is brought to trial, assault and battery. The little one refuses to testify against his older brother but they convict him anyway. They give him a year in the state reform school. (This is where he met Gene, the president of the Albuquerque chapter of the Scorpions.) After he’s sentenced and the marshal is escorting him out the little brother calls to him, ‘I love you,’ he says, ‘you’re my brother, I’ll always love you no matter what.’ The older brother turns to him. ‘You’re not my brother anymore, faggot,’ he says.

It’s the last time they ever see each other. Until today.

MOSEBY EXAMINES JAMES ANGELUS.

“Why do you think your brother is so frightened of homosexuals?” he asks in a soothing tone, like an uncle would use on a favorite nephew.

“Objection! Leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

This would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. Moseby’s a redneck, he’s been a public queer-baiter for years. Now he’s Mr. sweetness and understanding.

“Do you think your brother is afraid of homosexuals?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Objection, your honor! This line of questioning is leading the witness and is intentionally inflammatory.”

“Over-ruled.”

Shit.

“Please answer the question,” Martinez instructs Angelus.

“Because I’m one and he’s afraid it’s in our blood and maybe part of him is, too.”

I turn to look at Lone Wolf. His head’s buried in his arms.

“Do you think he’s so afraid of that,” Moseby asks, “that he would kill a homosexual if it brought his submerged feelings too close to the surface?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

It doesn’t matter. Everyone on the jury heard it, and it went straight to their guts.

“Why did you change your name?” I ask.

“I didn’t like it. It wasn’t of my choosing. I didn’t want the same name as him.”

I don’t know what the fuck to do. Try to discredit him. How? He doesn’t have a record, not even as a male hustler or anything similarly tawdry, we ran a National Crime Information Center check through the computer, he came back clean in a matter of minutes. He’s a software programmer in Silicon Valley. Just your average guy who happens to be gay and hates his brother because he’s not allowed to love him.

“Do you love your brother?” I ask. I’m fishing, I don’t know what for. The lawyer’s nightmare.

“I wish I could say no, but I guess I still do. But we’re not brothers anymore. Only biologically.”

“After today you’ll never see each other again?”

“I hope not.” He pauses. “I know he wouldn’t want to. He doesn’t want to now;” he adds emphatically.

I take a shot in the dark.

“How much did they pay you to come here and testify?” I ask.

“Objection!” Moseby’s almost apoplectic.

Martinez thinks about this one. “Over-ruled,” he decides. “Answer the question.”

A break. Why didn’t you help me out earlier?

“I … I don’t know what you mean,” he stammers. He’s actually blushing.

Jesus Christ. A wild swing with my eyes closed and it’s a home run.

“How much money,” I say slowly, enunciating clearly, “did the prosecution pay you to fly here and testify against your brother Steven Jensen?”

His head drops.

“Ten thousand,” he whispers forlornly.

“How much? Speak up man!” I lean in so close to him I can smell his breath mints.

“Ten thousand dollars.”