Limitations (17 page)

Four boys parade out and spread themselves along the platform from which, at other times, the shift sergeant makes the day’s assignments. They are all between five six and five nine, the height George gave for his second assailant. Three of the kids are probably volunteers from the juvie house who will be rewarded for their cooperation with a hamburger in the squad car on the way back. They all wear blue jail coveralls, but a sweatshirt is passed from one to the next. Each puts it on for a second and draws the hood around his face, then turns to expose both profiles.

By the time the fashion show, as it’s called, has ended, George has settled on the third boy from the left. Gina clearly does not like the array and scribbles notes on her yellow pad. The problem is obvious. Two of the kids don’t have the close-cropped hair George described on the younger boy, but even with that hint, he is not quite positive about the kid he’s inclined to identify. From the corner of his eye, the judge catches Cobberly scratching his face. He uses three fingers and rakes his nails across his cheek three times, repeating this performance twice more. George says nothing but stares until Gina’s younger colleague catches on.

“What?” Cobberly says.

“Can we get that dipstick out of here?” Gina asks Grissom. She looks at George. “Did you know him?”

“Sixty, seventy percent,” he tells her. “I’d have said, ‘Most closely resembles.” ’ The lawyers make notes.

It takes more than half an hour for the second array of taller boys to appear because Gina has demanded that Grissom find sweatshirts for all of them, and each emerges with the hood drawn around his face, depriving George of any clues from their hair.

He asks Gina, “Do you mind if I get closer?”

George walks along only a few feet from the platform. Gina has asked Grissom to instruct all the participants to look only straight ahead, but when George strolls by, the fourth in the group, the kid he’s ready to make, can’t resist a peek downward. His eyes do not rest long, but he might as well have shaken hands and called George ‘ puto ’ for old times’ sake.

The judge stops there and points.

“Oh, man,” the kid says, but it’s fairly fainthearted. After Cobberly’s stunt, the other cops are careful not even to glance in George’s direction, but he knows from a pulse in the room that he selected the right boy.

Next, Grissom leads George and the legal retinue behind him to the desk of one of the detectives. Six handguns are laid out, two of them undoubtedly recovered from the boys under arrest. George knew nothing about firearms when he started as a State Defender, but he learned more than he might have liked on the job, and he has remained somewhat up-to-date because he often reads trial transcripts of the testimony of ballistics experts. He thought the silver gun with black handles that the older boy held on him was a Kahr MK40, which he recognized only because it’s the current king of concealed weapons. It was probably ‘rented’ from a senior gang member in exchange for a share of the proceeds. The second kid had a black. 32 or. 38, also an automatic. George picks out the first gun without hesitating. The courtroom axiom is true. It’s the only thing you really see. He takes a guess at the second.

“So much for the unreliability of eyewitness testimony,” Gina murmurs. With the IDs made, George and Abel and Gina await the cops who have remained behind in the detectives’ area with the Deputy P.A. from Felony Review, caucusing to be certain that they need nothing more to make their case.

“Neither gun was loaded by the way,” Gina says to George, as they’re waiting. “Just for the record.”

“Pros, huh?” Abel asks.

“Not first-timers. But it counts, right? Not to take a chance on killing somebody?”

“Except by heart attack,” the judge says.

The cops and P.A. s are bound to be satisfied, but from George’s perspective, picking out the right kids is only a start. The real issue is whether Corazon sent them. Gina will never let the boys talk to the cops, especially if Cobberly or anybody like him is involved. George keeps turning the problem over.

“How would you react if I said I wanted to interview your client?” the judge asks her. “The taller one?”

“What’s he get?” Gina responds instantly.

“I’m not in charge.”

She smiles. “Something tells me everybody will listen pretty hard to the recommendations of an appellate court judge.”

“So then, let’s see if he spills. It’s the one way he can lighten the load on this thing.”

When the cops emerge, Grissom likes the idea. “You’ll get more from this kid than we will, Judge,” he says.

Gina goes off to inform her client.

The boy is placed in a beaten-up interrogation room with an old wooden desk and three chairs and a number of heel scuffs and gouges running up the walls. From the corridor, he can be viewed through a one-way mirror. Nonetheless Grissom, Gina, and the P.A. escort George into the room and remain standing behind him while the judge takes a chair opposite the kid. There’s an iron hook in the floor used to chain the prisoners who are shackled, but as a juvenile, the boy is merely cuffed. By the terms Gina established, her client will not get renewed Miranda warnings, meaning his statements can’t be used against him in court, on the odd chance he ends up going to trial.

“Man, you got me down bad, man,” he tells George. He’s talking about the lineup.

“How’s that?”

“Man, I ain’ never seen you before. Never, man.”

“It didn’t look to me like your eyes were closed last night, so I don’t think I believe that.”

“Nuh-uh, man. You got me down bad.” The kid has a round face, a hawk’s nose, and large, dark eyes, quick with concern. The half-head of raven hair shines on the back of his scalp. Even lying, he looks a good deal more appealing than he did when he was holding a gun.

Gina speaks up behind George.

“Hector,” she says, “didn’t you listen? I told you, you have two choices. Either shut up or tell the judge you’re sorry and answer his questions straight down. Nobody wants to hear that you weren’t there last night.”

“ Es verdad, man,” Hector says.

“Cut it out,” Gina says. “Listen to what the judge wants to know, and do yourself some good.”

Hector responds to the word judge this time.

“You a judge?” When George nods, the brief lick of a smile crosses Hector’s lips. He jacked a judge. There will be some street cred for that. But the smile slips away as the young man reflects further. In his face, you can see the digits falling and his mounting concern. “So how’s this go, man? You ain’t gonna be the judge on me, man, right?”

“Nope.”

“Just gonna be one of your people, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Yeah,” Hector says. He doesn’t believe it for a second. His tongue slides around in his mouth as he assesses his predicament. Then his black eyes kick up to George with an aspect of surprising openness.

“So how’s that anyway, man?” he asks.

“What?”

“You know, man, sittin’ up there, goin’ like, ‘You guilty, man. You ain’ guilty. Dude, you get twenty-five. But you, hombre, you get paper.” ’ Hector’s cuffed hands circle the air as he passes out these imaginary sentences. “That cool or what?”

“That’s not actually my job anymore,” George says. “But when I did it, I never especially enjoyed that part.” George has never met a judge who didn’t say that sentencing is the hardest thing he or she has to do.

“ Ese,” the kid answers, “is pretty cool.” When George was a State Defender and had conversations like this, he used to give his young clients the same timeworn speech. Forget thug life, stay in school, you can be a lawyer too. It was 1973, and George believed that. He hears occasionally from a couple of the young men he represented who turned their lives around, but nobody’s a lawyer or a judge. These days kids like Hector sneer. At the age of sixteen, he already knows how much of the world is closed to him.

“Hector, I want to know why you and your brother decided to rob me.”

“Man, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout who jacked you, man. But gotta be to see the presidents, no?” Money, he means.

“Maybe we should ask Guillermo,” Grissom says from behind, referring to the little brother.

“Oh, he’s soft, man. You can’t go with nothin’ he gonna tell you. He’s just off the hook, man.”

Nonetheless, Grissom’s made his point. Hector seems to sober.

“That arm broke, man?” He nods at George’s sling.

“Hairline fracture. Hurts.”

“ Y que,” says Hector again. “Gotta do your work, right?”

“If that’s what you call it.” George gives the boy a cold look. “I want to know why you jacked me, Hector. I want the whole story. It’s the only way Guillermo and you catch a break.”

Hector ponders while George keeps a hard eye on him.

“ Y que,” the kid says wearily again and takes a deep breath in defeat. “We got this carnal, man. Fortuna? Had his first appearance and all last week. And that judge, man, he did him real greasy. Twenty bills, man. The bond? And he’s just hemmed in on some little dope thing, man. Twenty bills? What’s up with that, man? So like, Billy and me, man-you know, we was gonna back him up.”

“Help him make bond?”

Hector nods. “We seen you, man? Just sittin’ there? Couple times we seen you. So, you know, we get us the cuetes. But Billy, man, we come up on you, and he’s like, ‘No, vato, no way we can do this hombre, man, he’s like prayin’.’ Were you prayin’ in that car?”

George can’t help smiling briefly.

“But why me, Hector, and not somebody else?”

The boy draws back with a quick, disdaining look.

“Man, that’s a nice g-ride, man, ain’t that? Mucho ferria. ” A lot of change.

George would have been skeptical that a 1994 Lexus, a virtual antique, commands much on the street, but Cobberly said the Mexican gangs prefer to detail and retrofit older cars, regarded as classics. A style born of need is now fashion.

“Nobody pointed me out? Described the car?”

“Man, you was there. We was there. No way I knew you was a judge, man. Nothin’ like that. Only thing I heard is after, when we went to that lame puke who said he was gonna take it off us, and he’s goin’ like, ‘ Malo suerte, man, that ride, it’s been on TV, I ain’ gonna touch it.’ Even he didn’t say ‘Judge,’ man.” Hector shakes his head over his ill fortune.

“What about the guy you got the guns from?” George asks. “You didn’t talk about it with him?”

“Jorge? Can’t tell him nothin’, man. He’d come over and do you himself.” The kid frowns. “Jorge, man, that’s gonna be one vato loco ’bout losin’ them weapons.”

“How about this, Hector? Do you know the name Jaime Colon? El Corazon?”

George has asked the question in his best matter-of-fact tone, but it stops Hector cold. He rears back and delivers a narrow, disbelieving look.

“Corazon?”

“You know who he is?”

“ Ese. You thin’ I don’t know Corazon? Seen him plenty, man.”

The judge takes care to show nothing.

“Where have you seen him?”

Hector looks to the distance to fix the time.

“Tuesday night, man, ain’t it? My ma, man, she don’t never miss them damn telenovelas. She loves that guy, man. ‘Mira, mira, El Corazon.’ She’s straight loca about him.”

On the way out of the room, Gina grabs George.

“Did you believe him?”

“More or less.”

“I want three for him. And two for the little brother. The guns weren’t loaded.”

“That’s too light.”

“Come on, Judge. First adult offense.”

He remembers how he felt facing that pistol. His instinct is to say six, but that’s what the Warnovits defendants got for raping Mindy DeBoyer.

“Gina, my arm’s in a sling. And both those boys have chairs with their names on them in juvie court. Five and three sounds right to me. That’s what I’ll tell the P.A.”

Marina, who came speeding back from her conference after the arrests, missed the interrogation. She’s just entering from the receiving area as George and Abel are headed to the door. Grissom comes over, and together the three of them describe what’s transpired. Marina asks several questions before they leave.

“What do you think?” George asks her as they depart the station. She appears somewhat listless, without her usual brio. Then again, given events in the garage and her travel schedule, she missed a night’s sleep.

“I don’t think anybody in his right mind gives up Corazon-six, sixteen, or sixty.”

George tries not to react, but compared with Marina, Ahab barely gave a second thought to that fish.

“Not that it matters anymore,” she adds.

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

“I got a call from the FBI, Judge, while we were driving back. Remember I told you they were going to run forensic software on your hard drive? When I shipped Koll’s letter over, it sort of reminded them. They only picked up one thing, but it’s pretty interesting. The very first e-mail you got, Judge? They figured out what computer it came from.”

“And?”

Weary, Marina nonetheless manages to find his eye.

“It was yours. The one in your chambers.”

George stands on the sidewalk outside Area 2 with Marina and Abel, trying to gather himself. It’s shift change, and the black-and-whites are double-parked in the small lot behind the station while uniformed officers, usually in pairs, stroll in and out in the declining light of a mild late-spring evening. Across the street, in a ragged park, a few flowering trees remain in bloom on a lawn that is littered and unmowed. George’s arm is bothering him. He needs more ibuprofen.

“My computer?” he asks. “The first message came from my computer?”

“Yes, sir,” Marina answers. “They finally got around to running the forensic software and reconstructing your hard drive, so they could see everything that had been on it. I mean, it’s an obvious thought that a message returned to your computer came from there. But since the rest of the e-mails went through the open relay, the Bureau techies pretty much crossed that off. They only ran the forensic software to double-check on your copy of the message Koll received, to see if there was something about it they hadn’t noticed, but as long as they were doing it, the techs poked around to look at the very first e-mail-the one you thought you’d deleted?-and when they reconstructed the message, it was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was from your IP address, through the courthouse server. That seemed pretty weird because there was no copy in your Sent file. They figured it was a super-sophisticated spoof, and then one of them suggested reconstructing the Sent file too, and there it was. It’d been deleted.”