The Hanging Judge (22 page)

“I’ll testify myself. I’ll tell my own story.”

“I doubt I’ll put you on.”

“What do you mean, you doubt you’ll put me on? What kind of bullshit is that?”

“You testify, and the jury will hear about your drug record.”

“They’ll hear about it anyway.”

“Only if you testify.”

“That doesn’t make any damn sense.” Moon snorted and shook his head.

“You’re right, it’s a stupid rule, but that’s how it works. That’s why Sandy has to go on.”

“You’re not hearing me, man.”

Sandra was looking back and forth at the two men. Her frightened expression suddenly dissolved, and she released her constricted breath like a small engine blowing off pent-up steam. She rocked back in her chair with a disgusted laugh.

“Hey,” she said, smacking the table with both hands. “Do either of you boys notice I’m sitting here? I’m having to listen to ‘she’s going to do this’ and ‘she’s not going to do that’ and ‘I need her’ and ‘no, you don’t need her,’ like I’m not even in the room. Well, here I am, boys!” She poked herself with both hands. “Here I am, in full Technicolor! Right? And I can decide for myself what I’m going to do. Do you hear what I’m saying?

“Now take you”—she looked over at Moon—“You say I’m going to get myself in some kind of big, big trouble. And that won’t be good for Grace. Okay, I see what you’re saying. And we have to talk about that, and then I have to decide what I’m going to do.

“And you”—she turned to Redpath—“You’re in a cold sweat because you’re afraid I’ll mess up. I’ll kill Moon trying to help him. That Gomez bitch might tangle me up. I see that. I see that. So I need to think about that, too. And then I’ll decide what I’m going to do.”

She stood up and smoothed her skirt.

“And now I’m going to leave, because I’ve got a baby who’s waiting in the car with her grandma, warming up her pucker muscles. I’m going to think about what you both said, and then we’ll have one more talk, and then I’ll decide.”

She walked briskly around the table toward Moon, continuing.

“And when they get those records, Clarence, aka Moon, Hudson, you’re going to have to apologize, because you were in bed just like I said you were.” As a clatter of metal on glass rose angrily, she gave the startled defendant a hard kiss on the lips, turned, and walked out of the room.

27

A
tkins Fruit Bowl was hopping. The morning doughnut-and-coffee crowd had overlapped with the early-bird shoppers, and the combination was generating well-mannered chaos in the farm stand’s parking lot. No fewer than six cars idled in various attitudes of congestion while a blue-haired lady in avid discussion with her daughter inched obliviously over the blacktop, dragging her walker.

Claire, behind the wheel of her red Prius, waited in the queue gnashing her teeth and fighting a desire to get out and give the old sweetheart a smart kick in her bum hip. She had a long list of weekend errands, and she was not, she freely admitted, a terribly patient person in these situations.

A door thumped, and traffic finally began moving. Claire snaked through the cars toward the upper parking lot, where a few empty spots beckoned. As she swung around to enter one of them, she nearly collided with a late-model gray Saab whipping in from the other side. Both drivers were caught in mid-glare as they recognized each other and made hasty facial adjustments. The Saab driver was Gerald Novotny, the pushy professor from the Pratt dinner.

Claire had no intention of giving Novotny an opportunity to be chivalrous. Before he could even get into reverse, she had backed out and swung into another place. Now, she told herself as she applied the parking brake, it was going to be necessary to make conversation. Ugh.

“Sorry,” he said as they made their way out of the parking lot. “Didn’t see you.” His face bore a clouded expression.

“I didn’t like that spot anyway,” Claire said. She knitted her brows and peered over his shoulder in the direction of his car. “Are you getting that tire fixed?”

Novotny jerked around quickly; Claire put her hand on his shoulder.

“Just kidding. Just kidding.” She felt bad when he gave her a wounded look. Apparently, Novotny wasn’t the type to be teased. An uncomfortable silence followed during their downhill approach to the fruit stand. Having given the man a dig, Claire now felt obliged to sweeten their interchange somehow.

“I enjoyed our dinner at the Pratts,” she said.

“You and your new pal hustled off just when things were getting good,” Novotny said. He had been staring at the ground moodily but now turned to look at her. “I suppose he’s happy. It’s official now; he’s got his death penalty case.” His ponytail flapped as he shook his head. “Just unbelievable,” he muttered.

“He’s
not
happy,” Claire said sharply. They were approaching the front door, where a man of about fifty, sporting an Atkins-green apron, was vigorously sweeping. “The whole trial’s incredibly stressful, and difficult. It’s like some enormous …”

“Circus,” Novotnyy broke in. “It’s a circus. TV cameras outside the courthouse. Protestors. One guy with a big sign that says ‘Fry him!’ Did you see that? It’s worse than third-century Rome. It’s worse than Daley and Halligan.”

They passed from the freezing air into a cloud of delicious, fresh-bread fragrance beyond the door. He had not stood aside to let her through first, thank God.

“You want a basket?” Novotny asked in a clipped tone, not looking at her.

Claire watched while he separated a couple of red plastic baskets from the stack inside the door and handed one to her.

“You know, that’s such garbage, Gerry,” she said, taking a basket from him and trying vainly to make eye contact. “I don’t believe in the death penalty, either. But different people think different things.”

“Right. I know. Salt and pepper.” Novotny was speaking over his shoulder. He had wandered off into the store and was pawing through a pyramid of loaves, not bothering to hide his indifference to any opinion Claire might have. His unspoken message, Claire thought, was that she was an overgroomed English teacher in an Ann Taylor outfit, who was setting her sights on a well-heeled representative of the ruling class. Just another embodiment of the banality of evil. This whole scenario was making her cross.

“Where’d they put the cheddar cheese bread?” Novotny asked absently. “It makes great toast.”

One more effort, Claire decided, and she would drop this Czech shithead. How much penance was required for a tweak of the male ego? She wondered in passing whether Professor Novotny’s political discussions highlighted the tendency of males to feel entitled to interrupt or withdraw from women when confronted.

“Well, it’s not easy,” she said more calmly. “A million things can go wrong in a trial like this. Here’s your bread.” She handed him a plump, heavy loaf.

“Really. What kind of things?” He tossed the bread into his basket and turned from her toward the pastry counter. She could not see his expression. His tone was casual.

Claire thought and spoke quickly. “Well, one example: The jurors could find out about Hudson’s prior drug convictions. David’s keeping that information out of the trial, trying to make things fairer, but it’s been all over the papers. Some juror could find out about that, and it would screw everything up. That’s just one thing.”

But Novotny, caught up in his muffin order, did not seem to hear. He was bent over the counter alternately pointing and speaking to the pretty girl on the other side of the glass.

“Three morning glory, three cranberry nut. Where’d you get those awesome earrings? Three no-fat blueberry and three, uh, bran, I guess.” He straightened and, for the first time, smiled thinly at Claire. He put a hand on the small of his back and arched; evidently, bending over the counter had not been easy. Novotny must be older than Claire had thought. Did he use Grecian Formula on his ponytail?

“I’m sorry. I’m in the dumps today.” He turned to Claire while the clerk retrieved his pastries. “It’s tough on him, I suppose. But this whole thing—this whole …” He ran his hands over a pile of grapefruit, fondling them as he searched for the word. “This whole carnival of pseudo-justice is so degrading, it’s hard to talk as though it were just some random topic. I thought your friend Dave was kind of pretentious, frankly, but you’ve obviously put your hands on his good side.” He gave Claire a wry look to make sure she knew what he was implying. “The point is,” he continued, “it’s a corrupt system, and he’s perched right on top of it. He’s accountable, and he ought to be held to account.”

Novotny got his bag of muffins, with a melting look from the girl behind the counter, and placed it in his red basket.

“Why don’t we have coffee sometime when I’m downtown,” he said. “I can’t talk about heavy stuff like this on the fly.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s this endless winter that’s getting to me. But the first death penalty case in Massachusetts, and it’s out here? In Springfield? I mean, for God’s sake.”

“The weather has been lousy,” Claire agreed. “Give me a call next week. I better run.” She produced a compact smile, and they swerved off from each other, swept along on parallel currents of relief and with, of course, no intention on either side of ever having coffee or any other beverage with each other, if at all possible, for the rest of their natural lives.

By the time Claire was paying for the lamb chops she planned to grill for David, Novotny was already getting into his Saab. He retrieved his cell phone from the glove compartment and dialed quickly.

“Brit?” he said when she answered. “Just wanted to make sure everyone will be there.” He paused and listened, then said in an annoyed tone, “My place, of course.” Another pause. “Right.” And finally: “Well, I just had a thought I’d like to run past people, okay?”

28

B
ill Redpath used Sandra Hudson’s dramatic exit as an excuse to step outside and jack up his nicotine levels. Now he was back, and Moon was shaking his head. His face had softened.

“You see why I can’t tear her off?” he asked. “How could anybody not want to be with that woman every second he could?” He shook his head. “What I can’t figure is, why’s she messing with an empty T-shirt like me?”

“My track record in this area is pretty poor, Moon, but my guess is she loves you.” Redpath’s mind flickered back to his own marriage, the missed anniversaries and birthdays, and, finally, the divorce. Barbara lived in Santa Cruz now, near their son, Tom. Every Christmas, Barbara sent one of her hand-painted cards and a note with the news. Tom was a federal public defender; they talked every Sunday, mostly about their cases. He’d salvaged that at least.

Moon shifted, and his leg irons clanked, bringing Redpath back.

“Well,” Moon said, sighing and running his hands over the table, “there’s stuff she doesn’t know. And I think she’s wrong about me being home asleep that morning.”

“We’ll see,” Redpath said.

Moon’s reference to other “stuff” was an opening. Soon they’d need to have the hard talk, now that Moon trusted him a little, about exactly what happened. Right now, though, they had other problems.

“We’ve only got a few more minutes today,” Redpath said, “and I need to go over a couple things with you.”

Redpath opened his briefcase and withdrew a letter on the U.S. attorney’s stationery. He held the two pages in front of him, then set the document on the table and peered at it closely.

“I got the government’s revised witness list yesterday, and there are two names I don’t recognize.” He passed his thumb down the page and stopped.

“Who’s Jesús Santiago? And … Wait a minute.” His thick finger ran down to the bottom of the page, and then flipped to the next. “And who’s Manuel Ortiz?”

Moon frowned and shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

“Neither one? You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, they’re both on Gomez-Larsen’s list, and I’d really like to know who they are. I don’t even like surprises on my birthday.”

Hudson shook his head.

“They wouldn’t be using their real names on the street anyway.” He sat up and looked straight ahead as a thought struck him. “Hold up. I think I heard someone call this little Flag I knew—his street name was Spider—but I’m thinking I heard somebody call him Jesús once. Nasty, tall, skinny motherfucker, with all this hair on his arms. Everybody called him Spider. Maybe that was Jesús. Could’ve been him.”

“I don’t like this,” Redpath said, scratching his head.

“Yeah,” Hudson was gazing at the far wall, off in his own memories. “Yeah. Shit, yeah. I bet that was him. Spider always went around with this short chunky Flag, looked like a bowling ball, who never said anything, called Nono. They could stand next to each other and look like a one and zero, the number ten. People’d just say ‘X,’ like, for ten. Like, ‘X is going to be there’ for the two of them. What was the other name?”

“Manuel Ortiz.”

“Don’t know. Could be Nono. They didn’t like me, that’s for sure.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, we got into a beef once. Nono pulled a burner on me and got himself hurt.” Moon looked up at the ceiling, searching back. “Yeah, that would make sense.”

“How would it make sense, Moon?”

Hudson wrapped his arms around himself and scratched his shoulders, as though he were in a struggle with something inside. Then he let his arms drop, looked down at the table, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

“How would that make sense?” Redpath pursued. “What do you mean?”

“That’s what I have to tell you.” Moon opened his eyes and settled himself with a deep breath. His expression, when he finally managed to look at Redpath, gave his lawyer a glimpse of Moon as the big-eyed first grader who was always in fights. Some morning a few short years from now, Redpath could find himself watching through a window as this one-time little boy was strapped to a cart and given the needle. It could happen; he’d seen it happen. And he’d never stop wondering whether another lawyer, another strategy, might have saved Moon Hudson’s life.

His client, however, was obviously bothered by something other than this horror, maybe something even worse.