The Laws of our Fathers (49 page)

    '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 & 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.'