Against the Wind (39 page)

“I don’t know.” I drain my glass, licking the last drop of Scotch off the ice-cubes.

“We’d better find her,” she says. “We can.”

She takes my hand across the table, kisses the palm.

“We can do it,” she says. “We will. We have to.”

MISS GOMEZ HAS THE FLU,
your honor. She’s running a temperature and she’s unable to get out of bed. I have a note from her doctor.”

I hand it up. Martinez glances at it. It’s not a forgery; a real doctor in Boulder wrote and signed it. There just wasn’t a real patient, but the doctor was a friend of a friend.

“How long a postponement would you like, counselor?” he asks politely.

I look over my shoulder. Robertson and Moseby glare at me; they’re not liking this, they know I’m vamping. Robertson doesn’t know the real skinny, he thinks I’m milking this for maximum effect, but he doesn’t suspect the truth. Moseby I check out extra hard; if he’s in on her disappearance he’s doing a better job of covering than I give him credit for.

“I’m sure a week’ll be sufficient, your honor. We want to make sure she’s well enough to travel and hold up under the strain of the hearing.”

“Objection?” Martinez asks.

Robertson could bitch and moan, but he knows the judge’ll give me this one.

“No, your honor. Not if it’s one week.”

“A week from Tuesday,” Judge Martinez says, consulting his calendar. “That’s a week and a half, Mr. Alexander.”

“Thank you, your honor. We’ll be here.”

“Are you ready, Mr. Alexander?”

“We have a problem, your honor.”

“Are you telling the court you’re not ready, counselor?” he asks, harshly.

“My witness is missing.”

“Excuse me?”

Behind me, Robertson and his contingent are talking rapidly among themselves.

“We are unable to locate Rita Gomez at the present time. She has … uh … she’s vanished from sight, or at least from our best efforts to find her,” I tell him, lamely.

At this particular moment, if the earth were to open up and swallow me whole, it would be a blessing.

I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I did in this last week and a half. I flew back to Denver right after I got the postponement. Mary Lou came with me. She’s been incredible; everything you want in a partner and a woman. She took all her vacation time to do it. When, if, this is ever over, I’ll owe her a bunch, which I’ll gladly pay.

To their credit, the detective agency pitched in mightily. Three men, two hundred a day each plus expenses, all of which they waived. We’d had words when first Rita had disappeared, but as they logically stated, they couldn’t have been responsible for her every waking moment unless we’d hired a live-in, and we hadn’t; we didn’t think it was necessary, and we couldn’t have afforded it anyway. Everyone we knew in Denver, every lawyer, old friend, acquaintance, everyone we could enlist to help find her, we called on. Thousands of phone calls. Every bar, restaurant, flophouse. The hospitals and morgues. Everything in a hundred-mile radius was covered like a blanket. And she didn’t turn up; not a trace, not a faint odor to track.

“She could be anywhere,” Mary Lou said one night, late, when we’d collapsed in our hotel room. “It’s two weeks.”

“I don’t think she’s left town,” I answered, stubbornly. “At least not the general area.” I believed it; I don’t know why, but I did. “I think she’s gone to ground. She’s with a friend, slipped through a crack somewhere.” I’m convinced of that; that she was too scared to form a plan, that all she could do was bolt mindlessly for the nearest safe hole, like the rabbit she is, and hope that if she’s still enough, the hunters won’t find her.

“You want to believe that, Will.”

“That’s right.”

“So do I. But we’ve got to face what happens if we don’t find her.”

I know already. It’s not faceable.

The head of the detective agency was embarrassed.

“I’ve never run up against one this cold,” he told me.

“You did your best.”

“We’ll keep looking informally. No charge.”

I thanked him, went outside. Mary Lou was waiting for me in the cab. We rode to the airport and flew home.

Mary Lou checked in with Mercado. Dead-end there as well. Rita had wised up—no electronic trail this time. It was our last dying-gasp hope.

That was yesterday.

Martinez looks down at me from his perch on high.

“Do you have any idea where Miss Gomez is at the present time, Mr. Alexander?”

“No, sir. Not precisely.”

“In general? Anything?”

“No.”

“Are you asking for another postponement?” he says.

“Under these special circumstances, I would like one, your honor, yes.”

“Objection, your honor!” Robertson cries out, jumping up. “There’s no basis at all for another postponement. The first one was dubious but this would be completely uncalled for.”

The judge looks at him, at me.

“If I were to grant you another postponement could you give the court any reassurances whatsoever that you could find this witness? That there is a reasonable chance that she could be brought into this courtroom in a reasonable time?”

“No, your honor. I can’t make such reassurances.”

“Then we’ll have to proceed without her,” he so informs me.

Martinez has looked at Rita’s video.

“Do you have anything further to add?” he asks. “Any other witnesses or anything in corroboration, in addition?”

“No, your honor,” I say. “The deposition stands on its own.”

Robertson tears it to shreds. His job isn’t difficult; any reasonably competent first-year law student could do it. She claims she was lying then and telling the truth now; why not the opposite? One statement’s as acceptable as the other.

He puts Gomez on the stand.

“Did you do any of this stuff that she says you did?”

“No.”

Sanchez: “No. A pack of lies from beginning to end.”

Moseby turns to Martinez, to me, to Robertson. He’s wearing a clean, pressed shirt. A first.

“Not only didn’t I do any of these things,” he says, “I bent over backwards to make sure that what she was telling us then was true, because of the kind of person she is. I checked and double-checked every aspect of her story. I have never treated a witness this way; I have never broken the law this way, or bent it even a little. I feel like
I’m
on trial here,” he says, very aggrieved, “and I’m not. And I resent Mr. Alexander here bringing these kind of trumped-up charges against me and these policemen. You try to do your job for the community and this is the thanks you get.”

I stand in front of the bench.

“If it may please the court: I move for a new trial, based on the new evidence presented in this motion and the video statement,” I say.

“I am against a new trial,” Robertson tells them. “Vehemently against one. We should nail this case shut, right here, right now. This is nothing but a desperate attempt at overturning a fair and just trial. A pitiable, desperate attempt that anyone can see right through. It’s beneath the dignity of this court to even consider such a mockery of justice, of our system of laws.”

He piles it on nice and thick, in case Martinez doesn’t get it.

Without elaboration, Martinez denies our motion. He spends less than twenty minutes deliberating; he had nothing to deliberate.

Slam fucking dunk.

I’VE NEVER FELT SO SHITTY
and impotent in my life as I do at this moment, and I’ve been practically making a career of feeling that way the last couple of years. Even when Holly left me, or when Andy and Fred gave me the boot, or when Patricia moved; even at the end of the trial, when the ground collapsed under us. These men have put their lives in my hands and I’ve failed them, utterly failed them again, and worse than that, I raised their hopes and now I have to bury them.

The warden, a decent man, does me a big favor; he lets me meet with all four of them at the same time. Technically, it’s against the rules, but it’s his prison, he can run it pretty much the way he sees fit, as long as things are cool, which they are.

It’s the first time the four of them have laid eyes on each other since they were put away, almost a year ago. There’s an impulse to grab each other and hug, squeeze as hard as they can, but they know better: touching is strictly verboten, one high-five could stop this meeting before it starts, buy them additional penalties besides the standard ones they’re already enduring; complete lockdowns or worse. So they hug psychically, their eyes bright with love.

These four men, the four toughest, scariest human beings I’ve ever known, are desperate for love; the way they are here, now, in front of me, is proof that the meanest animal can be tamed if he’s in prison long enough. I am a cynical man, I have always been a cynic, with good reason, but a moment like this reinforces the belief that there is such a thing as rehabilitation, that even the blackest sinner can turn to the light. (I sound like one of those jive-ass TV evangelists, Jim Bakker or one of those scuzzballs, but it is true.)

We’re in one large room; no Plexiglas separating us this time. They’d heard the news, even before I called and told them, a jailhouse grapevine’s faster than AT&T, but they don’t know what it really means. So she didn’t show; sooner or later she’ll have to, and then we can press ahead again. She’s the state’s key witness, if she’s turned they have to grant a new trial, isn’t that the way it is? It’s a matter of time; isn’t it?

“So you mean even if she shows,” Roach asks, “it won’t matter?”

“Probably not.”

“Why the fuck not?” Dutchboy; he doesn’t get it at all.

Lone Wolf says nothing; his eyes are flat, fixed on me.

“Because …” I am getting a migraine the size of Rhode Island. “Because you can only go to the well so often; they don’t let you keep coming back whenever you feel like it. We could’ve been denied the first time, our original petition. We were lucky to get back in. They don’t give you a second chance in this game; not usually,” I conclude miserably.

“But she admitted she lied,” the kid says.

“Doesn’t matter.” We all turn to Lone Wolf. It’s the first time he’s opened his mouth. “Does it?” he asks me.

“No.”

“Why?” Dutchboy persists.

He doesn’t understand, this twenty-two-year-old man-child. Doesn’t want to; to understand, understand and thus acknowledge, is to be resigned to never leaving this place, outside of being carried out in a coffin.

“There’s a procedure,” I explain. I want them all to understand; everything I know. “There are rules laid out for an appeal. You can’t keep going back to the courts every time you think you have something new, especially if you’ve already gone to them with a specific, like we did with this perjured testimony. Otherwise people would spend their whole lives doing it, and the state could never kill anyone or bury them alive in joints like this forever, and the state doesn’t like that. The state wants its pound of flesh.”

“So even if the whole case is built on a lie,” Goose asks, “it doesn’t matter if they can slide by on a technicality.”

“That’s right.” He knows; he’s always known.

“I can’t believe this,” Roach says. He’s shaking, his leg tap-dancing under the table. He’s the most volatile of them, he could go right now.

“It’s like that movie,” Dutchboy says. “About that guy in Texas. You know.”

“
The Thin Blue Line,
” Goose prompts.

“Yeh. That guy’d still be in there. ’Cause some punk lied and the cops wanted to believe him. Like us. Shit, I’ll bet this kind of shit happens all the time,” he marvels.

“No,” I tell him. “Thank God it doesn’t. But it does sometimes, and each time is too much.”

“Especially when it’s you,” Roach says.

“So even if she shows,” Goose repeats; he wants to be absolutely sure he knows what’s going on; “even if she shows and swears on a stack of Bibles, it won’t matter now.”

“I can’t say. But the odds are against us,” I tell them. “Not only because she didn’t show this time,” I elaborate, “but because she’s a liar, she’s saying ‘I lied then but I’m telling the truth now.’ One cancels the other. Who’s to say she’s telling the truth now, that she wasn’t telling the truth then, and is lying now? It’s happened before.”

The silence fills the room.

“So now what?” Roach finally asks. “What do we do now, just fucking lie down and wait to die?”

“No,” I say, “we keep going. There’s other avenues. I’m certainly going to try to find her and force another hearing, but even if that doesn’t happen there are other avenues. Years of them.”

“Technicalities,” Lone Wolf says flatly.

“Mostly,” I concede. “But they have worked before.”

“Yeh,” he sneers. “To keep ’em from dropping the load on you. A lifetime inside instead of the death penalty. Whoopee,” he adds without mirth.

I tell them straight: right now it’s all we have.

We talk a little longer. Human contact of any kind is gold to them. Then there’s nothing more to say. They’re led out, handcuffed and manacled, taken back to their cells, not to see each other again for God knows how long.

Lone Wolf’s the last to go. As he’s shuffling out, the heavy chains hanging from him like shrouds, he fixes me with a look.

“What’s the point?” he asks.

“You’re still alive, man.” I make my point as forcefully as I can. “Anything’s possible as long as you’re still alive.”

“Depends,” he says. “On what side you’re standing on.”

They take him away.

I’m scared. It’s dangerous to hold out hope to a desperate man and then yank it away. It makes him crazy. It would make me crazy.

Crazy people do crazy things. Fuck the consequences.

IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT.
I sit in my dark office and look out over the town, what I can see of it from here, the dark adobes, in the distance the state offices, all dark now. I’m alone.

I feel that I’m at a crossroads in my life. I have felt that before, it seems to be a continuing motif in my life, feeling that I’m at a crossroads and thinking about being at that crossroads, wherever it happens to be at the time. I’ve always had a strongly melodramatic side to my personality; it’s served me well in the courtrooms but has, I’m afraid, now that I’m finally looking at it, hurt the rest of me. It has cost me dear relationships. It has forced me to imagine slights where none were present, or were small. I have had the need to build my molehills of annoyance into mountains of pain, until the pain became real and I lashed out at the causes of it, not at myself, the core cause, but at the reasons I’d built up in my mind. I am one of those people who would cut off his nose to spite his face. I have never gotten past that childish pose. There is something in me that wants to hurt me. A psychologist would probably say I don’t feel worthy of good things, so I make sure I don’t get them. That may be. But it is costing me the most important things in my life, the things that, when I’m not reveling in my self-pity, make me feel good, feel alive. I’m full of bile towards Andy and Fred, but I liked them once, there was a lot of strong feeling between us, we created something important together that had some lasting power; it outlasted me. And I fucked it up. It wasn’t them; it was me. It’s been so long since Patricia and I split up that I don’t remember the specifics anymore, but I’m sure there was much of the same behavior; the preening, the need to be on-stage all the time, to be top dog, to bully and control. I concede that it undoubtedly would have ended the same way, ultimately, but I know that the reason I feel unresolved about it is because of who I am and how I was. Not a man; not a real man.