Degree of Guilt (74 page)

Without more, Paget sat down.

Of the next few moments he had only impressions: Caroline Masters’s gavel cracking; a softening in Carlo’s face; Mary’s murmured thanks; Masters leaving the bench; the crowd releasing its tension in a cacophony of sound.

None of it seemed real; he knew only that he believed what he had said. For now, that would have to be enough.

It was Terri, touching his arm, who brought him back. ‘You can go on now,’ she said.

He turned to her. For a moment, he watched her face, as if searching for something more to believe in. ‘To where?’ he asked.

It had been some time since Christopher Paget had thought about Andrea, who once had been his wife.

In the chaos of the courtroom, his bewildered words to Terri had been swallowed by sound. The media had converged before he and Carlo could speak; all that Paget could do was begin pressing toward the hallway, with Mary, Terri, and Carlo carried by the throng that followed. On the steps of the Hall of Justice, Johnny Moore had managed to tell him that he was taking Carlo to school; Paget had time only to suggest that Terri leave with them. Reporters had shouted questions from all sides.

It had seemed wrong that he was not with Carlo. But he was not yet sure what either of them would say, and this was not the place to say it; part of him was simply glad that Johnny could get Carlo away from this. The boy had disappeared in the crush, and Paget and Mary Carelli had faced the cameras alone.

Mary had been uncharacteristically subdued. All that Paget recalled her saying was that she was grateful for what he had done and that the rest was in Judge Masters’s hands; she did not proclaim her innocence or even ask for understanding. Then she had disappeared into a limousine, giving Paget a last backward glance, and he was alone with them.

He had said almost nothing; his closing argument, he told them, was what he meant people to remember. He did not add that he himself could hardly remember what he had said. Their faces were a blur.

He had driven home by instinct.

The quiet house had felt deserted, like a place preserved as a museum to some life no longer lived there. Climbing the stairs to his bedroom, he had stopped at the sight of the canopied bed.

Andrea had chosen it. The bed was not to his taste, but when she had gone to Paris, leaving Paget and Carlo in a third-floor flat not suited to a child, she had not taken it. In the semidaze that followed, Paget had kept it; there was a boy to worry about, too many other things to brood on for Paget to replace a bed. The bed had remained until getting rid of it seemed a reaction to pain and disappointment Paget simply wished to put aside; since then, there had been no woman in his life so permanent as to see Andrea’s presence in it, or express tastes of her own. The bed had become an artifact.

Now the memory of Andrea was clear and sharp.

Paget stood there in the doorway, staring at the bed until he understood his thoughts.

It was the tape: Mary’s voice, telling him that Carlo was not his son, had taken him back to the moment in time when he had decided that the boy needed him, no matter what. Now, pausing in the doorway, he felt himself standing on that threshold again. Time changed for him: Mary Carelli was seven years in the past; Andrea Lo Bianco was his wife again; some other life, now unlived and irretrievable, was still possible for him. Perhaps when Andrea’s career was over, and they could look at things anew, they might decide to have a child. There were still times between them that seemed so good.

The moment passed.

He had no idea where Andrea was now; he had let her vanish from his life without a trace. It made him feel shallow and unreal. He had loved her enough to envision a life with her; now she could die without his knowing. He saw her in his mind, a dancer who carried herself so much like Mary, the mother of the son he had not then known.

Except that it was eight years later; Andrea was gone, and Carlo – the boy he now knew well – was not his son at all.

He walked to his dresser, opening the top drawer.

The tapes were inside. It was where he had hidden them, minutes before Carlo had found him downstairs, drinking alone in the darkened library. He still did not know what to do with them.

About this he could not talk to Terri. He could not tell her what he feared: that if the tapes were traced to her, and Paget had destroyed them, Terri would share his culpability. Only by putting Terri at risk could he ensure that Carlo would never hear the tape.

He no longer controlled his life, Paget thought, or even how he felt about it.

He slowly shut the drawer.

Where would he go? he had asked Teresa Peralta.

Paget found himself staring at his calendar. He had always kept it on top of his dresser, to remind him of his schedule, and Carlo’s. But he had never flipped it to February; gazing at January, he saw that it was checkered with Carlo’s basketball games. Paget had recorded them in December, when the schedule first came out, to remind himself. Now January read like a trail of broken promises; Paget had not seen a game since Carlo’s mother shot Ransom.

How would Caroline Masters rule? he wondered.

Tomorrow, at two o’clock, Masters would announce her decision. He did not try to guess what she would say; he knew only that as of today, he had made his final argument as Mary Carelli’s lawyer.

Today, February 20th. The first morning he had awakened knowing the truth about himself and Carlo.

He flipped the calendar to February.

February 20th was Carlo’s final game.

Had Johnny taken him there? he wondered.

It did not seem likely; how could the boy make himself play basketball? And yet, this morning, he himself had argued Mary’s innocence. Every age has its own terrors; often we respond as we are taught. If Paget had made himself go to court, then Carlo, seeing this, might force himself to play. Or perhaps, long ago, the boy had started to respond like Paget. For better or for worse.

Where was he going?

To a basketball game. He had nothing else to do.

Arriving at the game, Paget felt disoriented.

The gym, the red banners with
ACADEMY PREP
lettered in white, the changing tide of the game itself, were like shadows at the periphery of his mind, the crowd noise like distant signals on a crystal set. But the usual parents were scattered in the bleachers, their faces familiar from the games before Mark Ransom died. Sitting alone, Johnny Moore looked up in amiable surprise.

‘Taking the afternoon off?’

‘At least.’ Paget sat down. ‘Do me a favor, Johnny. If you’re planning to kill someone, wait a week or so. And don’t murder anyone I know personally.’

Moore seemed to know better than to smile. They watched the game in silence.

Amid the red uniforms, Paget saw Carlo.

His face was damp with sweat. He ran down the court to set up for defense, sweeping the thick black hair back from his forehead, glancing at the melee of red and blue uniforms and then up at the time clock. He did not see Paget.

Paget realized that he had been quiet for some moments. Turning to Moore, he asked, ‘How has he played this year?’

‘Well, as I said.’ Moore kept watching the game. ‘Carlo’s more improved than anyone – he plays hard all the time, really responds to pressure. He’s the one on the team who’s got real character.’

Paget hesitated. ‘He hasn’t said much about it. I figured he wasn’t doing well.’

Moore shook his head. ‘He’s turned into the player other kids respect. Watching, you’d never know what was happening to his mother – he wouldn’t let it show. He just kept getting better.’

‘I wonder if that’s good.’

‘How would you have him be? Really, Chris, you’d have liked watching him. He loves to play under pressure.’

Paget was quiet again. Then, nodding toward the blue uniforms at the other end of the court, he asked, ‘Who are the bad guys?’

‘Woodland Prep.’ Moore focused his attention on the team in blue. ‘See the black kid?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘That’s Tony Farrow. He plays a game most of these kids don’t even understand.’ Moore smiled. ‘It’s a shame you missed the
last
Woodland game.’

Paget turned to him. ‘I’m not sure I heard about that.’

‘Carlo won the game off Farrow.’ Moore’s voice warmed. ‘Snatched an offensive rebound out of Farrow’s hands, got him to buy a fake, slid past him under the basket, and flipped the ball in over his head as the buzzer sounded. It was one for the highlight film.’

Where have I been? Paget wondered. Where have
we
been? He lapsed back into silence.

Most of the first half of the game came to Paget as a collage of images – long periods of introspection, interspersed with sudden moments when Carlo, bursting into action, left an imprint on Paget’s retina and brain. The score was not important; Paget was not part of the crowd. It was Carlo the person, not Carlo the player, that registered with Paget. The boy alone kept him from thinking of the past, or Mary Carelli, or what Caroline Masters would decide.

Carlo played harder than anyone.

The game transformed him. He seemed eager to be lost in it, to find himself again in the ebb and flow of bodies; the sudden shifts of emotion; the strategy and errors and spontaneity. His body still did different things at different times and his shot was not yet consistent. But the still boy with the quick tongue and lazy grin, the one who could seem to occupy an entire couch with no hint that he would ever move, played with an intensity that Paget had not seen. He stole the ball; blocked shots; turned rebounds into baskets; shouted encouragement or advice. He and the black kid, Farrow, seemed to have something going; when Farrow shot an elbow to his ribs, fighting for a rebound, Carlo simply shook it off. But a few plays later, in a melee beneath the basket, Farrow doubled in pain; Carlo emerged from the crush with the ball and a twitch at one side of his mouth which, just for an instant, transformed his stoic face. And then he was off down the court, the first awkward step accelerating into a fast break in which Carlo, passing, sped suddenly past the last defender so that when the ball came back to him he was under the basket alone. He seemed so much faster; when he put the ball in, there was no one within ten feet. The stands erupted.

By what alchemy, Paget wondered, had Carlo made himself this good?

The moments came quicker: Carlo knocking the ball from Farrow’s grasp, then launching it down the court into a teammate’s hands. Carlo blocking a jump shot so hard that he spiked it to the floor. Carlo sinking a shot of his own, nothing but net. Only Farrow looked better.

Part of Paget could not believe that Carlo had come so far. His mind was still suspended between now and eight years prior; fresh as yesterday was the small dark-haired boy who was afraid to go outside, who snatched vainly at the rubber ball the first time Paget threw it. But between then and now were a thousand baskets, shot at the hoop Paget had put up in the backyard, first seven feet high, then eight, and finally the full ten. The sound of Carlo’s basketball banging on cement still echoed in Paget’s ears.

Carlo drove suddenly to the hoop, drawing a foul as the buzzer sounded to end the third quarter.

For the first time, Paget looked at the scoreboard.

Woodland led by a point.

Carlo walked to the foul line. On the opposite side of the gym, the Woodland kids jeered and stomped their feet to rattle him. A red-haired kid with big ears half rose from the Woodland bench and yelled, ‘
Choke
.’

It made Paget angry. For a moment, he thought of a frightened young boy on a Boston playground, telling Paget that other kids would not play ball with him because he was no good. But Carlo did not seem to hear.

He looked calmly at the basket, the ball in the air. It arced into the basket, barely hitting metal.

Carlo’s second shot hit only net. He watched it without expression. Then he turned to the red-haired kid who had jeered him, and gave him the crooked grin that Paget had known for years. But now it was the grin of a competitor, triumphant and without malice. Carlo trotted toward the bench, smiling to himself. Academy led by one.

The boy who was Paget’s son, but not his son, was becoming a young man. Paget was no longer sure he knew him.

In the fourth quarter, Carlo felt Tony Farrow taking over.

The game was Carlo’s world now. All that he cared about was the next eight minutes. The thought of winning consumed him with a fierce purity.

But Farrow raised his game to where no one else could reach it.

He was six feet two, incredibly quick, completely without nerves, and headed, Carlo was certain, straight for the NBA as soon as he got his driver’s license. And he was everywhere. A fall-away jump shot; a drive; a three-point shot; even a tip-in. Mike Stanley, who was guarding Farrow, could do nothing with him. Carlo and Academy kept close with fast breaks, but suddenly Woodland was up by three.

There was one minute left.

Turning to the bench, Carlo saw Coach Mack call a timeout. Carlo glanced up at the clock; fifty-five seconds.

He did not look toward the stands. He knew that his father was not there; he did not want to distract himself by wishing otherwise.

On the way to the bench, Carlo turned to Mike. ‘Tired?’

Mike shook his head. ‘It’s just that this guy’s Jesus Christ.’

‘Yeah,’ Carlo said, ‘I saw the movie. Mind if I try guarding him?’

Mike hesitated, and then looked relieved. ‘It’s fine with me. Just don’t tell coach that.’

They reached the sideline. Carlo grabbed a towel off the bench and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘What is it?’ Coach Mack demanded.

Carlo gave him a level glance. ‘Let me take Farrow. Mike’s knee’s acting up.’