The Good Boy (45 page)

In the bathroom mirror over a pair of sinks he discovers he wouldn’t fit his own description: his hair hangs in limp strings, there is some kind of rash on his chin, and his face is so filthy he appears naturally dark-skinned. He probably could have passed for the Hispanic man’s son, though he’s glad he didn’t try.

He keeps one hand pressed to the faucet’s push handle while he dispenses liquid soap, goopy and pink and smelling like disinfectant. When his hands are clean he washes his face and runs wet fingers through his hair, behind his neck, around his shirt collar. The water is cold, and it feels nice.

It isn’t until he’s good and soaked that he realizes there are no paper towels—just two hand dryers—and it turns out neither of them is worth the noise it makes. He holds his knees and shakes out his hair, like Butchie would, water everywhere.

When he’s through he checks the mirror, and now he looks filthy and wet.

He’s pressing his hair to his head when two men in suits come into the bathroom and he tries to play it cool, like there’s another reason everything’s all wet.

“It’s like that fucking Mamet play,” says one, turning to a urinal. “We were just
speaking
about selling senate seats. As an idea. And Jesse Junior—boy, he’s perfectly cast.”

The other one smiles at himself in the water-pocked mirror and picks something out of his teeth. He says, “Because, because you know it’s a
crime.
” He never looks at Joel.

Joel wipes his hands on his pants and ducks out and he hopes the men are careful on the wet floor, this being the place for lawsuits and all.

On the way to the elevators a Snickers taunts him from a rack of candy at the snack bar. He wonders if things would have turned out differently if he’d bought one back at the Jewel. If that would have changed the course of events just so, made the trip a success or a failure, but not a loss. He can’t stand feeling like things would have worked out—that Butchie would be here—if he’d handled any one thing differently. The Snickers, the storm, the soup.

He crosses the lobby and shares an elevator with a handful of adults who step in and look up. Next to him, a black woman has a huge purse hooked in one arm and a doll-dressed, sticky-faced toddler in the other. As usual, the little girl is the only one who looks at Joel; in fact, she’s the only one who’s made eye contact since he made it through security. Joel smiles at her and gets sunny eyes in return. Nobody else notices. He wonders when his adult bubble will surround him, and he’ll simply stare at the rising floor numbers like everyone else.

At the seventh floor, Joel is the only one who exits. He’s also the only one in the corridor who isn’t a police officer: there are at least twenty of them standing around in groups like there’s been some sort of roll call. Joel turns a hard right for Judge Crawford’s door and he hopes the cops, who are supposed to notice when someone’s out of place, don’t start to wonder where he belongs.

He pushes open the heavy doors and, like yesterday, the courtroom is empty. He walks the center aisle toward the judge’s bench and takes a seat in the second row from the front—the seats are reserved for witnesses—and though the judge doesn’t know it yet, Joel is one.

He slides down to the middle of the bench. Daylight glows white in the high windows and ceiling fans turn slowly enough to count the blades, which he does, until the clock ticks a minute past nine. He waits, and another minute goes by, and another. No one comes in.

The plan is to see the judge, and this is where he planned to see her, and so he’s not going anywhere. He opens his book to where he left off and reads about White Fang’s fight with the bulldog Cherokee.

The fight is long and White Fang is losing, the bulldog’s jaws locking on to his neck, hanging there, suffocating him. Patiently, heartlessly. And the men cheer, their dollars against the wolf-dog.

Joel pictures Beauty Smith as Agapito, standing on the edge of the ring. Before, he had imagined the character was Zack Fowler, the dead-eyed aggressor. But Agapito is the one who took Butchie—and on a trick, just like Beauty did with White Fang. And Agapito is the one who pretended to be friendly. Zack Fowler never ever did that.

As White Fang struggles, Beauty enters the ring and starts to kick him, and Joel’s picturing Butchie there, left to fight alone. Left to die.

Then a camp newcomer named Whedon Scott stops the fight. He rescues White Fang and looks around at the other men and cries, “You cowards! You beasts!” And in that role—the hero’s—where Joel always pictures the Hollywood actor who played Iron Man, Joel sees his dad instead.

“Miss Garza,” someone says, and Joel snaps the book shut; so engrossed, he didn’t even notice the man with the untied pinstriped tie who came in and set up shop, his briefcase open and unpacked, papers all over the defense table. He’s addressing the bailiff, a long-legged woman wearing a stiff, short-sleeve uniform, who’s come in from the door in the front corner of the room—the one to the judge’s chambers.

“Counselor,” the bailiff replies; she doesn’t seem the least bit interested. She climbs risers to the judge’s bench—a silly thing to call a big chair, if you ask Joel, who should know, since he’s sitting on a bench. Loose black curls fall over her shoulders as she leans over, flips a switch, and brings the audio system to life, the speakers hitched up along the walls burping their hellos.

“When’s Crawford due?” the attorney asks, taking up the ends of his tie.

Miss Garza steps down to the witness stand—another funny name, since it’s also a chair—to check the microphone. “
Judge
Crawford,” she says, but her voice doesn’t go through. She pulls the mic from its stand, which is actually a stand, and follows its cord underneath. Whatever she does down there fixes the problem because she tells the whole room,
“Judge Crawford is impaneling the grand jury this morning. She isn’t expected in court until ten thirty.”

The attorney says, “I need five minutes.”

Miss Garza reappears and says something so far under her breath that the microphone picks up only a clip: “
like I need a pain in my
—”

“What did you say?”

She puts the mic back. “I said
ask.
I will
ask
her as soon as she returns to her chambers, Mr. Borstein.”

He straightens the knot of his tie. “Thank you.”

She leans into the mic.
“Anything for you, counselor.”
The way she smiles after that makes Mr. Borstein mutter and shake his head.

Miss Garza comes down from the stand to walk the gallery perimeter, checking under and along each row of benches. Joel gets nervous and opens his book, pretending to read while he mentally rehearses asking for his own five minutes.

When Miss Garza gets around to him, she smiles when she asks, “You okay here?”

And Joel says, “Yes,” even though it isn’t what he meant to say at all.

Then she passes by Mr. Borstein and says, “I’ll see about that five minutes,” and disappears through the chamber door.

Mr. Borstein thumbs through a folder full of papers and then goes back through them again, like he missed the most important page. Based on the way his hair sticks up funny, Joel is sure he also missed a look in the mirror this morning. For being early, it sure seems like he’s running late.

Joel imagines he’s stressed; defending a suspect must be a difficult job. He’s got to cross fact over circumstance, match what happened with what was witnessed, loop what was said over what was heard—and then pull it all together and hope the whole story hangs straight. And what if the suspect is guilty? Then Mr. Borstein has to do all of that and lie, too. As he throws the end of his tie over his shoulder, Joel wonders if he’s cinched his client’s story into a tight-knotted lie, and if he’ll be able to keep it from coming undone.

Eight endless minutes later, the judge’s door opens again. Joel sits up straight and presses his hair down some more and hopes Judge Crawford will recognize him.

Except it’s only Miss Garza. “Okay, counselor. You got your five minutes.”

Mr. Borstein packs his briefcase and Miss Garza waits, her foot kicked up like a doorstop as she twists her long curls into a claw clip.

Joel starts to get up and then sits back down again. What should he do? He thought the judge would come. He can’t let Miss Garza disappear again without saying something. He can’t wait here forever.
Miss Garza
—that’s a good way to start.

He gets up. He sits back down. What if Miss Garza doesn’t like being called Miss Garza? She doesn’t seem to like Mr. Borstein. But Joel’s got to say something. Anything. He’s got to get word to the judge.

The third time Joel gets up, he blurts out: “MVM4944” which is anything, all right.

“Excuse me?” Miss Garza puts up a hand for Mr. Borstein to hang on a second.

Joel comes out from the bench and stops just shy of the bar, the line between the public and the court proper. “That’s, ah, that’s a license plate. But what I mean to say is, I need five minutes also. It’s, she, well, I, you see—I was involved in a crime. And Judge Crawford said if I ever needed a fair trial, she would grant it to me.”

Miss Garza glances at Mr. Borstein, whose lips are squished together like he’s silently pleading his case to ignore Joel and get on with it.

“If I can’t come with you,” Joel says, “will you please tell her I’m here? My name is Joel Murphy. This is very important. My best friend is in trouble.”

“Who’s your best friend?”

“He’s, he’s my dog. He was stolen and the man’s name is Agapito and his license plate is MVM4944, like I said—”

“I see,” she says, nodding her head, a polite
yes
like she’s humoring him, while Mr. Borstein’s head goes from
no
to
oh, oh yes.

“You’re that kid,” Borstein says.

“Which kid?” Miss Garza wants to know.

“I’m Joel Murphy. I said.”

“He ran away—”

“Where are you from, Joel?” Miss Garza asks.

“I live at 1967 West Balmoral. But it’s temporary.”

Mr. Borstein says, “That’s all the way up in Andersonville—”

“Bowmanville, actually.”

“Is that in Chicago?” Miss Garza has no idea.

“It’s a long way from here.” Mr. Borstein loosens his tie and attempts a smile.

Miss Garza approaches the other side of the bar. “Are your parents looking for you?”

“Everybody’s looking for him, it’s all over this morning’s news—”

“Judge Crawford knows my dad.”

“You have to know
that
story, that’s been news for—”

“Objection, counselor,” Miss Garza interrupts. “Irrelevant.” She turns to Joel. “You walked here all the way from Bowmanville by yourself to see Judge Crawford because your dog is in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Joel Murphy.” She extends her hand, welcoming him around the bar. “I think you need that five minutes more than the counselor does.”

“Wait just a minute—” Mr. Borstein says.

“You wait,” she says, “five more of them.” She takes Joel in through the judge’s door.

*   *   *

Joel thought the door would lead directly into the judge’s chambers, but they walk a long hall flanked by closed doors before Miss Garza pauses in front of a bank of elevators, pushes the Down button.

When the car arrives, Miss Garza takes a wide stance in front of Joel while another bailiff escorts a chain of three inmates onto the floor. Then they take the car down just one floor, to six, and continue down another long hallway with another bunch of closed doors until she chooses one, knocks lightly, and pushes it open.

Inside, Judge Crawford is on the phone, her back turned and one finger raised, a signal to shush. Miss Garza directs Joel to a chair in front of the judge’s desk and takes position behind him.

The judge looks out the picture window north—over the same streets Joel and Butchie traveled to get here. Though he can’t see her face and her hair is cut short, Joel recognizes her immediately, just by the way she
is
: just like he remembers, her body language speaking far more than she does.

As she listens to the caller, she tilts her head, the nape of her neck showing beneath her collar. She is so pretty—even the back of her.

“I’ll see to that,” she says, and as she turns and puts down the phone she is not smiling when she expects—“Mr. Bor—” but she stops there, seeing Joel.

“What is this?”

“This is Joel Murphy,” Miss Garza says.

The judge’s face is a mixture of warmth and worry as she comes around her desk and kneels in front of Joel and says, “Oh my god, Joel? What in the world are you doing here?”

And Joel sits up in the chair and begins, “What happened was, Butchie and I … we came to find you. We had to.…”

31

Sarah spends the morning cleaning Joel’s room—keeping herself busy—so Pete gets online to take out a loan against his life insurance policy. He lies to Sarah about it; he tells her he’s hacking into McKenna’s social media to see if he can pull names—something Detective Colton has probably already done, and something Pete will certainly tell McHugh to do, for evidence against Carter—but both tasks are necessary, so the sentiment is the same.

He spends a good chunk of an hour setting up an automatic transfer from his insurance company to his savings account, and the other chunk figuring out how to get the money from that bank to the joint account he shares with Sarah. It shouldn’t be so complicated, but he doesn’t want her to know about the loan. He just wants there to be some financial security in place if she needs it—if he goes to jail. Because he should.

He doesn’t think much about the money until he scrolls through to clear the browser history and comes across Disneyland’s Web address. He clicks. On the main page, a young girl smiles at him over her dad’s shoulder as he carries her into the park. Into the happiest place Pete won’t be taking his kids anytime soon, as he’d have to find his son before he could take him anywhere, and he just funneled money he never thought he’d spend into an account for their fucking lunch money.