The Hanging Judge (13 page)

“Oh, give me strength!” Gomez-Larsen exploded. “You
know
he’s guilty!” The low orange sunlight was making the air in the small office too warm. She rose and turned her back on Redpath to drop the blinds. The result when she faced him again with the sun blocked out was to return her clothing and body to full Technicolor. Her bright coral blouse, her animated face, and her long, black hair jumped into the foreground like a billboard. She stretched out her arms and looked up at the ceiling.

“That is such
crap
!” she exclaimed. Then more softly, almost to herself, as she turned to sit down again: “
Such
crap. You know he’s guilty, and you’re pretending! This is a waste of my time.”

“Well, it’s my worst nightmare.” Redpath ran his hands through his hair gloomily. “If I have an innocent client. It’s impossible to …”

“Oh, pass me a hankie!” Gomez-Larsen had picked up her pencil again and was tapping it furiously. She leaned toward Redpath; her intensity seemed to increase the size of her eyes and mouth.

“Is that what he’s told you? And you supposedly believe him? I don’t know who’s playing games now, you or him. I took a chance; I made the offer. I didn’t make you beg. I didn’t even make you bring it up. But your guy killed two people, okay? And now he wants to play around here, or maybe you do. If you want to run the string out, fine, but don’t expect me to hold back when we get to the penalty phase. To be honest, I’m not all that hot to send him off to his doctor’s appointment in Indiana—I’ve got reasons of my own I don’t need to get into, plus I doubt my children would ever speak to me again—but this is my job, Bill. This is my job, and if you and Hudson force me to do it, well, then I’ll be like the sneaker ad. I’ll just do it.”

There was another long silence, with only the sound of the smoke eater and Gomez-Larsen’s breathing.

“But just remember, Bill, when the time comes.” She looked at him steadily. “It didn’t have to be this way. I offered. You passed.”

“If he were guilty, Lydia, don’t you think I
would
plead him? That’s my …”

“I don’t know if I would plead, if I were him. Frankly? I bet he feels bad about Ginger, but he tells himself that was just bad luck—his, not hers. From his point of view, even if he gets convicted, he probably thinks it’s less than fifty-fifty that a western Massachusetts jury will give him the death penalty. So it’s life in prison anyway. And if he’s got a ten percent chance of beating the charges completely—maybe twenty percent with a really good lawyer like you—why plead and tear up his lottery ticket? He’s hoping to walk. Kill two people in cold blood and live to brag about it. Great guy. That’s his plan.”

“Please, no compliments,” Redpath said in his gravelly voice, looking more disconsolate than ever. “This is hard enough.”

“So why are we talking?” Gomez-Larsen tossed the pencil on her desk and leaned back. “You want me to recommend probation? This was a long way for you to come to dump a load of confetti on me, Bill.” She looked at her watch, which hung from her wrist on a delicate gold bracelet. “I had a meeting ten minutes ago. We better wrap up.”

Redpath ignored the last comment and spoke deliberately. “The best I could do, given the situation, is to try to convince him to plead to three hundred and sixty months, or even a longer sentence if it held out any possibility that he might be released eventually, some day before he dies. I honestly don’t know if he would take it, but that’s what I was thinking. I’d like him to have some hope, that’s all.”

“No chance, and no way,” Gomez-Larsen said. She straightened up and ran her fingers back through her hair without looking at him. “Now we both know where we are. Call me if you want to talk seriously.”

A few minutes later, Redpath was descending the elevator. It was okay, he told himself; he’d had to try it, and now he knew a little more about the person he’d be facing. Anyway, he wasn’t sure Moon Hudson would ever plead to anything. The poor bastard really might be innocent. Horrible.

Meanwhile, upstairs in her office, Gomez-Larsen was reading an email from Washington with explicit instructions: no deal for Hudson under any circumstances. The prosecution was part of the attorney general’s initiative to bring the death penalty to states without their own capital punishment laws. It was a definite trial.

15

T
he man’s voice was deliberately casual, but persistent.

“So, you kill that white bitch, or what?”

Four black men sat at the end of a long Formica table in the nearly deserted C-pod dining hall. Powerful fluorescent lights blazed off the linoleum floor and cream-colored cinder-block walls, creating an atmosphere of unnatural brightness and sterility. The smell of overcooked broccoli hung in the damp air. In the corner, a fat white man wearing a do-rag was collecting trays on a pushcart. Occasional shouts and clangs from the unseen kitchen staff reverberated in the distance.

“You talking to me?”

“You know I’m talking to you, nigger. And I’m asking you whether you killed that white bitch like everybody says.” The questioner, an undersize man with reddish black hair, folded his arms, changing to a tone of faint mockery. “Or, you going to tell me and my friends here you’re just another sad-ass, innocent black boy?”

Moon Hudson set down his plastic knife and fork and rested his fingers on the edge of the table. He pulled his legs up underneath him and let his eyes drift briefly from the wiry little interrogator to the two men seated to his right. One was six seven at least, with a close-cropped gray-and-white beard and glasses. His name was Deshawn Santana, but he was known in the jail as Satan. The other was shorter, but broader across the shoulders with heavy upper arms; he clearly spent a lot of time in the weight room. Moon hadn’t been around long enough to learn what he was called.

Both these strangers were finishing their meals, eating slowly and keeping their eyes on their trays. The bigger one wiped his mouth on a paper napkin and looked from Moon to the questioner without changing expression. The broad-shouldered prisoner stabbed a piece of pineapple out of his fruit cup and chewed ruminatively, staring down as though he were deaf.

The room had gotten very quiet. Moon slid his chair back a few inches and glanced up into the reflection in the windows facing him. No one coming up from behind. No corrections officers around. The white guy pushed his squeaking steel cart off into the shadowy kitchen, whistling “Danny Boy” under his breath.

Moon finished his mouthful of boiled chicken and swallowed.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want me to say, peckerbutt? That way you’ll be sure to like my answer.”

The small man leaned forward, putting his face so close Moon could see a strand of spit between his lips.

“Listen up,” he began, “I asked you a civil question, and I’d …”

But as the man spoke, Moon leaned back and kicked out hard with his foot under the table against the front of his questioner’s chair, so that it shot backward and dumped the man over with a clatter onto the floor. Before he could scramble up, Moon leaped behind his own chair, ready for the other two men.

Neither one moved. As the little man crouched to come at Moon, the bearded prisoner said in an authoritative voice, without looking up from his tray: “Squash it, Pinball. This ain’t the time, nor the place, for that.”

Pinball, still on his hands and knees, glared at the big man indignantly.

“Goddammit, Satan, you told me to ask him, and I asked him. You said you wanted to know.”

“Yeah, and now I know. I know enough.” Satan pushed his tray away and gestured at Moon. “Sit down, man.”

“Motherfucker punking me down like that.” Pinball grumbled, picking up his chair up. Moon noticed that the broad shoulders of the third man were jiggling; short spurts of high-pitched laughter were hissing out of him.

He spoke in spasms. “Man, they got your name right. I haven’t,” he paused and his shoulders shook. “I haven’t seen anybody move so fast since Dingo sat on the hotplate.” He put down his fork and wiped a napkin over his face. “Satan and me’re going to take you to the North Carolina State Fair. Sign you up for human cannonball.”

“Sit down, man,” Satan said again, looking up at Moon and pointing at his chair.

But Moon still hesitated, hands at his sides, ready.

The prisoner with the big arms stopped laughing and said to Moon, in a different tone. “Gentleman asked you to sit down, friend. Didn’t you hear?”

A tense few seconds ticked by; a dishwasher somewhere kicked on. Finally, Moon pulled his chair back, placing it a long step away from the table, reversed it and sat straddling the seat, setting his elbows on the back and letting his wrists hang loosely. Pinball started to rejoin the group, but Satan waved him away.

“ ’Bout time for volleyball, isn’t it?”

Pinball scowled but turned without saying a word, tossing a dark glance over his shoulder at Moon as he disappeared down the hallway leading to the rec yard. The fat white man drifted back in, as though he’d been waiting for the coast to clear.

“Mind if I bus them dishes, Rashid?”

“Go ahead,” the broad-shouldered man said, pushing the trays down to the end of the table. “Do your job.”

The white prisoner piled the dishes onto one tray and moved off.

Moon’s chest rose and fell quickly.

“I’m not looking for any trouble.” He held his palms up to the two men, fingers splayed, and spoke in a low voice. “But that’s three times today some fool tried to tap me. Once more, and we’ll have problems. I got nothing to lose here.”

“Hold up,” Satan said. “First things first.” He reached into his pocket and took out two packs of Pall Malls, shoved them across to Moon.

Moon started to push them back. “Never use those things, man.”

“Hey, I know you don’t, dammit.” His enormous hand slapped down on Moon’s, and he looked at him steadily. “But when we get done here, you take these—you hear me?—and you give them to Pinball. He’s not big, but you don’t want that boy over your shoulder, I can tell you that. You make peace.”

“You’re a jumpy, jumpy man, ” Rashid added. “Take them.”

After a pause, Moon nodded. “I’m still learning.” He put the cigarettes into the pocket of his jumpsuit.

“Don’t make enemies, that’s your first rule,” Rashid said. He interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Make friends.”

Satan was studying Moon. The big man’s weathered face, round wire rims, and beard gave him the look of a scholar. He slowly scratched the stubble under his chin.

“Friend of ours asked around,” Satan said slowly. “Told us that woman caught a stray. You weren’t fixing to shoot her at all.”

“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying,” Moon said.

“Right.”

A corner of the rec yard was visible through the steamy windows, just a wedge of cracked asphalt and one end of a tattered net. The ball escaped and came bouncing across the thin grass toward the windows—leaping like a playful, living thing. An inmate trotted over, snatched it up, and tossed it back into a chorus of shouts.

“You ain’t a rat, anyway,” Rashid said. “Not getting any breaks for giving somebody up. That could’ve been a big problem for you.”

“They don’t want to talk to me.” Moon shrugged. “Think they already know everything.”

Outside, there was a hard smack and then a burst of cheers and laughter.

“Be interested some time to know what really happened that morning,” Satan said. He looked at the floor and then up at Moon. “Realize, now, I’m not asking—but I’d be interested to know. Some time. Information is as good as cash money around here.”

Rashid nodded. “Good way to make friends, too.”

Moon turned toward the window and shook his head.

“Shit,” he said, more to himself than to the two men.

For the first time since Pinball spoke to him, he let his arms and shoulders relax. Maybe this was not his time.

“Only three people in this wide world know for sure what happened and what didn’t happen that morning.” He dropped his chin and looked at Satan.

“Maybe three. Dude named Carlos knew, but they say somebody put him down already. Maybe there’s just me and this sad, little shitball Pepe, and nobody’s going to believe him whatever he says. Maybe he’s lying. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he won’t be around too long.”

“We know all about Pepe,” Rashid said. “And we know where he is.”

Moon took his hands off the back of the chair and folded his arms. He ran a tongue over his upper lip. “Supposing I tell you I did it.”

“Okay,” Satan said slowly.

“Half the people around here be thinking I’m stuffing them anyway. Trying to make myself look like some big, bad Bandera hit man. Other half would be getting on the phone, trying to cut a deal. Testify, put me away, and get their asses out of here.”

“It’s possible,” Rashid said. “That’s not us, but it surely happens.”

“Or, suppose I tell you I didn’t do it?”

“Okay,” Satan repeated.

“Then y’all be thinking I am definitely a stuff man, which is what I think right now every time I hear some brother wearing people’s ears off about how he’s innocent. Out loud, I say, ‘Right on, brother. Amen!’ but inside I’m thinking,
Uh-huh, right.
”

“We’re all innocent in here,” Satan said. He was looking down, mopping up the remains of his chicken gravy with a wedge of toast.

Moon continued, “The way I see it, it doesn’t matter what I say, or even what really happened anymore. Me doing it or somebody else doing it is not going to bring that girl back, and it won’t get me out of here. Truth is, I could have done it. I might have done it. I did other things just as bad.”

“That’s what counts,” Rashid said. “So the preacher says.”

“I’m here because of me. I set my own self up from jump. Right now, I got nothing else to say to anybody.”

The ventilation unit in the ceiling burst into operation with a buzzing rattle and a gush of warm air, as though underlining Moon’s defiance.

“You got a wife, we hear,” Satan said. “And a little baby girl.”

“Light in the darkness, friend,” Rashid said.