The Laws of our Fathers (19 page)

    'Okay,' says Hobie, 'okay, but here's my point.' With the concession he wanted, he's striding about, full of excitement. 'You were willing to make this deal with Hardcore, even though your investigation had given you no reason at all to think Nile Eddgar was involved in this crime.'

    'I wouldn't say that,' answers Montague coolly.

    Hobie freezes with his back to the witness. Struggling toward his predetermined point of arrival, it takes him a moment to absorb what Montague has said.

    'You suspected Nile Eddgar? By September 11 you were looking at him?'

    'What I thought? Yeah, I'd say I was.' Hobie's cross, the big windup he had planned - showing that nothing until Hardcore's appearance implicated Nile - has been derailed. I'd caught his drift, which was that the whole investigation was shaped to fit Hardcore's information. He was suggesting that the prosecutors and cops, hungry for the excitement of a heater case, had been less skeptical than they should have about what Hardcore was saying.

    'You suspected Nile Eddgar,' Hobie repeats. 'Why? Because he'd talked to a community service officer when he came to tell him his mother was dead? You weren't there for that, were you?'

    'I heard about it.'

    'And that's why you suspected him?'

    'In part.' Montague is even now and confident. He is sitting a little straighter in his chair, while Hobie is blundering. He has lost all form, propounding two or three questions at once, quarreling with Montague and forgetting to lead him. Hobie's like a terrier hanging on to a trouser cuff and getting kicked each time.

    'And what was the other part?' asks Hobie. 'You didn't hear anything from Lovinia Campbell, right? Or on the canvass?' 'We'd talked to his father.' 'His father! The senator?' 'That's right.'

    'So it was what his
father
told you that made Nile a suspect?' 'Basically,' says Montague. 'Yes.'

    And just that quickly something happens in the courtroom. It's like that extraordinary instant in the theater when an actor comes through the curtain to take her bow, and the character she has been for hours suddenly has been shed like some second skin. Hobie, too, is someone else. He lifts his face to a refractory angle, and briefly allows a cryptic, constricted smile across his lips, like a lizard darting through the sun. He's apparently gotten just the answer he wanted, and scared me badly in the process, because I was taken in like Montague, like everybody else. Hobie ponders the witness one more moment, then looks straight to me and says serenely, 'Nothing more.'

    

    

    Once each month, as a matter of solemn commitment, I have lunch or dinner with my friend Gwendolyn Ries, without our kids. She is a large cheerful woman, emphatic by nature, one of those people who proudly regards herself as an element of the life force. She wears too much perfume, too much makeup, too much jewelry; there's a reddish wash in her hair too bright to call 'henna.' She appears today in gaucho pants and a woolen vest of South American weave, bedecked with matte-gold buttons in the shape of lizards.

    Since the birth of her son, Avi, eight years ago, Gwen, a radiologist, has worked four days a week. Today, she has taken the morning to herself for shopping, long her favorite pastime, and dashes from the taxi into the restaurant, arms abounding with bags full of gold and silver boxes. We have met at Gil's, a renowned spot, and surely the best meal near the courthouse. Years ago, this place was known as Gil's Men's Bar, and it retains an Old World atmosphere, with its splendid century-old interior. The vast room is a gorgeous wooden box, the wainscoting, the floors, the tables, the paneled ceiling, all hewn of quarter-sawn oak, heavily grained and varnished, accented by various polished brass fittings and great cast-iron chandeliers suspended on heavy chains from the high ceiling. One of the only real perks of judicial life is that
1
can always get seated here. As soon as Gwen arrives, she and I are swept past the long line of lawyers and other courthouse regulars crowded behind a red velvet rope to one of the many square tables for two aligned in dual rows at the center of the restaurant. For the sake of privacy, the abutting tables are separated by handsome partitions of yellowish wood, into which some clever craftsman long ago burned graceful images of German mountain scenes. The brusque waiters, in black cutaway coats, and the busy patrons speak at volume. With its solid surfaces, Gil's is a cascade of noise.

    Gwen opens every box. I admire each item, even though we both know I wouldn't wear most of the exotic clothing if it were given to me free. We are long accustomed to our differences, which I alternately cherish or, in some moods, tolerate with the self-conscious discipline of one who at the age of forty-seven still feels she is learning how to be a friend. I've never had a full complement of close relationships. My mother, always battling landlords and principals, jumped from apartment to apartment, enrolling me in a different grade school every fall; and as a grown-up, I've taken my own bumpy twisting path, forever leaving folks behind as I've gone through my changes. Naturally, there are colleagues and acquaintances. I think I'm regarded as amiable, candid, maybe even charming. I'm welcome in lots of places. Judicial power, like a beacon, draws invitations to zillions of functions, bar affairs, political dinners, law-school dos. And although I was an only child, I have a semblance of family life, through my cousin Eddie, the oldest son of my Aunt Hen and Uncle Moosh, who has always treated me as an honorary sib. I talk to him or his wife, Gretchen, every week, and Nikki and I are with them and their five kids for every holiday.

    But, admittedly, it's been hard for me to connect. For this reason, I have found the alliances of motherhood a sweet relief. Is it only my imagination, or are women better to each other at this point in life? It seems as if we all learned some crucial secret in the delivery room about nurturance and kindness. My neighbor Marta Stern, Sandy's daughter and a lawyer herself, who is now at home with two young daughters, has become a special friend. There are a couple of others.

    But I go back in time only with Gwen, whom I have known since high school. She was upbeat, alert, one of those loud, effusive, laughing girls I so admired, someone who seemed to have a promising relationship with every person at East Kewahnee High. I felt greatly honored by her friendship, and for years contrived not to notice that I was never invited to her home. Eventually, through other kids who were her neighbors, I learned that her mother was in the final stages of M S. There were a few occasions, after we started to drive, when I'd borrowed my uncle's Valiant and dropped Gwen off, that I glimpsed Mrs Ries through the window. She was enfeebled by disease, with stricken hands and dirty matted hair and a harrowed look as she sat in her chair, a blanket folded precisely over her knees. The contrast with Gwendolyn was extraordinary. And I can remember taking note of Gwen's slow stride across the lawn as she approached her home, a girl inclined to run on most occasions. I could see her posture take on the weight of knowing that at the center of her world lay trouble no one else could share and which she could not escape. And I remember seeing exactly what we had in common, since during those years I hoped, always - secretly and eternally - no one would know I was the daughter of Zora Klonsky, gadfly and loudmouth, a person whom only I understood, a woman notorious in the early sixties in the Tri-Cities for her conduct at a city council meeting where she had punched a right-wing city councilman opposed to water fluoridation.

    'Shit,' says Gwen now, as we near the end of our meal. From beneath the brightly striped flap of her vest, she grabs her beeper off her belt and makes a face at the readout. The hospital. She disappears to find a phone. We have spent most of lunch, as always, gabbing about our kids. We're the two oldest moms in U. Lab Lower School and both on our own. Nikki is a kindergartner; Avi's in second grade. I worry that Mrs Loughery, a benign soul who talks to grown-ups in the same braindead singsong in which she speaks to the children, is not challenging enough for Nikki. She was born just on the wrong side of the deadline and seems a little ahead of herself, able to read simple sentences, to add sums in her head. Gwen told me to ease up, Nikki and Virginia Loughery both are doing well, advice I'm somberly pondering when I'm drawn to voices on the other side of the panel at my right: two men who, I realize quite suddenly, are talking about my case. One just said distinctly, 'Molto.'

    'Why's it wrong?' the first asks.

    'It's wrong. I'm telling you it's wrong. This bird, around the courthouse they call him Mold-o. I'm not kidding. Talk about a guy who walked through the metal detector too often.'

    'He's doing all right,' the first man says. 'He did all right yesterday.' The voices are familiar. Lawyers, I guess. It has to be. I think the first one, who I've heard often, tried a case before me. A good guy. Very good. A flush of positive feeling is the sole retrieval when I send the summons to memory.

    'Eh,' says the second one. 'Room temperature IQ. Molto -Jesus, he was nearly disbarred back in the eighties. Were you ever around here when Nico Delia Guardia was the PA? Molto was sitting at the right hand of God then. I think he used to write Nico's papers in high school. So when Nico wins, Tommy gets to be Queen for a Day. And the two of them fucked up some murder case to a fare-thee-well. God, I can't even remember what it was.' I hear knuckles rapping on the table. 'Sabich,' the man says.

    'Who?'

    'Too hard to explain. But there was this implication they'd doctored the evidence. So, you know, the baying hounds of the press ran Nico out of office. With help. Plenty of help. He'd gotten crosswise of the Mayor in the meantime. And Molto they sent out for hanging with BAD. Bar Admissions and Discipline. And it's a typical BAD investigation. Four months, six months, eight months, ten months. Two years. Nothing happens. So he's still here. Still a deputy P A. Poor mutt. What else is the son of a bitch gonna do for a living? His name is shit on the street. All he can do is keep cashing that green check. That's Molto. Now you tell me. Is this the guy you send to court to win one for the Gipper? I think not. He's sleepwalking up there. He's a beaten dog. I checked my file. He hasn't tried a case in three years. He's just a bitter little man waiting to collect a county pension.'

    'So what are you saying?'

    'I'm saying it's wired. Didn't you hear that cop today? The PA and his cronies want to see this thing go in the dumper. They sent this poor hump Molto up there cause he'd get lost looking for the men's room.'

    'Jesus, Dubinsky,' the first man says. Stew Dubinsky! The

    
Tribune
courthouse reporter, the man to whom the prosecution leaked yesterday's story about Eddgar being the murder target. I feel an immediate impulse to leave. I shouldn't listen to discussions of this case, let alone from someone who could turn my eavesdropping into a
cause celebre.
But I see no unoccupied tables nearby and there's still half a piece of sole on Gwendolyn's plate. Besides, she'd kill me if I left all her new treasures unattended. Instead, I look straight forward with an impassive expression, but the voices, raised in the raucous lunchtime atmosphere, remain disturbingly clear on my side of the panel.

    'Jesus,' the first man repeats.' "Wired." Doesn't anybody ever tell you you're paranoid?'

    'All the time,' Stew answers. 'That's how come I know they're part of the plot.'

    'Christ. Go watch
JFK
again.' Whoever this is has Stewart's number. He's always snooping around the courthouse and implying in his stories that the true facts have been concealed in an obscure conspiracy of silence. 'How's your salad?' Stew's friend asks.

    'Shit,' Dubinsky says. 'This isn't food. Why'd I let you order for me? Spinach and spring water. I feel like I'm a fucking elf.'

    'You don't look like an elf, so just keep chewing.' Stew has pretty much lost the battle. His belly has the dimensions of a late-term pregnancy, and his face is swaddled in chin. This has to be an old pal to be freely giving Stew the business about his physique. 'So what'd you think today?' this man asks. 'How'd you like that business at the end about Eddgar?'

    'Six point zero for Artistic Impression. Zero point zero on substance.'

    'How's that?'

    'You don't watch these alley cats day in and day out like I do. It's standard defense melodrama. Letting rabbits loose in the courtroom. Eddgar's the big name so Hobie figures he'll raise the most dust that way. But it's a smoke screen. Take it from me. I know what I'm talking about on this one.'

    On reflection, my assessment has not been much different. The craft was impressive, but it's hardly a shock that the target of the murder scheme had things to say that drew suspicion to Nile. The other man maintains his doubts. Hobie, he says, seemed to have a point.

    'Listen, why ask me what he was doing?' says Stew. 'Talk to Hobie.'

    'I keep telling you, he won't say anything to me about this case. Not word one. I came two thousand miles and I'm sitting in the Hotel Gresham at night playing computer games.'

    It's Seth! With Dubinsky? How interesting. In the midst of my spying, I hear within a discordant note, a fugitive thought calling for later reflection.

    'You know,' Dubinsky says, 'you call me suspicious -'

    'I called you "paranoid." '

    ' "Paranoid," fine. But look at you. You think Eddgar's Darth Vadar's misplaced twin. His constituents admire the guy.'

    'Shit,' answers Seth, 'talk about the American electorate. I think about Eddgar in the State Senate and I can't believe we're not on
Twilight Zone.'

    Dubinsky recounts Eddgar's emergence in local politics more than a dozen years ago. Eddgar had become a green. He forged a coalition of anti-capitalists, ecologists, and animal-rights supporters. When a large cosmetics company made a grant to one of the labs at the university, Eddgar led demonstrations.