The Laws of our Fathers (62 page)

    'June?' he finally asks. 'Hardcore didn't know June. What are you thinking? He was trying to get even with me.' Eddgar has taken hold of the front rail of the witness stand. In his confusion, he briefly glances over his shoulder toward me. Hobie now is standing just a few feet before him.

    'Well, certainly you've read the papers, Senator, as the case has gone on. You know both Hardcore and Lovinia testified that when the shooter, this Gorgo, arrived on the scene, Hardcore hit the pavement and acted as if he knew in advance June was going to be shot. Have you read that?'

    'Why would Hardcore want to kill June?' Eddgar responds. 'And Lord knows, Nile had no reason. No one did.' He has done this a number of times, asked his own questions. Under stress, he assumes he's in charge, here as elsewhere. But Hobie does not bother to object. Instead, he offers an answer of sorts.

    'Senator, we don't need the details, but isn't it a fact there are acts, events, occurrences, things you did years ago during the period of your marriage, that you wanted your former wife, June Eddgar, not to disclose?'

    In the courtroom, the only sound at first is an elderly buff, caught short of breath, who dispenses several phlegmy eruptions behind the glass.

    'Oh God,' Eddgar says at last. 'Oh Lord. Sweet baby Jesus,' he says. Fifteen feet from the witness, Hobie is calm and, in this modulated mood, especially imposing.

    'While June Eddgar was alive, Senator, your political career, in fact, even your liberty remained in peril, did they not?'

    'Lord, Hobie, what in hell are you doin? This is horrifying.' As Eddgar has lost track of himself, his accent has become julepy and full. 'This is not a defense. You know what happened here. Who's to believe this? Everyone who knows me, if they know anything - Nile knows, you know, I felt June was the most sacred soul on this planet.'

    'You're a lot safer now, Senator, aren't you, than when she was alive?'

    'After twenty-five years? After twenty-five years could anyone believe I would concern myself about this?'

    'We don't have her here, do we, to tell us what was going on between you two - why she came to town? All we know is you sent her down to Grace Street because you claimed you had an emergency that never actually materialized.'

    'Oh Lord,' says Eddgar again.

    'In that meeting you had with Hardcore before Labor Day, the meeting where you threatened him, did you reach any other agreement with him? Did you agree with him, Senator, that he could keep the $10,000 and you would secure Kan-el's parole if BSD would kill your former wife?'

    There it is. We have all known for a minute what was coming, but even so, with the question, my heart nearly leaps out of my chest. In the press row, one of the reporters squeezes out of the jury box, scrambling over her colleagues' knees so she can go running for the phone. One, then another follow. Annie, who places order above the First Amendment, approaches to shush them even as they hustle by. Seth is leaning on the front rail of the jury box. He is watching with an intensity so complete he could not have even a remote awareness that I, a woman he made love to a few hours ago, am seated in this room. Eddgar has turned about completely to face me. His mouth is parted and it moves once or twice before he speaks.

    'Do I actually have to answer these questions?'

    As near as I can reason, he does. I nod minutely and Eddgar pivots erratically, tossing a hand Hobie's way.

    'This is Perry Mason,' he says, 'this is absurd. Why,' he says, 'why, this is senseless. This is drug-induced, Hobie. You know the truth here. If I had done such a thing, can you explain for a moment why Hardcore would not have been sitting on this witness stand pointing his finger at me?'

    'What sense would that make, Senator, if the goal was to secure Kan-el's release? Core couldn't have made a better deal, could he, than the one he got for blaming Nile? One Eddgar is just as tasty as another to a hungry prosecutor. And this way, Senator, they can hold your feet to the fire, make sure you deliver on your promise about Kan-el. I bet he's out six months from now.'

    'And I would sacrifice my son? Is that your theory? You know that isn't true. My God. This is evil, Hobie, what you're doing. This is the very face of evil!' His outcry resounds in the silent courtroom. Beside himself, Eddgar grabs hold of the lapels of his coat, he looks all around the witness stand, as if something that might help him is concealed there. Then he points at Hobie. ‘I understand this,' he says. ‘I understand just what you're doing to me.'

    'It's called justice, Eddgar,' Hobie whispers. His eyes never leave the witness as he lumbers back to his seat. Next to him, Nile has laid his face down on the defense table with both hands over his head.

    After court, a fragile foreboding air grips my chambers. Judgment is near. Annie and Marietta both keep their distance. Tomorrow, the state will rest. Hobie, if he's smart, will not offer much evidence for the defense. He'll capitalize on today's events and let the trial move quickly to conclusion.

    I have motions to review on a number of other cases, but in the few minutes before I must go, I find myself stuck on the trial. It was like watching a car wreck today. Something awful. Destructive. Yet it's no longer possible to find Nile guilty. My assessment of the case has reversed so quickly I doubt myself at first. I still feel light-headed from sleeplessness and slightly poisoned, as if my heart is pumping battery acid, not blood. But my conclusion appears firm. Hardcore has been proven a liar about too much that's essential. Something about the money, the $10,000 he said Nile gave him, is simply wrong. The cocaine residue. The campaign check Nile cashed. There is real doubt. I ruminate on whether to rule from the bench at once or to make a show of some period of deliberation.

    But that's only the formalities. I'm still wrapped heart and soul around The Questions. Who wanted to kill whom? Is it really possible, I keep wondering as I sift the facts, could it really be that Eddgar has engaged in a monstrousness of the order of Medea's, killed his wife and blamed his son? I could almost believe it about the man I knew so many years ago. And his silence about that $10,000 seems awfully telling. He probably went to Matt Galiakos and Brendan Tuohey, in hopes of keeping the DFU money out of the case. So he could save himself. Pondering all of this, I'm gripped by the profound elusiveness of the truth, as it drifts like smoke through every courtroom. Something happened. Something objective but no longer verifiable. When I was a child, they used to claim all history was knowable, if you could catch up with the light emitted by the body and traveling eternally in space. 'Light prints,' they talked about, better evidence than fingerprints. An intriguing idea. But Einstein said that wasn't possible. The past is always gone, retrieved only, ultimately, in the filaments of memory.

    Near 5:00, with her hat and coat on to leave, Marietta knocks. One look at the smirk tautening her cheeks and I realize Seth is here. She scouts my countenance for any telltale sign. Oh, and isn't there a part of me which would love to boast? 'We had a fabulous night,' I want to say, 'he is a fine, sweet man, he loves every inch of my skin, just as you said.' Instead, I greet her with my frostiest judicial demeanor. 'Show him in.'

    He slides past Marietta, thanking her effusively, making jokes - they are pals already. I signal discreetly and he gently closes the door, then comes around to my side of the desk and leans against it. He takes my hand.

    'Okay?' he asks.

    'Sore,' I say.

    ‘I take it as a compliment.' He peeks back over his shoulder, then leans down for a quick, sweet kiss. A lovely silent second passes, i didn't want to bother you, but I need a rain check tonight. I forgot Sarah's coming up. I'm taking her to dinner and she's staying over at my dad's to help him with some stuff tomorrow.'

    We agree on tomorrow night instead. I shake his wrist. 'How about you? Are you okay?'

    'Me?' He straightens up. He stretches. He beams. 'I've had the best twenty-four hours in years. Years,' he repeats, ‘I mean it.' Like me, he's pale with sleeplessness, but he's clearly inhabited by a tonic air. 'I've taken the cure,' he says. 'Like the Count of Monte Cristo: love and revenge.'

    'Revenge?' I ask, but dampen the question in my voice, even as I'm speaking, for I understand. Eddgar, he means. 'You really hate him that much? After all this time?'

    'You don't know the whole story.'

    'And I don't want to hear it. Not now.'

    ‘I understand. But it does my heart good to see somebody finally catch up with him. Believe me. He's a bad, bad dude.' His eyes have sparked with an incendiary light. 'Now I finally get why Nile told me he didn't want a lawyer from around here. No one Eddgar could fix.'

    There is something jarring in the remark. I rerun it several times before I catch hold of what bothers me.

    'He told you?' Seth looks my way at length and I repeat myself. 'Nile told you? You said the other day you don't even talk to him.'

    'Not during the trial. Hobie won't let me. But I'm the one who hooked them up.'

    'Wait, Seth.' I stand. 'You? Are you still close with Nile?'

    'Close?' He shrugs. 'I've stayed in touch. You know me. The Sentimental Heart. What did you think?'

    'Think? I thought he was a little boy you baby-sat for a century ago. My God, Seth! The defendant? You're close to the defendant? Why didn't I know this? Why didn't you say something to me?'

    ' "Say something"? Jesus. Shit, that's exactly what you keep telling me not to do.'

    'Oh God.' I feel polluted. The defendant! Seth's allied not just with the defense lawyer, an advocate with a limited stake, but with the man on trial. I've slept with Nile's friend, his crony, his guardian angel. 'Oh God,' I say again. 'What else don't I know?' And then, with this question, a connection whirls in place, possible only in the dizzy ether of little sleep. I search Seth for reassurance.

    'What?' he says.

    'Hobie's trick-bagging me.' I'm battling something now - the paranoid center, the injured child. 'Tell me you're not in this with him.'

    'In what?'

    'Tell me you weren't part of this from the start.' 'Jesus Christ. Of course not. I don't even know what you're talking about.'

    But I've finally seen it all: why Hobie wanted a bench so I'd decide this case, why he took his mischievous steps to arrange that, and worst, perhaps, why Seth insinuated himself again into my life. A jury, another judge, would recognize Eddgar only as a solid citizen: respected legislator, grieving father, loyal ex. They would have scoffed at Hobie's ultimate suggestion that Eddgar was responsible for June's murder. They would never allow it to inspire any doubts. But I'm susceptible, willing. I have my griefs with Zora. I know Eddgar's past. And now I've heard more from Seth. Bad, bad dude. Heinous creep. That's the hellish thought. Because it seems so plausible that the two of them, Seth and Hobie, friends for life, could have engineered this together. And if that were so, then all of this, the sweet romance, the tireless if unbelievable claims of passion, are just part of a scheme molded against me. It makes sense - except when I look again to Seth, take in his confusion, the aura of sincerity always surrounding him, the solidness of his presence.

    'Just tell me you're not in this with him.'

    'With Hobie? Are you crazy? He's barely talked to me for two weeks. He works at Nile's all night and goes to sleep at his parents'. You know him. He loves the fact I don't know which end is up. I mean, Jesus, what's the trick?'

    True - or an act? He would say the same thing either way. I am so tired, so unbelievably confused. I have an instant more intense than the one before - something from dreams: the world collapses and shows itself as a monstrous scam, a stage set where the paper walls fall in, revealing a director back there with a megaphone and people you've believed in now wiping off their makeup. I'm full of a terror as old as I am. It's all these men, Tuohey and Hobie and Seth, able to play me, because they see what I can't recognize in myself. I sit here tormented again, feeling so vulnerable and incomplete I could almost reach inside myself and find the place where there's a missing piece. No father. That's what I always think at the ultimate moment. I blame Zora for too much. Half-orphaned, I simply can't be whole.

    'What?' he asks. 'Now you don't believe me? Christ!' He tears around the desk, but wheels back in my direction when he's halfway across the room. 'I'm sorry I broke your rules, Sonny. But you've got so fucking many it's hard to keep track. And, frankly, it's what you're waiting for anyway. That's your deal, right, Judge? Let's keep everybody six feet below you and safely remote.'

    He's right: he knows me. And how to hurt me, too. His anger literally takes away my breath. 'Go to hell, Seth.'

    He thrusts a dismissing hand in my direction and rushes through the doorway, nearly crashing into Marietta, who, in her coat and hat, has been lurking there.

    

    

    
Seth

    

    Another car arrived. Another Fairlane. The agent who'd caught me shoved me in the back seat and fell in beside me.

    'Hey, Rudolph, you collared Frank Zappa.' The driver was looking in the rearview and smiling.

    'Lucky for me he runs like Frank Zappa. Some dick from Jersey wandered by and stopped him.'

    'Hard time? You give Special Agent Rudolph a hard time, Frank? What's his name?'

    'Michael.'

    'Michael, you give S A Rudolph a hard time? He's not as young as he used to be. He keels over from a hard attack, then it's murder.'

    'All right, Dolens. You're supposed to be busting his chops, not mine.'