Blood of Angels (5 page)

“No kidding.”

“I told the kid he had me all wrong. I was trying to help him. He looked like he was going to spit in my face.” Carl shrugs. “It was pretty obvious we weren't going to get the deal, so I went home. I wasn't in the mood to be told I was a devil anymore, anyway. It was amusing for a few minutes, but it lost its appeal pretty fast.”

I shake my head. “Looks like we might be in for quite a show.”

Carl sighs. “You're in for the show,” he says quietly. “They're leading me to pasture, Thomas. I've got good years left in me. Maybe not great, but good.” He looks at me helplessly, which is a new expression for him. He is so good at what he does—so finely tuned, for such a precise purpose—that neither one of us can imagine his next act. He's only sixty-five, which means he could be looking at twenty-five years to fill.

“You think any more about that teaching job?” I ask. “Any law school in the country would be lucky to have you.”

“I have a very serviceable revolver at home, Dennehy,” he says. “If you ever see me sitting around a bunch of twenty-three-year-olds telling my old war stories, please use it on me.”

He sounds tired, like he's already bored with doing the nothing he has staring at him for the next two or three decades. “I had to get out of my office for a while,” he says. “It's like a parade in there. Everybody wants to say good-bye. It's all sad faces and moist eyes. Nightmare.”

“I can't believe you have to come back next Monday for one last day.”

“Yeah, and I have to wait until the next Friday for the party. The great state of Tennessee is forcing me to use four days vacation.”

“Just as well. Knowing the group around here, nobody is going to be in shape to come into the office the next day.”

“Speaking of the party, no speeches, Thomas. I'm serious.”

“Fine by me, but Rayburn never met a microphone he didn't like.”

Carl's eyes widen. “God, I hadn't thought of that. Look, want to meet me before at Seanachie's? I can't face David Rayburn with a microphone sober.”

“Sure,” I say, smiling. “And listen, Carl…”

I don't get the sentence finished before he's out of his chair and heading toward the door. “Like I said, no speeches.”

IT
'
S FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE
nine the next morning when I arrive at the New Justice Building for Bol's hearing. The old building, over on Union—a street conspicuously renamed by the conquering northern army shortly after the end of the Civil War—was an aging money pit of a structure, but it was a repository of extraordinary memories, both glorious and infamous. The new building, by contrast, is a high-tech paean to the power of the state. Architecture, I've found, often contains clues to the intentions of the people behind the structure. From the immaculate, unscalable walls of the exterior to the invisible, bomb-sniffing sensors in the entryway, this is a building bereft of history, thoroughly committed to the present and future. It sits a city block wide on the banks of the Cumberland River, testimony to the burgeoning prison population of metropolitan Davidson County. By the time I arrive, Stillman is already there—God, he's an eager beaver—and the two of us walk up the concrete stairs to the big, revolving doors of the main entrance.

Stillman and I clear security together. Stillman is looking nifty in a well-tailored, gray linen suit, white shirt, and bloodred tie. He jokes with the guards like an old hand, even though he's going to court for about the fifth time in his life. One of the guards, a huge black man everybody calls Hap, motions me over. “You going up to Ginder's courtroom?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Another day in paradise.”

“What's goin' on today?” he asks. “The United Nations is up there.”

“What do you mean?”

Hap shrugs. “I haven't heard a word of English the last half hour, except a lot of brothers want to know the way to Ginder's room.” I glance at Stillman, who gives me a blank look. We take the elevator to the second floor and Judge Joseph Ginder's courtroom. Ginder is a decent guy whom I know well, since I've spent about a thousand hours arguing cases before him. He's generally fair, although he has a temper. This doesn't usually present a problem, because most of the prosecutors know how to avoid his hot buttons. These mostly have to do with respect issues, along the lines of treating him like he's a god. He's got an election coming up in three months, and he's been on his best behavior, making sure he gets the endorsement of the trial lawyers' association.

Stillman and I come around the corner and see a crowd of about twenty white people standing around with pissed expressions on their faces. Most are male, under the age of twenty-five, and dressed in this summer's version of Caucasian street thug. Stillman pulls up short. “Is it just me, or did a trailer park just empty out around here?”

I smile. “Welcome to the Nation, Stillman,” I say. “That's with a capital
N.
” I point to the crowd. “I probably had five cases with this crowd my first year. They live in the whitest and poorest forty square blocks of Nashville. Their parents worked low-end manufacturing jobs, except there aren't any anymore. So now they have lots of time to decide whom to blame.”

“Why do they call it the Nation?”

“All the cross streets are named after states. Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, that kind of thing. They don't look happy, do they?”

“No.”

“What's bothering them, Stillman, is the fact that their little place in the world is now completely surrounded by Laotians, Ukrainians, Hispanics, Cambodians, and God knows what else. These are not the kind of people who like to hear Croatian at the corner grocery store. The city planning commission has been dumping immigrants on their borders, and they're freaked.”

Stillman stares. “Somebody didn't think that through.”

I nod. “And now, thanks to the United Nations of We-Bail-Everybody-Out, we can add Africans to their volatile little mix.”

“So what are they doing here?”

“They're here, Stillman, because a member of yet another group of people they don't want to live next to raped and killed one of their own. Tamra Hartlett.”

“She lived in the Nation?”

“Nationite, third generation,” I say. “They want to get a look at the man who killed her.”

Stillman finally proves he has something resembling an incisive mind by saying, “Damn, Thomas. We better not fuck this up.”

I nod, and we push through the crowd of Nationites to the door of Ginder's courtroom. I open the door, walk in, and pull up short. We have entered a sea of willowy, giraffelike young black men who, quiet and circumspect, are occupying almost every seat in the gallery. I look right and left; although it's hard to be sure with them sitting, it looks like the shortest of them is a good six foot three. The taller ones sprout from their benches like slender, ebony trees. Their clothing is a patchwork of cheap formal and hand-me-down casual, combined in startling ways: there are bright-colored T-shirts with rayon slacks, tennis shoes with sport coats, a mélange of Salvation Army and Dollar Store fashion. A few—I can't get an actual count, but it seems like no more than five or six—have ritual markings of some kind on their foreheads. Interspersed in the crowd—like white dots in a black puzzle—are three figures, stark and pale in their surroundings. One is Dan Wolfe, a raging conservative with an afternoon radio talk show who never misses a photo op; a few rows up is Linda Martin, a reporter at the local Fox affiliate; on the other side of the room, scrunched between two tall Africans who tower over him like black palms, is Gavin Davies, a reporter from the
Tennessean.
Stillman and I stand mesmerized a second, then push on through the swinging doors at the front of the courtroom to the lawyers' tables. We put our briefcases on the table and take our chairs. Stillman leans over and whispers, “What the hell is this?” The boys behind us are so quiet, it's like we've come upon them sleeping.

“Apparently, Mr. Bol has friends.”

A minute later Rita West comes in, another woman trailing behind. West is in her usual lawyer's suit, but the other woman has a kind of Ben and Jerry's, retro-hippie look about her. She's taller than Rita, with black, shoulder-length hair pulled back behind her ears. She's slender, with a good figure, and immaculate, pale skin. There's no makeup discernible, except for surprisingly bright red lipstick on her full lips. She wears a pair of proto-geek, black-rimmed glasses, a man's dress shirt, fitted black pants, and heavy, black shoes. Her left wrist is ringed by several bracelets, each a slender circlet of a single color: one red, one blue, one yellow, and so on. When she enters, the sea of blackness behind us comes alive in a hum of languages. She stops and speaks quietly to several of the boys, and I hear the word
mother
interspersed in a lot of foreign words I can't understand.

Stillman shakes his head. “Shit, man, I thought this was Nashville.”

“Welcome to the new South, pal.”

“Who's the woman?”

“Got me.”

Rita tries to find the woman a seat in the gallery, which is impossible since every square inch is occupied with silent Africans. Apparently, giving up a seat to a woman isn't a part of their culture, because nobody moves. The woman doesn't seem bothered; she plops down next to Rita at the lawyer's table. Rita looks exasperated; I look over to catch her eye, but instead I get the full-on laser stare of the other woman, who's glaring at me like I've just eaten her last cookie.

I'll be damned if I'm going to sit there and not find out what's going on, so I stand up and walk over to Rita's desk. She stands, and we shake hands, as usual. I've been in court with Rita seven or eight times, and we've always stayed friendly. “Kind of an interesting crowd today,” I say.

Rita has her game face on and ignores the comment. “I hear Carl's retirement party is next Friday night,” she says. “Is that staff only? I'd like to come.”

“Consider yourself invited. He wants a big enough crowd he can sneak out the back while nobody's looking.”

Rita looks past me to Stillman. “This your new partner?”

“Could be,” I say, and I nod toward the woman behind her. “This yours?”

“Could be.” We're standing there talking in circles, ignoring the wall of still blackness behind us. I look toward the back of the courtroom; I can see curiosity seekers peering through the back window.

“Any idea why the media showed up?” I ask.

“Guess they like a good story,” she says, and that's the first time I actually worry about what Rita West has up her sleeve. I don't worry long, because the side door opens, and Greg Seneff, the judge's amiable, 275-pound bailiff, steps into the room. I head back to my table. Behind Seneff, flanked by two corrections officers, comes my enemy, Moses Bol.

Bol is as tall as the others—around six foot six—and although he's heavier than most of the other Africans in the room, he still weighs no more than 190 pounds. Because this is a bond hearing and there's no jury to sway, Bol doesn't get to wear street clothes. He comes in the room wearing a Tennessee Department of Corrections orange jumpsuit, and his arms are shackled. He enters the room cautiously, looking tense and a little scared. The guards move him along, and he follows, walking woodenly. With Bol's entrance, the room comes alive again, this time with a lower, more guttural hum. I don't understand it, but forty young men a few feet away are saying
something
to each other, and they don't sound happy. The officers lead Bol toward the defense table, and for a moment he faces the gallery; a couple of voices call out to him, loud, clear, and alien. Bol looks back at them, eyes wide, and the guards get him seated between his lawyer and the other woman. The bailiff turns toward the crowd, calling firmly for quiet and threatening to clear the gallery. For a second, I wonder if all hell is going to break loose, but the black sea obeys and the humming descends back into the silence. The energy behind us is palpable, like a loaded gun set down but easily picked back up. Seneff stares out at them awhile, just to make sure the silence is going to take; when he's satisfied, the officers who brought in Bol take chairs near the witness box, against a wall to the right.

An awkward ninety seconds or so passes. Stillman looks over at me, his face a big question mark for which I don't have an answer. At the moment, I'm more interested in Bol: He's looking straight ahead, as nervous as a hunted deer. His hair is close-cropped, but his skin is surprisingly soft-looking, like a woman's. He has the ritual markings, however; his forehead is marked by three horizontal lines, scars of some tribal custom.

Finally, the door behind the judge's bench opens, and Ginder, resplendent in black robe, walks into the room. He knows about the packed gallery and the reporters; I can tell by how determined he is to act like it's just another day in Nashville. He sits down and flips open his laptop, ignoring the gallery just like Rita and I did. Somehow the Africans are invisible, even though they're filling the room. Seneff gives the “All rise,” and the black sea is on its feet, its energy filling the air like electricity.

Ginder sits, and the crowd settles back down. Bond hearings are normally casual affairs, at least compared to actual trials. They usually take about five minutes—less, in some cases—and protocol is kept to a minimum. It's revolving-door justice at its most time-efficient. Ginder says hello to the attorneys, but his gaze stops on the woman beside the prisoner. “Ms. West, does your cocounsel need to have the dress code explained to her?”

Rita is on her feet in a nanosecond. “Judge, this is Fiona Towns, a friend of the defendant. She's here to speak on his behalf. There wasn't any other seating available.”

Ginder gives his unhappy look. He has a repertoire of about five looks, and I've seen them all a hundred times. There's generic unhappy—he wears this 80 percent of the time—along with pleased, angry, bored, and above all, the one he gives when he thinks he's brilliant. “If she's at the lawyer's table,” he says, “she'll have on suitable attire.”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Fine. We're here at the request of the defense counsel for a second bond hearing for Mr. Moses Bol,” he says. “The charges are aggravated rape with special circumstances, use of a weapon with deadly intent, and one count of first-degree murder. Ms. West, you've asked for this hearing, and we'll get to you presently.” He turns toward me. “Mr. Dennehy, how are you this morning?”

“Fine, Your Honor.”

“Glad to hear it. Before we hear Ms. West, I assume your position on bail hasn't changed?”

I rise. Considering the seriousness of the crimes, having to say anything is probably unnecessary; I could just as easily read back the charges and sit down. The thing to do in circumstances like this is keep things simple: make the case, shut up, and sit down. Otherwise, you insult the intelligence of the judge. “The defendant is an obvious flight risk, Your Honor. He's an immigrant, with no ties to the community. He owns no property. He's not currently employed, having been recently fired from his job at Wal-Mart. As you know, the state has filed the paperwork with the court indicating we are pursuing the death penalty for Mr. Bol. Therefore, his motivation for flight would be substantial. Finally, the state believes that Mr. Bol is clearly a threat to this community and needs to remain incarcerated until such time as his future is determined.”

Ginder nods soberly, like he's thinking things over, even though both Rita and I know that he's already made up his mind. Bol isn't getting out of jail, not on this day. “Ms. West?” he says.

Rita stands, all five foot three of her. What happens next is like a kind of dream. Rita gives a very nice speech about how the state may think it has a strong case against her client, but she thinks otherwise. Then she turns halfway round and makes real the invisible elephant in the room, namely, the packed gallery. She says Bol has the support of 100 boys just like the 40 who are in the room right now. She says that considering what these boys have been through together, he would no more abandon them than abandon his own mother, except that his mother was executed before Bol's eyes when he was eight years old by marauding Arabs, just like they executed his father and two brothers. His sister wasn't executed, Rita says, because the same Arabs dragged her off to be sold into sex slavery on the streets of Khartoum. She says that Bol was held captive by Islamic fundamentalists for four months, during which time he was routinely abused. She says Bol refused to convert to Islam, even under pain of torture and fear of death, and that he escaped the prison and led twenty other boys across two hundred miles of rugged terrain to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. She wants the court to consider how bad things have to be when your idea of improving your life is escaping to
Ethiopia.
She says that five minutes in jail for her client is horrifying psychological torture, because he has been punished on numerous occasions by some of the cruelest men on Earth, simply for being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rita spells out a story of unimaginable tragedy, which I badly want to stop, but doing so would make me look like an insensitive bastard, which is not in the interest of my case. None of this is going to be admissible in the actual trial, anyway, although the rules for hearings are considerably more lenient. After three or four minutes, however, Rita's story is drawn to an awkward halt by Judge Ginder, who holds up his hand for silence.