“Was it the money? Was it money that you and Buck wanted to get out of the car?”
“Whoa,” he said, putting his cuffed hands out. “Doctor told me to rest. This is too many for me. Was I supposed to get a briefcase for Buck? Help me.”
“You said Buck could maybe get you some good money if he could get to your car, remember?”
Whitlow shook his head and hissed. “Shit. See there? Just like a lawyer. I’m looking at the death penalty. I’m trying to make my way after having my brain operated on. And you? You wanna talk about money?”
“Two guys chased me down in your car, Jimmy, and they want to know what happened to the delivery,” said Watson, his voice shaking. “You remember when you were in Des Peres. Scared? Because people wanted to kill you? Well, now people want to kill me because they want whatever Elvin Brawley was bringing to your house.”
“Wait,” he said, lifting his restrained hand and touching his temple. “Bells are ringin’ but it’s ever so faint. That name …”
“The victim,” said Watson. “The black, deaf guy you shot.”
“That’s it,” he said. “They said this might happen.” He shook his head. “I can see so much clearer, and I know what’s right and wrong, and the hate is all gone, but I can’t remember jack shit about facts and such. ’Specially I think they took out all the stuff that happened right
around the time the Afro-American died. They burn it out of there with lasers is how they described it to me and suction out parts of your brain with glass tubes. It’s gone.”
“Forget the murder, then,” said Watson. “But there’s a few things I need to know.”
Whitlow frowned. “The law says you can’t hate niggers. If you hate niggers, it means you are a sick deviant psycho motherfucker. So I said, ‘OK, I won’t hate niggers, if I can help it.’ And they said, ‘Part of the reason why you hate niggers is because you have a brain tumor and it is pressing on certain parts of your brain that keep you from seeing that it is wrong to be violent and hate niggers.’ So I said, ‘Well, we got nothing to talk about. Go ahead on and take out the parts you don’t like, and let’s see.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but you might get some side defects, like maybe you ain’t gonna remember your fucking name when we’re done.’ And what did I say? Did I say no? I said, ‘Get that bad part of my brain out of there. Be gone, Satan! I’m gonna be reborn with a new brain that don’t hate niggers.’ That’s what I said. I done my part. But now I can’t remember shit about this killing business. It’s lost in a fog.
“And besides, that was the old Jimmy Whitlow. He ain’t here no more. He’s gone. And if I’m supposed to know something about briefcases, well, it musta gone with him.”
“O
dor,” said Judge Stang. His back, as usual, was to the lawyers, and Watson and Harper, standing, as usual, could just see his grizzled scalp sticking up like a weathered hillock on the red leather horizon of his recliner’s headrest. The judge fingered the file and the newest submission of evidence and evidentiary motions in United States v. Whitlow. Watson had filed copies of Mary Whitlow’s medical reports, including her statement that, during the last seven years, she had never had sex with anyone except her husband. He had also included highlighted copies of Mary Whitlow’s TDD communications with the victim, showing that the day after receiving a diagnosis of venereal disease, she had invited him to her house for another sign language lesson, had told him that her husband would be out of town, and that she wanted him to “touch her with his signs.”
His clerks had distilled the salient points of the submissions into a one-page memo and had clipped it to a tabbed folder containing the documents. The judge looked up from the paper and gazed out his window, taking in the view of the Mississippi, which looked like a slag run of cold lead drifting downstream under a sunless sky.
“This case stinks all the way to hate heaven, doesn’t it, Mr. Harper?” said the judge. He fetched a cigar clip from the fob pocket of an ancient
gray vest. He retracted the blade of the small guillotinelike assemblage and stared into the hole.
“But as near as I can tell these pungent varietals of hatred don’t come under any of the categories covered in your statute. Can’t the government recast this whole mess as a gender crime? I mean we have a man, and we have a woman, and they obviously hate each other. Can’t we argue that they hate each other
because of
their gender?”
Harper cleared his throat and shifted slightly. “Our office has considered the possibility of a charge under the Violence Against Women Act, but so far no such charge has been filed.”
“Because everybody had race fever and hate fever on the brain when they took the woman’s original statements,” said the judge, “and now it’s too late to go back and interpolate some vile female derogations for a gender crime charge. I understand.”
Harper bridled at the judge’s insinuation. He opened his mouth and drew a breath. Then his shoulders sagged, and his mouth closed.
“This case does have a distinctly human stench about it,” said the judge. The recliner’s swivel mechanism groaned as he adjusted his view of the river by a few degrees.
“I dare say, Mr. Watson, you’ve made the government a trifle gun-shy. Mr. Donahue isn’t here, and the case has instead been returned to the capable hands of Mr. Harper.”
“Mr. Donahue asked me to apologize on his behalf,” said Harper. “He has engagements in Washington, D.C. He’ll be unavailable for the next two weeks, at which time he will be able to devote himself almost exclusively to this case until it is resolved.”
The judged chuckled softly. “That’s so rich, Mr. Harper, it hurts my fillings. Mr. Donahue doesn’t really think this psychotic fetish he’s calling a case is going to be stinking up my docket for the next two weeks, does he?”
“Judge, I …”
“This will be
some
trial, Mr. Harper. Your hate crime business is gone, along with the Confederate flags and tattoos. Just what are we going for now, motor vehicle homicide? Improper mooring of a watercraft?”
“Mr. Donahue feels quite strongly that—”
“How many times does he want to lose this case in color on the front page of the paper, Mr. Harper?”
“Judge, I can’t speak for Mr. Donahue’s position with regard to …”
“YOU WHAT!?” shouted the judge in a voice so loud that Watson felt sound percuss the skin of his face. “YOU CAN’T WHAT?”
Harper looked once at Watson and struggled to speak, “I said—”
“You can’t
speak
for Mr. Donahue? I fear for your soul and body, Mr. Harper, if you are telling me that you came to a settlement conference without authority to settle the case. If that’s true, the ghost of your career will wander these halls until your foul, unnatural crimes are burned and purged away. You have authority, don’t you? Full and complete authority?”
“Judge,” said Harper. “I’m only an AUSA. A case with this kind of profile will require Mr. Donahue’s approval, at least, maybe even approval from our Washington office. I can’t—”
The judge spun around in his recliner and threw the folder of papers on his desk. He clutched his chest and snarled at Harper.
“It’s Friday and it’s two o’clock,” he said, glowering up at Harper, who was terrified, probably because the judge had hardly glanced at him over the years, much less brought his lights full bore on Harper’s own. “Out in the hallway, twenty feet from my door, is a pay phone. Go to that phone, Mr. Harper. Pick it up, and
find
Mr. Donahue. Tell him that he will give you full and complete,
final
authority to settle this case
today
, or I will issue a summons for him and for anybody else who needs to approve the resolution of United States versus Whitlow. Then I will have the marshals drag their FAT GOVERNMENT ASSES IN HERE IN CHAINS!
GO!
”
“Yes, Judge,” said Harper, sidling toward the outer office, where Ida was knitting.
Ida reached up and touched the dial of her flesh-toned hearing aid, then glanced up at Mr. Harper. “Is the judge calling for tea?”
“MR. HARPER!” shouted the judge.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Harper, pausing at the door.
“If you have small children or any other family matters to contend with over the weekend, please arrange to have someone else assume those duties. We will be staying here, in this courthouse, until this case is off my docket. All weekend, if necessary, understand? And if I die, or if you die, or if, because of force majeure or some act of God, we are not able to settle this case by Monday morning, then tell Mr. Donahue that trial will begin at nine-thirty
A
.
M
., Monday morning. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Judge,” said Harper.
“Tell him also we will be using the same jury pool we used in that drug courier case his office lost last week. Remember? The one where the defendant had two kilos in his golf bag, signed a confession, made bail, and then asked if he could have his drugs back before leaving jail? Ask Mr. Donahue if he remembers what the jury did to his office on that one. Not guilty! I will be using the
same
jury pool in this case. Monday morning. GO!”
“Yes, Judge,” said Harper, and left, by way of Ida’s office.
“The gentleman’s room is two doors down on the right,” she said as he passed.
“You probably don’t know about that yet,” the judge said to Watson, “because your feet are still tender. Federal jurors sit for six months in rotating pools. By the end of the six months, I know every single juror. At my age, I’ve seen them twice before. If I take a notion, I can fuck either side by seating the jury pool in such an order that the side I’m mad at must squander all their peremptory strikes and still wind up with people who are going to find against them. Remember that. Federal judges have damn near absolute power to fuck and scuttle your case if you piss them off. You heard it here first.”
As Judge Stang spoke, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds outside and slanted in his window.
“Ah,” he said, “that’s what I’ve been waiting for.” He leaned back until his shoulders caught a patch of warm light. “Keep coming, sun.” He looked over his shoulder at the clearing sky. “If that sky opens all the way up, we’ll get rid of this case in an hour.”
Watson smiled and looked at the widening hole in the cloud ceiling, wondering if the judge meant he was going to call down some divine influence to settle itself on the proceedings, cast demons out of the lawyers’ brains, and calm their disputatious natures.
“You can force a resolution using terror or tenderness. Meathooks or molasses. Terror is my personal preference, but today you’ll see both. Mr. Harper is a golfing fool, perhaps you know that? It’s Friday. Two-ten by my watch. He’s probably trying to make a foursome out at Bellerive by, I’d say, five. And if the sun stays out, this case will be settled by four-fifteen. Until then, I will subject Mr. Harper to verbal Chinese water torture.”
Watson kept nodding and smiling at what he hoped were appropriate junctures in the judge’s speech, until the judge stopped and looked into his eyes.
“Your top and bottom are?” he asked. “Well, never mind that,” he said, waving the thought away with a bony hand. “The government will come back in here and pretend like they are doing you a big favor by stepping down to second-degree murder, which will put you at number thirty-three under the sentencing guidelines. Eleven years minimum. Would your man go for that?”
“I would advise him not to take that, Judge,” said Watson. “If we have to, Ms. Schweich and I will try this case on Monday morning. She could make the defendant’s wife, the government’s main witness, look very ugly on the stand.”
“So could you,” said the judge. “But then you’ve got the uncertainty of what the jury will do. What are you after?”
“Manslaughter, Judge. But manslaughter is where I want to end up. If I start there, they’ll try to take me up a big notch to second-degree murder.”
“Manslaughter will put you at level twenty-five under the sentencing guidelines. Five years is the lowest I can go there. He’ll probably get out sooner.”
“A single charge of voluntary manslaughter,” said Watson. “And because of the surgery and the ensuing testing, my client should be allowed to spend as much time as possible in forensic psychiatric facilities.”
“What if Mr. Harper says no?” asked the judge. “I’ll be asking him to ride a bicycle without a seat.”
“Then we will come away with manslaughter or better starting Monday morning,” said Watson. “Maybe I’m wrong. I have one other stipulation. That the plea agreement dispose of all charges arising out of the incident in question, including charges based upon any evidence seized from the premises of the base quarters where the defendant lived with his wife, and any evidence seized from the trunk of his vehicle, which was towed the day of the shooting. If we could get a package like that, we would take manslaughter.”
Mr. Harper appeared at the door of Judge Stang’s chambers.
“Back with full authority, Mr. Harper?”
“I have full authority up to a point, to take certain—”
“FULL, UNQUALIFIED AUTHORITY!”
The judge’s voice probed the upper registers of Watson’s cochlear nerves, and he wondered again where Judge Stang kept his arsenal of decibels. He could scare God off the Mount and deafen Moses. The
judge pressed his gnarled fingers to the bulging veins in his temples. Then he carefully spread his mottled gray hands on the desktop, as if to grasp a physical object and prevent the onset of a felony or a high crime. He stared at his own fingers—skeletal phalanges and vasculature wrapped in papery skin.
“Call Mr. Donahue back,” he said slowly and carefully, “and tell him that I want to be absolutely certain that you have final authority for an offer of voluntary manslaughter. Level twenty-five on the guidelines. Tell him there is no way in Hell I will make you agree to it, but at this juncture in these negotiations, it is imperative that I am able to represent to the other side that you have final, complete, total authority to accept a plea-bargain agreement for a single count of voluntary manslaughter.”
“But—?”
The judge held up his hand and waved Harper away with a single, back-handed flap.