Ernesto Ramirez.
One of those things, not slipping through the cracks exactly but never making the cut as the top priority. He’d told me to go scratch my ass when I’d visited him at the YMCA—what was that, three months ago now? I told him I’d keep his information anonymous, and he’d had a ready answer:
They’ll know.
Right. It was the night Emily was born. I’d driven straight home from the Y and taken Talia to Mercy General, where she spent eleven hours in labor before our little gift showed up, red-faced and fussy.
I was feeling a surge of momentum. Things had gone perfectly today. If I could just pull this one last rabbit out of the hat—
I meandered to the corner of the conference room and dialed him on my cell phone. The phone rang twice before he answered.
“Hello?”
“Ernesto? Jason Kolarich. The lawyer who—”
“Yes, Jason.” Curt and hostile.
“I’m out of time here, so I’ll be blunt—”
“I don’t have anything to say to you. You understand? Nothing.”
“Wait. Just—hang on. I can protect you. I can have the government protect you as a material wit—”
“The
government.
Yeah, the government. Man, you don’t get it.”
“Then
help
me get—”
“Listen to me. Listen. Don’t ever call me again. I got nothing to say.”
A loud click followed. I sighed and closed up the phone. I turned to find Riley, Lightner, and Hector Almundo staring at me.
“Ernesto Ramirez,” I explained.
“Ernesto—oh, Jesus, kid.” Lightner chuckled. “Dead . . . end.” Hector looked up from his plate of chicken and rice that we’d catered in. He was looking better today than he had for a while. We’d taken blow after blow in the prosecution’s case-in-chief, but things had gone well today, and his expression seemed to reflect the turn of events. Hector generally liked to keep up a brave front. He was a stubbornly proud man who did not like to show weakness; it made our relationship with him difficult at times. He was quick to anger and seemed to hold grudges, which probably made him an effective politician. It also explained, in my mind, the reason for his divorce almost eight years ago, though Joel Lightner had favored another theory—that Hector’s true tastes didn’t run toward the female gender.
He had a good politician’s story. He’d grown up on mean streets and dropped out of high school but eventually returned and got a college and legal education to boot. He started at the bottom of city government but worked his way up quickly, having thrown in a few extracurricular hours on the mayor’s political campaign to win a few chits. He got fairly close to the mayor—as close as he could, probably more an alliance than friendship—and ultimately took a shot at the senate seat and won. He was a street fighter. He went after his opponents ferociously. He’d put Joey Espinoza’s head on a stick if he could. And yes, we figured he probably did engineer this extortion scheme with the Columbus Street Cannibals, though we thought the murder of Adalbert Wozniak was beyond even Hector’s capacity.
“Who’s Ernesto Ramirez?” Hector asked.
“Guy we met during the canvas,” said Lightner. “He runs a nonprofit called
La Otra Familia
or something. He was a mentor to Eddie Vargas. We asked him for information and he said he didn’t know nuthin-bout-nuthin. Like a hundred other people said. But this guy Ramirez, he must have scratched his cheek or averted his eyes or something when he answered, so young Jason here is convinced he holds information that could break the entire case wide open.”
Paul smirked. Lightner and Riley liked to point out my youthful vigor—read näiveté—from time to time.
But I had built up some additional credibility after today. Hector looked at me quizzically.
“The guy’s a former Latin Lord and he’s still close to them,” I explained. “Whatever it is he knows—”
“If he knows anything,” Lightner interjected.
“Whatever he knows, he probably knows from the Lords,” I said. “I think maybe the Lords shot Wozniak, not the Cannibals. Now wouldn’t
that
be a nice thing to share with the jury.”
“The Lords? Why would they do that?” Hector asked. “It’s not their turf. It’s not even
La Zona.
”
“I don’t know why,” I said. “But Ernesto Ramirez does. I just know it.”
“And how many times has Ernesto Ramirez told you to go fuck yourself?” Lightner asked.
“Only twice,” I conceded, to the amusement of the other lawyers. “But I haven’t turned on the charm yet.”
7
I DROVE HOME, MY EYELIDS HEAVY, EXHAUSTED FROM
the comedown after an intense day but propped up on electricity. This had been probably the best day of my professional life. After today, I thought we had a great shot at an acquittal, which three months ago would have been unthinkable. It wasn’t lost on me what this could mean for my career, for my family. I’d never had money, and until a year ago served as a county prosecutor making shit for a salary. This case could make me. Driving home, I let it swim over me, ambition mixed with fantasy, fancy cars and a second home and an Ivy League education for Emily Jane, foreign things to me, all of them.
I found them both in the nursery when I came upstairs. We had done up one of our spare bedrooms into a nursery for a little girl, pinks and greens with bunny wallpaper. Talia was seated in the rocking chair that her mother had used for her. She had been breast-feeding Emily, and the little one seemed to have settled down for the moment. Talia managed a weak smile but didn’t speak, not wanting to wake the dozing munchkin.
“How’s she doing?” I asked.
Talia simply nodded. She looked beautiful and awful at the same time. The shape of her coal-black hair, which she had cropped in anticipation of Emily’s birth, still looked new to me, though tonight it was unwashed and flat against her head. Her eyes were puffy and lifeless. Maybe four hours, tops, of sleep over the last two days will do that.
“How are
you
doing?” I whispered.
“I’m fat, tired, and my nipples are killing me.”
“Other than that, I meant.”
“We’re still on for my parents tomorrow?”
“Sure, yeah.” Tomorrow—Friday night, we were heading out of town to see Talia’s parents, who lived ninety miles south. Talia’s mother had MS, and it was hard for them to make the trip up to the city.
Talia managed herself out of the chair with Emily cradled in her arms and began the transition. Emily let out a soft moan, and those large, expressive eyes opened. When she saw me, she grimaced in that unsubtle way that babies possess. Pure horror might have described it better. She wasn’t in favor of the transfer from Mommy to me.
“She had a dirty diaper an hour ago and I just fed her,” she said.
“Okay. Hey, beautiful.”
Now safely in my arms, my bellicose beauty broke into a full-out cry, the tiny red face collapsing into utter revulsion. I bounced around the nursery, humming to her and bringing my face close to hers, but she wanted Mommy. I wasn’t good at this yet. I hadn’t developed a rapport with her, a rhythm. With the amount of time I’d spent at work these last ten days, I was hardly different from a guy off the street. I pulled out my bag of tricks I had developed to date. I changed my tone of voice. I closed my own eyes to see if she would mimic. I cited the preamble to the Constitution. I recited her a poem I’d memorized in junior high (“It was six men of Indostan to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant though all of them were blind”). I held her up at my shoulder, in the crook of my arm, on my legs while seated. I tried a few songs I knew. “Catch” by the Cure. “The Riddle” by Five for Fighting. “Verdi Cries” by 10,000 Maniacs. All over the board, but all slow and soothing, at least when sung properly. If I was any kind of a vocalist, it might have worked, but I wasn’t, nor was my voice a source of calm to her. That, in the end, was the real problem. It wasn’t what I was saying or doing, but the fact that it was me, not Talia, saying and doing it.
And then it just happened; she ran out of steam. Her eyelids fluttered and she was asleep, her head resting in the crook of my arm. She looked like her mother, the almond shape of her eyes, the tiny nose and full lips. Asleep, at peace, she had Talia’s placid expression, too.
Time passed. Her tiny, warm body rose and fell, short breaths escaping from her mouth. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
We got two hours like that, sleeping together on the couch. I was startled awake by her stirring, a moment of panic as I realized I’d been responsible for holding her while I slept, never a good idea. My head had fallen forward during sleep, and now I had a crick in my neck as a reward.
Once Emily realized who was holding her, it was back to the horror movie. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, but I tried to sweet-talk her, which never worked on any other female in my life, so I don’t know why I thought it would now.
“I’ll take her.” Talia was at the landing, looking in on us in the family room. “You need sleep.” Her hair was all over the place and her right cheek showed a crease line from her pillow.
“You need it more,” I noted. I had no idea how she could have awakened on her own, at her level of sleep deprivation.
Emily wailed at the sound of her mother’s voice, but as soon as Talia had expertly scooped her from my lap, the cry shut off in an instant, like an alarm clock after hitting the snooze button.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.
Talia kissed Emily’s forehead and tucked her into the nape of her neck. “She just doesn’t know you yet, that’s all. She will.” She put her hand on my cheek. “She will, Jase.”
8
I LEFT HOME THAT MORNING ESTIMATING THAT COURT
would adjourn early on Friday, and that I’d be able to hit the road with Talia and Emily by no later than five to go to her parents. Evening rain was predicted, she’d told me, so the earlier the better.
Court actually adjourned even earlier than that. Chris Moody, re-directing Joey Espinoza, had wanted to run through the recorded conversations of Hector several times, stopping at various intervals to ask Joey, “Did it sound to you like the defendant was joking
there
? Did
that
sound like sarcasm?” That kind of thing. But I made the point that Joey had testified on cross-examination yesterday that they sometimes misunderstood each other’s sarcastic exchanges, so how could Joey really say if Hector was kidding or not? It became enough of a distraction that Chris Moody dropped it altogether, opting to make his pitch in closing argument.
When Chris Moody sat down, he looked awful. He’d had a rough night, I imagined. His star witness hadn’t done well, and there wasn’t a whole lot he could do to rehabilitate him. This case was far more important to him than it was to anyone else in the courtroom, save Hector. This, I assume, was going to be his crowning achievement before he went for the big bucks in a major law firm, not starting as a junior partner like me, but at the equity level, the really big bucks. But if this went the other way on him, it would be a pretty black mark. And at this point, I figured it was even money, at best, that Chris Moody would convict Hector Almundo.
After court recessed at two o’clock, we retreated to the law firm. Hector’s spirits were relatively high. Paul tried to dampen enthusiasm, but I could see it in his eyes, as well. The prosecution hadn’t proven Hector’s knowledge of, much less involvement in, this conspiracy. There was no concrete evidence that he had any idea what was taking place. Joey Espinoza simply was not credible, and the tapes reeked of staging—Espinoza forcing the conversation, discussing the topic when Hector was distracted or making it sound like a joke so Hector would agree, sarcastically. Though Paul didn’t want to raise expectations, he had to acknowledge the current state of affairs, because we were debating whether we should call any witnesses at all or just rest.
“I’ll be back Sunday,” I told him. “If you’re sure it’s okay I go.”
“It’s more than okay. It’s an order,” said Paul. “You did a great job, kid. Go have fun and we’ll talk Sunday afternoon.”
I looked at my watch. It was half past two. I still had time for one more errand before I hooked up with Talia and we drove downstate.
I drove to Liberty Park, where I knew I would find Ernesto Ramirez. I got out of my car and passed through a tall chain-link fence at a spot where someone had torn open a human-sized portion. Why rip into this fence when there was a gate just down the way? Because kids are stupid. It’s the kind of thing I did, too, when I was a kid.
I walked across the wide expanse, grass and concrete. A grown man, without a child in tow, feels funny these days walking among children in a park under any circumstances, and throw in that I was wearing a suit, and I had white skin, and I pretty much stuck out like oil on snow. I was headed for the basketball court, where I’d previously talked with Ernesto.
They’ll know,
he’d said.
Ernesto was with two other Latino men who looked to be in their mid-twenties. One of them was wearing a ripped tank top, long shorts, and court shoes. The other was scrawnier and wore an oversized shirt and blue jeans. I’d seen enough of them in my time as a prosecutor, the posture and cocky chin. Gangbangers, or I wasn’t a south-side Irishman.