Pirate dreamed about God. God thundereth marvellously with his voice. Pirate heard God’s thundering in his dreams and was not afraid. Why? Because great things doeth he, which we can-not comprehend. For he saith to the snow, Be thou on earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength. The great rain of his strength: Pirate slept to the sound of the great rain, God driving the deluge on and on. Picturing God was easy—a whirlwind with an unseen face inside. It poured and poured but Pirate was warm and dry on his bunk.
“Hey, you alive in there? Wake fuckin’ up.”
Pirate rolled over, sat up, saw the big guard with the modified dreads, whose normal voice was soft, but not today.
“And put that goddamn patch on. No one wants to look at you like that.”
Pirate felt around on the bunk, found the patch. Sometimes it slipped off in the night; that had never been a problem with anyone before.
“Come on, shake a leg,” said the guard, still sounding angry, maybe even angrier.
Pirate got his patch in place. “I didn’t put in for it,” he said.
“What you talkin’ about?”
“Protective custody. I don’t want it.”
“Protective custody? Shit. Get a move on.”
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“Where?” said Pirate. “Where am I going?”
“Court. Forgot your own hearing?”
“I didn’t, uh—”
“Move, for Christ’s sake. It’s a long drive.”
“Where, um—”
“Belle Ville—where d’you think?”
“Leaving the . . . the building?”
“Goin’ senile or something?”
Leaving the building: this was bad. Pirate didn’t even like leaving his cell without the tiny weapon. “Need a minute,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Just to, uh, clean up a little.”
“Clean up? Ain’t no job interview.”
Pirate’s hands got unsteady. This was bad. All he wanted was to be at peace. Then he had a thought. “Respect for the court,” he said.
The guard gazed at him. This wasn’t one of the hard-ass guards, but his gaze today was hard-ass as the most hard-ass. “One minute,”
he said, and moved down the block.
Pirate took less than half of that to get the tiny weapon from the secret hideout and stick it in place; cutting himself just the lit-tlest bit on account of that unsteadiness in his hands. He was at the soup-bowl-size sink, splashing cold water on his face—there was no hot—when the guard returned. The door slid open.
“Raise ’em up,” said the guard.
Pirate raised his arms, spread his legs, exposed his anus, went through the whole routine.
“Move.”
Pirate picked up his Bible.
“Who said anything about that?”
“Just my Bible.”
The guard made a move to grab it, a move that slowed down, became a more respectful taking. He held Pirate’s Bible by the spine, gave a shake. Nothing fell out; the gold tassel looped free, that was all. The guard handed back the Bible.
They walked down the block, past the rat cages.
“Adios,” said one of the rats.
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Adiós
meant good-bye; also had God in it. Pirate was still thinking about that—the guard on his blind side, but there was nothing Pirate could do—when they left the block, crossed a patch of dirt near the kitchens and entered a room Pirate had never seen.
More guards. Some Pirate knew and some he didn’t, but all were at their meanest. Why?
“What’s he’s got there?”
“Bible.”
“Who said he gets to take that?”
The guards looked at one another. A phone call went out somewhere; Pirate thought he heard the words “warden’s office.” His Bible must have been important if the warden was getting involved. Word came back.
“Bible okay, but it can’t be in his possession until transfer to court custody.”
A guard took the Bible. Then they handcuffed him, hooked the cuffs to a waist chain, shackled his ankles.
“See you soon, Pirate,” a guard said.
Pirate shuffled out a door, across another dirt patch, into the back of a white van with DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS on the side.
The double doors closed. Bolts clicked into place. The van started rolling, the driver and two guards, one with the Bible, in front, Pirate alone in back. There were two small windows and soon Pirate caught a glimpse of countryside going by, his first glimpse of countryside since . . . since the only other time he’d been outside the walls, the brief hospital visit after Esteban Malvi scooped out his eye. Pirate watched the countryside through the small windows. Once he spotted a woman in shorts and a T-shirt, walking by the side of the road.
He kept a lookout for more to appear, but none did. After a while, he fell asleep. The sound of great rain rose up all around.
“Hey. Wake up.”
Pirate opened his eye. The van wasn’t moving. One of the guards stood before him.
“On your feet.”
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Pirate rose, checking that his patch was in place. He shuffled to the open doors, sat on the edge of the steel floor, bumping down awkwardly—he felt a tiny stab in his non-eye—swung his feet outside and slid down, stumbling, but not falling, as he landed on the pavement of a parking lot.
“Move.”
Pirate walked across the parking lot, a guard on either side. They went down some steps, through a basement doorway, into a room with two cells at the back, both empty.
“Inside.”
Pirate went into one of the cells. The door closed. Keys jingled, locking him in. The guards left the room. Pirate sat on a bunk, much like his own. He smelled coffee, real brewed coffee, not far away.
Pirate hadn’t drunk real brewed coffee in twenty years. He took a deep deep breath.
A door opened.
People came in: his two guards in their tan uniforms, some others in blue; and behind them someone he knew—the woman with the amazing skin. Susannah, her last name almost coming to him. She walked right over to his cell.
“Hello Mr. DuPree. Everything all right?”
“Hi, Miss, uh, Susannah.”
All at once her eyes narrowed. She whirled around, faced those guards and cops. “Why is he shackled?” she said.
A man in blue, three yellow stripes on his sleeve, said, “Standard procedure.”
“It may be standard procedure here, Sergeant, but it’s also entirely discretionary, according to state code. I want them off—cuffs, shackles, chain.”
“Can’t do that,” said the sergeant.
“Plus we have some normal clothes for him. My client is not appearing in court attired in this prejudicial way.”
Pirate didn’t know what that last sentence meant, but he liked the effect she was having on all these officers of the law. They were frowning, turning red, puffing out their chests; he almost laughed out
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loud. And maybe he did, just a little, because an officer of the law or two shot him a look, quick and nasty.
Then came a long silence. Pirate was familiar with silences like this, had witnessed plenty in the last twenty years: whoever spoke first lost.
The sergeant said, “Someone go get the chief.”
A minute or
two later, the chief appeared. Pirate wouldn’t have guessed that, expected a chief to be dressed in a fancy uniform, while this man wore a gray business suit; but everyone called him chief, so Pirate knew. The chief was trim and broad-shouldered, not as big as Pirate; one of those handsome types with some Cajun blood, dark-haired and dark-eyed. People were explaining things to him. The chief listened, his eyes on Pirate. All at once Pirate remembered that brown-eyed gaze, seemingly sympathetic, remembered who this was, remembered a detective named Jarreau. And now: the chief?
The room went quiet. The chief spoke. “No shackles,” he said.
“No cuffs. He can wear street clothes, but go through them first. Two court officers behind him at all times.” The chief turned to Susannah.
“Good enough?” he said.
“Thanks,” Susannah said.
“It’s discretionary, as you say,” the chief said. “Anything else?”
“I’d like a few minutes alone with my client.”
“Stay as long as you want,” the chief said, “but a court officer is here at all times.”
Susannah gave the chief a long look but didn’t argue. Everyone except one uniformed man went away. The uniformed man sat on a stool in the corner. Susannah approached the cell.
“Can’t be in contact range with the prisoner,” the guard said.
Susannah stopped about three feet from the bars.
“How are you, Mr. DuPree?”
“Um,” said Pirate. “You know.”
“You must have a lot of questions.”
There was always that one question: Why did God pick on Job in the first place? But other than that, Pirate couldn’t think of any.
“About the hearing, for example?” Susannah said.
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“Yeah, the hearing,” said Pirate.
“First, I don’t want you to be nervous.”
“I’m not,” Pirate said, which wasn’t true: thoughts about Esteban Malvi and the Ocho Cincos kept coming, unstoppable.
“Good,” she said. “You won’t be required to say a word. I’ll be sitting with you the whole time. As for what to expect, there’s no telling.
My customary advice in these situations is to expect the worst.”
“No problem,” said Pirate.
Susannah gazed at him for a moment, then went on, but suddenly distracted again by the beauty of her skin, so soft and glowing, he missed most of what she said, just catching the last few words:
“ . . . haven’t been able to find out what it means, if anything.”
“What what means?” said Pirate.
“This last-minute change in judges,” Susannah said. “That I’ve been explaining.”
“How many judges are there?” Pirate said, a little embarrassed, wanting her to know he was interested in what she had to say.
“How many judges?”
“Like nine or something?”
“Nine?” Susannah laughed. “Are you talking about the Supreme Court?”
Pirate didn’t like that laugh. All of a sudden he was seeing flaws in her skin, or flaws that could be there with a little help. He said nothing.
The laughter left her face. “There’s just one judge,” she said. “The judge on the schedule—a good ol’ boy apparently, but with a decent reputation—got pulled for some reason and we don’t know much about the replacement.”
“Never got along with good ol’ boys,” Pirate said.
“Then maybe this is a lucky break,” Susannah said. “The replacement’s certainly no good ol’ boy—she’s black, for starters.”
That wasn’t good either.
And young, besides.
That was the first thing Pirate noticed when they led him into the courtroom. Pirate found himself blinking, even
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though it wasn’t very bright. Then, as the blurriness cleared, he saw the judge, sitting up high with that hammer thing—name escaping him at the moment—beside her. The judge looked about Susannah’s age, but not so friendly. She saw Pirate following Susannah to one of the two long tables in front, Bible in hand, and frowned. Pirate began to change his mind about protective custody.
He sat down, feeling strange in regular clothes: a suit, in fact, brown, with a white shirt and a beige tie. Pirate had never actually owned a suit, not if a suit meant the pants matching the jacket. He’d once had a purple jacket with silver buttons; in fact, it hit him at that moment, he’d been wearing that purple jacket the last time he was arrested.
“You all right?” said Susannah.
“Uh-huh.”
“I want you to meet,” she began, and then introduced the man sitting on Pirate’s other side, a Jewish-sounding name that Pirate didn’t quite catch.
“Hold on tight,” said the man.
Did he mean the Bible? Pirate had it in his usual grip, loose, fingering the gold tassel. He glanced around, saw lots of people sitting in back, a few still coming in. And one of those—a tanned, in-shape-looking woman, older than Susannah but just as pretty, in a softer, better way—he recognized. Pirate had seen her only once, and that was twenty years ago, but he would never forget that face, not so soft, on second thought. Oh, no. She was the woman who’d sat in the witness chair—in this very courtroom?—pointed right at him and said he was the one. But he wasn’t the one; and the whole thing came flooding back: how he’d been down in a holding cell, still in that purple jacket, waiting to get bailed out on an everyday B&E he’d done, maybe unwisely, on the spur of the moment, when the next thing he knew he was upstairs getting asked about the Parish Street Pier, where he’d never been, and somebody named Johnny Blanton, who he’d never heard of. He didn’t do it, didn’t kill Johnny Blanton, had still to this day not yet killed anyone in his life. The woman—he’d forgotten her name—met his gaze, then quickly looked away. Oh, yes.
At that moment, starting to get wound up like he hadn’t been for a
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long time, Pirate remembered how hard he’d worked to be at peace.
He turned around, opened the Bible in his lap.
For he saith to the snow, Be thou on earth; likewise to the small
rain, and to the great rain of his strength.
“Are you all right?” Susannah said.
Pirate nodded, kept reading.
“This court is now in session. All rise.”
Pirate rose with the others, sat down when they sat down. Things started happening, but Pirate’s mind was elsewhere. He could tell from the tones of all the voices that a big argument was going on. A little guy with a mustache who kept stabbing with his finger wanted to keep him in prison. Susannah’s Jewish buddy wanted to get him out. They fought about the tape. They fought about Napoleon Ferris.
Someone from FEMA, whatever that was, took the stand. A fight broke out about how the tape got found, then about whether this FEMA guy knew someone at the Justice Project. And had he also once been busted by a cop named Bobby Rice? So was this all about getting revenge on Bobby Rice? But what sense would that make? said the Jew, real sarcastic: Bobby Rice was already dead before the tape got found. Did you ever consider it might be a plot against the whole department? said the finger stabber, even more sarcastic. The fighting moved on. Someone else took the stand. Was it true that there was tension in the department between the chief and his deputy? Voices rose. Pirate lost interest.