They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee (10 page)

When she stepped in, tears were running down her cheeks. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. There are certain hurts for which an apology is an insult. I dropped to my knees and pressed the side of my face to her belly. She ran her fingers through what was left of my gray hair. She kissed the top of my head before dropping down to her knees. Once we kissed, we could not stop. And not for a sec ond did I think of John Francis MacClough hiding there in my closet.

The Baby Jesus at Christmastime

She wouldn't let me explain about the night before. Kira understood about demons. Most of the time, she said, we speak for them. Sometimes they speak for us. And when she swore she didn't hate me, I nearly believed her.

She got curious about my leaving town for the day, but I deflected her questions. If MacClough hadn't been in the closet, I might have told Kira about our day trip to meet with Valencia Jones. But MacClough could be a security freak. As he didn't want me to tell my own brother details of what we were doing, I didn't figure he'd be happy with me telling Kira. I held her for a moment and sent her on her way.

Closing one door, I opened another.

“I admire you, John. It takes balls to come out of the closet so late in life.”

“Start running!” He took out his .38. “I'll give you a five minute head start. It'll take me that long to get the feeling back in my legs.”

“Stop complaining. I'm going to take a shower.”

“The only thing I'm complaining about is that I couldn't watch. Next time,” he winked, “I'm hiding behind the curtains. She sounds unbelievable, but you disappointed me, Klein. You didn't beg once or squeal like a pig.”

“Fuck you.”

“So,” he wondered, putting away his pistol, “what was that all about?”

I handed MacClough the newspaper article about Steven Markum's death. I stood by for a second as he read through it.

“Mr. Vodka and I took it out on her. We didn't quite tear her heart out, but it wasn't for lack of effort.” I stepped into the bathroom.

“Jews can't drink,” he shouted through the door. “Don't you know that yet?”

“Try explaining that to my Uncle Saul.”

“Coffee and sponge cake, that's how your people punish themselves. Besides, you didn't get this kid killed.”

I turned the water on full blast to drown out MacClough's voice. I wasn't ready to hear his “It wasn't your fault” lecture. Not yet.

I rolled over and looked at the clock. I cursed MacClough's birth and answered the phone. It was one of those automated voices reminding me it was time to get up. I told the voice to stick something up its mechanical ass, but it insisted upon repeating itself.

“Room 8, in accordance with your request, this is your 4:45
AM
wake-up call. It has been our pleasure to serve you. Press the pound sign if you wish this call to be repeated in ten minutes. Room 8, in accordance...”

It might have been my request, but it was MacClough's idea. My only consolation was that John himself was already up, out, and on the road. I emptied my bladder, brushed my teeth, and struggled to get dressed. I threw on MacClough's ancient peacoat and a ski cap and left the Old Watermill via a side exit. I found his rented car parked at the curb. There was a road map on the front passenger seat. MacClough had marked in red a rest stop along the interstate. I checked my watch. I had an hour and a half to get there.

I was on my second cup of coffee when he walked up to my table.

“You look better in that coat than I do,” I said. “Wanna trade?”

I had asked him that question in one form or another at least once a winter for the last ten years. He always said no. He had kept his peacoat for over three decades, since his dis charge from the Navy. And like my motorcycle jacket, his peacoat represented something to him that wasn't easily explained. It was more than nostalgia or aesthetics. It was as if part of his being was stored in the coat itself. I don't know, it was sort of like how a kid feels about a baby blanket.

“Keep it,” he answered. “Come on, we gotta go.”

I nearly spit coffee through my nose.

The trial was being held in Mohawkskill, NewYork, a funky little town just across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont. Mohawkskill, NewYork resembled the part of the state I grew up in about as much as Bobo Dioulasso resembled Beijing. One thing I noticed right away, there weren't many Mohawks in Mohawkskill. There weren't many Blacks or Asians or Latinos either. And for some odd reason, I got the feeling that there wasn't much of a push to place a menorah on the village green next to the baby Jesus at Christmastime. Go ahead, call me a cynic, but I was having some difficulty believing that a young African American woman, the daughter of a murdered drug kingpin, apprehended with a large quantity of hallucinogenic chemicals in her BMW, was going to find a jury of peers, let alone a sympathetic ear, in Mohawkskill.

“So,” I spoke up, “how did our clothes and car swapping charade go?”

“Fine. I felt like I was in a conga line,” he laughed. “They all followed your car like good little soldiers. Imagine their surprise when I pulled to the side of the road and took your coat off. I started stretching and turned right around so they could all get a good look at my face.”

“They probably felt like they got caught jacking off in the bathroom by their mothers.”

“Klein, you got a way with words.”

We pulled into the county jail parking lot and headed-on upstairs. If the staff wasn't exactly friendly, they were, at least, cooperative. They seemed less emotionally invested in Valencia Jones' fate than the folks in Riversborough. But when we met the county prosecutor outside the visitors' area, I realized I was wrong. This guy was out for blood.

“Mr. MacClough, Mr. Klein, I'm A.D.A. Bob Smart,” he said, shaking our hands without enthusiasm.

Bob Smart was a rotund little man with cruel eyes, thick lips, and a bad comb-over hairdo. He had pudgy, sweaty hands and a wardrobe that would have been tasteless in the '70s. He would have been easy to dismiss, but I had seen his type operate before. He practically begged you to underestimate him and, if you did, he'd eat you for lunch.

“Can I ask you gentlemen what this meeting is about?”

“Well, Mr. Smart,” MacClough began, “it's—”

“Why,” I wondered, cutting Johnny off, “isn't Miss Jones' attorney here?”

“I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Klein,” Smart dropped his friendly voice. “You'll have to ask Miss Jones. Let me repeat my initial question.”

“No need for that,” MacClough turned on the charm, “we have no wish to interfere with your case. I have all the confidence in the world that you'll prove Miss Jones to be guilty as sin. We're here because Mr. Klein is researching a book on Miss Jones' late father, Raman Jones.”

I improvised. “I'm going to call it
The Iceman Goeth.
”

“I like it,” Smart approved. He nodded to the guard. “Go on in. You've got fifteen minutes.” We did the handshake thing again. He mentioned that he'd look for my book on the shelves. We watched him waddle down the hall.

“You think he bought it?” I whispered.

“Not for a second, but he couldn't really stop us. And next time, let me do all the talking to the D.A. You almost blew it with that question about Jones', lawyer.”

“How?”

“Later.”

We were patted down and ushered into a drab room with barred windows. Everything, from the chairs to the ashtray on the table, was bolted and/or welded down. Valencia Jones was led into the room by a female guard through a thick metal door. She was pushed into her chair and her right leg was cuffed to the chair leg.

“There is to be no physical contact with the prisoner,” the guard instructed. “I'll be right outside that door. If you need me, there's a call button under the table.” She checked her watch. “Fifteen minutes and counting.”

Valencia Jones wasn't beautiful nor was she as plain as her newspaper pictures. She was a medium girl: medium height, medium weight, medium. She had skin the color of dark coffee and sad, sad eyes. If I were facing ten to twenty-five years in a state prison, I, too, would have sad eyes. The rest of her face told no tales. Her expression remained blank until the guard was fully out of the room.

“You look like Zak,” she smiled. Then, catching herself, went back into her shell.

She had answered my question without it even being asked.

“Your lawyer told you why we're here?” MacClough half asked, half stated.

“You the man?” Jones sneered at MacClough.

“Yeah, I used to be a cop. I used to chase your father around.”

“Fuck my father!” Tears poured out of her. “Do you think if my father had been a dentist or a Yale professor that I would be here now, tethered to a chair like a wild animal? My father's the reason I'm here.”

“Your father's not the one who got caught smuggling the felony weight drugs. You were.”

“You know, Mr. MacClough, I spent my life trying to deny my blackness. But when you're in here, that's impossible. You told my lawyer that you were looking for Zak and that you might be able to help me. So far all I hear is that you sound like every other cop. You talk about my father and you think I'm guilty.”

“You're not guilty?” I asked.

“No, sir,” she said to me, “I am not. But if you're going to ask me how the drugs got in my car, I can't tell you. If you expect me to prove my innocence to you, I can't. All I know is that Zak believed in me enough to ask his father to represent me.”

MacClough and I were dumbfounded. “Zak asked my brother to represent you?”

“He did, but Zak's dad gave him some nonsensical answer. Zak said that his dad was just afraid to handle my kind of case. I was the wrong color and drug defendants are politically unpopular. Bad for the firm's image, you know. Zak told me he would never forgive his father. I can understand that.”

“How do you know Zak?” I shifted gears slightly.

“We met at a party during my first term. I was kind of over to one corner, drinking a beer by myself. I think he felt sorry for me. I didn't care. I was just happy to have someone to talk to. He was really sweet and charming and funny. He was different, you know, not macho, not interested in impressing me or anything. We dated for a few months. We even lived together for a week,” she laughed. “That went kind of rough, so we chilled for a while.”

“Did you get back together?”

“Didn't get the chance.” She tugged on her jail fatigues. “Zak and I thought it was a good idea to give it a rest for a few weeks. We agreed to talk about it as soon as we got back from Spring break. He flew back home a couple of days early and I went skiing before driving to Conn—”

“Skiing!” MacClough perked up.

“Yes, skiing.” She was indignant. “All the basketball courts were taken.”

“That's not what he means,” I interrupted. “Were you arrested on your way back from skiing?”

“I was.”

“And if I guess where it was you went skiing, will you promise to have a little hope?”

“You ever been chained to a chair, Mr. Klein? It's hard to have hope when you're chained to a chair.”

“Point well taken.” I paused. “Cyclone Ridge.”

She didn't react at all the way I had expected. “So what?” she said. “You could've found that out fifty different ways. You could have read it in the paper.”

“The point is that he didn't,” MacClough jumped to my defense.

“Don't you think my lawyer sent an investigator up there? They didn't find anything. What do you think you'll find almost a year after the fact?”

“Show her the paper,” John gestured to me.

I unfurled a copy of the Riversborough Gazette article about Steven Markum's death. “Recognize him?”

Her eyes got wide. “He was . . .” She choked up. “He was the valet.”