2 in the Hat (11 page)

“We’re sitting on another panel today, Luther. Just follow my lead. I’ll
talk a little bit about my life, my background and my experience in the criminal justice system, how I was framed and wrongly convicted. And you can talk about your experience.”

“As a real criminal, someone rightly convicted?”

“As someone who got caught up in a bad situation and made some mistakes,” Zardino explained patiently, “but who’s turned things around. You know the spiel. The same pitch we use when we talk on the street.”

“I don’t mind telling people about the mistakes I’ve made,” Luther said. “But why should I humiliate myself in front of a bunch of suits, cops and white women social workers from Wellesley?”

“Because Mayor Dolan pays you to. Could you survive on the money you make at the Crispus Attucks?” Zardino didn’t wait for a response. “Of course not. That’s why it’s nice to have that steady income from the Street Saviors. Did I mention the health insurance? We can’t lose sight of the big picture. We just need to play the game and sometimes that involves being Dolan’s poster boys. Today could be good for your career. A lot of those white women from Wellesley are college professors. You impress them, they might have you back to talk to their classes or to professors at a faculty training.”

“Sounds like you’ve got the routine down.”

“You know my lawyer, the one who got me out of jail?” Zardino asked.

“The one from Harvard Law School? Sonya Jordan?”

“When I first got out, she used her connections to get me speaking gigs—conferences for lawyers and judges, college and law school classes. I even did some TV and radio interviews. She’s not just some ham-n-kegger trying to make a quick buck. She wanted to let the world know that there are people who have been wrongly convicted. It was a way for me to tell my story. That’s why the mayor hired me.”

“And you get paid for all these gigs?”

“Sometimes. Usually I get a sandwich and a bag of chips. But I let people know this can happen when people abuse the system. It’s everyone’s nightmare, getting convicted of a crime you didn’t commit. I’ll tell you something else. You should see how the women act after I tell my story. At least one good thing came out of my nightmare. My plight is a chick magnet.”

“I’m all set with the chicks. I want to know how I’m going to follow your act. My story’s not heartbreaking. Remember, I
did
commit the crime. I hurt someone, Richard. I put him in a wheelchair. I went to prison. A lot of people don’t think I was in there long enough. They figure
the man in the wheelchair is trapped in sort of a prison, so I should be there, too.”

“Your message is that you made mistakes. You did your time. And now you’re trying to keep kids from making the same mistakes. The people at this conference will want to know what it was like for you growing up in a tough neighborhood, losing your big brother the way you did, and then turning to crime yourself.”

“You have put a lot of thought into my life and the decisions I’ve made.” Luther smiled.

“See who comes to these things. See what people are interested in. You’ve got a unique story and people want to hear it. You just need the right way to tell it. The kids on the street are a tougher audience than these creampuffs.” Zardino spotted a packed Student Center just ahead of them. “These people have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a poor neighborhood, with gangs, guns and drugs. You know more about it than any of the so-called ‘experts’ in the room. You’ll be a rock star with the students, especially the
Chiquitas.”

Luther stared straight ahead at that comment. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor about women. “I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of these people,” Luther finally said.

“You’ll be fine,” Zardino said.

T
hey were crammed in a small interview room on the sixth floor of
the courthouse. Lydia Thomas was in Connie’s face, shouting. “I don’t care what kind of subpoena you served my son with. He’s not going into no grand jury!”

It was too early for this. It had been after midnight, after dogs at Simco’s for dinner, when they’d found Ellis Thomas hanging out in front of an apartment building on Magnolia Street. His crew took off when they spotted the unmarked car. But Ahearn got to Ellis and served him with a subpoena in front of the whole neighborhood.

Fatigue from his late nights and crazy mornings with uncooperative witnesses was starting to set in. Connie and Mark Greene hadn’t counted on Ellis Thomas showing up this morning with his mother. His angry mother. But since she was there, he knew it was best for her to let it out. Then, maybe he could reason with her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he has to go in there and tell us what he knows about this case,” Connie said.

“He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t see anything. He wasn’t there.” Ellis was slouched in his chair, sullen and silent. Mrs. Thomas reached over and pulled her son by his red-and-black Avirex shirt, forcing him to sit up straight. “Tell them, Ellis.”

Connie spoke up before Ellis could say anything. “We have a witness who says he was there.”

“Your witness is lying. Ellis was home with me that night.”

“Ellis admitted to us last night that he was there.”

“He was mistaken.”

“No one’s mistaken. Our other witness is not lying,” Mark Greene interrupted her. “Your son saw everything.”

“Who the hell are you?” she took a step toward him.

“Mark Greene. I’m the detective investigating this shooting.”

“Well,
detective
, we’re not in a police station, are we?” She stood over him. She was a tall woman, imposing. “We’re in a courthouse. So, unless you’re a lawyer, I suggest you stay out of this conversation. I don’t even know why you’re in this room.”

“Because I asked him to be here,” Connie said.

“Well, Mr. Darget,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, “my son was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. You’ve been trying to interrogate him in this room all morning. Why haven’t you brought him to the grand jury so he can tell
them
he didn’t see anything?”

“Because I don’t want him to make the mistake of going in there and lying. Miss Thomas, I want us all to talk this through first. If you’d take a seat we can try to figure out what to do here.” Connie pulled out the chair next to Ellis.

“I don’t need to sit. And I don’t need to figure nothing out.”

“Please, ma’am?” Connie tried a soothing tone. “I need to know what he saw. Then we can make sure he’s safe.”

“You can’t do anything to keep him safe. You gonna ride the bus with him every day? You gonna walk him to the corner store when he want a bag of chips? These kids are vicious. They kill you for no good reason.”

She was right. There really wasn’t much he could do for her son. If these gangbangers wanted to get to her and her son, they could.

“My office has access to witness protection funds,” Connie said. “It’s nothing like federal witness protection, but we can help move you to an apartment or a housing development in another neighborhood.”

“So you want
us
to pack up and move out because of these thugs? You think that will make the neighborhood safer? You be giving them the power. You think they don’t have ways of finding us? No, Mr. Darget, I lived in that neighborhood my whole life. We are not moving.”

“What do you think it does when people hide in their houses and pretend
they didn’t see anything? These kids know that the adults are scared of them. If you really want to change the neighborhood, someone has to be the first to stand up.”

“I know that, Mr. Darget. I’m no fool. I know what it will take to bring these kids down. If I witnessed the incident, I would be testifying in front of that grand jury right now. But this is my only child. From the day he was born, it was just the two of us. I swore I would protect him. I will not let him bear the burden of saving our neighborhood. He’s too young to carry that responsibility.”

“Miss Thomas,” Connie said, “the grand jury is a secret proceeding. It’s not open to the public like a regular courtroom. No judge sitting, no defense attorneys. It would just be me and Ellis in there. I would ask him questions and he would answer them. He’d only be in there ten, fifteen minutes, and it would be over.”

“Mr. Darget, I know there’s one more person in that courtroom. Nothing is secret in there. There’s a court reporter who takes down every word. Am I right?” Lydia Thomas asked. “And she type it out for the world to see. She put my boy’s name on the first page. She write his name before every word he speaks.”

“No one will have access to the grand jury minutes.”

“Don’t try to play me. I seen your ‘secret grand jury minutes.’ I seen them plastered on doors and hallways and telephone poles in my neighborhood. The kids call them black and whites. They pass them around whenever they get them from their lawyers.”

Greene shifted in his chair. What she said was 100 percent true.

“Mr. Darget. If my son goes in there and testifies, he will be marked for death.”

“We can get a protective order from a judge,” Connie argued. “No one sees the grand jury minutes unless we charge someone. That’s the only time I have to turn them over to the defense. Then I can ask the judge to order the defense attorney not to make any copies. I can have it ordered that he not give a copy to the defendant.”

“So you want me to put my son’s fate in the hands of a lawyer?” She gave a short laugh. “I’m supposed to trust that some defense attorney is going to follow a court order and not turn over a copy of my son’s testimony to his client? What happen if that attorney says his secretary
accidentally
sent a copy to his client? I tell you what happen. He apologize to the court and that will be the end of it. And my son’s testimony, his ‘secret’ testimony, will be out there.”

“Most attorneys are honest and respect the court’s orders. If you’re worried about it, I can also redact your son’s name out of the grand jury minutes that I turn over. I will black out every reference to his name before I turn anything over to the defense. We’ll be covered even if we’re dealing with an unethical defense attorney.”

Mrs. Thomas stared at Connie. For the first time all morning it looked like he had her thinking. He needed to act fast and stay on her.

“Ma’am, this is your chance, your son’s chance, to make a difference in your neighborhood, the neighborhood you grew up in. Your chance to take it back. What if we were able to rally some of your neighbors to stand behind you and Ellis when it comes time for him to testify at trial? We’ve done it before. I’m glad you don’t want to run from these kids. It’s more effective if we can get the whole community to stand up. They’ll learn not to mess around in your neighborhood.”

“So they just move on to another neighborhood and terrorize them?”

“If they do, we’ll follow them and try to get those people to fight them the same way you did. If everyone stands up to them, they’ll eventually have no place to go. The first thing we need to do is hold them accountable for shooting Tracy Ward.”

“No black and whites floating around?”

“Court ordered, and redacted. And I’ll get people in your neighborhood to show their support for what you and Ellis are doing.”

Lydia Thomas sank into the chair Connie had provided for her. She took a deep breath. She brought her hands to her face and started to cry.

She was going to let her boy testify.

Connie felt the cold wave of responsibility roll over him. He had promised a woman he would keep her son safe. He needed to deliver on that promise.

M
assachusetts Avenue was crowded with students. Sleep savored
the stroll through his favorite section of the city. He had enjoyed his visit to Boston College—such trusting youngsters there—but Chestnut Hill was so inconvenient, nothing more than a glorified section of Brighton, the forgotten stepchild of Boston. The neighborhood was tough to get to, plagued with tight, crowded one-way streets that were difficult to maneuver, and it was nearly impossible to find a parking spot—not an insignificant detail for what Sleep was trying to accomplish.

But the BC campus had served its purpose. It had pulled the police attention away from his favorite part of the city, the neighborhoods around the Fens, with so many schools, so many beautiful couples. This section of Mass Ave. near the Christian Science Park was a magnet for students from Northeastern, Berkeley School of Music, and the New England Conservatory. Even those from BU and BC managed to find their way to this Mecca of youth and beauty.

He continued on toward Commonwealth Avenue, looking in the windows of the many restaurants and bars along the way, dodging skateboarders whizzing by. Sleep was overwhelmed by the number of people basking in the sun, enjoying what was sure to be one of the last warm days before the fall settled in in earnest. All these fresh faces, young people experiencing the best time of their lives. Time could stop for them.
They could spend eternity as they were, enjoying the company of a young lover, flirting, teasing, anticipating the moment when the two would become one. He could give them that gift.

Sadly, there were too many for him to attend to. He had to be selective, careful. Sleep would never just take them off the street, not without a plan. Not anymore. He had only done that the one time, the first time. It was a foolish risk he had taken. He was lucky he hadn’t been caught. But he didn’t regret having done it. Now he understood that he needed to know more about them, to study them, to learn their habits, prepare and patiently wait for the right moment, just as he had done at the football game last weekend. That had seemed risky, but he had planned. He was prepared to drive away if things weren’t perfect, but everything had worked out fine.

Sleep stopped when he reached Newbury Street. The memories of that first night came back to him in a rush as he stood on the corner, and for a moment he had difficulty breathing. Then he remembered something from high school football after wind sprints. He put his hands on his hips and raised his head to open his airway and breathed. He knew why he had come, but he wanted to take his time, savor every moment. He waited for the light to turn, then crossed to the other side of Mass Ave. and began his trek down Newbury. To the spot where it all began. Maybe he would get lucky and see
her
working in the shop.