Limitations (10 page)

About to reach for the phone again, George is surprised by a squall of angry voices resounding from the corridor. John and Cassie look into his chambers from their small adjoining office, then run for the hall. George follows. Dineesha is there too. Abel is having words with a man. He looks close to thirty and is, as they say, ‘g’d up’ in full banger regalia: shiny white starter jacket, sagging trousers, rows, and a derringer-size pistol in gold around his neck. Urgent voices screech from the radio on Abel’s belt as the young man swats at him every time Abel reaches for him. The banger knows the part about a good offense being the best defense.

“Get yo’ fuckin’ dogs back, Chuck, otherwise they gone be some drama.”

The elevator dings, and two more khaki officers come tearing down the marble corridor. In an instant, another car delivers three additional members of Court Security. All have their radios on at full volume, and the young man is quickly surrounded and cuffed.

“I asked him ten times what he was doing here,” Abel tells Murph Jones, a tall black man who is Marina’s second in command.

“I was lookin’ for the baf’room,” the guy in cuffs responds.

“Plenty of men’s rooms downstairs,” Abel says. Access to the appellate court’s separate elevators is restricted, with khaki guards requiring ID in the lobby from anyone trying to go up. But the stairwells on either side of the building are open because of the fire code. Strangers, including many who look like this young man, are walking around up here all the time, even ambling down the judges’ private corridor.

“It’s a crowd down there,” he says. During the 10:00 A.M. court calls, the lower floors housing the criminal courtrooms teem like a rush-hour bus station. “I gotta go.”

“And what brought you downstairs?” Murph asks.

“You know, man. Got a turnout. On a case.” He means he has a required court appearance on a pending charge. The point is to be sure he hasn’t skipped bail.

“What kind of beef?” Murph asks.

“Some rudipoop 323. I ain’ gone catch no bit for it.” Mob Action is the violation he’s referring to. Living while being a banger. Men on a corner representing, or cruising a drive-by. The cops grab them to prevent trouble, but the charges never stick, just as this young fellow has said.

“Take him down,” Murph says.

“Oh, man,” the banger answers. “Ain’t that America or what? Gone get rolled up for goin’ tinkle.”

They’ll hold him most of the day, but if everything checks out, they’ll have to let him go, probably by nightfall. Four of the khaki officers take hold of the young man but do not get far down the corridor. They are halted by the arrival of Marina, who holds up a hand to signal that she is taking over, even as she’s dashing forward with a surprisingly athletic bound. When she gets to George, she asks if he is okay.

“Nothing happened to me,” George says. “Abel’s the hero.” He was sprier than George had expected.

“Punk like that,” Abel says but doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I don’t like this, Judge,” Marina says after she’s been briefed. “I’m thinking Corazon.” She’s lowered her voice so that the banger, a distance down the hall, cannot hear her, but the name George has asked her not to mention is still audible to his staff arrayed along the wall. Listening, Dineesha, John, Cassie, Marcus, the courtroom bailiff all look up at the same time.

“Marina, that kid is black. He’s not courted in to ALN. Did you see a star, Abel?” All jumped-in members of the Almighty Latin Nation sport a five-pointed star tattooed between the wrist and thumb.

“Saint,” Abel says. “He got the Chinese junk on his hand.” The Black Saints Disciples’ tats in the last few years have gone to Chinese characters, because the cops have a hard time telling apart the marks of one set or another.

“The Latin and black gangs-they’re oil and water,” George says.

“Come on, Judge. You know the deals the gangs make in the joint as well as I do. They trade cappings. Gives the obvious suspects an alibi when the target goes down. Corazon realizes we’d be looking for a Latino.”

Marina’s right about the gang sociology, but that doesn’t make this man Corazon’s emissary. For one thing, he was unarmed. Yet the incident is discomfiting, because the judge doubts the tale about the bathroom. The guy was up here scoping things out-but theft, rather than violence, might have been his motive, or just a renegade desire to go where he was unwelcome. Nonetheless, it’s the first vague indication that #1’s presence might reach beyond the electronic fantasyland of the Internet.

The officers have resumed leading the gang-banger away when a voice resounds from the other end of the judges’ private corridor.

“Whoa,” someone says. “Whoa. What you-all doin’ with my road dog there?”

A large figure advances confidently down the hallway. His attire is a more polished version of what the young man being held has on, the same baggies and jacket but less gold, and he sports a Lycra wig cap, similar to those worn by long-haired football players under their helmets. Dineesha makes a sound first, but George recognizes the man at almost the same moment. So does Abel, who can’t suppress a hawking groan from the back of his throat. It’s Zeke, Dineesha’s oldest son.

Zeke is still Zeke, big and affable, a gifted talker. “Hey there, Mr. Mason. Momma,” he says and manages to peck his mother’s cheek in the same motion in which he reaches for George’s hand.

“Judge,” murmurs Dineesha, correcting him, and without another word departs. Zeke watches her go with a timeworn smile. Nearly six three, he must be going close to three hundred these days. He has grown out a kinky stubble on his face as some kind of fashion statement.

The contours of Zeke’s story match fairly well with his friend’s. He accompanied this buddy, Khaleel, to the courthouse for his appearance, just to be sociable. When Khaleel couldn’t find a free spot in the crowded men’s room downstairs, Zeke directed him up here. He knows the layout of the floor, of course, from his visits to his mother.

“A little strange,” says Marina, “that you didn’t stop by to say hi to your mom.”

Zeke just laughs at that. “Don’t want to bother her when she’s workin’,” he says.

George’s pinball tilts on with that one. Zeke comes around often-too often as far as his mother’s concerned-walking through chambers and greeting everyone as if they’d been waiting for him to stop in to sign autographs. It’s obvious that Zeke sent Khaleel up here for another reason. Maybe Khaleel was supposed to see if Dineesha was working so Zeke could corner her for money, or perhaps it was to be sure she wasn’t there so Zeke could prevail on George for a favor. Or perhaps, as Marina is certain to believe, he was up to something more sinister. It doesn’t matter. The two men have their stories down, leaving no real basis to hold either. Not that that would stop Marina’s people or anybody else in law enforcement from locking them up for a while anyway, in other circumstances. But now the two are no longer simply badass bangers. Zeke is somebody’s child. The cuffs are removed, and the two friends amble off down the corridor, clearly pleased with themselves.

“You know what I’m thinking,” Marina says to George. He lets her lay it out once he’s motioned his staff to go back inside. Corazon found Zeke through the gang networks she described before, and Zeke was here to direct a surveillance on George, planning for some event. “Let’s check up on both of them,” Marina says quietly to Murph before she departs.

Back in George’s chambers, there are no voices amid a funereal mood of fear and sympathy for Dineesha. She has deserted her desk. George thinks she may have slipped out or is in with Cassie and Banion, but he finds her inside the door to his private chambers, sitting alone in a straight-backed chair. She has a hankie in her hand, but the crying for now appears to be over.

“Judge, I am so sorry.”

“For what? He didn’t do anything.”

She answers with a look.

George still regards Marina’s theory of gang alliances as fanciful. But there is no denying that Zeke deserves to be a suspect in his own right. There’s no limit to what Zeke knows about George, both through their contacts over the years as lawyer and client, and far more, from what he hears through his mother. Who knows which of the eternal resentments always seething in Zeke might have spurred an effort to intimidate George? Some theory that George has misused Dineesha for the last two decades. Or yet another way for Zeke to revenge himself on her. Or some long-simmering bitch about the way George represented him. The judge knows that among the many educational projects that took Zeke nowhere in life was training as a computer programmer after his first stretch at Rudyard. If Zeke is #1, then he probably sent Khaleel up here to lift something, or to check out a piece of information Zeke would stick in his next unpleasant message.

But even were that the case, there is comfort to be taken, because George would be in absolutely no danger. Zeke is a con, a crook, an inveterate swindler whose dominating passion is to prove he can put it over on everybody else. His performance in the hallway, talking Khaleel out of handcuffs, is vintage Zeke, a moment he’ll be celebrating and recounting for days. But there’s nothing on his long sheet involving any real violence, notwithstanding the behavior of many of those with whom he’s surrounded himself. If it’s Zeke, then all of these threats are aimed at a payoff of some kind, an inventive scam he’s preparing to run. A ransom for stopping. A reward for information, or for investigative services. Some setup.

There is no telling Dineesha that Zeke had innocent motives today or that he’s not a suspect for #1. She has already assumed the worst and sits rigidly in the chair, plainly suffering.

“My own child,” she finally says to George before she gets up to return to her desk.

Not long after he leaves home Friday morning, Judge Mason concludes he’s being followed. A car, a late-model maroon DeVille, appears in his rearview mirror when he’s no more than a block away from his house and remains a few lengths behind until he reaches Independence Boulevard, the byway on which he crosses the river Kindle into the city every morning. Lots of people drive from the West Bank into the Center City at 8:30 A.M., he tells himself, and many, as he does, use surface streets to avoid the tie-ups on the highway. But when he gets a better look, the car concerns him. It’s ‘pimped out,’ as the cops would put it, with the suspension lowered and a fringe swinging in the rear window. A vapor trail has been detailed on each fender, and the auto is topped with an old-fashioned leather carriage roof in cream. Standard gangster ride. He’s a bit relieved when the Cadillac finally disappears. No more than five minutes later, it’s there again, jumping in and out of lanes a quarter of a block behind him.

He turns down the radio so he can concentrate and moves into the right lane, traveling about twenty miles per hour. The Caddy slows up as well. After another couple of minutes, he hooks a right onto Washburn and shoots several blocks down the narrow streets in the neighborhood of three-flats. The DeVille is gone. But when he circles back onto Independence, the Cadillac zooms out of an alley and closes again to four or five car lengths.

A half mile farther on, the judge pulls his Lexus to the curb, and the Caddy comes to rest in a red zone a hundred feet behind. When George steals back into the traffic, the car does too. Finally, no more than three blocks from the courthouse, he stops short at a light, leaving the Cadillac without a choice about pulling up beside him.

The driver is a slick-looking young man, white or Hispanic, with black spiked hair. He’s wearing a leather vest. A portly black man in a coat and tie occupies the passenger’s seat. The young man flashes George a tidy smile and winks.

His heart gives a frightened spurt before he understands, then he flashes a quick okay sign, thumb and forefinger. But he’s burning. Unwilling to wait until he gets to chambers, he curbs the car again so he can dial the cell phone he’s borrowed from his wife.

“We had an agreement,” he tells Marina as soon as she answers her private line.

“What?”

“You made a deal with me, Marina. I was only going to be covered in the courthouse. I’ve just had two county cops riding my tail from home in a Caddy they forfeited from some dope king.”

Marina is quiet. “You weren’t supposed to pick them up.”

“In that car? It’s for undercover buys in the North End. In my neighborhood, they might as well have announced themselves with heralds. Really, Marina. What the hell are you up to?”

“Judge, I’m just trying to do the right thing. After those two characters showed up out in the corridor yesterday, I thought things were getting a little close for comfort. I called a pal of mine, Don Stanley, and asked them to keep an eye on you, back and forth. No details, Judge. I said we had an incident that made me a little hinky.” She’s clearly talked to Rusty, who let her know that George does not take kindly to her talking out of school. That would be particularly true about sharing information with the Kindle County cops. Rumors and gossip are traded faster than in a junior high at the police headquarters, McGrath Hall. If word gets out about #1, it would find its way quickly to a reporter.

“Marina, I’m the one who’s on the line here. And so I make the choices. When they find my body, I give you permission to hold a press conference right over the remains and say, ‘I told him so.’ ”

“Come on, Judge.”

“Marina, on my block there are nine families who’ve lived there for twenty years. We raised our kids together. We vacation together. We pick up one another’s newspapers and mail. None of us minds his own business. And there’s no way these lugs in a dope-mobile following me from home each morning-or back-aren’t going to be noticed. Tomorrow or the day after, one of my neighbors is certain to say something to Patrice.”

He struggles to rein in his temper, reminding himself that Marina’s intuition that #1 may have a bead on his house is more accurate than she knows. But the last thing he’ll do at this stage is mention that e-mail. He already has virtually no handle on her. And overnight he’s grown more settled that Zeke is the culprit. Nevertheless, he tries a more patient approach.