Slow Motion Riot (18 page)

At a quarter past ten, I see Andrea
walk into the courtroom wearing a demure white blouse and a red skirt. It's the
first time I've seen her since we slept together and she almost doesn't
recognize me because I have on a jacket and tie and my hair is neatly combed. I
put my hand on the seat next to me in the first row so she'll sit there.

She seems shy and a little distant.
"I guess I should say I'm sorry for leaving like that the other
night," she murmurs.

"I guess." She was gone
by the time the Sunday morning birds woke me up. No note, no phone call.

Now she's glancing around the
spectator section to see if anyone can hear us. Two little energetic Hispanic
boys are chasing each other between pews. "Mikey, I'm gonna kill you,
man," one tells the other. An old black woman is weeping in the fourth
row. In the back, a young white guy in a khaki suit and glasses with
tortoiseshell frames reads New York Newsday.

"I'm just not sure if I'm
ready to get serious about someone like that," she says and then
hesitates.

I don't know what "like
that" means. Is it that she's not sure she wants to get serious in a
particularly intense way? Or does "someone like that" refer to me
being just a probation officer? I'm a little pissed off, but I know I'll never
get anywhere with her by acting sour. Instead, I ask if we can have dinner and
talk it over.

"I'll get back to you on that,
Steve."

"Sure," I say, trying not
to sound too dejected.

I pan around the courtroom, looking
for a familiar face. "Where is the court liaison officer?" I ask
Andrea. "I'm not going to prosecute this violation myself. That's not my
job."

Court liaison officers act as
prosecutors at violation hearings, which are somewhat less formal than trials.
If no court liaison officer is available, regular probation officers sometimes
prosecute the cases, though I've never done that myself.

"I don't have time for
this," I say. "I'm supposed to be training with the Field Service
Unit so I can go out with them tomorrow."

"Ms. Petrocelli said she'd be
by to do this case," Andrea says.

"Shit. She hasn't even called
me to talk about it. She doesn't know what the fuck's going on."

"That's what she told me to
tell you."

More people stream through the big
oak doors to the side and fill up the spectator benches. A male and female pair
of court officers stand around comparing muscles and firearms. Most of the new
arrivals in the courtroom are defendants with family members and Legal Aid
lawyers in tow. I take Andrea's folder off her lap and start going through the
papers quickly. Then the side doors slam and several voices mumble tensely.

"Is this Darryl King?"
Andrea whispers.

He walks slowly past the wooden
balustrade right in front of us. What he wears is nothing special: a red
T-shirt, black jeans, and sneakers. But something about him puts sweat on the
back of my neck. He has the fearless "b-boy" swagger down to an art.
Other defendants swivel in their seats to look at him. He gives Andrea and me a
bored smirk as he passes the first row and turns down the center aisle. The
court officers hitch up their gun belts and try to look a little more alert. A
woman who looks like she might be his mother follows. Then comes Ross Goldfarb,
a wily old defense lawyer I know, who seems to be having a problem closing his
fly.

"You never told me why Darryl
got probation," Andrea says.

"It's the numbers. Everybody
wants numbers. Prosecutors get rated on how many cases they get convictions on,
right?"

"Of course," she says,
getting a notebook out of her bag and starting to write down what I say.

"And so do judges and defense
lawyers. So it's in everybody's interest to dispose of these cases as quickly
as they can, without going to trial. And the easiest thing to do a lot of the
time is to get the guy to take a plea, so he'll get probation and be out of
everybody's hair."

Judge Bernstein comes out of his
chambers and makes his way to the bench. He's a bent-up man in his sixties
without a hair on his head. His face, with its deep creases and broken blood
vessels, is like a map of war-torn Gaza. He wears his black-framed glasses far
down on the bridge of his nose. On the few occasions when I've stood near him,
I could swear the judge's glasses do not have lenses.

As the first case of the morning is
called, the male court officer yells at the well-dressed white man in the back
row to put down his newspaper. When he obeys, the male officer smiles at the
female officer and mutters something that sounds like, "I showed
him."

The first defendant has his case
called and steps forward with his Legal Aid lawyer. He's a short, chunky
Hispanic guy in his mid-thirties.

"Why didn't you show up for
your last hearing, Mr. Hernandez?" the judge asks.

"I had an excuse from
God," Mr. Hernandez says in a forthright voice, giving a court officer a
piece of paper to give to the judge.

"I see," Judge Bernstein
says, looking it over. "And do you have any witnesses?"

"Yes. God."

"Oh." The judge glances
around the courtroom. "Is he here?"

"Yes, Judge," Mr.
Hernandez says earnestly. "He's in my body and he's using my voice."

"And why's he doing
that?"

"He's embarrassed," Mr.
Hernandez explains. "He has a funny voice."

Jeff Washington, the judge's clerk,
is waving for me to join him at the table to the left of the bench. Jeff is a
tall, young black guy who's a sometime drinking buddy of mine. We have a steady
exchange of inside information about the courts and probation flowing back and
forth.

"We're gonna get to your case
this morning," Jeff says, laying a hand on the folder I gave him earlier.
"But the judge has gotta see a couple of people before you. All right? So
just sit tight, we'll get you in."

"No problem."

"Who's handling the
violation?"

I check the room once more. The
spectator seats are more than half full. Andrea's giving me that appraising
look again from the first row. Four rows behind her, Darryl King glowers and
folds his arms across his chest. Ms. Petrocelli, the court liaison officer,
still isn't here. "I guess I'm going to be doing it," I say.

"How interesting," Jeff
says. "Are you nervous?"

"I'm starting to be. Do
prosecutors ever get stage fright?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. It's
terrible sometimes. You want a Valium? The judge has a jarful in his
chambers."

"No thanks, I guess."

As I go back to my seat, I notice
Darryl King watching me with furious concentration. Trying to unnerve me just
by staring.

I try to smile back at him, but my
heart isn't in it. Darryl isn't the only thing bothering me. It's that I'm
going to have to make a lawyerly presentation right here and now and I don't
want to make a fool out of myself in front of everyone. Especially not in front
of Andrea. My throat starts feeling dry and parched. I could use a stiff drink
and a long smoke right now. "You all right?" I hear Andrea say.
"You look a little pale."

People are moving and talking in
front of me; I can't quite hear them. It's like watching television with the
sound turned down. The images pile on top of each other, making increasingly
less sense as you can't follow their meaning. I try rereading some of the court
documents, but that just makes things worse. The words and letters appear
backward and out of order to me. I get that old feverish panic I couldn't
control or understand when I was younger, before they told me it was dyslexia.
Everything's blurring. In the middle of the crowded courtroom, I feel
absolutely alone.

The next sound I hear clearly is
Jeff Washington calling my case. I turn and look at the clock on the back wall.
It says almost 11:30. The last time I looked, it was 10:25. Andrea touches my
arm lightly. "Good luck," she says.

I button my jacket, straighten my
tie, and stand up to approach the bench.

I stop at the district attorney's
table on the left. Sergio Rivera, the assistant district attorney handling the
regular cases this morning, steps aside to give me some room. Darryl King and
his mother are standing near the defense table with Ross Goldfarb, the lawyer.
Darryl puts his hands behind his back and crosses his wrists, assuming the
classic defendant's pose, as though he were still wearing handcuffs. Darryl's
mother searches through her handbag. "Mr. Baum," the judge says.
"You're looking very handsome today in your jacket and tie. To what do we
owe the pleasure of your formal presentation?"

Bernstein has a harsh voice; I
picture his throat being like a rusty old pipe. Everything he says has the
singsong rhythm of ancient Yiddish wisdom and a knife's edge of bitterness.

"Judge, we have a probationer
who needs to be violated here." I sound strange and disembodied, like my
mouth is on one side of the room and my ears are on the other.

The judge stops shuffling papers
and peers down his long nose at me. "What's the problem?"

"Judge, since you gave the
defendant Darryl King probation earlier this year, he has violated a number of
his conditions and I believe he is quickly moving into a high-risk category. He
has repeatedly failed to report to his assigned probation officer. When he has
reported, he has been uncooperative and he has refused to answer all reasonable
inquiries."

Darryl King makes that disgusted
ticking sound with his mouth as I pause to look at my notes again. "In
addition, Judge, the probationer here continued to associate with his original
co-defendant, a Robert Kirk, of 209 East 105th Street, and I have evidence that
Mr. King is persistently using drugs. He appears to be becoming a menace within
his own household..."

I protect Darryl's
great-grandmother's identity, as she asked me to, by not mentioning her name in
court. But I put a copy of the note she mailed me in the judge's file.

"Finally," I say,
"Mr. King was recently arrested again, this time on multiple charges
involving car theft and resisting police officers in Harlem. And... I have
reason to suspect he may be involved in much more serious criminal activities..."

Darryl whips his head around to
glare at me. I deliberately avoid meeting his eyes. I don't need to know
exactly how much he hates me right now.

The judge looks down again at the
papers on his desk. He rocks back and forth in his chair as he reads for the
next few seconds. He reminds me of the film I once saw of Orthodox Jews
davening before the Wailing Wall in Israel.

The file, which Andrea helped
assemble, includes Officer Kelly's statement, notes from my interviews with
Darryl, the formal statement of charges and the violation complaint, and an
affidavit that Andrea got from a nonpolice witness to the most recent arrest.
Goldfarb, the defense lawyer, asks if he can have a word with the judge.

I don't have enough experience to
know whether I should object to the judge and Goldfarb having a private
conference.

Goldfarb faces the bench and at one
point, he jerks his thumb over his shoulder to indicate he's talking about
Darryl and me. I can't hear a word they're saying. It's like trying to
eavesdrop on a conversation in a tomb. The judge keeps looking back and forth
between Darryl's side of the room and mine. From the corner of my eye, I see
Darryl's mother blowing her nose into an old tissue while Darryl impatiently
bounces up and down on his heels.

Finally, the conference breaks up
and Goldfarb returns to the defense table. "Mr. Baum," the judge
says. "Do you ever go to the track?"

I lean forward, not sure I'm
hearing him right. "No, Your Honor."

"Have you been to Atlantic
City?"

"Um, no, sir."

The judge clears his throat with a
loud revving sound. "Then let's become gamblers, you and I, Mr. Baum. Not
in Atlantic City, not at Aqueduct, not on the roll of the dice or how fast a
horse can run—but an enlightened form of gambling. Let's gamble on a human being."

The judge seems to be giving a
campaign speech, though as far as I know, he is not up for renomination any
time soon. , "I am not one who believes that there is no such thing as
rehabilitation," the judge declares. "I believe human beings are
capable of change. So I say, let's be gamblers, Mr. Baum, and let us use
probation as our track."

"Your Honor, with all due
respect, I think Mr. King has already shown himself to be a very bad bet."
A few people chuckle behind me.

Without meaning to, I find myself
making a speech too. "Judge, you were talking about racetracks before. I
wonder if I could change metaphors on you for a moment. Because sometimes I
think poor neighborhoods are more like river streams and the people struggling
to get out are like the salmon making a run for it. Felons like Mr. King poison
that stream. And his victims are often the best people in those communities,
and he makes it harder for them to get out. If I might switch back to your
racetrack analogy, giving Mr. King probation is like blowing all of your money
on a doped-up horse, Your Honor. Which leaves you nothing else to gamble with."

All this sounds like a lot of shit
to me as I'm saying it, but everybody else seems impressed, including the
judge. I turn my head slightly and see Andrea nodding. I don't know how all of
this came out of my mouth. The judge asks me to step forward.

"That was very eloquent, Mr.
Baum," he says with a low rumble. "I'm surprised you did not become a
lawyer..."

I'm too confused and nervous to
manage a decent response. Bernstein takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
People in the spectators' galley shift in their seats. Darryl and his mother
murmur to each other. "Man, why are these motherfuckers clockin' me?"
someone says.