The Hanging Judge (23 page)

“Like I been telling you, I”—Moon cleared his throat—“I didn’t put it on Delgado or that nurse. But I’ve been holding this one big thing back. I was going to tell you, pretty soon, right? If this Santiago motherfucker is Spider and Ortiz is Nono, then I better tell you now.” He paused. “But I want a promise. No bullshit. Sandy doesn’t know about this until I tell her. If I ever do tell her.”

“Okay. Let’s hear,” Redpath said. “But keep it low.”

“Or anybody in her family.”

“Fine. Let’s hear it.”

Moon tilted his head back, looked at the ceiling with his lips parted, and closed his eyes. Then he opened his eyes, looked at Redpath, and began.

“When I got out of here the last time, I had my GED, right? Then I got my own place and a car, and I got a job. And I said to myself, I am never—not ever—going back to the old life, doesn’t matter what happens, even if I starve to death. Couple people called up from my old corner, and I was cool, but I stayed away, and pretty soon, you know, nobody is bothering me. I’m clear. I’ve got money in my pocket. Not too much, but enough. Like, I won’t have to quit my job if the car needs new tires. I may have retreads, but I’m going to get to work.

“Then I get this bright idea to try college. I hear, you know, about UWW, University Without Walls, and I think, that’d be cool. And I start with one class. You know all this, this is not new.” Redpath shrugged, and Moon continued.

“And pretty soon I’m taking this one class, but sitting in on that other class, having lunch at the Student Union, doing this and that. I’m learning to talk white, working on my Theo Huxtable imitation, everything’s okay. I got my UMass sweatshirt on, and I even make a couple basketball games. Watch my alma mater get her sorry ass kicked.

“Then, one day, I’m talking to these white boys after a game, fraternity brothers or some shit. And they’re talking about how they want to get a hold of some wicked weed. That’s what they call it. The one guy is fiddling with this big fucking roll of bills, and he’s talking about how much they like to get high and get laid, and how their girlfriends like to get high and get laid, and maybe I like to get high and get laid, and they say they’re looking for some seriously—‘seriously’ is a big word for these boys—seriously wicked weed. We’ve been talking, and they know I live down in Springfield or Holyoke, and I come from the projects, and I’m this scary black motherfucker who doesn’t smile too much, so they figure I am an expert, which I am. I am an expert on seriously wicked weed. That’s what they think.

“But I don’t jump. Right? I don’t jump, one, because this smells like old times, and, two, because I’m not that stupid. I’m wondering, is this a setup to jump some dumbass who walked into the wrong neighborhood?

“So I don’t do anything,” Hudson paused and shook his head. “That’s not true.” He looked at the ceiling. “I do one thing. I beep this one old Flag I used to hang with, and he tells me, yeah, he’s fat. He’s real fat, he’s got shit to move, and he’d be fine with me helping him move some of it.

“But I’m still waiting, right? But now, I’m also thinking. I check out the white boys, and I find out they’re not just for show, they take classes and this and that, play sports, and they’re not wired, nobody’s making a movie of us. So now I’m really thinking, and I’m getting stupider every minute. And the next time I see them …” Hudson stopped again and wiped a hand over his face. “The next time I see them, we set it up—half a pound. Fuck!”

He slapped the table hard. By now he was breathing as though he were running a race. Finally, after opening and closing his mouth twice, he continued almost in a whisper.

“And the whole deal just goes like cookies, Bill. A little phone call, a little ride, and my share is two hundred cash, twenty-five an ounce, smooth as your baby sister’s ass. Man!”

His voice rose again. “That’s two, three days’ work for me, after what they take out at J and K. Right? That’s twenty, maybe twenty-five hours of hauling boxes and sweating like a Georgia field hand. And now, with this one itty-bitty deal, I’ve got a little extra in my pocket, with no trouble and no fear. So now, I’ve got myself really thinking, and I’m just getting stupider and stupider. I’m thinking, all it takes is a couple deals a week like that, and I could double what I’m bringing home. Maybe more.

“Then I met Sandy. Now I really have myself a good reason to get a hold of some extra. I want some nice clothes. Nice TV. Nice big comfy bed. Pretty soon, I’m moving a few ounces a week, regular, just to people I know, and I make, some weeks, two hundred, some weeks four hundred. I don’t have to share it with the governor—no taxes. And it’s solving a lot of problems for me, especially after I meet Sandy’s family. We’re getting married, and they expect us to live decent.

“Okay. Next thing, they’re asking for coke. These are still my white boys, so they want the powder, not the hard stuff. Seems like they’ve discovered getting high and getting laid on blow is even better than on weed. So I call my old friend and get myself a finger of coke, and I cut it with so much shit it couldn’t get a parakeet high, and I sell it to them for twelve hundred dollars! About a hundred and fifty worth for twelve hundred!

“Next day, they come running up to me over on University Drive, four of them, big giant motherfuckers, from the football team or something, and I think here’s where I get my ass kicked. And I’m just about to jump the fence, when I hear them talking all at the same time about what great shit it was, and how they were so high, and how their girlfriends were so high, and how the pussy was so tight—and how soon can I get them more of that great, serious shit I sold them? They think I’m the candy man. I could sell them lime Jell-O and baby powder, and they’d be throwing the money at me.

“So that’s what I did. I’d cut back sometimes. Sometimes I wouldn’t sell anything for a month or two. But then we’d be running short, we’d need something, and one of my boys was always wanting to talk to me, just ready to start shoveling out money.”

Redpath broke in. “So that explains the marijuana and the cash?”

“Right, and the shit in the basement.”

“And Sandy?”

“I just always had money in my pocket for this and that. I’d tell her Kostecki’d give us cash bonuses. Which he did, once in a while, but it was like twenty or thirty. And I’d buy her presents, like the changing table, the living room furniture. I’d tell her I’d been saving up to surprise her.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Redpath said, suppressing a smile.

Toward the end of Moon’s speech, the defense attorney had been experiencing, almost to his embarrassment, a ripple of very inappropriate amusement at the irony of their situation. Because the clerk had bungled the search warrant paperwork, it seemed likely that none of the drugs found in Hudson’s apartment would be admitted at trial. As a result, they might well beat the charges for the crimes his client actually did commit, while his client went on to face a lethal injection for a crime that he probably never even thought of. It was a strange upside-down world he’d chosen to work in. Unfortunately, the attorney’s buzz was short lived.

“It is worse,” Moon said. “You know how Gomez has it in her head that Carlos fixed me up to shoot Peach? Well, guess who I was getting my shit from.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“My old friend from La Bandera, Carlos. Three days before Peach went down, I met Carlos at the White Castle in Holyoke, picking up a couple eighths. Spider and Nono were there, and Carlos’s nephew, that little pig’s asshole, Pepe. They heard us talking, and they saw Carlos front me the stuff.”

29

B
uddy Hogan’s grating voice on the other end of the line exuded an infectious anxiety that was beginning to make Gomez-Larsen squirm. Plus, she was already ten minutes late for her son’s game, and she needed to make a visit to the ladies’ room before she took off.

“I hear what you’re telling me, Lydia,” Hogan was saying in his fingernails-on-chalk voice, “but—honestly?—it looks from here as though you’re letting yourself get pushed around by Judge Funky. And all I’m asking is, what can we do to give you some help with this prick?”

“Listen to me, Buddy,” Gomez-Larsen began. “Just listen a minute now.”

“I mean, we lost the motion to suppress, so the drugs are gone, right? And we lost the motion to get Hudson’s criminal record in, right? So now that’s gone, too.”

“Not quite. The convictions still come in if Hudson testifies.”

“Well, he won’t testify, so what the fuck good does that do us? I mean, it’s fucking meaningless.”

“I’m not so sure. Redpath looked pretty banged up about that.”

“Really? Hmm. That’s good.” A pause followed while Gomez-Larsen drew squares and triangles on her yellow pad, trying to stay patient.

“Okay, Buddy, listen to me now,” she began again.

“Wait. Let me float this to you. Sorry. Just let me think for a minute here. How about some kind of public statement? See, we’re just a teensy bit afraid you’re being too nice here, maybe a little too feminine—no offense—letting him shove you around and all.”

Gomez-Larsen sat up straighter and tapped briskly with her pencil.

“We’re not holding any press conferences, Buddy. I don’t try cases that way.”

“Oh Jesus, no, no, no! That’s not what I mean. What I’m thinking is, let me call Sam Craig at Harvard. He’s an old classmate, with friends on the Court of Appeals, and he owes me a big fat one. He can find some way to make a statement that will get picked up by the papers—a speech at the Boston Bar or some goddamn thing—something like how he finds Norcross’s rulings puzzling in view of First Circuit authority. Hard to square with precedent, some crap like that. We can have it in the
Globe
by the end of the week. Something subtle and understated, like a karate kick in the balls.”

“Not a good idea, Bud.”

“Does Norcross want to be on the Court of Appeals? Does he have aspirations?”

“I really don’t know.” Her need to use the bathroom was becoming a distraction.

“And then this bullshit letter to the editor by his law clerk about gay marriage, and the term paper, or whatever the hell it was, by his niece, Ray Norcross’s daughter, for Christ’s sake, and …”

“Buddy! Zip it, and listen to me a minute, all right?” A clatter erupted on the other end of the line. Something hit the floor.

“Just a second. I knocked the phone over,” Hogan said. There was a sound of grunting and mumbling while he rearranged things. “Okay,” he said at last. “Call me Frasier Crane. I’m listening.”

“Everything is fine, Buddy, just fine.” Gomez-Larsen spoke slowly and distinctly, drawing the words out as though she were talking to one of her children. “None of these Norcross rulings was a particular surprise. The problem was the idiot clerk who screwed up the warrant paperwork. If Norcross had let the evidence in, we’d just have to defend a borderline ruling on appeal, and maybe end up giving Hudson a remand and new trial. It’s no biggie.”

“Okay, maybe,” he said. “Maybe I overreact. I get calls from Washington, and they rattle my chain, and then I …”

“You need to relax. The defense is asking for some old records to help them jury-rig their testimony and, between you and me, I’m not looking real hard for them at the moment. Got a lot of other things to do.”

“Documents get lost all the time, Lydia,” Hogan said, suddenly quiet. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

“Right, and they can get found, too. So you just need to let me take care of business here. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”

“I hear you, and it’s helping my ulcer.”

“Good.” Gomez-Larsen picked up a yellow message slip. “Now my son’s hockey game is already into the second period, and if I don’t leave now I’m going to be Public Enemy Number One. Promise me you won’t do anything without talking to me first.”

“Like I always say, Lydia, I’m a politician. Promises are us.”

“Bye, Buddy.”

“So long, sweetheart. Keep in touch.”

As Gomez-Larsen put down the receiver and began looking around for her purse, Judge Norcross, squirming like a boy in the principal’s office, was picking up his own phone to take a call from Chief Judge Broadwater. Norcross had just come off the bench from three consecutive sentencings, the average age of the defendants being twenty-two, and the average term of imprisonment, by his quick arithmetic, eighteen years. One African-American, two Puerto Ricans—all repeat offenders sentenced for crack. He still had his robe on, open at the front. He was itchy and tired.

“Hey, Skip, what’s up?”

“Big problems, Dave, big problems. Spring has sprung, and the folks at the administrative office are dancing around like peas on a hot shovel. Some House sub-committee is going to cut off all funds for the judiciary, now that the District of Massachusetts has declared heterosexual marriage unconstitutional.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

Frank Baldwin, in an ill-conceived tribute to Eva Meyers and her partner, Bonnie, had written a tongue-in-cheek letter to the Springfield
Republican
suggesting that the courts should ban heterosexual marriage, since the divorce rate for straight couples in Massachusetts was proving to be higher than the rate for gays. Someone found out Frank was Norcross’s law clerk, and the blogs went ballistic.

“Just kidding. What?” The chief was apparently talking to his secretary. “Take a message.

Anyway, I hope you’ll excuse me poking my nostrils in here, Dave. I haven’t had a death penalty trial, thank God, but I’ve had a few big cases in my twenty-six years, and I can tell you what you don’t need right now is some kid with a big mouth and his own agenda. Picking this moment to stick himself into the spotlight was dumber than chocolate shorts in August. I’d get rid of him.”

“He’s a good man who made a mistake, Skip, that’s all. He had no idea his letter would make such a splash. He’s ready to pull off his own head, he feels so bad.”

“I’d can him, Dave. He’s embarrassed you once, and he’ll do it again. Plenty of good clerks where he came from. Ten cents a bushel.”

“I appreciate your advice, but I can’t do that.”

Norcross had been frozen, holding his robe in his outstretched hand as the tension mounted. Now he threw it onto one of the leather chairs facing his desk.