Jury of One

6

“Your folks are deceased,” she said to Alex. She had read it in his file. His father, Gerhard Baniewicz, died when Alex was ten years old. His mother, Patricia, had died of cancer when Alex was thirteen. Alex was taken in by Elaine Masters, the mother of Alex’s best friend, Ronnie Masters, three years ago.

Alex nodded. “My dad was a good man. Came over on a boat from Warsaw. Worked his butt off. Sold machine parts.” His eyes cast away as they walked along the lakefront. It was a quick walk from Shelly’s law school office and it was unseasonably pleasant for March. “Problem was, he didn’t have much by way of benefits. So he didn’t leave us much.”

“An independent contractor,” she said. Not an employee, and therefore without pensions and health insurance. An inexpensive way for a company to hire workers.

“Exactly. He dropped dead. Aneurysm. Just dropped dead at a sales call.”

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

“Mom was okay after a while. We got along okay there for a while.”

Two parents lost in three years. She couldn’t fathom the sense of abandonment. Or maybe she could, but not in such a cruel manner.

“Cancer of the pancreas,” he explained. “By the time they found it, it had spread to her lungs. They couldn’t even operate. She lasted about four months.”

“Do you get along with Elaine?”

“Yeah, Laney’s all right. Good heart. Kind of a messed-up lady, but a good heart.”

“How’s she messed up?” They had reached a small park carved out of the shoreline, and found a bench.

“Booze,” he answered. “She makes-let’s say she makes bad decisions when it comes to men. There’s a guy she was with. He’s been gone over a year and she still thinks he’s coming back.” Alex cupped a hand as if to make an announcement across the lake. “He ain’t.” He waved off the sarcasm, leaned onto his knees as he looked out at the water. “She just needs a break, really. She needs someone to take care of her.”

“So it’s you and Ronnie.”

“Ronnie’s my guy. Only one I trust. Good role model.” Alex lightened up. “This guy, he’s a junior, he’s already got a scholarship to Mansbury College. Smart, smart, smart. And he’d give his right arm for me.” He looked at Shelly and then beyond her. “He saved my life once,” he said.

Shelly drove along the south side of the city, her stomach in knots and her head full of dark images. The thing about this city, you could drive two miles in this direction or that and find completely different neighborhoods. There was a pocket, about three square miles, almost directly south of the city’s downtown, that contained tree-lined streets and small bungalows. The area was known as Mapletown, consisting almost entirely of city workers-firefighters, cops, teachers, and other civil servants-who were required to live in the city boundaries but wanted to get as far out as possible. Mapletown looked more like a suburb than the city proper. But there was a decent influx of minorities in the community over the last ten years-moving into a decent neighborhood was not, after all, the exclusive province of white people. Shelly recalled the cries from minority leaders that realtors were steering blacks away from Mapletown, that homeowners had a silent pact to sell only to other whites, which had prompted a federal investigation by the Justice Department. Lawsuits had been filed, subpoenas issued, but at the end of the day, all that Shelly knew was that Mapletown was slowly integrating.

Alex lived on one of Mapletown’s tree-lined streets. Shelly liked the character of the old homes, contrasted with the cookie-cutter developments sprouting up in the city neighborhoods north of the river, where every new townhouse looked the same. Here, the homes were different heights and sizes, though most were limited to small lots. Alex’s home was midway down the street, a faded red-brick bungalow with a decaying yard in midwinter. She opened a screen door that looked as if it had been the object of a great deal of work to keep it fastened.

The boy answering the door, she presumed, was Ronnie. He was taller than Alex. His eyes were a bright, watery blue that stood out from an olive complexion. His hair was a thick black, combed back to expose a high hairline. He was wearing a ragged flannel shirt open to his navel, over a white undershirt and blue jeans, no socks or shoes. His face was washed out, presumably from tears and distress and sleep deprivation.

“How?” Shelly had asked him. “How did Ronnie save your life?”

Alex smiled quietly. “A couple of years ago. I was a freshman. Me and a couple of my buddies were drinking. We didn’t have much experience with it, so we were pretty lit. Anyway, one of these guys gets the bright idea to hot-wire a car and go for a joyride. We drive it awhile and my buddy almost crashes it. That woke us up. So we ran like hell. Left the car where it was, on some random street corner.”

Shelly opened her hands.

“Anyway, turns out, that car belonged to someone who, uh”-his face brightened-“a guy whose car you don’t want to hot-wire. This guy was affiliated.”

“He was in a gang.”

Alex nodded. “He found out who did it and he wasn’t pleased. This is the kind of guy, Shelly-we’re not talking about someone who’s just gonna punch you in the face.” His expression straightened out. “Anyway, I didn’t know it, but Ronnie went to him and said it was him, not me, in the car.”

“Hm. Nice guy. What happened to him?”

“Well, he didn’t get killed,” said Alex. “We’ll leave it at that.”

“You’re Shelly,” Ronnie said.

“Yes.”

He gawked at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d been the object of stares, especially from a teenager, but like Alex, this boy seemed more fascinated than admiring. He sized her up and stuffed his hands in his jeans, narrowed his eyes. “They’re saying he killed a cop?”

“Yes, they are. Can I come in?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He led Shelly into a humbly furnished living room. It was her first time actually stepping into Alex’s home. The furniture was decent but old and mismatched, yellow-brown fabric couches, a black leather chair, off-white carpeting. The walls were almost empty of photos or artwork, a muted green color in need of another coat.

“Is your mother here?” she asked. She was referring to Elaine Masters, or Laney, as Alex always called her. It sounded like Laney spent many nights away from home, so she wasn’t surprised when Ronnie answered in the negative. She helped herself to a seat on the couch.

Not sure of what to do, Ronnie took a seat as well, on the opposite couch. Shelly looked over Ronnie’s head and saw a black-and-white photo of a man, woman, and infant. The photo would have been about sixteen years old and it looked every day of it.

“Alex’s folks,” Ronnie confirmed.

The man was dressed in a shirt and tie, the mother in a simple dress as she held the baby. Alex’s father had died seven years ago, his mother three. Looking at this photo, it made sense. The parents looked to be midforties at his birth. Late in life to start a family. That sounded like Shelly’s mother talking.

“He moved in with you after his parents died,” Shelly said.

“Right.”

“He was lucky to have you to turn to,” she said.

“Look what good it’s done him.” Ronnie rubbed his hands together. He was despairing, Shelly could see, fidgeting in his chair, wanting to do something but understanding that there was little he could do. To listen to Alex, Ronnie was the epitome of all things virtuous. Intelligent, ambitious, compassionate, courageous. It was always interesting to meet someone after such a buildup. But the young man certainly wasn’t in top form at the moment.

“Tell me what they’re saying,” he asked.

She answered clinically, as a lawyer, to defuse the heartache she knew both of them were experiencing. “They said he was carrying a weapon and drugs. The police tried to stop him on the street, he ran, and there was a shooting.”

“Bullshit. He wouldn’t walk around with drugs like that.” Ronnie looked away in anger. “No way.”

An interesting response. Denying the drugs but not mentioning the weapon. Shelly had had the same response about the drugs, though. It didn’t fit. She wondered how much Ronnie knew. Was he aware, for instance, that Alex had been arrested by the F.B.I.? She assumed so, but she hadn’t even spoken with Alex yet on the subject.

“Just”-Ronnie shook his hands-“just tell me what to say. I’ll say anything.”

She ignored the offer for the moment. She certainly would not take him up on it. “I thought he was going to stop, Ronnie,” she said, not hiding her disapproval, as if Ronnie were to blame for Alex’s transgressions. “I thought he was going to find another way to make some money.”

Ronnie struggled in the chair. “That was the plan. Didn’t seem to work out. Your guess is as good as mine.” Ronnie was acknowledging the same feeling that Shelly had experienced of late with Alex-he was keeping his friends at a distance.

“What in the world was Alex doing with a gun?” she asked.

Ronnie opened his hands. He appeared to be giving a poker face, but he wasn’t a natural. In her job, Shelly had seen plenty of them. Bottom line, he wasn’t going to answer. Everyone was playing it close to the vest. “Did you ask him that?” he asked.

Actually, no, she hadn’t. It hadn’t seemed the time for twenty questions. She looked at this young man, the boy of whom Alex had spoken so affectionately, and she felt as if she really didn’t know Alex Baniewicz at all.

“He was playing hoops at the open gym,” said Ronnie. “City Athletic Club. He was coming home afterward.”

“You were home?”

“Yeah. When he didn’t come home, y’know-with all this shit he was up to, I got worried. I knew something like this would happen.” He shook his head. “Can you fix this?” he asked her. “Make this go away?”

She looked at him a moment. “I can try to help him.”

“But you know people, right?”

“Ronnie, this isn’t something where you make a phone call and erase what happened.”

He received that statement like a stubborn child. He was feeling helpless, she could see. Surely, he didn’t think that she could snap her fingers and get Alex out of a murder charge.

Ronnie brought his hands together. “Tell me what to say and I’ll say it.”

She waved a hand and sighed. She wouldn’t know where to start.