The Laws of our Fathers

DECEMBER 6, 1995

Sonny

In the same short-sleeved blue coveralls worn by the male prisoners, Lovinia Campbell is escorted by the transport deputies from the lockup and walks alone to the stand with a loose, disaffected ease. She is a thin, dark girl, with perfect skin and prominent eyes. No wonder she is called Bug, except the name belittles her beauty. She has the exotic, assertive looks of some of today's fashion models, big-featured and proud to be more than merely cute, although this young woman seems largely unaware of her striking appearance.

Questioned by Tommy, whose heavy grey suit looks as if it had been stuffed in a drawer overnight, the girl says she is fifteen years old, sixteen soon. When Molto asks, she looks to the courtroom ceiling to recall her precise birthdate. Her hands are in her lap and her shoulders are rounded protectively as she sits in the witness chair. Her voice is small.

'And where do you presently reside?' Tommy asks. 'Where do you live?'

'Sometime I stay by my momma.'

'No, I meant right now. Are you in the Juvenile Hall?'

'Uh-huh. In juvie.'

'And how long have you been there? Since September?'

'Uh-huh,' says Lovinia. 'Since I be out the hospital.' She scratches her nose and watches Tommy alertly, her mouth barely parted, sitting forward slightly to hear the next question. It is not Tommy, however, who speaks.

'Your Honor,' says Hobie. Basso profundo. His hands, in more courtroom opera, are lifted imploringly. 'If Mr Molto can't bring out the witness's residence without leading, we may as well just administer the oath to him.'

'All right, Mr Tuttle.' Hobie knows Tommy has a tough road here and is serving notice that he will not let him travel easy. I remind Tommy not to ask his witness questions which suggest their answer and Tommy nods resignedly. He and Lovinia move falteringly through the details of her bargain with the state. She has acknowledged responsibility – a guilty plea, in juvenile terms – for conspiracy to murder and been adjudicated delinquent. She will be in juvenile facilities until she turns eighteen. She will not, however, be tried as an adult, will not even have a criminal record when she emerges. It's a great deal, a point which Hobie is bound to emphasize on cross. Tommy turns then to B S D, eliciting Bug's gang name, her set, her acquaintance with Ordell Trent.

'And what was your relationship to Hardcore in terms of BSD?'

'Core no kin to me,' she answers. 'Only BSD sides me is my brother, Clyde, and he downstate.' 'Downstate' is one of many euphemisms for the maximum-security prison at Rudyard.

'No,' says Tommy, 'no, what did you do for Hardcore in the gang?'

Recognizing her mistake, Lovinia's eyes plunge to her shoes. 'Kinda like scramblin,' she answers softly.

'What does that mean?' 'Sell.'

'Sell what?'

'Mostly smoke and crank. Sometimes blow.' Crack and speed, occasionally powder cocaine.

'You mean you sell dope for Hardcore?'

'Leading,' says Hobie, as Lovinia says yes.

'As long as he's clarifying previous answers, I'll allow it.'

Tommy nods. One for his side.

'And do you sell for Hardcore in any particular location?' 'Round T-4. Mostly by Grace Street and Lawrence.' 'Across from the IV Tower?' 'Kinda there, uh-huh.'

'All right,' says Tommy. Feeling somewhat steadier, he leaves the prosecutor's table and travels a few steps along the carpeting.

'Now, Ms Campbell, do you know a man named Nile Eddgar?'

'Uh-huh,' she says. She gets a smile, this girl, this accomplice to murder, and is at once her age, happy, even a little silly. She looks askance. 'I be knowin Nile for a long time.'

'And do you see him in the courtroom? Point him out please and say what he's wearing.' Although all eyes in the courtroom are already turning toward him, Nile, in another of his odd moments, seems unselfconsciously merry. He has turned himself fully about in his black bucket swivel chair, his worn cowboy boots – cowboy boots! – planted on the carpet. He sports an absolutely foolish grin, as if this young woman were here to entertain him. Lovinia is not quite able to meet his eye, even as she lifts her hand.

'He over there, by the big fella,' Bug says. This description of Hobie brings down the courtroom. The laughter resounds, even from me. Caught by the outburst while her slender arm is still midair, Bug once more drops her head abjectly. Like most of the homegirls, she wears a plastered mass of straightened hair, dulled wisps, stiff as a hedgehog's, that go in one direction, another shiny patch of bangs shellacked in place with spray. The Afro, the do of liberation, is long gone, one more forgotten fashion of the disrespected past.

'Ms Campbell,' I say, 'he is a big fella. You didn't say anything wrong.'

Hobie stands grandly. 'I'll stipulate to that, Your Honor. Bigger than I should be.'

Lovinia nods, somewhat mollified by all this reassurance. She is, as so many of these children turn out to be, a nice kid, without much protection at the core.

Tommy resumes. 'Now how do you know Nile?'

'He round,' she says, 'he hangin.'

'Around where?'

‘IV Tower,' she says.

'When did you first see him around the IV Tower?' She rolls her eyes again to the ceiling and guesses it was about March.

'And how often after March did you see Nile around? Once a week? Twice?' asks Tommy. 'Seem like.'

'Judge Klonsky,' says Hobie, 'he's leading.'

Tommy tries again, asking simply, 'How often?' Bug can't really say. Tommy's eyes close briefly. He says something to Rudy, seated just beneath him, and Rudy shrugs. I imagine they're debating whether to go after her, to remind her that she said something different before. But that is always the last resort for the state. Once they attack the witnesses they've called, they're admitting they have no direct road to the truth. Tommy decides to venture on.

'And did Nile tend to be with anyone when you saw him?' 'Seem like he kickin it with Hardcore.' 'He was with Hardcore?'

Something darts through her expression and her eyes flash away, perhaps toward the defense table.

'You know, seem like he be checkin out lotsa different cuzes,' she adds.

Tommy frowns. He leans down and confers with Rudy once more, then opens a file folder on the prosecution table and stares into it for a moment.

'Ms Campbell, do you recollect ever characterizing Nile as, quote, "Hardcore's road dog"?'

Lovinia passes off the question with a vague gesture.

'Isn't a road dog a best friend?' Tommy insists.

'Don't know nothing bout no road dog,' says Lovinia.

At the table, Rudy waves his long slender hand. Move on, he's saying. It's a small point, and she already gave the answer Tommy wanted before. But Molto stares darkly at Lovinia another second before accepting his younger colleague's guidance.

'Let me call your attention, Ms Campbell, to September 6, 1995. Do you remember having a conversation with Hardcore?'

Hobie makes a standard hearsay objection. He and Molto debate at length whether a preliminary showing of a conspiracy has been made, but given Nile's fingerprints on the money, I rule in the end for the state.

'Do you remember that talk with Hardcore?' Tommy asks, starting again.

'Kinda,' she answers.

'Kinda,' Tommy says. He raises his eyes to God. He's strolling now. 'Where did you speak to Hardcore?' 'Seem like in the crib on 17.'

'In an apartment on the seventeenth floor of the IV Tower?' 'Uh-huh.'

'And what did Hardcore tell you?'

'Said next a.m., real early, man, we was gone ride down on some dude on my corner.'

'What kind of dude? Did he describe the dude you were going to ride down on?'

'White dude.'

'He said your set was going to ride down on a white dude?' 'Uh-huh.'

'Did he say who the white dude was?'

'Said somethin bout some kin to Nile, seem like.' 'What kin? Did he say what relation the white dude was to Nile?'

She tosses her head around uncertainly. Across the courtroom, Molto is still, his lips drawn into his mouth. He knows for sure now. She is going to do it to him. Rudy knows, too. He has already picked up the file folder Molto had before. When Tommy gets back to the table, he takes it from Rudy and snaps it open.

'Ms Campbell,' he says. 'Do you recall talking to police officers on September 12? And September 14? And September 29? Do you remember that?'

'Seems like I be talkin to the police all the time.'

'Do you remember on September 12 that you spoke to officers Fred Lubitsch and Salem Wells at Kindle County General? And on September 14, you were released and you spoke to them at the intake area of the juvenile home? And you saw them there again on September 29? Do you recall all of that?'

Her shoulders rise and fall in mild resignation.

'And do you recall saying on each of those occasions that Core said you were going to ride down on Nile's father?'

'Maybe I say it be some kinda kin like his father.' In this brief interchange, Lovinia's youth has left her. The girl shamed by the courtroom laughter and intimidated by the setting has disappeared. Her street mask is on now. She sits straight in her chair.

'Ms Campbell, didn't you meet with Mr Turtle two weeks ago?'

Hobie rises immediately. 'Your Honor, what's the insinuation here?'

'You'll have to let me hear the question to know.'

'And wasn't it only after meeting with Mr Turtle that you suddenly began to say that you couldn't recollect which kin of Nile's it was Core said you were going to ride down on?'

'Can't only say but what I 'member. You done to' me that a bunch of times,' she says to Tommy.

‘I ask you again: Didn't you tell Officer Lubitsch repeatedly that Hardcore said you were going to ride down on Nile's father?'

Tommy has rolled up the police reports in one hand and he brandishes them for a second. He has shown her those reports often by now. There have been a dozen impassioned sessions in the little attorney interview rooms at Juvenile Hall, with their barred windows and peeling radiators. In menacing tones, he's reminded her what the cops say she told them and he's put it to her: she flips him, her deal' s out the window, she' 11 be tried as an adult, do murder time, maybe even some perjury time, too. Molto waits, while the unspoken memory of these threats is summoned.

'I don't hardly 'member,' says Lovinia. 'Might be I been sayin that.'

'Okay,' Tommy says. He's finally getting somewhere. He straightens his coat and finds his notes. 'Did Hardcore tell you who was going to ride down on Nile's father?'

'Objection to "Nile's father,"' says Hobie. 'We still don't have such testimony.'

'Overruled.' Hobie's being a pest. Judging from the opening, the state has plenty of proof that Eddgar was the intended target. But Hobie, I surmise, messed with Lovinia's testimony on this point anyway, just to throw down roadblocks for the prosecutors. I still can't quite make up my mind about Hobie. He's already done some memorable things: the way he snuck up on Montague or courted Lovinia here. But there doesn't seem to be any overall purpose or strategy. Stew said it yesterday: it's all diversionary tactics. For all his craft, I see Hobie as another charming courtroom blowhard, ad-libbing and always onstage, more interested in causing a constant commotion than conducting a symphony.

'Gorgo, he said. Said some white dude gone roll up and be askin after Hardcore. And how it be, I'm s'pose to say I'm gone go get Core, then I'm s'pose to shout out for Gorgo instead.'

'How were you supposed to shout out?'

'On my flip.'

'You had a cell phone for the dope business?' 'Uh-huh.'

'And what was the number?' She gives it.

'And after you called Gorgo, what were you supposed to do?' 'Jam,' she says. 'Get out of there?' 'Uh-huh. Leave out.'

'And was there a further plan? Were you supposed to do anything else?'

'Uh-huh,' she says. 'After they done burned a cap in him and all, then Core say like I oughta get back up to the car and put a seam on him.'

'And by "a seam" you mean a little foil packet of narcotics?' 'Uh-huh,' she says. 'Blow.' Cocaine.

'And did Hardcore tell you that the idea was to make it look like this white man had been killed in a drive-by while he was buying blow?'

'Objection. Leading.'

Caught, Tommy slumps a bit. Lovinia continues on her own.

'Hardcore, he like, "Gone be like GOs come bustin up while this dude was coppin." '

'Were you supposed to tell the police that? That this was done by the Gangster Outlaws?'

'Uh-huh.'

Pleased with himself, Tommy struts back to Rudy, who reminds him of one further question.

'And by "busting up" and "riding by" and "capping," did you understand that Hardcore was telling you this white dude was going to be murdered by gunfire?'

'Uh-huh.'

'All right now, Ms Campbell, now after Hardcore had explained all of this to you, did you have any further conversation with him, there in the crib on 17?'

'No, sir. Not so I 'member.'

Tommy breathes once, sharply, through his nose. 'Did you ask him why it was necessary to kill this relation of Nile's?'

She shakes her head, with far more vigor that she has mustered until now.

'Didn't he tell you he was doing this killing for Nile?'

'Objection!'Hobie lumbers to his feet. 'Objection, Your Honor! There is no good-faith basis even to ask that question.' He raised the same point – at similar volume – during Molto's opening. Tommy is looking back at Hobie with awful hatred. His view is obvious: Hobie suborned her. At a point so critical, I decide to take over. I lean down toward Bug.

'Did you hear Mr Molto, Ms Campbell? He says Hardcore told you he was doing this for Nile. Did he say that?'

'Nn-uh,' says Lovinia. 'I ain never be sayin nothin gainst Nile.'

The courtroom is at a standstill. Tommy's witness has gone over the border. Prepared for this, Molto is resolute.

'Did you not state on September 14 to Officer Lubitsch, and here I quote, "I asked Hardcore why we had to be doing like this with Nile's father and he answered, quote, 'We-all are doin it on account of Nile.' " Did you say that?'

'Nn-uh,' says Lovinia.

'Do you recognize this statement?' Tommy approaches her, flourishing the papers like a flag.

'I didn't write that. That ain my writing.'

'That's Officer Lubitsch's writing, isn't it? And didn't he write down your words exactly as you spoke? And didn't you then sign this statement? Isn't that your signature right here?'

'That be what I wrote, just here, my name. I din't write none the rest.'

'Isn't this your signature under all these words?' 'That just be my name.'

'And right before your name, it says, "I sign this statement freely and voluntarily, under no coercion of any kind, and swear that the foregoing is true and correct." '

'I don't hardly understand that,' says Lovinia, her beautiful dark eyes quite wide. Buckwheat could hardly improve on her performance.

'And, Ms Campbell, wasn't it only after your meeting with Mr Turtle that you suddenly disavowed this portion of your statement, where you said that Hardcore told you this was being done for Nile?'

'I don't understand what you saying now neither.' 'I'm saying you're lying.'

'Nn-uh,' says Lovinia. 'This here, what I be sayin now, this the swore truth. And I ain never been sayin nothin gainst Nile.'

'Didn't you say again yesterday, Ms Campbell, in the presence of Mr Singh and Detective Montague and myself, when I met with you at the Juvenile Hall, didn't you in fact say again that you now recalled Hardcore saying this was being done on account of Nile?'

'Is that when you-all was trippin on me, how I tricked on you and I was gone away for M-1?' Murder one.

Tommy stands still in the middle of the courtroom with his eyes closed. The trial lawyer's bad dream: major witness giddyap and gone. At the defense table, Hobie is making notes madly. Behind him, his goofy client remains fixed on the girl with the same erratic grin. Bug, in this idle moment, becomes aware of Nile's attention and again looks toward her shoes.

'Lunch?' I ask Molto.

With evident gratitude, he nods.

Annie knocks her gavel once to announce the recess and the spectators rise, voices racing with the trial's first taste of excitement. I stay on the bench to write a few more notes in the bench book about Bug, not certain yet what I think of her or the way the attorneys have dueled over her testimony. Marietta appears with the files on two new custodies, both State Defender cases. They are scheduled for bond hearings at 2 p.m., but Gina Devore has grabbed Rudy Singh in the hopes of doing them now. She has a suppression hearing before Judge Noland this afternoon. I oblige Gina, and the keys rattle and doors clank as the transport deputies head back to retrieve the prisoners.

We immediately reach the Crime of the Day. Rogita Robbins slouches out of the lockup, small and overweight, with orangish hair and many black marks on her face. I am almost sick listening to a description of this case. Rogita and her man, Fedell, are Gangster Outlaws from Fielder's Green. They had a date with their homegirl, Tawnya, who was safekeeping the night's entertainment, multiple doses of dust. When they arrived at Tawnya's apartment, Fedell found both Tawnya and their PCP gone, and in reprisal exorcised his fury by sodomizing Tawnya's children, a boy eight and a girl nine. Fedell was apprehended months ago. Nailed on DNA and fingerprints, he pled out for sixty years before Judge Simone, whose call I inherited when he transferred to Chancery. Rogita has been at large, and was taken into custody on a shoplift. She will probably not deal, Gina and Rudy explain, since the state is light on her. The PAs have only the boy and girl to testify against Rogita. A mother of two, Rogita aided Fedell by holding both children down.

'A million full cash,' I say.

Gina looks at me. $100,000 would keep Rogita behind bars. 'Full,' I repeat.

She gives her wavy high-school hairdo a churlish toss, but I doubt if we changed places the ruling would be different. I like Gina. She's a tiny, athletic woman, a gymnast at one point, if memory serves. It's always impressive to see her, barely five feet, even in her big high heels, standing in the lockup, reading out her clients, who hulk over her. Yet last month she cried in my chambers. She'd spent hours she didn't have cobbling together bail for Timfony Washington, a decent young man being held for setting fire to the back porch of his girl's apartment. Gina talked the contractor who employed Tim as a laborer into making a $1,500 cash advance on some overdue workmen's compensation benefits and, late Friday, handed the money to Timfony's mother and sisters with instructions to post bond at the jail at 8 a.m. Monday morning. Instead, it was gone after the weekend – spent, stolen, disappeared, you could guess whatever you liked based on the four or five different stories the family told. In the jailhouse, Timfony accused Gina of ripping him off, and became so abusive he had to be restrained.

By the time we are done, the courtroom is largely empty. A few stragglers, elderly buffs with no place to rush to, are gossiping behind the glass, while Seth has remained at the near end of the jury box. He's preoccupied, looking toward his lap, his hands moving furtively. Idling on the question that finally came home to me after overhearing Dubinsky and him yesterday, I drift his way.

'What in the world?' I ask, when I first see the needle in his left hand. Then I realize he's sewing a button back on his sport coat. He's made a terrible hash of it. Thread is going everywhere. It looks less like a button than a leak. 'You can see why I gave up a career in surgery.' He bites off the thread between his teeth. ‘I thought we weren't talking,' he says.

'We're not.'

'Ah.'

'There's just one question I've been meaning to ask you.'

‘I figured you would. The answer is, I truly don't know. That's straight up.' His eyes, a dense, greenish-grey, narrow mysteriously. I haven't a clue what he means. 'Forget it,' he says. ‘I need some work on my Carnak routine.' He raises a hand, inviting my question.

'I couldn't help noticing you sitting here every day with Stew Dubinsky. I wondered how well you know him.'

'Stew? Only since kindergarten. We all grew up in U. Park together.'

'All of you? You mean Stew and Hobie and you?' I didn't have the remotest idea how I was going to broach this subject as I moseyed over, but I've done a decent-enough job. I sound casually curious. Life is full of these funny little connections.

'Hobie wasn't there in grade school. He went to St Bernard's?'

'St Bernard's,' I say, simply to fill airtime. When I was in fourth grade, my mother made the first of her periodic out-of-town journeys, living for three months in North Carolina while she attempted to organize a stamping plant. In the interval my Aunt Hen put me in St Rita's down the block. I was already developing, well ahead of everyone else, and my skin had become awful. I was delighted by the uniform and the opportunity to look like all the other girls. By comparison, the discipline, the catechism, the nuns smacking their rulers on the desktops seemed unimportant. When Zora came back, though, she had a fit. Catholic school? Had Henrietta lost her mind? 'Hobie's Catholic?' I ask, still being somewhat diversionary.

'Just his mother, but Loretta's pretty religious. He got a full dose. I remember, when I was first getting to know him, in sixth grade we had this phenomenal argument because he refused to believe his parents had intercourse in order to conceive him.' Seth laughs at the memory. 'I actually made him cry.'

'But you guys all went to high school together, you and Hobie and Stew?'

'U. High,' he says, 'in the fabled days when U. High was a question, not a place.'

A little buzz passes through me, the naughty satisfaction of the old prosecutor vindicating her suspicions. Stew and Hobie are old pals. Hoping to remain unobtrusive, I smile at Seth's joke.

'If you stick around for Narcotics Court,' I say, 'you'll find those days aren't over. I live in the neighborhood. They have undercover cops in the high school now.'

'Yeah,' he says. 'That's a good column, you know. I write it three times a year. Being the first generation to take a dose of our own medicine. "Listen, kids, Daddy really didn't mean what he was saying about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." '

'And turn down the record player when I speak to you.'

'The CD player.'

'The CD. So, thanks,' I say.

'That's it? Jeez, don't run away. So what's the deal with Stew?'

'Nothing to talk about. Something struck me while I was on the bench.' He'll mention my question to Stew, I know, even perhaps to Hobie. Which is fine. If it's what I fear, then I want them to realize I'm on to them.

'No, really,' Seth says. 'Take the load off your feet. Tell me what I've missed in the last twenty-five years. Anything dramatic?'

The courtroom is empty now and quiet. One of the stout Polish cleaners, friendly, mute, and virtually analphabetic in English, has come through the chambers corridors and is emptying the trash can behind the bench.

‘I don't think of my life as dramatic, Seth. Anything but. What about you? You're the one who's rich and famous. What's dramatic with you?'

'I'm not famous. Not really. I may not even be that rich pretty soon.' His eyes, his face draw in somewhat with the discomfort underlying this cryptic declaration, then he disciplines himself to look straight at me. 'Lucy and I are separated,' he says.

Sorry, I say. The only thing you can.

'Yeah, well,' he answers. 'Life. Love. The big city. We've been talking about getting back together. I think we will. But it's been a pretty rough patch.' He sighs at the thought. I should have known better than to argue with Marietta. She always has a faultless grip on facts.

'Is she well? Lucy?'

He nods. ‘I think so. She still looks like she's fifteen. There are days I'd say she acts that way, too, but then again there's twenty-five years with me, so she's got her excuse.' The joke does not seem to elevate his mood. 'So you live in U. Park?' he asks. 'You know, my father's still there.'

'Your father? God, my memory really must be going. I have this picture of him as elderly twenty-five years ago.'

'He was. He's ancient now. Don't bother looking for a nicer word. Ninety-three. Visibly failing. Still going to the office a couple of times a week. And still full of shit.'

That was a difficult relationship, Seth and his father. The old man was cold, unyielding. A Holocaust survivor. He had endured, but was hardly unharmed.

'And your mom?' I ask.

'Gone. She died in a home. Advanced Alzheimer's. Terrible thing. It's just a body in a bed.'

'Oh, that's right.' I tap my forehead. 'That was a number of columns, wasn't it?'

'Columns? Hell. That was two years of treatment.'

He's funny, he always was funny, a sweet, vulnerable boy, unusually in touch for a male of his era with the fact he was needy. Irresistibly, mysteriously, I find, still standing above him, that I've touched him on the shoulder. He asks, of course, about Zora, and I answer with the sad news: passed too. I hope my delivery is stoical and mature, but there is still a throb, an inner outcry whenever I am forced to acknowledge this.

'She died of lung cancer four years ago.'

He winces. 'God. I remember the cigarettes. Chesterfields, right? Cancer,' he says.

'I had cancer myself,' I tell him. 'You asked what was dramatic. I suppose that was.'

'No shit,' he says, 'cancer?'

'It was shit, but I'm not kidding.'

'Lung cancer?'

'No, no. Breast. I had a breast removed, almost twelve years ago.' I never impart this information, especially to a man, in a mood of complete neutrality. In some minute way, I always feel as if I'm issuing a warning, an attitude that persists even though I took my retirement money when I left the federal government and, with Gwendolyn's relentless encouragement, used it for a reconstruction. I had terrible conflict about this. I hate the idea of apologizing for being sick. And I'd adjusted. On Saturdays, I'd walk around without even bothering to stuff the other side of my bra. Then I became single again. And it was easier for Nikki. She'd begun to notice and I was always concerned about explaining it to her. Even the little ones are so quick to peek into the void. And what reassurance can I really give her?

Seth says the right things, mentions everyone he knows who's doing well, cites the recovery statistics with which he's familiar. He's clearly pained at the thought of what I went through.

'Was chemo as bad as they say?' he asks.

‘I didn't have chemo. I was lucky. There were no lymph nodes. And I still wanted to try to have a baby. It was radiation. A lot of radiation. It was pretty terrible. But I hated the surgery more. It just seems so barbaric. Cutting off a piece of you? The whole experience made me crazy. It was a little disappointing. I thought I was mature enough to weather anything.'

'No such illusions here.' He's raised a finger. 'We're all as crazy as we used to be, Sonny. There are just fewer opportunities to show it.'

That line I like. My laughter bounces off the empty pews. Standing over Seth, in my robe, I feel some echo of the usual relations of the courtroom, where so many men look up toward me, hoping for clemency of some kind. Seth also wants something. I can feel that much. I've noticed him once or twice, resting his chin atop his hand on the urethaned oak railing of the jury box, his expression as he watches me so stupid, beamish, and – face it – adolescent that I find my heart surge in a combination of shock and dismay as I turn away. It is, all in all, an odd grown-up he's turned out to be. His feelings seem slightly beyond his full control, like a dripping nose. I like him, though. I'm pleased to find he's maintained some basic appeal. It would be horrifying to think I'd wasted my time with him, too, particularly since I've long since reached that conclusion about Charlie.

' Before?' he asks. ‘I thought you wanted to know what happened to Michael Frain. When you said you had a question? I figured you had to ask eventually.' 'Can I ask?'

‘I gave you my answer.' He said he didn't know.

'Well, is that all there is to it, Seth? I've always thought it was a bizarre choice for a pen name.'

'It's a story,' he answers. 'I'll tell you one day.' 'And you never hear from him?'

‘I doubt he's alive.' He says this in a morose, deadened tone that spells trouble to me.

'Okay,' I say and lift a hand in farewell.

'Are you really going to avoid me as long as this trial lasts?'

‘I intend to try.'

When I wave again, he catches my fingers, and with his other hand taps once on my knuckles, a tiny gesture affirming some lingering contact. I take it that way, with a laconic smile, and turn at once, where, to my misfortune, I confront Marietta, who has just come through the back entrance to the courtroom. Chief Judge Tuohey's chambers are on the phone, she says, counting noses for a judges' meeting later today. I take the call at my desk and assure Wanda, the judge's officious secretary, that I'll be along.

By the time I'm done, Marietta has resumed her standard lunch-hour posture at her desk in the outer office, attention fixed on a minute TV held on her lap, while she eats a sandwich off the brown sack in which she brought it. The metal band between her headphones glints amid her bushy curls, and disregarded crumbs dandruff her full bosom and the nubbly brownish tweed of her sweater. Nonetheless, I become aware, through the open doorway, of her droopy eyes drifting toward me in assessment.

'Not a word,' I tell her.

She remains silent only a few seconds. 'Folks never do forget bein in love,' she says suddenly, as if to herself.

'Oh, give it a rest, Marietta.' I scowl at her from twenty feet. She turns away, but her jaw is set as if to show she's standing her ground. 'It wasn't love,' I say, 'not for me.' She actually grimaces slightly. I'm blaspheming. But over time my understanding has become surprisingly clear. 'He adored me,' I explain, 'and the ugly truth is I loved that.' I never felt more splendid, more admired, than in those months I spent with Seth. But his attention was draining because it was so needy. Seth was like a nosebleed. So close, too close. Life with him was always on the verge of turning suffocating.

'Well, I thought you two wasn't talking,' Marietta offers in her defense.

Annie has just come in and quietly takes the straight-backed chair in the corner of Marietta's office. She is carrying a school text and demurely finishing an apple.

' I had to ask him about something.' I explain to them that I found out Hobie and Dubinsky have been friends since high school.

'So?' asks Marietta.

So it means the notion Molto offered two days ago which I scoffed at is actually possible: Hobie could have been the source of the very leak for which he blasted the state on the first day of the trial, the story revealing that Eddgar was the target of the shooting. I've caught both women's attention with this idea. Marietta lays her earphones down. Annie is quick to accept that there is a conspiracy afoot.

'That Dubinsky,' she says. 'He is bad. He is a snake.' She recalls an incident two or three years ago, during the Termolli trial, in which an oil executive and his mistress were charged with killing his wife. The judge, Simon Norfolk, found Dubinsky with an ear up on the jury-room door, during deliberations. Norfolk stuck Stew in the lockup for several hours for contempt, before the Trib's lawyers arrived in flotilla screaming about the First Amendment.

'Yeah,' says Marietta, 'but you asked the right question, Judge, the other day. What's the defense get out of leaking this? It don't make any sense for them.'

In reply, Annie speaks up softly. 'Maybe for the bench trial?' she asks. That's what's occurred to me, too.

'Think about this, Marietta,' I say. 'Tommy's hair's on fire – he has to get started, because he' s hoping to keep Lovinia corralled. Hobie knows it, since he's the one who's been causing the problem with her. So he pushes his story into the paper, screams bloody murder about how he can't get an impartial jury, and then magnanimously takes a bench so we can get started, realizing that normally I'd be reluctant to do it in a case where I know so many of the players. Remember that remark of Nile' s when I admonished him on the jury waiver? "That's what we want." '

'Ooh,' says Annie and makes a face. 'Ooh. That is sneaky.'

'What I can't figure out is what he thinks he gets out of a bench.'

Marietta laughs. 'Judge, I'm not picking on you or teasing you or nothing but, Judge, you know, there's lots of defense lawyers who work in this courthouse might have said to him, "You get a bench with her, you got a pretty good deal." That's fact, Judge.'

In this building, the judges who were once PAs are expected to exhibit the loyalty of a Marine to their former office. Many think of being a prosecutor here as akin to combat experience, each courtroom another theater in a war zone, civilization versus barbarians. After my weekly call, I've heard supervisors ask the courtroom PA for a 'body count,' referring to the number of guilty pleas. But the rhetoric I grew up with in the federal courts was constitutional not military: I still think about rights, about inviolable first principles in the dealings between individuals and the state. The defense lawyers regard me as a natural ally – and Marietta as a turncoat.

She stands, her skirt another pleated brownish print that spreads about her amply, and tosses her empty soda can into the trash, then shoots me a hard look, reaffirming her message. Hobie did this because he thinks I'm more likely than a jury to acquit Nile. Who'd be more sympathetic to Nile, twelve coldhearted folks off the street or me, somebody who knew Nile as a boy and, better yet, who knows firsthand the gripes of a child who lived through the revolution at home? That's the bet Hobie took. I'm here because I'm Zora's daughter. Always. Inescapably. Just as Gwen said yesterday. Marietta goes off, unable to restrain a slight toss of her head in unending amazement at what I miss.

*

The trial resumes with bickering. Hobie wants to have lab work performed on the money the state introduced yesterday. He cites Montague's acknowledgment that the bills had not been tested for blood, for example, or gunpowder. Rudy objects for the state.

'Yaw On-uh, such tests are to be puhfawmed befaw thee trial.'

'I made some calls,' says Hobie. 'I can have the tests done in twenty-four hours. Montague admitted the state doesn't need the bills they didn't submit to the lab. What's the harm?'

'What's the relevance?' asks Tommy. 'Even if there's gunpowder or blood on the money, so what?'

'Well then,' says Hobie, 'the state will have to explain how it got there.'

'Talk about a fishing expedition!'

Tommy's right. But I allow the motion. It's harmless, and the accepted wisdom in this job is to let the defendant have his meaningless victories. It shows evenhandedness to the court of appeals.

The state completes its examination of Lovinia uneventfully. With unsettling calm, Bug describes the shooting on September 7: the approach of June's car, her call to Gorgo, and then, when a woman, not a man, rolled down the window to the Nova, summoning Hardcore. The woman and she were alone for about five minutes.

'Did you have a conversation with the woman?'

'She askin, can she talk to Or-dell.' Messing with Hardcore's given name, Bug pauses to smile. Hardcore came up fast, she says, and the woman and he conversed momentarily. Then Gorgo swung out of the alley. ‘I got wounded,' she says, with the composure of a soldier.

Having survived the last of this examination, Tommy retreats to the prosecution table with a glum look, awaiting whatever will happen next. Hobie rises for cross.

'Bug,' he says. In his fine suit, a rich grey nailhead which I would bet is part cashmere, Hobie strolls around the courtroom, hands in his pockets. 'Bug,' he called her. No pretending they're unacquainted. 'Let me ask you a few questions about this shooting. You say you didn't hear what Hardcore told this lady?'

'Nn-uh. Seem like they trippin with each other.'

'Some kind of argument?'

'Seem like.'

'Did she leave the area?'

'No how. She standin there, you know, out the car, gone on with Core.'

'And then Gorgo came and fired. Now, when that happened, where was Hardcore?' 'Come by me.'

'He'd come over by you, leaving Mrs Eddgar at her car. Right?' 'Yes, sir,' she says.

At the easel, Hobie has raised the street schematic, People's 3, where Montague made his Xs and Ys to show the location of the bodies. Now he is indicating that Lovinia had stepped into the street about fifty feet from June Eddgar's vehicle and that Core was near Bug.

'And what did he do?'

'Seem like he tryin to get me down.'

'Before Gorgo shot?'

'Seem like. It was all, man, that scene go down like ninety, man. Fast.'

'But it seemed as if Hardcore was trying to get you down, as if he knew Gorgo was going to be shooting?'

'Cuz got his T-9 out there, gone look like blastin.' Everybody laughs.

'But did you see Hardcore frying to stop Gorgo?' 'He behind me, man.'

'Well, Bug, do you remember hearing or seeing Hardcore do anything to stop Gorgo?'

She eyes Hobie narrowly. Whatever her disaffection with the prosecution, her loyalty to Hardcore remains supreme.

'Can't be tellin you that,' she says.

'But you were trying to stop Gorgo, weren't you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And he shot anyway?' 'Shot me.'

'You've said. Now did Hardcore get shot?' 'Nn-uh.'

'He ducked in time?' 'Got down by them cars.'

'Okay.' Hobie lifts his face to consider her, the equivalent of a musical caesura. It' s not completely clear if he' s really suggesting something or simply wandering, the way he does. The mystery of this unannounced defense briefly lingers, like smoke, in the courtroom air. Then Hobie glances at his notes, shifting subjects.

'Now, Bug, Mr Molto, Tommy over here, talked to you about some of the things that Hardcore said to you. Let me ask you this first: Whatever Hardcore says, does he always tell you the word?'

'No, sir.' 'He's not always truthful with you?'

'Not hardly. Like be what kind of mood he in. Sometime, man, he get off, he just woofin.' Her emphatic delivery sets off a volley of hearty laughter.

'And Mr Molto said that yesterday you told him and the police officers and Mr Singh that Core said on September 6 that this killing was being done on account of Nile. Remember Molto saying that?'

'They all was gettin heavy on me.'

'Were they angry?'

'Hoo-ee,' answers Bug and inspires more chuckling. She's beginning to like it, to play a little to her audience. 'They was deep,' she says.

'But let's make one thing clear, Bug. When you say Hardcore was doing something "on account of" someone else, does that mean he was doing it for that person?'

The question, unfortunately for Hobie, confuses her. She looks all around the courtroom, searching for clues. Then she subsides to being what she is, a kid.

'Maybe, kinda like that. Folks be saying lot of stuff, you know.'

Stung, caught for the first time, Hobie tries again. 'But it could mean something different?'

'Objection,' says Tommy. 'Asked and answered.'

'Here, let's make this very clear,' says Hobie. He has perched on the defense table and leans there, like a teacher against a blackboard. He raises both hands. 'Very clear, Bug. Hardcore never told you he was doing this "on account of Nile," did he?'

'No, sir. I ain never be sayin nothin gainst Nile.'

'But you did talk with the po-lice?'

'Too much,' she says sadly.

'Too much,' he repeats. 'You don't really remember what you told the police one time or the next? That how it is?'

Her narrow shoulders turn.

'You have to answer yes or no,' he tells her.

'Seem like I kinda be sayin what they say.'

'Is that what happened yesterday? These men were angry and telling you what you'd said before and saying you were going to go to the penitentiary if you didn't say it again?'

'Uh-huh,' she says. 'Molto and them, he sayin, Tell the truth.' 'Troof,' she says, 'then he start in readin from them reports, sayin I don't say it here, I a lie, I gone have do time on the hot one.' Murder one.

Everybody in the well of this courtroom has witnessed similar scenes. What's interesting, though, is that Hobie's backtracking. Despite Tommy's accusations, Bug went further on direct than Hobie wanted. He knows I'm not likely to accept Bug's testimony that she never said what's in the signed statement she gave Lubitsch at the hospital.

'So let's go back to how this started,' says Hobie. 'Now, Mr Molto asked you about this deal that your lawyer in the guardian's office made for you with the state? You remember that? That was a good deal for you, wasn't it?'

' Whole lot better than M-1.' More light laughter ripples through the room.

‘I just wanna be sure Judge Klonsky understands how you felt about the deal you made.' He looks up to be sure he has my attention, seldom a problem for Hobie in any courtroom, I'd bet.

'Now, you told Mr Molto where you were living when you were arrested. Sometime with your momma, is that what you said?'

'I stay by my momma some. Sometime by my auntie, too, or some my homegirls.'

'And has your momma been to see you while you've been inside?'

'Nn-uh,' says Lovinia. 'We ain been talkin none. Might be she don' even know where I is, seem like. Might be she done booked.' Lovinia shrugs, with an effort at sullen indifference that still somewhat betrays her. I've learned this much: these children know. From the comparisons to the TV, to the billboards, from the expression on our faces. They know they are the measure by which even the desperate give thanks they don't have less.

'You and she don't get on?'

'She just some smokehead bitch, you know. All she be.' Bug's eyes slide sideways. The softness in Bug is gone now. Although spoken quietly, this last declaration escapes her with venom. Hobie, wisely, lets the moment linger, so that I am accosted yet again with a clear vision of the life of the poor. This is the sanest, noblest legacy of being Zora Klonsky's daughter and I freely indulge it, pondering what it really means not to have. It's not the lack of luxury, the stuff we all know we can comfortably endure – driving a rusted beater, or having to eat p.b. amp; j. on your sandwich instead of smoked turkey and Boursin. And it's not just the lack of esteem, the sense of having finished second, which sometimes briefly grips me when I bump into friends from law school who chose the plummy, thin-air life of corporate firms and allow themselves crowing references to trips to Tuscany and Aruba, to 'second places' up in Skageon, to the kinds of delicious excess Nikki and I will never see. 'Poor' means what it probably has meant to Lovinia's mother – competing with the children for the little that is left, these drippy-nosed kids begging dollars for stupid trifles, a bag of chips, a Coke, when you need that six bucks in your pocketbook so bad, for just a little fun on Friday night. And they just keep up with it, Can-I? Can-I? Can-I, so that you want to bust them for asking, again and again, what you hear as only one terrible question: Who do you really love, yourself or me?

'You've done a piece of time in juvie before, haven't you?' Hobie asks. 'A couple of weeks for selling dope last year?' 'Uh-huh.'

'And when you went on selling dope, you knew there was a good chance you'd be goin back, right?'

Her slim shoulders move loosely again. 'Seem like nobody has a forever run.'

'So your deal with Mr Molto sounded all right to you?'

'Yeah,' she says, 'all right.' Hobie nods. He's moving again, more slowly. This is the most artful he's been. A roof, three meals, a place where she belongs – Lovinia has plenty of reason to like juvie.

'And when was the first time somebody from the state talked to you about a deal? Was it when Detective Lubitsch came to see you on September 12?' Hobie motions irritably at Nile for copies of the police reports. Still somewhat hypnotic, Nile wakes himself and fumbles awkwardly in the large carton of materials.

'Oh yeah. He was rappin to me. Gone make me a good deal.'

'Had you been knowin Lubitsch for a while?'

'He in Tic-Tac. He done gaffled me twice.'

'Arrested you?'

'Uh-huh.'

'And had he done right by you, Bug?'

She gives him a complex expression suggesting the amount that can't be freely communicated in these circumstances. 'He ain beat on me or nothin,' she says, inspiring more laughter.

'He's better than some, right?'

'Word,' she answers.

'And you were in the hospital, on September 12? That's where Lubitsch came to see you, right?'

'Uh-huh,' says Bug, 'on accounta I been shot.'

'On Account Of you'd been shot,' says Hobie slowly, throwing his watery, dark eyes my way again. 'And did you have a fever?'

'Fever? Uh-huh.'

'You getting pain medication?'

'Seem like they givin me all kindsa stuff.'

'And the po-lice questioned you anyway?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Did you have a lawyer?' 'No, sir.'

'Was your momma round?' asks Hobie. 'No how.'

'They bring a youth officer?'

'I don't know who-all they was there. Ain no one said that.' 'So Lubitsch came to see you. And he said they could make you a deal? Is that what he said?'

'Yeah, if I spill. You know, all bout how this lady got faded and shit.' Lovinia's eyes dart toward me and she murmurs,' Sorry.'

'And did you tell him at first, when he asked, what had happened?'

'Nn-uhh. Say I don't know nothin. Just some Goobers comin through.'

'But eventually you said something different, didn't you? Mr Molto's read some of the statements?' 'Seem like I have to,' she says.

'Seems like you had to,' says Hobie. He knows just where we're going; he's fully the master of this child. I had this happen to me on one or two occasions when I was a prosecutor, and it was agony, sitting there as the defense lawyer waltzed my witness to any destination she or he chose. It brought to mind those mournful country/western tunes, where the singer wails about watching his date at the big dance go home with someone else.

‘I want to ask you about that, but first tell me this, Bug. Before you changed what you said, did Detective Lubitsch tell you that Core had been talking to the po-lice?'

'Uh-huh. Told me he gone state and all how he been goin on.'

'They told you he was a state witness now. And did they tell you everything he'd been saying about this crime?' 'Uh-huh. Seem like.'

Again, Hobie looks my way. He's scoring quickly now, and wants to be certain it's all getting posted.

'Now, Lovinia, let's talk about the gang, BSD. When did you get courted-in?' He's asking when she became a member, using the gang talk smartly, not just to make it easier for her, but to acknowledge again that he's spent time with Bug.

'I be claimin mine a long time.'

'Years?'

'Five years at least.'

'Okay. Where do you stand? You still a Tiny G or you a full homegirl now?'

'Homegirl,' she says.

'But Hardcore, he's Top Rank, isn't he?'

She nods once, cautious again about the gang and its workings.

'If he says go sell dope at Grace and Lawrence, you do that, right?'

'Most times,' she says.

'If he says somebody's got to be beat down, do you say no?' 'No, sir.'

'Have you ever given some homegirl a beat down because Hardcore said so?'

She freezes a bit here, looks away before answering. 'Once. Little girl name Tray Weevil. They was lotsa us. She been doin crazy stuff.'

'Okay. Have you ever gotten busy with someone because Hardcore said so?'

She does not like this subject, sex, at all. She looks straight at the lockup door from which she emerged. Hobie has finally gone too far with her.

'Don' know bout that,' she answers finally, her eyes still nowhere in the room.

'Okay, but you follow Hardcore's lead, don't you?'

'He Top Rank,' she says.

'And so when Lubitsch said that Hardcore was co-operating and told you what Hardcore said, you repeated exactly what they said Hardcore had, didn't you?'

'Seem like.' Over at the prosecution table, Tommy has taken to flipping his pen in the air and catching it, a jury-trial trick meant to distract me. I'd call him on it, but after twenty years, it's principally second nature for Tommy and it's obvious he's too furious over what's going on between Bug and Hobie to be thinking clearly about much. It's all baloney as far as he's concerned, crap Hobie made up which she's parroting. But even Tommy recognizes the significance. Lovinia's statements to the police mean nothing if she was merely echoing what she knew Core had said.

'They told you they'd make you a deal, they'd let you stay in juvie, if you said what Hardcore said?'

'Pretty much.'

'You had no choice, did you?' 'No, sir. Specially since I messed up on the lie box.' Hobie stands still, viewing her with half a face. 'Are you saying they gave you a lie detector?' 'Uh-huh.'

'There in the hospital on September 12?'

'Right where I was layin there in bed.'

Hobie looks to me. 'Your Honor, I need a sidebar.'

Tommy and Rudy drag themselves over. ‘I don't know anything about it,' Molto says. His eyes close briefly. He sighs, in pain.

'Judge, if there's a polygraph, I'm entitled to the report. I'm entitled to explore this. Your Honor, this is a clear discovery violation.' I have my doubts about Hobie's claim of surprise. He's interviewed Bug too thoroughly to have missed this. I suspect his outrage is theatrical. But he has a point. 'Judge Klonsky, I might have grounds here to suppress her testimony.'

'Yeah, right,' says Tommy. 'I'll join in that motion.' The four of us actually laugh. The moment of candor is becoming to Molto.

'What do you want?' I ask Hobie.

'The report.'

'There is no report,' Molto repeats.

'Then I want the examiner,' says Hobie. 'We can't complete her testimony without knowing what this is about.'

I take two steps up so I can see Bug on the witness stand and ask her who gave her the polygraph.

'Lubish,' she says to my astonishment. Molto's skimpy eyebrows have also jumped up his face.

'Fred Lubitsch can't do a box,' says Molto. Rudy cuts in and draws Tommy away. They whisper heatedly, leaving Hobie and me looking at each other in order to give the prosecutors some privacy. As the silence lingers, I finally ask Hobie if he's married.

'Not now, Judge. Three-time loser,' he says. 'I'm in solitary.' He emits a brave laugh, then regains a sober expression. Somehow, in this scrap of conversation, I see a clear resemblance to Seth, not simply in the news of foundering marriages, but in the attitude: the gloomy eyes, the dark fog of things that did not go well. Having had such high hopes for the world, are we the unhappiest adult generation yet? Hobie tells me he has two daughters, the older one a junior at Yale. Singh and Molto return then.

'We'll have Lubitsch here in the morning,' Molto announces.

'We'll recess now?'

The lawyers agree. From the witness stand, the transport deputies remove Lovinia, who, despite his fixed gaze, his silly smile, still will not look at Nile.