The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  The State doesn’t quarrel with these authorities. Rather, it argues that Godfrey’s cross examination of van Keet at the preliminary hearing was adequate because the only advantage that Godfrey might have gained from access to the subpoenaed files would have been additional impeachment of van Keet, and that in the preliminary hearing, the weight of a witness’s testimony – impeachment of van Keet in this instance – is irrelevant.

  As Mr. Bohem correctly observes, the State misses the point as the Court cannot say, without having seen the subpoenaed files, that Mr. Bohem had an adequate opportunity to cross examine van Keet. Accordingly, van Keet’s testimony is not admissible in this proceeding.

  Mr. Bohem also argues that the probation violation charge must also be dismissed because Godfrey will be unable to defend himself without waiving his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on the accessory charge, which the State may reinstate at any time until there has been a full trial or passage of the statute of limitations. The Court will decide whether to cross or not to cross that proverbial bridge at the time of the probation violation hearing.

  Therefore, it is Ordered, Adjudged, and Decreed that the accessory charge and the grand theft charge against Godfrey are dismissed without prejudice. The restraining order prohibiting Ms. Verus from talking to Godfrey is hereby terminated.

  The Court on its own motion now reduces Godfrey’s bail to $100,000 pending hearing on the probation violation charge and sets trial on that cause for January 14 in this Courtroom at 8 a.m.

  _______/S/_________________

  Maurice R. Rabin, Circuit Judge

  Ryan

  Estella reads the opinion quickly, scanning the pages, skipping to the end to see the final order. She thinks of sipping the tea Aurora offers but imagines spilling it, soaking the documents on Aurora’s desk, and staining her own outfit, a peau de cygne blouse and Poiret twill skirt prêt-à-porter 1920s retro ensemble. So she leaves the teacup on Aurora’s desk and reads the order again, savoring each word, hearing the judge’s voice – stern, inquisitive, impatient, reverent, professorial.

  She’s disturbed that someone in her office, probably Aurora, prevented Andrew from obtaining evidence he needed for his defense though she appreciates the irony in the result. But those feelings pale in comparison to her grief and rage upon learning that Billie Bower – a boy who had lived with them the year following his father’s death, a year in which his mother was in and out of rehab – was complicit in her rape.

  Estella says, “Thanks for the tea.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the county detention center to see Andrew. Then I’m going to find Billie Bower and shove something very hard, like the barrel of my shotgun, up his ass and ask him how he likes it.”

  “When we find Andrew, we’ll let you know,” Aurora says. “Someone posted his bail and— he’s gone.”

  “Who?” Estella says. “Who posted the bail? Certainly the bondsman knows.”

  “We’re on it,” Aurora says, and there’s not much hope in her voice.

  Without identification, without a cent, Andrew walks out of the Miami-Dade County Detention Center into brilliant sunlight. He’s read the judge’s order, sent to him by his lawyer, Georges Bohem, but he doesn’t know who posted his bail or who’s been paying his high-priced lawyers. He asked Georges, of course, when he agreed to be represented by him, but all that Georges would say was that his benefactor insisted on anonymity and that for many years, from time to time, his benefactor had retained counsel for defendants in unusual high-profile cases whom he believed to be innocent and who were men or women of exceptional character and accomplishments.

  “Don’t say that,” Andrew said.

  They were in a room in the detention center reserved for lawyer-client consultations. Because Andrew had been driving away from the scene of his mother’s rape, the prosecution had argued that he was a flight risk and that bail should be set prohibitively high. Murray Rabin had agreed and set $5 million as the amount of bail.

  “Say what?” Georges said.

  “There’s nothing exceptional about me,” Andrew said.

  “Obviously, we don’t agree.”

  “Lately when someone says I’m special, bad things happen.”

  “Are you superstitious?” Georges said.

  “I can afford a lawyer,” Andrew said.

  “Not one with the resources that will be necessary to win your case,” Georges said. “Your money is tied up in the trusts set up for you by your great-grandparents and your grandmother. And the tribe is withholding your monthly stipend until your legal troubles are resolved. And what was that drug-diversion plea dealing your former lawyer got you all about? That LSD wasn’t yours.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” Andrew said.

  “I know that you don’t use drugs and you certainly don’t sell them. You don’t need the money, and how much profit could there be in thirty tablets of LSD? You were covering for Billie Bower.”

  “You make it sound simple. Even my mother didn’t get that.”

  “She would have,” Georges said. After a brief silence he continued, “Even if I agreed to represent you on your own dime, hoping you’d pay me after you’re found not guilty, you still couldn’t afford me. Hell, I couldn’t afford me.”

  Andrew laughed.

  “I don’t set my rates, the firm does. For a court appearance, the charge is $10,000 for any portion of a half day. So if I’m in court in the morning and have to return in the afternoon, the charge is $20,000 no matter how long I’m there. For work outside of court, my time is billed at $1,750 per hour.”

  “A nice, round number,” Andrew said. “What if I’m not innocent?”

  “Of aiding and abetting the rape of your mother? You didn’t,” said Georges. “And grand theft? Your accuser admits he and his sidekick kidnapped you at gunpoint. Who’s going to blame you for using the sidekick’s truck to get away? What I haven’t figured out, why would Billie Bower help kidnap you? Why would he stand by while van Keet was leaving to rape your mother?”

  Andrew said, “What makes you think that Billie Bower knew that van Keet would rape my momma?”

  Georges said, “Billie knew Van Keet was a violent sexual predator.”

  Andrew said, “The other defense lawyers I’ve talked to say the evidence against me is overwhelming.”

  “That’s why you need me,” Georges said without a hint of mirth.

  “At least you’re modest,” Andrew said.

  “I’m not used to begging a client to retain me, especially when my services will be free.”

  Georges said that if Andrew retained him, he would immediately file a writ, asking the court of appeals to reduce the amount of the bail to something reasonable.

  Georges also said, “Everything we talk about is protected by the attorney-client privilege. No one can legally compel me or you to reveal what we’ve told each other.”

  “Everyone knows what the attorney-client privilege is,” said Andrew.

  “One condition of my representing you is that you not give up the privilege, not unless I say it’s okay. And that could be never.”

  “I get it,” Andrew said. “A writ of silence.”

  A white Mercedes limousine waits at the curb. A uniformed chauffer holds open the back door, gesturing for Andrew to get in.

  In the backseat a man who is probably in his mid-to-late forties – long blond hair graying at the temples and pulled back in a ponytail, wearing Dockers and Gucci loafers – is on a cell phone. When he sees Andrew, he ends the call.

  “Hello, Andrew,” he says, extending his hand, smiling. “Ryan Hunter.”

  “Hey, Ryan,” Andrew says, returning the smile, shaking hands with Ryan.

  Part VI Al and Hailey

  Victim of Love

  Alfred stands on the veranda off his second-floor study, resting a hand on a limestone balustrade, gazing into soft golden late-afternoon light past gazebos, koi ponds, manicured
gardens, and trim lawns sloping to the docks where his fifty-four foot sport yacht, The Octopus, is moored behind his home on Biscayne Bay. Near the docks, his son, Jacob, expertly flips his wrist and a Frisbee sails over the lawn toward his friend, Pierre, who backpedals, his arm extended, his hand open, but before he can grab the flying disk, Argos, the family’s labradoodle, jumps high, snatches the Frisbee, then gallops toward the house, the Frisbee in his mouth, the boys in pursuit.

  Al searches for the words he’ll have to say to Jacob on the Saturday morning, only one week hence, when they’ll troll for sailfish in the Gulf Stream. He’ll just have to come right out with it. There will be confusion on his son’s face.

  Jacob will say, “What does that mean, Dad, racketeering?”

  Waves will lap the hull; seagulls will chirp for alms. Becoming inert like a mollusk tossed in the tides, Al will be unable to say more.

  Hailey, wearing a bikini, waves to him from a chaise lounge by the pool. Sunbathing beside Hailey is Al and Hailey’s lifelong friend, Aurora Goldin, an Assistant United States Attorney. The top of Aurora’s bikini, even skimpier than Hailey’s, frames her cleavage. While Hailey’s stomach is flat, Aurora’s is ripped, like his own. Tight bodies for fifty-year-old women, bodies that will stay strong because they belong to women determined to be strong.

  Aurora whispers something to Hailey, kisses her lightly on the lips, and they laugh. He marvels that women can be so physically yet platonically intimate and shudders at the thought of men trying to kiss him while he’s in prison.

  In high school, he’d had a crush on Hailey and had planned to ask her out, but before he could she was going steady with Georges Bohem, one of the boys who was going to go to college. She was a member of his congregation, so years later he wasn’t surprised when she expressed her condolences at his mother’s funeral. He was surprised when she called the next week to ask him to meet her for drinks after work.

  A few months later she’d suggested a picnic on a secluded beach. She brought a gourmet lunch and a vintage bottle of French Chablis. After they ate, she slipped out of her bikini and waded into the water.

  “Are you coming?” she’d said.

  An hour later, lying on a towel on the warm sand, she ran her tongue over his chest, his thighs, his scrotum, and he took her into his muscular arms and made love to her until the sun was setting and the beach growing cold.

  Afterward, she’d said, “One of us had to make the first move.”

  On the veranda, Al thinks, soon, very soon, too soon, day after day, year after year, he’ll be waking up without Hailey beside him. Undoubtedly, Aurora will end her friendship with him when she learns of his crimes. He will miss Jacob’s high school graduation, college graduation, his wedding, the bris of his grandsons. Will he even meet them? Will Jacob stay in touch? His love for his wife, his son, his friend, his feelings of loss deepen his already near-bottomless regret.

  Hailey calls to him, “Al, is it time?”

  He knows he must dress for dinner. But he doesn’t move, and when she comes onto the veranda, it’s dusk. Giant birds of paradise and coconut and traveler’s palms are backlit by low-voltage lights. She stands behind him, slips her hands under his shirt, and massages his back.

  “Who are you tonight?” she says. “Hamlet, taking up arms against a sea of troubles, or Prufrock, overwhelmed by the question, ‘Do I dare to eat a peach?’”

  He doesn’t like it when she quotes literature, especially when he doesn’t know where it comes from or what it means. He wants to ask her, who is Prufrock? But he doesn’t want to embarrass himself. So he hesitates, hoping she’ll tell him, but, of course, she doesn’t. Prufrock? It sounds familiar. She’s probably told him before about Prufrock, but he just can’t remember, not with so much on his mind, so much to do to arrange his affairs, so many decisions to make.

  “You better get ready, love, or we’ll be late,” Hailey says.

  When he was first visited by the FBI, he was told that he was a target of a federal investigation into a host of white-collar crimes that by comparison made Enron or Countrywide look like petty theft. Since then his mind had raced over the past, into the future, covering a gambit from denial to vengeance to remorse. Now, reluctantly, he’s accepted the inevitable: humiliation, alienation from his family and friends; poverty; incarceration.

  He wants to tell Hailey about the plea bargain that his lawyer hopes to get him. If he gets the plea his lawyer has proposed, at the arraignment he’ll be taken into custody; the government will seize their home, The Octopus, their bank accounts, and everything else.

  He decides to wait. He wants to enjoy his time with her and Jacob before he’s imprisoned. And he’ll never tell her that he’s taking all the blame to protect them.

  On the day he will plea bargain, a half hour before sunrise, two FBI agents follow Al through the lobby of the Hay-Adams Hotel. He doesn’t see them; he sees their shadows thrown by light from chandeliers hanging from an ornate ceiling. The shadows have stalked him on and off for two months, so he knows they’re dressed, as he is, in white reflective running shoes, shorts, and T-shirt even though it’s fifty degrees outside.

  He walks between columns from which barrel vaults rise into perpendicular arches. Exiting the hotel, he follows the vapors of his breath around the circular drive, gazes for a few moments at the White House illuminated in the dark. Then he leans against a cherry tree, beginning his pre-run stretching.

  During the investigation that preceded the secret indictment, three men had walked into his office unannounced. Two of the men, large as NFL linebackers, wore dark suits. The third, a diminutive Latino, wiry, wore tan slacks, beige deck shoes, a short-sleeved brightly colored sport shirt. He had a cobra-poised-to-strike tattoo on his forearm. Al thought he recognized him, but he wasn’t sure.

  The Latino said, “Call me Matteo.”

  One of the larger men overturned a crystal decanter— a gift from Al’s boss and lifelong friend, Ryan Hunter. The spill soaked a loan-participation agreement that Al would never understand but, as president of the bank, he was obligated to sign. Al tried to rise to confront the intruders, but they pushed him back into his chair.

  On a laptop, Matteo played a clip of a high school baseball game— Hailey cheering, Al coaching, Jacob pitching. A slideshow of teenagers with amputated arms scrolled across the screen, every other frame displaying the severed limb.

  “Boys in the so-called witness-protection program. for Jacob, we’d amputate right about here,” he said, pointing. A stiletto sprang from a switchblade. Matteo dumped the bloody contents of an envelope in Al’s lap. “An indiscreet husband; his wife’s tongue,” he said.

  Al was retching when the men left.

  Where Pennsylvania Avenue turns toward the Hill, Al darts around slower joggers and picks up his pace. At Tenth Street, he approaches the FBI Building, which he’d visited on a field trip with his high school class thirty-two years before. He remembers standing before an exhibit of the death mask of John Dillinger: Old Testament justice on public display.

  When he’s abreast of the FBI building, one of the shadows runs beside him, gives him a thumbs-up. “Hey, Al,” he says. “Curious choice of routes.” The agent’s blond hair encroaches the top of his ear lobes. Al’s hair is closely cropped. The agent’s forehead is smooth – as if the man hadn’t a care in the world – contrasting with ridges of heartburn and insomnia carved across the brow of Al’s face, mapping the years of deceit he’s had to mask.

  “Get a haircut!” Al says, running faster, leaving the agent behind. His repartee was lame, but he’s pleased he was fast enough on his feet to think of something to say.

  He runs under the Interstate bridge and when he turns right at the border of the Capitol grounds, one of the shadows is gone, the other lagging but still within sight. He turns right on Independence Avenue, running even faster, and when he circles the Washington Monument at sunrise, the shadows have vanished. He finishes his daily-six-mile run feeling strong.


  At nine o’clock Al and his lawyer walk into the prosecutor’s office. The nameplate on the door says Theo Langford. Involuntarily, Al’s fists clench when Langford – tall and thin with shaggy hair and a gold ear stud – says “Not a minute less than twenty-five years.”

  In an interplay of light and dark, life and death, Al visualizes the sorrowful eyes of zebras, their heads, striped black and white like prison garb, mounted in the den of Melvin, his recently deceased father-in-law. If Melvin had known of Al’s crimes, he’d have splayed him like one of the deer they’d hunted with bow and arrows. Spasms of pain knot in Al’s calves. Fear clings to him like a leech.

  “Take your best shot, Bud,” his own lawyer says in a southern drawl, taking Al by the elbow. “Looks like we’ve wasted our time.”

  They walk out the door and his lawyer, a former boxer Al met in the Navy, still solid as the U.S. dollar, whispers, “Walk slowly, he’ll come after us.”

  An hour later, Al signs a plea agreement in a soon-to-be-filed case titled The United States of America vs. Joshua Alfred Rosen.

  That evening, when he comes home, Hailey says, “Aurora told me.”

  He tries to explain, but she cuts him off.

  “Take me upstairs,” she says.

  He flounders up the circular staircase and onto the landing that floats above the marble floors of the entry, where he’s seized from behind; powerful hands choke him until, gasping, he falls into unconsciousness. When he revives, he’s underwater, unable to breathe, Hailey and Melvin beside him. The water turns blood red. His vision occludes. The apparition of his father-in-law fades.

  Then he’s on a gurney. Paramedics remove his shirt, shoes, and socks, but he can’t feel a thing, not the weight of his body, the sheets beneath him, or Hailey’s hand on his arm. They carry him down the stairs. With the jostling he regains sensation, pain searing through his optic nerves.