Limitations

by Scott Turow

  “What?” Marina asks.

  “Private joke.” After this star turn as urban war hero, George realizes he could not only free the Warnovits defendants but order the state to pay them reparations and still win the retention election.

  The morning is a procession of visitors to chambers expressing sympathy, as well as constant phone calls from friends and reporters, which George does not take. The only persons he can’t defer are his colleagues on the court. The Chief, appropriately, is the first to show up, instants after George has reached his chambers. He requires a full rundown of last night’s events, shaking his head throughout.

  “Nathan is bonkers,” he says then. “He’s sure he’s next. I’ll bet he’s found himself a ‘secure location’ that’s not within three hundred miles.”

  Neither of them can keep from laughing.

  “So what’s your theory?” Rusty asks. “About last night?”

  Unrelated events, George explains, except that attempting to be bold in the face #1’s threats seems to have made him more stupid.

  “Still not buying Corazón?”

  Strangely, only now, after avoiding it for weeks, the fear that properly belongs with that possibility invades the judge. His heart knocks and his hands clench as he imagines what it would mean to be stalked with lethal intent by a ruthless sociopath like Corazón. With his self-imposed exile, Koll might have the right approach if that actually were what is happening. But in his heart of hearts, George still does not believe it.

  “To me, it doesn’t fit,” he tells the Chief. “But the only way we’ll ever know for sure is if the cops scoop up those kids and see whether they have any connection to Latinos Reyes. And I wouldn’t bet a lot on that happening. My car’s probably been peddled or chopped and those kids are high on the money.”

  “Probably,” Rusty agrees.

  By noon, the last of his visitors seem to have paid their respects. George is closing his door in hopes of getting some work done, but hearing it scrape over the carpet, Dineesha abruptly stands. Her hands folded across her plump middle, she faces him with an expectant look. She is handsome, if matronly, with a large globe hairdo, a seventies remnant she never abandoned. He motions her in with a leaden heart. He has seen her hangdog expression a thousand times before and knows just what’s coming. There is only one cause.

  “Zeke says the police talked to him, Judge, wanting to know where he was Friday. And he was in St. Louis, Judge. I’m sure. We had his dog while he was gone. And he says he had papers showing he went.”

  “I don’t think anyone doubts that, Dineesha.”

  “The thing is, Judge, this is a good job for him. But if the police call the company, Judge. Well—” Her hands are still clasped in front of her waist. There’s no point in asking whether Zeke truthfully answered the question on the employment application about whether he’d ever been convicted of a felony. For a guy like Zeke, it’s all a circle anyway. Do it the right way and you’ll never get your foot through the door.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he tells her. She sighs and smiles. “But one thing that bothered the police is that they thought you told Zeke to expect them.”

  Her mouth forms a dark O.

  “It wasn’t like that, Judge. I just had it out with him, Thursday night. I wasn’t trying to warn him, just give him a piece of my mind. Judge, he says he wouldn’t ever do you any harm. I believe it, Judge.”

  That’s the problem, of course. His mother will always believe Zeke. No other sane person should.

  “Dineesha, you don’t really believe he and his pal were up here to use the bathroom, do you?”

  She wilts with the question and takes a seat in the same straight-backed chair by the door that she found the other day in order to weep out of sight about her oldest child.

  “No, Judge. I don’t think that.”

  “So what were they doing? Were they here to steal something?”

  She manages a quick, sharp laugh. “No, Judge. Just the opposite. They were putting something back.”

  “From my chambers?”

  “From my purse. Zeke had been by that morning, Judge. Because of the dog. And he’d grabbed hold of my keys out of my purse.”

  “And why was that?”

  She presses her finger to the center of her lips, determined not to cry again.

  “He wanted to get into our shed. We stored his things when he went off, Judge.” Prison is what she means. “And I don’t know how exactly, but Reggie found two guns in there, and when Zeke came out, his father wouldn’t let him have them. You know, he can’t own firearms.”

  It’s both a federal and a state crime for a felon even to hold a gun.

  “And Reggie and Zeke, they go around about those guns every couple of months. Zeke says all he wants is just to sell them, that they’re worth good money. So he took my keys and got them. That boy Khaleel, he has the guns now, but I guess they made a deal, Khaleel was supposed to walk in and put the keys on my desk when I got up for a second, and if anybody saw that, he’d just say he’d found them in the hall, right outside the door.”

  She has her face in both hands.

  “Judge, if he could just get himself going in the right direction, he’d really be all right. I truly believe that.”

  There is no divorcing your children, George thinks. For Dineesha, hope is eternal. And thus, so is the heartbreak.

  “I mean, Judge, I don’t have any right—”

  “I’ll keep it to myself, Dineesha.” She stands, still under the weight of it.

  Ten minutes later she knocks again. No more, George thinks. Even for Dineesha. But when she opens the door, he can see she has regathered herself. This is business.

  “Murph’s on the phone, Judge,” she says. “Area 2 picked up two boys. They want you for a lineup.”

  17

  AREA 2

  AREA 2 HEADQUARTERS is a fortress, a limestone redoubt built near the turn of the century. It is frequently shot by TV and movie crews when they need an exterior that appears utterly impregnable. Entering, you confront a much newer cinder-block wall, interrupted only by a small window of bulletproof glass, behind which the desk officer sits. Years ago there was a little metal teller’s tray at the bottom so bondsmen or relatives could pass bail money, but that was before some gangster stuck a sawed-off in the slot and seriously wounded three officers. These days everybody passes first through a metal detector.

  Cobberly, the red-faced detective who enjoyed giving it to George last night, is on the other side.

  “So what do we know about these fine young lads, Philly?” Abel asks him. On the way over, Abel said that the younger boy had been grabbed in a nod in George’s Lexus, which was parked on a North End street. An hour later, the older one strolled up with the car key and a sack of burgers.

  According to Phil Cobberly, the two are brothers, the last of four.

  “Nice family,” the detective says. “Dad was always in and out of the joint, but now there’s sort of a family reunion. Older two boys are in Rudyard with him. I just love happy endings,” he adds.

  “Bangers?” George asks.

  “Natch.”

  “Latinos Reyes?”

  “Nope. Over where they’re from in Kehwahnee, that’s Two-Six turf.” Twenty-sixth Street Locos.

  “So no connection to Corazón?”

  “Can’t say that. Two-Six and Latinos Reyes make their deals.”

  Abel asks if the boys gave any statements.

  “Usual speeches,” says Cobberly, “don’t know nothin’, but we didn’t take it down. They’re juvie.”

  Juveniles may not be questioned outside the presence of their parents, who, in Area 2, do not tend to answer when the police come knocking. In their absence, a youth officer must attend the interview. The State Defender assigned to the station was summoned too, since both boys will be charged as adults. He, in turn, called for his supervisor. George suspects he is the reason a higher-up was needed. The State Defenders w
ant to tread carefully with a judge, especially one on the appellate court who sides with them occasionally.

  When the supervisor arrives, it turns out to be Gina Devore, who oversaw the S.D.s in George’s courtroom during the two years he sat at the trial level in the Central Branch. She was famous in the courthouse for punching out one of her clients in the lockup when he grabbed her breast. Five feet in her heels, Gina knocked the guy cold.

  “The best and brightest,” George greets her. She surprises him a bit with a quick hug despite being on duty. Married to a police lieutenant in Nearing, she gives him a one-sentence rundown on both of her kids.

  “How’s the arm, Judge? I heard about you on TV.”

  “It’s all right, but I don’t think I’ll be sending your clients a thank-you note.”

  “Judge,” she says, “I bet when you get a look, you’ll realize they’ve got the wrong kids.” She is utterly stone-faced making that remark, although both George and she know that not only were these boys arrested in the judge’s car, but each kid’s clothing—and the guns discovered under the front seats—matched his descriptions.

  The boys’ defense, if it goes according to the book, will be that they found the Lexus abandoned with the key in the ignition. It’s far-fetched at best. But if George makes the IDs, the case becomes a lock. No jury will disbelieve a judge in these circumstances.

  Led by the Detective Commander, Len Grissom, a bony, self-contained Texan, the procession—two defense lawyers, a Deputy P.A. named Adams who has arrived from Felony Review, Cobberly, Abel, and several other officers, and, finally, the judge—enters the shift room, where the Area 2 cops assemble to start duty. It looks like a classroom, full of school chairs with plastic desk extensions on the right arms. In front, a track of high-wattage floodlights blares down. They were installed for lineups, both to illuminate the participants and to prevent them from getting a good look at the witnesses.

  Four boys parade out and spread themselves along the platform from which, at other times, the shift sergeant makes the day’s assignments. They are all between five six and five nine, the height George gave for his second assailant. Three of the kids are probably volunteers from the juvie house who will be rewarded for their cooperation with a hamburger in the squad car on the way back. They all wear blue jail coveralls, but a sweatshirt is passed from one to the next. Each puts it on for a second and draws the hood around his face, then turns to expose both profiles.

  By the time the fashion show, as it’s called, has ended, George has settled on the third boy from the left. Gina clearly does not like the array and scribbles notes on her yellow pad. The problem is obvious. Two of the kids don’t have the close-cropped hair George described on the younger boy, but even with that hint, he is not quite positive about the kid he’s inclined to identify. From the corner of his eye, the judge catches Cobberly scratching his face. He uses three fingers and rakes his nails across his cheek three times, repeating this performance twice more. George says nothing but stares until Gina’s younger colleague catches on.

  “What?” Cobberly says.

  “Can we get that dipstick out of here?” Gina asks Grissom. She looks at George. “Did you know him?”

  “Sixty, seventy percent,” he tells her. “I’d have said, ‘Most closely resembles.’” The lawyers make notes.

  It takes more than half an hour for the second array of taller boys to appear because Gina has demanded that Grissom find sweatshirts for all of them, and each emerges with the hood drawn around his face, depriving George of any clues from their hair.

  He asks Gina, “Do you mind if I get closer?”

  George walks along only a few feet from the platform. Gina has asked Grissom to instruct all the participants to look only straight ahead, but when George strolls by, the fourth in the group, the kid he’s ready to make, can’t resist a peek downward. His eyes do not rest long, but he might as well have shaken hands and called George “puto” for old times’ sake.

  The judge stops there and points.

  “Oh, man,” the kid says, but it’s fairly fainthearted. After Cobberly’s stunt, the other cops are careful not even to glance in George’s direction, but he knows from a pulse in the room that he selected the right boy.

  Next, Grissom leads George and the legal retinue behind him to the desk of one of the detectives. Six handguns are laid out, two of them undoubtedly recovered from the boys under arrest. George knew nothing about firearms when he started as a State Defender, but he learned more than he might have liked on the job, and he has remained somewhat up-to-date because he often reads trial transcripts of the testimony of ballistics experts. He thought the silver gun with black handles that the older boy held on him was a Kahr MK40, which he recognized only because it’s the current king of concealed weapons. It was probably ‘rented’ from a senior gang member in exchange for a share of the proceeds. The second kid had a black .32 or .38, also an automatic. George picks out the first gun without hesitating. The courtroom axiom is true. It’s the only thing you really see. He takes a guess at the second.

  “So much for the unreliability of eyewitness testimony,” Gina murmurs. With the IDs made, George and Abel and Gina await the cops who have remained behind in the detectives’ area with the Deputy P.A. from Felony Review, caucusing to be certain that they need nothing more to make their case.

  “Neither gun was loaded by the way,” Gina says to George, as they’re waiting. “Just for the record.”

  “Pros, huh?” Abel asks.

  “Not first-timers. But it counts, right? Not to take a chance on killing somebody?”

  “Except by heart attack,” the judge says.

  The cops and P.A.s are bound to be satisfied, but from George’s perspective, picking out the right kids is only a start. The real issue is whether Corazón sent them. Gina will never let the boys talk to the cops, especially if Cobberly or anybody like him is involved. George keeps turning the problem over.

  “How would you react if I said I wanted to interview your client?” the judge asks her. “The taller one?”

  “What’s he get?” Gina responds instantly.

  “I’m not in charge.”

  She smiles. “Something tells me everybody will listen pretty hard to the recommendations of an appellate court judge.”

  “So then, let’s see if he spills. It’s the one way he can lighten the load on this thing.”

  When the cops emerge, Grissom likes the idea. “You’ll get more from this kid than we will, Judge,” he says.

  Gina goes off to inform her client.

  The boy is placed in a beaten-up interrogation room with an old wooden desk and three chairs and a number of heel scuffs and gouges running up the walls. From the corridor, he can be viewed through a one-way mirror. Nonetheless Grissom, Gina, and the P.A. escort George into the room and remain standing behind him while the judge takes a chair opposite the kid. There’s an iron hook in the floor used to chain the prisoners who are shackled, but as a juvenile, the boy is merely cuffed. By the terms Gina established, her client will not get renewed Miranda warnings, meaning his statements can’t be used against him in court, on the odd chance he ends up going to trial.

  “Man, you got me down bad, man,” he tells George. He’s talking about the lineup.

  “How’s that?”

  “Man, I ain’ never seen you before. Never, man.”

  “It didn’t look to me like your eyes were closed last night, so I don’t think I believe that.”

  “Nuh-uh, man. You got me down bad.” The kid has a round face, a hawk’s nose, and large, dark eyes, quick with concern. The half-head of raven hair shines on the back of his scalp. Even lying, he looks a good deal more appealing than he did when he was holding a gun.

  Gina speaks up behind George.

  “Hector,” she says, “didn’t you listen? I told you, you have two choices. Either shut up or tell the judge you’re sorry and answer his questions straight down. Nobody wants to hear that you weren’t t
here last night.”

  “Es verdad, man,” Hector says.

  “Cut it out,” Gina says. “Listen to what the judge wants to know, and do yourself some good.”

  Hector responds to the word judge this time.

  “You a judge?” When George nods, the brief lick of a smile crosses Hector’s lips. He jacked a judge. There will be some street cred for that. But the smile slips away as the young man reflects further. In his face, you can see the digits falling and his mounting concern. “So how’s this go, man? You ain’t gonna be the judge on me, man, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Just gonna be one of your people, right?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Yeah,” Hector says. He doesn’t believe it for a second. His tongue slides around in his mouth as he assesses his predicament. Then his black eyes kick up to George with an aspect of surprising openness.

  “So how’s that anyway, man?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “You know, man, sittin’ up there, goin’ like, ‘You guilty, man. You ain’ guilty. Dude, you get twenty-five. But you, hombre, you get paper.’” Hector’s cuffed hands circle the air as he passes out these imaginary sentences. “That cool or what?”

  “That’s not actually my job anymore,” George says. “But when I did it, I never especially enjoyed that part.” George has never met a judge who didn’t say that sentencing is the hardest thing he or she has to do.

  “Eso,” the kid answers, “is pretty cool.” When George was a State Defender and had conversations like this, he used to give his young clients the same timeworn speech. Forget thug life, stay in school, you can be a lawyer too. It was 1973, and George believed that. He hears occasionally from a couple of the young men he represented who turned their lives around, but nobody’s a lawyer or a judge. These days kids like Hector sneer. At the age of sixteen, he already knows how much of the world is closed to him.

  “Hector, I want to know why you and your brother decided to rob me.”

  “Man, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout who jacked you, man. But gotta be to see the presidents, no?” Money, he means.