It is true that Jerome Hardy provided weapons to occupants of Domestic Refugee Resettlement Center–Houston East. It is also true that he advocated for political change, in his musical performances and otherwise. But these two activities were unconnected. The rifles were funded by charitable donations and provided for sporting use to refugee student participants in the outreach programs run by Hardy’s Big Tree Hunt Club. Hardy never disputed that the weapons used in the attack on the President were obtained through his youth charity, or that the alleged assassins possessed copies of Hardy’s musical recordings, including the cassette releases HTX Bomb and Swamp Guerrilla. But no connection between Hardy and the attack was proven at trial. And mere advocacy by a public figure of a change in leadership, however hyperbolic, is protected speech, and even to be admired for
He erased that, and tried again.
The clock was ticking. More accurately, it was steadily spinning there on the wall, and the less time he had the faster the minute hand seemed to move. White-Out could bend time, but not always in your direction.
He tried to get inside the head of the President. It was a scary place, the mind of a person who thinks they should be able to exercise power over everyone else, including the power of life or death—a power whose exercise was guided entirely by the self-interest of one man. Re-arguing the weakness of the government’s case was a road to nowhere. They didn’t care about the facts, other than the fact of Jerome’s opposition to them. When they couldn’t nail him for the assassination, they went after him for treason—the only offense for which you could be killed without having killed anyone. Treason was an existential threat to the existence of the state itself, a state that had been birthed in revolution and knew how quickly the fuse could burn if you let someone light it. And the more the old order started to collapse as the climate degenerated, the economy cratered, and the geopolitical order inverted, the more the state worked to preemptively police unrest. Jerome’s case was a loser precisely because Jerome’s political posturing had been so artful, the way he leveraged his persona as a swaggering rapper into a nemesis of the ascendant authority. That the assassins had been playing his song “99 Names” on their way to shoot the President with guns obtained through a charity controlled by Jerome didn’t help.
Donny needed an alternate pitch that would get the President’s people to pay attention. A political angle. Mercy for his political enemies, even those he framed as terrorists. Even one who had supposedly tried to kill him. Subtextually, reminding others that life in the Supermax was in many respects a more severe punishment than death. And a demonstration of the President’s capacity for forgiveness at a time when his power was being contested. To save his client’s life, Donny needed to help the President—the guy he wanted out of office—to increase his chances of winning another term.
Donny tried begging. Words of supplication, words that licked boots, words that picked the toe jam out from the sovereign’s feet and ate them like little pinches of black caramel. Words of prayer, seeking the mercy of the national father.
Donny threw in some legal arguments meant to give the administration cover that granting such mercy would not set a bad precedent, because the case was so unique. He whipped up a list of some of the most heinous things for which this President had issued pardons and reprieves. Things that Donny could make a pretty good case were more treasonous than what Jerome had done. Stealing from the people in the name of taking care of them.
He rode the wave of words that flowed from his fingers onto the screen, hearing the heavy jazz, surfing the rolls of cumulus riffs charged with the idea of real justice.
The White-Out had a way of opening the vein of insight. Or at least that’s the way it felt when you were on it. He could really feel it when he added a section arguing the case from Jerome’s point of view, laying out an impassioned defense of how someone could believe the only way to save the country is to kill the president.
It ended up longer than he expected, and he didn’t have time to proof it. But he hit the send button at 3:37 p.m. Central time, twenty minutes before the deadline. And then, to bolster his odds by drawing public attention to the plea, he proceeded to jam up KopyKat’s fax machines sending forty-three copies out to the press, using contact info for editors and reporters he tracked down on the workstation after making the deadline. The copy of the filing was accompanied by an even more hastily penned press release.
Donny had never written a press release before. So he erred on the side of writing something people would read. Bold claims, in big type.
It wasn’t until he was done sending it all out that he started to wonder if maybe he had overdone it.
Not just because the tab for all of this required him to hand over a large chunk of the money he had promised to Percy. As he counted out the bills for the clerk, he could feel the crash like a tremor through the chest, the adrenaline and intoxicants draining from his body along with the exuberant confidence he had felt minutes earlier about the thing he had just done.
Fortunately, his next appointment was going to provide him with reinforcements.
If Donny could convince his friend to help.
9
The White-Out had mostly worn off by the time Donny got to the meet-up. The American Lounge was the lobby bar of the Mercure, a French five-star hotel on Polk Street that was popular with the international business crowd, visiting Californians, and locals who wanted neutral territory. The theme was mid-century Americana. Maximum lounge through a Euro prism, all streamlined aluminum, red leather, and neon. Now that the swing of the cultural pendulum had people wearing business attire again, when you walked into the American Lounge you could almost believe you had stepped into another time, a time when it was America that had just won the war for global dominion. Until you sat down at the bar and noticed the channel over the bar was tuned to CNN, the Chinese News Network.
The sound was off, but the captions were on, in Mandarin, English, and French, relaying a report on the Pan-Asian Summit about the Himalayan melt. During the recent campaign the President had proposed banning Chinese TV entirely from American frequencies. To do so would violate the Valparaiso Accords the prior administration had signed at the end of the war, the meat of which were more severe restrictions on military and astronautic activity he also advocated breaking. A lot more than the cases Donny worked was riding on this election.
Donny didn’t understand any Chinese, but he liked to watch the Chinese channels once in a while. His favorites were the cooking shows and cop shows. It gave you a window into a different world, even if it was sometimes a bummer when the world you saw looked so much nicer than the one you lived in.
Donny had never been to China, but he had gone to Chinese Hawaii for a weeklong vacation with Joyce after he left the U.S. Attorney’s office. Maybe it was the sun and the sand that made it seem so different. One evening when they left the resort and walked into town, the locals were having the town meeting. Donny and Joyce stopped to watch for a while, standing at the periphery out there in front of the little city hall, watching a community learn how to govern itself without any evident leaders. Donny suggested that perhaps the pair of Chinese facilitators standing there smiling in the background were more than that, only to have Joyce give him a lecture straight out of the Green Book about how the seeds of real change must be planted by people with a vision of how our best natures can be cultivated, and who know how to spot the weeds and pull them from the field as soon as they pop up. Donny said that sounds lovely except you left out the part about the giant machine intelligence that gets to decide who’s a weed.
The symbol of the AI was there on the screen behind that beautiful CNN anchor Arlene Fong as she read the news, an icon that looked like a benevolent digital sun. Fong was giving her daily report on the national and global metrics, the ever-accumulating statistics that proved the national brain’s success at centrally managing the economy toward sustainable and egalitarian ends. Donny wished he could share Joyce’s f
aith in the dream, but he had never been able to believe in the infallibility of a machine programmed by humans. Especially if they tried to build a Yankee version.
As if on cue, they cut to Washington: video of the President’s lead litigator, Fred Foust, standing at a podium with his baggy suit and saggy jowls, roostering about his plans to defeat the injunction just issued against the Governor. You couldn’t really hear what Foust was saying through the Mandarin overdub, which could have been translating the statement, or, more likely, spinning the Mandarins’ take. But the lawyer’s body language said it all, to which Donny’s self-interested response was to think maybe Miles would now have time to take back Xelina’s case. He reached for his phone, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t believe everything they say,” said Lou.
Donny turned and looked at the guy who did make you believe everything he said, the model of a hale and hearty middle-aged professional who hits the gym before sunup every day before getting on the treadmill of billable hours. Lou had made partner at B&E the same year they pushed Donny out, and it suited him. There wasn’t as much prosperity to go around as there once had been, but Lou knew how to get his respectable share, by helping the real owners of the world hold on to what they had, keeping their commercial and regulatory enemies at bay, and getting them out of jams without making any more of a mess than the eraser dust he left on the desk while marking up the pleadings. A natural-born trial lawyer, the kind who could point at a dog and convince you it was a cat.
“Don’t believe the news, or don’t believe the lawyers?” said Donny, smiling as he stood to greet his old friend.
“Neither, I guess,” said Lou, running his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow.
“Good answer,” said Donny. “I can count on you to remain an independent thinker, right down to the grey suit.”
“It’s blue, actually,” said Lou, looking in the mirror behind the bar and straightening his party lapel pin.
“Must be the 1950s lighting in here,” said Donny. “From a time when your clothing didn’t need to match your politics.”
“That’s always been the rule, then maybe even more than now,” said Lou. “But I’ll know the new clarity has been achieved when you finally start showing up to court in bright green.”
“Who knows, the juries might like me better that way.”
“Who gets juries anymore?” said Lou.
“It’s not easy, that’s for sure. Another sign of the withering of democracy.”
“Oh, spare me. Juries suck and you know it. They get it wrong every goddam time, just about, at least in civil cases, and the bigger the case the worse they screw it up. Kind of like voters do with elections.”
“When they let them vote.”
“Don’t get me going about your supposedly disenfranchised traitors and nomads, Donny. Democracy belongs to people who love this country, and belong here. And law and order comes from jurists who understand the long game. You just like juries because the judges all hate you.”
“They love me,” said Donny. “They just don’t like my clients.”
“Can’t say that I blame them.”
Lou got the bartender’s attention, and then got momentarily distracted by the news Donny had been watching. The bar was full now, with a healthy crowd of international disaster capitalists and some familiar local faces who liked the surveillance-free branding. The piano man was on the keys, tinkling a mellow lounge variation on “California Über Alles,” the version that was popular during the three long years of the Green administration.
“Why don’t you get with the program of getting our country back, Donny?”
“We have it. We broke it. You’re the fixer, not me.”
“You’re making it worse, pal.”
Lou was not a Texan. He was an import, from Queens, who had come down here during the boom-boom years, when Texas still set the price of oil and it still rained once in a while in the Midwest. His outer borough capacity for pinstriped aggression worked well with the big-money good old boys, who liked to sic him on the other good old boys, especially the ones who didn’t have as much money.
“I wish they’d pay me for it,” said Donny.
“Come back to the firm if you want to make some money. I could use a smart scrapper like you on these merger fights.”
“Sounds like a blast, but you must have forgotten Freaky Friday.”
Freaky Friday was what people at B&E called the day of the office purge. Donny was one of the Freaks.
“They didn’t ask me,” said Lou, drinking from his newly arrived cocktail. “And you know where I would come down if they had. Just like I come down here on short notice when you say you need something. Which I’m hoping you’re going to tell me soon, because I have a place to be at seven and the traffic is backed up to Dallas.”
Donny handed him a copy of the clemency application.
“What is this?” said Lou, looking the document over, and quickly seeing for himself what it was.
“It’s a pitch,” said Donny. “Why your brother’s boss should cut my client a break, stay the execution scheduled for tonight, get some points for mercy, maybe help him win some goodwill with this election fight.”
“You seriously sent this thing in?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Jesus fuck, Donny. I thought you knew better.” Lou handed the document back to him like it carried a disease he didn’t want to catch.
“Zealous advocacy, Lou. They’re going to kill him, and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. The guy armed the rebels who attacked our leader.”
“That’s their version . . . and that’s why I thought you could call your brother, Mr. Undersecretary of Commerce for the Restoration of Sovereignty. I don’t have a chance unless it gets up the chain pronto, like before midnight.”
“Donny, Bob left before the election. Went back to Ramco as their CFO.”
“Oh,” said Donny.
Lou shook his head.
“He still could make some calls,” said Donny.
“For you and your scumbag client?”
“Life in prison, Lou. Not freedom. Show some beneficence to the opposition. Help calm things down.”
“You assume they want calm. What if more violence is exactly what they want to provoke? The justification for a more severe crackdown.”
Donny hadn’t really thought about that.
“Lou, can you at least ask him?”
“No, you fucking fruitcake,” he said, looking at Donny like he was crazy. “I can’t ask Bob to call the President and do you and your worthless client a favor.”
“Look at that,” said Donny, noticing the new image on the TV screen: Jerome’s mug shot. The bartender had switched to local news. “I didn’t think that would work. And definitely not so fast.”
HARDY LAWYER DEMANDS PRESIDENT GRANT STAY OF EXECUTION,
SAYS THE ONLY CRIMINAL IS THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
“What the fuck?” said Lou, watching with him now.
“Maybe I overdid it,” said Donny. “But I got them to pay attention.”
“That’s for sure,” said Lou. “You’re a dead man, Donny.”
“Better me than my client, if it comes to that.” Donny was surprised, when the words came out, that he actually meant them.
“They need your guy to be an example,” said Lou. “This situation is already snowballing. You know better than me—you’re down there taking numbers as they line them up, all these little copycat teen terrorist wannabes.”
“You think state-sanctioned killing is going to make them behave, Lou? Is that really the direction you want to see things go?”
Lou looked at him. He looked at his drink. He jostled the ice. He sucked back a swig.
You could hear piano man over the noise of the crowd, singing about compulsory meditation.
“If I make that call,” said Lou, “you have to promise me to clean up your act.”
&nb
sp; “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Stick to booze. Everybody who knows you knows. Joyce made sure the word got around. And these days all you need is to get a look at you up close to tell what keeps you up nights.”
Donny looked down. “We don’t all have your gift for not taking the work home with us,” he said.
Lou put a hand on his shoulder. “And I want you to talk to a guy I know about a job I think you’d be a good fit for. It’s no secret you’ve been struggling. The other stuff is just a symptom of that. This defense work is bad for you. Not just for your bank account.”
“I like what I’m doing. I help people who really need it.”
“You’re getting them killed,” said Lou, with cold clarity. “And you’re attracting a kind of attention to yourself that is a lot more unhealthy than that crap you put in your body.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a word of friendly advice. This practice of yours is not a good business model. Remember those guys who were doing all those Cleanfund defenses before the statute got repealed? This is like that, only in this case after they get done locking up all the clients they’re going to go after the lawyers. That’s you, pal.”
Donny wondered if that was a bad thing, or something to aspire to. He looked at Lou and tried to see if he really meant it. Lou was looking at the piano player instead of Donny.
“I’m exaggerating,” said Lou. “And I know you provide an important service. An essential one. I just heard about an opportunity that could be a good fit.”
“I’m listening,” said Donny, checking his watch. The truth was he trusted Lou, who had always given him good advice, even if it usually wasn’t the kind of advice he wanted to hear.
“You did international settlement cases before, right?”
Rule of Capture Page 6