The Hanging Judge

by Michael Ponsor

  “I enjoyed our dinner at the Pratts,” she said.

  “You and your new pal hustled off just when things were getting good,” Novotny said. He had been staring at the ground moodily but now turned to look at her. “I suppose he’s happy. It’s official now; he’s got his death penalty case.” His ponytail flapped as he shook his head. “Just unbelievable,” he muttered.

  “He’s not happy,” Claire said sharply. They were approaching the front door, where a man of about fifty, sporting an Atkins-green apron, was vigorously sweeping. “The whole trial’s incredibly stressful, and difficult. It’s like some enormous …”

  “Circus,” Novotnyy broke in. “It’s a circus. TV cameras outside the courthouse. Protestors. One guy with a big sign that says ‘Fry him!’ Did you see that? It’s worse than third-century Rome. It’s worse than Daley and Halligan.”

  They passed from the freezing air into a cloud of delicious, fresh-bread fragrance beyond the door. He had not stood aside to let her through first, thank God.

  “You want a basket?” Novotny asked in a clipped tone, not looking at her.

  Claire watched while he separated a couple of red plastic baskets from the stack inside the door and handed one to her.

  “You know, that’s such garbage, Gerry,” she said, taking a basket from him and trying vainly to make eye contact. “I don’t believe in the death penalty, either. But different people think different things.”

  “Right. I know. Salt and pepper.” Novotny was speaking over his shoulder. He had wandered off into the store and was pawing through a pyramid of loaves, not bothering to hide his indifference to any opinion Claire might have. His unspoken message, Claire thought, was that she was an overgroomed English teacher in an Ann Taylor outfit, who was setting her sights on a well-heeled representative of the ruling class. Just another embodiment of the banality of evil. This whole scenario was making her cross.

  “Where’d they put the cheddar cheese bread?” Novotny asked absently. “It makes great toast.”

  One more effort, Claire decided, and she would drop this Czech shithead. How much penance was required for a tweak of the male ego? She wondered in passing whether Professor Novotny’s political discussions highlighted the tendency of males to feel entitled to interrupt or withdraw from women when confronted.

  “Well, it’s not easy,” she said more calmly. “A million things can go wrong in a trial like this. Here’s your bread.” She handed him a plump, heavy loaf.

  “Really. What kind of things?” He tossed the bread into his basket and turned from her toward the pastry counter. She could not see his expression. His tone was casual.

  Claire thought and spoke quickly. “Well, one example: The jurors could find out about Hudson’s prior drug convictions. David’s keeping that information out of the trial, trying to make things fairer, but it’s been all over the papers. Some juror could find out about that, and it would screw everything up. That’s just one thing.”

  But Novotny, caught up in his muffin order, did not seem to hear. He was bent over the counter alternately pointing and speaking to the pretty girl on the other side of the glass.

  “Three morning glory, three cranberry nut. Where’d you get those awesome earrings? Three no-fat blueberry and three, uh, bran, I guess.” He straightened and, for the first time, smiled thinly at Claire. He put a hand on the small of his back and arched; evidently, bending over the counter had not been easy. Novotny must be older than Claire had thought. Did he use Grecian Formula on his ponytail?

  “I’m sorry. I’m in the dumps today.” He turned to Claire while the clerk retrieved his pastries. “It’s tough on him, I suppose. But this whole thing—this whole …” He ran his hands over a pile of grapefruit, fondling them as he searched for the word. “This whole carnival of pseudo-justice is so degrading, it’s hard to talk as though it were just some random topic. I thought your friend Dave was kind of pretentious, frankly, but you’ve obviously put your hands on his good side.” He gave Claire a wry look to make sure she knew what he was implying. “The point is,” he continued, “it’s a corrupt system, and he’s perched right on top of it. He’s accountable, and he ought to be held to account.”

  Novotny got his bag of muffins, with a melting look from the girl behind the counter, and placed it in his red basket.

  “Why don’t we have coffee sometime when I’m downtown,” he said. “I can’t talk about heavy stuff like this on the fly.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s this endless winter that’s getting to me. But the first death penalty case in Massachusetts, and it’s out here? In Springfield? I mean, for God’s sake.”

  “The weather has been lousy,” Claire agreed. “Give me a call next week. I better run.” She produced a compact smile, and they swerved off from each other, swept along on parallel currents of relief and with, of course, no intention on either side of ever having coffee or any other beverage with each other, if at all possible, for the rest of their natural lives.

  By the time Claire was paying for the lamb chops she planned to grill for David, Novotny was already getting into his Saab. He retrieved his cell phone from the glove compartment and dialed quickly.

  “Brit?” he said when she answered. “Just wanted to make sure everyone will be there.” He paused and listened, then said in an annoyed tone, “My place, of course.” Another pause. “Right.” And finally: “Well, I just had a thought I’d like to run past people, okay?”

  28

  Bill Redpath used Sandra Hudson’s dramatic exit as an excuse to step outside and jack up his nicotine levels. Now he was back, and Moon was shaking his head. His face had softened.

  “You see why I can’t tear her off?” he asked. “How could anybody not want to be with that woman every second he could?” He shook his head. “What I can’t figure is, why’s she messing with an empty T-shirt like me?”

  “My track record in this area is pretty poor, Moon, but my guess is she loves you.” Redpath’s mind flickered back to his own marriage, the missed anniversaries and birthdays, and, finally, the divorce. Barbara lived in Santa Cruz now, near their son, Tom. Every Christmas, Barbara sent one of her hand-painted cards and a note with the news. Tom was a federal public defender; they talked every Sunday, mostly about their cases. He’d salvaged that at least.

  Moon shifted, and his leg irons clanked, bringing Redpath back.

  “Well,” Moon said, sighing and running his hands over the table, “there’s stuff she doesn’t know. And I think she’s wrong about me being home asleep that morning.”

  “We’ll see,” Redpath said.

  Moon’s reference to other “stuff” was an opening. Soon they’d need to have the hard talk, now that Moon trusted him a little, about exactly what happened. Right now, though, they had other problems.

  “We’ve only got a few more minutes today,” Redpath said, “and I need to go over a couple things with you.”

  Redpath opened his briefcase and withdrew a letter on the U.S. attorney’s stationery. He held the two pages in front of him, then set the document on the table and peered at it closely.

  “I got the government’s revised witness list yesterday, and there are two names I don’t recognize.” He passed his thumb down the page and stopped.

  “Who’s Jesús Santiago? And … Wait a minute.” His thick finger ran down to the bottom of the page, and then flipped to the next. “And who’s Manuel Ortiz?”

  Moon frowned and shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

  “Neither one? You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, they’re both on Gomez-Larsen’s list, and I’d really like to know who they are. I don’t even like surprises on my birthday.”

  Hudson shook his head.

  “They wouldn’t be using their real names on the street anyway.” He sat up and looked straight ahead as a thought struck him. “Hold up. I think I hea
rd someone call this little Flag I knew—his street name was Spider—but I’m thinking I heard somebody call him Jesús once. Nasty, tall, skinny motherfucker, with all this hair on his arms. Everybody called him Spider. Maybe that was Jesús. Could’ve been him.”

  “I don’t like this,” Redpath said, scratching his head.

  “Yeah,” Hudson was gazing at the far wall, off in his own memories. “Yeah. Shit, yeah. I bet that was him. Spider always went around with this short chunky Flag, looked like a bowling ball, who never said anything, called Nono. They could stand next to each other and look like a one and zero, the number ten. People’d just say ‘X,’ like, for ten. Like, ‘X is going to be there’ for the two of them. What was the other name?”

  “Manuel Ortiz.”

  “Don’t know. Could be Nono. They didn’t like me, that’s for sure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, we got into a beef once. Nono pulled a burner on me and got himself hurt.” Moon looked up at the ceiling, searching back. “Yeah, that would make sense.”

  “How would it make sense, Moon?”

  Hudson wrapped his arms around himself and scratched his shoulders, as though he were in a struggle with something inside. Then he let his arms drop, looked down at the table, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

  “How would that make sense?” Redpath pursued. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what I have to tell you.” Moon opened his eyes and settled himself with a deep breath. His expression, when he finally managed to look at Redpath, gave his lawyer a glimpse of Moon as the big-eyed first grader who was always in fights. Some morning a few short years from now, Redpath could find himself watching through a window as this one-time little boy was strapped to a cart and given the needle. It could happen; he’d seen it happen. And he’d never stop wondering whether another lawyer, another strategy, might have saved Moon Hudson’s life.

  His client, however, was obviously bothered by something other than this horror, maybe something even worse.

  “Like I been telling you, I”—Moon cleared his throat—“I didn’t put it on Delgado or that nurse. But I’ve been holding this one big thing back. I was going to tell you, pretty soon, right? If this Santiago motherfucker is Spider and Ortiz is Nono, then I better tell you now.” He paused. “But I want a promise. No bullshit. Sandy doesn’t know about this until I tell her. If I ever do tell her.”

  “Okay. Let’s hear,” Redpath said. “But keep it low.”

  “Or anybody in her family.”

  “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  Moon tilted his head back, looked at the ceiling with his lips parted, and closed his eyes. Then he opened his eyes, looked at Redpath, and began.

  “When I got out of here the last time, I had my GED, right? Then I got my own place and a car, and I got a job. And I said to myself, I am never—not ever—going back to the old life, doesn’t matter what happens, even if I starve to death. Couple people called up from my old corner, and I was cool, but I stayed away, and pretty soon, you know, nobody is bothering me. I’m clear. I’ve got money in my pocket. Not too much, but enough. Like, I won’t have to quit my job if the car needs new tires. I may have retreads, but I’m going to get to work.

  “Then I get this bright idea to try college. I hear, you know, about UWW, University Without Walls, and I think, that’d be cool. And I start with one class. You know all this, this is not new.” Redpath shrugged, and Moon continued.

  “And pretty soon I’m taking this one class, but sitting in on that other class, having lunch at the Student Union, doing this and that. I’m learning to talk white, working on my Theo Huxtable imitation, everything’s okay. I got my UMass sweatshirt on, and I even make a couple basketball games. Watch my alma mater get her sorry ass kicked.

  “Then, one day, I’m talking to these white boys after a game, fraternity brothers or some shit. And they’re talking about how they want to get a hold of some wicked weed. That’s what they call it. The one guy is fiddling with this big fucking roll of bills, and he’s talking about how much they like to get high and get laid, and how their girlfriends like to get high and get laid, and maybe I like to get high and get laid, and they say they’re looking for some seriously—‘seriously’ is a big word for these boys—seriously wicked weed. We’ve been talking, and they know I live down in Springfield or Holyoke, and I come from the projects, and I’m this scary black motherfucker who doesn’t smile too much, so they figure I am an expert, which I am. I am an expert on seriously wicked weed. That’s what they think.

  “But I don’t jump. Right? I don’t jump, one, because this smells like old times, and, two, because I’m not that stupid. I’m wondering, is this a setup to jump some dumbass who walked into the wrong neighborhood?

  “So I don’t do anything,” Hudson paused and shook his head. “That’s not true.” He looked at the ceiling. “I do one thing. I beep this one old Flag I used to hang with, and he tells me, yeah, he’s fat. He’s real fat, he’s got shit to move, and he’d be fine with me helping him move some of it.

  “But I’m still waiting, right? But now, I’m also thinking. I check out the white boys, and I find out they’re not just for show, they take classes and this and that, play sports, and they’re not wired, nobody’s making a movie of us. So now I’m really thinking, and I’m getting stupider every minute. And the next time I see them …” Hudson stopped again and wiped a hand over his face. “The next time I see them, we set it up—half a pound. Fuck!”

  He slapped the table hard. By now he was breathing as though he were running a race. Finally, after opening and closing his mouth twice, he continued almost in a whisper.

  “And the whole deal just goes like cookies, Bill. A little phone call, a little ride, and my share is two hundred cash, twenty-five an ounce, smooth as your baby sister’s ass. Man!”

  His voice rose again. “That’s two, three days’ work for me, after what they take out at J and K. Right? That’s twenty, maybe twenty-five hours of hauling boxes and sweating like a Georgia field hand. And now, with this one itty-bitty deal, I’ve got a little extra in my pocket, with no trouble and no fear. So now, I’ve got myself really thinking, and I’m just getting stupider and stupider. I’m thinking, all it takes is a couple deals a week like that, and I could double what I’m bringing home. Maybe more.

  “Then I met Sandy. Now I really have myself a good reason to get a hold of some extra. I want some nice clothes. Nice TV. Nice big comfy bed. Pretty soon, I’m moving a few ounces a week, regular, just to people I know, and I make, some weeks, two hundred, some weeks four hundred. I don’t have to share it with the governor—no taxes. And it’s solving a lot of problems for me, especially after I meet Sandy’s family. We’re getting married, and they expect us to live decent.

  “Okay. Next thing, they’re asking for coke. These are still my white boys, so they want the powder, not the hard stuff. Seems like they’ve discovered getting high and getting laid on blow is even better than on weed. So I call my old friend and get myself a finger of coke, and I cut it with so much shit it couldn’t get a parakeet high, and I sell it to them for twelve hundred dollars! About a hundred and fifty worth for twelve hundred!

  “Next day, they come running up to me over on University Drive, four of them, big giant motherfuckers, from the football team or something, and I think here’s where I get my ass kicked. And I’m just about to jump the fence, when I hear them talking all at the same time about what great shit it was, and how they were so high, and how their girlfriends were so high, and how the pussy was so tight—and how soon can I get them more of that great, serious shit I sold them? They think I’m the candy man. I could sell them lime Jell-O and baby powder, and they’d be throwing the money at me.

  “So that’s what I did. I’d cut back sometimes. Sometimes I wouldn’t sell anything for a month or two. But then we’d be running short, we’d need someth
ing, and one of my boys was always wanting to talk to me, just ready to start shoveling out money.”

  Redpath broke in. “So that explains the marijuana and the cash?”

  “Right, and the shit in the basement.”

  “And Sandy?”

  “I just always had money in my pocket for this and that. I’d tell her Kostecki’d give us cash bonuses. Which he did, once in a while, but it was like twenty or thirty. And I’d buy her presents, like the changing table, the living room furniture. I’d tell her I’d been saving up to surprise her.”

  “Well, it could be worse,” Redpath said, suppressing a smile.

  Toward the end of Moon’s speech, the defense attorney had been experiencing, almost to his embarrassment, a ripple of very inappropriate amusement at the irony of their situation. Because the clerk had bungled the search warrant paperwork, it seemed likely that none of the drugs found in Hudson’s apartment would be admitted at trial. As a result, they might well beat the charges for the crimes his client actually did commit, while his client went on to face a lethal injection for a crime that he probably never even thought of. It was a strange upside-down world he’d chosen to work in. Unfortunately, the attorney’s buzz was short lived.

  “It is worse,” Moon said. “You know how Gomez has it in her head that Carlos fixed me up to shoot Peach? Well, guess who I was getting my shit from.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “My old friend from La Bandera, Carlos. Three days before Peach went down, I met Carlos at the White Castle in Holyoke, picking up a couple eighths. Spider and Nono were there, and Carlos’s nephew, that little pig’s asshole, Pepe. They heard us talking, and they saw Carlos front me the stuff.”

  29

  Buddy Hogan’s grating voice on the other end of the line exuded an infectious anxiety that was beginning to make Gomez-Larsen squirm. Plus, she was already ten minutes late for her son’s game, and she needed to make a visit to the ladies’ room before she took off.