The Hanging Judge

by Michael Ponsor

  After a pause, Redpath unfolded his arms, stepped from around the lectern, and took half a step toward the jury box.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I will make a promise to you right now. And I ask you to hold me to this promise.”

  He held up his finger and increased his volume.

  “Alex Torricelli will never say that! Never. He will testify that he saw someone, someone probably Hispanic, run down that alley, carrying something, an object that I agree was almost certainly the weapon used by the killer to commit these terrible murders. Moon Hudson is not Hispanic. The man who ran down that alley was not Moon. That man was the real murderer, a Hispanic man who was a member of the gang La Bandera. I submit to you that the evidence will show that the man running down that alley was almost certainly Carlos Arcera himself, Pepe Rivera’s uncle, who you heard so much about from the prosecutor. Based on Officer Torricelli’s own testimony, the man he saw running down that alley could not have been Moon Hudson. For the government to make that suggestion is outrageous. It is absolutely false and reveals just what a bag of broken bottles its whole case against Moon really is.”

  For the next five minutes, Redpath described Moon’s background, how he got the nickname Moon from his uncle Thad while he was still in the cradle, his meeting with Sandy at the university, and his job as a warehouse foreman. Redpath returned once more to Grace, lingering to make Moon show some emotion and was pleased to notice two of the jurors glancing his client’s way with expressions approaching sympathy. It was a good moment for another dart at the prosecutor.

  “And before I leave the topic of the Hudson family, I ought to mention one thing Ms. Gomez-Larsen tried to put such a sinister spin on—this terrible inositol, this so-called drug dilutant.” Redpath paused to suppress a smile and shake his head. “The prosecutor gave you the fancy name, inositol, but she never mentioned what it really is, to ordinary folks. It’s baby formula, ladies and gentlemen. They mix it with water to make up a bottle for the baby, so Moon can feed Grace on the nights when Sandra needs a little extra sleep. So much for that.”

  Redpath returned to the podium and flipped a page of his notes to let this sink in.

  “The mistake—assuming it was a mistake—about Moon’s supposed girlfriend, who was really his wife, the outright falsehood about the police officer seeing Moon when he didn’t and won’t say he did, the half-truth about the inositol—that’s all typical of what you will find is the government’s case. Distortion, innuendo, and spin. Let’s turn now to what they say their real evidence is.”

  Redpath counted off the government’s proposed witnesses contemptuously. Bobbie Thompson, the recently expelled UMass student, was a joke, completely untrustworthy. Santiago and Ortiz, facing felony drug charges with multi-decade potential sentences would say anything; their stories did not even jibe with each other.

  “The very nice man, Mr. Deluviani, who the prosecutor says will testify that he saw my client running down the alley? That’s another myth. I should have mentioned it right at the beginning, just like Officer Torricelli. Marco Deluviani will say that he saw somebody. He won’t be able to identify Moon Hudson, and he won’t even be able to tell you whether this somebody was Hispanic or African-American. That’s it. His testimony amounts to nothing.”

  Redpath turned to the side, looked up at the ceiling, and placed his hands together.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. He looked tired. “Okay.” He turned to the jury. “Now let’s get to what this case, or I should say this mess, is really all about.

  “The one witness who I predict will say just exactly what the prosecutor says he will say will be Pepe Rivera, the sixteen-year-old boy, now seventeen I guess, who admits he drove the car and assisted in the deliberate murder of Edgar Delgado and the tragic, unintended killing of Ginger O’Connor. He will say just exactly what the prosecution wants him to say, because if he doesn’t he will spend the rest of his life, instead of just twenty years, locked up in prison. He’s a kid who assisted in two murders, and he’s here looking for the door marked ‘Exit.’ A way out.

  “One thing that the prosecutor didn’t tell you is that the story Pepe will spin for you on the witness stand a few days from now is not his first story. Oh no. When he first came up with Moon Hudson’s name, he had a different, entirely screwball story about how Moon didn’t tell him he was going to be shooting anyone, just going to wave the gun at the victim to scare him, and Moon was going to pay Pepe a hundred bucks to drive the car. It was a story that Pepe now admits was a bald-faced lie, a total crock. It was not until several weeks after Moon’s arrest that he changed his story and came up with this fable, this new lie, about his uncle Carlos supposedly hiring Moon.

  “Now you might ask yourselves why Pepe changed his story. The reason is another thing the prosecutor didn’t tell you. A short time after the police arrested Moon, law enforcement officers down in San Juan found a body floating in the harbor that they’re pretty sure was Carlos Arcera. And this guy didn’t choke on a clam. He’d been shot in the face before somebody tossed him into the harbor. When he heard this, Pepe realized he didn’t have to cover for Carlos anymore, and he decided, or maybe somebody told him, to make his story a little bit more plausible by cooking up this crazy new fairy tale that Carlos Arcera hired Moon Hudson.

  “But the evidence will show that it is far, far more likely that Carlos Arcera himself committed these crimes, that Rivera was instructed to shove the blame onto Moon Hudson if he got caught, and that after Delgado’s drug-dealer friends caught up with Carlos and settled the score, somebody got Rivera to change his story. This teenager’s fake decision to come clean will be quite understandable when you hear about the stampede of government investigators and lawyers, including a Holyoke police captain who is Ginger O’Connor’s uncle, who were pounding on Rivera’s door day after day, hammering on him with the fact that his first story wasn’t going to do the trick. The revenge murder of Carlos Arcera freed Pepe, with a little help from his government friends, to come up with this new concoction of nonsense.

  “But it’s still a house of cards. If you touch it, ladies and gentlemen, it collapses immediately. When you get down to it, all the prosecution really has in this case is Pepe Rivera, a terrified child who admits he helped kill two people. That’s it. I am confident that after you hear this boy’s testimony you will have to conclude that no reasonable person, no one in this room, no one in the entire universe, would trust the word of Pepe Rivera in this situation, for one single solitary minute. And at the end of the trial, when I speak to you again, I will be asking you to return a verdict of not guilty, and end this nightmare for Moon Hudson and his family. Thank you.”

  39

  Later that day, David was sitting with Marlene on the stone terrace behind his house, pondering the slow sunset. The tallow-colored light threw shadows of leaf patterns on the judge’s sweet-smelling lawn. Marlene rested, alert on her haunches, scanning the edge of the trees for chipmunks and other interlopers. At a respectful distance, two robins hopped stiffly. Too much time had passed since David had seen Claire, and he was thinking about her again.

  She had called the evening of the garage catastrophe, around bedtime, to ask how his hand was. Then she’d started to apologize about talking to Novotny with a quaver in her voice that he’d found close to unbearable. David remembered interrupting her, telling her how sorry he was about what he’d said—that it was stupid, unforgivable—but the conversation started jumping around at this point, and his memory of exactly who said what got murky. He did remember that after a long silence she’d asked what was going on, as if it weren’t obvious, and that he’d lied and said that nothing was going on, and there had been another silence, followed by a sudden, intense burst of questions from Claire that jarred him so badly he just went blank. He couldn’t recall what either of them said after that, except that whatever it was made him want to hang up, get in his Subaru, and drive to Alaska. In the
end, they decided to take a break. He’d sat in his recliner that night, staring out the French doors into his backyard until three a.m. He hadn’t been up so late since Faye died.

  A few days later, Claire called again. He let the machine take her message. Her voice sounded thin and remote.

  “Hi, it’s me. Ummmm, I’m honestly not sure what happened last time, David. But I would like to give it another try. Are you there? Pick up the phone, please. Come on.” There was a pause while she waited. “Okay. David, I don’t want to be …” Another pause. The image of Claire rifling through her mental thesaurus looking for the right word made David start to smile. Was she trying to be diplomatic, or just clear?

  “Testy,” she said finally. “But I also have to say that I don’t think either of us deserves whatever’s going on here.” Another, shorter pause. “So call me, okay? Please. This is …” She sighed. “This is the pits.”

  Of course, she hadn’t phoned since then. She wouldn’t. But she was the first thing on David’s mind before he opened his eyes in the morning, and she was the final pang as he turned off the light each night. In the darkness behind his closed eyes, he would relive the totally unforgivable spectacle he’d made of himself the last time he’d seen her.

  David scratched Marlene’s neck as she watched the robins closely. Right now would be a perfect time to call Claire. The jury had finally been chosen, and the openings were behind him, with no IEDs exploding in the courtroom so far. Plus, with any luck, Claire would be out with friends, and he’d only have to speak to her machine.

  But the air was so consoling, the high western sky was such a perfection of iridescent teal and peach, and the spring aroma of the lawn was so rich that David kept procrastinating, kneading the back of Marlene’s thick neck. In a minute he’d go in, microwave his dinner, and spend the evening working up a summary judgment motion in an age discrimination case his clerk had squeezed onto tomorrow’s docket. For now, he’d sit. The bolder of the two robins bounced in their direction, and the dog shifted restlessly.

  The phone rang, startling the birds, which flew off with indignant cries. David could barely allow himself to hope it might be Claire, but as he hurried into the house he went through an absurd pantomime of making himself presentable, tucking in his shirt and running his hands back over his hair.

  It was Liz Coffman, Raymond Norcross’s long-time secretary, a pretty, highly competent woman David had grown fond of over the years, calling from Washington, DC. They exchanged greetings and inquired about each other’s dogs. She had two rescue greyhounds, Tammy and Pete. She asked him to hold for Ray. The delay while he waited for his brother to come on the line was shorter than usual.

  “Hello, Your Honor!” Ray sounded happy, or at least hearty.

  “Hello, Ray,” David said, a little more cautiously.

  “Listen, I’m sorry Lindsay complicated your life with her death penalty essay. Somebody at Deerfield Academy is going to wish he or she had never been born.”

  “It’s not a problem. The girl’s a chip off the old block.” After a pause, David added limply, “How’s the weather down there?”

  “Damned if I know,” Ray said with renewed gusto. “Just got back from Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and I forget where else. It’s been frustrating, because I’ve been dying to get in touch with you about the WFSC, and I’ve been too tied up to call.”

  The acronym went over David’s head, but he avoided letting his brother know. Ray did this sort of thing. Maybe it would come to him in a minute.

  “Well, you’re a very busy guy,” David said. “They tell me you had cherry blossoms down there. Too bad you missed them.”

  “You know what the WFSC is, don’t you?”

  David shifted from one foot to the other and pulled on the end of his nose, hoping something might click. Nothing did.

  “Not really, Ray.”

  “It’s short for the World-Famous Springfield Cock-Up.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re a celebrity.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s very much so. You made the International Herald Tribune. What happened?”

  David explained in general terms the Pratt dinner, Professor Novotny, and the disruption of the trial. When the topic of Claire arose, he could almost hear Ray’s antennae whirring.

  “We’re back on track now,” David said, dropping the words into his brother’s pregnant silence. “We finished openings today. Tomorrow we’ll get started with the government’s first witness.”

  Raymond had obviously not been listening. “Will you forgive me if I say something, little brother?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You’re a very, very decent fellow, you always have been, but as usual you’re missing the forest for the pine needles. Allow me to summarize for you: One, you’re on the young side; two, you’re extremely smart; three, you work as though God were standing next to you holding a big fat stick; and four, you’re an inoffensive moderate. Barring terrible luck, we’ll have you up on the First Circuit Court of Appeals in two or three years. Faster, if someone would shove dear Judge Leaky in front of a bus. After that, who knows? We might just see you wandering among the cherry blossoms yourself. So, no distractions or dillydally, dear boy. This is no time to tiptoe through the cow pies.”

  “Dillydally?”

  “Exactly. Let me tell you how this world wags. One mess, and you have an opportunity to prove your mettle. Two messes, and you’re a theme for late-night TV. This Claire enchantress can wait until the trial is over. For now, keep the old eye screwed to the ball, and the zipper tightly zipped. It was a lot of work getting you in there. Don’t mess us up.”

  The waxy sun had disappeared, and the air had turned chilly when David and Marlene returned to the back terrace. It was dark in the surrounding trees, and the sky high above the tallest branches was a deepening blue. Soon there would be stars. David let his eyes follow a pinkish-gray wisp of cloud for a while, then he turned and walked quickly into the house, heading for the phone. He needed to talk to Claire. His brother could go fish.

  40

  A few miles south of Amherst, the air was muggy over the Flats in Holyoke. Pepe Rivera’s mom, Maria Maldonado, and her cousin Hannah had the windows open in Maria’s one-bedroom apartment, trying to catch a little breeze as they rearranged the space to make room for Hannah. With Pepe sitting in a cell in Ludlow, Maria decided it didn’t make sense to keep carrying the rent on her own. Tomorrow morning, her uncle, Hannah’s father, would be coming by with his pickup bringing Hannah’s things.

  Maria was in the kitchen, unpacking a box of dishes, washing them and carefully placing them on the shelves. The radio was tuned to a Spanish-language station, playing softly so as not to disturb the neighbors. Maria moved deliberately, like someone convalescing from an illness. It had been a rough time for her—first, her son was arrested, then the news of her half brother Carlos, killed and thrown into the harbor in San Juan.

  She could hear Hannah busy in the bedroom, crooning to the radio and cleaning out what was left of Pepe’s things from his bureau and closet. It was kind of her to do this. Maria had tried going through her son’s stuff, but it disheartened her to find a stack of old Penthouse magazines in his underwear drawer. When did he stop being a little boy and start with this kind of trash? She would let Hannah have the bedroom while she continued to sleep on the couch in the living room. Maria had no boyfriend and was in no hurry to get one, whereas Hannah was talking about some new guy she’d been seeing and dropping hints about needing her privacy.

  Suddenly, Maria heard Hannah cry “Jesús Maria!” This was followed by a quick thumping of knees and feet from the adjoining room. Maria set down a plate and hurried to see what the problem was. Hannah rarely moved fast, and Maria was almost sick with dread at whatever this new thing might be. Her main fear was that Hannah had found baggies of marijuana or, God fo
rbid, a taped-together bundle of clear plastic envelopes with white powder.

  Hannah was struggling to her feet as Maria entered the room. She was a heavy woman, and she grunted as she pulled herself upright. No question she was upset. She was brushing back her henna-streaked hair and avoiding eye contact.

  The two women spoke in Spanish.

  “What is it?” Maria asked.

  “It’s nothing. Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing, Hannah! I can see by your face. In the name of God, tell me what it is.”

  Hannah did not reply but tipped her head toward the closet.

  Maria stooped, putting her hands on her knees as she peered into the shadows. A broken floorboard was lying next to a dark space with something inside it that she could not make out. Crawling into the closet on her hands and knees, she saw a piece of green canvas and, protruding from the top of the cloth, the barrel of a gun. She pulled back the canvas and felt the cold metal. There was a big space under the boards; the gun was large, not just a pistol. An oily smell rose from the hole.

  At the back of Maria’s mind, a dormant memory shifted and pressed itself against her consciousness: Carlos, back in October, on the morning of the shooting, coming by the apartment as she was cleaning up from breakfast, and disappearing for a few minutes into her son’s room. She recalled it had been a beautiful fall day, cool and sunny. She’d asked no questions—not even how he’d gotten in without knocking. The dark look on her brother’s face told her that he would take no questions. One peep and she’d get the back of his hand.

  In the dimness, Maria became aware that Hannah was working her way into the closet next to her. She pulled Maria’s hand away from the cloth and slid the broken board so that it fit snugly back in the hole.