ONE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
4:03 P.M. EST
JESUS PENA leans back on the metal chair he’s sitting on, glances over at his attorney, and then returns his attention to the bandage on his hand. He picks at it, giving it a flick, flick, flick with the nail of his index finger, as if to suggest he’s far more interested in whether the bandage will stay on than in how many years of his life he can expect to spend in prison. In addition to the bandage, Jesus wears a bright orange DC DOC jumpsuit. The outfit would have had the effect of making him look nonthreatening, bordering on silly, were the sleeves not rolled up to expose the intricate multicolored tattoos covering both arms. They complement the two additional tattoos in the shape of teardrops under his right eye. The face tats, each the work of a different prison artist, represent two different murders. However, neither homicide is the reason Jesus is sitting in the concrete-floored jailhouse conference room.
Jesus looks up from his bandage again, this time to eye-fuck the prosecutor, Sandy Remz, although he knows the man only as “the DA motherfucker.” Remz is sitting across from him at the bolted-to-the-floor metal table. He has the kind of smug look that comes with knowing he has Jesus dead to rights. It’s a look Jesus has daydreamed at length about wiping off the DA motherfucker’s face from the skin on down ever since first meeting him at his arraignment six months ago. It was at that hearing that the prosecutor argued, with the kind of fire-and-brimstone self-righteousness you’d expect from a southern preacher and not from some 50K-a-year civil servant, that Jesus was a flight risk and should therefore be left to rot in jail until he was convicted. And that, Jesus recalls with venom, is why he’s wearing this fucking orange jumpsuit and why he has already served six months for a crime he hasn’t yet been convicted of.
Worse still is the fact that Jesus has had to spend those six months in jail instead of prison. Prisons, at least the kind of prisons Jesus is accustomed to, are built to house inmates serving sentences measured in years if not decades, and they have the facilities to meet those needs. Jails, however, are designed for housing misdemeanors, people serving out sentences of 365 days or fewer, and those awaiting trial, like Jesus. As such, their amenities are minimal and their cells small, which makes jail a much deeper circle of hell than the worst of prisons.
“Murder two. Fifteen to thirty,” Remz throws out.
“Man two,” Jesus’s state-appointed attorney counters, as if the two men are dickering over a used car. “Seven and a half to fifteen.”
Jesus regards his lawyer, a chill enough guy named Alex Garnett. When Jesus first met him, he got up in Garnett’s grill. “You my lawyer, you figure out a way to get me off. ’S’not my problem no more,” Jesus hissed.
But Alex didn’t back down the way most civilians did. He just shrugged his shoulders with the same kind of apathy Jesus prided himself on. “Actually, it is your problem, ’cause I’m not the one facing life in prison. You wanna go in for all day, that’s cool. I get paid either way, man.” It was a show of sack that Jesus could respect.
Remz scoffs theatrically at Alex’s offered plea bargain and turns to his partner for confirmation that the public defender is barking up the wrong tree. The partner, whom Jesus has come to think of as “the bitch DA,” is much younger and more attractive than the DA motherfucker. She shakes her pretty little head. Her wholesome expression is contradicted by eyes that are a little more come-hither. She catches Jesus looking at her, not for the first time. He puckers his lips in response. He knows from long experience that she’s only pretending it doesn’t make her want to vomit as she keeps a dead stare on Jesus’s smug face. “Mr. Pena shot a man in cold blood.”
“Point of fact,” Alex counters, “his running buddy did. This accomplice—a Mr. Luiz Grenados—already pleaded to man one and is currently serving a fifteen-year sentence in one of our finer correctional institutions.”
“Mr. Grenados’s plea arrangement doesn’t interest me,” Remz rebuts. “That deal was negotiated by a different—and clearly more accommodating—assistant district attorney. More to the point, who fired the fatal bullet is irrelevant due to the application of the felony murder rule.”
“Bonhart issues,” Alex says with a dismissive wave. “I can get past felony murder. Plus, the vic was another gangbanger. So I could go self-defense.”
A felony repeater of some years, Jesus has enough experience with the criminal justice system to detect public-defender bullshit, the same way a meth head can tell if the crystal’s been cut with too much baking soda. That experience, however, tells him that PD bullshit won’t get it done. Not this time. Not with all the evidence, both forensic and ballistic, plus an eyeball witness, to say nothing of Luiz’s testimony against him. The bitch DA is pointing out exactly that as Jesus commits to doing something he’s not so much daydreamed about but planned. It’s a strategy he started formulating shortly after his arrest, on the ride to Central Booking in the squad car with the busted shocks, his hands still cuffed behind his back with the metal bracelets digging into his wrists. Its penultimate step was cutting his right palm on a cell-made shiv this morning. The jail infirmary bandaged it up, but Jesus has kept at the wound enough to prevent a scab from forming. Now, it’s oozing just a bit. Just the right amount.
Thanks to the natural selection of the street, most gangbangers, including Jesus, have the bodies and reflexes of at least farm-team-level athletes. That’s why it takes only three seconds for him to vault over the metal table, hockey-check aside the DA motherfucker, and get his arms wrapped around the bitch DA. Both prosecutors, completely unaccustomed to dealing directly with any type of violence, are frozen by the sudden display of aggression. All they can manage to do is suck in huge lungfuls of air. This paralysis buys Jesus the half second he needs to rip off the infirmary’s bandage, exposing the gash on his palm he’s so carefully maintained over the past few hours. Another half a second is all he needs to claw the side of the bitch DA’s face with his fingernails. It’s a pretty face and it’s a damn fucking shame to mess it up like this—it’s like keying the side of a brand-new Escalade—but drawing blood is the important element, the critical element, of his plan.
It takes three tries to open the bitch DA’s skin because she’s so busy crying—Jesus can’t believe she’s crying already—and the tears have made her cheek slick. Complicating matters further is the fact that she’s screaming—hysterically—practically in his goddamn ear. The DA motherfucker is screaming as well, starting with “Get away from her!” and then, perhaps realizing it will take more than that, turning away and yelling, “On the gate! On the gate!” He’s not shouting to the door but rather to the guards he hopes are within earshot beyond. If they are, they’re ignoring him, because no guards come in.
Jesus grips the female prosecutor tighter and raises his voice. “I’m positive. HIV, hoss. You lemme outta here or I’ll do her!” Then, as if more explanation were required, Jesus brings his bloody palm dangerously close to the girl’s bleeding face.
“Get your client under control!” Remz screams at Alex. As Jesus’s attorney, Alex is clearly the one best suited to bring Jesus under control, but Alex is showing no indication he plans to do anything of the kind. Instead, he’s taking notes on his yellow legal pad and he seems far more interested in whatever it is he’s writing than in the well-being of Remz’s partner, a fresh-out-of-law-school trainee. What is her name again? Alex wonders. Michelle Something-or-other.
“I’ll fuck her up!” Jesus yells. “I’ll do it! Sure as shit, I’ll do it!” His voice is trembling a little now, suggesting he might be just slightly unnerved by the fact that his own lawyer doesn’t seem to care he’s taken a prosecutor hostage.
“Let her go!” Remz bellows repeatedly over Michelle’s sobs. “Let go of her now!”
Jesus’s eyes flash back to Alex, who continues his scribbling. To the extent that Jesus had a plan here, it included at least some effort on Alex’s part. Specifically, Jesus was counting on Al
ex, as his attorney, to negotiate for him, to act, in essence, as the good cop to Jesus’s bad cop. But Alex does not seem interested in participating. He doesn’t even appear to be paying attention. He just writes away, like he’s working on a goddamned novel. Finally, without looking up from his pad, Alex remarks, “You’re wasting your time here, Jesus.” The room goes quiet. Alex continues to scribble on his pad. “I don’t know what you were thinking, or if you were thinking at all, but there’s no way they can let you out of here. Not alive, at any rate. In fact, I figure you got about thirty seconds before two guards burst in.” Two guards charge in, right on cue. “Okay, maybe a little less than thirty seconds.”
One of the guards’ hands is trembling and Alex is certain it’s not from the coffee the man consumed during his break. Alex intuits that neither guard has seen any action in his entire correctional-facility career up to this point. This is evidenced by the fact that neither has as yet remembered that he’s carrying an OC pepper-spray canister and a PR-24 baton on his hip. Despite having these weapons, the guards can’t seem to manage anything other than variations on Remz’s ineffectual commands. “On the floor!” is a favorite.
Finally, Alex rises from his seat, the very picture of calm. Jesus’s eyes dart to Alex and then to the guards and then all around the room—his street-honed instincts calculating his best chances for pulling this off—before settling back on Alex. “Go ahead and do it, Jesus,” Alex says. Silence descends on the room. “Go ahead and do it,” Alex repeats. “You might as well. ’Cause whether you infect her or not—and, let’s be honest, we don’t really know that you’re infected—whether you do it or not, you’ve well and truly fucked up your defense. This is kidnapping, Jesus. Plus attempted assault with what I’m going to take your word for is a deadly weapon. And now that the guards are here, we’ve got two impartial witnesses. My point being”—Alex pauses for effect—“if you’re going to do the time, you might as well do the crime. Am I right?”
Jesus’s heart is beating so hard that all he can hear is the sound of the blood surging—whump-whoosh-whump-whoosh—in his now-throbbing head. His pulse is racing so fast that it feels like blood must be pushing through the gash on his hand in tiny spurts. He looks again to Alex, as if the answer to why Alex is actually arguing in favor of infecting the bitch were written on his cavalier face.
“Except,” Alex says slowly, with the suggestion of offered hope, “except maybe you don’t want to do it.” Jesus’s trembling eyes lock with Alex’s, emboldening Alex to take a cautious step toward his client. And then another. And another. Until he’s standing less than a foot away from Jesus. “Maybe you know this girl hasn’t done anything to you. Maybe you know that hurting her is wrong. Even in this…this game of ours. Maybe you know it’s wrong.”
An eternity passes. Michelle’s not crying anymore. The room is still.
The locomotive heartbeat in Jesus’s ears finally subsides enough for him to hear himself think. He looks at his lawyer, who’s nodding slow, silent encouragement…and lowers his bloody hand. With his good hand, he pushes the bitch away from him. The moment he lets her loose, she starts sobbing again for reasons he can’t understand, but the issue is made moot by the two guards leaping over the metal table to get at him. The two screws finally remember their batons and set to work on Jesus, literally beating him to the floor. Jesus hears a gunshot-like sound that is actually his kneecap fracturing, setting his leg ablaze with agony.
Alex’s voice cuts through the chaos, louder, forceful, and commanding. “Hey!” Alex jabs a finger toward Jesus, now immobilized on the floor and wincing in kneecapped agony. “Cut that shit out. That’s my client.”
* * *
Alex does his best not to reveal the extent to which the hostage situation has unnerved him as he walks down the long jailhouse corridor. Remz and Michelle are walking beside him. Michelle’s eyes are red. She’s filled with the conviction that she won’t be coming to work tomorrow. In fact, if her silent promises to herself are to be believed, she won’t be returning to this particular job ever again. Alex places a hand on her shoulder, feeling for the first time just how small she really is. “You okay?” he asks.
Michelle nods. Alex figures she’s silently cursing herself for losing her shit, thinking that he’ll tell this story, including the details of how she handled herself, to his fellow PDs, and all hope she ever had of gaining their respect will be lost. Another good reason, he thinks, for her to leave and take the corporate job she should have said yes to in the first place.
Alex turns to Remz. “Back to the case for a second. To be blunt—and I’m sorry about this—but what just happened in there, it puts you in a bit of a jackpot.” Remz’s eyes go wide. Is Alex really going to talk about Jesus Pena? Now? After what just happened? “Because of what transpired back there, if you and Ms.—” Flailing for her last name, Alex gestures over to Michelle. “If you and Michelle don’t recuse yourselves, Jesus has a slam-dunk appeal on prosecutorial bias.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Remz blurts out.
“Unfortunately, your department is shorthanded these days, and it’s gonna take time to bring a new ADA up to speed, which, consequently, would step on Mr. Pena’s right to a speedy trial.” Alex lets this notion, a legal Hobson’s choice, sink in. Remz can either proceed against Pena, knowing all the while that any conviction he wins will be vulnerable to appeal, or hand Pena a virtual acquittal in the form of an unconstitutionally delayed trial. Alex watches, with some enjoyment, as these thoughts play across Remz’s face. He sees the prosecutor checking Alex’s legal math, probing for holes, not finding any. “You can take this to trial, but I can guarantee you it’s gonna be more trouble than it’s worth,” Alex says.
“What are you thinking?” Remz asks, his tone dripping with acid.
“I’m thinking man two. Eight to sixteen.” It’s only one year more than his last counter to Remz and half the sentence Remz was trying to get Alex to take, but Alex can tell from Remz’s resigned expression that he’s got himself a plea bargain.
* * *
DC PUBLIC DEFENDER SERVICE
6:20 P.M. EST
Alex looks at his desk in the DCPD bullpen and surveys the remaining items: a stack of legal files, a stapler, a desk blotter, a desk calendar, a desk lamp that hasn’t worked properly for months, and a chipped coffee mug filled with half a dozen pens. Everything else that was in or on his desk now resides neatly in the single banker’s box at Alex’s feet. Alex didn’t commit a lot of personal items to his meager workspace over the past two years. He’d always been, as they say, just passing through. Not that this troubles Alex much. At thirty-three, with his own share of personal baggage, he’s given himself permission to spend a few more years finding himself and figuring out what he really wants to do with his law degree from New York University. Perhaps next year, he thinks, will be the right time. After all, he’ll be facing down the business end of thirty-five.
Probably the only personal item of note in the box is the framed photograph of himself and his fiancée. The photo, taken on vacation a year ago in Costa Rica, is so perfect it almost looks like it came with the frame. Alex’s blue eyes look particularly cobalt against the setting sun, and his close-cropped hair lends a distinctive squareness to his jaw. Because he’s sitting on the bow of a catamaran, it’s hard to tell how tall he is, but the way his fiancée folds her svelte form into his hints at Alex’s six-foot-three frame. Her face, framed by long locks of black hair, defies categorization. Indeed, in person, she is capable of such metamorphoses—depending on light, angle, hair up, hair down, and so on—that Alex often wonders if he’s marrying a girl who’s part chameleon. But the way she looks in this photo, captured in the Costa Rican splendor, most closely matches the picture of her he keeps in his mind’s eye.
Alex lifts his banker’s box. He’s thankful that the office is empty. It means a clean getaway, free of maudlin good-byes and halfhearted Good lucks. Just then Paula Jobson, Alex’s bureau chief, w
alks in and blows the promise of a quiet exit all to hell. Of course she’s still in the office, long past the hour when five-figure employees should go home. A severe woman of forty-two, Paula doesn’t have anyone to go home to. It’d be easy to assume her solitude is the result of the fifteen extra pounds she carries in her waist and thighs, but it could also be due to the hundred-pound chip she carries on her shoulder. As to which came first…well, that’s a riddle for the ages.
“Exciting last day,” she says.
Alex nods as he discreetly slips his public defenders’ office badge into his pocket. “I’m pretty sure,” he says, “that Remz will plead out on Jesus Pena. Eight years, out in five.”
“Not bad for second-degree murder” is all that Paula, who abhors doling out praise with a fundamentalist’s fervor, will give him.
Alex hands her the first file off his stack. “B-and-E. Seventeen-year-old, first offense. DA’ll cop to a mis,” he says, referring to the breaking-and-entering case he’s already plea-bargained on behalf of the client. It took less than a day’s worth of badgering and more than his usual amount of charm for Alex to convince the ADA to let the accused plead out to a misdemeanor.
Without further preamble, Alex drops the rest of the files, one by one, into Paula’s hands. With each file, he rattles off a different charge. “Rape. Assault. Assault with a deadly. Possession. Possession with intent. Search is bad on this one,” he interjects. “Rape. Rape. Agg-battery. Possession. Possession. Possession. Possession.”
Paula holds the files in her thick arms. “You know, if two years ago someone told me I’d actually be sad to see you go, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
Alex tries, without success, to come up with a reply that won’t make him vomit.
“Honestly, I’m pretty much screwed without you to help shoulder the load around here,” Paula admits.
Alex points to the stack of cases now in Paula’s custody. “Bench trials on top.” He punctuates this with a smile he hopes will signal an end to both the conversation and his relationship with Paula.
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