The Laws of Our Fathers

by Scott Turow

  'And I hear this and I'm like, Holy smokes! Hold on, heart! I got myself an innocent client! I got so fuckin excited. I cross-examined like some ferocious motherfucker. And lost. Naturally. Never win

  a prelim if the victim says that's the guy. But I'm blue, I'm whale-shit low. So I go over to the jail that night, I walk up on the tiers to see my client. "Hey, man, Shorty, I'm sorry, we'll beat it at trial.'' He starts in again.' 'No right. No right. No right.'' And somehow, I'm walkin away and it dawns on me, he's still shaking one hand at me. And I go back, I say, "You mean, he's lying cause you didn't stab him with the right hand, it was the left?" Seen the fucker smile, you wouldn't believe it. "Left, left, left. No right." So don't tell me that the defendant said it was a lie, all right?'

  'Well, what does all that mean?'

  'It means what it means.' Hobie stands again to ponder his painting.

  'Nile was lying to me? Nile really paid him? What?'

  'See, this is why I didn't want you involved. This is why I was telling you, stay away from him. Cause you can't handle this. Man, I knew you, Jack, when you cried cause you found out Mary Martin was flying with strings. And you ain't changed. So leave it be. Scat.'

  'Hobie. Something happened there. Someone was murdered. I've known this boy almost his entire life.'

  'Look, I ain't gonna tell you what he said to me. I can't. Privilege holds unless he's dead. And he ain't dead.'

  'You sure?'

  'Pretty sure.' Hobie smacks the canvas with his brush. 'Why, you afraid Eddgar murdered him, too?' 'It's crossed my mind.'

  A rankling snuffle shoots from Hobie's nose. 'You the only fucker on Planet Reebok who hates Eddgar worse than I do.' 'Maybe I've got more reason.' 'You know your problem with him?'

  'I have a feeling you're about to tell me. Sock it to me, bro.' 'You envy him.' 'Say what!'

  'Yep, I think that's what it is. See, man, I hate him for the shit he did. But you hate him for that and what he is now. You look back to all that stuff you were going through twenty-five years ago and you say, "Wow, that was exciting, that's when I was political, idealistic, committed. But I quit that nonsense." And you blame him because you think he's basically the one what forced you to give it up. Yet here he is, that dog, talkin all that shit you'd still love to believe, doin it too, and you find that infuriating.'

  'No,' says Seth. 'I mean, yeah, I see it. And I know I still believe it. I mean, not all of it. I can't. It was a children's crusade and some of it was childish. But I recycle my bottles. I vote for the good guys. But it's the wild hopefulness I really miss. All that time, it didn't seem there was any difference between love and justice. You could have them both, without conflict. We were going to revise life, down to the essence. We were going to abolish unhappiness. It was glorious.'

  'Right,' says Hobie. 'We asked the essential questions: How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a cab?'

  'Thank you for your support.'

  'Shit,' says Hobie. Momentarily, neither speaks.

  'How about just a yes or no on one thing, Hobe? Did Eddgar get Hardcore to off June?'

  Hobie's sole response is to draw his mouth down into an irked little pouch.

  'Goddamn,' says Seth. 'You just want to be Captain Marvel.'

  'Oh, fuck you, motherfucker. All you're doin is lookin after yourself. This is the single thing in this life I am any good at, leastwise that means something to anybody else. And I'll be goddamned if I will treat it with disrespect, just cause you got the blues or some Holy Grail about some boy you looked after when he used to wet his pants. It's in the books, man: I can't tell.'

  They are within a few feet of one another in poses that would look combative to an outsider, staring each other down. Seth turns away first, wandering from Hobie's room, and takes a seat on the basement stairs, picking at the metal runner. The cellar is a collection of musty smells. Glancing menacingly over his shoulder, Hobie emerges but stalks off in the opposite direction. In the darkness, beside the glimmering sheet-metal venting of the furnace, Hobie rummages in the banker's boxes where the trial records are stored. Swearing in all the romance languages, he throws the top two aside to reach the herniated carton below. When he returns to Seth, he is holding a sheet of paper.

  'Not so fast,' he says, turning the paper to his chest. 'Not so fast.' He sits on the step below Seth, his bulk occupying the entire space of the stairwell. 'Now look, you're such a journalistic hotshot,' Hobie says, 'maybe you can figure this much out. See this prosecutor, what's he called? Moldo?'

  'Molto.'

  'I got onto him right from the start. You gonna be a PA for life, man, you gotta be an angry fella, you gotta be lookin to see the right people kick the shit out of the wrong people, you gotta get off on that, day in and day out. So I'm hip, and I start runnin some changes on him, and pretty soon he's so sore at me, he ain't even thinkin bout Nile, cause he figures I'm the evilest, most deceptive bastard ever walked into a courtroom. Which is just fine with me. All right?'

  'Are you going to say anything plainly?'

  'Lookee here,' he says, 'just listen up. Now here I am at the end of this trial, and I pull the rabbit out of the hat. State says my client brought $10,000 to this gangbanger to get him to commit murder, and lo and behold, I go and show Nile give him $10,000 cash okay, but it was from the DFU. You remember that part?'

  'Are you looking for applause?'

  'You be fresh, I can just go back to paintin’ on my picture.'

  'Fine, I apologize. So what's the point?'

  'Now, if I know from day one, from before that trial starts, that skunk Hardcore is lying through his gangbanging booty about what that $10,000 is and where it came from - and I do, I surely do know those things for fact - then why wouldn't I go in and say, "Now now, Mr Prosecutor, you done made one hell of a mistake, here's the check, go see the folks at DFU"? Why wouldn't I do that? How does Moldo answer that question?'

  'Because you're the evilest, most deceptive bastard that ever walked into a courtroom?'

  'Right on. I just get my jollies pullin his chain. That's what he thinks.'

  'And what's the truth?'

  'You supposed to tell me.'

  Seth thinks. 'It's a smoke screen, right? I would say you waited because you didn't want him to have time to look into this. Something about the money was wrong.'

  'Doin good, bro. Now I'll tell you the truth, man: There's a lot about that money, a whole lot, that's wrong, and I can't tell you but a little tiny part of it'

  'You didn't want Molto to ask Hardcore about it?'

  'No. Hardcore, he had to tell the lies he told before. Jackson gave him a script - that whole thing was so Jackson, man - and Core stuck right to it. Wasn't worried about Hardcore. See, what I didn't want Moldo and them to do was go out to that bank and talk to the teller who cashed that check. Cause she might tell them what-all she told me.'

  'Which was? Is that privileged too?'

  'Not really.'

  'So what'd she say?'

  'She remembered Nile. She remembered him cause he acted like his usual dumbbell self. She handed him $10,000 in cash - 100 one-hundred-dollar bills, by the way, no fifties or twenties. And he stuck them in an overnight delivery envelope. And she says, "You shouldn't oughta do that, it says right on the form, like, Don't send cash," and he says, "Neh, we've done it before," and 'fore he leaves out, asks her is Fed-Ex around the comer.'

  'So he didn't give money to Core? That's the point?' 'No.'

  'He did give the money to Hardcore?'

  'I'm saying that's not the point.' 'Well, who'd he send the money to?' 'That's the point.'

  The paper which Hobie's been holding is a printout from microfiche, white on black and heavy with toner, reflecting the data about a Fed-Ex delivery last July. Nile is listed on one side of the form as the sender. On the other is the destination:

  Michael Frane RR 24

  Marston, Wisconsin 53715

  When Seth looks back, Hobie is studying his reaction ab
stractly, waiting to see how long it takes to sink in. 'April Fools?' Seth asks. 'This here's no foolin.' 'It's him, right?'

  'Be a funny coincidence if it wasn't.'

  Seth stares at the paper again. His arms feel weak.

  'How long were you going to wait to tell me this?'

  'Probably forever. I'm probably doin somethin I shouldn't, as it is. Only you're breakin my heart with that hangdog shit, fuckin Oliver Twist or something, waitin for more. And this is a goddamn secret, Jack. The judge doesn't hear word one about this. I had enough lectures from her about withholding evidence to last a lifetime.' Hobie nods. 'You forgot to ask me when I got that from Fed-Ex.'

  'When?'

  'Night before Nile run off. One hell of a surprise, too. I'd asked them to dig it up weeks before. I opened the mail. It's like "Ee-yow!" '

  'He hadn't told you?'

  He shakes his head again, not a reply, but a sign he cannot respond.

  'He couldn't have told you,' Seth says. 'You just said you were surprised.'

  Hobie merely looks: a great stone face, which in fact it is, a face that would be worthy of some sculptor's efforts. 'What else did I miss?' Seth asks. 'Name of the town familiar?' Marston. 'Is that where June lived?' 'Bingo.'

  'He's been living there with her?'

  'Not with. Not so far as I can tell. But he'd been in those parts twenty-five years, same as her. Ran a little TV/radio/stereo kind of store since the eighties. Big chains, volume discounts finally put him out of business. Left him with some heavy debts.'

  'Is that what the money was for?'

  Hobie points. Bingo again.

  'Apparently, bankruptcy wasn't an option. Some folks didn't like the notion of a credit check on Michael or anything like that. You know, he'd sort of kept the name, case he ever ran across somebody he used to know, but he changed the spelling so he didn't step on your toes. Remember, you had his social security number. So his must have been a phony. Which meant they didn't want anybody pokin round about his background. That's how I figure it. Seems he's kind of a sensitive guy, anyway, not too good with stress. Had some kind of breakdown years back. He was working around there as a farmhand originally and cut off half of one foot in a threshing machine. That's like 1971.1 think that's when June showed up. June and Nile. Kind of nursed him back to health.'

  'Where the hell do you get all of this?' he asks Hobie. 'Not from Nile, right?'

  'Nope, else I wouldn't be telling you. No, I spent quite a bit of time on the telephone, starting with lunch the last day of the trial. While you were beatin the streets? I talked to the banker, realtor, chamber of commerce. Everybody liked Michael. Sweet, peaceful fella. Kind of strange. The boy we knew. I guess he stayed pretty close to my client over the years. Kind of like you and my client? Anyway, that's who I was trying to rustle up - my client. I've always figured this is where he bolted. Wanted to warn Michael his cover was blown.' 'That's why he took off?'

  'Partly, I'd guess. In part. I'd say, overall - strictly an estimate, not a confidence - Nile wasn't very pleased by the direction of the defense. He was ripshit with me already, by the time I showed him that piece of paper. But I think this here's a secret he'd always sworn to Mom he'd keep. I'm damn sure he didn't want me to go into all of this in court. Which, of course, I'd be obliged to do, if he would have let me. And then again, I think he might have worried I'd let word slip to you.'

  'To me? What would I do?'

  'Hey, dude, way I remember this one, Michael set you up big-time. Only logical to think you'd want to trash him, if you ever got a bead on where he was.'

  'I never held him to blame. You know that. I'd actually like to see him.'

  'Proust,' says Hobie.

  'Right,' says Seth. His imagination, anchored in the past, already is crawling toward some usable image of Michael. Seth has been to towns like Marston. Several years ago, he did a few columns on a girl up in Podunk, Minnesota, who wanted to play the tuba in the all-boys marching band. He spent a week out there. Everybody has strange hair: girls with dos like woodpecker's combs, guys whose fathers ragged the hippies now with greasy locks dripping to their shoulders. All of them get drunk on Friday nights and tear down the county roads, picking off the rural-delivery post boxes with their bumpers. Their parents, farmers mostly, are utterly confused by the viral spread of urban life. Their kids take drugs and hang out at the malls down on the interstate, wear their seed caps backwards, and call each other 'motherfucker.' What the hell? the adults always seemed to be asking.

  And here, where people once thought they were the real America, Michael Frain has remained. Seth envisions him on the

  main street peering discontentedly into the window of his store. An unlit neon sign, too small for the frontage it decorates, mentions a popular brand, Sony or G. E. Behind it, the shop is gloomily, grimly out of business. Some disused something, two cardboard boxes, and a few stray kinks of wire are piled meaninglessly on a ledge blanketed with acrid dust, which has gathered at places into hairy wisps. The fixtures and display shelves have been removed. The man himself remains angular, still slender, though his gut has taken on some slope. He wears a washed-out plaid shirt, with the tails hanging outside his twill trousers. He looks a bit wasted, gawky, with a knobby weight at the elbows and the knees. He still has some hair, ragged but not quite as wild, not quite as bright of course. And he would take considerable pain in stepping down into the street. To walk, Michael wheels his upper body to the left and stiffy hurls the opposite leg, an elaborate, painful-looking motion which he has thoughtlessly mastered. Down the way, the unpainted clapboard church and corrugated Farm Bureau building stand beside a new brick restaurant, prefab construction from the looks of it, insubstantial as a cereal box. As he moves along, Michael's eyes, still glossy and uncertain, would flash this way and avoid Seth, as they avoid all strangers, with no hint of recognition. That's him. Seth gathers himself around the picture.

  'And did you find him?'

  'Which one?'

  'Either. Nile?'

  'Nope. Course not.'

  'How about Michael?'

  'Nope. That's how come I ended up talking to everybody in town. Man's just gone. Nobody could find him that day. Or since.' 'They're together?'

  'Doing their fugitive thing. My guess. Michael's had practice slipping his name, his past. I figure he's showing Nile how.'

  In the silence of the basement, the voice of one of the wrestlers, at the same pitch as an engine exhaust, rumbles across the room from the TV. 'I'll crush the Mighty Welder's butt,' he declares to an interviewer.

  'And you're not going to tell me the rest. How we get to this point?'

  'Can't, man.'

  'Who can?' Seth asks. 'Who will?'

  Hobie lays his heavy hand on Seth's knee. He smells of paint, his eyes are bleary. He looks at Seth, as they look at each other, with what's been imbued over a lifetime.

  'You'll figure,' he says.

  SUMMER 1995

  Nile

  Weak, Nile always thought when he entered the jail. The damn guards were so weak, just in a total snooze. Their whole deal was papers and forms. 'Captain wants them forms to be right.' Here they were, with all these bad actors and tough customers, killers and heartless slobs two hundred feet away, and the realest thing to these tools was whether every visitor put down a sign-in time and the inmate's pen number. Probation was the same way. Jesus. Nile sighed and thought about the girl.

  Nile was in love. He was always in love, but this was different. It was always different, because he didn't love the girls other men did. He didn't think Julia Roberts was so beautiful. In high school, he wasn't like every guy who thought about boning the whole pom squad. He liked sweet girls, gentle girls, girls who had something special - girls who maybe some way reminded him of himself. Right now he was really in love. Better than ever. He was like the dude in the song who loved being in love. He loved Lovinia.

  'Nile, my man, my man,' said the lieutenant. He said that each week. Nile timed it
so this sphincter-brain named Eddie was on the desk, because he barely searched him. 'It rainin out there?'

  'A little,' Nile said. 'Kind of misting.'

  'Shit. That damn pizza boy get slow. Any doggone excuse. Step into my office. Kind of mistin,' said Eddie, as he extended a slightly arthritic finger to the examination room. 'Shit, you know, it been mistin all damn month. That pollution and all's what done it. You think I'm kiddin? I'm not kidding. Mistin. Shit, I'll be havin this damn cough all year.' He ran his arms along the outside of Nile's torso, inside each leg until he reached the thigh. 'Okay, you done. Which one you want?'

  'Henry Downs. Sly Bolt.'

  'Mr Sly Bolt. Yessir, we gonna tell another gangbanger this week how he got to be a good boy when we let him out. You make sure he listen up.' Eddie laughed and stamped Nile's hand. He said he'd call to have them bring Bolt down.

  Nile walked on. At the gatehouse, he stuck his hand under the ultraviolet and the guards inside discharged the lock, admitting him. Nile could feel it there behind him. It reminded him of Bug; every step, every twitch, brought her to mind. She was always with him, like magic. He saw some skinny girl on the street and he remembered her. He saw stocking caps or grey twills; he felt the package in his can. It was like a town where all the roads ran to one place. Lovinia.

  Girls always got Nile like that. He was always waking up and trying to remember first thing who he was in love with. His heart was always flying along, airborne with secret love. He was crazy all the time about someone who didn't even know it. There was Emme Perez, a receptionist at Main Probation who had two little babies from two different men. He'd loved her secretly for a long time, with her thin little legs and her kind of attitude. There was Marjorie in his father's campaign office, who had a limp from something she'd had as a kid. There was another black girl named Namba Gates he met at college who seemed to like him, too. Nile thought she was waiting for him to ask her out, and he almost did it, until he realized he couldn't bear to. When he was a freshman in high school, there was a girl in geometry, Nancy Franz, chubby really, but kind of sweet on him, she used to bump him in the hallways and stuff, steal his books; it was fifteen years later and he still thought of her sometimes. There were so many.