“Well, I already told them about you,” she says.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t use your name.”
He wishes like hell he had any reason to believe her.
“I told the district attorney that I know someone who might have information about the case. They want to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“Jesus, Cynthia.”
“I had to say something, Jay. The D.A.’s office is hot as hell on this one,” Cynthia says, explaining, apologizing almost. “The girl went and hired herself someone right out of their office, an ex-D.A. by the name of Charlie Luckman.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“You know him?”
“Charlie Luckman?”
Jay thinks of all the unreturned phone calls, Mr. Luckman’s secretary reporting over and over that her boss was with a new client on urgent business.
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Jay?”
“I’m in a lot of trouble, Cynthia.”
He turns and opens the front door, squinting against a blast of white light. The rain has stopped, and the sun has found its place again, its oppressive position on high. The heat is dizzying. On the street, Jay stumbles back to his car, playing the words over and over again in his mind:
Chapter 18
They bring in the defendants in groups of five.
Jay, palms slick with sweat, watches from the back row of the
gallery.
He scans the faces in the courtroom, knowing the risk he’s
taking by being here. There must be a dozen or so spectators in
the gallery, mostly men in sports coats and slacks. He wonders
if any of them are cops.
If he’s asked anything, he’ll lie. He decided that on the ride
over.
But he needs to know what, if anything, Elise Linsey said to
detectives.
For arraignments, the defendants sit in the jury box, to the
right of Judge Emily R. Vroland’s bench. Two armed bailiffs stand on either side, taking note of any stray movement, any unnecessary shifting or yawning or whispering among those waiting to be formally charged. The men and women in custody are a solemn bunch. Most have spent a night or two in lockup, been forced to trade their clothes and personal effects for a county-issue jumpsuit, and are not exactly in the most cheerful
of moods. They stare straight ahead, waiting their turn. Jay remembers looking out into the gallery at his own arraign
ment, searching first for his mother’s face, then Cynthia’s. He
knew right away something was wrong. His mother’s absence
didn’t surprise him. It hurt, but it didn’t surprise him. But when
he looked out into the courtroom and did not see Cynthia, he felt
actual alarm. Something was seriously wrong. He felt it before
he understood the weight of her absence, how bad things would
get for him.
That first court appearance, Bumpy Williams was the only
cat who showed up for Jay. After all the organizing Jay had done
in support of his brothers in lockup, the arrested or wrongly
accused, most of his comrades-in-arms stayed away in those
early days. It was the first true indication that the charges against
him were more serious than the cops had initially let on. This
was bigger than some trespassing charge or a case of unlawful
assembly.
He was too ashamed to push Bumpy on the Cynthia issue when
