Southern Discomfort

'Court's due to start in fifteen minutes,' I told Reese as he unlocked the shop next door, 'so tell me quick: you and A.K. get yourselves in any trouble last night?'

He swore they hadn't.

'We went over and parked in front of Bannerman's trailer till his wife came home. And then we'd hardly started asking where he was till her girlfriend came running up saying he was killed.'

'She wasn't home when you arrived?'

Reese shook his head.

'And you didn't threaten her? Or him?'

'We don't beat up on women,' he said indignantly. 'And Bannerman was already dead, wasn't he?'

He and A.K. had tailed the women over to Redbud Lane, gotten the main facts from Deputy Jamison (who hadn't thought to mention to Dwight that he'd seen the boys), and had then driven on over to Chapel Hill. 'But Mama made us come on home 'cause she wanted me to open the office this morning. Besides, A.K. called from the hospital and Uncle Andrew told him he was going to be in big trouble if he didn't get home before midnight.'

I glanced at my watch and knew I was going to be in big trouble if I wasn't sitting on the bench in eight minutes. *      *      *

Around the courthouse, the connection between Bannerman's death and my brother, his daughter, and me was such a muddle that conversations broke off whenever I appeared and no one found the nerve to broach the subject directly. 'Sorry to hear about your brother,' was the closest anyone came; and I pushed it all out of my mind till court adjourned for the day.

I had been a district judge for a full week now and it seemed to become more interesting every day, although cases involving drugs were more depressing than I'd expected. I can't get seriously upset about marijuana anymore. Not when there's so much hard stuff floating around the country. Heroin, crack, angel dust, China white— it's everywhere, in every stratum of Colleton County society from migrant camps to million-dollar houses, and I've pretty well reversed the never-in-a-million years position I had when I first passed the bar exam.

'Every day, legalization starts to make more and more sense,' I tell Dwight. 'You and Bo may think everybody in your department's straight, but there's so damn much money in trafficking and your salaries are so damn low—'

'Who you think's not straight?' growls Dwight.

'That's not what I said. I'm saying if drugs were legal, you could cut your operating costs in half.'

'If we had stiffer laws—'

'You can't enforce the laws we have.'

Dwight doesn't like to hear me talk that way. 'You see that documentary they did on the needle parks in— where was it? Holland? Denmark? Kids overdosing. Hypodermics all over the sidewalks. I'm telling you: drugs are flat-out bad.'

'Hey, I never said they weren't. A fried brain is disgusting. Wave your magic wand, make the stuff disappear, and you'll get no argument from me. But till you do, the only real difference between those needle parks and what's happening in the side streets and back alleys of Durham, Fayetteville, or parts of Dobbs right now is that at least those European addicts didn't mug helpless old people or break into houses to get money to buy the stuff.'

'Yeah,' says Bob McAdams, who heads up a local independent insurance company. 'You guys don't put a cap on drug crimes pretty soon, everybody's premiums are going to be right through the roof. The industry's hemorrhaging money from drug-related thefts and bodily injuries.'

'Legalization's not the only answer,' Dwight argues. 'What about education and rehabilitation? They'd work if the legislature would fund them right.'

'Big if,' says Lu Bingham, who daily tries to wheedle more money from government agencies. 'Instead of spending millions on something that works, Congress would rather waste billions on trying to keep drugs illegal.'

'For the last three years, at least once a week I'd have a client that'd beg the judge to get her in a treatment program,' I say. 'You want to guess how long some of the waiting lists are?'

I spouted off like this in frustration to one of our state's older elected representatives at a fund-raiser last month. He'd nodded sagely. Oh, yes, indeed. He remembered Prohibition, when the U.S. government told its citizens they couldn't drink booze and then couldn't or wouldn't enforce it.

'From the White House to the courthouse, everybody kept a bottle in the desk drawer. Whole police forces were bribed, judges subverted. Gangs distributed the stuff. There were turf battles, innocent bystanders got mowed down in drive-by shootings. Sound familiar, young lady?'

'So how come you don't introduce a bill to decriminalize drugs?' I goaded.

'Too late,' he said, patting my shoulder. 'Too much vested interest in keeping it illegal on both sides of the law. Take away the crime and you take away the cash, cash that needs to get laundered through otherwise legitimate banks and businesses. Good ol' supply and demand.'

He was just tipsy enough to keep patting my shoulder and nodding agreement. 'But nobody's gonna give up that Niagara of cash without a bloody fight. I'm not saying both sides'll use Uzis or busted kneecaps, but you watch what happens to the first round of politicos who advocate legalization, little lady. Pay attention to who contributes to whose campaign. Hell, maybe I'll even introduce a bill like that myself when I'm ready to retire. Just to see what crawls out of the woodwork. Long as I want to keep this seat, though'—he tucked his tongue firmly in his cheek —'I'm going to vote for tougher laws and bigger prisons every time. Yes, ma'am!'

Disheartening.

Yet, even though I was beginning to feel we'd never get a handle on drugs, I did as much as I was allowed to, and the view from the bench continued to fascinate.

Wednesday was no different.