being a banger. Men on a corner representing, or cruising a drive-by. The cops grab them to prevent trouble, but the charges never stick, just as this young fellow has said.
“Take him down,” Murph says.
“Oh, man,” the banger answers. “Ain’t that America or what? Gone get rolled up for goin’ tinkle.”
They’ll hold him most of the day, but if everything checks out, they’ll have to let him go, probably by nightfall. Four of the khaki officers take hold of the young man but do not get far down the corridor. They are halted by the arrival of Marina, who holds up a hand to signal that she is taking over, even as she’s dashing forward with a surprisingly athletic bound. When she gets to George, she asks if he is okay.
“Nothing happened to me,” George says. “Abel’s the hero.” He was sprier than George had expected.
“Punk like that,” Abel says but doesn’t finish the sentence.
“I don’t like this, Judge,” Marina says after she’s been briefed. “I’m thinking Corazon.” She’s lowered her voice so that the banger, a distance down the hall, cannot hear her, but the name George has asked her not to mention is still audible to his staff arrayed along the wall. Listening, Dineesha, John, Cassie, Marcus, the courtroom bailiff all look up at the same time.
“Marina, that kid is black. He’s not courted in to ALN. Did you see a star, Abel?” All jumped-in members of the Almighty Latin Nation sport a five-pointed star tattooed between the wrist and thumb.
“Saint,” Abel says. “He got the Chinese junk on his hand.” The Black Saints Disciples’ tats in the last few years have gone to Chinese characters, because the cops have a hard time telling apart the marks of one set or another.
“The Latin and black gangs-they’re oil and water,” George says.
“Come on, Judge. You know the deals the gangs make in the joint as well as I do. They trade cappings. Gives the obvious suspects an alibi when the target goes down. Corazon realizes we’d be looking for a Latino.”
Marina’s right about the gang sociology, but that doesn’t make this man Corazon’s emissary. For one thing, he was unarmed. Yet the incident is discomfiting, because the judge doubts the tale about the bathroom. The guy was up here scoping things out-but theft, rather than violence, might have been his motive, or just a renegade desire to go where he was unwelcome. Nonetheless, it’s the first vague indication that #1’s presence might reach beyond the electronic fantasyland of the Internet.
The officers have resumed leading the gang-banger away when a voice resounds from the other end of the judges’ private corridor.
“Whoa,” someone says. “Whoa. What you-all doin’ with my road dog there?”
A large figure advances confidently down the hallway. His attire is a more polished version of what the young man being held has on, the same baggies and jacket but less gold, and he sports a Lycra wig cap, similar to those worn by long-haired football players under their helmets. Dineesha makes a sound first, but George recognizes the man at almost the same moment. So does Abel, who can’t suppress a hawking groan from the back of his throat. It’s Zeke, Dineesha’s oldest son.
Zeke is still Zeke, big and affable, a gifted talker. “Hey there, Mr. Mason. Momma,” he says and manages to peck his mother’s cheek in the same motion in which he reaches for George’s hand.
“Judge,” murmurs Dineesha, correcting him, and without another word departs. Zeke watches her go with a timeworn smile. Nearly six three, he must be going close to three hundred these days. He has grown out a kinky stubble on his face as some kind of fashion statement.
The contours of Zeke’s story match fairly well with his friend’s. He accompanied this buddy, Khaleel, to the courthouse for his appearance, just to be sociable. When Khaleel couldn’t find a free spot in the crowded men’s room downstairs, Zeke directed him up here. He knows the layout of the floor, of course, from his visits to his mother.
“A little strange,” says Marina, “that you didn’t stop by to say hi to your mom.”
Zeke just laughs at that. “Don’t want to bother her when she’s workin’,” he says.
George’s pinball tilts on with that one. Zeke comes around often-too often as far as his mother’s concerned- walking through chambers and greeting everyone as if they’d been waiting for him to stop in to sign autographs. It’s obvious that Zeke sent Khaleel up here for another reason. Maybe Khaleel was supposed to see if Dineesha was working so Zeke could corner her for money, or perhaps it was to be sure she wasn’t there so Zeke could prevail on George for a favor. Or perhaps, as Marina is certain to believe, he was up to something more sinister. It doesn’t matter. The two men have their stories down, leaving no real basis to hold either. Not that that would stop Marina’s people or anybody else in law enforcement from locking them up for a while anyway, in other circumstances. But now the two are no longer simply badass bangers. Zeke is somebody’s child. The cuffs are removed, and the two friends amble off down the corridor, clearly pleased with themselves.
“You know what I’m thinking,” Marina says to George. He lets her lay it out once he’s motioned his staff to go back inside. Corazon found Zeke through the gang networks she described before, and Zeke was here to direct a surveillance on George, planning for some event. “Let’s check up on both of them,” Marina says quietly to Murph before she departs.
Back in George’s chambers, there are no voices amid a funereal mood of fear and sympathy for Dineesha. She has deserted her desk. George thinks she may have slipped out or is in with Cassie and Banion, but he finds her inside the door to his private chambers, sitting alone in a straight-backed chair. She has a hankie in her hand, but the crying for now appears to be over.
“Judge, I am so sorry.”
“For what? He didn’t do anything.”
She answers with a look.
George still regards Marina’s theory of gang alliances as fanciful. But there is no denying that Zeke deserves to be a suspect in his own right. There’s no limit to what Zeke knows about George, both through their contacts over the years as lawyer and client, and far more, from what he hears through his mother. Who knows which of the eternal resentments always seething in Zeke might have spurred an effort to intimidate George? Some theory that George has misused Dineesha for the last two decades. Or yet another way for Zeke to revenge himself on her. Or some long-simmering bitch about the way George represented him. The judge knows that among the many educational projects that took Zeke nowhere in life was training as a computer programmer after his first stretch at Rudyard. If Zeke is #1, then he probably sent Khaleel up here to lift something, or to check out a piece of information Zeke would stick in his next unpleasant message.
But even were that the case, there is comfort to be taken, because George would be in absolutely no danger. Zeke is a con, a crook, an inveterate swindler whose dominating passion is to prove he can put it over on everybody else. His performance in the hallway, talking Khaleel out of handcuffs, is vintage Zeke, a moment he’ll be celebrating and recounting for days. But there’s nothing on his long sheet involving any real violence, notwithstanding the behavior of many of those with whom he’s surrounded himself. If it’s Zeke, then all of these threats are aimed at a payoff of some kind, an inventive scam he’s preparing to run. A ransom for stopping. A reward for information, or for investigative services. Some setup.
There is no telling Dineesha that Zeke had innocent motives today or that he’s not a suspect for #1. She has already assumed the worst and sits rigidly in the chair, plainly suffering.
“My own child,” she finally says to George before she gets up to return to her desk.
10
Not long after he leaves home Friday morning, Judge Mason concludes he’s being followed. A car, a late- model maroon DeVille, appears in his rearview mirror when he’s no more than a block away from his house and remains a few lengths behind until he reaches Independence Boulevard, the byway on which he crosses the river Kindle into the city every morning. Lots of people drive from the West Bank into the Center City at 8:30 A.M., he tells himself, and many, as he does, use surface streets to avoid the tie-ups on the highway. But when he gets a better look, the car concerns him. It’s ‘pimped out,’ as the cops would put it, with the suspension lowered and a fringe swinging in the rear window. A vapor trail has been detailed on each fender, and the auto is topped with an
