courtyard, sits on northwest Twenty-seventh Avenue in what police maps used to call the Central Negro District. It is a neighborhood of pawnshops and used car lots, lumberyards, and hubcap bazaars. About a block away is a gun shop with a pass-through window, like a hoagie stand in South Philadelphia. I had parked in a public lot surrounded by a razor-wire-topped fence. I took Kip by the hand, which felt small and moist, and led him through the maze of administrative buildings into the courthouse.
“ Afternoon, numbah fifty-eight,” the judge greeted me, in homage to my short but unspectacular career on the football field. “Don’t see you much in kiddie court.”
“ Good afternoon, Your Honor,” I acknowledged, bowing my head slightly. Like most lawyers, I would curtsy or kiss the hem of a judge’s robe to help win a case.
“ Say, Jake, what do you think of my dog-ass Gators this fall?”
“ I think they’ll play eleven games, twelve if they go to a bowl.”
“ Ah believe those boys will go all the way,” the judge opined, as he did each summer. “Sugar Bowl and a numbah one ranking.” It galled him that the University of Miami had won four national championships while his alma mater had failed to notch even one. “Now, let’s see what roguery brings you here today.”
The judge hunched over the bench and riffled through a court file. He had a bulbous nose lined with purple veins, a large bald head that reflected the overhead lighting, and he carried close to three hundred pounds on a five-eight frame. He liked to let people think he played football in college, but according to an ancient yearbook some lawyer friends passed around, the closest he got to the end zone was as a cheerleader. The judge, still peering into the file, made a tsk-tsk-tsking sound. Part of the role, as played by T. Bone, was to scare kids straight. “Malicious mischief!” he thundered, lifting his large head and glaring at Kip. “Trespassing and willful destruction of property. Serious charges, one and all. Son, how do you plead?”
I was ready to say “not guilty,” but my half-pint client was too quick for me.
“ Hey, Judge,” he called out, “when you go through the metal detector downstairs, what goes off first, the lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?”
The judge turned red.
I was speechless.
Kip smiled a sinister grin I hadn’t seen before. It didn’t even look like him. Which made me think it wasn’t him at all. I was tossing around that idea, but the judge’s booming voice interrupted my train of thought.
“ Young man, you’re in direct contempt of court! Ah’m looking at your face, and it’s got Youth Hall written all over it. Jake, you got yourself a real in-cor-rigible here.”
“ Your Honor,” I responded, “that wasn’t him talking.”
“ What are you saying, that Ah cain’t believe my ears?”
“ No, just that he didn’t have control over what he said.”
“ Why not? Is he on ecstasy or crack? Is he one of those dopeheads who puke on my Dodge in the parking lot?”
“ Your Honor, I believe what the boy said was from a movie.” I turned to Kip, my eyes pleading. “Isn’t that it, Sylvester?”
“ Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2,” Kip declared, proudly. “It just sort of popped into my head.”
“ That’s part of our defense, Your Honor,” I volunteered, making it up as I went along.
“ Jake, that dog won’t hunt. You know me, Ah’m just a simple country lawyer who’s now a simple country judge…”
Four million people from Miami to Palm Beach, and we still have judges chewing straw and handing out that aw-shucks routine.
“…and while I may not read everything in the law books,” he continued, gesturing to a shelf of pristine copies of the Southern Reporter, “Ah believe there are only three possible pleas-guilty, not guilty, and nolo con-ten- dere…”
He made the last plea sound like the title of a Tony Bennett song.
“…unless you’re claiming the boy’s incompetent. You’all looking for a competency hearing, Jake?”
“ Respectfully, Your Honor,” I said, employing a term lawyers use to mean just the opposite, “we plead not guilty and seek an immediate adjudicatory hearing, and while the facts of the incident may not be in dispute, there are certain mitigating factors, including the defendant’s age, lack of prior record, and psychological considerations we’ll be asking the court to consider.”
Judge T. Bone Coleridge exhaled a guttural snort. “Ten-minute recess. Then strap on your helmets ‘cause we’re gonna try this case.”
I adhered to the first rule of courtroom recesses: I took a pee, because you don’t know when you’ll have a chance for the next one. Then I used a pay phone to call Doc Riggs and find out if the autopsy report on Kyle Hornback was finished.
“ Obviously, this was neither a natural death nor an accident,” he lectured. “I believe we can rule out suicide, though that’s often an issue in hangings. So, we’re dealing with homicide.”
“ No kidding, Charlie. C’mon, I’m in court. Cut to the chase.” I am not usually testy with Charlie or Granny, but my nerves were on edge. I was worried about Sylvester aka Kip; I was worried about Blinky; and I was worried about me.
Charlie harrumphed and continued: “Well then, you might be interested to know what the toxicology report showed. I happened to be there when the chemist-”
“ Charlie, please!”
“ All right, all right. Vincit qui patitur. He who is patient prevails. Hornback’s blood was loaded with barbiturates. Probably pentobarbital, pretty fast-acting, and he was unconscious when throttled by person or persons unknown. If he’d been conscious, there would have been a struggle, and pressure on the neck would have been intermittent. There’d probably be some petechial hemorrhaging, burst blood vessels and the like. With slow, steady pressure, there’s less evidence of trauma, and that’s the case here. Just a trace of blood in the larynx, some engorged blood vessels in the brain, that’s about it. Cause of death was asphyxia. Your tie, and quite a handsome one at that, was the ligature, used much like a garrote. There was a contusion in the middle of his chest. Hornback was probably face-up on the floor when the tie was slipped around his neck. The assailant likely placed a knee on his chest for leverage, then tightened the tie, squeezing off the air supply, and finally tying the knot.”
“ That it?”
“ Just about. Before the M.E. sliced him open, they tried to pull latents off the body. As usual, they couldn’t do it. But one of the technicians wanted me to help with a methyl methacrylate test.”
“ Did you?”
“ Of course. We used Super Glue, which converts to fumes quite easily, tented the body, and came up with some nice latents on the neck and chin. Checking them out now.”
“ Great. I hope there are some besides mine.”
“ Yes, well next time, don’t fool around with murder scenes.”
Next time? “Okay, Charlie, thanks.”
“ Thank you, Jake. You know, I’m never as alive as when I’m poking around in a dead body. Strangulation is quite tricky. Not like the old days of execution by hanging when they’d just tie the knot under the left side of the jaw to throw the head back and snap the odontoid process of the second cervical vertebra. No, that was too easy. As Pierrepoint, the former hangman of London once testified-”
“ Charlie, hold that thought. I’ve got a case to try.”
An earnest young woman wearing a blue suit and white silk blouse introduced herself as the assistant state attorney. Her mouth was fixed in a grim expression, and the notes on her yellow pad were printed in precise block lettering. I don’t know why, but prosecutors tend to be more organized and less humorous than defense lawyers. And the women prosecutors tend to be very good. Just look at Marcia Clark or Josefina Baroso.
The state began with the theater manager, whose testimony was matter-of-fact. There was a disturbance outside the theater. A lanky blond-haired boy was cursing at the ticket seller. The boy left and came back half an hour later, at which time he began spray-painting the outside of the theater, first with a drawing of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then the phrase, “ Hasta la vista, baby.” When the manager dashed out of the theater, the boy
