Judge Bell looked out over the audience, apparently considering his plight. The judge was quite literally overheating. Somewhere in the intestines of the courthouse, an ancient furnace was huffing hot air into the first- session courtroom, where the temperature was already near eighty oxygenless degrees, and the goddamn Boston police had placed the entire population of the city under arrest, and here they all were, these huddled masses, turning Judge Bell’s courtroom into a great sweating steerage compartment, exhaling more and more of their steamy vapor toward the judge’s bench, a sirocco of unminty breath. The judge fiddled with his bow tie. He looked up at the ceiling for heavenly assistance. The audience looked up along with him, but all we saw were water stains.
Then the pensive moment was over and it was back to work.
‘Next case!’ Judge Bell bellowed.
‘Number ninety-seven dash seven-seven-eight-eight,’ the clerk read out. ‘Commonwealth v. Gerald McNeese the Third, also known as G also known as G-Mac also known as G-Money also known as Trey McNeese.’
‘Custody!’ the clerk sang.
‘Custody!’ echoed one of the court officers.
By now the audience had learned the drill, so like spectators at a tennis match we right-faced in unison toward a rectangular cutout in the wall. On the other side of this glassless window were the arrests from the previous weekend who had not posted bail. They crowded together, visible from the waist up like puppets in a shadow box. The men shuffled about until one was able to squeeze to the front and wordlessly identify himself as Gerald McNeese.
‘Commonwealth!’ the judge said.
A young assistant DA riffled through his files. The kid’s face was sweat-shiny from the heat. Two round coins of red flushed his cheeks. At length, he pulled out an empty file folder and held it open for the judge to see. ‘Your Honor, I don’t have anything on this one. It’s Ms Kelly’s case.’
The clerk rolled his eyes.
Judge Bell shook his head. It was hopeless. ‘So where is she?’
The kid made a face. Beats me.
‘Well?’
‘I don’t know, Your Honor.’
‘Why don’t you know?’
‘Um, I don’t know… why… I don’t know.’
The kid could not have been more than a year or two out of law school. Now here he was, reddening in the heat of Mission Flats District Court, buried in files, no doubt counting the days till his tour of duty was up and he would be transferred somewhere — anywhere — else.
‘You don’t know why you don’t know?’
‘I don’t — I don’t know. Your Honor.’
‘Next case!’
There followed a few desultory arraignments on charges that, even to me, seemed petty: possession of marijuana, disorderly, simple A amp;B. With each arraignment, the audience gave a little respiratory heave of relief as the defendant and his supporters were exhaled from the courtroom. Each time, though, the void was filled by others. They pushed in from the hallway, and the benches were squeezed tight, the room repressurized.
‘Call the McNeese case again.’ The judge was smoldering.
‘Your Honor, I still have not heard from Ms Kelly.’
‘Then turn around and tell them.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Turn around and explain to all these people why you’re unprepared, why you’re wasting everyone’s time.’
‘Your Honor?’
‘Turn around, Mr Prosecutor.’ The judge swept his arm toward us, the groundlings in our damp shirts. ‘Tell it to them, not me.’
The kid turned slowly, penitently. The red stains on his cheeks seeped over his ears and down his neck. He stood with a self-effacing turtle-backed slouch, scanning the crowd. But when his eyes reached the doorway, he managed a wan smile. He’d found an ally.
A woman entered the courtroom and pushed and excuse-me’d her way forward. She was dressed in a sleek black skirt suit. The jacket had a band collar with an open tab at the hollow of her neck. It looked a little like a priest’s collar.
‘Ms Kelly!’ the clerk blurted, and the entire court staff repeated ‘Ms Kelly!’ as if they’d all been trying to think of a forgotten name and it had just come back to them.
Caroline Kelly stood at the prosecutor’s table next to the young ADA. Unseen by the judge, she put her hand on the kid’s shoulder blade. The point was not so much to reassure him, I think, but to get him to stand up straight. She stretched her thumb to touch his spine just as a stern mother would press on the backbone of a slouching child. And it worked; the kid did stand a little straighter. Kelly left her thumb on his weakest vertebra for good measure, to prevent a relapse. She leaned over and whispered in the kid’s ear, but loud enough for us in the front row to hear quite clearly, ‘Fuck him.’
Those were the first words I ever heard Caroline Kelly say, fuck him, and she loaded a little extra sauce on the fuck to show she meant it.
From my seat in the front row, I studied the details of her posterior side. Her hair was dark brown, clipped loosely at the back of her neck with a gold clasp. The twill fabric of her skirt was slightly but discernibly taut around her hips, which were not thin. She stood with her anklebones nearly touching, so that a flame-shaped gap was formed between the inner curves of her calves. A soft leather briefcase slumped against her ankle when she set it down.
‘Ms Kelly,’ Judge Bell said. ‘The prodigal daughter.’
She held out her free hand, palm up. The gesture said, Here I am.
‘Was there something you’d like to share with the court?’
‘Not really.’
The judge regarded her. ‘Perhaps you can help us, Ms Kelly. We have a little mystery. Last weekend there were — Mr Clerk, how many arrests?’
‘Two-oh-five.’
‘Two hundred and five arrests. All for this one humble court. I believe that must be a new record.’
‘Congratulations, Your Honor.’
‘Enlighten me, Ms Kelly. How do you explain such a burst of zealous law enforcement? Was there a sudden spike in the crime rate? These must be serious cases, I’m sure. Let’s see’ — he thumbed through the case files — ’one marijuana cigarette; trespassing; ooh look here, defacing public property.’
‘Defacing public property is a crime, Your Honor.’
‘He urinated on the sidewalk!’
‘Well, if it left a mark, then technically-’
The facial muscles around Judge Bell’s jaw and temples tightened visibly. Evidently you just did not bother with these sorts of offenses in Mission Flats. They were clogging the docket; they were sand in the gears. It wasn’t funny, dammit. ‘Ms Kelly, is it the District Attorney’s intention to punish a whole neighborhood for a single homicide?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
The judge told the young ADA to sit down. Before the kid moved, Kelly patted him twice on the shoulder blade, once again unseen by the judge.
‘Call the case,’ the judge said.
‘Number ninety-seven dash seven-seven-eight-eight,’ the clerk announced a second time. ‘Commonwealth v. Gerald McNeese the Third, also known as G also known as G-Mac also known as… whatever. Intimidation of a witness. Assault and battery. Assault with intent to maim. Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, to wit, a sidewalk.’
Beside me, the perfumed girl confided, ‘He hit somebody with a friggin’ sidewalk? I don’t think so.’
‘Assistant District Attorney Caroline Kelly for the Commonwealth. And Mr Beck.’
