The players all stepped forward, forming a triangle before the judge.
Along with Kelly, there was Attorney Max Beck, who marched over to the hole in the wall. Beck had the look of a True Believer. His hair was a snarl of salt-and-pepper curls that tumbled over his collar. Plastic pens poked out of various pockets. His necktie was wrenched loose. The message in all this anti-fashion seemed to be: Citizens, fighting Government Oppression is hard work! I have no time to worry about clothes! It was pretty effective, actually.
The anchor of the triangle, however, was the defendant. Gerald McNeese radiated a sinewy, menacing aura. He leaned his forearms on the sill of the prisoners’ dock and laced his fingers. The pose was so perfectly casual, so lazy-cool, you almost forgot there were handcuffs on his wrists. Tall and very thin, the points of McNeese’s clavicles protruded under his shirt. His head was shaved, revealing a lumpy cranium.
At the prisoners’ dock, Max Beck laid his hand on McNeese’s forearm — Fight the power! — but McNeese pulled his arm away.
‘Commonwealth,’ the judge said.
‘Your Honor, this is the man Assistant DA Bob Danziger was preparing to prosecute when he was murdered.’
‘Objection!’
‘Overruled. I want to hear this.’
‘But my client is not charged with killing Bob Danziger! This has nothing to do with Bob Danziger!’
The judge flippered his hands, brushing Beck off. ‘I said I’ll hear it.’ Suddenly we were no longer talking about a garden-variety A amp;B. The mention of Danziger’s name changed everything.
The prosecutor continued: ‘The defendant’s gang-’
‘Objection!’
‘Overruled.’
‘But my client is not a member of any gang!’
‘Yes, he is,’ Caroline Kelly assured. ‘And it goes to motive.’
‘Overruled,’ the judge said again.
‘The defendant’s gang, the Mission Posse,’ Kelly said, ‘was anxious that Danziger’s case against this defendant not come to trial. Gerald McNeese is believed to be a close associate of Harold Braxton, the gang’s leader. In the case Mr Danziger was prosecuting, the key witness had gone into hiding, and the Posse could not locate him to… dissuade this witness from testifying.’
‘Objection! Pure speculation.’
‘Overruled. I’ll hear it.’
‘Over the weekend,’ Caroline Kelly said, ‘Mr McNeese — who is known as G-Mac on the street — finally did locate the informant, a man named Raymond Ratleff. The defendant was eager to convince Mr Ratleff not to testify in Mr Danziger’s case. Around midnight on Saturday, the defendant was seen beating Mr Ratleff on Stanwood Street in the Flats, smashing his face against the curbstone at least a half dozen times. According to one observer, it looked like the defendant was driving a nail into the sidewalk with Mr Ratleff’s head. Mr Ratleff suffered broken bones in his face, including a fractured eye socket. He may lose the use of his right eye.’
Gerald McNeese pursed his lips and sniffed disdainfully.
‘Mr Beck?’
‘Your Honor, with all due respect to Ms Kelly, the police have been sweeping through this neighborhood, rousting young African-American men for weeks because of the Danziger case.’
Kelly glared as Beck dropped the firebombs of race and police misconduct, and her stare only darkened as Beck went on.
‘-young black men in this neighborhood have been targeted-’
The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed to a high-noon stare. She seemed to be trying to vaporize poor Max Beck with those lasers.
‘Mr McNeese in particular has been targeted,’ Beck persisted. ‘He certainly has no link to the Danziger murder. That is just a smear against my client. The police have nothing, so they’re conducting a witch hunt.’
The judge groaned. ‘Not the witches, not today’
‘My point is, this is just the kind of hysteria-’
‘Mr Beck, I have a crowded courtroom. We’re not going to do the thing with the witches.’
Beck made a face to show there was a valid point to be made about witch hunts, if only the judge would let him. ‘Judge, then I’ll simply say there is no evidence against my client, there is no witness, therefore there’s no possibility of a conviction. Under the circumstances, he must be released on personal recognizance.’
‘What about it, Ms Kelly? Do you have a witness?’
‘Yup.’
‘Can this witness make the I.D.?’
‘Yup.’
‘And he’s willing to go forward?’
Kelly hesitated. She tilted her head left and right, a gesture of uncertainty. ‘Your Honor, we believe the witness will go forward. We’re requesting the defendant be held without bail.’
Judge Bell frowned. The prosecutor was pushing a case with a reluctant witness — more likely, no witness at all — and putting the judge on the spot by tying the case to a more sensational one, the murder of ADA Bob Danziger. He studied a fanfolded printout of McNeese’s record while his fingers worked the bow tie. At last he announced his decision: ‘Fifty thousand cash, five hundred thousand surety.’
The clerk repeated this information to the defendant, but G-Mac did not seem to be listening. He was glaring at Caroline Kelly.
The judge had a message for the prosecutor too. ‘Ms Kelly,’ he said, ‘find your victim and indict this case, or I’ll cut him loose.’
When the McNeese arraignment had been wrapped up — with the droning incantation ‘Gerald McNeese, this honorable court has established bail in the amount of fifty thousand dollars cash or five hundred thousand dollars surety…’ — the judge looked at his watch and announced, ‘Two o’clock,’ which signaled the lunch break. The atmosphere in the room instantly relaxed, in large part because Judge Bell himself departed. In the lawyers’ area, ADAs and defense attorneys chatted like weary comrades-in-arms. Among the spectators, there was a riotous push toward the door.
Caroline Kelly lingered at the prosecutors’ table for a few moments, arms folded, greeting some of the lawyers. It was interesting to watch her after seeing her photo in Kelly’s cabin in Maine. I realized immediately that I had misimagined Caroline — that she was both more formidable and much, much prettier than I’d presumed. Which is not to say she was conventionally beautiful, because she was not, quite. She had not inherited her father’s lanky frame or his narrow face. Caroline’s features were more generous: broad, prominent cheekbones, dark brows separated by a twice-creased spandrel, a slightly too-soft chin. Her nose was prominent too, with an aristocratic little Bourbon bump at the bridge. Caroline’s mouth was her only delicate feature. She had thin, expressive lips and small teeth, which she seemed reluctant to reveal. All of it fit somehow, and anyway the alchemy of attractiveness is more mysterious by far than a simple accounting of facial features; there are many more ways to be attractive than to be beautiful. What Caroline Kelly had that her photo did not and could not capture was presence. She had a worldly manner. She met events and people with a sidelong glance, with the left corner of her mouth curling upward like a cat’s tail. That smirk suggested not the usual acid cynicism of young people, but a gentler and healthier sort of knowing-ness — a comfortable skepticism from which, one suspected, she did not exempt herself.
When I reached her, Caroline was chatting with Max Beck. Or, to be accurate, Beck was attempting to sustain a chat with her.
‘How is your father?’
‘Oh, he’s unchanged, Max.’
‘Unchanged! Precisely!’
Caroline gave him one of those wiseguy smirks, then turned to me. She was not as tall as I am, but she managed to convey the impression of looking me level in the eye. ‘Ben Truman. What did you think of this place?’
‘Have we met?’
‘No.’
