lacked morals, ethics or plain good manners: How did it feel to look at your daughter’s head encased in clear plastic? Did you cry? Did you faint? What do you think about Wesley le Clerc?
Wesley had been charged with first-degree murder, the premeditated kind, and the only legal argument could be about that premeditation. Having put himself in the limelight, Wesley knew full well that in order to stay there, he had to go on trial. A plea of guilty meant that his only appearance in court would be for sentencing. Therefore he pleaded not guilty, and was remanded for trial without the granting of bail. Outside the court after this hearing, Wesley was accosted by a high-profile white lawyer who introduced himself as the leader of Wesley’s new defense team. A cluster of other white fatcat lawyers behind him were the rest of the team. To their horror, Wesley rejected them.
“Fuck off and tell Mohammed el Nesr that I have seen the true light,” Wesley said. “I will do this the poor black trash way, with a lawyer assigned from the public defender’s office.” His hand indicated a young black man with a briefcase. A faint shadow of pain crossed his face, he sighed. “Could have been me in ten years’ time, but I have chosen my course.”
Once the exaltation of that ride back to the cells in the company of Carmine Delmonico had died away, Wesley had undergone a sea change that perhaps had a little to do with what Carmine had said to him, but a great deal more to do with witnessing from a distance of three feet the life go out of a pair of eyes. All that was left of Charles Ponsonby was a husk, and what terrified Wesley was that he had liberated that unspeakably evil spirit to seek a home in some other body. Allah warred with Christ and Buddha, and he began to pray to all three.
Yet strength poured into him too, a different strength. He would somehow manage to make of this cardinal mistake a victory.
The first signals of victory were there when he was sent to the Holloman County Jail to wait out the months between his crime and his trial. When he arrived the inmates cheered him wildly. His bunk in the four-man cell was heaped with gifts: cigarettes and cigars, lighters, magazines, candy, hip clothing accessories, a gold Rolex watch, seven gold bracelets, nine gold neck chains, a pinky ring with a big diamond in it. No need to fear that he’d be raped in the shower block! No tormenting from the warders either; all of them nodded to him respectfully, smiled, gave him the O sign. When he asked for a prayer mat, a beautiful Shiraz appeared, and whenever he entered the meal hall or the exercise yard, he was cheered again. Black or white, the prisoners and their guards loved him.
A huge number of people of all races and colors didn’t think that Wesley le Clerc should be convicted at all. Letters to the editors of various papers nationwide flooded in. The lines of phone-in radio shows were overloaded. Telegrams piled up on the Governor’s desk. The Holloman D.A. tried to persuade Wesley to plead guilty to manslaughter for a much reduced sentence, but the new hero wasn’t having any of that cop-out. He would go to trial, and go to trial he did.
A trial that went on at the beginning of June, months before it should have; the judicial Powers That Be decided that delaying it would only make matters worse. This wasn’t a nine days’ wonder that people would forget. Do it now, get it over and done with!
Never had a jury been chosen with more care. Eight were black and four white, six women and six men, some affluent, some simple workers, two jobless through no fault of their own.
His story on the stand was that he hadn’t planned a thing beyond the hat – that a surge in the crowd had put him where he ended – and that he didn’t remember firing any gun, couldn’t even remember having a gun on his person. The fact that the deed was immortalized on videotape was irrelevant; all he had ever meant to do was protest the treatment of his people.
The jury opted for unpremeditated murder and strongly recommended leniency. Judge Douglas Thwaites, not a lenient man, handed down a sentence of twenty years’ penal servitude, twelve before a chance of parole. About the verdict expected.
His trial took five days and ended on a Friday, marking the climax of a spring that the Governor, for one, never wanted to see repeated. Demonstrations had turned into riots, houses burned, stores were looted, gunfire exchanged. Despite the fact that his disciple Ali el Kadi had turned on him, Mohammed el Nesr seized his chance and led the Black Brigade into a minor war that ended when a raid on 18 Fifteenth Street in the Hollow produced over a thousand firearms. What no cop could work out was why Mohammed had not moved his arsenal well ahead of the raid. Save for Carmine, who thought that Mohammed was slipping, and knew it; even his own men were beginning to admire Wesley le Clerc more.
The Black Brigade’s fate notwithstanding, it became clear a week before Wesley’s trial opened that it was going to become a gigantic mass demonstration of support for the slayer of the Monster, and that not all who planned to march to Holloman were peacefully inclined. Spies and informers reported that 100,000 black and 75,000 white protesters would take up residence on the Holloman Green at dawn on the Monday that Wesley’s trial was to start. They were coming from as far away as L.A., Chicago, Baton Rouge (Wesley’s hometown) and Atlanta, though most lived in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. A gathering place had been designated: Maltravers Park, a botanical gardens ten miles out of Holloman. And there, from Saturday on, the people assembled in many thousands. The march to Holloman Green was scheduled for 5 A.M. on Monday, and it was very well organized. The terrified inhabitants of Holloman boarded up store windows, doors and downstairs windows, dreading the urban war that was sure to come.
On Sunday morning the Governor called out the National Guard, which trundled and roared into Holloman at dawn on Monday to occupy the Green ahead of the marchers; troop carriers, armored vehicles and massive trucks shook building foundations as all of Holloman huddled, wide-eyed, trembling, to watch them grind by.
But the marchers never came. No one really knew why. Perhaps it was the prospect of a confrontation with trained troops deterred them, or perhaps Maltravers Park was as far as most had ever wanted to go. By noon of Monday, Maltravers Park was empty, was all. The trial of Wesley le Clerc went on with less than five hundred protesters on Holloman Green amid a sea of National Guards, and when the verdict was announced on Friday afternoon those five hundred went home as meekly as lambs. Was it the official display of official force? Or had the mere act of congregating satisfied those who came to Maltravers Park?
Wesley le Clerc didn’t waste time worrying or wondering about his supporters. Transferred to a high-security prison upstate on Friday night, the following Monday Wesley petitioned the prison’s governor for permission to study for a pre-law degree; this smart official was pleased to grant his request. After all, Wesley le Clerc was only twenty-five years old. If he gained parole on his first try, he would be thirty-seven and probably possessed of a doctorate in jurisprudence. His criminal record would prevent his being admitted to the bar, but the knowledge he would own was far more important. His speciality was going to be the U.S. Supreme Court. After all, he was the Monster Slayer, the Holy Man of Holloman. Eat your heart out, Mohammed el Nesr, you’re a has-been.
Chapter 32
Carmine and Desdemona were married at the beginning of May, and elected to honeymoon in L. A. as the guests of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum; the facsimile of Hampton Court Palace was so enormous that their presence was no embarrassment to Myron or to Sandra. Myron was theirs for the asking, whereas Sandra floated on cloud nine in oblivion. A little to Carmine’s and Myron’s surprise, Sophia decided to like Desdemona, whose hypothesis was that her new stepdaughter approved of the no-gush, matter-of-fact way her new stepmother treated her. Like a responsible, sensible adult. The omens were propitious.
Back in Holloman not all was quite so propitious. As if the Hug hadn’t suffered enough sensations and scandals in the last few months, its dying throes produced yet another when Mrs. Robin Forbes complained to the Holloman police that her husband was poisoning her. Interviewed by the newly decorated detective sergeants Abe Goldberg and Corey Marshall, Dr. Addison Forbes rejected the accusation with scorn and loathing, invited them to take samples of any and all foodstuffs and liquids on the premises, and retreated to his eyrie. When the analyses (including vomitus, feces and urine) came back negative, Forbes crated his books and papers, packed two suitcases and left for Fort Lauderdale. There he joined a lucrative practice in geriatric neurology; such things as strokes and senile dementia had never interested him, but they were infinitely preferable to Professor Frank Watson and Mrs. Robin Forbes, whom he filed to divorce. When Carmine’s lawyers contacted him about buying the house on East
