Despite his skepticism, Donnell is lucky to have a Canadian. Public defenders come from all over the world, and especially the Caribbean, ever since its largest law school—University of the West Indies—super-sized its applicant pool by only training and certifying in US Law. Not that there’s anything wrong with Caribbeans per se—many, Donnell’s sure, are excellent lawyers—but certain older, white judges have trouble with accents. Donnell’s friend Kwame was once arrested for an open container and he ended up doing thirty days because the judge misunderstood the lawyer and became convinced that Kwame had hit a cop while resisting arrest.
By contrast, a Canadian lawyer is theoretically good news, or would be if Donnell’s looked older than twelve. There’s no question that this is the lawyer’s first murder. Donnell could see the fear in his eyes every time the detectives unveiled another piece of quote unquote evidence, all of which was circumstantial, hearsay, or otherwise inadmissible. The cops have nothing and Donnell knows it.
Well, not nothing exactly. A witness, the lawyer explained, claims to have seen Donnell in the lobby of the Zone. The witness was shown a six-man lineup of possible suspects, and she picked Donnell. This, despite the fact that she couldn’t have actually seen Donnell, because he’s never stepped foot in the hotel in his life.
No matter. In her initial report, the witness described the suspect as a dark-skinned black man between the ages of thirty and forty, and the five other guys in the lineup were light-skinned twentysomethings.
“The whole thing is a setup,” he tells his lawyer.
The lawyer nods, neither affirming nor denying Donnell’s statement. Perhaps the computer mic’s not working. The unit, a boxy desktop chained to the table with a bicycle lock, looks like a relic. He says, again, louder this time, “The whole thing is a setup.”
“I heard you,” says the lawyer. He clicks his teeth, tugs on his tie, and says, “She picked you out of the lineup.”
“Of course she picked me. I was twelve shades darker than the others. Who’d they think she was going to pick?”
Again, the lawyer says nothing, as if the context is too charged, and he’s afraid that whatever comes out of his mouth might be read as racially insensitive. Or maybe he’s distracted. For all Donnell knows, the kid’s concurrently scrolling Twitter.
Donnell called Jackie last night from the prison payphone, reversing the charges. As they spoke—awkwardly, avoidantly—he found himself thinking back on the days following Jackie’s birth, when she wouldn’t sleep anywhere but her mom’s or dad’s chest, screaming every time they tried to ever-so-gently place her in the bassinet. Donnell and Dani traded two-hour sleep shifts, while the other stayed up in the living room: rocking Jackie, staring at Jackie, trying to find echoes of their own facial features. Jackie slept in Donnell’s arms, lulled by the white noise of the turned-down TV, or else lulled by the sound of her father’s voice, which sang “You Are My Sunshine” over and over, and whispered key facts about her dry, new world: the names of her relatives, and things to look forward to like coffee, ocean swimming, and Beanpot hockey. He recited a poem he remembered from college—Galway Kinnell, “I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones”—and Donnell found himself crying for this fragile human whom it was now his mission to protect.
Which might be how he got into this mess. Because Donnell’s a good father, and good fathers provide, even when they can’t afford to provide. And so good fathers sometimes do stupid things, like emptying their bank accounts to make down payments, and signing off on mortgages without really knowing what floating-rate means. They do stupid things like paying for a gut renovation on credit, because a girl should grow up in a light, airy space, with high bedroom windows that catch the pink dawn, and a modern kitchen with a Viking stove so they can eat Sunday pancakes in style, and a spacious, private bathroom for the long years of puberty distantly ahead.
And when debt begins to weigh them down, one stupid thing that good dads do is take sports betting tips from their coworker Steve, who claims his friend’s sister dates the Jets’ QB, and Steve knows for a fact that the dude tweaked his wrist playing Fortnite and will sit out next week. When that bet goes bust, then really dumb good dads continue taking tips from Steve, and taking tips from paid tip lines, siphoning money. So they start buying scratch cards, and Mega Millions tickets, and keep betting on horses, and football, and the Academy Awards, even after their wives have put them on warning, and even after their wives have moved to Los Angeles and left them alone.
If Donnell had been better with money, he would have never ended up with the doorman job. He would never have met Ricky Cortes. When Jackie asked, last night, when Donnell was coming home, he told her, tomorrow. He tried to sound like he believed it.
“You have to do something,” says Donnell. “You have to get that lineup thrown out on the grounds that none of those people in the lineup looked anything like me. And then you have to get that security tape thrown out on the grounds that it’s impossible to even see the guy’s face in the video, and the only reason they’re assuming it’s me is because they think all black people look alike. And you’ve got to get them to admit they have no murder weapon and they have no evidence, and I’ve never heard of this gold watch or bracelet or whatever it is they keep asking about. You getting this, Atticus? Maybe you should write it down.”
The lawyer says, “I think I can get you a deal.”
“I don’t want a deal. I want to get out of here.”
“They have motive,” says
