"Well-that's true. I'm gonna be completely out front with you, Pete. You're a real journalist. When these TV channels see a real journalist on to something, they hop to it."

Fallow sat back and took a leisurely draught of beer in the doldrum gloaming of the Huan Li. Yes, his next coup would be a story exposing television news for what it really was. But for now he would forget that. The way the television news people came running in his footsteps on the Lamb case-nothing had ever made him look quite so good.

Within a few minutes he had worked it out in his mind that a story on the hospital's negligence was nothing more than the natural next step. He would have thought of that on his own, inevitably, with or without this ridiculous Yank and his chubby face, pinky-winky as could be.

Today's sandwiches came to Jimmy Caughey, Ray Andriutti, and Larry Kramer from the State of New York, courtesy of the Willie Francisco case. It had taken Judge Meldnick a mere four days to ask around and find out what his opinion was of Willie's pet.i.tion for a mistrial, and this morning he had given it. He declared a mistrial, based on the fat old Irish juror McGuigan's attack of the doubts. But since the day had begun with the trial technically still in progress, Bernie Fitzgibbon's secretary, Gloria, was ent.i.tled duly to order the sandwiches.

Ray was once more lunging across his desk eating a super-sub and drinking his vat of yellow coffee. Kramer was eating a roast beef that tasted like chemicals. Jimmy was scarcely touching his. He was still moaning over the disintegration of such an easy one. He had an outstanding record. The Homicide Bureau kept actual standings, like baseball standings, showing how many guilty pleas and guilty verdicts each a.s.sistant district attorney had scored, and Jimmy Caughey hadn't lost a case in two years. His anger had now developed into an intense hatred of Willie Francisco and the vileness of his deed, which to Andriutti and Kramer sounded like just another piece a s.h.i.t. It was strange to see Jimmy in this state. Ordinarily he had the black Irish coolness of Fitzgibbon himself.

"I've seen this happen before," he said. "You put these germs on trial, and they think they're stars. You see Willie in there jumping up and down and yelling 'Mistrial'?"

Kramer nodded yes.

"Now he's a legal expert. In fact, he's one a the stupidest f.u.c.ks ever went on trial in Bronx County. I told Bietelberg two days ago that if Meldnick declared a mistrial-and I mean, he had had to declare a mistrial-we were willing to make a deal. We'd reduce the charge from murder two to manslaughter one, just to avoid another trial. But no. He's too shrewd for that, Willie is. He takes this as an admission of defeat. He thinks he has a power over juries or something. On retrial he's gonna go down like a f.u.c.king stone. Twelve and a half to twenty-five he's gonna get himself, instead of three to six or four to eight." to declare a mistrial-we were willing to make a deal. We'd reduce the charge from murder two to manslaughter one, just to avoid another trial. But no. He's too shrewd for that, Willie is. He takes this as an admission of defeat. He thinks he has a power over juries or something. On retrial he's gonna go down like a f.u.c.king stone. Twelve and a half to twenty-five he's gonna get himself, instead of three to six or four to eight."

Ray Andriutti gave up whaling down his super-sub long enough to say, "Maybe he's smart, Jimmy. If he takes a plea, he's going to jail for sure. With a f.u.c.king Bronx jury, it's a roll of the dice every time. You hear what happened yesterday?"

"What."

"This doctor from out in Montauk?"

"No."

"This doctor, I mean he's some local doctor out in Montauk, probably never laid eyes on the Bronx before. He has a patient with some esoteric tropical disease. The guy's very sick, and the hospital out there don't think they can handle it, but there's this hospital in Westchester with some kind of special unit for this stuff. So the doctor arranges for an ambulance for the guy and gets on the ambulance with him and rides all the way to Westchester with the guy, and the guy dies in the emergency room in Westchester. So the family brings suit against the doctor for malpractice. But where do they bring suit? In Montauk? Westchester? No way. The Bronx."

"How can they bring suit here?" asked Kramer.

"The f.u.c.king ambulance had to go up the Major Deegan to get to Westchester. So their lawyer comes up with the theory that the malpractice occurs in the Bronx, and that's where they had the trial. Eight million dollars they were awarded. The jury came in yesterday. Now there's a lawyer who knows his geography."

"Aw h.e.l.l," said Jimmy Caughey, "I bet you every negligence lawyer in America knows about the Bronx. In a civil case a Bronx jury is a vehicle for redistributing the wealth."

A Bronx jury...And all at once Kramer was no longer thinking of the same cl.u.s.ter of dark faces that Ray and Jimmy were thinking of...He was thinking of those perfect smiling teeth and those sweet full lips glistening with brown lipstick and those shining eyes across a little table in the very heart of...the Life...which existed only in Manhattan...Jesus...He was broke after he paid the bill at Muldowny's...but when he hailed her a cab out in front of the place and he held out his hand to thank her and say goodbye, she let her hand stay in his, and he increased the pressure, and she squeezed back, and they stayed that way, looking into each other's eyes, and-G.o.d!-that moment was sweeter, s.e.xier, more full of-G.o.dd.a.m.n it!-love, genuine love love, the love that just hits. .h.i.ts you and you and...fills up your heart...than any of those slam-bang first-date scores scores he used to pride himself on when he was out prowling like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned cat...No, he would forgive Bronx juries a lot. A Bronx jury had brought into his life the woman he had been destined to meet all along...Love, Destiny, How Full My Heart...Let others shrink from the meaning of those terms...Ray whaling down his super-sub, Jimmy grousing morosely about Willie Francisco and Lester McGuigan...Larry Kramer existed on a more spiritual plane... he used to pride himself on when he was out prowling like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned cat...No, he would forgive Bronx juries a lot. A Bronx jury had brought into his life the woman he had been destined to meet all along...Love, Destiny, How Full My Heart...Let others shrink from the meaning of those terms...Ray whaling down his super-sub, Jimmy grousing morosely about Willie Francisco and Lester McGuigan...Larry Kramer existed on a more spiritual plane...

Ray's telephone rang. He picked it up and said, "Homicide...Unnh-hunnh...Bernie's not here...The Lamb case? Kramer...Larry." Ray looked at Kramer and pulled a face. "He's right here. You wanna speak to him?...Okay, just a second." He covered the mouthpiece and said, "It's a guy from Legal Aid named Cecil Hayden."

Kramer got up from his desk and walked over to Andriutti's and took the telephone. "Kramer."

"Larry, this is Cecil Hayden over at Legal Aid." A breezy voice this Cecil Hayden had. "You're handling the Henry Lamb case. Right?"

"That's right."

"Larry, I think the time has come to play Let's Make a Deal." Very breezy.

"What kinda deal?"

"I represent an individual named Roland Auburn, who was indicted two days ago by a grand jury on a charge of criminal possession and sale of drugs. Weiss put out a press release describing him as the Crack King of Evergreen Avenue. My client was immensely flattered. If you ever saw Evergreen Avenue, you'd ask why. The King is unable to make ten thousand dollars bail and is currently on Rikers Island."

"Yeah, well, what's he got to do with the Lamb case?"

"He says he was with Henry Lamb when he was. .h.i.t by the car. He took him to the hospital. He can give you a description of the driver. He wants to make a deal."

18. Shuhmun

Daniel Torres, the fat a.s.sistant district attorney from the Supreme Court Bureau, arrived at Kramer's office with his ten-year-old son in tow and a ditch down the middle of his forehead. He was furious, in a soft fat way, about having to show up at the island fortress on a Sat.u.r.day morning. He looked even more of a blob than he had the last time Kramer had seen him, which had been in Kovitsky's courtroom. He wore a plaid sport shirt, a jacket that didn't have a prayer of closing around his great soft belly, and a pair of slacks from the Linebacker Shop, for the stocky man, in Fresh Meadow that made his underbelly protrude beneath his belt like South America. A glandular case, thought Kramer. His son, on the other hand, was slender and dark with fine features, the shy and sensitive type, by the looks of him. He was carrying a paperback book and a baseball glove. After a quick, bored inspection of the office, he sat in Jimmy Caughey's chair and began reading the book.

Torres said, "Wouldn't you know the Yankees'd be on the road"-he motioned toward Yankee Stadium, just down the hill, with his head-"on the Sat.u.r.day"-Saddy-"I gotta come over here? This is my weekend with..." Now he motioned his head toward his son. "...and I promised him I'd take him to the ball game, and I promised my ex-wife I'd go to Kiel's on Springfield Boulevard and get some shrubs and take them to the house, and how I'm gonna get from here over to Springfield Boulevard and then over to Maspeth and then back to Shea in time for the game, I don't know. Don't even ask me why I said I'd take the shrubs over to the house." He shook his head.

Kramer felt embarra.s.sed for the boy, who appeared to be deep into the book. The t.i.tle was Woman in the Dunes Woman in the Dunes. As best as Kramer could make out from the cover, the author's name was Kobo Abe. Feeling curious and sympathetic, he walked over to the boy and said in the warmest Dutch-uncle manner possible, "Whaddaya reading?"

The boy looked up like a deer caught in a pair of high beams. "It's a story," he said. Or that was what his lips said. His eyes said, "Please, please, let me return to the sanctuary of my book."

Kramer detected that, but he felt obliged to round out his hospitality.

"What's it about?"

"j.a.pan." Pleading.

"j.a.pan? What about j.a.pan?"

"It's about a man who gets trapped in some sand dunes." A very soft voice, pleading, pleading, pleading.

Judging by its abstract cover and dense print, this was not a child's book. Kramer, student of the human heart, got an impression of a bright, withdrawn boy, the product of Torres's Jewish half, who probably looked like his mother and was already estranged from his father. For an instant he thought of his own little son. He tried to imagine having to drag him over here to Gibraltar some Sat.u.r.day nine or ten years from now. It depressed him profoundly.

"Well, whaddaya know about Mr. Auburn, Danny?" he asked Torres. "What's this Crack King of Evergreen Avenue business?"

"It's a piece a-" Torres stopped short for the boy's sake. "It's a joke, is what it is. Auburn's-you know, just the usual kid from off the block. This is his third drug arrest. The detective who arrested him called him the Crack King of Evergreen Avenue. He was being sarcastic. Evergreen Avenue is about five blocks long. I don't even know how Weiss got hold of it. When I saw that press release, I about-I couldn't believe it. Thank G.o.d, n.o.body paid any attention to it." Torres looked at his watch. "When are they gonna get here?"

"They should be here pretty soon," said Kramer. "Everything's slower over at Rikers Island on Sat.u.r.day. How did they happen to catch him?"

"Well, that's a screwy thing," said Torres. "They really caught him twice, but this kid has very big-a lotta nerve, or else he's very stupid, I don't know which. About a month ago this undercover cop made a purchase from Auburn and another kid and announced they were under arrest, and so forth, and Auburn told him, 'If you want me, mother-you're gonna have to shoot me,' and he started running. I talked to the cop, Officer Iannucci. He said if the kid hadn't been black, in a black neighborhood, he would've shot him or shot at him, anyhow. A week ago he brought him in, the same cop."

"What's he looking at if he's convicted of a sale?"

"Two to four, maybe."

"You know anything about his lawyer, this Hayden?"

"Yeah. He's a black guy."

"Really?" Kramer started to say, "He didn't sound black," but thought better of it. "You don't see too many black guys in Legal Aid."

"That's not true. There's quite a few. A lot of them need the job. You know, these young black lawyers have a rough time. The law schools graduate them, but there aren't any slots. Downtown-it's pathetic. They're always talking about it, but they don't hire black lawyers, that's the truth of the matter. So they go into Legal Aid or the 18b pool. Some a them scuffle along with a rinky-d.i.n.k criminal practice. But the big-time black wiseguys, the drug dealers, they don't want a black lawyer representing them. The small-timers don't, either. One time I was in the pens, and this black lawyer from the 18b comes in looking for the client he's been a.s.signed, and he starts yelling out his name. You know the way they yell out the names in the pens. Anyway, the guy he's been a.s.signed is black, and he comes walking over to the bars, and he looks this guy in the eye and he says, 'Get lost, mother-I want a Jew.' I swear! He says, 'Get lost, mother-I want a Jew.' Hayden seems pretty sharp, but I haven't seen a lot of him."

Torres looked at his watch again, and then he looked at the floor in the corner. In no time his thoughts were somewhere out of the room and out of Gibraltar. Kiel's nursery? The Mets? His ex-marriage? His son was off in j.a.pan with the man trapped in the dunes. Only Kramer was right there in the room. He was keyed up. He was aware of the stillness of the island fortress on this sunny Sat.u.r.day in June. If only this character, Auburn, turned out to be the real goods, if only he wasn't too much of the usual mindless player, trying to get some stupid game over on everybody, trying to trim the world, bawling into the void from behind the wire mesh...

Pretty soon Kramer could hear people walking down the hall outside. He opened the door, and there were Martin and Goldberg and, between them, a powerfully built young black man in a turtleneck jersey with his hands behind his back. Bringing up the rear was a short, chunky black man in a pale gray suit. That would be Cecil Hayden.

Even with his hands behind his back Roland Auburn managed to do the Pimp Roll. He was no more than five feet seven or eight, but very muscular. His pectorals, deltoids, and trapezii bulged with ma.s.s and sharp definition. Kramer, the atrophied one, felt a jolt of envy. To say that the fellow was aware of his terrific build was putting it mildly. The turtleneck jersey fit him like a skin. He had a gold chain around his neck. He wore tight black pants and white Reebok sneakers that looked as if they had just come out of the box. His brown face was square, hard, and impa.s.sive. He had short hair and a narrow mustache lining his upper lip.

Kramer wondered why Martin had cuffed his hands behind his back. It was more humiliating than having them cuffed in front. It made a man feel more helpless and vulnerable. He could feel feel the danger of falling. He would fall like a tree, without being able to protect his head. Since they wanted Roland Auburn's cooperation, Kramer thought Martin would have taken the man on the easy route-or did he think there was actually some danger of this bulked-up rock making a run for it? Or was the Martin way invariably the hard way? the danger of falling. He would fall like a tree, without being able to protect his head. Since they wanted Roland Auburn's cooperation, Kramer thought Martin would have taken the man on the easy route-or did he think there was actually some danger of this bulked-up rock making a run for it? Or was the Martin way invariably the hard way?

The entourage came crowding into the little office. The introductions were an awkward shuffle. Torres, as the a.s.sistant district attorney in charge of the prisoner's drug case, knew Cecil Hayden, but he didn't know Martin, Goldberg, or the prisoner. Hayden didn't know Kramer, and Kramer didn't know the prisoner, and what should they call the prisoner, anyway? His real status was that of punk arrested on a drug charge, but at this moment, technically, he was a citizen who had come forth to a.s.sist the authorities in a felony investigation. Martin solved the nomenclature problem by referring to Roland Auburn frequently and in a bored manner as "Roland."

"Okay, Roland, let's see. Where we gonna put you?"

He looked around the office with its clutter of dilapidated furniture. Calling a prisoner by his first name was a standard way of removing any pretensions of dignity and social insulation he might still be clinging to. Martin was going to put the carca.s.s of Roland Auburn wherever he felt like. He paused, stared at Kramer, then cast a dubious glance toward Torres's son. It was clear that he didn't think he should be in the room. The boy was no longer reading his book. He was slouched back in the chair with his head hung low, staring. He had shrunk. There was nothing left but an enormous pair of eyes staring at Roland Auburn.

For everybody else in the room, perhaps even Auburn himself, this was just a routine procedure, a black defendant being brought into an a.s.sistant district attorney's office for a negotiation, a little round of plea bargaining. But this sad, sensitive, bookish little boy would never forget what he was now looking at, a black man with his hands shackled behind his back in his daddy's office building on a sunny Sat.u.r.day before the Mets' game.

Kramer said to Torres, "Dan, I think maybe we're gonna need that chair." He looked toward Torres's son. "Maybe he'd like to sit in there, in Bernie Fitzgibbon's office. There's n.o.body in there."

"Yeah, Ollie," said Torres, "whyn't you go in there until we get through." Kramer wondered if Torres had really named his son Oliver. Oliver Torres.

Without a word the boy stood up and gathered his book and his baseball glove and headed for the other door, to Bernie Fitzgibbon's office, but he couldn't resist one last look at the manacled black man. Roland Auburn stared back at him with no expression at all. He was closer to the boy's age than to Kramer's. For all of his muscles, he wasn't much more than a boy himself.

"Okay, Roland," said Martin, "I'm gonna take these offa you, and you're gonna sit'n'at chair there and be a good fellow, right?"

Roland Auburn said nothing, just turned his back slightly to present Martin his shackled hands so he could unlock the handcuffs.

"Ayyyyyy, don't worry, Marty," said Cecil Hayden, "my client's here because he wants to walk walk out of this place, without looking over his shoulder." out of this place, without looking over his shoulder."

Kramer couldn't believe it. Hayden was already calling the Irish Doberman by his nickname, Marty, and he had just met him. Hayden was one of those bouncy little fellows whose breeze is so warm and confident you'd have to be in a very bad mood to take offense. He was pulling off the difficult trick of showing his client he was sticking up for his rights and dignity without angering the Irish Cop contingent.

Roland Auburn sat down and started to rub his wrists but then stopped. He didn't want to give Martin and Goldberg the satisfaction of knowing the handcuffs had hurt. Goldberg had walked around behind the chair and was settling his hulk onto the edge of Ray Andriutti's desk. He had a notebook and a ballpoint pen, for taking notes on the interview. Martin moved around to the other side of Jimmy Caughey's desk and sat on the edge over there. The prisoner was now between the two of them and would have to turn to see either one of them head on. Torres sat down in Ray Andriutti's chair, Hayden sat down in Kramer's, and Kramer, who was running the show, remained standing. Roland Auburn was now sitting back in Jimmy Caughey's chair with his knees akimbo and his forearms on the armrests, cracking his knuckles, looking straight at Kramer. His face was a mask. He didn't even blink. Kramer thought of the phrase that kept turning up in the probation reports on these young black male defendants: "lacking in affect." Apparently that meant they were deficient in ordinary feelings. They didn't feel guilt, shame, remorse, fear, or sympathy for others. But whenever it fell to Kramer's lot to talk to these people, he had the feeling it was something else. They pulled down a curtain. They shut him off from what was behind the unblinking surface of their eyes. They didn't let him see so much as an eighth of an inch of what they thought of him and the Power and their own lives. He had wondered before and he wondered now: Who are these people? (These people, whose fates I determine every day...) Kramer looked at Hayden and said, "Counselor..." Counselor Counselor. He didn't know quite what to call the man. Hayden had called him "Larry" on the telephone, from the word go, but he hadn't called him anything in this room, and Kramer didn't want to call him "Cecil," for fear of appearing either too chummy or disrespectful in front of Roland. "Counselor, you've explained to your client what we're doing here, right?"

"Oh, sure," said Hayden. "He understands."

Now Kramer looked at Roland. "Mr. Auburn..." Mr. Auburn Mr. Auburn. Kramer figured Martin and Goldberg would forgive him. The usual procedure, when an a.s.sistant D.A. was questioning a defendant, was to start off with the respectful Mister, just to set things up, and then switch to the first name after things got going. "Mr. Auburn, I think you already know Mr. Torres here. He's the a.s.sistant district attorney handling the case you've been arrested and indicted on, the sale charge. Okay? And I'm handling the Henry Lamb case. Now, we can't promise you anything, but if you help us, then we'll help you. It's as simple as that. But you gotta be truthful. You gotta be completely truthful. Otherwise, you're just jerking everybody around, and it's not gonna be good for you. You understand?"

Roland looked at his lawyer, Cecil Hayden, and Hayden just nodded yes, as if to say, "Don't worry, it's okay."

Roland turned back and looked at Kramer and said, very deadpan: "Unh-hunh."

"Okay," said Kramer. "What I'm interested in is what happened to Henry Lamb the night he was hurt. I want you to tell me what you know."

Still slouched back in Jimmy Caughey's chair, Roland said, "Where you want me to start?"

"Well...at the beginning. How'd you happen to be with Henry Lamb that night?"

Roland said, "I was standing on the sidewalk, fixing to go down to 161st Street, down to the takeout, the Texas Fried Chicken, and I see Henry walking by." He stopped.

Kramer said, "Okay, and then what?"

"I say to him, 'Henry, where you going?' And he say, 'I'm going to the takeout,' and I say, 'That's where I'm going.' So we start walking down to the takeout."

"Walking down what street?"

"Bruckner Boulevard."

"Is Henry a good friend of yours?"

For the first time Roland showed an emotion. He seemed faintly amused. A little smile twisted one corner of his mouth, and he lowered his eyes, as if an embarra.s.sing topic had come up. "Naw, I just know him. We live in the same project."

"You hang around together?"

More amus.e.m.e.nt. "Naw, Henry don't hang around much. He don't come out a lot."

"Anyway," said Kramer, "the two of you are walking down Bruckner Boulevard on the way to the Texas Fried Chicken. Then what happened?"

"Well, we go down to Hunts Point Avenue, and we fixing to cross the street to go over to the Texas Fried Chicken."

"Cross which street, Hunts Point Avenue or Bruckner Boulevard?"

"Bruckner Boulevard."

"Just so we get it straight, you're on which side of Bruckner Boulevard, the east side going over to the west side?"

"That's right. The east side going over to the west side. I was standing out in the street a little ways, waiting for the cars to pa.s.s by, and Henry was standing over here." He motioned to his right. "So I can see the cars better than he can, because they be coming up from this way." He motioned to his left. "The cars, mostly they be traveling out in the center lane, in, you know, like a line, and all of a sudden this one car, it pulls out, and it wants to pa.s.s all these other cars on the right, and I can see it's coming too close to where I'm standing. So I jump back. But Henry, I guess he don't see anything until he see me jump back, and then I hear this little tap, and I see Henry falling, like this." He made a spinning motion with his forefinger.

"Okay, what happened then?"

"Then I hear this screech. This car, it's putting on the brakes. The first thing I do, I go over to Henry, and he's lying there on the street, by the sidewalk, and he's curled up on one side, kind of hugging one arm, and I say, 'Henry, you hurt?' And he say, 'I think I broke my arm.' "

"Did he say he hurt his head?"

"He told me that later. When I was squatting over him there, he kept on saying his arm hurt. And then I was taking him to the hospital, and he told me when he was falling, he put his arms out and he came down on his arm and then he kept on rolling and hit his head."

"All right, let's get back to right after it happened. You're there beside Henry Lamb in the street, and this car that hit him, it put on its brakes. Did it stop?"

"Yeah. I can see it's stopped up the road."

"How far up the road?"

"I don't know. Maybe a hundred feet. The door opens, and this guy gets out, a white guy. And this guy, he's looking back. He's looking right back at me and Henry."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I figured this guy, he stopped because he hit Henry and was gonna see if he could help. I figured, hey, the guy can take Henry to the hospital. So I got up, and started walking toward him, and I said, 'Yo! Yo! We need some help!' "