Neal crosses to Jay, putting a hand on his attorney’s shoulder, standing so close that Jay can see the dots of sweat above his lip, can smell the whiskey on his breath. The fear is still there, in the quivering of his lower lip, the searching look in his desperate, bloodshot eyes. “Just get A.G. on the stand.”
Jay spends the rest of his evening at St. Joseph’s, where Rolly is up and eating well, thanks to Marisol, who, thank god, really was just going for a cup of coffee. Tonight she brought him ceviche and a T-bone from Tampico, a cantina around the corner from his house in the Heights. He’s sitting up in bed, a robe over the bandages and a paper napkin tucked up under his chin. His black hair has been freshly washed and braided, also thanks to Marisol. She’s watching Jeopardy! on television, her butt in the hospital room’s only chair and her bare feet resting on the edge of the bed, near Rolly’s waist. Her man awake and alert, she’s dressed herself accordingly, in a tight sweater and black jeans. She said hello to Jay when he walked in and not much else. Rolly washes down his steak with a swig from a contraband bottle of Negra Modelo. He snatches the napkin from beneath his chin and wipes his mouth with it. “So what do you want to do?”
“You know what I want to do.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here, man?”
“Well, you were shot,” Jay says.
“My own damn fault.” Rolly sits up, using his fists to adjust his position in the bed and wincing from the residual pain in his left shoulder. “But if that earns me a window of grace, let me say my piece now. You think you can handle it?” He looks at Jay, a cockeyed grin forming across his plump, almost ladylike lips. “We’re friends, right? I mean, we can call each other that?”
“Yes, sir,” Jay says, smiling faintly.
“I like you, man, I might even love your ass,” Rolly says. “But anything I owed you for shit you’ve done for me, I paid back years ago. That ain’t why I’m here. I don’t need your money, I got a job, a good one. That ain’t it either. Hell, I’d pay you just to see you this up and at it again, this, I don’t know, alive again, man. This is you, Jay, this is where you belong, stirring shit the fuck up. And what I did not do all this for,” he says, gesturing at the white walls of the hospital room, the monitors, and, yes, the bandages, “is for you to come all this way only to half-ass it. Parker, her crew, they’re tromping on your legacy too, shit you and your boys marched for.” He stares down the length of the hospital bed to Jay, who is standing with his head down slightly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants, still in the suit he wore to court today.
“It’s just the way this works,” he says to Rolly; “it’s his game to play, his life. He’s my client, man.”
“Then counsel him, Counselor.”
Hours later, just after midnight, the telephone on Jay’s bedside table rings, echoing throughout the house. Having just dozed off after a late-night conference at Neal’s house, Jay doesn’t pick up until the sixth ring. “You son of a bitch,” Reese Parker hisses in his ear, before hanging up, never bothering to identify herself, not that she needed to. He was expecting her call. Though Neal and Sam didn’t know it, Rolly either, Jay had actually filed a subpoena two full days ago for her to appear in Judge Caroline Keppler’s courtroom. He’d had his eye on this moment all along. He hangs up the phone and rolls back to sleep.
CHAPTER 27
Word of Reese Parker’s expected presence in the courtroom must have gotten out. The 181st District Court is more packed than it was on the morning of opening statements, with a few spectators waiting out in the hallway to see if they might get a spot, if someone faints maybe in the unusually hot courtroom, leaving an extra seat for the next person in line. Johnetta Paul is here; the county clerk, Wayne Duffie; and a few other names on next month’s ballot. There are reporters, of course; lawyers from neighboring courtrooms, come to watch; and the families on both sides. The entire Hathorne clan is in the front row of the gallery, behind Jay’s client. Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux sit somberly, staring straight ahead, as Nichols stands and announces, just as Jay had expected, “The state rests, Your Honor.” Keith Morehead, their spokesperson and ardent supporter, has been pushed to the other side of the courtroom because of the overcrowding. He is sitting today beside Ellie, who is behind her father, taking notes for her government class. She and the principal and Mr. Jensen worked out a deal: for a heaping dose of extra credit, Ellie will take notes and deliver a report to the class when the trial is over. She’s taken her role seriously, borrowing some authentic-looking steno pads from Lonnie. The pastor smiles at her, patting her on the leg for her good work. Jay can hear their whispers behind him. He looks at his client, seated beside him. It’s his last chance to change his mind. But Neal just nods. Behind him, Sam sits with his arms folded. He was not present last night when Jay showed up on Neal’s doorstep, when he’d asked him, point-blank, why he was interested in politics in the first place, what any of this meant to him if it wasn’t about protecting the work of men and women of his grandfather’s generation. “Any gratitude you owe Sam is for that, not for taking you in,” he said, alluding to the family secrets. “You have to do what you think is right.”
And when Neal had grown quiet, chewing on his bottom lip, Jay said to him, stoking a buried rage, “You really think you would have been charged if Sandy Wolcott weren’t running for mayor, if Parker weren’t involved?”
“Mr. Porter?” the judge says.
After a perfunctory motion to dismiss the case for insufficient evidence, which Keppler denies, Jay is free to start. “The defense calls Reese Parker.”
Nichols is on his feet too. “Your Honor, may we approach?”
Keppler waves them both forward.
There’s a low murmur rolling through the courtroom. Lonnie is watching the commotion from the last row of the gallery. At the bench, the D.A. makes clear his objection to this witness. “On what grounds, Mr. Nichols?”