“Don’t you dare! You haven’t earned the right to speak to me like that. I was out there marching these streets when you were in short pants. You late ones think you invented struggle, invented the right to stand up to something.”
“That’s right, Sam, you and I were both out there once. We both marched for something better, for change, but you’re not letting it happen. We’re sitting here four years from a new century, man, and you’re still trying to run it like we’re standing still, putting up a black candidate, when behind the scenes you’re planning to keep everything business as usual.” He thinks of his old comrades, his running buddies during the Movement. Bumpy Williams, shot up by the feds in 1970. Marcus Dupri, lost to drugs and the Texas penal system a long time ago. And Lloyd, Kwame, whose heart gave out before he got to see a brother get within arm’s reach of running the good ol’ boy city of Houston, Texas. They didn’t die for this shit, he tells Sam. “Did you even want Axel to win? Or if he loses, do you get to hold your place in line, stoking the flames of Axel’s loss as proof that black folks can’t win, that they can’t have nothing without you? You at the head and everyone else walking two steps behind. Isn’t that what A.G. said?”
“You leave him out of this.”
“Where the hell is Cobb!”
“You’ve got to have a number,” Cynthia says, “some way to reach him.”
Sam looks at Jay. “Leave A.G. off the stand, and we’ll talk about it.”
Jay lunges at Sam, straight for his throat.
Neal has to pull the men apart.
“Drop A.G. and we’ll talk.”
“Pop!”
“You don’t need him, Neal, you don’t,” Sam says, damp desperation on his face, sweat on his brow, spittle in the corners of his mouth. “You saw the state’s case, how weak it is. You can close the trial without him. I’ll protect you, no matter what happens, I promise, son. You’re mine, Neal,” he says, claiming the boy against everything, as if that could stem the fallout of his betrayal.
“What are you so afraid he’s going to say?” Neal whispers.
Jay’s cell phone rings.
He yanks it from his pocket, checking the screen. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize, one with the new area code 281. He looks at Sam, as if this is it, as if he’s prepared to force Sam to negotiate a hostage release. He answers the phone, nearly collapsing at the sound of the first word: “Dad?” It’s Ellie. She’s crying.
“Are you okay?”
He can hardly hear her for the noise in the background: car horns and loud music, someone yelling in the distance. “Where are you?” he says.
“I don’t know why he grabbed me like that,” she says.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, crying harder. He listens to the street noise in the background. She’s outside somewhere. “Are you on a pay phone?” he asks, turning to Neal to tell him to get Axel on the phone right now. “Start describing everything you see, Ellie, especially street signs. If you see a cop, flag him down. I’m going to put out a countywide bulletin right now. But I’m on my way, El. I’m coming to get you right now, do you understand? Ellie? Ellie?”
The line is dead.
Jay starts for the front door, Cynthia right behind him. Outside, they climb into the back of the waiting Town Car. She’s on the phone with a contact at the FBI by the time her driver pulls away from the curb. She reaches for Jay’s hand and he lets her take it. Ellie calls two more times, each call shorter than the last, but she’s finally able to give him a street name, and how she got there. She ran from Cobb the second they were through the courthouse doors. She used the crush of downtown pedestrians as cover and then jumped on the first city bus she saw, too frightened to get off until she was miles and miles from downtown. “I’m scared he’s coming back,” she says. “I’m scared, Dad.” It takes an hour for them to find her on a street corner halfway out to Missouri City, hovering in the vestibule of an abandoned medical supply company. He opens the door before the car stops, and she runs to the curb, throwing herself into his arms. They stand for a long time on that street corner, the blue Town Car idling nearby, just holding each other, the front of Jay’s shirt soaking up her tears. “I got you,” he says.
They spend two hours at the police station downtown–Axel standing close by while Ellie is interviewed by two detectives–before Jay is finally allowed to take her home. Cobb is apprehended that afternoon, at a pool hall around the corner from the address on his driver’s license. He’s arrested without incident while Jay is across town, getting his daughter settled in at the house. He is loath to ever leave her again. But Ellie, who is leaning into Lonnie on the couch in the den, with her aunt, Evelyn, on the other side of her, swears she’ll be okay.
“I won’t be long,” he says.
He kisses his kids and walks out the door.
Neal agreed to meet him, but not at his house. He doesn’t feel safe there. He doesn’t feel safe anywhere anymore, he says. He’s at the bar when Jay walks into the Marquis II on Bissonnet, a few blocks from Neal’s house. He’s drinking a Texas Tea, running the black straw through the soup of ice cubes and liquor. He’s not talking much, but Jay came for the answer to only one question. “It’s your deal,” he tells Neal. “Your case and your life,” he says, waving off the approaching bartender. This won’t take more than a few minutes.
“I can’t tell you what to do, not on this one,” he says.
And Neal nods because he understands the logic of it. He went to law school after all. But it doesn’t help him one bit. “He used you, Neal.”
“I know,” he says, looking down at his drink, losing interest fast.
He nods, to himself more than anyone else. “Do it,” he says.