“You know what I’m thinking,” Marina says to George. He lets her lay it out once he’s motioned his staff to go back inside. Corazon found Zeke through the gang networks she described before, and Zeke was here to direct a surveillance on George, planning for some event. “Let’s check up on both of them,” Marina says quietly to Murph before she departs.
Back in George’s chambers, there are no voices amid a funereal mood of fear and sympathy for Dineesha. She has deserted her desk. George thinks she may have slipped out or is in with Cassie and Banion, but he finds her inside the door to his private chambers, sitting alone in a straight-backed chair. She has a hankie in her hand, but the crying for now appears to be over.
“Judge, I am so sorry.”
“For what? He didn’t do anything.”
She answers with a look.
George still regards Marina’s theory of gang alliances as fanciful. But there is no denying that Zeke deserves to be a suspect in his own right. There’s no limit to what Zeke knows about George, both through their contacts over the years as lawyer and client, and far more, from what he hears through his mother. Who knows which of the eternal resentments always seething in Zeke might have spurred an effort to intimidate George? Some theory that George has misused Dineesha for the last two decades. Or yet another way for Zeke to revenge himself on her. Or some long-simmering bitch about the way George represented him. The judge knows that among the many educational projects that took Zeke nowhere in life was training as a computer programmer after his first stretch at Rudyard. If Zeke is #1, then he probably sent Khaleel up here to lift something, or to check out a piece of information Zeke would stick in his next unpleasant message.
But even were that the case, there is comfort to be taken, because George would be in absolutely no danger. Zeke is a con, a crook, an inveterate swindler whose dominating passion is to prove he can put it over on everybody else. His performance in the hallway, talking Khaleel out of handcuffs, is vintage Zeke, a moment he’ll be celebrating and recounting for days. But there’s nothing on his long sheet involving any real violence, notwithstanding the behavior of many of those with whom he’s surrounded himself. If it’s Zeke, then all of these threats are aimed at a payoff of some kind, an inventive scam he’s preparing to run. A ransom for stopping. A reward for information, or for investigative services. Some setup.
There is no telling Dineesha that Zeke had innocent motives today or that he’s not a suspect for #1. She has already assumed the worst and sits rigidly in the chair, plainly suffering.
“My own child,” she finally says to George before she gets up to return to her desk.
10
Not long after he leaves home Friday morning, Judge Mason concludes he’s being followed. A car, a late-model maroon DeVille, appears in his rearview mirror when he’s no more than a block away from his house and remains a few lengths behind until he reaches Independence Boulevard, the byway on which he crosses the river Kindle into the city every morning. Lots of people drive from the West Bank into the Center City at 8:30 A.M., he tells himself, and many, as he does, use surface streets to avoid the tie-ups on the highway. But when he gets a better look, the car concerns him. It’s ‘pimped out,’ as the cops would put it, with the suspension lowered and a fringe swinging in the rear window. A vapor trail has been detailed on each fender, and the auto is topped with an old-fashioned leather carriage roof in cream. Standard gangster ride. He’s a bit relieved when the Cadillac finally disappears. No more than five minutes later, it’s there again, jumping in and out of lanes a quarter of a block behind him.
He turns down the radio so he can concentrate and moves into the right lane, traveling about twenty miles per hour. The Caddy slows up as well. After another couple of minutes, he hooks a right onto Washburn and shoots several blocks down the narrow streets in the neighborhood of three-flats. The DeVille is gone. But when he circles back onto Independence, the Cadillac zooms out of an alley and closes again to four or five car lengths.
A half mile farther on, the judge pulls his Lexus to the curb, and the Caddy comes to rest in a red zone a hundred feet behind. When George steals back into the traffic, the car does too. Finally, no more than three blocks from the courthouse, he stops short at a light, leaving the Cadillac without a choice about pulling up beside him.
The driver is a slick-looking young man, white or Hispanic, with black spiked hair. He’s wearing a leather vest. A portly black man in a coat and tie occupies the passenger’s seat. The young man flashes George a tidy smile and winks.
His heart gives a frightened spurt before he understands, then he flashes a quick okay sign, thumb and forefinger. But he’s burning. Unwilling to wait until he gets to chambers, he curbs the car again so he can dial the cell phone he’s borrowed from his wife.
“We had an agreement,” he tells Marina as soon as she answers her private line.
“What?”
“You made a deal with me, Marina. I was only going to be covered in the courthouse. I’ve just had two county cops riding my tail from home in a Caddy they forfeited from some dope king.”
Marina is quiet. “You weren’t supposed to pick them up.”
“In that car? It’s for undercover buys in the North End. In my neighborhood, they might as well have announced themselves with heralds. Really, Marina. What the hell are you up to?”
“Judge, I’m just trying to do the right thing. After those two characters showed up out in the corridor yesterday, I thought things were getting a little close for comfort. I called a pal of mine, Don Stanley, and asked them to keep an eye on you, back and forth. No details, Judge. I said we had an incident that made me a little hinky.” She’s clearly talked to Rusty, who let her know that George does not take kindly to her talking out of school. That would be particularly true about sharing information with the Kindle County cops. Rumors and gossip are traded faster than in a junior high at the police headquarters, McGrath Hall. If word gets out about #1, it would find its way quickly to a reporter.
“Marina, I’m the one who’s on the line here. And so I make the choices. When they find my body, I give you permission to hold a press conference right over the remains and say, ‘I told him so.’ ”
“Come on, Judge.”
“Marina, on my block there are nine families who’ve lived there for twenty years. We raised our kids together. We vacation together. We pick up one another’s newspapers and mail. None of us minds his own business. And there’s no way these lugs in a dope-mobile following me from home each morning-or back-aren’t going to be noticed. Tomorrow or the day after, one of my neighbors is certain to say something to Patrice.”
He struggles to rein in his temper, reminding himself that Marina’s intuition that #1 may have a bead on his house is more accurate than she knows. But the last thing he’ll do at this stage is mention that e-mail. He already has virtually no handle on her. And overnight he’s grown more settled that Zeke is the culprit. Nevertheless, he tries a more patient approach.
“Marina, I realize you don’t know Patrice all that well. So let me explain. She’s one of those people who go rock climbing and then come home and throw the dead bolt and set the burglar alarm. She designs houses. She thinks everybody is entitled to a safe private space. This would upset her at the best of times. And it’s not the best of times.”
“I understand, Your Honor. Only-” She stops.
“What?”
“You know, not to get in the middle, Judge, but maybe we can work out security arrangements that wouldn’t alarm Mrs. Mason. Might even make her more comfortable. Because I really think it’d be better for everyone, including the two of you, if she knew what was going on.”