The Laws of our Fathers (47 page)

    'Some women sold their bodies to buy your crack, didn't they?' Hobie asks, pointing out the gravity of what Core's gotten away with. 'Some folks stole?' Hardcore quarrels at points - he didn't tell nobody to steal - but acknowledges what he must in a well-schooled tone that insists, correctly, that none of this is news. Often when I sit up here, I attempt to imagine the outlaw existence of the hardened young people who come before me: getting up each morning with no real conviction that you're going to end the day intact. Someone may shoot you; you may have to slap-up some homie who has a knife you didn't see, or the Goobers may come by, slippin, and gauge you at sixty feet. Creature things must dominate. Heat and cold. Sex. Intoxication. Each moment is a struggle to maintain dominance or at least power - downtalking everyone around you, exerting strength, sometimes cruelly. And making no real plans. A vague shape to tomorrow, and no thought at all of a month, let alone a year. Survive. Make do. Life as impulse. And why not?

    Having accomplished little thus far, Hobie reaches deeper. He leers across the podium and asks, 'Now, Mr Trent, would you mind telling us how many other people you've killed?'

    Aires and both prosecutors leap up, all of them shouting objections. This is the kind of question we were arguing about in chambers.

    'Is this for credibility, Mr Turtle?' I ask. He shakes his head yes and I shake my head no. 'I don't think it's necessary. Mr Trent has admitted he's a murderer for hire. Whether it's one murder or twenty, that acknowledgement of that sort of conduct gives me an adequate window on his character. I'll sustain the objection.'

    Hobie, unfailingly respectful of my rulings until now, can't keep himself from raveling up his lips in pique. He repeats his bitter complaints about interference with Nile's constitutional rights to confront the witness. For the first time, he is clearly setting me up for appeal and even goes so far as to move for a mistrial - a claim that my ruling is so unfair, he'd rather start the trial again from scratch. It's routine defense hysterics - a sort of exclamation point for his objections - and I respond with a single word: 'Denied.'

    Listening to this byplay, Hardcore displays a japing smile. For Core, this is head-up, street stuff, dude on dude, the kind of strife he's always known. He thinks he's winning. Studying him, I notice a teardrop etched beneath the corner of his right eye. He is dark enough that the tattoo barely shows, but it means he's killed with his own hands. There is probably not a Top Rank gangster out there who has not shot or knifed someone. Yet despite my glib assurances to Hobie, the sight - the reality - remains disquieting.

    Hobie's next sortie is a series of questions about the crimes for which Core was arrested, but not convicted, as both a juvenile and an adult. I let Hobie explore a charge of deviate sexual assault that arose when Core, early in his career with BSD, lured a whore into a Grace Street apartment, beat her, and made her service dozens of young men, each of whom, under this arrangement, paid him instead of her. But as Hobie attempts to thumb through the catalogue of Hardcore's earlier thuggery - everything from truancy to zip-gun stickups - I begin to see the point of Aires's and the prosecutors' vehement objections. It's unfair to force Core to acknowledge much of this conduct, which has little to do with his honesty. Jackson Aires comes from his seat in back and stands before the bench to argue.

    'Judge, I was the lawyer there for Trent here on all these cases,' Jackson says, 'and I can tell the court, Judge, there was somethin wrong with each of them.' On Core' s rap sheet there are twenty-two arrests which Jackson somehow beat. Sometimes he filed motions to suppress, or objected successfully on technical grounds like venue; more often - if the rumors are true - he agreed that the $1,500 pocket money Hardcore had when he was booked in Area 7 could be forgotten if certain incriminating details disappeared as well from the collective memory of the police. In Jackson's view, there's no reason black gangsters shouldn't take advantage of the same devices white ones have always employed. He'll admit that to you straight up, in the confidence of a barroom or a corridor, with a stern, humorless look daring you to tell him he's wrong.

    By the time we return from the morning recess, a dazed air has come over the courtroom. The spectators' benches, thick at 9 a.m. with those awaiting a cross which the papers promised would produce theatrics, now have thinned. Hobie continues to look poised, but I know, having been there, that he spent the last ten minutes telling himself he is going to have to get Core now or, surely, lose.

    'Let's talk about the shooting,' he says, ambling toward the door to the lockup. 'It was your homeboy, Gorgo, who actually gunned down Mrs Eddgar, right?'

    'Sure 'nough,' Core answers. You would not call his demeanor mournful.

    'And have the police asked you to help them find Gorgo?' Core thinks about it and shrugs. 'Cuz hit the wall, man. Ain no tellin where that mother gone.'

    'Well, help me, Hardcore, I'd think you'd want to find Gorgo.

    Isn't he one more person who could tell the police whether or not what you're saying is true?'

    Molto objects that the question is argumentative, which it is, but given the constraints I've already imposed on the cross, I allow it.

    'He ain goin 'gainst me,' Hardcore says with a faint smile. It's not clear if Core is asserting the truthfulness of his testimony or a reality of gang life. 'Sides, man,' he adds, 'nigger don't want to be found, you know? He ain just run from the po-lice neither. I git my dogs on that motherfucker, time I done, he be rankin out.' Begging for mercy. Core, feeling friskier as the cross goes on, ends his answer with another sneer in Hobie's direction. There is a scratchy something between them, a contest that goes beyond the courtroom. Bold and unruly, Core seems to assert at every pass that he's the real black man, poor, raised without refuge, full of the rightful indignation of the oppressed. Hobie, in Core's view, is a fake, someone who doesn't know the real deal, a challenge to which Hobie seems oddly vulnerable. That, perhaps, is what's sapped some of his strength.

    'You're pretty angry with Gorgo?'

    'Word,' answers Hardcore, and at the further thought of Gorgo gives he head a disgusted shake.

    'Because he shot Mrs Eddgar while you were standing there, right? You and Bug? And that's how you got in trouble?'

    ‘I stand behind that,' says Core.

    Turning away from the witness, I see Hobie smile fleetingly for the first time. Has he got something?

    'Now, how close to Mrs Eddgar was Gorgo on this bicycle when he shot her?'

    With his long nail, Hardcore describes the distance between Hobie and him. Close enough to kill. Core grins tautly at the thought. Hobie, catching the drift, smiles too.

    'He could see it was a woman, couldn't he?'

    Molto objects that Core can't testify to what Gorgo could see.

    'Fair enough,' Hobie says.
'You
could see it was a woman when you were twelve feet from her, couldn't you?' 'I ain dumb like he is.' Hobie absorbs that. Core fences well. 'Well, Bug was waving to Gorgo?' Thass right.' 'Trying to stop him?' 'Thass right' 'But you didn't wave?' 'Naw.'

    'You didn't shout to him?' 'Uh-uh.'

    'You hit the pavement?' 'Thass right'

    Hobie has approached Core gradually. Now he dares to touch the front rail of the witness stand.

    'You
knew
he wasn't going to stop, didn't you?'

    ' Shee-it, man.' Showily, Core waves the back of his hand inches from Hobie's nose. 'Listen how you get up on yo'self! Look that bitch-made nigger in the eye, man, you gone see that fool straight down to shoot. I like to seen that plenty.'

    'Sir, you
knew
Gorgo was going to shoot anyway, didn't you, even though it was a woman standing there, and as a result you hit the pavement?'

    ‘I already answered that damn question.'

    'Judge,' says Tommy, belatedly. I sustain the objection and Hobie retreats to his notes to seek another subject, once again short of success. Naturally, I've gotten the point - but it baffles me, as it has when Hobie's prowled this ground before. What earthly good does it do Nile, even if June, rather than Eddgar, was the target?

    'Senator Eddgar,' says Hobie. 'Let's talk about him. You had one meeting with the Senator, is that your testimony?' 'Seem like one.'

    'Seems like? One or more than one?'

    ‘In my lid, man, you know I got one.' 'It could be more?'

    Core shirks it off. Hobie fixes him with a look, but decides, after an instant's reflection, not to pursue it.

    'Now, Hardcore, to you, to T-Roc, this idea of getting Kan-el out of prison - that was very important, wasn't it?'

    'Down for mine, man,' he says. 'Stomp down.' The credo. The gang, he means. Everything for the gang.

    'And that's why you agreed to meet with the Senator. Am I right? Because getting Kan-el out, that's a thang with you. Right?'

    'You with it, cuz,' he answers, and adds a quick simpering smile, mocking Hobie for trying to take up his lingo.

    'And you told us, I believe, that when you found Senator Eddgar had this idea that BSD could become a political organization you were real angry - "deep"?'

    'Man, what he were stressin, man, that shit ain real.'

    Hobie nods, mulling as he strolls. Then he turns back abruptly and asks in a smaller voice, 'So why'd you think Senator Eddgar was coming down there?'

    Core for an instant is dead silent. I see him look to Aires.

    'Nile sayin get with his daddy. Thass all.'

    'That's all? Let's set the scene, Core. We got two gangbangers. Top Rank. Black men. Both convicted felons, right? And we have an important white politician, chairman of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, who drives all the way down to the North End of DuSable and climbs in the back of a limousine with the likes of you-all, knowing you want nothing more in the world than to get your homie, Kan-el, out of Rudyard penitentiary. Now I ask you again, Hardcore, what did you think he was coming for? What did you think he was going to get out of this?'

    Core stares, motionless, feral. Hobie's finally got him. 'Huh?' asks Hobie. 'You and T-Roc had this one checked out, didn't you?'

    Core just shakes his head.

    'You went there thinking you were going to bribe Senator Eddgar, didn't you?'

    Aires unfurls his lanky form from his folding chair and raises his hand tentatively. 'Judge,' he says, ‘I have to be heard.' Suddenly -in one of those light-switch moments - it's clear what Jackson's doing here. He's not just protecting Hardcore. He's looking after T-Roc, Kan-el, his entire client base in B S D. I wave Aires to his seat and Hobie asks me to have the court reporter read the question back.

    'No way,' says Core. 'You trippin.'

    Hobie's nostrils flare in a sudden disbelieving exhalation. It's the first moment in which I know for certain Hardcore has been caught lying. Core and Aires have covered this one. If Hardcore acknowledged a conspiracy to commit bribery, T-Roc's supervised release would be in jeopardy. Worse, Core would have dimed out his own, not the way to commence a ten-year stay at Rudyard.

    'So are you telling us, Hardcore, that you never offered or received any money directly or indirectly through Senator Eddgar? Is that what you're saying? Do you understand what I'm asking?'

    'Nigger, I understand you fine.'

    Hobie stands with paralytic stillness. The sole movement - an involuntary one - is the tip of his tongue sneaking forth between his teeth. The word, of course. The entire gulf of black life, that heritage of disrespect, stands between them for a moment.

    'Read the question back,' he tells the court reporter, finally, without taking his eyes from Hardcore. It's my job to issue that instruction, but under the circumstances I do not intervene, just nod to Suzanne.

    'No money, nothin,' Core says, 'ain nothin like that.'

    'Nothing like that,' Hobie says. Standing over his notes at the podium, he takes a few more seconds to collect himself, shifts his shoulder, and rebuttons his handsome, green-toned Italian suit. Over in the jury box, in the journalistic dog pound, there is a steady murmur. Bribery! This case is too much, something great each day. I see Dubinsky and Stuart Rosenberg huddled together, but turn away abruptly when I sense Seth trying to catch my eye.

    'Now, Hardcore, most of what you're saying about Nile -there's no kind of record of it, is there?'

    'Record? What kind of damn record, man? I ain no D Jup here, man. Record,' he huffs.

    'No documents. Nothing to prove what you're saying is true. For instance, this phone call you say you made to Nile the morning of the murder, after he beeped you. There's no record of that, is there? Not so far as you know?' The state has already stipulated to this. Hobie's on safe ground.

    'They's the money, man,' says Core.

    'Right,' says Hobie. 'The money. That's the only thing backing up your testimony, right?'

    Hobie's correct, but it's an argument not a question and I sustain the prosecutors' objection.

    'Well, haven't the prosecutors told you, Hardcore, how important that money is?'

    'Money be money, man. Make the world go round.'

    ‘I think that's love,' Hobie says, over his shoulder. He's moving again, on the prowl, working his hands, his fancy alligator loafers scudding across the worn courtroom carpeting. 'You understood that bag of money you delivered to the prosecutors - you knew it was the key to corroborating your testimony, didn't you? You couldn't have gotten your sweet deal without the money to back you up, right?'

    'Yo, man, chill. That wasn't no thang, man, cause I had the damn money, okay?'