Clockers (63 page)

Rocco tried to drift back to sleep but couldn’t. The mother had told him that Victor had drawn Jimmy Newton as a public defender. Rocco and Jimmy had known each other for twenty-five years: Rocco thought that ought to count for something, and he allowed himself to imagine that Jimmy might let him reinterview his client. But that would mean exposing Victor to the possibility of self-incrimination,
further
self-incrimination, which could set Jimmy up for an incompetency hearing. No way in hell Jimmy would do it.

But the idea stayed with him, and Rocco began working out his pitch in his head. It’s not like I’d be going in there to
fuck
the kid, he thought. Hey, I’d be trying to cut the kid loose.

Rocco pressed the pillow into his eyes, tried to untrack his thoughts, but after a long moment of enforced stillness he rolled out of bed and jumped into the shower.

Rocco hounded the courtrooms and cafeterias of the Municipal Building for close to an hour. He finally found Jimmy Newton emerging from a conference with a client in the men’s room, coming out of a toilet stall followed by a middle-aged fat man dressed in a blood-spattered raincoat and a cracked pair of bedroom slippers.

The fat man headed for the hallway as Jimmy bent over the sink and washed his hands. “And lose the raincoat, Octavio,” he said, looking over the top of his bifocals.

The guy raised his arms and snapped his head to get the hair out of his face. “This all I got.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” Jimmy threw the guy a reassuring squint, then saw Rocco. “Heyyy, how you doing?”

“I thought you were over that,” Rocco said, nodding to the open stall. “I thought you went back to women.”

Jimmy laughed gamely. “What’s up, there, Rocco? Long time no see.”

Rocco leaned against a sink as if this was his usual hangout. “Can I buy you lunch?” He yawned his way through a sudden gust of anxiety.

“We can go Dutch.”

The mild note of caution in Jimmy’s voice turned Rocco’s yawn into a small groan.

As they walked out of the Municipal Building to the row of bars and restaurants across the street, they made meaningless small talk. Rocco saw that Jimmy was on his guard, which wasn’t surprising given the adversarial nature of their respective jobs. But Rocco was pretty sure he could break through that instinctive wariness, because Jimmy was basically a good man. In fact, Rocco considered Jimmy Newton just about the most decent person he knew.

Most Dempsy public defenders worked for the county for three to five years, got their combat ribbons and moved on to private practice so they could start raking it in. But Jimmy was pushing forty-five and still grabbing manila folders out of the arraignment basket every morning, interviewing an anonymous and endless stream of indigent mutts through the grills of the processing pen, haggling over bail reductions, jail time, accepting collect calls from the coinless phones up on the tiers—all this for forty-five thousand dollars a year, with no outside legal work allowed. But where was the satisfaction? Even the skells in the cells treated Jimmy like shit, not even regarding him as a real lawyer because he was free.

Rocco was convinced that the reason Jimmy had never moved on from the public defender’s office was that he genuinely felt bad for his clients. Jimmy wasn’t politicized, wasn’t by any means an activist or even a Democrat. He was just a sweet guy who happened to believe that most of his clients were hapless hard-luck bozos who had the misfortune to be born when and where they were, who at this point in their lives needed a friend on the Inside, needed Jimmy Newton.

Nothing symbolized Jimmy’s approach to his job more than the half-dozen sport jackets he always carried in the trunk of his car—polyester thrift-shop horrors in bizarre color combinations like blue and cream, raspberry and tan. The jackets were for his clients. Jimmy believed it was in their best interest to go before the judge dressed respectfully, and there wasn’t a judge, court officer, district attorney or geriatric courtroom buff in all of Dempsy County who couldn’t pick one of Jimmy Newton’s clients out of a sea of bench-warming felons on the day of sentencing. In legal circles, the jackets were known as Newt Suits.

Rocco put his palm to the small of Jimmy’s back and steered him into the Old Town, the most expensive restaurant on the strip. The hostess ushered them to a booth in the nearly deserted room, and a few minutes later Rocco watched Jimmy toss back an 11:55
A.M.
Gibson like he was trying to wash down a Ring Ding.

“You want another one of those?” Rocco asked.

“Nah.” Jimmy smacked his lips and made a growling sound. “I got to keep my wits about me. What’s up?”

“OK, OK.” Feeling nervous again, Rocco scanned the sea of unoccupied tables. “I want to throw something at you. Just sit and listen to me, and if it bothers you ethically, just forget I said anything.”

Jimmy stared at him through lowered eyes, waiting.

“Your client, Victor Dunham. He’s in the can for homicide, right?”

Jimmy went very still.

“Look, I took that confession and I
know
it’s horseshit. You know it’s horseshit too, right? So what am I saying, that I think this kid’s dirtier than he says? No. Me to you, off the record? We’re not even here? Yes?”

After a long moment Jimmy reluctantly grunted, “Off the record,” one half-open fist curling inside the other on the tablecloth.

“Jimmy, what I’m saying is, the kid didn’t do it. Well why not, and who did, you ask. OK, well, the word on the street is that the vie, this Darryl Adams, was selling dope in there, in that Ahab’s. Word on the street—but the fact is, we
did
find a lot of cash on his body, none of it from the store receipts as far as we know, so I mean it could have been a holdup, a fucked-up holdup, the shooter could have panicked and run off without the money. But I doubt it. I think it was an execution.”

Jimmy puffed his cheeks and rubbed the back of his head.

“You hangin’ in?” Rocco tapped Jimmy’s wrist, worried that he was losing him when he wasn’t even halfway through his warm-up.

“G’head, g’head,” Jimmy said brusquely, looking off to the bar.

“OK, just stay with me. Now, this kid Darryl used to work for Rodney Little, the dope guy, in his grocery. Victor has a brother, a kid called Strike, who used to work with Darryl in that same grocery. This kid Strike is now out there on the streets clocking for Rodney, like his lieutenant or something, OK? So, what do we have here so far? This kid Strike’s selling dope, this kid Darryl’s selling dope, they both used to work for Rodney. Now, here’s the thing. Are you ready for the thing?” Rocco tried to catch Jimmy’s eye, make him smile.

“Just talk, Rocco.”

“OK. This Strike, Victor’s brother? Well, the bartender of that Rudy’s, the bar that Victor came out of, he also ID’d Strike in there the night of the shooting, said he never saw the kid in there before. So then I go to interview this Strike kid and he fucking lies about everything. He says he hasn’t seen Victor in two months. He says he didn’t know the vie, this Darryl Adams, when / know they worked together in Rodney Little’s hole-in-the-wall grocery store for a whole fucking year. Then, on top of that, he tells me some bullshit story about Darryl having an attitude problem as being the reason his brother shot him—like this kid Victor is into killing people because they wear their smile buttons upside down, you know?”

Rocco leaned back for a breather. Jimmy’s eyes were focused on the tablecloth.

“But to be in that bar for the first time on
that
night? Not ever having been there before? Plus, he left
before
the shooting, stone sober, so give me a break. Plus, plus, the kid’s got some violence on his jacket, an Aggravated Assault. I mean, I don’t know yet what this kid Darryl did to piss somebody off—that somebody probably being Rodney Little, is my guess—but who knows, maybe he was skimming profits or stealing the product or hey, maybe it wasn’t Rodney. Maybe it was Champ, that guy Champ. Maybe it was territorial, because I understand Champ controls the dope around here and maybe this kid was freelancing on his turf. I don’t know, maybe
Champ
got this kid Strike to go in and jap his old buddy from Rodney’s store. But all I can say for now is that Jimmy given all this shit I’m telling you circumstantial as it may ‘sound I wind up arresting a clean-cut kid who tries to sell me this cock-and-bull self-defense scenario I mean what’s going on?”

Jimmy threw Rocco a furtive glance, then looked away, as if desperate to be gone.

“Yo Jimmy!” Rocco mock-shouted through cupped hands.

Jimmy laughed, baring his teeth. “I’m not hearing this, Rocco,” he said almost shyly. “You’re setting me up for something here.”

Rocco ignored the comment. “But so, OK, so how did it come to pass that this wrong kid, this Victor, came in on it, gave it up? Well, I don’t know. Maybe he’s protecting his brother. He’s got no jacket more or less, he’s a church kid, hard-working. Maybe he thinks he’s got a better chance of beating the rap or serving less time. I mean, when I interviewed the kid he came off like one of these heavy scrimper and saver types. He sounded to me like he hated a nickel because it wasn’t a dime, so I don’t know, maybe his brother promised him a shitload of money to take care of his family, build a nest egg for when he gets out. Or maybe this
bad
brother’s got something on him, maybe he threatened him, you know, threatened his family,
made
him do it … I don’t know, but I
do
know that what we got here is the wrong brother walking in with the right gun I mean given all I’m telling you what would you believe?”’

“What would / believe?” Jimmy waved for another Gibson, cracked a bread stick. “I believe that in my profession it’s very dangerous to believe or not believe—that’s what I believe.”

“OK, well put, but look, here I am, you know?” Rocco turned to the waitress. “Can I have a white wine spritzer? No, make it a white wine with ice.”

Jimmy brushed away his bread crumbs with an extended pinkie. “You know, Rocco, you’re not supposed to even
talk
to me about this. I can use everything you just said to me in court to fuck up your case, right?”

“Hey, don’t you think I know that?” Rocco raised his chin as if to offer his throat for slitting. “Look, here it is, OK? Let me ask you. You know me like twenty-five years, right? Have I
ever
come to you like this? The reason I’m here is because I know what I’m saying is the truth. Twenty years of dealing with these jamokes says to me it’s the
truth.
Do you think I would be sitting here like an asshole if it wasn’t? What the fuck do I care if this goes in as a solve or a beat—I got more good confessions in this county than any fucking investigator alive. I don’t need this win, who gives a fuck. It’s just that it
bothers
me what’s happening here. I mean, when do I ever encounter a truly innocent man? It’s like a pebble in my shoe.”

Not sure who he was trying to convince now, Rocco had to force himself to keep up direct eye contact with Jimmy. The truth of it was, he had been so worried about Jimmy not hearing him out that he hadn’t really thought about his own jeopardy.

The waitress came by and they both ordered blindly, some pasta special. Rocco’s wine tasted like flat, sour soda, not a real drink at all.

Jimmy looked at Rocco over the top of his bifocals. “You know, I already talked to your boss. He’s offering me a good deal—Aggravated Manslaughter, twenty years with a third in. That’s pretty good.”

“Of course he’s offering you a good deal, I gave him a bullshit confession. What do you expect?” Rocco’s spirits sagged as he realized that the prosecutor would never allow him to talk to Victor and afford a confessed murderer the chance to recant his own testimony. He would have to do it on the sneak, keep everything under wraps until he could walk into his boss’s office with enough on Strike to justify this dangerous breach of procedure. Shit: a good way to lose his job, too. “Of
course
he’s offering a good deal,” he repeated hollowly.

Jimmy hesitated. “Yeah, well, there’s only one problem. I go to this kid, I say, ‘What happened?’ and I think,
he
thinks, like many of them do, that I’m an extension
of you
cocksuckers, a white man in a tie, you know? I say, ‘Talk to me, I’m on your side.’ He says, ‘Self-defense.’ I say, ‘Hey, I can have you out in six and a half years, just tell me something else, anything but that.’ He says, ‘It was self-defense, that’s all I wanna say to you.’ I say, ‘Hey, you say that, we’ll have to go to trial, because the PA ain’t gonna negotiate that, and we go to trial with a self-defense defense, we’re probably gonna lose.’ Then I explain to him all the shit about unarmed vie, distant shot no retreat et cetera tell him that if we go in like that we got a seriously handicapped roll of the dice there and I tell him ‘If I was you I’d plea out I’d take the Aggravated Manslaughter’. Get out of jail mv kids are still in elementary school ‘ And then he says ‘It was self-defense.’”

Jimmy flapped his hands in exasperation. “So once again, I’m trying to explain to him that on this one, self-defense is an insult to the good will and the intelligence of the prosecuting attorney, and how they get very pissed off if you make them go to the expense and time of a trial, and how if you
lose,
you’re gonna get it put up your brown but good. I say, ‘You’re flirting with thirty fucking years, here, Victor. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to illustrate that number.’ So what does he say to all this? ‘Self-defense.’ I tell him, ‘Victor, Victor, listen to me. You can bullshit me, that’s why I’m here, to be abused, but you can’t bullshit
yourself.
I am your lawyer …
Help
me.’”

“Help me help you,” Rocco said, surprised by Jimmy’s sudden candor.

“Exactly.” Jimmy reared back from a steaming bowl of ziti, wincing at the sudden humidity. “‘Help me help you.’ I like that. Anyway, like I say, I don’t believe or
not
believe, but if I did, I’d believe this kid is holding back something. But they all do.”