Gods Go Begging (43 page)

“You told the inspector, did you not, that you knew that Little Reggie had the gun?”

“I know that he almost always be carrying a gun,” answered Calvin, “so, on the tape, I guessed that he had one that night. If you listen to the tape, Mr. Cling, you can hear that I was ask a trick question. I been forced into giving that answer. On that night, the night when Mai was killed, I ain’t knowin’ he had the gun until I saw it in his hand.”

Despite the obstruction by the prosecution, the witness saw the signal to elaborate. Calvin continued his statement.

“Everyone on that hill have a gun, sir. Even the little kids have guns. They takes their guns to the playground when they ride on the swings. When they ain’t got decent clothes or shoes on, they got heat. They be strapped when they go to the store to buy penny candy or a root beer.”

“You also told the inspector, did you not, that you knew that he was going to kill her?”

“When he pull out that gun, knowin’ him the way I did, I knew that those women be in danger.”

“You’re not answering my question,” continued the prosecutor. “You knew that Little Reggie was going to kill those women before he actually did it, didn’t you?”

Calvin turned his gaze to the jury.

“If Little Reggie Harp be here today, pointin’ a gun at you, I be sure that the crazy fool would use it on one of you, maybe more. That’s what I mean by that answer. If I had knowed that he was going to hurt those women, I woulda tried to stop him. All I know when I knock on the front door of the Amazon Luncheonette was that I be near … her.”

“You wanted to be near her?” asked the prosecutor.

“I always want to be near her, near Mai. From the first time I saw her I could not stop thinkin’ about her, to smell her perfume. I thinks she is … was the mostest beautiful woman I ever seen.”

“Who was it that put Mai in the refrigerator?”

“I put her there,” answered Calvin. “I thought she be safe in there. I thought Reggie be satisfy if he think she suffocate in there. I schemed to let her out as soon as he leave and it be safe but she kick the door open.”

Now a shining tear began to wend its way down the ebony cheek of the defendant. Jesse sat upright in his chair, surprised by the emotion evident in his client’s face. He hadn’t given the sign for an emotional display.

“Until the day I die I never be forgettin’ the look on her face when she run past me into the street. She hate me. That pretty face couldn’t stand to look at me. I love her so much and she hate me for bein’ with him. I want her to stop—not to go out there. I know what Little Reggie could maybe do to her. I never had no time to explain to her….”

“There’s no question before the witness,” interjected the prosecutor.

“The witness is allowed to explain,” answered the judge.

“I ran out behind her and scream at her to stop, but nothin’ on earth could stop her. She be screamin’ something and can’t hear me callin’ out to her. Then I hear the first shot. Miss Persephone already be down. Blood everywhere. Then I seen him shoot Mai….”

Now the tears were streaming down the Biscuit Boy’s face.

“God, I be lovin’ her.”

“You got the gun from Reggie, didn’t you? He handed you the gun right after he killed those two women.”

“Yeah, he done that.”

“You said on direct examination that you tried to shoot Reggie right there in the street, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.”

“But Reggie had removed the clip.”

“Yeah, I mean yes.”

“It was your job to hide the gun, wasn’t it?

“Yes.”

“It was your job to hide the clip, wasn’t it?”

“I never seen the clip, sir.”

“And you hid them both under the front porch of Princess Sabine Harp’s apartment?”

“Yes, but only the gun. Reggie always keep it there.”

“You killed Reggie Harp just one or two days after the murders at the Amazon Luncheonette, didn’t you? You were afraid that he would spill the beans about your part in the murders. First you sent him a note saying that he was a dead man, then you killed him.”

“I didn’t kill him, sir. I want to kill him, I’ll tell you that, for what he done to those three boys, for what he done to Mai. I try to kill him that night. He be such a sick boy. He got no place to live, did you know that? He be livin’ with those homeless vets down at the bottom of the hill. That crazy mama of his won’t let him in, so I be bringin’ him food that my mama cook, and I kicked it with him a little bit, but not too long ‘cause he be livin’ near a outdoor toilet.

“That mama of his always be askin’ boys to come in her house, of ferin’ them food and beer, and always showing those pictures of her, some with no clothes on. I never seen none of them pictures, but I heard. She be lettin’ any fool boy into her house, but she didn’t never let her own son to come in.”

Calvin glanced toward his lawyer for some indication of how well he was doing on the stand. The lawyer seemed pleased. Calvin’s English was much better than before, but not so good as to destroy all poignancy. This case needed poignancy. Jesse gave Calvin the signal to elaborate about Princess Sabine.

“Boys would come out her house swearin’ that they had been to bed with her, seen her titties and everything. They say she tied them up with string. Weird stuff. Jesus, that make Reggie so mad. It drive him crazy. It turn him into a crazy killer. I know he shot those three boys. Everybody know it, even without seein’ it.

“But I always know there be somethin’ wrong with him. If there was a pretty new car on the block, he scratch up the paint. If someone plantin’ some pretty flowers, he’d wreck ‘em. I think he hate anything pretty. That’s why he kill those women. He hate anything nice. If there be another bullet in that chamber, I swear he be dead that night. Good thing the gun be empty or there be another body out on the sidewalk.”

“Mai Adrong, Persephone Flyer, and Reggie Harp,” said the prosecutor reproachfully.

“No,” said Calvin. “There be another man out there that night. He run over to the bodies of the two women. It be the homeless man that I seen on the hill, Mr. Homeless. He’s all the time preaching against violence and drugs and such. He tells crazy stories about spiders and about what happens on a hill. Reggie aim right at him and pull the trigger but nothin’ happened. The homeless guy never even look up. He saw Reggie, but went right back to what he doin‘. It look like he be sayin’ something to those women.”

After almost two full days of cross-examination the prosecutor sat down at his table, leaving the crowded courtroom silent, and an exhausted Calvin anxious to leave the witness stand. Jesse was openly proud of his client and smiled at Eddy Oasa, who was seated in one of the attorneys’ seats just behind the defense table. Eddy nodded his head imperceptibly. The boy had survived. He had explained himself clearly and answered every question in a manner that the jury could understand.

“Just one or two more questions, your honor,” said Jesse who did not rise from his table. “What is your name on the street?”

Calvin smiled at the question.

“Biscuit Boy.”

“How did you come to have that name?”

A look of calm and deep affection descended upon Calvin’s face as he considered his answer to the question.

“I be stealin’ pastries from the back yard of the Amazon Luncheonette. I be takin’ the pastries just to taste somethin’ that her hands be touchin‘. I use to go up there and watch Mai all day long. I know when she wake up in the mornin’ and I know when she go to sleep at night. Before the kids go to school I be watchin’ her window to see the lights come on in her bedroom. Then I run up the hill to catch the sound of her mixin’ machine and the smell from her oven.”

Calvin closed his eyes but continued to speak.

“I be standin’ across the street and just watch her movin’ back and forth in her kitchen. She be the most prettiest thing I ever seen. Well, one morning I’m fixin’ to steal some of the pastries that she leave on a bench in back. I seen the homeless guy takin’ them, so I reckons I’d try it. But she nabbed me. I won’t never forget that for as long as I live.

“I reach out for the pastries, but her hand come out and grab mine. Then I hear this laughter that sound happy and sweet like a kids’ playground and I look up to see that face smilin’ at me.
‘Dud bé giao bánh bích guy,’she
say.”

One or two of the jurors had looks of pure amazement on their faces. Could they really be hearing a black boy from the projects speaking Vietnamese? Was it possible?

“Then in good English she translate. She say, ‘Biscuit Boy.’ She turned my hand over and, with her other hand, put a stack of hot biscuits in my palm. I feel like she had put one of her titties—” He turned his head to look at the face of his lawyer. “—breasts on my palm.”

With his eyes once again shut tight, he swooned at the thought.

“Mai teach me how to say my own name in Vietnamese, and she be usin’ that name every time she catch sight of me. I learn to say my name by sound at first, but, Hong Ha, the Vietnamese interpreter who come up to the jail, wrote it out for me, with all them accent marks and stuff. I needs to know how to spell my name correct, you see. When she give me that name, my life been change forever.”

“How did you feel about Mai?”

“I been waitin’ a long time for this here trial by jury, Mr. Pasadoble. I passed a lot of time upstairs, in my bed in the jail, readin’ and learnin’ things. I wasn’t livin’ life before—when everythin’ around me was the enemy, when every day be war. What I mean to say is I love Mai when I be a stupid boy stealin’ biscuits. Now I be a man charged with killin’ her, I know there ain’t no words to say what my heart feel for her.”

“No further questions, your honor,” said Jesse Pasadoble. He smiled and gave his client a thumbs-up for all to see. It was not semaphore. The time for secrets and signals had passed. Calvin stepped down from the witness stand and walked to the defense table, where he touched his lawyer’s shoulder lightly, then sat down. The Biscuit Boy sighed deeply, closing his eyes to fight the incessant desire to cry.

Without knowing it, Jesse had been sucking on his sliver of jade. He had slipped the sliver of jade into his mouth by mistake after digging into his coat pocket for a mint. Suddenly the courtroom, which had been silent for the few moments it took for Calvin to leave the witness stand and walk back to his seat, became alive with the strang est, most disconcerting sounds. Jesse glanced frantically around the courtroom to locate the source of the disturbances and saw that no mouths were moving; no one was speaking. Yet there were distinct voices—voices without timbre or tenor, bass, or baritone, voices without words, without volume.

It was long moments before he realized that he was listening to the jurors. He was hearing their hearts. He slumped in his chair. Was it possible to hear the innermost thoughts of another being? Then a question struck him like a blow to the face: Could peasant warriors in Vietnam have used these slender green stones to penetrate the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps and its web of cryptography? Could the NVA have listened in on us back on the hill near Laos?

He turned his head toward the jury box. One by one, each juror had gone to the orphanage door, and after overlooking him on the first pass, they had begun to consider Calvin. They had begun to adopt the Biscuit Boy. One by one, they were shaking off their initial revulsion toward him and were coming to embrace the existence of a reasonable doubt. Their skeptical hearts had been opened to the possible presence of both genuine love and the whole truth.

Now Jesse knew its secret, why only select soldiers had been given the jade. It wasn’t fear that activated the power of the green stone. Now Jesse knew what had been so different about the two burned corpses he had found at the base of that hill near Laos, two small bodies with slivers of jade set upon their tongues. Like those two soldiers, Jesse was fighting in this trial to save a life. Those dead soldiers had been unarmed. They had both been women.

Jesse carefully removed the jade from his tongue. Slowly he became aware that the judge was staring at him, and that he needed to shut out the voices in order to speak. He stood up slowly and addressed the judge.

“Your honor, at this time the defense rests.”

He sat down, grabbed his stack of notepads, and began to mentally prepare for his closing argument. After the morning recess the jury would be brought back and would be forced to hear almost two hours of convoluted, confusing, and repetitive instructions. By the time the judge was finished, most of the jurors would be nodding off or half-asleep. Two experienced jurors had brought dark glasses for the occasion. After that, the two lawyers would be allowed to sum up their cases.

This jury, once hostile and closed-minded, was now open and receptive to the defense. During recess they would be eagerly waiting for the summations. Jesse had heard it in their beating hearts. Miraculously, each one of them had come to see something of themselves in the Biscuit Boy. They no longer believed that Calvin had killed the three boys that were dug up on the hillside. That had been thoroughly disproved through the compelling testimony of a single surprise witness. Now they knew for certain who it was that had strangled Little Reggie Harp.

But still, the Biscuit Boy had been there when those two bullets had insulted the flesh and spirits of Mai and Persephone. There was still the question of accomplice liability. In the eyes of the law, an aider and abettor who intends the same result that the actual perpetrator intended is just as guilty.

If he and Calvin could get past that, there would be no penalty phase, no life-without-possibility-of-parole. The miracle would have happened. For the first time, Jesse began to realize that the impossible could happen: Calvin could be acquitted of everything. He could walk from this courtroom and into a new life.

Jesse would have to tell the jurors the story behind this case—without telling them all of it. They would never believe the entire story. Who on earth would? He breathed deeply to relieve the incredible stress brought on by the mere thought of it. A pain descended from his head to his neck and shoulders. His fingers were desperately rubbing the dog tags in his pocket. This closing argument would have to be like none other. Jesse clenched his fists and felt every muscle in his upper body tightening. Risks would have to be taken.