The Kill Clause (32 page)

“How about passing judgment on an
individual
?”

“Leave that to God. Or Allah, or karma, or the Great Pumpkin. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone is
evil.
It matters what they’ve done and how we deal with it.”

“But we have to carry out our judgment on individuals.”

“Of course. So what determines the strictness of punishment? Irredeemability? Lack of contrition? Unfitness to participate in society? No one so much as examined these factors for my client today. This kid is screwed. He’s gonna have to punk for some gangbanger for the rest of his life over a thirty-seven-cent fucking toilet-paper holder.” Richard’s voice wavered, either from rage or grief, and his face contorted once, sharply, presaging a sob that never came. Instead he grinned. “That’s the reason for our little party tonight, my friend.” He raised a shot glass. “Celebrating the system.”

His buddy put a hand on his shoulder and steered him down onto the barstool.

“It goes both ways,” Tim said.

Richard looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and drooping. “Yeah, yeah, it does.”

“I’ve seen guys walk through loopholes I’d never even dreamed of. Chain of custody. Speedy trial motions. Search and seizure. It’s not justice. It’s bullshit.”

“It
is
bullshit. But why can’t we have good procedure
and
justice? So the court spanks the cop for”—his hands fluttered, seeking a phrase—“illegal search and seizure or whatever, and
next time around
the cop does his job right, with respect for civil liberties. The trial goes clean. Guy gets convicted, receives a fair sentence. Then it’s right all the way around—we have our cake and eat it, too.”

Nick slumped forward, his forehead thumping against the bar. Tim thought it had to be a joke, but Nick remained there. Richard didn’t notice. He leaned in, his breath carrying a sickening combination of breath mints and tequila. “Lemme let you in on a little secret. PDs don’t like their clients, generally. We don’t want to see them go free. We
want
them to get convicted.” He held up a wobbly finger. “However. More important than that, we want tough guy cops like you and hard-on DAs to respect the Constitution, the Penal Code, the Bill of Rights. And everyone chips away at them, these rights, slowly over time. Detectives, prosecutors, even judges. But not us. We’re fucking zealots. Zealots for the Constitution.”

“Jews for Jesus,” Nick muttered from his facedown slump on the bar.

“And we protect…we protect that thing, that stupid, distant,
abstract fucking piece of parchment, despite the scum we represent, despite the crimes they may have committed or may commit after we get them off because some dumb-ass cop doesn’t fulfill the oral announcement of intent to search after the knock and notice and puts us in the fuckdamned position of having to point it out and let some mouth-breathing reprobate walk out the fucking door, in all likelihood to do whatever he’s done again.”

Richard tried to stand but fell back onto the stool. Nick was making raspberry noises against the bar.

“We fight fascism in the petty details.” Richard pivoted to face the bar, letting his hands slide up, covering his face. “And it’s awful. And we lose sight of the prize, the aim, sometimes, because we just wallow in this…in this…” A jerking inhalation led to a sob, but when he lowered his hands, he was smiling again. “We need a shot. Another shot.”

“Trying to break the Breathalyzer record and win a Kewpie doll?”

“What, are you gonna arrest me, Officer? Drunk and disenfranchised?”

“If I do, I’ll be sure to Mirandize you.”

“Funny, that’s funny.” Richard laughed hard. “You’re okay. I like you. You don’t talk much, but you’re okay. I mean, for a cop.” He leaned heavily on the bar, his shirtsleeve soaking up spilled alcohol. “Lemme let you in on a little secret. I’m leaving my office. Going across the street to federal—believe it or not, federal sentencing is even more draconian. I’m gonna go throw myself against that wall for a change.”

“Why do you do it?” Tim asked. “If you hate it so much?”

Nick raised his head, and his face looked startlingly sober. “Because we’re worried no one else will.”

Richard drummed the bar with his forefingers. “And it makes us pretty unpopular. Didn’t used to be that way, not with Darrow and Rogers. The greats. Now a PD’s just a knee-jerk apologist. A pushover. A softie. Dukakis. We’re Dukakises. Dukaki.”

“And Mondale,” Nick said. “We’re Mondale, too.”

“And guys like me feel like guys like you are running the show these days,” Tim said.

“Are you kidding me?” Richard spun around on the barstool, twirling a full rotation before stopping himself. His head jerked back with a hiccup. He looked distinctly nauseous. “Have you been watching the news? This vigilante business—it’s meeting with general societal approval.”

“The people who have been executed are hardly—”

Richard bellowed out a bad imitation of a game-show buzzer, tilting from the stool onto his feet. “Wrong answer.”

“Right. Just have faith in the system. The system you just described to me from your angle and I described to you from mine. Why should we hold on to that faith? Why shouldn’t someone try something better? Take matters into their own hands?”

Richard clutched Tim’s arm, and for the first time his voice was soft and cracked, not giddy or deadened with tired irony. “Because it represents such
hopelessness.
”

He leaned over and vomited on his shoes.

A girl two stools over looked down at her splattered capris and screamed. The smell rose from the puddle, rank and heated. Richard grinned, his chin stained with puke, and raised his arms, Rocky style.

The bartender was cursing a blue streak, and a gym-enhanced security bozo was closing fast, barking into a radio. The bouncer from outside plowed through the crowd and grabbed Richard.

“All right, asshole, I told you before, you get hammered in my club again, you’re fucking finished.” He threw a full nelson on Richard, bending his head forward and making his arms stick up like a scare-crow’s. The other guy seized Nick’s shoulder and jerked him back off the bar.

“Take it easy,” Tim said. The bouncer slammed Richard against the bar. Tim’s hand shot out and grabbed the bouncer’s thick neck, thumb digging into his sternal notch. The bouncer gagged out a sound and froze. “It wasn’t a suggestion,” Tim said.

He waited for the bouncer to release Richard. The other guy let go of Nick and stepped wide, eyes on Tim, looking for an angle. Several people were watching, but for the most part loud music covered the sound of the commotion. The dance floor remained a swirl of oblivious motion.

Tim removed his hands, holding them up in a calming gesture. The bouncer took a quick step back, coughing.

Tim said, “I don’t much like to fight, and I’m sure you could kick my ass anyway, so what do you say we just do this the easy way. These guys are going to pay their tab—” he nodded at Nick, who fumbled a few bills out of his pocket and onto the counter “I’ll walk my acquaintance out of here, and you’ll never hear from us again. Sound good?”

The bouncer glowered at him.

“Okay.” Tim shouldered Richard and half dragged him to the door,
Nick scurrying close behind. They stepped outside, and the cool air hit them like a chest-high wave.

“That asshole,” Richard slurred, rubbing his elbow. “Why didn’t you badge him?” He fumbled in his pocket for his valet ticket, but Tim dragged him to the curb and hailed a passing cab. He deposited Richard inside and stepped back to let Nick slide in.

Richard opened his mouth to say something, but Tim rapped the window with his knuckles, and the cabbie pulled away. Tim headed back to the valet stand and handed off his ticket. The bouncer was back at his post by the rope, rubbing the raised red mark on his neck. “You all right?” Tim asked.

“You’d better get the fuck out of here. Fast.”

They stood in tense silence, waiting for Tim’s car to be pulled around.

TIM SAT ATOP
the playground slide at Warren Elementary, a few blocks from his old house, his feet pointed downward on the aluminum slant, clutching a bottle of vodka loosely in his lap. The small, unadorned merry-go-round sat still and silent, a flipped spider with bunched metal legs. Swings rattled in the night breeze; a tetherball bounced against its post. The air smelled of tanbark and asphalt.

He’d been here last on a lazy Sunday when Ginny had interrupted his edging the back lawn to make him walk her over, hand in hand, so she could again study the monkey bars that she was too afraid to swing across. They’d stood there silently, father and daughter, while she circled the bars, examining them from all angles, like a horse she was planning to mount. When he’d asked if she wanted to try, she shook her head, as always, and they’d walked back home, hand in hand.

Tim was shivering, though he wasn’t the least bit cold. He found himself walking, studying the ground at his feet. He found himself on his porch, ringing his doorbell.

Some commotion, then Mac answered. It took Mac a moment to recognize him and take his hand off the butt of the Beretta stuffed into the waistband of his sweats. Behind him, even through the thickening haze of his grief and anger, Tim could see the blanket and bed pillow on the couch from which he’d been roused.

“I want to see Ginny’s room,” Tim said.

Mac’s body swayed, as if he’d taken a step, but he hadn’t. “Look, Rack, I don’t know if this is such a—”

Tim spoke low and calm. “You see that pistol in your hand?”

Mac nodded.

“You’d better step aside or I’m gonna take it from you and ram it down your fucking throat.” His voice wavered hard.

Mac’s mouth pulsed in a half swallow, half gulp before smoothing back into a handsome inscrutability. “Okay.”

Tim pushed open the door, and Mac stepped back. Dray was coming down the hall, knotting her bathrobe, her mouth slightly agape. “What are you—?”

He lowered his head when he passed her and shoved into Ginny’s room, locking the door behind him.

He heard the sound of Dray and Mac talking down the hall, but he was too drunk to shape the sounds into words. He took in the room blurrily, the mound of stuffed animals in the corner, the pleated shade crowning the pink porcelain lamp on the diminutive desk, the inane glow of the Pocahontas night-light. Only when he curled up on Ginny’s bed did he realize he still held the vodka bottle. The last thing he remembered before dozing off was setting it gently on the floor so it wouldn’t spill.

•When he awakened, it took him a few moments to remember where he was. He’d curled into the fetal position to fit on the small bed. He scooted up against the headboard, rubbed his eye, and felt the pinch of crust against his lid. Dray was sitting across the room, back to the wall, facing him. The faint gray light of early morning, split by the slats of the venetian blinds, fell across her face.

He glanced at the now-unlocked door, then at her. She had an unbent bobby pin in her mouth, angled down over her plump lower lip.

“I’m sorry,” he said, placing his feet on the floor. “I’ll leave.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Yet.”

Her stare made him uncomfortable, so he studied the yellow and pink flowers of the wallpaper.

“You were crying last night,” Dray said.

He clasped his hands, pressed the knuckles to his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you
dare
apologize for that.” She leaned her head back until it thumped softly against the wall. “Maybe you should have done more of it.”

He blinked hard, kept his eyes closed. “I don’t know what to do to
diminish the hurt. There’s got to be something, some outlet for the victims. If not, if we don’t get anything from the courts, from the laws, what are we supposed to do?”

“Mourn, stupid.” She propped her chin on the union of her fists. “And, Tim?” She waited for him to look up. “We’re not the victim. We’re related to the victim.”

He sat with that one for a few minutes. Then he said quietly, “That is a damn powerful insight.”

Dray took a deep breath, as if preparing for an underwater plunge. “You and I, we have a tough time starting conversations, not having them.” She lowered her arms until they stuck straight out, her elbows resting on her kneecaps. “I went to the grocery store today for the first time. Shopping not for three, not even for two. I skipped the candy aisle because Ginny, you know, and I bought less stuff, just for me, and I got to the checkout counter, and it was thirty-something dollars. So cheap I almost started crying.” Her voice cracked, a seam of vulnerability. “I don’t want to shop for one.”

He felt something break inside him and spill relief. “Andrea, I—” He sat up sharply. “Wait a minute. You didn’t go to the grocery store the day I went in to work, the day of the Martía Domez shooting?”

“I couldn’t get off the couch that day. What’s going on?”

“The Stork said that’s when he broke in and bugged my watch. I left it at home.”

“No way. I was here all day.” She let a sigh puff out her cheeks. “They must have had their eye on you longer than they’re letting on. You knew they were manipulating you from the get-go—”

“I’ll have to talk to Dumone. I know I can trust him.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. I know it in my bones.”

“Well, maybe the Stork and Rayner wanted a transmitter on you a week early, and they didn’t let on.”

“Maybe.” His mind seethed with troubling thoughts. He vowed to get some answers from Dumone or in the next meeting at Rayner’s, to learn the precise parameters of the Commission’s stalking of him. His unease had been ratcheted up another notch—if his trust had indeed been violated, he’d be forced to implode the Commission.

Dray remained backed against the wall, watching him with moist eyes. Her neck bore the mark of her nails from earlier scratching. “Come here,” he said.

She rose with a groan, knees cracking, and crossed to Ginny’s bed. She lay down, her face on his chest, a wisp of hair falling to frame the
outer edge of her eye. He put his spread hand over the back of her head and cradled it to him. She nuzzled into him like an animal, like a baby. They breathed together, then breathed some more.

He pulled her hair back out of her face, and their eyes met, held. Her hand tightened on his chest.

“I feel like we just found each other again,” he said.

His phone, wedged in the front pocket of his jeans, vibrated against them both. Dray backed up off him, her knees and elbows pressing into the mattress, her chin resting on his stomach.

He flipped the phone open. “Yeah.”

Mitchell’s voice came with the staccato fire of cop argot. “The subject’s at the ten-twenty.”

“Okay.” Tim turned off the phone and regarded Dray, savoring a final trace of comfort and, beyond that, feeling the stone edge of need bulldozing through him.

She raised her eyebrows. He nodded. She pushed herself off him and stood, straightening her shirt.

He wanted desperately to put his mouth on hers, but he feared if he started, he wouldn’t stop. He
had
to be across town, and he hated himself for it.

On his way past her, they pulled together in a spontaneous embrace, caught sideways, her hands clasped around his waist, his arm down over her back, her face pressed to the side of his neck, chin resting on his shoulder.

It was all he could do not to turn his head and kiss her.