The Lightning Rule (10 page)

“Change of plans. I need Guthrie in court this afternoon.”

“Suit yourself. I was just tryin’ to give you guys a hand.” He scratched
out the correction on the clipboard. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” the guard grumbled.

That was precisely what Emmett was thinking. He had twenty-four hours until Ionello and Vass would come looking for Freddie and for him.

In Newark, justice had a face and a name—it was Abraham Lincoln. A bronze statue of the former president was mounted outside the county courthouse, seated on a bench in an informal pose, like an innocent man awaiting an innocent verdict. Few who would pass him on their way up the cascade of limestone steps and through the chamfered columns into court wore expressions as placid or confident as Lincoln’s, including Emmett.

The pomp of the post and lintel stonework on the courthouse facade faded as soon as he stepped inside. The building’s interior had the ambiance of a run-down music hall. Mold had enveloped the hand-painted wall murals, and grime blotted the color from the trio of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass ceiling domes, the consequence of years of delayed and shoddy repairs as well as neglect. Plasterwork rotted by rain damage blistered the walls while naked cords for electrical wiring snaked along carved moldings and over swooping archways, nesting in the decorative filigree. The sixty-year-old courthouse, which served as the model for the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, had resoundingly lost its trial against the ages.

Misdemeanors and disorderly conduct cases, such as Freddie’s trumped-up charge for loitering, fell under Part I of the municipal court
system, and those hearings were held on the second floor. Court was in session when Emmett arrived. A handful of family members were in attendance. Otherwise, the benches were empty. Freddie and a string of defendants were biding time on the front row until it was their turn. Freddie was a head shorter than the rest, all of whom were black but two. There were no lawyers, only the magistrate and the court clerk, and they were whipping through the proceedings at a breakneck speed, clocking five minutes per case. In assembly-line fashion, one man after another rose to listen to the clerk read the charges against him.

Emmett slid in behind Freddie and put a hand on his shoulder. The kid flinched.

“Oh, it’s you.” He tried not to act too relieved. “What now?” he whispered. “I already told this guy I wasn’t guilty.”

“If you’d said you were, you might be free.”

“Huh?”

“When you plead ‘not guilty’ they remand you to jail until your case comes up again. A plea of ‘guilty’ can get your case disposed on the spot.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“You weren’t. That’s what Ionello and Vass were counting on.”

“I shoulda stuck to lyin’. I’m better at it.”

The clerk called the name of the guy sitting beside Freddie, who stood to hear his charges. He wore a red T-shirt with a picture of a Coca-Cola bottle on it and was visibly battling a hangover. He had been arrested for urinating by a tree in Military Park.

“Do you have counsel present?” the magistrate asked. Framed by a hefty desk and pitted wood paneling as dark as his robes, the judge looked pale and diminutive and indifferent.

“Do I what?”

The magistrate may as well have been speaking a foreign language.

“Do you have an attorney, a lawyer?”

“No.” The guy’s response fell somewhere between a statement and an apology.

“If you wish to proceed without counsel you must sign a formal
waiver indicating that you, the defendant, have been informed of your right to counsel and that you, the defendant, have declined.”

The clerk thrust the papers at the guy in the T-shirt before he had a chance to make sense of what the magistrate had spouted at him. The guy signed the documents without reading them.

“Freddie, when the judge asks if you have an attorney, say yes.”

“But I don’t. Unless you is one of them too on top ’a being a cop.”

“You won’t really need a lawyer. We’re just getting your bail back on the table. If the judge asks you anything else, say that your attorney was called into another trial and that he advised you of your right to remain silent. Tell the judge you are exercising that right. And don’t forget to call him ‘sir.’”

“He’s gonna believe all that?”

“You said you were good at lying.”

Three minutes had ticked by and the clerk was wrapping up the hearing. In a monotone, he pronounced, “The defendant is released on his own recognizance and scheduled to appear for trial on the date set forthwith.”

The guy in the T-shirt simply stood there, not knowing what to do, as if he had accidentally bid at an auction.

“You’re free to go,” the clerk explained. Pleasantly surprised, the guy hot-footed it out of the courtroom, afraid the judge would change his mind.

“How’d that guy get outta here?” Freddie demanded. “I coulda got drunk off his breath and he’s free to go. He didn’t even say nothin’.”

“People released without bail have a higher rate of showing up for their trials.”

“Take my word for it, that guy won’t.”

“Maybe not, but he definitely wouldn’t if he had to pay bail through a bondsman. The bond fee is nonrefundable regardless of whether the guy goes to court, so there’s no incentive.”

“Incentive?” Freddie was unfamiliar with the term.

“It’s like motivation or encouragement, something to force the guy to come back.”

“What’s my incentive gonna be?”

Before Emmett could reply, the clerk was announcing the next name: “Fredrick R. Guthrie.”

“Stand up,” Emmett whispered.

Freddie rose and straighted his ripped shirt.

“Do you have counsel present?” the magistrate asked, repeating the query without a glance at the individual case file in front of him.

“Not yet, sir. My lawyer, he, um, had to go to this other trial.”

The magistrate peered over the top rim of his glasses. “So you have counsel?” This was clearly the first occasion he had heard that all day.

“Yes, sir. And he told me that I shouldn’t talk until he gets here.”

“When will that be?”

“Could be awhile. This other client ’a his, he ran somebody over with a truck. Sir.”

Freddie glanced at Emmett to see if his improvisation had done any irrevocable damage. Emmett rolled his eyes.

“Bail stands. You can pay it or return to jail until you and your otherwise occupied attorney can get your acts together.”

Emmett motioned for him to take the bail, but Freddie mouthed that he didn’t have the money.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Guthrie?” Freddie’s hesitation was decelerating the magistrate’s turnover time, and he didn’t appreciate that.

“He’ll pay the bail, Your Honor,” Emmett said, jumping to his feet.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, sir, however unless you’re his attorney, the defendant has to tell me that himself. Well, Mr. Guthrie?”

“Yeah, I’ll pay it,” Freddie said unhappily.

“Then consider yourself free to leave.”

The clerk gave him the documents with his new court date, and Freddie brought them to Emmett. “What do I do with these?”

“Mark that date on your calendar. That’s when you have to come back. Maybe your attorney will be finished with that hit-and-run case by then.”

“Very funny.”

They were exiting the courtroom as the clerk called the next defendant, the wheels of justice rolling onward without a speed limit.

“Now we’ve got to find a bondsman to pay your bail.”

Freddie stopped in the center of the second-floor rotunda, his sneakers squeaking on the stone floor. “I told you I didn’t have the money. And I gotta feeling whoever this bond man is, he ain’t gonna wanna play Santa.”

“What you told me was that Luther Reed gave you a hundred bucks for every car you brought him. So where’s this big bankroll of yours?”

“It’s gone,” Freddie exploded. “It’s all gone. Luther made me pay him for snitching to the cops about it being my idea. Said I owed him for getting us both in trouble.” The kid sunk into himself, hating to admit what had happened. “Guess that means I did this for nothing, huh? You gonna send me back to Newark Street, right?”

Emmett wasn’t about to let his sole lead return to jail. “No, Freddie. Fifty-fifty, remember?”

“But I told you I’m broke. Fifty percent ’a nothin’ is still nothin’.”

“Ten percent of your bond should only be a few bucks. You can pay me back.”

“You take spark plugs or distributor caps? ’Cause I ain’t got no cash.”

“We’ll worry about that later.”

Emmett had far bigger worries, not the least of which was what would happen once Ionello and Vass tracked Freddie down. In lockup or out on bail, Freddie was a walking bull’s eye.

A block from the courthouse on Market Street, they found a bail bonds company located above a pet shop. The sign said fast cash for bonds. The minute Emmett laid eyes on the guy behind the desk he said a prayer that the sign was right, that this would go fast, because he could tell that the bondsman was a former cop.

“Don’t you hold me to that, you bastard,” the bondsman joked loudly into the telephone, then he cupped his hand over the receiver. “Be with you in a jiff.”

His meaty forearms, auburn hair, and ruddy drinker’s complexion weren’t what had given him away as an ex-cop. It was the slapjack on the edge of his desk. Preferred by some to a nightstick, the seven-inch piece of pipe bound in thick leather was a tiny yet formidable weapon, and anybody who got hit with one wouldn’t soon forget it.

Most policemen earned extra money moonlighting. The plumbers’ and electricians’ unions were full of officers, spanning every rank. A paltry pension kept many in their second trades past retirement. Private investigations and bail bonds—jobs that required similar skills as police work and familiarity with the criminal element—were also favored professions of men who had left the force. Emmett was angry at himself for not having foreseen this.

“That guy’s a cop,” Freddie said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Was.”

“Close enough. I told you. I can smell ’em.”

The office was a converted studio apartment with a miniature fridge and a sink. Glossy posters of tropical islands were tacked to the walls, likely ferreted out of a travel agency’s trash bin. Emmett wished he had made Freddie wait downstairs. He hadn’t been willing to let him out of his sight. Now it was too late.

“This’ll go more smoothly if you’re not here. That way he can’t ask you anything. When the guy gets off the phone, I’ll say something about going to the pet store. Pretend you’re excited.”

“Puppies and kittens. Yay,” Freddie deadpanned.

“Oh, and if you run off on me, I’ll call Ionello and Vass myself.”

“Wouldn’t we both be in hot water then?” Freddie was raising Emmett’s call.

“Who do you think they’d come after first?”

The kid gave him a sarcastic salute, assenting to play along.

“Sorry,” the bondsman said as he hung up the telephone. “Was an old friend.”

Another cop, Emmett thought. He had to make this quick. He put his hand on Freddie’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go and look at the dogs in the window while I take care of this,” he suggested.

“Goodie,” Freddie replied, a little too enthusiastically.

After Emmett heard him go down the steps and out the door, he said, “I’m watching my cousin’s boy. The rest of the family won’t talk to her anymore. You can see why.”

That goosed a grin out of the bondsman. “Naw, he’s got your eyes.”

“I need to spring a buddy of mine and your sign says you’re fast.”

“Fastest there is.”

Emmett passed him Freddie’s paperwork. The guy whistled with dismay. “Awful generous of you. Bail’s a thousand. Makes the fee one Franklin. That’s steep.”

The number caught Emmett between the eyes. The charge was loitering, and Emmett had assumed the bail would be set at the low end of the range, a hundred tops. This was ten times the average, another sign that the detectives from the Auto Squad weren’t messing around. Emmett would be lucky if he had that much cash on him.

“Must be some friend.”

Emmett counted out the last of his money and handed it over. “Yeah, we go way back.”

“He skips, it’s on you, ya know.”

“He won’t skip. You’ve got my word on that.”

“No offense, pal, but your word ain’t worth a dime. Nobody’s is. If every man, woman, and child was an honest, upstanding citizen, I’d be out of a job. As you can see, I ain’t.”

When Emmett exited the bond office, Freddie was crouched in the stairwell, listening distance from the door. He had feigned going to the pet shop, footsteps and all, and was eavesdropping on everything that was said. Emmett opened his mouth, about to give the kid an earful, but Freddie hushed him, signaling that they should take the stairs in sync so it would sound as if one person was walking out, not two.

“If I’d ’a known you had a hundred bucks on you, man, I’d ’a copped your wallet myself,” Freddie said once they were outside.

“That’s reassuring.” For every step Emmett took, Freddie jogged three to match his stride.

“What? You don’t believe I can do it. I’m a legend when it comes to wallets. Watch this.”

Freddie bumped Emmett’s hip hard, distracting him. In a flash, he had Emmett’s wallet. Emmett hadn’t even felt Freddie’s fingers slip into his pocket.

Emmett held out his palm. Freddie gave him the wallet. “Come on. My car’s at the courthouse.”

“You bought it, didn’t you? That I left.”

“When you’re good you’re good,” he answered blandly.

“I’m not good. I’m great.”

“If you’re so great, why didn’t you Houdini yourself out of jail.”

“I did,” he said, strutting, pleased with himself. “And you was my talented assistant.” He waved his hand with a magician’s flourish.

Emmett halted midstride and spun Freddie by the arm. “You think you played me? Is that it? Well, the only person you’re playing is yourself. Let me tell you what I know about Fredrick R. Guthrie. That water pistol they took off you at Newark Street, you push into the ribs of little old ladies when you stick them up for their purses. It’s an old trick. You’re no big shot gangster. You’re a pickpocket. That’s the bottom of the totem pole. I’ve arrested punks just like you, and you know what happens to them at the end of the story? They wind up in Bordentown Reformatory or Yardville or Trenton State. You might be smart, but you’re too dumb to see where you’re going.”

Humiliation made Freddie seem smaller than he was.

“As of today, you owe me one hundred dollars. That might be chump change to a master criminal such as yourself. It’s a week’s pay to me. So unless you can pull that money out of a hat, you don’t leave my side until I get paid or you go back to jail.”