“Did you believe him?”
“It was supported by the evidence. No one the police questioned ever admitted to having bought drugs from Jude.”
“He was selling. He had to have been,” Anna insisted.
“Think about this,” Harry said. “When I arranged the setup, I forgot one important thing. Afterward I was sure someone would notice, point it out, but no one ever did.”
“What was that?”
“When the police searched Jude’s room, they found the drugs, but they didn’t ever find any money, did they? If he had really been selling, where was all the money?”
Jude couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that. In all the years in prison, all the years he’d spent thinking about chinks in the case against him, he’d thought only of evidence, not lack of it. He looked at Anna to see her reaction.
She paused, looking almost frightened. But then something occurred to her. “He hid it,” she declared with relief. “Of course he hid it.”
Watching her, Jude realized that his mother didn’t want to believe what Harry was saying. She wanted him to be guilty. He felt suddenly very tired. Not angry. Not surprised. Just tired.
Harry responded to Anna’s solution, “You mean he didn’t bother to hide the heroin, but he hid the money? And where do you think he hid it—you didn’t find it when you moved out, did you? Did he bury it in the backyard?”
“He used it. Spent it,” she suggested in desperation.
“Did you ever see anything he bought? Any evidence that he had spent thousands of dollars?”
“No, but …”
“You never found the money because it wasn’t there,” Harry said gently. “And it wasn’t there because I forgot to give it to him to put in his room when I gave him the drugs.”
“You gave him the drugs?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
“And the phone call?”
“It was my idea. I set it up.”
“So it wasn’t an accident that I went in right at that moment? That the answering machine picked up so I could hear everything?”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Harry confirmed. “In fact, if you think of it, it’s a pretty big coincidence. How often did you go home in the middle of the day? And then what are the chances that he got the call seconds before you walked in the door? Do you think it was coincidence that he was just slow enough in answering the phone that the machine picked up?”
Jude watched belief take hold and spread over his mother’s face.
Here it was. Finally. The moment he had been waiting for. The moment when she knew what he had really done. He found himself holding his breath as she turned to him. And what she said was, “How could you?”
“How could I?” Jude repeated stupidly. Of the several thousand different responses he had imagined, this was not one he had foreseen.
“Both of you,” Anna amended. “How could you make a decision like that without consulting me?”
While Jude was still speechless, Harry was ready with an answer. “It wasn’t your decision to make. It was Jude’s. Even if Jude had nothing to do with actual buying or selling, just his accompanying the boy was enough to ruin your political career—especially coupled with the fact that his involvement was hushed up by the police. It was his mess, so it was also his decision whether he wanted to clean it up. As it turned out, he did.”
“I did it for you,” Jude said.
“How could you think I’d want you to sacrifice five years of your life for my career?”
“Like Harry said, it was my mess. And I do believe in taking responsibility for my own actions.”
“Oh, Jude. I don’t know what to say.”
In his mind Jude said, Say you’re proud of me. Say you understand. Say thank you.
“Five years,” she continued. “Five wasted years.”
“Not wasted,” he said. “Don’t say they were wasted.”
“How could they be anything but wasted?”
He thought of all that he had learned in prison—and not just from books. He had learned about people. And about himself. He thought of River and Fats and Mack, and he couldn’t imagine a life in which he didn’t know them. But he couldn’t explain all of this to his mother, so he said, “You got elected. So it wasn’t a waste.”
“That’s right. It does seem I have you to thank for it,” she said.
Jude wondered why she didn’t sound thankful.
His silent question was answered by her next words, “And all these years I thought I’d earned it. It seems you earned it for me. Children aren’t supposed to sacrifice for their parents. It’s supposed to be the other way around. But then, you never really were a child, were you? Not in the normal sense.”
“I wanted to be,” he said.
“A normal child would never have done what you did. Five years …,” she repeated again.
“It wasn’t supposed to be five years,” Jude said.
“What did you think would happen?”
Jude looked at Harry.
Harry cleared his throat. “I told him that I would get the charges reversed after the election.”
“You what?” Anna said.
“I told him he wouldn’t have to serve more than a few months.”
“And you left him there? When you knew he hadn’t done it?”
It was the first moment of real satisfaction for Jude; Anna was looking at Harry with a dawning horror and revulsion. “How could you?”
“I can explain.”
“I can’t imagine how you can explain that.”
Suddenly Jude remembered. He had forgotten this part of the story. He hadn’t even considered that Harry might use this as an excuse.
“I left him in prison because I knew that even if he hadn’t done what he was convicted of, he had done something worse.”
“What could be worse?”
Harry paused for effect, then said quietly, “He killed his father.”
“How do you know that?” Anna demanded.
Harry looked at Jude. There was triumph in that look. “Because he told me.”
Anna looked at Jude.
“I didn’t,” Jude said.
“I swear on my life, Anna, he told me that he did it,” Harry vowed.
Anna looked back to Jude.
“I did say that,” Jude said, “but only because he told me that if I admitted I had something to do with it, he’d make sure I wasn’t questioned anymore. The man who killed my father threatened to kill me as well if I told anyone. Harry said he’d make it go away. So I told him I did it,”
“Did you say that to him, Harry? Did you tell him that you’d ‘make it go away’?”
“I admit, I pulled some strings so that no one looked into it too closely. I thought it would be best for everyone. Not only for you, but for Jude as well. I thought he should have a chance. Who knows what he went through with his father? I thought, given the opportunity, Jude might turn things around. But then it didn’t seem to get better. Do you remember? He was getting in fights and barely passing his classes, and I could see his attitude wasn’t improving, and then finally that boy dying … it’s true, Jude didn’t actually sell drugs, but he was the one who made it possible for that poor boy to get them. That, with what he admitted to me about his father—well, I didn’t feel too guilty about leaving him in prison. I know it wasn’t right under the law, but morally I felt it was justified.”
“But what if he’s telling the truth, and he wasn’t involved?” Anna said, getting more upset. “That’s why there needs to be a trial. To give someone the opportunity to defend himself.”
“He did it,” Harry insisted. “He confessed.”
“Haven’t you heard of false confessions?” Anna said.
“You believe him?”
She hesitated. There was a long silence, and both Harry and Jude waited for her answer. She finally said, “At this point I don’t know what to believe.”
“But you understand that I didn’t lea
ve him there without cause,” Harry said.
Anna frowned and twisted her hands together in her lap. Jude could almost see the battle going on in her head. This was something he hadn’t considered. She had been with Harry for two decades. Presumably she loved him. Now she had to face the fact not only that Jude had been framed, but that Harry was the one who did it. So Jude couldn’t exactly blame her for looking to excuse Harry, at least a little.
After a moment Anna said to Harry, “I understand that you felt you had cause, but that doesn’t make it right. And Jude”—Anna turned to him—“I don’t know what happened with your father.” He started to speak, but she stopped him with a hand. “It doesn’t matter. You served enough time as it is, so I don’t see any need to go digging all that up again. As for the trial—I can see you meant the best, but I wish you’d confided in me. I would never have asked you to do that. How could you think that an election would be more important to me than your future? If you’d told me the truth and given me a chance to defend you, I would have given up the race, and I would have been prouder of that than of winning an election.”
Jude listened to his mother’s speech. She hadn’t said thank you, and she hadn’t said that she was proud of him, but she had said how important he was to her—more important than even her job. That would have been enough to make him happy—if he believed her. It was easy now to say what she would have done six years ago. It was another thing to be faced with the situation and choose. He wished there were some way for him to know. And for once in his life one of Jude’s wishes would come true.
44
HARRY AND JUDE returned to the study. Davis was on his cell phone. He hung up quickly and said to Jude, “How did it go?”
“Well, she knows the truth now,” he said. Half an hour before, if someone had told him that he was naive, he would have laughed and said there was no way to spend five years in a state penitentiary and come out naive. But he saw now that was the only word for his simple belief that if only his mother knew the truth, she would suddenly turn around and tell Jude what a wonderful son he was and how she didn’t know what she would have done without him. Why hadn’t he seen that the situation was so much more complicated, and that in order to do that, she would have had to despise her husband and discount what she thought of as her greatest achievement?
As Jude took his seat, Harry crossed to the fax machine, extracted two sheets from the tray, and placed them in front of Jude and Davis.
Jude pulled the sheet toward him. “I need a pen.”
Harry rummaged in his desk and tossed a pen to Jude.
Jude reached up and caught it deftly in his fist. He bent over the paper and skimmed the lines. It seemed relatively straightforward, so he signed. His only thought was to get out of that house as fast as he could.
“Thank you,” Harry said, whisking away his copy.
Jude turned to Davis and handed him the pen. Davis took it but then put it down on the table. “I’m not signing it.”
Both Harry and Jude stared at him.
“We had an agreement,” Harry protested.
“Sign the paper,” Jude said to Davis. “Harry did what I asked him. And I gave my word.”
“But I didn’t give mine,” Davis pointed out.
“Is this something you two cooked up?” Harry said. “So you could get out of keeping your word?”
“If I’d really wanted to do that, Harry, I wouldn’t have bothered with this kind of thing,” Jude said through his teeth. “I don’t make those kinds of distinctions. I don’t believe in getting off on technicalities. Sign the paper, Davis.”
Davis shook his head. “I’m printing it, and not just the part about Harry and your father. I’m printing everything—about the drug bust and the trial and how your mother really got elected.”
“But you can’t print that story,” Jude said. “There’s no proof.”
“There wasn’t any before,” Davis corrected. “Now there is.”
“How is there suddenly proof now?” Jude said.
Davis reached out and turned over the lapel of the blazer that Jude was still wearing. Jude looked down. Then he shrugged out of the coat and looked closer. He found a small microphone pinned to the fabric.
“I invested in some electronics,” Davis said. “It feeds into a remote recording device. I got every word. I think that’s enough to stand up in court against a libel charge, don’t you?”
There was silence in the room for a moment, then Harry turned to Jude and said, “You’ve done it again. Next time why don’t you leave your poor mother alone?”
But Jude barely heard him. His mind was leaping forward, turning over different possibilities. “Speaking of my mother,” Jude said, “why don’t we get her in here and see what she thinks?”
“It doesn’t matter what she thinks,” Davis pointed out. “There’s nothing you can do.”
Jude looked at him. “Are you sure about that?” he asked.
ANNA SAT, STARING down at her clasped hands. Harry had just finished explaining the situation, and in the ensuing silence Jude could hear the rustle of leaves on the tree outside. A bird twittered. The day was fading, and the light in the office was turning gray with shadows.
It was just the three of them in the room. Davis had agreed to sit in the living room while they talked. Now Jude waited for what his mother would say.
She sat in silence for a minute, twisting her hands in her lap. Then she stood up abruptly.
“I want to talk to this reporter. I should be able to convince him. I could arrange it that he would be in a position to hear certain information before it was officially released. And between Harry and me, we know a lot of people who could help him in his career.”
Jude shrugged. “You can try,” he said. Maybe his mother could convince Davis with that kind of carrot.
“Harry, will you come and help me talk to this young man?”
Harry followed Anna out of the room, and Jude remained behind in the office, staring out the window.
He didn’t have long to wait.
Less than five minutes later Anna stormed back in the room. “He was completely unreasonable,” she said the moment she was inside the door. “He wouldn’t budge an inch. And he practically laughed at me when I told him how we could help him. He said he was helping himself.”
That sounded like Davis, Jude thought.
“How could you do this to me?” she said.
“Do this to you?” Jude repeated. “I didn’t do anything to you.”
“You brought a reporter into my house. You gave him the opportunity to tape a private conversation.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to antagonize Jude right now,” Harry said, laying a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Harry should have been the politician, Jude thought. He was the one who realized the position they were in.
“I’m sorry.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. It’s just that this afternoon—it’s too much. I don’t know what to do.”
“I can stop him,” Jude said suddenly.
She looked up. “You can? Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to,” Jude said. “About half an hour ago you said you wished you’d had a chance to sacrifice for me. You said you would gladly have given up your political career for me six years ago. What about now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if Davis publishes the real story, I get a chance to start over. My record will be clean.” He hurried to explain, “Of course, Davis would make it clear that you had no idea what was going on during my trial, and that you did what you thought was right at the time. You probably won’t be able to continue in politics, but you could go back to being a lawyer. You could probably get a job anywhere you wanted.”
Anna stared at him. “But … you don’t understand what you’re asking,” she protested. “The party just told me a few weeks ago that they’re looking at me for a congressional spot
. They might want me to run.”
“Oh?” Jude said.
“Yes. It’s an incredible honor. How would you feel to be able to say that your mother was a congress woman?”
“It wouldn’t matter to me.”
“Why are you being so difficult?”
“I don’t think I’m being difficult,” he said. “I want to give you a chance to do what you said you would have liked to do six years ago.”
“If your mother loses her position, it all would have been for nothing,” Harry said.
“That’s right.” Anna seized on it eagerly. “If I become congresswoman, it would be thanks to you. Don’t you want your sacrifice to really mean something?”
“Yes. But I want it to mean something else,” Jude replied.
“It does. It means a lot. But don’t punish me because of it. Don’t ask me to give up everything I’ve worked for. I’ll make sure that your conviction doesn’t keep you from anything. I’ll help you in any way I can.”
“As long as you don’t have to give anything up to do it,” Jude said.
“But this is my life now. This is what I had when everything else went wrong. This is how I was going to make a difference. I’m so sorry if I’m a disappointment to you, and I swear I’ll try to make it up to you, but please … please will you stop your friend from printing the story?”
Jude allowed himself a small, ironic smile. Then he said, “No.”
Anna’s sharp intake of breath showed her surprise. “So you won’t do it? You’d rather tear down everything I’ve got?”
“You’ve only got it because of me,” Jude pointed out. “But it’s not that I won’t stop him. It’s that I can’t stop him.”
“But I thought you said …”
Jude shook his head. “I lied. I just wanted to know if you meant what you said before.”
“Oh,” Anna said slowly. “I see. It was a test.”
“Sort of.”
“I see,” she said again. Then she turned away toward the window so Jude couldn’t see her face.
Jude Page 26
