Failed State

by Christopher Brown

  At least the Greyhound station was close to the courthouse. The station had no newsstand, but they did have doughnuts and coffee. The buses were mostly biodiesels, which meant they smelled like fast-food, but at least they had onboard network connections and room to work.

  Donny had taken the bus all the time when he was in college and law school. After his dad dumped his mom, their war meant Donny was on his own financially, and he decided to get by without having a car, especially since the only car he could afford was the kind guaranteed to die somewhere outside of Waco if you had the bad idea to actually head to another town. So the bus was how he would get to and from school, and on weekends he figured out how to make the run for the border on the Mexican buses, which were cheaper and cooler, the poor man’s idea of exotic travel. That was before the Mexicans closed the border to most American traffic.

  Donny always managed to end up on the night bus, especially when he was headed home. That night he left his grandmother’s the 10 p.m. bus was ninety minutes late. He tried to get some work done in the station, with coffee and a slightly stale cruller, but ended up giving free legal advice to the old lady sitting next to him, first about how she might clear her son’s record, then about her war with her neighbors over the fence line. He tried working again once the bus finally got going, but only managed to wake up at 3 a.m. with drool drying along the corner of his mouth.

  He watched the view from his window seat as they rolled into town. The Woodlands, once the most attractive suburban development, had been mostly abandoned as people moved back into town, though some folks who could afford it kept weekend places up there in the pines, tearing down the fat tract homes that the elements had already started to rot and replacing them with these little prefab eco-cabins. The area around the international airport had been heavily militarized, first by the feds during the long emergency, then by units of UN peacekeeping troops. The flag was still up over one of the camps by the freeway, but you could see most of the troops were already gone.

  Donny saw the sign for the big Walmart just north of 610, with the whole property fenced off behind chain link, the building a charred ruin that had been destroyed in the riots.

  When the bus finally exited at the edge of downtown, it stopped at the first light in three hours. And when Donny looked out into the predawn cityscape, he saw a couple of hungry-looking kids rummaging in a dumpster, just like those raccoons he’d seen. Behind them was a big lawn, something you never expected to see along the side of the feeder road in the shadow of the elevated expressways. And then he realized it was the funeral home where they had taken Miles.

  Miles just had the one brother left when he died, his older brother, Milton III, who opted for medicine instead of law. Beyond that, the closest thing he had to family were his workmates. That’s how Donny and Percy ended up going to the funeral home with Milton to see the body.

  Percy had become Miles’s only law partner by then, after she started out a decade earlier as Donny’s part-time legal assistant while she was still in law school at U of H, only to be poached by Miles and his then-partner, who had since retired. Donny was never formally affiliated with the firm. Miles said that was partly for cultural reasons, but mostly because of the quote his malpractice carrier had given him when they were talking about that possibility and Donny filled out his part of the questionnaire. So they ended up working as co-counsel on a lot of cases, and trading notes on others, as the courts went crazy and the country went crazier.

  Through all that craziness, Percy had worked hard to stay focused on what she said were the real people’s cases—traditional criminal work, instead of the political cases Donny gravitated toward. After a couple of years, she discovered personal-injury work. She was picky about those cases, too, determined to find the real wrongs. She succeeded, and one of those cases, a wrongful death action involving a black kid killed by private-security forces for trespassing on an empty lot next to their client’s polyethylene plant, delivered a big payday. One Percy got a third of, close to a million bucks. And turned around and gave most of it away, while even Miles sided with Donny in pleading her to hold on to more.

  She said that verdict made her see what Donny was always saying. That all the cases were political cases, if you looked at them right. And then she said there’s a lot more money where that came from.

  Donny said be careful who you piss off, and she just said I’m not as reckless as you, Donny.

  Miles took all the cases. At least all the ones that deserved him. He was so good at it, one of those lawyers in the mold of the ones who only seem to exist in fiction, the champion of the underdog who manages to make a nice living without ever breaching his own strict ethical code.

  As the bus sat there annoyingly long at the light, Donny remembered how depressing he had thought it was that his friend had to begin his journey to the place where lawyers don’t have to argue anymore with a stop along a Houston frontage road in the shadow of the elevated freeway. The lawn didn’t really help, and the fountain tended by angels carved from black stone just made it look like some cheap amusement-park imitation of the Isle of the Dead. When they walked up that morning, the fountain was off, but the pool was full, with what looked to be rainwater, and one big miserable-looking koi. Milton was already there when Donny and Percy arrived, and the owners of the place, friends of the family, greeted him and took them up to the room where Miles lay for visitation.

  “We didn’t have time to do much to prepare him,” said the funeral director, a middle-aged woman. “The wounds were pretty bad.”

  “It’s okay,” said Milton. “We’re not having an open casket.”

  Donny looked at Percy.

  The room was small, and quiet. You could hear the freeway traffic, but close enough to white noise that you didn’t mind. There was a reproduction of a painting on the wall, a still life with white flowers, some actual flowers in a vase, and four boxes of Kleenex around the room.

  Miles lay on a tall table against the near wall as you entered. Milton had insisted they leave him in the same suit he had been wearing when those motherfuckers shot him outside the courthouse, a classic Miles tropical-weight gray flannel with a light-blue button-down and a bright-green tie. He looked good in it, the way the color of the tie seemed reflected in his dark skin. There was some blood spatter you could see on the left shoulder of the suit, and they had leaned his face toward the wall so you would have to work to look at the wound on that side. Milton straightened his tie while he talked to him, and then let Donny and Percy come up close.

  Miles was such a fucking hero. Looking at his waxy face with the eyes you could tell had been closed by someone else’s hands, Donny tolled a list in his head of the times he had let his friend down, and the times Miles had delivered even when Donny didn’t deserve it. Donny managed not to cry until he grabbed Miles’s right arm, and it felt like a block of wood.

  “I wish we could light him up,” said Donny, looking at the way they had him laid out there on the table.

  Percy looked at him through her tears, like her anger at the unknown perpetrators had just been partially transferred to Donny.

  “That’s what they do,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to make sure we help get these yahoos moseyed along to whatever redneck Valhalla they think awaits them.”

  You could tell she meant it. That something had changed in her. In how she saw things, and how she felt.

  “I’ll help you,” said Donny.

  And he did. At first, at least.

  They divvied up Miles’s caseload, and shared a few of the cases. They tried to find who had killed Miles. They suspected it was tied to the AMR case, but evidence in support of that theory was hard to come by. The courthouse where the shooting happened was blanketed with electronic surveillance, and the incident was captured on two camera views, but neither showed the faces of the perpetrators. And their ability to get more evidence through discovery was cut off when the judge dismissed
the case six weeks after the killing.

  That only made Percy more motivated. She put together a new case against AMR on similar facts, harvesting from the detailed file Miles had assembled on the case. She filed other cases against friends of the administration, having figured out that the civil courts were not yet entirely suborned by the powers in Washington and Austin who had successfully rigged other parts of the mechanics of justice in favor of them and their allies. She figured out the best judges and courts to chase down those cases. But it didn’t move fast enough for her.

  “People are dying while we take depositions,” she said, the day she told Donny she was leaving the practice to run for office. He couldn’t argue. Even though he knew the reason she could make that move was that she had managed to settle one of those cases she had filed, and banked enough this time to live on for the next decade, even if she decided instead she wanted to blow it on political ads.

  She let Donny pick which of her cases he wanted. AMR was the easy one. If he could get it far enough along, not only could he expose what was going on in the farms but maybe also help bring down the regime, and make a nice payday in the process. He might even find who ordered the hit on Miles, and who carried it out, and make them all pay.

  The other thing about that case was, Miles had taken it on in the first place only because of Donny, when one of his oldest clients asked for help for her nephew. Maybe if he had taken it on himself at the beginning, instead of saying I only do criminal defense, Miles would never have ended up embalmed by the frontage road.

  The light changed, but his thoughts stayed on his old friend.

  18

  “It’s been a long time,” said Donny, greeting that old client and her partner at his Houston office later that morning.

  “That it has,” said Xelina.

  Clint was behind her, casually guarding her. You could see the war in their eyes.

  “Thanks for coming down here to meet,” said Donny.

  “Wouldn’t miss the chance to see you in your native habitat,” said Xelina, sizing up the conference room. She had a little bit of gray in her hair, coming in early, and her rebel style had mellowed. The clothes were more minimalist, black cotton and denim, and the jewelry that looked like it could hurt you had been replaced by pieces that looked like they could put a spell on you.

  “My native habitat is the courtroom, and you’ve already seen me there.”

  She nodded. You could see she still didn’t want to talk about what she went through back then, almost a decade ago. “Where did all this wood come from?” she said, putting her hand on the paneling like it was the fossil of some extinct pterosaur. “Look at that grain.”

  “I don’t know,” said Donny. “No doubt Miles had the full provenance, but he never told me.”

  “I’m still sorry about what happened to him,” said Xelina.

  “Thanks,” said Donny, looking at the ghosts in the room. “I suppose taking over his lease wasn’t the best way to cope with his loss.” Donny didn’t mention that he had missed the last two payments on that lease.

  “It was the right way to honor his memory,” said Xelina. “To carry on his work.”

  Donny nodded.

  “He was a good dude,” said Clint, looking out the window. “Sucks that they never could figure out who killed him.”

  “We haven’t given up yet,” said Donny. That was true, except there wasn’t much of a “we” anymore.

  “At least you finally got justice for this guy,” said Xelina, looking at one of the photos on the wall.

  It was a picture of Donny standing with Sig, one of his most famous clients from the uprising. Slider had started out in one of Sig’s gangs in New Orleans. Sig went on to build a bigger gang that led a series of cross-country raids and even helped liberate the White House, only to be jailed as a scapegoat for having the balls to rob the Federal Reserve and keep the money instead of giving it to the cause. Killing politicians was one thing. Taking the banks’ money was a whole different deal.

  “Yeah,” said Donny. “That was actually easier than you would think. Mainly because his sister called in some favors, along with some powerful backers. I just came up with the idea to offer up his leaving the country in exchange for an early release.”

  “Such bullshit,” said Xelina. “It’s not what we fought for.”

  “I know,” said Donny. “But I think he was actually kind of happy about it. He’s a freeborn man. More of a Rover than any of you ever were, like literally born to roam. He told me he was happy to see the world across the ocean. I even paid for his upgrade to a nicer berth on the ship.”

  “He’s lucky they didn’t put him with the live animal cargo,” said Clint. “I miss him. Is it true he’s in Russia?”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Donny. “Hanging out somewhere in Siberia, with actual nomads. But that’s mostly word of mouth. Sig’s not the kind of guy who sends a lot of postcards.”

  They sat.

  Donny had his working file on Slider’s case on the table in front of him, which was as thick as a couple of dictionaries stacked on top of each other. He put his hand on it.

  “I don’t need to tell you I have a lot invested in this case. Enough to be very close to getting the outcome we all want.”

  “You’ve told us that before, Donny,” said Xelina.

  “It’s closer this time,” said Donny. “For real. Trial is set for next month. I have finally found real evidence of AMR’s complicity in the killings at the resettlement farms. At least the Killeen camp. Including Juana and Gil. This could bring the company down. We’ll get to dissolve it, liquidate the assets, and pay them out to the families of all those who died or were injured behind the wire. Or that was the plan, until Monday, when the defense lawyers sprang their trap on me: Slider is dead. Killed during an op.”

  Clint sipped his coffee, watching Xelina. She had her soldier face on, but you could see the sad welling up.

  “I can’t imagine how hard this must be,” said Donny. “He’s y’all’s nephew. You’re the closest thing he has to parents, and he’s the closest thing you have to a child. It’s too late to save him, but maybe not too late to keep his case alive. And to do that I need to figure out what really went down.”

  Clint took Xelina’s hand and held it. He looked even more emotional about the subject than her.

  Donny looked at their hands.

  Both had the scars of fighters who had been members of the resistance and been detained by the old regime. Her scars were finer than his, but older, and maybe deeper.

  “Who did he piss off?” said Donny. “I know it’s hard to talk about. But if I can put the real story together, I just might be able to convince the judge to give me a break. Or, failing that, get justice from whoever took him out.”

  “Daryl was an angry kid,” said Clint. “He pissed off a lot of people.”

  “I know,” said Donny. “I helped him get away with the things he did in the struggle.”

  “Can’t I substitute for him in your case?” said Xelina. “Juana was my sister.”

  “Not in the eyes of the law, Xelina,” said Donny. “You may have shared a house as kids, but there are no ties of blood or marriage. Nothing that will support you standing in as the injured party.”

  “Fuck the law and its bullshit ideas of what makes a family,” said Clint.

  “I agree. And we may have a chance to change that yet. But not in time to save my case. I need answers.”

  “You should leave it alone, dude,” said Clint. “You need to come up with another angle.”

  “Did he piss off someone on the Council? He was always talking about how he had better ideas than them.”

  “Maybe,” said Clint. “We got out of there, and I’m not going back anytime soon. That’s some Reign of Terror shit they got going.”

  Donny looked at Xelina.

  “I don’t know what happened, Donny,” she said. “Like Clint said, we haven’t been back there in a while, and mo
st of our people there have left too. We’re tired of fighting. The only thing I do know that might help you is that some blue neckties have been sniffing around asking questions about Slider.”

  “A couple of them dropped in on me the other day,” said Donny. “Asking some pretty wild questions. I figured they were crazy. But now I want to know what he did.”

  “Then you know as much as we do,” said Clint.

  “Are you really going to New Orleans?” said Xelina.

  “Yeah. To try to save the rich girl they were arresting when Slider was killed.”

  They looked at each other. Clint raised an eyebrow.

  “I know what you think,” said Donny. “But her dad is an old friend.”

  “Be careful,” said Clint. “The war’s not as over as people like to think. And last time I checked, you’re on the payback list.”

  “I know. But I have to believe they’ll talk to me. There’s got to be a shot at a deal. And if I don’t go, I’m afraid things will be a lot worse for all of us.”

  “You may be right about that,” said Clint.

  “When are you going?” said Xelina.

  “In the morning. There’s a hearing scheduled for Friday, and I’m hoping we can work a deal and make it a short trip.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Xelina. “The people on the Council can’t even figure out what to have for lunch without two days of argument.”

  “I’m counting on the fact that they know me. And they need to work something out just as badly as my clients do.”

  “Sounds like the time you told us you had the case all figured out, and then Xelina ended up spending a week on that fucking prison boat,” said Clint.