Rule of Capture

by Christopher Brown

  “Can I have my pants back?”

  “No, asshole. We’re going to torture you.”

  “Just promise you won’t give me the Mary Lou.”

  “The what?”

  “The Mary Lou. Guess you never read the memos.”

  “I told you we should plug this shyster’s piehole,” said Moody. He looked weirdly like a young Richard Nixon. The charcoal suit he was wearing only added to the effect, except for the cowboy boots. In Xelina’s video he wore snake boots.

  “They weren’t actually memos,” said Donny. “Maybe technically. But more like a manual. A glossary of ways for the government to subject captives to fear and pain without breaking the law. But maybe you guys aren’t too worried about that. Because you don’t seem like the government types.”

  “You don’t have to work for the government to want to help your country,” said Moody.

  “You guys take care of the things the memos won’t let the government agents do. With no fingerprints.”

  “Yeah,” said Moody, flashing a blade. “We’re going to show you what no fingerprints looks like.”

  “We should pull one of his teeth,” said Charlie.

  “Jesus!” said Donny.

  “Why stop at one,” said Moody.

  “What do you guys want?” said Donny.

  “The first thing we want is for you to stop talking,” said Moody.

  “Where am I?” said Donny.

  “Don’t you recognize it?” said Charlie.

  Donny looked around the room. He closed his eyes and opened them again, trying to see into the shadows. That’s when he saw the face of Tiger Woods, framed on the wall to the side. Then he noticed the map of the course, and the soft glow of the dormant TV screen. And the nine iron in Charlie’s hand.

  “What the fuck?” said Donny. They were in the men’s grill at the Cypress Bayou.

  “It’s perfect, right?” said Charlie.

  It was definitely private.

  “He’s not a member,” said Moody. He was plugging a cord into the wall.

  “Tonight’s the initiation,” said Charlie.

  “I didn’t know country clubs had hazing rituals,” said Donny.

  “This one does,” said Charlie. “Have a drink.”

  He pulled Donny’s head back by the hair, still holding the gun with the same hand, then poured brown liquor into his gullet until he was choking.

  “I don’t know if he’s gonna pass,” said Moody.

  Donny spit out what he could, and felt the rush from what he couldn’t.

  He looked at his laughing captors. “We know you idiots killed Gregorio.”

  “Dude, you really need to learn to keep your trap shut,” said Charlie. “And stop poking your nose around in other people’s business.”

  “The future is not your private property, you little trust fund commandos.”

  Charlie swung the golf club in the air, like he was warming up to hit a long one. “You could have fooled me,” he said. “Why don’t you ask Gregorio how that kind of thinking worked out for him?”

  “Where’s the body?” said Donny.

  “You know that water hazard on the seventeenth hole?” said Moody.

  Donny knew it. He had put a few balls into that deep black pond.

  “Shut up,” said Charlie.

  Charlie looked pretty loco. But Moody was the one holding the cord. The one that was bare wire at the business end.

  “This fraternity sucks,” said Donny.

  Charlie laughed at that.

  “We’re just getting started,” said Moody. “Hold him down, Charlie.”

  “Fuck that,” said Charlie. “I don’t want to touch this weasel.” He teed up his club against the side of Donny’s head. “We should just bash his skull, and retire him out there with the Councilman.”

  Donny tried to move his head away, but Charlie just pushed the club harder, right on his ear.

  “Ease off, will you?” said Donny. “I’m one of your dad’s oldest friends, for fuck’s sake.”

  “You’re nobody’s friend,” said Charlie. “Not anymore. You’re on the list now.”

  “What list is that?”

  “The list of problems that need special solutions. The kind we take care of. Like you were saying.”

  “You guys set up the Refugio Five, too, didn’t you?” said Donny. “Set up Jerome.”

  “Not our idea, but we helped out those friends of Dad’s from Washington,” said Charlie.

  Donny tried to press at his bindings, but they had him tight. He twisted his neck, and found the golfer staring back at him again.

  “How old do you think that picture is?” he asked.

  “Huh?” said Moody.

  “Tiger,” said Donny, nodding at the photo. “That photo’s been there for eons. And look at him, he looks like a kid. Before the anger started coming out.”

  They both looked. That’s when Donny noticed what was lying on the chair by the wall.

  “See that jacket?” he said. “If you reach into the right side pocket, there are some nice treats. If you want to really party.”

  They looked at him, curious.

  “You know Ward Walker, right?”

  “Sure,” said Moody. “Best hookup inside the Loop. Good shit.”

  “This is his extra-good shit.”

  “White-Out?” said Moody.

  Donny nodded. “New mix. ‘Light Show.’ You gotta try it.”

  Charlie was already in his pockets, fishing around. He pulled out the tin, shook it, and raised his eyebrows. He knew.

  “Open it,” said Donny. “And if you’re determined to fuck me up, at least let me get fucked up first. One last time. Because you guys and me are a lot more alike than we think, and I’ve had to stay clean all week for work.”

  Charlie opened it, sniffed it, touched it with one finger. He showed it to Moody.

  “Imagine how much more fun this will be if we light it up,” said Donny.

  Charlie smiled, and Moody nodded.

  “You first,” said Charlie.

  “Happily,” said Donny. “Just give me one hand free, okay? I need to pinch it just right. Ward showed me how.”

  Moody nodded again, and cut the tape along Donny’s right wrist. Then Charlie held out the open tin. Donny deftly broke the ball with a practiced hand into three equal doses. Then he took one and ate it.

  Charlie and Moody followed.

  Tiger Woods lit up like a Bodhisattva, and pretty soon, he was there in the room with them, playing Texas Hold ’Em with Aaron Burr and Quanah Parker.

  Giving a military-grade performance enhancer to his aggressive young captors turned out to be not as great an idea as Donny thought it would be.

  They did let him go. More accurately, they gave him a running start. They also let him take the golf club, for good sport.

  He did not know he could be that fast, but the abuse he had heaped on his body caught up with him as he huddled in the trees, panting, watching the golf cart come closer. They had let him put his pants back on, but not his shoes.

  “I hear you, asshole!” yelled Charlie.

  Donny decided to run, before they also saw him. But they had a big flashlight, and they shined it on him just as he started moving.

  He stumbled as he punctured his foot on a sharp stick in the turf, and looked back. Charlie was out of the cart now, coming after him, a blade in hand.

  Moody kept the light on, until Donny was able to lose the beam back in the trees. It was when he stepped on the pinecones that he got a better idea.

  But when Charlie got close to where he was, he wondered if he had made himself a sitting duck by climbing the tree.

  He heard Moody call for Charlie from the distance. When Charlie replied, he realized Charlie was right there under him.

  When he decided to jump, he was no longer thinking, and he didn’t even realize he was swinging until he had stopped.

  He looked down at Charlie’s body, motionless but making the we
ird sounds of labored respiration, like an animal that’s been hit by a car.

  He looked up, saw the flashlight a ways away, and heard the sound of the electric motor rolling. He ran in the opposite direction, out of the trees and onto the wide-open fairway, feeling almost in flight.

  When he finally stopped to catch his breath at the edge of a green, the bloody nine iron still in his hand, he realized it was the seventeenth hole. He could see the water hazard there. He got up, thinking he could use the club to find the body.

  Then he heard the sound of an engine. Not the golf cart. More like a truck.

  He saw the fence, maybe a hundred yards away. He dropped the club and ran for it. Gregorio would have to wait.

  He was almost there when Moody came roaring down in the cart, hooting and then firing a pistol at Donny with his free hand.

  Donny dove for the ground, feeling the lawn chemicals up in his nose as he ate it.

  He heard another shot, and then the sound of the cart hitting the chain link.

  He looked. Moody was on the ground.

  Joyce stood there in the moonlight, her gun still trained on Moody. Her car was there behind her a little farther, idling.

  65

  In the morning, Broyles himself called before sunup. Donny only picked it up because he recognized the number.

  “I need you to come down here, Donny. My chambers. As soon as you can.”

  “The chopper doesn’t leave until eight.”

  “No, come to the courthouse. No trial today. Something has come up. That’s what we need to discuss.”

  Donny wanted to ask for more of an explanation, but could tell he wasn’t going to get one over the phone.

  “Okay, Judge.”

  He took the extra keys next to Joyce, but this time left a note.

  Just in case.

  When he got there forty minutes later, it was still dark out. No traffic, no protesters, no Cleburne—just a night shift of two younger marshals manning the entry checkpoint.

  The judge’s chambers were behind the courtroom, and that was how Donny entered, even though there was a more normal entrance from the hallway around the side and past the secretary’s office. The courtroom was empty, and dark, and stepping back into that secret space behind the bench felt like walking into some mountain cave. But the big wooden door embossed with the seal opened without compelling a password.

  The chambers were a suite of rooms along a small hallway, with the judge’s library, the clerk’s office, and a small conference room where Broyles would sometimes summon counsel to bang their heads together in an effort to work out a deal. The library had breached its bounds and spread out into the hall, which was also lined with shelves. The spaces on the wall that weren’t crammed with law books were covered with pictures and art—photos of Broyles from throughout his career, consorting with pols, golfing with Supreme Court Justices, presiding over prosecutorial press conferences, a few photos of the young JAG officer in full dress, and one big painting of a cowboy defending himself with a rifle from behind the corpse of his horse as the Indians surround him. Right outside his office was the photo of Broyles shaking hands with the President, when he was just a candidate, a candidate that even people like Donny had thought perhaps could unite the broken country and restore the American future that had been shredded in the wars.

  The door was open, and Broyles was alone, hunched over his desk with tie loose and jacket off, reading a document with a sharp red pencil in hand.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said. Then he looked up, and you could tell he meant it. “You look like shit.”

  “I just got the crap beat out of me last night.” He thought about it. “Twice.”

  “Good. Sit down.”

  Donny grabbed one of the two armless chairs Broyles had there in front of his old wooden desk, a desk that had belonged to one of his predecessors in the old courthouse. Broyles kept a tidy office, with rarely a paper out of place and no more books than needed for the task at hand, but it looked a little unkempt that morning, like old Harry was having some trouble keeping it all together. He had four casebooks open in front of him and a stack of old-school phone messages scrawled on red paper. The judge’s precious Oxford English Dictionary was there on its stand, also open, and Donny wanted to go look through the magnifying glass and see what word it was Broyles had last looked up, but the image of old Justice Korb staring down from its frame on the wall above made him think it better to sit and listen. Even though Korb was smiling in the picture, enough to make his weird beard fan out like the facetail of some exotic mammal.

  “What the hell is this?” said Broyles, tossing the document he’d been reading across the desk at Donny.

  Donny ducked the interoffice projectile, and picked it up after it fluttered to the floor. He knew what it was before he saw the U.N. file stamp. He had written every word, except for the annotations Broyles had scrawled in the margins, which Donny saw as he laid the pages back in their stapled order.

  “Zealous advocacy,” said Donny, setting the document down on the edge of the desk. “A forum-shopping flanking maneuver. Just like you taught me.”

  “I never taught you to go running to courts run by foreigners.”

  “You told me to give my clients the best defense I could. Looks like it worked.”

  “You better hope that doesn’t work,” said Broyles, pointing at the document. “You could do more harm to this country than all your terrorist clients combined. Upend our entire system of property ownership, the roots on which our entire economy is built. To sort out what the consequences would be if you got the remedy you ask for there would take decades. Decades. People would lose their homes, their businesses. We would lose the past and the future.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “Not your problem! You are an officer of the court, Donny. An agent of the state.”

  “Doing what I am sworn to do, within the bounds of the rules. And sometimes that means testing the rules. Pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Even if he has soldiers and secret police and kangaroo courts.”

  “This isn’t testing the rules,” said Broyles, pointing at the brief. “This is trying to rewrite history.”

  “No it’s not,” said Donny. “It’s just checking the title. In this case, to a chunk of Texas that your paisanos in Austin want to sell. And like any title, if you go back far enough, you find it was stolen. Taken by force. If you build a legal system on a foundation of theft, you’re living on borrowed time. Cooking the books. I didn’t expect to get far with this, but I’m glad to see the very idea of an accounting—of real justice—has you rattled.”

  “Real justice comes from real order, Donny. An order founded on allocation of resources to those willing to make productive use of them. I guess you would rather have us all become nomads, like your free-roving clients. Shall we bring the buffalo back, track them along the abandoned highways?”

  “That would be kind of awesome, actually, but no. I just think there needs to be a fresh reckoning that starts with an honest assessment of what right underpins the system. Of who really ‘owns’ the land and everything in it. Because I do think my clients are correct when they say the system we have is no longer sustainable. We all share this place now—this state, this country, and this planet—and we need to figure out a way to take care of it together and keep it healthy instead of fighting over the last harvest of a fallow field.”

  “You want us to cry about Indians in the twenty-first century.”

  “You don’t have to cry. Just be honest. And follow your own rules.”

  Broyles looked at him. He was tired. And you could tell he knew Donny was right. Even as he knew the real right lay with the power.

  “Well, I’m not going to cry. But I may get fired.”

  “You have life tenure.”

  “Really, Donny? Do you still not get it? Nothing is guaranteed these days. The people you have angered can be very persuasive. And determined to get their way.�
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  “I think I know what they are capable of. They killed my client for something they did.”

  “We did. It was not an easy decision, Donny. And he was not an innocent.”

  “Let’s not go there.”

  “Okay. In any event, you’re going somewhere else.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They want you in Washington. To talk about this.” He pointed at the brief again. “And some of the other matters you have been rather recklessly sticking your nose into.”

  “Oh,” said Donny. He considered that for a long moment. He looked back at Broyles, and Broyles nodded in agreement at what he could tell Donny was thinking.

  “They are making me tell you, because it’s part of their way of letting me know they think I screwed up and let things get out of my control.”

  “That brief is out of your jurisdiction. And you can’t control what I do outside your courtroom.”

  “That’s not how they see things. You have been summoned. To the White House.”

  Those were scary words to hear.

  “Is this a one-way trip?” said Donny, all his cockiness of the moment drained out like a flaccid balloon, suddenly seeking succor from the mentor he had been lecturing moments before.

  “That’s probably up to you,” said Broyles. “They told me they would like to see you. Maybe they want to make a deal. You’ll need to decide how you want to play it.”

  Right before the conventions that summer, as the campaign started to overheat, the President had invited a television commentator who was one of his most colorful and relentless critics to the White House. The guy, Virgil Miller, was never seen again. The White House produced photos of him leaving, and said he had fled the country. Others said he had been killed by Secret Service agents and dumped in Chesapeake Bay.

  Donny didn’t want to end up like that guy. Or like Gregorio.

  “What if I don’t want to go?” he said.

  “That’s not an option,” said Broyles, looking at something behind Donny.

  Donny turned, and saw Cleburne there, looking down at him with gallows eyes. He hadn’t even heard him come in.