Outlaws

by Tim Green

  "Yeah," Cody said, "I'm going to get something to eat right after I get some ice on this." "Good," the doctor nodded, all cares and concerns.

  "Hey, doc," Cody said as he hopped down off the table and opened the door to get his knee packed in ice.

  "Hmm?" said the older man, looking over his bifocals.

  "Would you take this stuff?" Cody gave the box a shake.

  The question obviously stunned the physician.

  "I--uh--I . . . you certainly don't have to. 1 suggested giving you some Motrin. If you don't want to use this, I don't think you should."

  "Nah," Cody said, having had his fun. "I don't care. I just wondered if you'd take it or not. Me? 1 don't really have a choice."

  Before the doctor could start stammering again, Cody left the room. He hoped he'd made Burlitz at least think about how liberally he used the word "we." A couple of rookies limped in with twisted ankles, and Cody realized he needed to get his ice quickly and get down some eggs and toast if he was going to fire up the Butte before practice. The way his knee felt right now, he could use it. Cody climbed up onto the first table in the row and asked Jerry, the head trainer, if he could have some ice for his knee.

  "You mean 'our knee?" Jerry quipped with a wry smile.

  Cody lay down on the table and watched without too much interest as the rest of his injured teammates began to file in and go through Burlitz's revolving door before coming out for some ice or some high-volt. It wasn't long before Biggs wandered in, yawning and scratching at his crotch.

  "Yo, roomy," Biggs said in his deep voice as he flopped down on the table next to Cody.

  Within two minutes Biggs was snoring. He'd let the trainers come to him and massage his leg. He was in no hurry to get well. He knew camp was just a grind. He would wait until it was just about over before he put himself back out on the field. It made Cody wonder why the hell he was doing all this to himself. Butazolidin. Why? He'd pound his way through camp and then hit the bench as soon as Biggs decided he was tired of early morning massages. The answer, of course, was that Cody Grey couldn't imagine a life where he wasn't an Outlaw. Unlike Biggs, he seemed to need the team more than they needed him. Cody didn't resent Biggs for it. Biggs was just smarter and younger than he was.

  Soon Cody's knee was numb from the ice pack. Once the pain was finally gone, he lay back comfortably on the table to listen to the radio. Jerry liked to play NPR in the morning, and Cody found himself listening to Bob Edwards talk to some expert about a group of Muslim extremists in the Middle East who claimed that it was their religious duty to destroy as much of the godless western world as they possibly could. Cody wondered why in hell Jerry bothered to listen. What, he asked himself, could that crazy stuff, halfway around the world, have to do with any of them? Didn't they have it hard enough just trying to get themselves through training camp?

  Madison was already having a bad day, so the last thing she needed was to have to go to jail. But jail was where she was headed. The boy, as Judge Connack so innocently referred to Yusef Williams, was being held at the county jail until his trial. With the change of counsel the trial wouldn't be for some time, but Madison figured from the kid's file that he was probably just as well off in the county slammer as he was anywhere else. Yusef had no family. He'd been in and out of foster homes since he was taken from his parents at the age of three, after being found with cigarette bums up and down his legs. No one was quite certain where his real parents were anymore or even if they were still alive. Madison doubted that Yusef cared.

  Besides the temperature climbing to over one hundred degrees with high humidity, which was enough in itself to make it a bad day, she had received bad news from Glen Westman. Joe and his attorney were refusing to give anything in preliminary negotiations. She had offered one Saturday a month visitation rights for Joe and one additional holiday day at her own discretion with a five-thousand-dollar lump sum to help him get on his feet. This was generous considering that the law had already determined he was due nothing. But Madison had hoped that by sweetening the pot with some cold cash, Joe would jump on the deal and be only a limited pain in her ass.

  On Joe's behalf, Gleason hadn't even balked. They were still demanding a lump payment of three hundred thousand dollars, half her yearly income, joint custody, every other weekend visitation rights, and one weekly sleep- over with a rotating split on the holidays. This was the maximum even a model husband could expect where the wife had somehow created some aggravated circumstances, like having sexual intercourse on the living room rug with her lover in front of the child.

  "I don't want Jo-Jo to be deposed," she had said.

  "1 think everyone knows that," Glen Westman responded.

  "I won't let that happen," Madison said fiimly.

  "That's what they're obviously banking on."

  "Can we get a ruling on this whole ball of fucking wax?" Madison said. "That bitch Judge Iris is way the hell out of line opening this back up."

  Glen raised an eyebrow. He'd never heard Madison talk like this.

  "Madison," he said calmly. "It's not that far out of line. It's becoming the rule rather than the exception. The pendulum is swinging the other way. It's very vogue to consider the father's rights these days."

  Glen didn't have to tell Madison what Joe's demand meant. It meant that Joe and Gleason were ready and willing to take the whole thing to trial. She didn't want that. She could grind him down at trial, everyone had to realize that. But it would be bad on Jo-Jo, everyone had to realize that as well. It was so obvious that Joe didn't care about his son. Only someone who didn't care would push this to the limit. It was such a contradiction. The less he really cared, the more he would get.

  It had gotten worse as her conversation with Glen went on. He told her that he had spoken with Judge Iris DuBose and that DuBose was asking that she consider some temporary visiting rights until things were worked out.

  "She told me to ask you to think about the best interests of Jo-Jo," Glen had hesitantly told her.

  "His best interests!" Madison had exploded. "Why, that dried up old bitch!"

  She was close to tears when she leaned across the rich mahogany conference table in the firm's offices and said, "Glen, this can't be happening to me, can it? 1 mean, I've done everything right. I've tried. He's done everything wrong. We had the law behind us from the start. How--how can she do this now? How can she start talking like this? Is she that blind? Joe Thurwood is a goddamned animal!"

  Glen became obviously uncomfortable. Although he was a divorce lawyer and used to spouses becoming distraught, irate, and even murderous, Madison was one of the heavyweights in the firm, and watching her come undone was a difficult thing. Madison recognized this immediately and excused herself. Marty was in a meeting, but he broke it and met her privately in his office. Madison cried and he held her. She had no one else she could turn to, and Marty was more than glad to be there. By lunch time, Madison had composed herself enough to work. It helped, but a dread had fallen over her like a pall.

  She pulled up to the guardhouse. It was the only break in the sixteen-foot- high fence topped with concertina wire. She showed her identification and they let her through. Once outside her car, the heat pressed against her like an iron. Breathing was difficult in the sweltering humidity. By the time she reached the visitors door, Madison was sweating hard. Inside wasn't much better. Madison knew there would be some Republican lawmakers who would be delighted to know that everyone in the county jail was receiving no quarter from the heat, especially the defense attorneys.

  She was shown to a cubicle where she sat down to wait for her client. She took a blank yellow legal pad from her briefcase and set it out in front of her with a fresh ballpoint pen. Prisoners came and went, up and down the row of cubicles that stretched across the room. Madison didn't have a hard time imagining the heinous crimes many of them had committed. They all seemed to look the part. One was an enormous fat man whose arms hung from his shoulders and spilled like dough out of
a grubby white tank top. Tattooc of swastikas and skulls went up and down his exposed flesh. His greasy hair ^ntJ beard were long and scraggly. Another man had a mouth full of rotten teeth and a demonic set of beady eyes that raped her the instant he caught sight or her. Then came Yusef.

  Madison knew now why Walter Connack had continually referred to him as "the boy." He was sixteen, she knew from his record, but he looked closer to fourteen. Because of the gravity of his crime, he would be tried and punished as an adult. His eyes brimmed with fear. His dark, nappy hair was closely cut, and his face was pitifully marred with what looked like a painful case of acne.

  Yusef sat down and looked at his folded hands.

  "Yusef," Madison said, "I'm Madison McCall, your new attorney. I'm here to try to help you."

  Yusef looked up at her words. She had spoken them as though she was a den mother and he nothing more than a scout late for a meeting.

  "Can't help me," he said, looking back down. His face scrunched up, and he began to cry. He drove his fists angrily into the comers of his eyes, as if to grind the tears into oblivion.

  'Tell me what happened," Madison said without reacting to his unnerved state in any way. She was certain that although he was kept in a special juvenile section of the jail that he had already fully considered and been generously filled in on the joys of dying by lethal injection in the state of Texas. That was what prisoners did for sport, tormented each other.

  While Yusef gained control of himself, Madison thought of herself that same morning, dealing with something that she couldn't avoid, something that had already happened and was bearing down on her like the stifling heat outside. It helped her to empathize with the boy, and it prompted her to listen closely, as a good lawyer should.

  Yusef recounted the story for her, the way he remembered it, the way he had recounted it several times already. The story about the man dressed in black who followed them into the abandoned garage and forced him to shoot his friends. He was tired of hearing himself say it. No one had believed him from the start. When he finished, Madison sat back and leafed through her notes in silence for a few moments. Then she leaned forward.

  'Tell me everything again," she said.

  Yusef's face sagged. What little hope she'd pumped into him with her flashy presence and kind demeanor was gone.

  '"Cause you think I'm lyin'," he said as a statement of fact rather than a query.

  "No," she said, "because I'm a good lawyer and I want to be thorough. Sometimes there are things that even you don't know you remember. They come out sometimes at strange moments. My job isn't to judge whether you're telling me the truth. You're my client. I assume everything you tell me is tnie, no matter how strange or bizarre it sounds. That's my job, and I'm damn good at it. Didn't your other lawyer tell you this?"

  "No," he said quietly in a shameful whisper.

  'Tell me what happened again, please," Madison said patiently.

  She would do this twice more, forcing the boy to recount the story four times in succession. Details in a client's story would always emerge that either highlighted the glaring lies or suggested important clues that hadn't been thoroughly examined. It was a technique that many defense lawyers didn't bother with. It took a lot of time and clients sometimes saw it as a hostility rather than an aid to their defense.

  Madison went back through her notes. Half the tablet was filled now. She went all the way to the beginning and then back again, stopping to clarify inconsistencies and highlight questions that needed to be answered that might help in Yusef's defense. There were two things that bothered her most.

  "Here's something," she said, looking up from the pad. "It's a small thing, but the last time you said that before your friend Ramon stood up, the man in black 'capped' him. Why did you say that? The man didn't kill Ramon then? You told me that Ramon was killed with his own gun, and that you shot him."

  Yusef stared at her mutely.

  "Well," Madison said patiently, "did the man shoot Ramon or shoot at him?"

  Yusef seemed to think a minute.

  "I guess he shot him," he said.

  "Why do you guess that?" Madison asked.

  '"Cause ..." Yusef looked up at her, '"cause I think Ramon's ear was bleedin'. He grabbed at it, and I think I remember blood."

  "Why didn't you tell someone this before?" Madison inquired, trying to hide her impatience.

  Yusef shrugged and said, '"Cause no one asked?"

  Madison nodded and said, "Are you sure about this, Yusef? It's very important. Think hard. Was Ramon's ear bleeding? Was he shot?"

  Yusef did think. He scrunched up his face and worked at it before nodding affirmatively.

  "Uh-huh," he said. "That man capped him. Now I remember thinkin' thr. T I was thinkin' then that Ramon was gonna kill that dude sure as shit stinks, if he got a shot at him."

  Madison wrote down Capped and underlined it three times.

  "There's one other thing that I want to ask you about," Madison said. "Two times you told me, when I asked you what the man screamed at you, that he screamed, 'Do it. Do it. Do it.' Two other times you told me he said, "Do it, bigshot. Do it. Do it.'"

  Madison looked up at Yusef. He was looking at her now, obviously fascinated.

  "Yeah," he said, "I don't know why 1 said that. 1 don't really remember exactly what he said."

  "Well, if he did call you a bigshot," Madison said, "it suggests that you did something to offend him, something that showed him a lack of respect. ..."

  Madison didn't know where this was leading. She had already gone down the road of the man in black being a rival drug dealer or a recent crime victim, but there was absolutely no connection the boy could come up with between the man in black and himself. She let the words just hang out there, hoping that the boy might have an epiphany.

  Instead he shook his head and said, "I don't know."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Where are you goin'?" Striker asked. He was lying on his bark completely naked on top of his bed.

  Jenny looked down at his tan body. He stretched. Hard long muscles rippled under the brown skin. He was delicious, that was the word she had for him. Cody had about the same build, maybe a little heavier than Striker. Cody was strong but didn't look incredibly muscular. Unlike Striker, who had a sexy tan, Cody was pale. And Cody didn't have Striker's abdomen either, a washboard of muscle and flesh. Jenny couldn't help comparing the two.

  "I'm going to call my husband," she said, running a long, red nail up the length of his thigh as she passed by him. It was ten-thirty at night. They hadn't bothered going out at all that night; instead they'd ordered in Chinese food.

  Striker flipped on his stomach to watch her go.

  "Why don't you call from in here?" he said. "I'd like to hear what you have to say."

  "Leave me alone," she said lightly, continuing into his living room to make the call. Cody liked to speak to her every night. It was annoying, but she understood.

  "Soon you won't have to keep him happy," Striker said from the bedroom. "Soon you and I won't have to wait two or three days between the times we see each other."

  "You're the one who says I have to keep things cordial with him," Jenny answered from the living room.

  "1 know." He rolled back over and looked up at the ceiling. "But I don't have to like it, the way you have to call him all the time."

  Jenny's face appeared in the doorway to the bedroom.

  "Jealous?" she asked.

  Striker threw a pillow at her and she ducked.

  "Maybe," he said thoughtfully. But he knew he was, veiy.

  Jenny smiled and said, "Good," and then went to make the call.

  Since her return from St. Martin, there was no doubt her stock had gone up in Striker's mind. Jenny was elated. She felt more alive than she had in her entire life. Together, she and Striker were outsmarting everyone. Jenny was important now. She'd made the exchange. She was in as deep as he was. Both their lives were at stake now. It was a good feeling.


  She dialed the number of Cody's room. He'd gotten his own phone after the first few days at the dorm. He answered on the first ring.

  "Jenny!" he said, obviously thrilled about something. "I've been waiting for you to call."

  "Hi, love," she said with what sounded like genuine enthusiasm.

  "Guess what?" Cody said.

  "What?" she asked, pulling aside the curtains to get a clear view of the capitol dome, enveloped by an eerie yellow light across the tree-lined street.

  "You know how Biggs came back today?" he said, knowing he'd told her only last night that his replacement was going back in the lineup. "Well, he blew out his ham again! Can you believe it? He's out for at least six weeks, maybe eight to ten! Jenny, I'm back! Hell, I may be the starter for the entire season. Baby, I am the man again!"

  Those were a lot of words and a lot of excitement for Cody. Jenny couldn't think of the last time she'd heard him so animated.

  "It's wonderful, Cody," she said. She really was glad for him. He sounded so good and so vital that, in a way, it made her miss him.

  "I can make my incentives," he continued. "Jenny, I could make almost four hundred thousand dollars if Biggs stays out ten weeks!"

  "It's fantastic," she said.

  "I know," Cody said, and then there was silence.

  Jenny couldn't think of anything to say. She hadn't expected to feel this way, to miss him, to feel even the most remote twinge of guilt that she was deceiving him. She wondered for the first time if she might have made a mistake about Cody. Maybe Cody was going to make a comeback and still had several more years of stardom left. It was too strange. She had just been thinking how wonderfully happy she was with Striker, and she was. Jenny had moments like this often in her life. Just when she was completely sure of one thing, some other, unwanted emotion would pop up and confuse her.

  "How's your knee feeling?" she asked. It was the first thing that came to mind.

  Cody hesitated, then said, 'You know, that's a problem. I mean, it's better with the Butte, but I think they're going to have to start draining it again. But if I can keep this job for another week and finish camp, I'm the man. I can get by if I don't have to run on it too much in practice and I get it drained before the games. I can definitely make it through the season like that. It's been done before."