by Jay Brandon
“That sound was me cocking the hammer. If what I’ve got the barrel on is important to you, drop your gun.”
For emphasis Rybek pressed a little. Loftus moved only his eyes, being very, very careful not to move his hand that was holding the gun. He looked down and confirmed Rybek’s claim. Rybek had a very mild, almost amused expression. He was twisted on the ground, but his hand was rock steady.
Now Loftus could make out what Carol was shouting from above. “Shoot!” she was saying. “He’s moving! His hand is moving!”
Loftus hastily dropped the gun. Rybek kept his own in place, He held it there even after he saw two uniformed officers coming toward him with their own guns drawn. He held it there while he put his thumb on the hammer and slowly lowered it back into place. Loftus watched him do it. Rybek enjoyed watching his face as he did it.
There was surprisingly little damage. Half of Khai’s men had run off into the night before the police arrived. Of the ones left behind, none was unbloodied but very few dead. The ugliest thing the police found was the body of the rat-faced man, the sight of which caused one officer to turn quickly away and go looking for a bathroom.
They also found an old man cowering in one of the bedrooms. He didn’t speak English and he appeared frightened by the uniforms. The old man offered no resistance. He seemed to be just a mild-mannered, nervous old man until they brought him into the same room with Khai. Khai addressed two sharp syllables to him, and when that didn’t stop the flood of the old man’s abuse Khai ignored him.
Daniel and Linh passed each other in the upstairs hall, each with his wife. The women hugged each other. Daniel and Linh just looked at each other. If they’d both been Americans they might have shaken hands, which would have been a pitifully inadequate gesture. They were the oddest of allies. In the moment when they’d acted together, trusting each other with their lives, they had been strangers. Linh would never have agreed to Thien’s scheme if he hadn’t been suicidal already. He had let the American point a gun at him not out of trust but because he didn’t care what happened to him. Now here they were, triumphant, co-workers, yet still strangers. They nodded to each other as if being formally introduced for the first time.
In the living room Daniel and Carol found cops, Khai and others, and Thien. The boy was standing quietly against a wall, listening to the old man.
“What’s he saying?” Daniel asked.
“ ‘Why couldn’t you be satisfied with what we had?’ ” Thien said without preface, picking up the translation in midstream. “‘Would that I’d been unmanned before I ever fathered such a thing as you. An old man destroyed by his son’s idiocy.’ And so on in that vein.”
The sound of Thien’s voice drew Khai’s attention as his father’s did not. He looked down at Thien with a blank expression that nevertheless made his eyes appear deeper black. His eyes moved to Daniel and he looked almost friendly.
“Look out for that one. Baby Mao. He’ll be the next boss of Little Saigon.”
“Why not mayor of Houston?” Daniel replied. He put a hand on Thien’s head and moved on.
On the porch he found Steve Rybek in a chair still directing operations. Ambulance attendants stood by but Rybek wouldn’t let them take him away yet.
“You kept a little from me,” Rybek said to Daniel, but not threateningly.
“You can see I had to.”
Rybek nodded. “You certainly put on a big finish, I’ll say that for you. It all looks justifiable to me, but of course I’m not a judge. All we gotta do now is sort out which gook was on which side—”
Daniel knelt beside him so they were on an even eye level. “Do me a favor,” he said quietly. Rybek looked at him accommodatingly. “Don’t ever say anything like that around me again.” Daniel looked at him levelly. He hadn’t raised his voice.
“Hey, I don’t mean anything by it. You know, I just—”
“I don’t care,” Daniel said just as quietly. “Don’t even let me hear it.”
“Sure thing,” Rybek said, managing not to look terrified. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive.”
Daniel just nodded and stood up again.
Rybek cleared his throat and said, “How’d you manage all this, anyway? How do you rate so much support from the—Vietnamese?”
“I don’t. But I’ll tell you how to find out. When you finish sorting through the—Vietnamese—and you come to the smallest one you can find, ask him.”
Rybek tried to look as if he understood that. When Greer turned away, arm around his wife, Rybek said, “I need statements from both of you.”
They ignored him.
Back inside the house, Thien passed slowly through the throng. He was so young no one seemed to see him.
He found Khai’s study and sat behind his desk. It was a very comfortable chair. Idly Thien glanced through the papers on the desk.
He thought about what Khai had said of him and about what Daniel had replied. Boss or mayor. Those were not the only possibilities, of course, but they were the two on which his mind lingered. First there was school to finish. And it was possible the years and circumstances might change his goals. But he doubted it. He was a very singleminded young man. In fact, there were steps he could begin taking now, while still in school. His father was a small businessman. Thien could help make him bigger. And someday ...
He sat in Khai’s chair and thought long, long thoughts about America. The future had never seemed so open.
As they walked away Carol saw Linh and his wife being questioned by a uniformed police officer. Linh looked up at them but his face was blank again, the expression he offered strangers.
“You know what you might consider?” Carol said, looking at Linh.
“What?”
“Becoming partners with him.”
Daniel turned his head to look at Linh as well. Linh nodded, ever so slightly. The cop’s head was down, writing, so he didn’t see the movement. Daniel returned the nod. “I think I already have,” he said.
As they neared the front gate, Carol’s steps slowed. It was the way she left a party, slowly, afraid she might miss something. He was holding her hand. Since they had found each other they hadn’t stopped touching.
“Where’re Mother and Dad?” she asked. She sounded like a woman being met on the docks after a long trip abroad.
Daniel hesitated. He wondered how long it would take Carol to find out that her father had used her as a bargaining chip. He wanted to be there when Hecate saw his daughter had been delivered safe and sound. He’d probably give himself away by trying to take credit for her delivery.
“I haven’t talked to them about it,” he said truthfully, and continued: “Jennifer knows something, but she doesn’t know what she knows. Either that I killed you or you ran off with someone.”
“Jennifer,” Carol said, like a name she remembered from childhood.
Carol seemed to him physically unhurt. He felt very light-headed himself. Everything was drifting away from him. He hadn’t asked her any detailed questions yet, nor she him. They would talk about what had happened, talk about it for years, but not yet. The best attitude for them at the moment seemed to be to act, not as if it hadn’t happened, but as if it had been something else—an event. An adventure. So he was surprised at the bluntness of her next remark.
“You know the worst thing they did to me?” He steeled himself for the answer. “They made me think you were dead.”
He turned and hugged her. She was crying. He was probably crying too. It was hard to tell in the rain. “It’s okay,” he kept saying, or something inane like that.
They went out the front gate. Uniformed police there didn’t stop them. Now that they were clear of the trees there was a view of downtown. Carol stared at it. “My city,” she said. On the way home she would ask Daniel to drive through the heart of it.
Daniel was looking back at the house, where the tiny figures of people still moved. He was thinking how displaced they all were. Even Rybek, who
had never managed to leave Vietnam behind. Of the whole crowd, only he and Carol were free to walk away from it all and go home.
So they did.
POCKET BOOKS
Proudly Presents Jay Brandon’s New Courtroom Thriller
RULES OF EVIDENCE
Available in Hardcover from Pocket Books
The following is an exciting preview of Rules of Evidence. ...
San Antonio's most prominent black attorney, Raymond Boudro, has his first encounter with Detective Mike Stennett, SAPD, on the witness stand.
"Would you agree with me that the east side of San Antonio is the area with the greatest concentration of black citizens?”
Stennett appeared to think about it. "Yeah,” he said.
"And in fact, the five men you saw on this street comer on this day last July were black.”
"■fes, they were.”
"Well, it’s a black neighborhood, so that wasn’t unusual, was it?"
"No."
“Then why did you note that in your report, Officer? That the men were black."
Stennett grew a little exasperated. "The report’s written on a form. You have to identify all the suspects by race, sex, height, all that. Even the witnesses, you have to say what race they are."
"Yes," Raymond agreed. "In the space at the top of the form where you list people, you have to fill out all that information. But you also included it in the body of the report, in your written summary of the events leading up to the arrest.” Out of the corner of his eye Raymond saw Rebecca looking at the offense report, frowning a little. "Do you have a copy of your report in front of you?" he asked Stennett.
"I think I left it on the table over there.”
"Let me show you.” Raymond approached the witness stand with long strides and stood beside the cop, pointing at the page he was holding. Judge Marroquin was looking down on them with some interest. It would have been nice if the witness had flinched from contact with the black defense lawyer, but Stennett only squinted at the report.
“You see?” Raymond pointed. “ ‘Drove to the location, saw five black males on the comer.’ That is what ‘BMs’ stands for, isn’t it, Officer? Black males?”
"Yes.”
"Why did you note that? Did you think it added something to your probable cause that the men were black?”
"No.”
"But you already said that when you drove by and saw them your suspicion increased. So seeing five black men together increased your suspicion that a crime was in progress. Would it still have looked suspicious if they’d had a basketball?”
The cop laughed and shook his head. He didn’t look concerned, he looked like a man mired in silliness. When the elongated silence inflicted itself on his attention he glanced at the defense lawyer, who was staring at him. "I’ll wait as long as it takes you to think of an answer," Raymond said charita- bly.
"I didn't think that was worth answering. It wasn't them being black that made me suspicious. It was five able-bodied young men standing on the street on a workday afternoon with nothing else to do. That made me think maybe they earned their living illegally.”
Raymond looked at him seriously. "Do you know how many unemployed people there are on the east side of San Antonio, Officer?”
"I know how many drug dealers there are.” "Perhaps you can regale us with that information
if someone asks you a question that requires it. My question is whether you know how many unemployed people there are on the east side of town, how many young black men who can’t find a job worth having because they don’t have the education or qualifications or opportunity to find such a job."
Stennett held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "We’re way outside my field of expertise now, Counselor.”
"But you'd agree that the percentage of unemployment is higher on the east side than in San Antonio generally?*'
"I don’t know.”
"I thought you were rather expert on the east side," Raymond said. He resumed his seat. For the first time he opened the file beside him. Becky looked at him. The thickness of the file made her suspicious that Raymond hadn’t been kidding when he’d announced he was ready to proceed on this motion. The defense lawyer riffled through several pages before he found the one he wanted.
"We’ve established, Officer, that the east side of town, where you’re assigned, is the area with the largest black population in town, but in fact it’s not exclusively black by any means, is it?"
"No.” The detective sat alertly in his chair.
"No more than fifty percent black, would you estimate?”
"I wouldn’t know that,” Stennett said carefully. He had some vague idea where this was leading and he wasn't going to help.
"You see a lot of people over there, don’t you, Officer? Would you say more than half of them are black? Or don’t you make those distinctions?"
"I’m not a census taker,” the cop said.
Rebecca Schirhart stood up. "I’ll object to any more of these statistical questions, Your Honor. The witness has already said he doesn’t know, and I don't see the relevance anyway.”
"Okay,” the judge said noncommittally. That was the kind of ruling you got from Judge Marroquin unless you pressed him. The appellate court couldn’t reverse his rulings if he didn’t make any. Maybe he was sustaining the prosecutor’s objection. It didn’t matter. The judge would know the answer to Raymond’s question. Even on the “heavily black" east side, less than half the population was black. The judge knew that. And this was all aimed at the judge. It didn't matter what the evidence showed, all that mattered was how the judge felt about what he’d heard.
“Let’s say half then," Raymond said to Stennett. "Now, I assume you do have personal knowledge about how many people you’ve arrested. How many would you say it’s been in the last five years?” Stennett rolled his eyes. "I have no idea. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”
"Let’s make it easier. How about just in the past year?”
Stennett was silent, calculating. He was intrigued. "Not that many anymore," he speculated. "When I’m undercover I don’t arrest every drunk or speeder I see. Maybe one a week, maybe fifty the whole year?”
Raymond nodded. He had a piece of paper in his hand. Pieces of paper lent weight to questioning. “Very good, Officer. Would you disagree with the figure sixty-two?”
"Sixty-two arrests in the last year? No, I wouldn’t disagree with that." Stennett was no longer casual on the witness stand. He was in a sort of stance, preparing himself.
"And what percentage of those arrestees would you estimate were black?" Raymond asked. He put aown his piece of paper, picked up another. He looked over its top at the witness.
Becky was poised to object again, but she saw the relevance of the question; so would the judge. The judge was watching the witness with interest. It was okay, Becky could clean all this up on redirect.
"I guess that would be about fifty percent too," the detective said.
"Would it surprise you to learn the figure is more like eighty percent?”
"Yes, it would.”
Raymond approached the witness again. "Do you recognize this as a computer printout of the names of people you’ve arrested in the past year? And do you see this column that identifies the race of the suspect, as taken from your reports?"
"I object to defense counsel testifying,” Becky said. The judge didn’t even look at her. He was leaning over to look down at the list. Stennett was studying it too.
"I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this,” the detective said slowly. "But I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage is a little higher than the percentage of black population.”
“Because the sight of a black man makes you more suspicious than the sight of someone nonblack? Because you're more likely to investigate a black suspect?"
Stennett appeared to be keeping a rein on his temper. "If this is true I think it's because statistics will show—”
Becky did
n't let him finish, "'tour Honor. This is not only unfounded—the only testimony about the accuracy of these statistics comes from defense counsel himself—it’s also irrelevant. The witness has testified to specific facts that gave him reasonable suspicion to conduct a frisk of this particular suspect. What’s happened in other cases is irrelevant.”
The judge didn’t rule on the objection, but his expression as he looked at Raymond clearly said, "She’s right.” Raymond had taken the point as far as he could anyway. He returned to his seat. "Let's talk about the specific facts then, Detective Stennett. What was it that made you think you had to frisk Claymore Johnson?”
"As I said, fear for my own safety. I was afraid he might be armed.”
"In fact, what you said was there's always the possibility a criminal suspect is armed and you’re always concerned for your safety when conducting an investigation. Under that rationale, you'd be justified in searching everyone you see any time. What was it made you fear this particular”—the word was aimed at the prosecutor—"suspect was armed?"
Stennett looked sure of himself again. "The bulge in his pocket.”
Raymond stood up. He was wearing his best suit, a midnight-blue pinstripe he had bought after his last major triumph in court. Three years later the suit still fit well, though maybe a little tight in the waist and thighs. Raymond put his hands on his hips, flaring the wings of the jacket back like a gunfighter. "A bulge about this size?" he said.
Stennett glanced at Raymond’s pants. So did Rebecca. So did the judge. "Could be,” Stennett said. “I didn’t study the size of it.”
Raymond reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills, folded once and held by a money clip. "Did it occur to you, Detective, that it might be cultural, for a black man to carry a lot of cash on him? Maybe because he doesn’t have credit cards, because he can’t get credit?”
"As a matter of fact, I thought it might be cash,” Stennett said. "That would fit the profile. Guy on the street comer, gathering a crowd, showing something, big wad of cash in his pocket—”
