Home Town

by Tracy Kidder

  Judge Ryan scratched his head. “Why didn’t you come back to answer this?”

  “I can’t really answer that,” said the defendant. “But I would like to resolve all this.”

  “What image of a resolution do you have in mind?” asked Judge Ryan.

  The young man shrugged.

  Judge Ryan leaned forward, his elbows on the bench. “Well, let me ask you this. What were you hopin’ to get away with?”

  The old part of the Hampshire County Courthouse faces Main Street, the Romanesque part with the lawn out front and the bust of Calvin Coolidge and the wrought-iron fence with little spears on top. Nowadays almost all of the business was conducted to the rear, in the tall, modern, warehouse-like annex, largely hidden from Main Street. In the outer lobby of the annex, beside the metal detector, there was a blackboard with this label at the top: WEAPONS INTERCEPTED. The court officers had begun keeping track in the fall of 1989, after being asked repeatedly why they bothered to search people in a crime-free place like Northampton. The running tally on the blackboard read: “14,634 knives, 1,606 mace, 346 pistols, 14 switch blades, 13 double edged knives, 4 stun guns, 1 set nunchucks, 1 ninja star, 1 set of metallic knuckles, ammo, razors, 2 mock bombs.” This was the kind of raw statistical data that confirms people’s worst thoughts about the general state of society. You looked at numbers like those and wondered about the educational system. How could so many people think they’d get away with carrying stuff like that through a metal detector? But this was, after all, the courthouse. Most of its clientele wouldn’t have been coming here at all if they had done better in school.

  Frankie didn’t come in the front entry, not this time. He was led in handcuffs from the back door of the Hampden county jail van, through a brief taste of winter air, and into the courthouse through a side door, the door to the holding cells, where he was deposited to wait for his turn in court. Carmen’s latest allegations had gotten him six months in Ludlow. He’d had no choice but to accept a plea, because the D.A. in Springfield had threatened to send him away to state prison for two years if he insisted on a trial. And because Frankie had pled guilty to those charges, the old motor vehicle ones had been reinstated, the ones that Rusty Luce had gotten suspended for him months ago. Frankie had to face them in court today. Then he’d go back to jail, probably with some time tacked on to his six-month sentence.

  Frankie was neatly dressed today. His pants were clean and safely aloft. He’d put on some weight; he always did, in jail. Life wasn’t terrible in Ludlow. He had a cousin serving time there who was a big shot in one of the Latino gangs, so no one messed with Frankie. But you couldn’t smoke cigarettes in Ludlow as you could at Camp Hamp, and that made the time go by more slowly. And he hated jail as much as ever. He’d never get used to the feeling of being buried alive. He’d been counting the days to his release, and now the prosecutors up here in Northampton wanted to tack on more days, for those stupid old motor vehicle charges. He’d helped these prosecutors out. He’d bagged that crack dealer Tyrone for them, and now they were going to punish him for something that never would have happened in the first place, if the cops had treated him as decently as he’d treated them and had helped him get his license back.

  Frankie languished in the holding cell, thinking angry thoughts. He didn’t want any more time tacked on to his sentence. It was long enough already. He needed a strategy, but he couldn’t think of one.

  Frankie sat all morning in the courtroom lockup. He sat there half the afternoon. By the time he was led into Courtroom 2, most of the cases were over. Only a couple of spectators remained in the gallery. In one corner, a lawyer stood talking softly into a defendant’s ear. Frankie sat in handcuffs, on the bench reserved for defendants already in custody. He looked around the all-but-empty room, looking for Rusty, looking for Peter, looking for Oakie. All his old friends had abandoned him, except for the public defender. She was a very nice young woman. Kind of pretty, too, he thought. She had represented him before.

  The gray-haired, gray-bearded judge above him on the bench didn’t look familiar. Frankie had stood in front of him once before, around Thanksgiving many years ago, but Frankie had seen too many judges. They all looked the same to him now. As the judge heard another case, Frankie turned a sorrowful-looking, attentive face toward him. You never knew. The judge might notice and see how sorry Frankie was. Finally, the clerk called Frankie’s surname, mispronouncing it as usual. His was the last case of the day. He stood at the lectern in the well of the courtroom, beside his young, pretty lawyer. She wore nice perfume. The clerk intoned the old motor vehicle charges. The judge asked, “How do you want to plead?”

  “Not guilty,” said Frankie. He added, “Uh, sir.”

  Then his lawyer took over. “I was Mr. Sandoval’s attorney on another matter, Your Honor. But he defaulted. I’m glad to represent him again.”

  Frankie spoke up quickly. “When I defaulted, I was also incarcerated, Your Honor.”

  “How much time are you doing now?” asked Judge Ryan.

  “Six months,” said Frankie.

  “Do you want to resolve this today?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  The judge called a recess so that Frankie could confer with his lawyer, and then disappeared through a side door. Frankie and his lawyer sat down on the prisoners’ bench.

  “You’re breaking your mother’s heart,” said the public defender. Moms had called her recently.

  “I wasn’t really doin’ anything,” said Frankie. “My wife promised she’d behave. I got her an apartment. I had two jobs. My therapist told me it was an addictive relationship.”

  The lawyer bowed her head, probably to hide her smile. Then she started reading through Frankie’s printed record. She shook her head. Frankie looked over her shoulder. “You think that’s a lot. I met this guy, he’s got a hundred and seventy-two charges.”

  Frankie wondered if she could talk the prosecutor into helping him get a driver’s license. “Because I heard of something called a Cinderella license, where you can’t drive after dark.”

  She looked over at him, at the wide, copper-colored face. She smiled. “You’d look good as a pumpkin.”

  Then she got down to business. The prosecutor wanted Frankie to get ten days “on and after” for these old, reinstated motor vehicle charges, ten days added to his six-month sentence. It was just as Frankie had feared. But his lawyer was hopeful, she said, because of the judge sitting here today. Frankie should plead guilty and throw himself on this judge’s mercy. “I think he might make those ten days concurrent,” the public defender explained.

  “I hope so,” said Frankie. He scowled, thinking of the prosecutors and the cops. “I helped them out, and they dropped this. Now look what they want.”

  “What are you going to do when you get out?” asked the lawyer.

  “Go to work,” said Frankie. “I got a job in Springfield, with Hearth ’n Home Construction. It’s like home repairs.”

  The lawyer made a note on her yellow pad.

  Maybe, after all, there is such a thing as karma. If so, Frankie’s had never been anything but mixed, bad one moment, good the next.

  Judge Ryan sat in his chambers, a well-appointed private room, full of law books. He read over Frankie’s record. He didn’t recognize the name; he’d seen so many names. In here earlier today, the probation officer on duty had described the pending cases, and near the end of the listing he’d told the judge, “And we’ve got a shitbum from Ludlow on some motor vehicle charges.” But now, reading Frankie’s rap sheet, Judge Ryan murmured to himself, “I’ve seen worse records.”

  As a rule, Judge Ryan didn’t like adding time to the sentence of a defendant already in jail. Moreover, he never felt happier up on the bench than when he had a chance to construct an artful sentence. Like the one he’d given a locally famous antiwar demonstrator, a Quaker woman, during the Gulf War. She was found guilty of trespassing at an air force base and said she would refuse to do communit
y service. So, she told him in effect, he’d have to set her free or else send her to jail. But he outfoxed her. He sentenced her to give classes on nonviolence at the high school. “I’ll do it,” she’d said fiercely. “But not because you told me to.”

  This case wasn’t nearly as challenging, but it left some room for invention. Ten extra days of jail time wouldn’t do this Mr. Sandoval any good, and to give him ten days that ran concurrently with his other sentence wouldn’t accomplish anything either. So Judge Ryan would give him another suspended sentence. It was possible that Mr. Sandoval would go straight and never sin again. That was always possible, in Judge Ryan’s philosophy. It wasn’t likely, though, he thought, pondering the rap sheet. And if he gave Mr. Sandoval a plain old suspended sentence on these charges, and Mr. Sandoval committed another sort of crime, then these charges would once again be reinstated, and then the same thing that was happening today would happen all over again, wasting the court’s time. There was only one logical solution. He’d give Mr. Sandoval a suspended sentence, and add the proviso that these charges could not be brought forward again unless Mr. Sandoval committed identical offenses. Because it was a lenient sentence, Judge Ryan would deliver it in a stern voice, full of opprobrium.

  He walked back into the courtroom. He had his mind all but made up. But first he’d hear the lawyers’ arguments.

  The court officer said, “All rise.” Frankie and the public defender returned to the lectern. And Judge Ryan led Frankie through the standard colloquy, Frankie answering all the questions in his sweet, soft voice. He was forty-two. He’d made it as far as tenth grade in school. He wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol, just now.

  “And how do you plead?”

  “Guilty, Your Honor.”

  The prosecutor made his pitch for severity. “He has a very long record, Your Honor. He’s in jail on other matters. The Commonwealth feels he shouldn’t be let off on a concurrent sentence as he would normally. That’s why we’re asking for ten days on and after.”

  It wasn’t a strong argument, and it was delivered a little wearily. It was an end-of-the-day argument. Judge Ryan didn’t feel swayed. Even if he had, he would have been swayed back by the public defender. He liked to reward public defenders when they did a good job. They were crucial to the system, and they weren’t paid well or often thanked for their work. And this public defender’s argument, he thought, verged on eloquence.

  She started out in a routine way, attesting to the side of Frankie’s character that, as Frankie would have said, meant well. And finally, as is proper at the ends of arguments on behalf of human beings, she spoke of new beginnings. “He has a job waiting for him when he’s released, Your Honor.” She glanced at her yellow pad. “With Hearth ’n Home Construction.”

  It was news that seemed calculated to strike fear in the hearts of homeowners. A smile flickered around Judge Ryan’s eyes.

  “He plans to get his license back,” the public defender continued. “He is eligible for parole soon, and I sincerely think that it is Mr. Sandoval’s wish to put all of this behind him.” She paused, and then, looking up at Judge Ryan, declared, “Because frankly, Your Honor, he’s too old for this nonsense.”

  Feeling sure that he must have guilty secrets, but unable to root them out, feeling a little as he had as a boy at confession, but with no intention of making something up this time, the way he used to for the priest, Tommy sat down and let the polygraph operator hook him up to the machine. He confessed everything. The time he appropriated a ream of paper from the Detective Bureau to do some work at home. The time when, as a teenager, he tried to smoke a joint with an old friend—and, of course, they should know about that old friend. Even the times he told Jean he’d taken out the trash when he actually hadn’t yet.

  The test went on for hours. Afterward, the operator laughed. He said Tommy was one of the few completely honest husbands he could remember examining. So Tommy figured he’d probably passed.

  Tommy had a young friend named Luis Ramos, who lived in the Hampton Gardens apartment complex. They went way back. Tommy remembered Luis as a child and young teenager. In years past, when there was trouble at the Gardens, Tommy would drive up to the scene and usually find Luis on the sidelines. “What’s goin’ on?” Tommy would ask, and Luis would invariably say, “I don’t know. I just got here.” At first this was annoying. But eventually Tommy realized that Luis acted out of a sense of honor. Tommy found it hard not to like a young teenager who wouldn’t do everything his friends did but wouldn’t rat them out either.

  Luis had complicated the view through cruiser windows. “It’s all in who you hang out with.” That was one of Father O’Connor’s favorite sayings. But, at one time or another, Tommy had arrested half the friends of Luis’s youth, and he’d never had a reason to arrest Luis. When Tommy was a young cop, he used to say he wasn’t interested in why people did things, just in what they’d done. He wondered about Luis, though. Luis was an orphan essentially, abandoned by his parents and raised in Northampton by grandparents who spoke no English. He and the former gangster Felix, an old friend of Luis’s, had similar backgrounds. The other night Tommy had asked him what the difference was. Luis had shrugged. “My grandparents gave me everything I needed. Maybe his parents didn’t.”

  On a night in November, when the only things that remained between Tommy and the FBI were the physical and the background check, he drove into Hampton Gardens, looking for Luis. He found him standing outside his apartment. Luis was a tall young man, with his head shaved like Tommy’s—but in his case for fashion.

  Tommy parked and Luis got into the cruiser. He had been a star on the Hamp High basketball team. He was twenty-one now. He had a part-time job, which Tommy had gotten for him, and was taking courses in law enforcement at Holyoke Community College. Luis said one of his teachers had gone to the FBI Academy. “Ever think of doing it, O’Connor?”

  “You never know. Keep all the doors open.”

  “Why don’t you just do it?”

  “Because you’re here, Luis. I couldn’t leave you.” Tommy smiled. Then in a serious voice, he asked, “What do you think the kids around here would say if I did?”

  “They’d be happy you were gone, actually. Relief.”

  Tommy smiled again, then changed the subject. Recently, Luis had said he didn’t want to be a cop. He wanted to be a probation officer. Tommy thought he was wavering, though. “The Border Patrol is hiring. Take every exam for every force you can. It’s a good idea to start young. The state police, they don’t look at anything but what you do on their test, which is wrong, but you being a minority, you get extra points. You’d do fine.”

  “I’d rather work in the daytime,” said Luis.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, son, you’ll get used to nights. You need nothing. You’ve got life by the balls. Twenty-one years old. Of course, I’m twelve years older than you.”

  “God, I hope I don’t have a head like yours in twelve years. Hey, O’Connor, I have to get my girlfriend a fake I.D. You know anybody who’s doing them?”

  “Yeah, I do. But they’re all in jail.”

  “So. You want to go back to detective?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Not dressed?”

  “Not in this uniform.”

  “If you’re a detective, do you go to other towns?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you go undercover?”

  “Not often.”

  “I’d like to go undercover,” said Luis. He changed the subject. “It’s scary. I’m getting older. I wish I could just stay this age.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Pretty soon I’ll be going to doctors, getting bald like you.”

  “It’s all in how you look at it, Luis. If you get stuck in a rut, it’s bad, but not if you move on and enjoy yourself. Hey, any rumors around that I have the virus, because I lost weight?”

  Luis hadn’t heard any. He wondered if he could ride along with Tommy f
or a shift. Tommy said he should come to the station the following night.

  When Luis arrived, a drunk was being led in handcuffs down the hall toward the Booking Room. The drunk was saying, in a garbly voice, “You’re locking me up illegally.”

  “You’re locking him up illegally?” Luis asked.

  “Yeah, we do that all the time,” said Tommy. He had some paperwork, but it could wait. He took Luis right out to the cruiser. “By the way, Luis. I know you’re not hanging with any of the troublemakers, but just don’t tell them things, like the fact that there were only three cruisers out tonight. Like Felix.”

  “Felix wouldn’t be smart enough to ask me a question like that.”

  Tommy had hoped for a busy night, but the city was quiet, settling down into winter again. He spent most of the evening showing Luis the city that a cop saw—the murderer paroled here long ago, out for a stroll; the dirt-floored cellars behind the tenement on Graves Avenue, where people had obviously been camping; the scruffy woods near the railroad tracks, Northampton’s main alternative homeless shelter. He stopped to show Luis the snapshot he kept in his logbook, a photo of himself in his wig and fake mustache.

  “Christ, I’d love to do that,” said Luis.

  “You’re helping people. Sometimes they’ll change. But you’re not gonna stop the drugs from coming in.”

  He showed Luis the bars where drug dealing was common, and Luis said, “There’s a lot of goddamn coke in this town. I just hear it from people. I’ve heard of lots of kids trying powder. Kids who surprise me.”

  Tommy didn’t ask for the names.

  “Let’s go down to the Meadows, Luis.” The dirt roads were still open. Across the cornfields, the trucks on the Interstate looked afloat, like lighted ships. It was a strange and lovely landscape, redolent of old cases. Tommy remembered, from many years ago, driving down here an hour or so before dawn. He drove into a wooded section. Uphill, about two hundred yards away, lay the South Street neighborhood and the mansion to which Calvin Coolidge had retired and the house where the mayor was sleeping. In the dark gray light, Tommy saw a parked car. He got out. Then he saw a figure walking up the dirt road toward him. He lit the figure with his flashlight. It was a man, and he was naked, except for a plastic garbage bag, wrapped around him like a loincloth or a diaper.