Blood of Angels

by Reed Arvin

  Stillman stares. “Somebody didn’t think that through.”

  I nod. “And now, thanks to the United Nations of We-Bail-Everybody-Out, we can add Africans to their volatile little mix.”

  “So what are they doing here?”

  “They’re here, Stillman, because a member of yet another group of people they don’t want to live next to raped and killed one of their own. Tamra Hartlett.”

  “She lived in the Nation?”

  “Nationite, third generation,” I say. “They want to get a look at the man who killed her.”

  Stillman finally proves he has something resembling an incisive mind by saying, “Damn, Thomas. We better not fuck this up.”

  I nod, and we push through the crowd of Nationites to the door of Ginder’s courtroom. I open the door, walk in, and pull up short. We have entered a sea of willowy, giraffelike young black men who, quiet and circumspect, are occupying almost every seat in the gallery. I look right and left; although it’s hard to be sure with them sitting, it looks like the shortest of them is a good six foot three. The taller ones sprout from their benches like slender, ebony trees. Their clothing is a patchwork of cheap formal and hand-me-down casual, combined in startling ways: there are bright-colored T-shirts with rayon slacks, tennis shoes with sport coats, a mélange of Salvation Army and Dollar Store fashion. A few—I can’t get an actual count, but it seems like no more than five or six—have ritual markings of some kind on their foreheads. Interspersed in the crowd—like white dots in a black puzzle—are three figures, stark and pale in their surroundings. One is Dan Wolfe, a raging conservative with an afternoon radio talk show who never misses a photo op; a few rows up is Linda Martin, a reporter at the local Fox affiliate; on the other side of the room, scrunched between two tall Africans who tower over him like black palms, is Gavin Davies, a reporter from the Tennessean. Stillman and I stand mesmerized a second, then push on through the swinging doors at the front of the courtroom to the lawyers’ tables. We put our briefcases on the table and take our chairs. Stillman leans over and whispers, “What the hell is this?” The boys behind us are so quiet, it’s like we’ve come upon them sleeping.

  “Apparently, Mr. Bol has friends.”

  A minute later Rita West comes in, another woman trailing behind. West is in her usual lawyer’s suit, but the other woman has a kind of Ben and Jerry’s, retro-hippie look about her. She’s taller than Rita, with black, shoulder-length hair pulled back behind her ears. She’s slender, with a good figure, and immaculate, pale skin. There’s no makeup discernible, except for surprisingly bright red lipstick on her full lips. She wears a pair of proto-geek, black-rimmed glasses, a man’s dress shirt, fitted black pants, and heavy, black shoes. Her left wrist is ringed by several bracelets, each a slender circlet of a single color: one red, one blue, one yellow, and so on. When she enters, the sea of blackness behind us comes alive in a hum of languages. She stops and speaks quietly to several of the boys, and I hear the word mother interspersed in a lot of foreign words I can’t understand.

  Stillman shakes his head. “Shit, man, I thought this was Nashville.”

  “Welcome to the new South, pal.”

  “Who’s the woman?”

  “Got me.”

  Rita tries to find the woman a seat in the gallery, which is impossible since every square inch is occupied with silent Africans. Apparently, giving up a seat to a woman isn’t a part of their culture, because nobody moves. The woman doesn’t seem bothered; she plops down next to Rita at the lawyer’s table. Rita looks exasperated; I look over to catch her eye, but instead I get the full-on laser stare of the other woman, who’s glaring at me like I’ve just eaten her last cookie.

  I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit there and not find out what’s going on, so I stand up and walk over to Rita’s desk. She stands, and we shake hands, as usual. I’ve been in court with Rita seven or eight times, and we’ve always stayed friendly. “Kind of an interesting crowd today,” I say.

  Rita has her game face on and ignores the comment. “I hear Carl’s retirement party is next Friday night,” she says. “Is that staff only? I’d like to come.”

  “Consider yourself invited. He wants a big enough crowd he can sneak out the back while nobody’s looking.”

  Rita looks past me to Stillman. “This your new partner?”

  “Could be,” I say, and I nod toward the woman behind her. “This yours?”

  “Could be.” We’re standing there talking in circles, ignoring the wall of still blackness behind us. I look toward the back of the courtroom; I can see curiosity seekers peering through the back window.

  “Any idea why the media showed up?” I ask.

  “Guess they like a good story,” she says, and that’s the first time I actually worry about what Rita West has up her sleeve. I don’t worry long, because the side door opens, and Greg Seneff, the judge’s amiable, 275-pound bailiff, steps into the room. I head back to my table. Behind Seneff, flanked by two corrections officers, comes my enemy, Moses Bol.

  Bol is as tall as the others—around six foot six—and although he’s heavier than most of the other Africans in the room, he still weighs no more than 190 pounds. Because this is a bond hearing and there’s no jury to sway, Bol doesn’t get to wear street clothes. He comes in the room wearing a Tennessee Department of Corrections orange jumpsuit, and his arms are shackled. He enters the room cautiously, looking tense and a little scared. The guards move him along, and he follows, walking woodenly. With Bol’s entrance, the room comes alive again, this time with a lower, more guttural hum. I don’t understand it, but forty young men a few feet away are saying something to each other, and they don’t sound happy. The officers lead Bol toward the defense table, and for a moment he faces the gallery; a couple of voices call out to him, loud, clear, and alien. Bol looks back at them, eyes wide, and the guards get him seated between his lawyer and the other woman. The bailiff turns toward the crowd, calling firmly for quiet and threatening to clear the gallery. For a second, I wonder if all hell is going to break loose, but the black sea obeys and the humming descends back into the silence. The energy behind us is palpable, like a loaded gun set down but easily picked back up. Seneff stares out at them awhile, just to make sure the silence is going to take; when he’s satisfied, the officers who brought in Bol take chairs near the witness box, against a wall to the right.

  An awkward ninety seconds or so passes. Stillman looks over at me, his face a big question mark for which I don’t have an answer. At the moment, I’m more interested in Bol: He’s looking straight ahead, as nervous as a hunted deer. His hair is close-cropped, but his skin is surprisingly soft-looking, like a woman’s. He has the ritual markings, however; his forehead is marked by three horizontal lines, scars of some tribal custom.

  Finally, the door behind the judge’s bench opens, and Ginder, resplendent in black robe, walks into the room. He knows about the packed gallery and the reporters; I can tell by how determined he is to act like it’s just another day in Nashville. He sits down and flips open his laptop, ignoring the gallery just like Rita and I did. Somehow the Africans are invisible, even though they’re filling the room. Seneff gives the “All rise,” and the black sea is on its feet, its energy filling the air like electricity.

  Ginder sits, and the crowd settles back down. Bond hearings are normally casual affairs, at least compared to actual trials. They usually take about five minutes—less, in some cases—and protocol is kept to a minimum. It’s revolving-door justice at its most time-efficient. Ginder says hello to the attorneys, but his gaze stops on the woman beside the prisoner. “Ms. West, does your cocounsel need to have the dress code explained to her?”

  Rita is on her feet in a nanosecond. “Judge, this is Fiona Towns, a friend of the defendant. She’s here to speak on his behalf. There wasn’t any other seating available.”

  Ginder gives his unhappy look. He has a repertoire of about five looks, and I’ve seen them all a hundred times. There’s generic un
happy—he wears this 80 percent of the time—along with pleased, angry, bored, and above all, the one he gives when he thinks he’s brilliant. “If she’s at the lawyer’s table,” he says, “she’ll have on suitable attire.”

  “Yes, Judge.”

  “Fine. We’re here at the request of the defense counsel for a second bond hearing for Mr. Moses Bol,” he says. “The charges are aggravated rape with special circumstances, use of a weapon with deadly intent, and one count of first-degree murder. Ms. West, you’ve asked for this hearing, and we’ll get to you presently.” He turns toward me. “Mr. Dennehy, how are you this morning?”

  “Fine, Your Honor.”

  “Glad to hear it. Before we hear Ms. West, I assume your position on bail hasn’t changed?”

  I rise. Considering the seriousness of the crimes, having to say anything is probably unnecessary; I could just as easily read back the charges and sit down. The thing to do in circumstances like this is keep things simple: make the case, shut up, and sit down. Otherwise, you insult the intelligence of the judge. “The defendant is an obvious flight risk, Your Honor. He’s an immigrant, with no ties to the community. He owns no property. He’s not currently employed, having been recently fired from his job at Wal-Mart. As you know, the state has filed the paperwork with the court indicating we are pursuing the death penalty for Mr. Bol. Therefore, his motivation for flight would be substantial. Finally, the state believes that Mr. Bol is clearly a threat to this community and needs to remain incarcerated until such time as his future is determined.”

  Ginder nods soberly, like he’s thinking things over, even though both Rita and I know that he’s already made up his mind. Bol isn’t getting out of jail, not on this day. “Ms. West?” he says.

  Rita stands, all five foot three of her. What happens next is like a kind of dream. Rita gives a very nice speech about how the state may think it has a strong case against her client, but she thinks otherwise. Then she turns halfway round and makes real the invisible elephant in the room, namely, the packed gallery. She says Bol has the support of 100 boys just like the 40 who are in the room right now. She says that considering what these boys have been through together, he would no more abandon them than abandon his own mother, except that his mother was executed before Bol’s eyes when he was eight years old by marauding Arabs, just like they executed his father and two brothers. His sister wasn’t executed, Rita says, because the same Arabs dragged her off to be sold into sex slavery on the streets of Khartoum. She says that Bol was held captive by Islamic fundamentalists for four months, during which time he was routinely abused. She says Bol refused to convert to Islam, even under pain of torture and fear of death, and that he escaped the prison and led twenty other boys across two hundred miles of rugged terrain to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. She wants the court to consider how bad things have to be when your idea of improving your life is escaping to Ethiopia. She says that five minutes in jail for her client is horrifying psychological torture, because he has been punished on numerous occasions by some of the cruelest men on Earth, simply for being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rita spells out a story of unimaginable tragedy, which I badly want to stop, but doing so would make me look like an insensitive bastard, which is not in the interest of my case. None of this is going to be admissible in the actual trial, anyway, although the rules for hearings are considerably more lenient. After three or four minutes, however, Rita’s story is drawn to an awkward halt by Judge Ginder, who holds up his hand for silence.

  “This is a moving story, no doubt,” Ginder says. I realize I haven’t actually breathed in twenty or thirty seconds. Rita’s litany of horror paralyzed everybody in the room, except, thank God, Ginder. “We are not presently on the streets of Khartoum, Ms. West,” he says. “We are in the city of Nashville, Tennessee, where Mr. Bol is being held on very serious crimes. Is the court to understand that you have asked for this bail hearing because the internal psychology of the defendant is so tortured that conventional incarceration constitutes cruel and unusual punishment?”

  “It’s deeply traumatizing to him, Your Honor. I would recommend that Bol be remanded to house arrest, with electronic monitoring.”

  “I see. Well, I sympathize with the young man’s story, but unless you have something more, I’m going to have to deny your client bail.”

  Rita takes this well, like the professional she is; she must have known that no matter how good she was on this day, she didn’t have a chance. I sneak a look behind me, wondering how the wall of young men are going to take the news that Bol isn’t getting out. But the woman beside Rita has not come to court this day to be a part of the furniture. She stands up, uninvited, and addresses the court. Under normal circumstances, this would have the bailiff escorting her out of the room before she had a chance to finish her first sentence. But it’s a bond hearing, so Ginder merely looks at her like she’s a kind of unwanted pest.

  “Your Honor,” she says, “I have something to say on this matter.”

  Rita looks pained; this isn’t in her ideal script for the day.

  “And who are you?” Ginder asks.

  “I am Fiona Towns, the pastor of the Downtown Presbyterian Church.”

  I look up. The voice is lower than I expected, with a sexy rasp. Pastor. Apparently, they’re making them a lot more attractive than I remember.

  “Fine institution,” Ginder says.

  “Thank you, Your Honor. I’m here to speak on behalf of Moses Bol.”

  “In the future, I’d recommend you wait until called on to speak.”

  “You weren’t going to call on me,” she says.

  Ginder gives his unpleasant look. “All right, Ms. Towns. Go ahead.”

  “January 7, 1994, Your Honor.” This is followed by a long silence. Rita slumps down in her chair a little, like she wants to be somewhere else.

  Ginder looks at her blankly. “That’s it?”

  “There’s also April 23, 1998. And October 27, 2002. I could go on, but I think you see my point.”

  “I don’t, as a matter of fact.”

  “Those were days when people accused of crimes similar to Mr. Bol were released on bail. By you.”

  Ginder’s eyes narrow; he senses he’s walking into a trap, but he doesn’t see the teeth yet. “Every case is unique, Ms. Towns. I’m sure that if those individuals were granted bail, it’s because the circumstances warranted it.”

  He raises his gavel, and Towns says, “As far as I can tell, Your Honor, the only circumstances unique to those defendants were that they were white.” The gavel stops in midair. I look up at the judge, as does every other head in the room, especially the media flacks. Ginder looks like he’s been struck, then turns into stone. I see Gavin Davies physically lean forward, like he’s a hungry dog and someone is unwrapping steak.

  Ginder sets down his gavel and looks out into the black sea, weighing his next move. He’s been a judge for almost twenty years, and he knows how things play in the media, how context is everything, how there isn’t going to be a way to put into print how stilted and artificial things are in his courtroom right now. Ginder isn’t a racist, not by a long shot. But whether or not Joseph Ginder is a racist isn’t what’s going to play in the newspaper tomorrow unless the next words out of his mouth are the right ones. All that’s going to come across is that he lets white people out for the same crimes he keeps black people in for, and that is going to play like shit.

  Ginder is very angry now, but not yet so angry he can’t think. He locks onto Towns, eye-to-eye, knowing it’s too late now to throw her out; he’s entered the zone where appearance is everything. The standoff doesn’t move for several seconds, until a barely perceptible smile creeps into his face. I recognize the “I’m brilliant” look; I’ve seen it a hundred times. He relaxes a little, leaning back in his chair. “October 27, that last date you mentioned,” he says. “You say that was the same crime as Mr. Bol?”

  Towns doesn’t need to look at her notes. “Th
e crime was aggravated assault with intent to do bodily harm, and first-degree murder, Your Honor.”

  “What bail did I set on that occasion, Ms. Towns?”

  “You set bail at seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Ginder nods sagely. “How about the date before. What was that one?”

  “April 23, 1998. The crime in that instance was rape with special circumstances.”

  “What was the bail in that instance, Ms. Towns?”

  “Four hundred thousand dollars.”

  “All right, Ms. Towns. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll set bail for Mr. Bol for one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Mr. Bol is facing both counts, and unless my math is rusty, that’s the combination of the two.”

  “It is, Your Honor.”

  I look over at Stillman and smile; Bol couldn’t raise fifteen hundred dollars’ bail, much less nearly a thousand times as much. A million dollars to Moses Bol might as well be a billion. Ginder is smiling when he grants the bail and states court is adjourned. I’m impressed; it’s a deft move that is scrupulously fair and deflates the racism charge without actually confronting it. Ginder stands—shit-eating grin on his face—and the gallery rises with him.

  At which point, Fiona Towns asks, “Where do I pay?”

  CHAPTER

  4

  “THAT DIDN’T GO WELL.”

  “No,” I say, “it didn’t.” I stare at Stillman, who, along with David Rayburn, has gathered with me around the district attorney’s conference table. It’s two hours after Stillman and I left the courthouse. The last few moments there are a blur, but at least I managed to recommend to Ginder that he arrange for security to escort the Africans out of the building. The judge, still shell-shocked by the pastor’s ploy, managed to pull himself together enough to get four officers to walk out the Sudanese in a long, protected line. The Nationites, angered that the man they considered Tamra Hartlett’s killer would soon be walking the streets, hissed at them as they passed. The officers gave the Africans a fifteen-minute head start, but eventually, they had to let the lions loose. Bol was remanded to Towns’s care, and his monitored house arrest will be at the church, not at Bol’s apartment in Tennessee Village, which is right next door to the Nation.