Mission Flats

by William Landay

  A woman entered the courtroom and pushed and excuse-me’d her way forward. She was dressed in a sleek black skirt suit. The jacket had a band collar with an open tab at the hollow of her neck. It looked a little like a priest’s collar.

  ‘Ms Kelly!’ the clerk blurted, and the entire court staff repeated ‘Ms Kelly!’ as if they’d all been trying to think of a forgotten name and it had just come back to them.

  Caroline Kelly stood at the prosecutor’s table next to the young ADA. Unseen by the judge, she put her hand on the kid’s shoulder blade. The point was not so much to reassure him, I think, but to get him to stand up straight. She stretched her thumb to touch his spine just as a stern mother would press on the backbone of a slouching child. And it worked; the kid did stand a little straighter. Kelly left her thumb on his weakest vertebra for good measure, to prevent a relapse. She leaned over and whispered in the kid’s ear, but loud enough for us in the front row to hear quite clearly, ‘Fuck him.’

  Those were the first words I ever heard Caroline Kelly say, fuck him, and she loaded a little extra sauce on the fuck to show she meant it.

  From my seat in the front row, I studied the details of her posterior side. Her hair was dark brown, clipped loosely at the back of her neck with a gold clasp. The twill fabric of her skirt was slightly but discernibly taut around her hips, which were not thin. She stood with her anklebones nearly touching, so that a flame-shaped gap was formed between the inner curves of her calves. A soft leather briefcase slumped against her ankle when she set it down.

  ‘Ms Kelly,’ Judge Bell said. ‘The prodigal daughter.’

  She held out her free hand, palm up. The gesture said, Here I am.

  ‘Was there something you’d like to share with the court?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The judge regarded her. ‘Perhaps you can help us, Ms Kelly. We have a little mystery. Last weekend there were – Mr Clerk, how many arrests?’

  ‘Two-oh-five.’

  ‘Two hundred and five arrests. All for this one humble court. I believe that must be a new record.’

  ‘Congratulations, Your Honor.’

  ‘Enlighten me, Ms Kelly. How do you explain such a burst of zealous law enforcement? Was there a sudden spike in the crime rate? These must be serious cases, I’m sure. Let’s see’ – he thumbed through the case files – ’one marijuana cigarette; trespassing; ooh look here, defacing public property.’

  ‘Defacing public property is a crime, Your Honor.’

  ‘He urinated on the sidewalk!’

  ‘Well, if it left a mark, then technically—’

  The facial muscles around Judge Bell’s jaw and temples tightened visibly. Evidently you just did not bother with these sorts of offenses in Mission Flats. They were clogging the docket; they were sand in the gears. It wasn’t funny, dammit. ‘Ms Kelly, is it the District Attorney’s intention to punish a whole neighborhood for a single homicide?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’

  The judge told the young ADA to sit down. Before the kid moved, Kelly patted him twice on the shoulder blade, once again unseen by the judge.

  ‘Call the case,’ the judge said.

  ‘Number ninety-seven dash seven-seven-eight-eight,’ the clerk announced a second time. ‘Commonwealth v. Gerald McNeese the Third, also known as G also known as G-Mac also known as . . . whatever. Intimidation of a witness. Assault and battery. Assault with intent to maim. Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, to wit, a sidewalk.’

  Beside me, the perfumed girl confided, ‘He hit somebody with a friggin’ sidewalk? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Assistant District Attorney Caroline Kelly for the Commonwealth. And Mr Beck.’

  The players all stepped forward, forming a triangle before the judge.

  Along with Kelly, there was Attorney Max Beck, who marched over to the hole in the wall. Beck had the look of a True Believer. His hair was a snarl of salt-and-pepper curls that tumbled over his collar. Plastic pens poked out of various pockets. His necktie was wrenched loose. The message in all this anti-fashion seemed to be: Citizens, fighting Government Oppression is hard work! I have no time to worry about clothes! It was pretty effective, actually.

  The anchor of the triangle, however, was the defendant. Gerald McNeese radiated a sinewy, menacing aura. He leaned his forearms on the sill of the prisoners’ dock and laced his fingers. The pose was so perfectly casual, so lazy-cool, you almost forgot there were handcuffs on his wrists. Tall and very thin, the points of McNeese’s clavicles protruded under his shirt. His head was shaved, revealing a lumpy cranium.

  At the prisoners’ dock, Max Beck laid his hand on McNeese’s forearm – Fight the power! – but McNeese pulled his arm away.

  ‘Commonwealth,’ the judge said.

  ‘Your Honor, this is the man Assistant DA Bob Danziger was preparing to prosecute when he was murdered.’

  ‘Objection!’

  ‘Overruled. I want to hear this.’

  ‘But my client is not charged with killing Bob Danziger! This has nothing to do with Bob Danziger!’

  The judge flippered his hands, brushing Beck off. ‘I said I’ll hear it.’ Suddenly we were no longer talking about a garden-variety A&B. The mention of Danziger’s name changed everything.

  The prosecutor continued: ‘The defendant’s gang—’

  ‘Objection!’

  ‘Overruled.’

  ‘But my client is not a member of any gang!’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Caroline Kelly assured. ‘And it goes to motive.’

  ‘Overruled,’ the judge said again.

  ‘The defendant’s gang, the Mission Posse,’ Kelly said, ‘was anxious that Danziger’s case against this defendant not come to trial. Gerald McNeese is believed to be a close associate of Harold Braxton, the gang’s leader. In the case Mr Danziger was prosecuting, the key witness had gone into hiding, and the Posse could not locate him to . . . dissuade this witness from testifying.’

  ‘Objection! Pure speculation.’

  ‘Overruled. I’ll hear it.’

  ‘Over the weekend,’ Caroline Kelly said, ‘Mr McNeese – who is known as G-Mac on the street – finally did locate the informant, a man named Raymond Ratleff. The defendant was eager to convince Mr Ratleff not to testify in Mr Danziger’s case. Around midnight on Saturday, the defendant was seen beating Mr Ratleff on Stanwood Street in the Flats, smashing his face against the curbstone at least a half dozen times. According to one observer, it looked like the defendant was driving a nail into the sidewalk with Mr Ratleff’s head. Mr Ratleff suffered broken bones in his face, including a fractured eye socket. He may lose the use of his right eye.’

  Gerald McNeese pursed his lips and sniffed disdainfully.

  ‘Mr Beck?’

  ‘Your Honor, with all due respect to Ms Kelly, the police have been sweeping through this neighborhood, rousting young African-American men for weeks because of the Danziger case.’

  Kelly glared as Beck dropped the firebombs of race and police misconduct, and her stare only darkened as Beck went on.

  ‘—young black men in this neighborhood have been targeted—’

  The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed to a high-noon stare. She seemed to be trying to vaporize poor Max Beck with those lasers.

  ‘Mr McNeese in particular has been targeted,’ Beck persisted. ‘He certainly has no link to the Danziger murder. That is just a smear against my client. The police have nothing, so they’re conducting a witch hunt.’

  The judge groaned. ‘Not the witches, not today’

  ‘My point is, this is just the kind of hysteria—’

  ‘Mr Beck, I have a crowded courtroom. We’re not going to do the thing with the witches.’

  Beck made a face to show there was a valid point to be made about witch hunts, if only the judge would let him. ‘Judge, then I’ll simply say there is no evidence against my client, there is no witness, therefore there’s no possibility of a conviction. Under the circ
umstances, he must be released on personal recognizance.’

  ‘What about it, Ms Kelly? Do you have a witness?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Can this witness make the I.D.?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And he’s willing to go forward?’

  Kelly hesitated. She tilted her head left and right, a gesture of uncertainty. ‘Your Honor, we believe the witness will go forward. We’re requesting the defendant be held without bail.’

  Judge Bell frowned. The prosecutor was pushing a case with a reluctant witness – more likely, no witness at all – and putting the judge on the spot by tying the case to a more sensational one, the murder of ADA Bob Danziger. He studied a fanfolded printout of McNeese’s record while his fingers worked the bow tie. At last he announced his decision: ‘Fifty thousand cash, five hundred thousand surety.’

  The clerk repeated this information to the defendant, but G-Mac did not seem to be listening. He was glaring at Caroline Kelly.

  The judge had a message for the prosecutor too. ‘Ms Kelly,’ he said, ‘find your victim and indict this case, or I’ll cut him loose.’

  When the McNeese arraignment had been wrapped up – with the droning incantation ‘Gerald McNeese, this honorable court has established bail in the amount of fifty thousand dollars cash or five hundred thousand dollars surety . . .’ – the judge looked at his watch and announced, ‘Two o’clock,’ which signaled the lunch break. The atmosphere in the room instantly relaxed, in large part because Judge Bell himself departed. In the lawyers’ area, ADAs and defense attorneys chatted like weary comrades-in-arms. Among the spectators, there was a riotous push toward the door.

  Caroline Kelly lingered at the prosecutors’ table for a few moments, arms folded, greeting some of the lawyers. It was interesting to watch her after seeing her photo in Kelly’s cabin in Maine. I realized immediately that I had misimagined Caroline – that she was both more formidable and much, much prettier than I’d presumed. Which is not to say she was conventionally beautiful, because she was not, quite. She had not inherited her father’s lanky frame or his narrow face. Caroline’s features were more generous: broad, prominent cheekbones, dark brows separated by a twice-creased spandrel, a slightly too-soft chin. Her nose was prominent too, with an aristocratic little Bourbon bump at the bridge. Caroline’s mouth was her only delicate feature. She had thin, expressive lips and small teeth, which she seemed reluctant to reveal. All of it fit somehow, and anyway the alchemy of attractiveness is more mysterious by far than a simple accounting of facial features; there are many more ways to be attractive than to be beautiful. What Caroline Kelly had that her photo did not and could not capture was presence. She had a worldly manner. She met events and people with a sidelong glance, with the left corner of her mouth curling upward like a cat’s tail. That smirk suggested not the usual acid cynicism of young people, but a gentler and healthier sort of knowing-ness – a comfortable skepticism from which, one suspected, she did not exempt herself.

  When I reached her, Caroline was chatting with Max Beck. Or, to be accurate, Beck was attempting to sustain a chat with her.

  ‘How is your father?’

  ‘Oh, he’s unchanged, Max.’

  ‘Unchanged! Precisely!’

  Caroline gave him one of those wiseguy smirks, then turned to me. She was not as tall as I am, but she managed to convey the impression of looking me level in the eye. ‘Ben Truman. What did you think of this place?’

  ‘Have we met?’

  ‘No.’

  I glanced down to see if I was wearing one of my uniform shirts, which identify me variously as Officer Truman and Chief Truman. I was not. ‘How did you . . . ?’

  ‘My father called to say you’d be here. Weren’t you with him?’

  ‘Sorry I’m an idiot.’

  Her lips unfastened into a lopsided Elvis-like smile. ‘So what did you make of all this?’

  ‘It was interesting.’

  ‘Interesting!’ Beck said, delighted again. ‘It is that!’

  Caroline still had not unfolded her arms. ‘Max Beck, this is Benjamin Truman. Mr Truman is the chief in Versailles, Maine.’

  Beck pumped my hand up and down. ‘We’re all so upset about what happened.’

  I offered my hand to Caroline, and she gave it a dry, businesslike shake.

  ‘Max, I should warn you, Mr Truman came down to look into the Danziger case. You’d better hope he strikes out, otherwise you’ll lose a few clients.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not too concerned.’ Beck gave me a look, rolling his eyes up toward that inverted bird’s nest of hair: Typical Caroline. Having imparted that mute warning, he drifted off.

  ‘I don’t think he thought that was funny.’

  ‘That’s because it wasn’t a joke.’

  Caroline gathered her papers into her briefcase. Up close, I could see there were undyed gray strands whipstitched through her dark hair. I wondered if she’d missed these while removing the other grays or if she’d decided to leave them. The latter seemed more likely. Caroline obviously paid too much attention to her appearance – she wore very light makeup, artfully applied, and her suit and shoes looked stylish and expensive – to have overlooked them.

  ‘Interesting is a pretty noncommittal word, Chief Truman. Is that all you have to say about this place?’

  ‘There was one thing. When you said . . . what you said to that DA, we could all hear you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well if we could hear you, the judge could probably hear you too.’

  ‘Good. He needed to hear it. You didn’t expect that kid to say fuck you to a judge, did you?’

  ‘Actually it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone was going to say it.’

  ‘Maybe not out loud,’ she sighed.

  ‘And the bit about the witch hunt?’

  ‘Oh, that’s just Beck. He tends to be dramatic’

  ‘Is he right?’

  ‘About the witches? No, we’ve got a pretty good handle on the witch problem.’ Another Elvis smile.

  ‘I mean about the hysteria. Are the cops panicking, making crazy arrests?’

  ‘Maybe. Probably. But in G-Mac’s case, they got the right guy. We’ve got a victim who knows him personally and can make the I.D. There’s no issue. McNeese is guilty and Beck knows it.’

  ‘He also seems to know McNeese is going to get off.’

  ‘Right. Well, there is one issue: whether the victim will show up to testify.’

  ‘What are the odds?’

  She shrugged. ‘This case is less important than the Danziger investigation. I won’t push the witness on this case; I may need him later. Besides, if McNeese gets off, we’ll get him next time. Guys like him always come back. The statistics say 5 percent of the criminals commit 95 percent of the crimes. G-Mac’s a five-percenter.’

  ‘Sounds like a witch to me.’

  ‘I think so too.’

  Outside the courthouse, a four-story cube at the southern end of Mission Ave, Caroline stood on the second step so she could look her father, John Kelly, in the eye. She kissed him, then wiped his cheek with her thumb to be sure she had not left a lipstick mark. It was a motherly, muscular gesture, but John Kelly seemed to enjoy it.

  ‘Thanks for helping us, sweetheart.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, Dad, thank Andrew Lowery He’s the DA. It was his call.’

  ‘But you gave him a nudge, I’m sure.’

  ‘Actually I told Lowery to send you right back where you came from.’

  ‘Now, why would you do a thing like that?’

  ‘Because I don’t want you screwing up my case.’

  ‘I thought it was Maine’s case,’ I said.

  ‘It is, but I’m coordinating the investigation here. Frankly, I don’t understand why you can’t just monitor the case from Maine, Chief Truman. But if you feel it’s important to be part of it . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Well, it’s none of my business. I suppose you have your reasons. Anyway, DA Lowery says I should extend
our full support, as a courtesy’

  ‘Imagine,’ Kelly grumbled, ‘my own daughter needing to be told—’

  ‘Dad, spare me. You’re supposed to be retired.’

  ‘I’m too young to retire.’

  ‘You’re sixty-seven years old.’

  ‘Sixty-six.’

  ‘It’s old enough.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’ She scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to her father.

  ‘Martin Gittens,’ he read. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘A cop. He’s been detailed to help you out, courtesy of Mr Lowery’

  ‘Very courteous, our Mr Lowery. What do you know about this Gittens?’

  ‘He’s a detective. He’s supposed to be wired up in Mission Flats. And he’s been calling me begging for a piece of this case. Other than that, not much.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘Dad, it’s like you always say: Trust everyone—’

  ‘Trust everyone but cut the cards. Good girl.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I interjected, ‘for helping.’

  Caroline leveled an index finger at me. ‘Chief Truman, so help me, if anything happens to my father . . .’ She didn’t feel constrained to fill me in as to the precise consequences.

  ‘Um, what if anything happens to me?’

  She ignored me. ‘One more thing. You two have to promise to share whatever you find with me. If you hold anything back, and I mean even the smallest detail, the arrangement is off. You’ll be on your own. That’s straight from Lowery.’

  ‘Of course,’ Kelly père assured.

  ‘Alright then.’ She kissed her father again and wiped his cheek again with the pad of her thumb. ‘You two make some team.’

  ‘Like Batman and Robin,’ John Kelly suggested.

  She sniffed and made that sardonic Elvis-smile. ‘Yah, right.’

  13

  The Grove Park housing project was a collection of six ugly, yellow-brick apartment buildings. They were arranged asymmetrically, like blocks dropped here and there by a careless giant.