While Justice Sleeps

by Stacey Abrams

  “Don’t lawyers practice the law?”

  “When we stumble, no one dies.” His hand trembled as he flipped defiantly through the musty pages of Faust and knew he had lied. “Doctors are nothing but cranks and convicts roaming the earth, telling lies to the healthy. Gathering corpses for their experiments.”

  Bushy eyebrows, twin shocks of alabaster against bronzed skin, lifted and lowered in rage. “But then, that’s not much better than this new crop of lawyers roaming the Court. A generation laid to waste by the putrescence of their own thoughts. Not an incisive mind among them. Computer-addled miscreants who’d rather be told the answer than investigate. Can barely find one smart enough to fetch my coffee.”

  “I thought you liked Mr. Brewer and Ms. Keene,” Jamie reminded him, standing at his elbow. His rant slid into a cough, and soon would warble off into mutterings. To urge the sequence along, she poked: “Just yesterday, you told me Ms. Keene was a bright young scholar worth watching.”

  “I said no such thing!” He levered himself into a fighting stance and spat, “Don’t tell me I’ve said things I didn’t say. Especially about persons whom you are ill-equipped to hold small talk with, let alone discuss their relative cerebral merit, Nurse Lewis.” He sneered her title and clutched her arm, desperately afraid that he had indeed paid the glowing compliment about one of his clerks.

  Too often, these days, he could not remember his own words from moment to moment. Or from afternoon to night.

  Wynn glanced up to find the nurse watching him, checking him for signs of dementia or the coming of death. Had he finished his sentence? How long had he been silent? “Stop staring at me!” he snapped and tightened his hold on her muscular arm.

  Jamie obliged and looked away before he could see her worry. His lapses were coming more frequently now. One day, the lapse would freeze in time. She’d seen it once before. Boursin’s syndrome was the name of the disease, and she could read its trek in Justice Wynn’s panicked eyes. Gently, she probed, “What were we discussing, Justice?”

  “Why? So you can report me to the president or whatever goon sent you to spy on me?” He snorted derisively. “Did I go too far at the graduation? Have they told you to kill me?”

  The nurse blanched. “Sir?”

  “Of course you’re spying on me,” he told her gruffly. “I may be paranoid and dying, but I am not stupid.”

  “You believe I would kill you?”

  “Nothing so bold and direct. You simply write down your observations and pass them along, in violation of medical privilege, building their case against me.”

  “Sir—”

  “I assume they make you report on my impending demise on a regular basis. Probably have you reading my papers at night, snapping photos so they know what I’m doing. Would love to have you tape me, but their surveillance can’t get inside. That interloper in the White House is afraid I’m going to crush his dreams, and they sent you to keep tabs on me. My speech today must have him cursing my name.”

  Her eyes widened. “I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” he barked. “For God’s sake, be the last exemplar of honesty left in this house.” A cough rattled through him, and he bowed his head as his lungs struggled for air. “How did they turn you? A bribe or a threat? Did they use your husband?”

  The flush turned pale and the nurse’s head hung slightly. “Thomas is in trouble again. They’re considering arresting him for some scam. He swears he didn’t do it,” she whispered. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You had a choice, Nurse Lewis,” he corrected tersely. “You simply chose the living over the dead.”

  “They want to know if you can do your job, sir. If you still have the capacity to function. That tantrum at the commencement didn’t help.”

  “That was no tantrum, you silly cow! It was strategy. It’s all strategy. Opening move of the King’s Gambit! Every breath is a movement toward the endgame.” His eyes widened, and he shook his fist. “Did you tell them about my research? That I know what happened?”

  Jamie frowned in genuine confusion. “Research? For the Court?”

  “Of course for the Court! Why else would they have you here? I am a threat to national security, but one they can’t prove without admitting what they’ve done. So the White House trespasser sends in his carrier pigeons to watch me like a hawk. I know their secret!”

  “Justice, you’re not making sense. Please, sit down.”

  “I won’t sit, and I won’t be silenced!” The bellow carried an edge of hysteria. He thought again about his estranged son. “They can’t kill my boy with their lies!”

  “No one is trying to kill Jared,” Jamie soothed, her hand stroking his stiffened back. “Please, Justice, calm down.”

  “It’s a prisoner’s dilemma,” he whispered as his voice shook. “My son’s life for their defeat. But I’ve outsmarted them. Lasker-Bauer, which they will never suspect.”

  “Lask Bauer? Who is he?”

  “Not he, you simpleton. In the middle game, both bishops will die to save him. To save the endgame.”

  “Who are the bishops?” Jamie frowned in confusion and gripped his shoulder. “Justice Wynn, who am I?”

  “Leave me be!”

  Jamie leaned closer and demanded, “Who am I?”

  His eyes snapped to hers, his mind clearing. He snarled, “Someone I cannot trust. I can’t trust anyone anymore.”

  “I’m here to help you.”

  “Liar. You’re telling them I’m crazy. That I’m infirm. I am still strong, madam. Stronger than he is.” Still, agitation knotted his belly. If the call came on the right day, a day when he’d forgotten his plan, he might accept their demands and ruin everything he’d so carefully plotted.

  Not yet. By God, not yet. Forcing his once-agile mind to focus, Justice Wynn summoned the thread of his conversation with Nurse Lewis. “Stop staring at me.”

  “What were we talking about?”

  “Before you admitted your perfidy, we were discussing the intellectual capacity of my law clerks, and I made a reference to a strategy beyond your grasp. And for the record, Ms. Keene is no better and no worse than the rest of her kind. Her sole differentiation is the glimmer of potential she tries to hide. Otherwise, she is as bright as one can expect given the utter absence of scholarship among her tutors.”

  Jamie closed plump, steady fingers around Justice Wynn’s upper arm and steered him to the open door. “I thought she went to Yale? Isn’t that a good school?”

  “A cesspool, just like Harvard, Stanford, or any other bastion of education in this end of days. A sea of sloppy thinking posing as legal education.” He stumbled and caught himself on the hallway wall. “No wonder lawyers want strict construction of the Constitution. Hell, that way, it’s already written down for their feeble minds.”

  At the staircase, Jamie nudged him to the left. Wynn halted beneath a framed photo displaying a sweep of glacier, the blue vibrant and grand. Remembering their earlier exchange, he shook his head. “Knowing the law isn’t about the school. It’s about the mind. The heart. About understanding what the law intends as much as reading beneath what it says. Knowing how to find one’s way to the truth.” He breathed deep, resting more of his weight on Jamie’s sturdy frame, confident she’d hold.

  He lifted his eyes to meet hers. Staring intently, he demanded, “Do you like Avery?”

  She nodded hesitantly. “She’s impressive. Well-spoken.”

  “That’s all you can say?”

  With a shrug, Jamie countered, “Well, she has a bit of an attitude, if you ask me. Tough. Not like that charming Mr. Brewer. He’s going places. I can tell.”

  “Brewer will build shallow empires,” Wynn snorted. “But Ms. Keene is a smart girl. Very smart. A bit preoccupied with proving herself, but she’s got a brain that she occasionally puts to use
. Could be brilliant if she were a more precise thinker.”

  “More precise?”

  “Precise, Nurse. A condition you have yet to stumble into.” Forcing his spine erect, he yanked his hand free. “I’m not an invalid. I can take myself to bed. Get me those pills of poison they’ve told you to foist upon me.”

  “Yes, sir.” She propped open the bedroom door and waited as he lumbered through. “Why don’t you slip into your pajamas, and I’ll bring your medication in two shakes?”

  “Don’t condescend to me, woman. I’m dying, not senile. I can hear your feeble attempts at patronization before they pass your lips.”

  “I’ve laid the black pajamas on the bed. Do you need any help?”

  “Only if it means I get a replacement for you.” Wynn glared at her retreating form. “Bring me a goddamned whiskey with my death pills.”

  * * *

  —

  Eleven o’clock arrived before the private nurse crept into his room and discovered the open, vacant gaze, felt the reedy pulse that slouched through veins constricted by disease. She knelt beside him and winced as something bit into her flesh. Shifting her knee, she reached for the lamp with one hand and for the foreign object with the other. Her fingers closed over a pill bottle top that had fallen to the carpet. Raising it to the light, she saw the colored stripe she’d placed there herself and gasped. She reached under the bed, searching frantically for the bottle she knew she’d find.

  The plastic bottle knocked against her hand and she drew it out, the label confirming her worst fears. He’d taken pills prescribed for the seizures that occasionally convulsed his limbs. Alone, the medication was dangerous, but when combined with his other meds and alcohol, the dose could be lethal. She groped under the bed, scooping up fallen pills, but she wouldn’t know how many were missing until she checked her charts.

  But the evidence was clear. Justice Wynn had tried to kill himself.

  Guilt clutched at her throat, forcing her eyes to the man she’d come to respect, even like, despite his fiery temperament. The promise of freedom and stability for her husband, Thomas, funded by the U.S. government, had seemed adequate justification for betrayal when she had accepted the post and her instructions. Become caretaker for a powerful but sick old man whose illness was slowly rendering him a security risk. Monitor his writings, report on his status weekly, and act when instructed. But that had been before she knew Howard Wynn.

  Now her hands clenched around the disposable cell phone.

  The number she was supposed to call, once she had confirmation that he was near death, had been drilled into her. A call, once made, that would guarantee he never awoke. She hesitated, unwilling to be the one to betray him as he suspected, but she told herself it was done now. Too late to undo the bargain she’d made. First, though, she’d check and be sure.

  Pressing her stethoscope to his lungs, she heard labored breath sounds. The plastic cuff around his leaden arm registered a low blood pressure. She flicked the pen light with practiced care. Minimal response to light. In short order, she ran each test that would confirm his imminent death.

  The whispered words caught her by surprise.

  “She has to finish it. For him.”

  Instruments tumbled to the carpet, and she knelt again, this time in shock. “Justice Wynn?”

  A feeble hand jerked up and seized her sleeve. “I’m not dead. Though you can try.”

  “I didn’t want to—” Her fingers closed over the cold, trembling ones on her arm. “You took pills—”

  “No time for excuses.” A hacking cough shook through him. “Avery has to save us. Swear it!”

  “Let me call the ambulance,” she whispered, fumbling. “I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s too late for apologies,” he wheezed as his eyes flickered. “Promise me. You’ll deliver a message. Just in case. Swear it.”

  Too shocked to object, she responded, “I swear.”

  “Tell her…tell her to look to the East for answers. Look to the river. In between. Look in the square. Lask. Bauer. Forgive me.”

  “Justice? I don’t understand.” Frantically, Jamie leaned closer. “Who is Mr. Bauer?”

  “Tell Avery. East. River.” He gasped then, choking on a bitter gulp of air. “Between. Square. Forgive me.”

  Jamie shook his shoulders, trying to rouse him once more, to make sense of what she’d heard. But the irises stared out blankly into the tepid light, unresponsive. She moved his hand back to the bed.

  “No. No,” she muttered aloud. “They won’t make me kill you.” She lifted the bedside phone and punched the speed dial assigned for such a moment.

  “U.S. Marshals. What’s your emergency?”

  “Justice Howard Wynn is unconscious. He needs immediate medical attention.”

  “Identify yourself.”

  “Nurse Jamie Lewis,” she answered tersely. “Now send an ambulance. He’s dying.”

  “Please stay on the line.”

  Once she was sure the ambulance was en route, she reached for the other phone and dialed the man she’d never met. She waited mere seconds for a connection.

  “Is it done?”

  “I think he took an overdose.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Maybe.” She hesitated. “Pulse is weak, and he’s in and out of consciousness. He’s near death.”

  “Do nothing. I will arrive in twenty minutes.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t do what?”

  “I can’t do nothing. It’s not right.”

  A long silence, then: “Leave the house, Nurse Lewis. At once.”

  “I said I can’t. An ambulance is on the way,” Jamie confessed. “I had no choice.”

  “This is a national security matter. You were told not to contact anyone except for me. Not to take heroic measures to prolong his life. Did you misunderstand?”

  “No. But I had to help him. He needs a doctor.”

  The admission of the former Army nurse told the man on the line that her usefulness was at an end. “Understood.”

  Nonplussed by the response, she asked, “What happens now?”

  “Take him to the hospital, and then you are relieved of duty. You’ll receive your payment tomorrow.” The line disconnected.

  Jamie stared at the phone. She was free? Relief snaked through her, and her knees gave way. She sank onto the bed, her hip against the limp hand that had grabbed her only minutes ago.

  A dying man had made a request of her. A last request. Her eyes fell on Justice Wynn, a man who’d served his country well. All he’d asked in his last moments of lucidity was for her to deliver a message. Save us.

  Smoothing down the wrinkles in her uniform, Jamie dialed the cell phone again. In for a penny…

  This time, it was the number she’d learned after months in his office. The rings gave way to a short greeting and then a tone. Jamie repeated the message the dying man had offered. She spoke quickly, her eyes on his. Then she finished: “Avery, his last words were Forgive me.”

  ONE

  Sirens shrilled outside the dingy casement window. The high whines seeped in, piercing sleep with pinpricks of sound. Avery Keene rolled to her side and tugged the lumpy pillow over her head. She continued to drift along the Danube, serenaded by the lead singer of some innocuous boy band clad only in his Calvin Klein finest. The sounds jangled louder, transforming into the insistent chime of a phone ring. Avery flung out a searching hand and fumbled blindly for the cell phone. Green eyes shut tight, she grabbed the device.

  “What?”

  “Avery, baby.” A rasping cough. A sullen giggle. “It’s Momma.”

  The sirens dropped away, leaving a more jarring reality. Wearily, Avery slid up to lean against the wall, braced against a raft of pillows. She hadn’t been able to jus
tify the expense of a headboard yet. One more year. Peeling open tired lids, she tracked the neon flickers against rain-spattered glass. “Rita. Where are you?”

  Another giggle. “Adams Monathalan.”

  “Adams Morgan?” With her free hand, she shoved the heavy fall of black away from a smooth, caramel-toned forehead, the kinky-curly mass tumbling down bare shoulders squared with tension. Sleep cleared quickly, and she checked the bedside clock. Nearly three on Sunday, no, Monday morning. Figured. Nothing good would be happening for her mother in the Adams Morgan neighborhood at this time of night. After the well-to-do retired to their neat row houses, the clubs spewed out partyers looking for hotter action. “Are you in Adams Morgan, Rita?”

  Rita Keene harrumphed. “Absolutely. I said so. Adams Morahan.”

  Recognizing the rise of belligerence, Avery spoke quickly, tightly. “Are you in jail?”

  “Won’t be if you come and give this cutie pie some money.”

  Cutie pie? Brows furrowed, Avery puzzled over the statement. If Rita was in jail, arraignment wouldn’t come until morning. Sunday-night busts had to wait until the judges arrived for Monday-morning calls. But just in case, she asked, “They’ve set your bail? Already?”

  A sudden shout forced Rita to raise her voice. “No bail, baby. No jail. Friend’s house. He’s a good friend. I just need to settle up. Can you come by?”

  “I’ve told you before, Rita. No more.” For God’s sake, no more.

  There was momentary silence. “I’m not getting wasted. I promise. But I have to be good for my word,” her mother wheedled. “I know you can spare a hundred dollars for your mother? That’s all I’m asking. If not, he might get mad.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Won’t,” Rita corrected. “Stuck-up bitch. Too good to help your mother out of a jam.” The cajoling tone slid into a string of expletives.

  “Rita.” Avery had heard it all before, and she silently recited the Al-Anon mantra, but serenity was a slippery commodity when your mother was holed up in a crack house cursing your birth like a drunken sailor. Hearing a break in the rant, she asked quietly, “Give me an address, and I’ll pick you up.” Hell, she was going to get only four more hours of sleep anyway. Might as well kick off the week with the great whirligig of fun that was her mother. “Momma, where are you?”