When the phone rang the first time he didn’t hear it at all.
He experienced the second bout of ringing as his brother and sister laughing and shouting, running through the sprinklers in the backyard. His mother was there and his father. There was a gray-brown mutt looking from a safe distance. This was a dog that Drum-Eddie had found on the beach and brought home.
Nathaniel — that was the dog’s name.
Silence.
Nothingness.
The third call again reminded him of children’s laughter and he woke up expecting to see them playing on the carpet next to his bed.
It was dark outside. The phone was ringing. He had to go to the toilet again.
He was not in federal custody.
Lurching upright, Sovereign went to the bathroom and returned to sit on the side of the bed. He was lost but not missing or absent. His brother was alive and his father the relative of snails and redwoods.
On the fourth call he picked up the phone midway through the second ring.
“Hello?”
“Mr. James.”
“Toni.” All the abstraction left his mind. Suddenly there was gravity and sound and light.
“Miss Altuna called and gave me your number. Where you been?”
As the words tumbled forth Sovereign realized with certainty that he was no longer the man he had been before the blindness. He told Toni Loam about his brother and mother, about his sister and her inability to experience love directly. He talked about the federal agents as if they were a gang rather than officials of the government, and about the young woman with the big legs and self-satisfied sneer.
“You lookin’ at other girls’ legs, huh?”
“Do you want to come over?”
The same driver who brought Sovereign to Greenwich Village from the Brooklyn courts picked him and Toni up the next morning. They were taken to a dirty brick building on Lafayette between Canal and Houston.
Lena met them at the entrance.
The lawyer led them past the first set of elevators and down a long, darkish hallway. There they came to a small lift that took them to the ninth floor.
Another dark hall brought them to a door. This opened into a rude room dominated by one large table faced by two smaller ones. Behind the long table sat a small woman with a wide face and brown hair. She wore a gray-and-brown dress suit with dull maroon shoes showing from under the table. Sitting at the table on her right were two men in business attire. The men looked up when Lena, Toni, and Sovereign entered.
To the left of the door they came through stood a uniformed guard, a black man with a big stomach and no discernible expression. Two more guards — a man and a woman, both white — stood behind the wide-faced woman at the long table.
Lena led her clients to the table on the small woman’s left.
“Good morning, Your Honor,” Lena said.
“Where is Miss Loam’s attorney?” the judge asked.
“We have agreed to have them tried together, Your Honor,” one of the men from the other table said.
“As you will, Mr. Sutter,” middle-aged Judge Lowell said. Turning to Sovereign she added, “I have allowed for this unusual meeting because of you, Mr. James. It seems that the federal government wants to whisk you away on the hope that you will lead them to your brother.”
Sovereign didn’t say anything, because Lowell hadn’t asked a question. Her eyes were hard and honed in on him.
“Do you know where your brother is?” she asked.
“No. No, I don’t.”
The judge stared a moment more and then said, “Okay, then. Mr. Sutter, you may begin.”
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. He stood up.
Sutter (Sovereign later learned that the chief prosecutor’s first name was Alva) stood up, revealing his tall, gaunt frame. He was a light-colored African American with eyes that might have had a little green to them.
“Mr. James and Miss Loam are charged with a crime that, for all intents and purposes, they have admitted to. Miss Loam brought Lemuel Johnson to Mr. James’s apartment so that Mr. James could exact revenge for Mr. Johnson’s earlier attack on him. James attacked Johnson in his living room but the victim ran. James chased his victim from the ninth floor to the front of his building, where he pummeled the younger man into a coma in front of more than a dozen witnesses. The charge, as you know, is attempted murder to be shared equally between the defendants.”
Sovereign studied Sutter’s profile as he sat down. The prosecutor seemed sure and a little self-satisfied. Sovereign thought that this was just the kind of young man he’d hire for a job at Techno-Sym.
“Ms. Altuna,” Judge Lowell requested.
“The facts in this case are not in question, Your Honor,” Lena said as she rose. “But the intentions of my clients are mere supposition on the behalf of the district attorney. Miss Loam misguidedly and under the sway of her former lover brought Mr. Johnson into Mr. James’s home, a home that she had free access to. Mr. James had just returned from an unscheduled doctor’s appointment. An appointment, I might add, that corroborated my client’s experience of hysterical blindness—”
“You’re claiming that Mr. James was blind at the time of the fight?” Judge Lowell said.
“Not neurologically but neurotically, yes, at least...” Altuna hesitated. “At least, he was blind at the onset of Johnson’s attack.”
“It’s hard for the court to recognize that a blind man of your client’s age and profession could do such damage to a healthy young man armed with a truncheon.”
“It is on this question that our case hinges,” Altuna said. “When Lemuel Johnson attacked Sovereign James, Toni Loam screamed. We have aural witnesses to that event. Hearing a woman whom he had great affection for cry out in such a manner brought Mr. James, literally, to his senses. His sight returned at the moment of greatest need. My client was under physical attack by Johnson and shocked by the return of his vision. In his confusion he lashed out at an enemy. And even though he overreacted, we maintain that he was not in control of his actions and should therefore be seen as innocent in the eyes of the law.”
Judge Lowell laced her hands, bringing the middle knuckle of her right index finger to her lips. From this pose she considered the case.
“The district attorney’s office,” piped up the second of the two prosecutors, “is willing to save time and expense by allowing summary judgment on the facts given. Attempted murder in the first degree seems a plausible verdict.”
“Ms. Altuna?” the judge asked.
“No,” Lena said. “We believe that the evidential discovery will bear out our claim. It is too much to ask the court, or anyone, to believe my clients’ claims on just their testimony. No. We need a full trial to prove our case.”
“I agree,” said the judge. “Mr. Atwell?”
The second prosecutor, a white man, said, “Yes, Your Honor?”
“Any requests about bail?”
“Seeing that the defendant, Mr. James, failed to appear at the first trial date, we believe that he should be remanded. We’ll accept a hundred thousand dollars’ bail on Miss Loam.”
“Mr. James was detained by federal authorities on suspicion, nothing else,” Altuna said. “And he was arrested at LaGuardia Airport on the day before his trial date. The only call he was allowed, he made to me, asking that I tell the court about his situation.”
“He left the state,” Alva Sutter said.
“No one told him not to,” Altuna replied. “A man is innocent until proven guilty.”