“Do you know why, Eddie?”
“Sure.”
“Are you gonna tell me?”
“It’s like that Carmen in the corner,” the sand-colored man said. “She sees how free somebody is and that makes her feel how trapped she is, even if she don’t know it. She reach out for me, and I got a question.”
“What’s that?” Sovereign James asked his brother.
“ ‘Do you wanna get yourself free or get me caught in the trap you in?’ ”
“And what do you do, according to the answer she gives?”
“First,” Drum-Eddie James said, “I have to figure out if she’s lyin’.”
“About what?”
“That’s not the right question.”
“What is?” Sovereign James asked.
“The question is who she’s lyin’ to.”
“And who is that?”
“Either to me, herself, or both of us,” Eddie said, showing not the slightest bit of humor. “She might say she wanna get free and believe it but it’s still not true. She might be testin’ me, sayin’ she wants the trap, but really she wants me to pry her outta the situation she’s in. She might even be tellin’ me the truth, just not the way it sounds.”
“What does that mean?”
“She might wanna be free for the night and crawl back to her cage in the morning.”
“And when you figure it out,” Sovereign asked, “what do you do then?”
To Sovereign, Drum-Eddie’s smile was like the crack of dawn at the end of a stormy night.
“You might not be able to tell the difference from the outside,” Drum said. “You know it’s the human animal have all them questions and shit, but it’s the animal period that gets up in the bed.
“I do the same things but my intentions are different. If she’s lookin’ to be free I invite her down to Rio and mean it. If she wants to trap me I make the same invitation but never call back.”
“What about what you want, Eddie?”
“Me? I got everything I need, brother. Got it like the grippe.”
“And why are you here?”
“Just to see you, JJ. Just to see you.”
When Sovereign’s eyes met Drum-Eddie’s he wondered if they had ever looked at each other like that before: with love that was deeper than any words could accurately attend.
“I’ve missed you, Eddie.”
“I sent you a text that has all my permanent numbers. If you need me I’m always only half a second away.”
The bank robber got up and slapped his brother’s shoulder. He walked across the bar to where Carmen was waiting. When she stood Sovereign did too.
That night Sovereign rolled into a ball in the hotel bed. Toni curled around him, stroking his head and shoulders. He shivered now and then, causing the young woman to whisper, “Shhhh.”
“You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and think that maybe you missed something the day before?” he asked late into the night.
“Like what?” she asked.
“Maybe... maybe you said the wrong thing to somebody important, or maybe they said something important to you but you didn’t get it at the time.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “You feel like that?”
“Every morning lately I wake up I feel like I missed my whole goddamned life.”
“The prosecution would like to present one more witness, Your Honor, before turning the case over for judgment.”
“And who is this witness?”
“Lemuel Johnson.”
“What?” Toni cried out.
The judge didn’t ask for order. Toni’s outcry echoed her own surprise.
“He regained consciousness,” Sutter continued, “two days ago, and the doctors say that he is strong enough to make a statement.”
“Your Honor,” Lena Altuna nearly shouted. “The prosecution has presented their witnesses. We were not informed.”
There was a window behind the judge. The glass was opaque green. Sovereign thought about the haze of light illuminating the room while hiding its sources. He felt Toni grabbing his forearm. There was a moth fluttering in the upper right-hand corner of the window frame.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
“But, Ms. Altuna,” the judge was saying. “Mr. Johnson is the victim of the crime we’re judging here. He is the only witness, other than the defendants, who experienced the entire flow of events.”
“But he has an interest in keeping his role secret,” Altuna said. “And he might harbor anger at my client for fighting him.”
“I will try my best to keep an open mind, Counselor,” Judge Lowell said. “Mr. Sutter.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“When can you have Mr. Johnson in court?”
“This afternoon at two.”
“Then we are adjourned until two.”
“Maybe we should run,” Toni suggested at a tapioca tea bar in Chinatown. “You know Lem is gonna want to get some payback for you kickin’ his ass like that. And if they told him that we’re together he’ll wanna get me too.”
“There’s a cigar box in my suitcase in the closet at the hotel,” Sovereign replied. “I got about eighteen thousand dollars in there. You could take it and run. I’ll tell the court you got sick with fear or something.”
“Where you get that money from?”
“Remember when my brother came by the other day?”
“Yeah?”
“He told me that the government is off me, that I could go home whenever I want. I went straight to the bank and cleaned out one of my CDs.”
“Let’s take that money and run.”
“I can’t.”
“You gonna go back?”
“I have to.”
“Why? Why can’t you and me run together?”
“Because I’m not my brother.”
There was a plain walnut chair to the right of Judge Lowell’s makeshift bench. This seat was for witnesses. When the court had been reconvened, at two-oh-seven, the door opened and everyone looked.
Lemuel Johnson had no marks from the beating on his face but he’d lost at least twenty pounds and moved slowly, as if his joints were stiff.
“Oh no,” Toni whispered.
The youngish man limped, without help from the uniformed nurse who followed him, until he had reached the seat. He put out his left hand and steadied himself on the judge’s bench before lowering himself into the witness chair.
The nurse was ecru skinned and voluptuous, forty-something and stern.
Sovereign found that he approved of Lemuel’s guardian.
“State your name for the court,” Alva Sutter said to the final witness.
“Lemuel Fister Johnson.”
“Do you promise to tell the truth here today?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
Sovereign was taken by the use of the word promise. There was so much meaning to the word used; in this case it was like a child’s fearful request.
“Tell us what happened on the day of the attack,” Alva said.
“I met Toni when she was thirteen and I was twenty-four,” he said.
“I’m asking about the attack, Mr. Johnson,” Alva said.
“I’m tryin’ to get there,” Lemuel replied.
“Just the events as they occurred leading up to the attack.”
“Mr. Sutter,” Judge Lowell interrupted. “It seems to me that the witness is trying to give us a full picture of himself and the defendants.”
“But, Your Honor, we’re only concerned with the crime.”
“You may continue, Mr. Johnson,” Lowell said.