James Burke - Cimarron Rose

'For some reason, you don't look all broken up.'

'You're still not hearing me. When Moon gets word of this, and he will, who's he going to come after?'

'Well, you never know what's down at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box, Marvin.'

He shook his head and walked away, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the seersucker coat he held in his right hand, a good man who would forever serve causes that were not his own.

Lucas took the oath just after one o'clock. He sat very still in the witness chair, his hands splayed on his thighs, his face damp in the humidity. His throat was already streaked with color, as though it had been rouged.

'When you were first arrested, you said you hardly knew Roseanne Hazlitt. You said you didn't even know her last name. That was a lie, wasn't it?' I said.

'Yes, sir.'

'Why would you lie like that?'

'Cause she told me she was pregnant. 'Cause y'all would think it was me hurt her if y'all knew it was my baby…' He took a breath. 'I lied 'cause I didn't have no guts.'

'How'd you feel about Roseanne?'

'She was a good person. She couldn't hep the things she done, I mean, with drinking and that kind of stuff.'

'Did she tell you who might have made her pregnant?'

'Objection, hearsay,' Marvin said.

'I'll allow it,' the judge said.

'Some older guy she was seeing in town. I didn't ask. It didn't make me feel too good.'

'You thought the baby could be yours, didn't you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why?'

'Sir?'

'Why did you think it could be yours?'

'Cause we was making love.'

'That's not what I'm asking you, Lucas. Did you use a condom?'

He rubbed his palms on his trousers and looked at the judge.

'Answer the question, please,' she said.

'No, sir, we didn't use none,' Lucas said.

'That sounds dumb to me. Why not?'

'Objection, your honor. He's badgering and cross-examining his own client,' Marvin Pomroy said.

'Approach,' the judge said. She took off her black-framed glasses and pushed aside the microphone. 'What are you doing, Mr Holland?' she said.

'I'm going to prove my client is psychologically incapable of having committed the crime,' I replied.

'Psychologically incapable? Wonderful. Your honor, he's not only appointed himself the repository of Freudian thought, he's psychoanalyzing someone who was drunk,' Marvin said.

'Mr Holland?' the judge said.

'My client has taken the stand of his own volition, your honor. The rest of his life is at stake here. How can justice possibly be harmed by the questions I've asked?'

'Mr Pomroy?' she said.

'I think he's turning this trial into a snake-oil show.'

'I caution you, sir,' she said.

'Mr Holland says he means no harm. Neither does a skunk wandering into a church house,' Marvin said.

'Your objection is noted and overruled. Mr Holland, I'm giving you some unusual latitude here, but don't abuse it. Step back.'

'Your honor-' Marvin said.

'Take a seat, Mr Pomroy, and stay in it for a while, please,' she said.

I walked to the right of the witness stand, so the jury would look into Lucas's face when he spoke.

'Let's forget that stuff about condoms, Lucas. What would you have done if Roseanne had been carrying your child?' I said.

'I wouldn't have done nothing.'

'Would you have asked her to get an abortion?'

'No, sir.'

'Why not?'

'Cause it would have been our baby.'

'A baby with no father? You'd just let her rear it on her own?'

'That's not what I meant.'

'What did you mean?'

'I figured we'd get married,' he said.

'You have a flop in the hay, then suddenly you want to be a father and a married man? Who you kidding, Lucas?'

'I told you the truth,' Lucas said.

'I don't believe you.'

'I wouldn't let no kid of mine grow up without a last name. I don't care what you believe.'

'Why all this moral righteousness about fatherhood? It's a little hard for me to swallow.'

'Your honor-' Marvin said.

But the judge made a placating gesture with her hand and didn't take her eyes off my face.

'Cause I know what it's like,' Lucas said.

'To be like what? You're not making sense.'

'Not to have a father.' His breath was coming hard in his throat now, his cheeks blooming with color.

'Vernon Smothers is not your father?'

Lucas's shoulders were bent, his head tilted sideways, his eyes pink with broken veins, glimmering with water, riveted on mine.

'My real father never give me his damn name. You know what I'm talking about, too,' he said.

'Your honor, I object,' Marvin said.

'Mr Holland-' the judge said.

'Who is your father?'

'I ain't got one.'

'Say his name.'

'You are! Except you'd never admit it! 'Cause you slept with my mother and let somebody pick up after you. That's what you done. You think I'd do that to my own kid?'

Then he started to cry, his face in his hands, his back shaking.

Judge Judy Bonham leaned her chin on her hand and let out her breath.

'Take your client down from the stand, Mr Holland, then report to my chambers,' she said.

Marvin leaned back in his chair, flipped a pencil in the air, and watched it roll off the table onto the floor. chapter thirty-three

It went to the jury late that afternoon. I stood at my office window and looked out at the square, at the trusties from the jail scraping mud out of the gutters, the scrolled neon on the Rialto theater, the trees puffing with wind on the courthouse lawn, all in their proper place, the presummer golden light of the late sun on the clock's face, as though the events of the last few days had no significance and had ended with a whisper.

Then Darl Vanzandt came out of a side street on a chopped-down chromed Harley motorcycle, wearing shades and bat-wing chaps, his truncated body stretching back on his arms each time he gunned a dirty blast of air through his exhaust pipe.

He drove around and around the square, mindlessly, with no apparent purpose, causing pedestrians to step back on the curb, his metal-sheathed heel scotching the pavement when he cornered his bike, his straight exhaust echoing off the buildings like an insult.

Then he turned into the shade of a narrow street and opened up the throttle, his tan shoulders swelling with blood and power, blowing newspapers and a cluster of Mexican children out of his path.

The phone rang on my desk.

'We'll probably fly in there this weekend. You going to be around?' the voice said.

'Mary Beth?'

'I'm in Houston with a task force. Brian is out of the picture. We're about to pull the string on some individuals in your area.'

'Let me know what I can do.'

'I don't think you quite understand, Billy Bob. The greaseball drug agent, Felix Ringo? He's gone apeshit. We get the impression you put some glass in Garland Moon's breakfast food.'

'So what?'

'So Ringo is part of a bigger story than the town of Deaf Smith.'

'Bad guy to break bread with.'

'Yeah? Well, as FDR once said of Somoza, "He might be a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch."'

'I never found a lot of humor in that story.'

'No, you wouldn't.'

I waited for her to say something else but she didn't. 'Why'd you call?' I asked.

'I don't know, Billy Bob. I really don't.'

I heard her lower the receiver into the cradle. I took the phone away from my ear and then put it to my ear again, the dial tone buzzing against my skin, as though somehow that would restore the connection. I stared at the shadows on the courthouse tower; they had the deep purple hue of a stone bruise, the kind that goes through the muscle into the bone.

I went home and cooked a steak in the backyard. I ate on the back porch, then sat at my desk in the library with Great-grandpa Sam's journal opened under the desk lamp and tried to read. L.Q. Navarro sat in the burgundy chair in the corner, twirling his gold pocket watch on its chain.