Tim Green: Exact Revenge

Against the wishes of the man hired to defend me, I had insisted on fast-tracking my trial. Emil Rossi, my lawyer, was old school and he believed in badgering the prosecution on every point. But I was an innocent man, anxious to have my life back. Now we were at the end. Tomorrow morning, both sides would make their closing arguments and then the jury would decide.

My father asked me to join him for a beer at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, a biker place that regular people go to. I could smell the slow-cooked ribs and chicken as I crossed the street and edged between two Harleys. Inside, a waitress in black T-shirt and push-up bra with a biker attitude asked me what did I want. Normally you had to wait an hour for a table, but it was just four o’clock and the place was half empty.

“All set,” I told her, unfazed and searching.

My father and Black Turtle looked ridiculous in their poorly cut blue suits, lizardskin boots, and short wide ties. I had seen them in the courtroom, but only nodded. It was like they knew what I was thinking, because as I passed the bar, they wrestled off the ties, shed their jackets, and began rolling up their sleeves. In front of them were three longneck bottles of Bud.

I sat down and raised my bottle before taking a long swig.

“What did you think?” I asked. A question that would have been unthinkable before Emil had begun to build me up. After three days of listening to Villay, the jury must have had a pretty bad impression of who I was and what I had done. Things were much better now.

“Good people,” Black Turtle said with a nod curt enough to toss his ponytail briefly into sight.

He meant the impressive list of character witnesses. Today Emil had conducted a parade of university professors, CEOs, and the director of the Red Cross office where I had been a volunteer since age fourteen. We could have had the congressman if we wanted. Bob Rangle magnanimously stepped forward to offer his help. For Rangle, it was a politically dangerous move. Emil voted to accept, but I flatly rejected it without knowing why.

My father finished his beer and leaned forward after wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. At the same time, he reached down under the table, producing a worn leather satchel that he thumped down next to the ketchup.

“You’re gonna take this,” he said in a whisper, “and go.”

“Dad?” I said with a short laugh.

“Run. Scat. Skee-daddle,” he said.

“They’ve got to prove the elements of the crime, Dad. The burden is on them and they haven’t done it.”

“This isn’t final exams, goddamn it,” he said. His pupils were wide and nearly swimming. His lips trembling beneath the wavy bristles of his gray mustache. His long gray hair was slicked straight back. “Black Turtle has some Mohawk friends up at the border who can get you across. We got you a Canadian passport and a ticket to Zurich. They don’t have no extradition from there.”

It was quiet among the three of us for a while. My head was buzzing and I was aware of the clashing sounds of Metallica in the background.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

My father’s face wrinkled and he quickly swiped at his eyes. His voice was broken.

“You know how many people died in jail that didn’t?” he said. “You gotta run.”

“Weren’t you at the same trial I was today?” I said.

“That’s just people talking. People that like you. I’m tellin’ you,” my father said, his leathery face reddening. “I’m not asking. There’s almost seven thousand dollars in here.”

“What did you sell, Dad?”

“That don’t matter,” he said. “You’re all I got. Everything…”

I reached across the table and grabbed hold of his hand. My father made a fist and I put my other hand on top too. My eyes were wet. I felt a flood of emotions inside me that I didn’t want coming out. We would have time to look back on it all. Soon. We could laugh and cry when it was all behind us.

“I know, Dad,” I said. “They’re gonna acquit me. He hasn’t proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“What the fuck does reasonable mean?” he said. “They got her blood. They got that knife. You see things the way you want to.”

“That’s what works, Dad,” I said. “Except for this: Look at me… look at my life.”

“This is everything and you don’t even see it. You got a charge in your hand. It’s gonna kill you and it’s gonna kill me too.”

“Black Turtle,” I said, “talk to him.”

But Black Turtle directed his blank look at me, not my father.

“I got two good men,” he said, signaling to the waitress. “We’ll get you across that river. This white court is a bad thing.”

“Dad,” I said, looking deep into his eyes. “I put up a two-million-dollar bond and I gave my word…”

My father looked back at me for a long time until the waitress brought three more bottles of beer.

He finally shook his head and said, “It don’t matter.”

“That’s all we got, remember?” I said, my voice frantic. “Your words.”

“I don’t give a damn ,” he said, banging his fist on the table, rattling the bottles and drawing attention to us.

“Don’t you see the way that fat guy in the front row looks at you?” he said, hissing, and spraying flecks of white spit across the checkered tablecloth. “Or that scrawny flat-headed schoolteacher? They don’t believe you. They’re gonna get you. I see it. So does Black Turtle, goddamn it. It’s not just me. That jury is people whose cards have always been bad and all you ever did was break the house. They never got a chance to do what you’ve done or be what you are. They can’t wait to see you lose.”

“It’s not about that, Dad,” I said. “Did you see them when the Red Cross lady talked about me saving that little girl? The award they gave me?”

“You goddamned fool,” he said. He had my wrist now and he was squeezing it to the bone. “That made it even worse. You just don’t see it.

“And now you’re holding aces and eights,” he said. Card players’ talk for a dead man’s hand. “And you got to fold. I don’t care how big the pot is. You take this money and you get your ass across that river. Black Turtle’s takin’ you right now. I’m walking out that door and you’re going with him, son.”

My father stood up and put his hand on my cheek. A tear hung from the corner of his mustache, glimmered, and fell to the floor.

“I’m walking out of here,” he said again in a husky voice. He turned his face and wiped it on his shoulder. “You go now, boy. I love you. I’ll come and see you over there when this all settles down and you’ll have it all again. The royal flush. Now you go.”

I closed my eyes and he let his hand fall from my face. When I opened them, all I saw was his bowed legs and his broad back, hunched over and disappearing through the door, swallowed up by the sunlight. Black Turtle’s eyes darted from the door to me.

“I’m not going,” I said, looking down and pushing the leather satchel toward him.

“I know you ain’t,” he said in his low rumbling voice. “You’re too much like him.”

I DIALED LEXIS from a pay phone and told her I was waiting on the street. I saw the green door in the alley beyond the Tusk open and she appeared with a small wave. There were no tables on the sidewalk yet, even though it was warm enough so that people would have used them. I brushed away the thought of Rangle and Frank and Russo and the day I could have saved myself by simply staying and drinking with them.

My throat felt tight until I saw the glint of the diamond ring on Lexis’s hand. That ring had gone off and on several times over these past months. Rocky times where she talked more and more about taking just one drink to dull the edge. Did she believe me? Didn’t she? Finally she did.