Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

Jack Valentine peered back through bare slits between black-and-blue swollen eyelids. “Sorry, Judge Archer.”

“I’ll bet you are.” The judge groaned and looked to the back of his courtroom, where young Valentine’s father stood, visibly nervous, twisting a Dallas Cowboys ball cap in his shaking hands.

Before the judge could ask the man to come stand alongside his son, the double doors behind Jack’s dad eased open, and a brawny man with a silver-and-black crew cut and a dark blue pin-striped suit stepped through.

“Can I help you, Counselor?” Judge Archer said to the sharp-dressed man who had entered his courtroom.

“I’d like to help the young man standing before your bench, Your Honor,” the lawyer said. “Pro bono.” Then he put out his hand to Harry Valentine and introduced himself. “Paul Cruz, Mr. Valentine. Do you mind if I represent your son? It would be a big favor to me and my daughter, and won’t cost you a dime.”

Jack’s dad smiled, and his face washed with relief.

“Why, yes!” Harry said, and shook Paul Cruz’s hand hard. “I mean, no! I, uh. We won’t mind at all! Please help us! He’s not a bad boy!”

Harry Valentine looked at the judge, then at his son. “Jackie, you don’t mind, do you?”

Jack Valentine looked with blurred vision at the man who had the build of a retired NFL linebacker and nodded his approval.

Judge Archer motioned both Harry Valentine and Paul Cruz to come forward and join their young thug at the bench, and gave El Paso Police Sergeant Freddy Montoya a look. Montoya nodded approval. Then the judge locked eyes with Alice Montoya, the police sergeant’s cousin, who had joined the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office six months ago, after graduating University of Texas at El Paso Law School and passing the Texas Bar.

Alice blinked at the judge, her face flushed red, at a complete loss of what to do.

“Tell you what, Alice,” Judge Archer said, bearing a small hint of a smile at the fledgling lawyer. “Just don’t say anything, and let me talk to these gentlemen.”

The judge leaned back in his chair and eyed the men and boy standing in front of him.

“What’s going on, Paul?” the judge asked. “Pro bono? I’m impressed. Defense business must pay well these days.”

“Did you watch this boy play football?” Cruz asked.

“My grandson, Ken Archer, plays quarterback for the Golden Thunderbirds, but you know that, Paul,” the judge said. “I’ve watched him connect many a pass to this young man. Jack Valentine is very likely the best tight end to ever play the game at Coronado High School. He’s a big reason we won the bi district championship. That’s why I’m out of sorts that he stands before me today. Second time in about a month!”

Paul Cruz nodded. He’d often seen the judge sitting under a blanket, first row of bleachers behind the barrier at the home benches, on the fifty-yard line.

Judge Archer scowled at Jack. “Master Valentine. You promised me! I threw out the last case of you brawling, and got the arrest record tossed, your seventeenth birthday and all. You promised me you’d walk the straight and narrow. Yet here you stand. Why, son?”

Jack Valentine looked at the scuffed toes on his cowboy boots, and tears ran out of his swollen-shut eyes.

“What in hell’s going on, Jack?” the judge blew up. “That Gomez lounge is a bloody bucket rod-and-gun club for every cholo outlaw on this side and the other side of the border. You just hate living? Is that it?”

“Your Honor,” the lawyer interrupted, his hand raised. “How much do you know about why Jack was in that bar?”

“Not one bloody word of it,” the judge fumed. “Sergeant Montoya pleaded to me to let young Valentine go last time because he and Harry here are old friends, the lad just turned seventeen the day of the fight, and he had no prior trouble. Freddy vouched for the boy. Now look.”

“May we go off the record for ten minutes?” Paul Cruz asked. “Talk as friends and concerned fathers.”

“Why not. Consider this a recess,” Archer told the clerk and stenographer. “Doris, you and Cynthia take a coffee break. Check back in twenty minutes.”

“My daughter, Alicia, and young Mr. Valentine have a relationship,” Cruz began.

“I thought that pretty little girl named Liberty something or other, the cheerleader, was your girlfriend, Jack?” Harry Valentine blurted at his son.

“That’s her nickname, Pop,” Jack mumbled. “Her Christian name is Melita Alicia Cruz, but everybody calls her Liberty.”

Paul Cruz smiled. “When Alicia was a little girl, every Halloween, instead of goblins or ghouls, she wanted to dress up as the Statue of Liberty. Little Miss Liberty, her mom and I called her. Then it became Liberty and stuck.”

“Well, that’s a nice daughter you have there, Mr. Cruz,” Harry Valentine offered.

“Call me Paul, Harry, please.” Cruz smiled.

“I know Liberty,” Judge Archer said. “She applied to work here this summer as a student clerk. Headstrong girl, that one. Smart, too. Up to a point,” and the judge glared at Jack Valentine when he said it.

“Do you recall the grisly story last year, about the boy from Coronado High School getting dragged to death behind a car for miles down a country road, and his body dumped just across the border, out by Anthony, New Mexico?” Paul Cruz said.

“Who can forget it?” Judge Archer sighed. “Gang thing, wasn’t it? The kid was supposedly gay and had just started telling people?”

“Barrio-Azteca gang we think did it, but nothing solid on any of them to make an arrest,” Freddy Montoya offered. “New Mexico police have jurisdiction since the body wound up across the state line, and apparently the murder occurred over there. Abduction here, murder there, FBI supposedly looking into it. Hate crime and all.”

“Case has gone nowhere, Judge,” Cruz interjected. “Poor kid from El Paso. Just another dead Mexican. Who cares? Right? Plus, he had come out gay right after he graduated from high school, and nobody wants anything to do with that can of worms. Why stir up trouble? Kick it under the rug with all the other poor dead Mexicans.”

The lawyer paused, letting the sense of injustice set in, then asked Judge Archer, “Do you recall the boy who snapped center for the Golden Thunderbirds last year?”

“Sure. A big boy, as I recall. Stood about six-four and weighed in at two-thirty or so,” the judge answered. “Gonzalez, I think?”

“Marco Gonzalez,” Cruz said, head nodding.

“Don’t tell me that’s the same boy dragged to death?” The judge sighed.

“One and the same.” Cruz kept nodding. “Not a big star. El Paso Times story focused on gang violence and the gruesome nature of the murder and barely mentioned Marco had played football or even graduated from Coronado High School.”

“Judge,” Harry Valentine interrupted, “Marco’s dad, Herman, works in my heating and air-conditioning business. Been with me from the start. That boy and Jack grew up together, hanging out in my shop, learning to bend sheet metal, machine, and fabricate. He was Jack’s best friend.”

“So after a year of the police doing nothing about the murder, you went hunting the killers?” the judge asked Jack.

The boy nodded yes. “I loved Marco like a brother.” Tears flooded Jack’s eyes, and he wept. “He was my brother, Judge. Same as, anyway. Besides, Marco never hurt anybody, not ever. He was shy all the time, embarrassed real easy. Soft-hearted, gentle.”

“A darned good center on the football field, too, no matter what the newspapers didn’t say,” Harry Valentine added. “And a good boy. Darned good boy! Gay or not. Besides, I don’t think he ever messed around with other boys. He was too shy, right, Jack?”