Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

“Be seated,” the judge proclaimed as he lowered into his broad-backed chair. John felt as if he could see a shimmering aura of importance between him and the judge.

“John,” Nina said. “John, sit down.”

She pulled at his sleeve and he relented, still gaping at the magistrate.

Halloran was glowering at a single sheet of paper that he held up to his face. The room behind the defendant’s table was filled with people come to see the trial of the murderous child grown up to be a college professor. Reporters had assailed him outside the courthouse but two big men who said that they were with his team shouldered them aside and brought him to the courtroom.

“Mr. Lars,” Halloran uttered.

“Yes, your honor,” the ADA replied rising from his chair.

“Is this for real?” he asked waving the sheet of paper next to his head.

John was tickled by the dialect-inflected question. He didn’t wonder about the paper or its intelligence; only the character of his judge.

“Yes, your honor,” ADA Lars apologized.

“The source has been verified and vetted?”

“My assistant took the deposition yesterday afternoon at four p.m., west coast time.”

“And before that the defendant confessed and accepted your offer of second-degree manslaughter?”

“Yes, your honor.”

The judge looked angry but John couldn’t tell if this was his normal expression.

“Cornelius Jones,” Halloran cried.

“Stand up, John,” Nina said.

He did so.

“Yes, Judge?”

“Did you kill Chapman Lorraine?”

The words, yes, your honor were on his tongue but his teeth were clenched shut. Service Tellman was in his mind, Service and Hong Li. He’d followed the rules from Parsonsville to Lower Manhattan; he’d confessed and allowed the courts and police and prison guards and convicts to have their way with his freedom. That was all over. Lorraine was dead, John Woman was alive, and the judge, no matter how magnificent, was no more master over him than the convict Andre had been.

“Mr. Jones,” Halloran rumbled.

“Yes, your honor?”

“Did you bludgeon Chapman Lorraine to death?”

“No, your honor.”

“No?”

John did not answer this question, because he had already done so. He could feel the guilt rising up and out of his body like morning mist under an unrelenting summer sun.

“Mr. Lars,” Halloran said.

“Your honor.”

“Do you intend to pursue the state’s case against this man?”

“Not at this time.”

“You’re dropping the charges?”

“We are.”

“Mr. Jones.”

“Sir,” John said to the judge.

“There’s something wrong here. Something stinks.”

“Is that a question, sir?”

“Don’t you get smug with me, young man. This is my courtroom.”

John thought that the halls of justice belonged to everyone but he did not voice this opinion.

“I’m going to launch an inquiry into this sudden confession,” the judge vowed. “I will see you in my court soon again.”

“France Bickman,” Nina said to John in a small café around the corner from the courthouse.

“What about him?”

“He confessed to the murder of Chapman Lorraine.”

“He just said it was him and they believed it?”

“He had physical knowledge of the murder scene and a motive.”

“What motive?”

“He’d been embezzling money from the ticket and the concession stands for many years. When Lorraine confronted him he killed him and hid the body to keep from going to prison.”

“But I ran away,” John argued. “Isn’t that some kind of proof?”

“You left New York years after Lorraine disappeared. That makes a good argument you had no knowledge of the crime.”

John was thinking about his early morning conversation with the man calling himself Service Tellman. Somehow the Platinum Path had rejiggered the facts in his murder trial.

“Are they going to prosecute France?” John asked Nina.

“No. He’s too old and feeble to be removed from the nursing home.”

“What about the mattress?”

“The one in the wall?”

“Yes.”

“Water damage erased any traces of DNA; also Bickman told the police that you visited him. He said that you told him about the crime being reported over the Internet and he confessed to you. He thought you told the police you committed the murder to protect an old man, the good friend of your father.”

“How did the police even know about France?”

“He called Lieutenant Van Dyne.”

“And so I’m free?”

“Any defense attorney could get this case overturned under these circumstances. With his knowledge, motive and confession Bickman is a perfectly sensible alternative explanation of the crime. There will always be reasonable doubt.”

John called the young law student, Hong Li, but got her answering service.

“Hey,” he said into the cell phone. “This is the confessed man-slaughterer you met on the train this morning. I guess we’ll never find out what I would think of prison because the judge and the prosecutor proved to themselves that I might not have done it. And who am I to argue with law?”

They were waiting for him in his mother’s apartment when he returned later that afternoon. He’d been walking for hours trying to understand how the study of historical deconstruction had come to rule his life. From Herman Jones to Service Tellman he had been reinterpreted until there was no truth possible.

“Hi, honey,” Lucia said to her son. She was sitting in her favorite chair looking out the window.

The man sitting next to her stood up and held out a hand.

“Congratulations,” Willie Pepperdine said.

“What are you doing here?”

Lucia stood up and said, “This is Filo Manetti, honey — my husband. I told you — we got married six years ago.”

There was no more room for shock or surprise in John Woman’s heart. Everything made sense and nothing did.

“When did this all start?” John asked Filo/Willie.

“All what?” Lucia asked.

“Why don’t we have a seat in this magnificent window?” Willie suggested.

“I’ll go make us some tea,” Lucia said. “You boys get to know each other.”

When his mother was gone John, CC, returned to the chair where he used to sit for hours entranced by her beauty and words.

“We aren’t inhuman,” Willie said. “When I met and fell in love with your mother I was mobbed up. I decided to break away because of her. I mean the government was after me but that was par for the course. Pretty soon after we went out west I was approached by Service Tellman. He told me that I’d been on their radar for years. They liked the way I worked with my people and their families. You know I’ve always been more businessman than thug, so when I broke with my crew the Path offered me a position. Just like they’re doing with you now.”

“But that’s because of you, right?”

“Partially. Your mother asked me to try to find you after your father died and you didn’t return home. I was able to trace your father’s credit cards. You were Anthony Summers by then, about to enter Yale. I didn’t tell your mother, because it seemed like you wanted a new life and we were all safer if that life remained a secret.

“It wasn’t until a few years later that I told Service about you. He read the papers you wrote and was very impressed with your knowledge and sophistication. That’s when the Path started monitoring you.

“I had convinced your mother that you’d faded into New York somewhere. When you were in your second year at NUSW I told her about the cable TV show and said that we’d figure out how to get you guys together.”