Delusion by Peter Abrahams Page B

said.
    “No cuffs. He can wear street clothes, but go through them first. Two court officers behind him at all times.” The chief turned to Susannah.
    “Good enough?” he said.
    “Thanks,” Susannah said.
    “It’s discretionary, as you say,” the chief said. “Anything else?”
    “I’d like a few minutes alone with my client.”
    “Stay as long as you want,” the chief said, “but a court officer is here at all times.”
    Susannah gave the chief a long look but didn’t argue. Everyone except one uniformed man went away. The uniformed man sat on a stool in the corner. Susannah approached the cell.
    “Can’t be in contact range with the prisoner,” the guard said.
    Susannah stopped about three feet from the bars.
    “How are you, Mr. DuPree?”
    “Um,” said Pirate. “You know.”
    “You must have a lot of questions.”
    There was always that one question: Why did God pick on Job in the first place? But other than that, Pirate couldn’t think of any.
    “About the hearing, for example?” Susannah said.
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    PETER ABRAHAMS
    “Yeah, the hearing,” said Pirate.
    “First, I don’t want you to be nervous.”
    “I’m not,” Pirate said, which wasn’t true: thoughts about Esteban Malvi and the Ocho Cincos kept coming, unstoppable.
    “Good,” she said. “You won’t be required to say a word. I’ll be sitting with you the whole time. As for what to expect, there’s no telling.
    My customary advice in these situations is to expect the worst.”
    “No problem,” said Pirate.
    Susannah gazed at him for a moment, then went on, but suddenly distracted again by the beauty of her skin, so soft and glowing, he missed most of what she said, just catching the last few words:
    “ . . . haven’t been able to find out what it means, if anything.”
    “What what means?” said Pirate.
    “This last-minute change in judges,” Susannah said. “That I’ve been explaining.”
    “How many judges are there?” Pirate said, a little embarrassed, wanting her to know he was interested in what she had to say.
    “How many judges?”
    “Like nine or something?”
    “Nine?” Susannah laughed. “Are you talking about the Supreme Court?”
    Pirate didn’t like that laugh. All of a sudden he was seeing flaws in her skin, or flaws that could be there with a little help. He said nothing.
    The laughter left her face. “There’s just one judge,” she said. “The judge on the schedule—a good ol’ boy apparently, but with a decent reputation—got pulled for some reason and we don’t know much about the replacement.”
    “Never got along with good ol’ boys,” Pirate said.
    “Then maybe this is a lucky break,” Susannah said. “The replacement’s certainly no good ol’ boy—she’s black, for starters.”
    That wasn’t good either.
    And young, besides. That was the first thing Pirate noticed when they led him into the courtroom. Pirate found himself blinking, even D E LU S I O N
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    though it wasn’t very bright. Then, as the blurriness cleared, he saw the judge, sitting up high with that hammer thing—name escaping him at the moment—beside her. The judge looked about Susannah’s age, but not so friendly. She saw Pirate following Susannah to one of the two long tables in front, Bible in hand, and frowned. Pirate began to change his mind about protective custody.
    He sat down, feeling strange in regular clothes: a suit, in fact, brown, with a white shirt and a beige tie. Pirate had never actually owned a suit, not if a suit meant the pants matching the jacket. He’d once had a purple jacket with silver buttons; in fact, it hit him at that moment, he’d been wearing that purple jacket the last time he was arrested.
    “You all right?” said Susannah.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I want you to meet,” she began, and then introduced the man sitting on Pirate’s other side, a Jewish-sounding name that Pirate didn’t quite catch.
    “Hold on tight,” said the man.
    Did he mean the Bible? Pirate had it in