cuffs are removed, and the two friends amble off down the corridor, clearly pleased with themselves.
“You know what I’m thinking,” Marina says to George. He lets her lay it out once he’s motioned his staff to go back inside. Corazon found Zeke through the gang networks she described before, and Zeke was here to direct a surveillance on George, planning for some event. “Let’s check up on both of them,” Marina says quietly to Murph before she departs.
Back in George’s chambers, there are no voices amid a funereal mood of fear and sympathy for Dineesha. She has deserted her desk. George thinks she may have slipped out or is in with Cassie and Banion, but he finds her inside the door to his private chambers, sitting alone in a straight-backed chair. She has a hankie in her hand, but the crying for now appears to be over.
“Judge, I am so sorry.”
“For what? He didn’t do anything.”
She answers with a look.
George still regards Marina’s theory of gang alliances as fanciful. But there is no denying that Zeke deserves to be a suspect in his own right. There’s no limit to what Zeke knows about George, both through their contacts over the years as lawyer and client, and far more, from what he hears through his mother. Who knows which of the eternal resentments always seething in Zeke might have spurred an effort to intimidate George? Some theory that George has misused Dineesha for the last two decades. Or yet another way for Zeke to revenge himself on her. Or some long-simmering bitch about the way George represented him. The judge knows that among the many educational projects that took Zeke nowhere in life was training as a computer programmer after his first stretch at Rudyard. If Zeke is #1, then he probably sent Khaleel up here to lift something, or to check out a piece of information Zeke would stick in his next unpleasant message.
But even were that the case, there is comfort to be taken, because George would be in absolutely no danger. Zeke is a con, a crook, an inveterate swindler whose dominating passion is to prove he can put it over on everybody else. His performance in the hallway, talking Khaleel out of handcuffs, is vintage Zeke, a moment he’ll be celebrating and recounting for days. But there’s nothing on his long sheet involving any real violence, notwithstanding the behavior of many of those with whom he’s surrounded himself. If it’s Zeke, then all of these threats are aimed at a payoff of some kind, an inventive scam he’s preparing to run. A ransom for stopping. A reward for information, or for investigative services. Some setup.
There is no telling Dineesha that Zeke had innocent motives today or that he’s not a suspect for #1. She has already assumed the worst and sits rigidly in the chair, plainly suffering.
“My own child,” she finally says to George before she gets up to return to her desk.
10
LOST AND FOUND
Not long after he leaves home Friday morning, Judge Mason concludes he’s being followed. A car, a late-model maroon DeVille, appears in his rearview mirror when he’s no more than a block away from his house and remains a few lengths behind until he reaches Independence Boulevard, the byway on which he crosses the river Kindle into the city every morning. Lots of people drive from the West Bank into the Center City at 8:30 A.M., he tells himself, and many, as he does, use surface streets to avoid the tie-ups on the highway. But when he gets a better look, the car concerns him. It’s ‘pimped out,’ as the cops would put it, with the suspension lowered and a fringe swinging in the rear window. A vapor trail has been detailed on each fender, and the auto is topped with an old-fashioned leather carriage roof in cream. Standard gangster ride. He’s a bit relieved when the Cadillac finally disappears. No more than five minutes later, it’s there again, jumping in and out of lanes a quarter of a block behind him.
He turns down the radio so he can
“You know what I’m thinking,” Marina says to George. He lets her lay it out once he’s motioned his staff to go back inside. Corazon found Zeke through the gang networks she described before, and Zeke was here to direct a surveillance on George, planning for some event. “Let’s check up on both of them,” Marina says quietly to Murph before she departs.
Back in George’s chambers, there are no voices amid a funereal mood of fear and sympathy for Dineesha. She has deserted her desk. George thinks she may have slipped out or is in with Cassie and Banion, but he finds her inside the door to his private chambers, sitting alone in a straight-backed chair. She has a hankie in her hand, but the crying for now appears to be over.
“Judge, I am so sorry.”
“For what? He didn’t do anything.”
She answers with a look.
George still regards Marina’s theory of gang alliances as fanciful. But there is no denying that Zeke deserves to be a suspect in his own right. There’s no limit to what Zeke knows about George, both through their contacts over the years as lawyer and client, and far more, from what he hears through his mother. Who knows which of the eternal resentments always seething in Zeke might have spurred an effort to intimidate George? Some theory that George has misused Dineesha for the last two decades. Or yet another way for Zeke to revenge himself on her. Or some long-simmering bitch about the way George represented him. The judge knows that among the many educational projects that took Zeke nowhere in life was training as a computer programmer after his first stretch at Rudyard. If Zeke is #1, then he probably sent Khaleel up here to lift something, or to check out a piece of information Zeke would stick in his next unpleasant message.
But even were that the case, there is comfort to be taken, because George would be in absolutely no danger. Zeke is a con, a crook, an inveterate swindler whose dominating passion is to prove he can put it over on everybody else. His performance in the hallway, talking Khaleel out of handcuffs, is vintage Zeke, a moment he’ll be celebrating and recounting for days. But there’s nothing on his long sheet involving any real violence, notwithstanding the behavior of many of those with whom he’s surrounded himself. If it’s Zeke, then all of these threats are aimed at a payoff of some kind, an inventive scam he’s preparing to run. A ransom for stopping. A reward for information, or for investigative services. Some setup.
There is no telling Dineesha that Zeke had innocent motives today or that he’s not a suspect for #1. She has already assumed the worst and sits rigidly in the chair, plainly suffering.
“My own child,” she finally says to George before she gets up to return to her desk.
10
LOST AND FOUND
Not long after he leaves home Friday morning, Judge Mason concludes he’s being followed. A car, a late-model maroon DeVille, appears in his rearview mirror when he’s no more than a block away from his house and remains a few lengths behind until he reaches Independence Boulevard, the byway on which he crosses the river Kindle into the city every morning. Lots of people drive from the West Bank into the Center City at 8:30 A.M., he tells himself, and many, as he does, use surface streets to avoid the tie-ups on the highway. But when he gets a better look, the car concerns him. It’s ‘pimped out,’ as the cops would put it, with the suspension lowered and a fringe swinging in the rear window. A vapor trail has been detailed on each fender, and the auto is topped with an old-fashioned leather carriage roof in cream. Standard gangster ride. He’s a bit relieved when the Cadillac finally disappears. No more than five minutes later, it’s there again, jumping in and out of lanes a quarter of a block behind him.
He turns down the radio so he can
Similar Books
