Jude Read online

  “You convinced her?” Jude said.

  “Yes, but that’s not important now,” Harry said. “I don’t have a lot of time, and I came here to give you this.” Harry tossed a bag of white powder on the table.

  “Holy shit,” Jude said, eyeing the bag. He picked it up and weighed it in his palm. “Jesus, Harry, I don’t need anywhere near that much.”

  “To make the story plausible, you need some stock.”

  “Not this much,” he protested. “Not unless you want everyone to think I’m doing a pretty brisk business.”

  “But that’s exactly what we want them to think.”

  “You want them to catch me with that?” His voice broke high on the question.

  “No, not that much …”

  Jude was about to heave a sigh of relief when Harry continued.

  “Not initially. There wouldn’t be any reason for you to carry all your supply with you to the sale. The rest of it you can leave in your room. They’ll find it later.” He must have caught something of what Jude was feeling in the expression on his face. “What did you think? That you’d go out with a gram or two? That’s hardly worth it. We might as well just let the article run in that case—we’d benefit so little. We have an opportunity here to turn a potential disaster into an advantage, but in order to do that you have to think big, take a few more risks. Let me put it this way,” Harry said. “It’s the difference between simply avoiding ruining Anna’s career and actually helping her.” He paused, looking at Jude expectantly. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

  “Fine,” Jude said. “Okay, whatever you say.”

  Harry shook his head. “That’s not good enough,” he insisted. “This is going to be hard. Harder than you probably think. There’ll be things that we can’t predict that might come up and make you think twice, even three times, about what you’re doing, and you won’t be able to ask me about them because after this morning we probably won’t be able to talk. You need to really commit to this, so I need something more from you than ‘whatever you say.’”

  “What do you need?” Jude asked.

  “Some assurance that you’re going to see this through. I may not be on the front lines with you, but I’m risking a lot—maybe even more than you, as I have more to lose.”

  Then Jude understood why he was getting the hard sell. Harry was worried that he’d get scared and spill the beans.

  “When I say I’m going to do something, I do it,” Jude assured him.

  “And your word is good?”

  “I never told anyone who killed my father,” Jude replied. He thought he saw a flash of something in Harry’s face, but it was gone in the next second, before Jude could read his expression.

  “All right then.” Harry took a seat at the kitchen table. “There are a couple of things you need to know about, after you’re charged.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your lawyer, if he’s any good, is going to tell you to plead out. To make a deal. This is important—under no circumstances should you agree to that, no matter what they tell you. If you admit to it, it will be much harder to get you a new trial when the time comes. Witness testimony is one thing, but I don’t know what I could do about a confession. Do you understand?”

  Jude understood, and the very thought took his breath away. He nodded.

  “Secondly—and this is just as critical—you absolutely cannot say anything to Anna about what’s really going on. I don’t care how much you’re tempted—don’t. There’ll be plenty of time afterward, but it will ruin everything if you tell her too soon. I don’t think she’ll be able to go through with it, and that will look even worse than the article. Even if she did follow it through, Anna is a lot of things, but she’s not a very good actress. So it won’t be real.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I want you to give your word.” Harry was staring at him intensely.

  Jude rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “I promise, okay?”

  “Good.” Harry stood and picked up his coat, which was folded over the back of a chair. “Enough talking. Now it’s time to do something.”

  “What if I need to get in touch with you?” Jude asked.

  “Too risky,” Harry said.

  “But what if it’s an emergency?”

  “I can’t imagine what could happen that would be so bad it’s worth the risk of contacting me. How about this—if I see anything that I’m concerned about, I’ll contact you. If you don’t hear from me, you’ll know that I’ve got it covered. Okay?”

  It wasn’t exactly okay, but Jude didn’t have much choice other than to agree.

  “You ready?” Harry said, shrugging into his coat.

  “Sure,” Jude agreed. What else was he going to say?

  17

  AT SCHOOL THAT day Jude took a Spanish test that he had forgotten about, scribbled notes in English on Julius Caesar, which he hadn’t read, and had to stay after class in math to listen to his teacher’s reprimands because for the second week in a row he had failed to hand in his homework. Throughout, he somehow managed not to think about Anna or Harry or what was going to happen to his life after tomorrow.

  When he let himself back into the house that afternoon, he stood a moment by the door listening to the silence, loath to move. Sounds seemed to echo when the house was empty, bouncing off the walls and reverberating in his chest, as if that, too, were empty.

  Jude left his book bag at the bottom of the stairs and went into the kitchen to get the things he would need to break the heroin into bundles. Then he retrieved his bag and climbed to his room. He didn’t even bother to close the door; he knew Anna wasn’t going to be home anytime soon.

  Jude crossed to the desk, then set the supplies down and fished out the plastic bag from the drawer. It could be just a bag full of baby powder they had given him. He almost hoped it was, but when he opened the plastic, dipped a finger in, and touched the tip to his tongue, he knew that it wasn’t. He knew the bitter taste from the years with his father.

  He set about packaging some of the stock. It had been a year and a half, but his hands remembered what to do, though at first they were clumsy with lack of practice. He remembered his father’s thick, awkward fingers sealing up the little bags, sealing up his fate.

  Jude didn’t have the glassine bags his father had always used, but tinfoil would do as well, and soon he fell into a kind of rhythm, so that he’d wrapped many more than he needed before he realized it. It didn’t matter. In fact, it would look even better to have a whole bunch wrapped and ready to go here in his room. It was all just for show anyway.

  Jude put what he needed in his book bag and looked around the room for a place to hide the rest. He had to remind himself that there was no need to hide it. It was meant to be found. He ended up just sticking it back in one of the desk drawers under some old notebooks and papers.

  Then he should have gone back downstairs again, watched some TV, eaten dinner—or at least he should have thrown his dinner out to make it look as if he had eaten it, but all of a sudden he felt too tired to get up. It was barely dark outside, but Jude lay down on the bed. When he opened his eyes again, it was morning; he’d slept straight through the night.

  He rolled over to look at the clock and practically leaped out of bed. There was no time for a shower or breakfast. He just threw on the first clothes that came to hand, checked his bag to see that he had the stuff, and took the stairs in twos. As he grabbed his jacket and yanked opened the door, he could see the school bus rounding the corner. He flew out the door and down the path, reaching the bus stop just as the last kid was climbing the stairs.

  Jude dropped into an empty seat near the front, panting. His oversleeping and his frantic dash were really a blessing. He was so flustered and out of breath he didn’t notice that the car parked across the street from his house had started its engine as they trundled by.

  When the bus pulled up in front of the school, instead of heading to English, Jude went to the cafeter
ia to get some breakfast. He bought a rubbery bagel and an apple juice and carried his tray over to a vacant table at the back of the long room. As he sat there chewing the bagel, he watched the other tables, filled with kids scribbling madly to finish copying the homework assignment before it was due, talking about last night’s ball game, huddling around a book for some last-minute exam cramming. He already felt as if he were a million miles away from these kinds of worries. He didn’t even bother going to his morning classes. He sat in the cafeteria until it closed for lunch preparation, then he went and sat in the library. He took a book off the shelf and opened it on the desk in front of him, but he didn’t read. He just waited for the clock to tell him that it was time, and when the hands reached eleven forty-five, he got up and started toward the park.

  He entered through the northwest gate and made his way to the statue. There was a man with a pretzel cart, so Jude bought a pretzel and a Coke to wash it down. He drank the Coke but ended up feeding most of his pretzel to the pigeons. He threw out a few pieces to three birds that were pecking among the puddles in front of the bench, and then birds seemed to descend from all sides. It gave him something to do—watching the crowd of birds fight over the hunks of dough while he waited for someone he knew wasn’t ever going to show up.

  But he played the game, as Harry had instructed him, and made a show of periodically checking his watch, then glancing around as if expecting someone. The air was warming toward spring, but there was still a sharp winter wind. He got up and stamped around in a small circle before returning to the bench again. He waited forty-five minutes past the appointed meeting time before he pretended to be fed up and rose as if to leave.

  Harry had told him that both the police and the DA’s office had agreed that they would take him even without the sale. Jude got only about ten feet away from the bench before they came for him. They descended like the pigeons, seemingly from nowhere. The only one he had seen—the first one to reach him—was the pretzel man. He flipped a badge at Jude and shouted, “Police.”

  Harry had wanted Jude to pretend to panic and try to run, but he found he didn’t have the heart for that kind of charade. He didn’t want to be tackled and brought down in the muddy puddles that dotted the walkway. So he simply dropped his bag and raised his hands.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” the pretzel man said, advancing.

  Jude felt someone come up behind him, catch his upraised arms by the wrists, and roughly muscle them down behind his back. He felt the burning cold of metal cuffs, which had been chilling in the air for the last hour, close over his wrists.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” the pretzel man continued, while another officer retrieved his bag from where Jude had dropped it. The man peeked inside and brought out a handful of the tinfoil-wrapped packets. “Bingo,” he said.

  “You have the right to an attorney—”

  “And you’re gonna friggin’ need one,” the cop behind him added.

  18

  JUDE MET WITH his lawyer in a tiny room at the precinct. It reminded him of the interrogation room from the night of his father’s death—it had taken only a year and a half to end up back where he started.

  Jude had been sitting in the room for more than an hour when his lawyer walked, or rather edged, through the door. She lowered herself cautiously into the chair across from him.

  Jude couldn’t help staring; his lawyer was the heaviest person he had ever seen. She seemed as round as she was tall. Her arms didn’t hang at her sides, but instead were supported by her bulk as if on armrests. The cruelty of it was heightened by the fact that while the size of her body was staggering, her face was only plump—and it was pretty. Or it would have been pretty if she’d smiled, a real smile, not the sour twist that she substituted for it.

  She caught his stare before he could glance away, and she responded to it in a dry, sarcastic tone, “It’s not catching, it doesn’t affect my brain, and unfortunately we’re stuck with each other.”

  At her speech Jude felt a sudden wave of pity. It was the last thing he had expected to feel at that moment—or at least he hadn’t expected to be pitying anyone but himself. He searched for something to say and came up with, “Why unfortunately?”

  She eyed him shrewdly. “Anybody who wants this case wants it for the wrong reasons. That’s why your mother hired me. I don’t want it.”

  “Great, just what I need—a lawyer who doesn’t want my case,” he said.

  “Let’s get something straight. I’m not here to hold your hand. I’m here to help you clear up this little mess you’ve made.”

  “Little mess?” he repeated. “Is that what you’d call it?”

  She pursed her mouth. “I was trying to be gentle,” she admitted. “By the way, I’m Maria Powell. Call me Maria.”

  She held out her hand and he took it. It was surprisingly soft and delicate.

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks, because I’m sorry to say I don’t have a whole lot of time right now. This is just a preliminary interview to go over a few things.”

  Jude nodded.

  “I don’t mean to scare you, but it doesn’t look good.” She glanced at Jude’s impassive face and said, “What the hell, let’s be honest here. I do mean to scare you. They’re planning on charging you with possession with intent to distribute. They’ve got you on the possession, and from the amount of heroin involved they’ve got a pretty solid case for intent to distribute. For good measure, they’re also tacking on the charge of criminally negligent homicide. I don’t see how they’re going to pull that off, but that’s what I hear.”

  Jude said nothing, but he wasn’t quite able to meet her probing stare. He could sense that he wasn’t going to enjoy lying to her. He had never quite gotten the hang of doing it easily with people he liked.

  “Do you know about mandatory minimum sentences for possession with intent to distribute?” she asked him. “Even without the criminally negligent homicide charge you’re looking at four years without parole. Minimum.”

  That startled him enough to look up. “But I’m a minor,” he protested.

  “The first thing they’re planning to do at the arraignment is to submit a motion to have you tried as an adult. I don’t agree with it, but more and more often the law is going after kids and treating them like adults, and I’m afraid that with the criminally negligent homicide charge—plus the amount of heroin involved—they have a good chance.”

  “Who decides that?” he asked.

  “Decides what?” she said.

  “Who decides to submit that … the motion?”

  “The DA’s office.” Now it was her turn to avoid his eyes. He decided to drop it. Her discomfort was answer enough.

  “So we need to talk about what we’re going to do,” she went on briskly.

  Usually somebody using the word we this way would have annoyed Jude, but here Maria sounded as if she meant it.

  “The senior assistant DA is handling the case, and he’s tough but not unreasonable. Now, I think that in view of your age and your … um … history they might go for a plea bargain. I think with some cooperation on your part we can arrange for you to go to juvenile detention and plead you down to eighteen months, maybe two years.” She held up a finger when Jude opened his mouth. “Don’t answer me yet. I want you to think about it.”

  Jude shook his head.

  “I said think about it, and I didn’t mean for three seconds.”

  “It’s not that, exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s the first part. That means I would have to plead guilty, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But I’m not going to make a plea bargain,” he said.

  “You’re not … what?”

  “I’m not going to plead guilty.”

  She blinked, her mouth slightly open. “That’s crazy,” she said.

  “I know,” he agreed.

  “They
caught you with more than three ounces of heroin.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you’re convicted, the judge would have to sentence you to at least four years, Jude. Real prison. What I’m talking about, you go to juvenile detention and could be out in less than two.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  “So tell me you’re joking.”

  He looked out the window to a view of the alley. “I’m not,” he assured her.

  “Why, for God’s sake? You’ve got to at least have a reason.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t know what to say to her.

  “This is about as stupid a stunt as I have ever seen. If you plead not guilty, this thing goes to trial. Let me make this very clear to you now. You don’t want this to go to trial. You don’t know—you can’t imagine—how ugly that would be.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t consider it, not even for a second. Not for a millisecond. But I don’t have time right now to paint the picture for you.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got a hearing for another case. Listen, I’m not going to blow sunshine up your ass and tell you it’s all going to be all right. It’s not. Best we can do is damage control. You think about that. You’ve got some time—we won’t be talking about a deal until after the arraignment, but after that I’ll arrange a meeting with the assistant DA, and we’ll need to be on the same page. You got me?”

  Jude nodded.

  “I’ll be seeing you at the arraignment,” she said. “Most people might tell you not to worry, but you know what? I want you to worry.”

  Then, in order to get up out of her chair, she had to place her palms on the table and give a little push. She caught him watching, but instead of being angry, as he might have expected, she just gave him that twisted smile. “We’re all prisoners, you know,” she said. “In one way or another.”