The barroom windows are steamed with excess body heat when Dean finally arrives at the Cock O’the Walk. He shoulders through the tail end of happy hour, baby-stepping through the carousal. Inching closer to the pool tables he can see the last minutes of a basketball match glowing slowly from the big screen, Oklahoma State at Kansas State. Staples and Dragnet are pressed against the jukebox, waiting to quarter into a game of doubles, but the boss is nowhere to be seen.
Penned in amidst the table-squatters, thinking about leaving, Dean feels something tug at his coat sleeve. Wolfman is drinking alone at a two-top trashed with empty beer bottles and shot glasses, not six inches off Dean’s elbow, wide mouth working.
“Say again?”
“Justice is a blind, mother-loving-goddamn-bitch,” Wolfman yells.
Dean wrestles the sole remaining seat in closer to his boss. He drapes his coat over the chair back, sits, and barks into the din.
“Have you ever defended a client that was innocent?”
“I’ve never defended one who deserved to die,” Wolfman barks back.
“Negative pregnant.”
Wolfman signs V-for-victory with two thick fingers. There is a high-wire kind of stiffness in this gesture, the inebriated vigilance of a man determined not to fall out of his chair.
“Two?”
“I am sure,” says Wolfman, “only of two.”
“What I wouldn’t give to pull an innocent. It would make the rest of it seem bearable.”
“As it turns out, the experience tends to have the exact opposite effect.” Wolfman sips his whiskey. “Because when John Q. Patsy is eventually put down you’re standing there, dick in hand, watching the entire system perpetrate murder in the first.”
“Was Osborne innocent?”
But Wolfman won’t answer. Last night in McAlester the state executed its first death-row inmate of the year, one Allen Osborne: teenage gangbanger cum war veteran cum wounded warrior cum drug addict cum double murderer. Osborne was one of Wolfman’s dearest clients, a genuinely good kid who came back from Iraq afflicted with traumatic brain injury and a concomitant paranoid psychosis, and Dean has come to see if his boss needs anything. From the looks of it he could do with a ride home.
“You’re going deep tonight.”
Wolfman drinks. “Where’s the Grimes case?”
“I’ll need to go on the road. Still haven’t found the parents.”
“You’ll do it on your own nickel. My discretionary funds are,” Wolfman laughs, “running low at the moment.”
“About your two patsies. You said the verdicts were tantamount to murder in the first.”
“Both those boys were somewhere else at the time of the murder. Both were muscled into bogus confessions. Both got put down. Even if they had done it, which they didn’t, both were incompetent. And everybody in that courtroom knew it. Or should have.”
“And Macy?”
“Macy fuck. Macy knows one thing.”
“Which is?”
“Which is Macy’s never wrong. And he’ll screw our beloved, blind, murdering, mother-loving-goddamn-bitch Justice in the ass every business day of the week just to prove himself right. That white Stetson of his might as well be a halo. Second you start arguing against him people in this town assume you’re some kind of devil.”
“Ironic.”
“It is dramatically that.”
On the big screen a buzzcut Bryant “Big Country” Reeves is moseying through the paint. Both men watch the kid stop on a dime, all doughboy seven feet of him, pivot-step back for the pass from Andre Owens, then he’s floating, up and away from a late-breaking Wildcat defender, unloosing the ball just before that crash landing back to court for an unlikely, ungainly two points.
“Kid makes you believe anyone deserves to play this game,” Wolfman says.
“My black clients trash-talk him unreservedly. They call him the great white hope.”
“It’s a mystery he’s so smooth.”
“I know.”
“Just look.”
“I know.”
“The love handles.”
“The flushed cheeks.”
“Why great white hope?”
“If he was black and seven feet tall, they say, we wouldn’t be making such a fuss. Rutherford’s on track to break some kind of three-point scoring record, they say, so why aren’t we hearing more about Randy?”
“That’s the skin thinking.”
“You can’t exactly blame them.”
“I can do anything I like.” Wolfman sips his whiskey, grimaces, chugs a Bud chaser. “I’m off the clock.” They watch Big Country on the bigger screen. Without looking away from the game Wolfman says, “Something else is on your mind, Tonto.”
Dean doesn’t answer.
“You’re not sleeping so good. Maybe you’re contemplating a career change.”
“Sam wants to have a kid.”
“Sam wants.”
“She’s driving it.”
“What about you?”
Dean doesn’t answer.
A denim-skirted barmaid clomps by in red cowboy boots, serving tray balanced above her blonde hairdo, big breasts straining against a too-tight T-shirt. Dean calls for a 7-Up but she doesn’t hear him for all the caterwauling small talk.
“Not finding the parents is sloppy work,” Wolfman says. “The parents are the key. Most of them don’t know what they’re getting into. They think these kids come with a 90-day trial period. They don’t understand parenting is a life goddamn sentence.”
“I’m tired, Trent.”
“Let me tell you the secret of Dean. See, Dean’s a fighter. I’ve watched him go to work. And not just a fighter. Dean has that killer instinct. It’s why he’s so good at the job. It takes one to know one, right? To defend one?”
“Your point is fucking taken.”
“Remember what you told me in that parking lot?”
“The truth?”
Wolfman is looking at him now.
“First time we meet. I’m out having a night on the town. Stumble out of that honky-tonk to find Tonto pounding snot out of some poor shit-kicker. Both of them drunk as Irishmen. Being the good, upstanding citizen I am, I pull Tonto off the guy. Save both of their lives. So I’m giving him a ride home after this and Tonto says something to me. I’ll never forget it. To account for the have-nots, our wannabe killer says to me, and to hold the haves accountable. This is what Dean tells me he wants to do with his life. Right after I stop him from beating a bigot poseur cowboy to death for making fun of his heritage. Or his hair. I can’t remember which it was. Doesn’t matter. Because that is a mission statement worth getting in line behind. The mission statement of a man who’ll always be itching for the next big fight. A true believer. And there are far too few of those in circulation.”
“What’s your attack plan for Carl Jefferson?”
“That’s for Dragnet to worry about.” Wolfman looks surprised. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not your regular kind of tired, Trent.”
“There’s no walking away, Tonto. This is the only fight out there worth showing up for. We’re like Easter Islanders, you and me, the last of a dying breed. The way I see it, you owe me every extra hour of freedom since that dustup in the parking lot. So my answer is not just no. But hell no. You can’t quit. I won’t allow it.”
Wolfman manages to stand but begins listing into the table. He rests the meat of his hand on Dean’s shoulder, steadying himself.
“Now. Go. Find Grimes’s parents. Keep your receipts, I’ll see what I can do. Do your mind-trip thing. Your vision quest or whatever. Then come back here and tell me how to argue the mitigation piece of this case. Take a few days off after and go clear your head somewhere. Hell,” Wolfman winks, “maybe Macy will grant your wish and throw us an innocent one next time.”
“Let me give you a lift.”
“I need the air.”
Dean’s boss stands there, sizing him up.
“Fatherhood might polish down some of your rougher edges, Tonto. It could look good on you.” He shrugs into his coat and turns to go.
The barmaid is circling back. She bends down to clink the empties onto her tray.
“What’s your poison?” she shouts at Dean.
He watches Wolfman maneuver carefully through the confusion for the street.