14

A VICTIM

OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, the gun muzzle, a spot of total blackness, looms a few inches from the judge’s face. George notices eventually that the boy is motioning with the other hand, but he has no clue what the kid wants, and the young man bangs the pistol on the glass again in rebuke. This is how people get shot, George thinks. By failing to follow orders they don’t comprehend. And then, remembering Corazón, he realizes that he is going to get shot anyway.

That thought pumps the harshest adrenaline rush yet through him. Inside his head there is a chaos of colliding ideas, each one as urgent as a scream.

For all the years George has spent on the periphery of crime, he has never been on the receiving end of any violence. Everything he knows is secondhand from contemplating victims across the clinical distances of courtrooms, where he has tried to assess their credibility and, in his years as a lawyer, shake their stories. At trial, the suffering of the vics is often minimized; it’s irrelevant to proving whether a crime occurred or who committed it. They rarely get to say much more about what they felt than ‘I was afraid I was going to die.’ And oddly, in this instant, George sees the wisdom of that. Language, rules, and reason can never capture this moment; they are definitional only by their absence, just as absolute zero is the complete absence of heat.

The boy’s free hand circles through the air again. At last, George realizes the kid wants him to lower the driver’s-side window, and he presses the button. But as the glass slides into the door, a faint outcry stirs inside him. It’s like slipping off his skin. He was already at the boy’s mercy, but with the last vestige of privacy gone, he knows he’s on the way to surrendering his soul.

“’Kay now, puto,” the boy says. “Give it up, man.” ‘Men’ it sounds like in the boy’s trace accent.

In his years as a State Defender, George cross-examined countless victims in armed-robbery cases. You always challenged the identification of the defendant the same way. By pointing out the obvious. ‘And you were watching that gun, weren’t you, Mrs. Jones? You never took your eyes off it, did you?’ And it’s true. He has not yet dared to raise his sight line. He has seen little more than the pistol, a small silver automatic, with a higher-caliber bore and black grips, and the hand that holds it, where the blue-black star of the Latin Nation is imprinted on the tan flesh just beneath the frayed gray sleeve of the boy’s sweatshirt.

But when the kid speaks, George looks up compliantly. He already knows the boy is one of the two they saw on the way into the garage whom Abel wanted to roust. This is the taller kid, with that patch hairdo that always reminds George of a shaved radish. Now it is hidden under the hood of his sweatshirt, which is drawn around his face, the better to prevent identification. He’s lanky and cannot be seventeen yet, with dark, bumpy skin and jittery eyes. Mexican or Central American. He has the high cheekbones and aquiline nose of native blood. Seeing the two boys from a distance over the last week, George marked them from their unchanged, ratty clothes as poor—really poor, locked-in poor, kids who rarely have the means to get beyond the barrio. It would be a miracle if this kid has ever had a conversation longer than a minute with an Anglo in a two-piece suit.

And realizing that he is largely incomprehensible to this boy, George considers what his chances will be if he puts the car in gear and tears away. Will the kid be too surprised to shoot? The idea comes, and he reacts to it. Some intermediate mental process has been evaporated by fear. George’s hand slides to the gearshift, and instantly the boy slams the gun down solidly on his forearm. The pain is intense, but George knows better than to cry out. It’s the boy who makes all the noise.

“Fuck, puto!” he cries. “Fuck, man, you gonna get yourself so pealed, man. What’s up with you? Fuck,” the kid says and in pure frustration slams the pistol backhand again on the same arm, which the judge has withdrawn toward his chest. This time a cry escapes George, and he lies against the seat with his eyes closed for a second, contending with the pain.

The boy is snapping his fingers.

“Give ’em here, puto. Right here, man.” He’s demanding the car key. George’s right arm is too numb to move. He turns in his seat and slides the key from the ignition with his left hand.

“Now give it up, man,” the boy repeats, circling the gun again. He wants George out of the car. They are not going to kill him here, George realizes. They are going to take him somewhere else, because they’re afraid the gunfire will attract the dog patrol before they can escape.

The boy again tells him to give it up. George continues to rub his arm, acting as if he’s too preoccupied with the pain to listen. He considers various speeches: ‘I’m a judge.’ ‘You don’t understand how much trouble you’ll get yourselves in.’ But they might well make it worse. The last thing he needs to do is add incentives. To this young man, George’s killing is almost certainly a gang initiation, ‘blood in,’ as they say. Corazón would have kicked the job down several levels, so that the judge’s murder, a capital offense, will never trace to him. For a second, George considers Marina and Abel, both justified in all of their suspicions. They will be entitled to a moment of pained laughter at his expense. But George is pleased to discover that he doesn’t mind. He knew he was taking his chances. Principle always comes with certain risks.

This instant of minute satisfaction ends when the boy punches the gun barrel into the judge’s temple to reacquire his attention. George recoils, and the kid grabs his shoulders and prods his neck with the muzzle. He can feel his pulse in the artery the cool steel is pressing against.

“Yo, vato,” somebody else says.

Afraid to remove his head from the pistol, George sweeps his eyes as far he can toward the passenger’s side of his sedan. The second kid he saw earlier is at the other door. He’s nearly a foot shorter than the boy holding the gun on George and younger. His arms are at his sides, but from the sheer drag on the right, George senses that he’s holding a firearm, too. The second boy rotates his chin.

At the far corner of the garage someone else has entered from the opposite stairwell. Without moving, George catches a glimpse of dark clothes. He was hoping to see the khaki of Marina’s security forces, but it’s only somebody like him, another late departure from the courthouse, probably a deputy P.A. or State Defender working on a trial. The footfalls are a woman’s, her high heels rapping smartly on the concrete. George listens before concluding disconsolately that the sound is moving away.

Scream, he tells himself. He has previewed this situation a thousand times through his career, looking up from a transcript or a police report and coldly assessing the victim’s options. If they are going to kill him but are reluctant to do it here, then screaming is the best choice. The boy with the automatic at George’s throat will be put to a decision. To run. Or shoot. Running would give him the best chance to get away. But George senses that he has exhausted the kid’s patience. He tried to escape once. Respect, the credo of the street, is likely to be the foremost issue. And there’s another problem. The judge is not really sure he can summon the voice for anything better than a meek croak.

George has always known you can be so frightened it hurts. His right forearm is throbbing, and his temple is tender, but there’s also pain throughout his body. His muscles have spasmed below his armpits for some reason. And he’s damp inside his shirt.

The boy has hunched down beside the Lexus while keeping the handgun against the base of the judge’s skull. An engine fires several rows over, and a car pulls away. As it rolls off, George feels a wave of despair. It was a mistake, he decides. He should have shouted.

“Give it up, man,” the kid says again.

George shakes his head.

“Yo, puto. Get your fuckin’ ass out here, man, or it’s comin’ right through this damn window.” The boy reaches in and takes hold of George’s necktie. He gives it a sharp jerk, smashing the judge’s cheek against the door frame, but he does not wait to see if George has changed his mind about cooperating. The kid does exactly as promised, using the tie as a leash and pulling George out the open driver’s window. Instinctively, George grabs for the seat belt hanging inside the door, but it pays out as the boy drags George’s entire upper body into the outer air. He is left gasping, with both hands at his collar. In whatever hissing voice he can muster, he has said ‘Okay’ a dozen times before the boy finally eases his grip.

The kid slowly backs off from the door and watches George emerge. The other boy bounds to this side of the car now, waiting at its rear. George was right. He too has a gun.

Standing, George feels his legs wobbling. He is afraid he’s going to topple, and he begs himself not to fall over, not so much out of pride as a sense that it will only enhance the danger.

“Wallet,” the kid says. He takes George’s watch too, and his class ring from college, then makes George turn out every pocket in his suit and surrender the contents. After that, the two boys motion George away from his car. He backs off about ten feet, still rubbing his forearm. He has no idea what is happening and wonders if they are going to shoot him here after all, but that makes no sense. If they were going to do that, it would have happened by now.

Instead, the first boy slides through the opened car door into the driver’s seat and triggers the engine. He nods to his companion, who has been holding his black gun, probably a .32, on the judge in the interval.

Please, God, not the trunk, George thinks then. They are going to force him into the car. Not the trunk. And with that, he realizes he’s going to stand his ground. They can choke him here, or pistol-whip him, but he’s not going to submit. He’ll scream if he has to. The end, whatever it will be, is going to take place on this spot.

His soul has compressed around that decision when he hears the second boy scampering away. He flees around the Lexus and into the passenger’s seat, and the kid driving throws the car into reverse. George realizes too late that he had a brief chance to run. Having backed the sedan out, the boy looks through the open window at George, who stands no more than two or three feet from him. The judge is not surprised at all when the silver gun reappears.

Shoot and drive, he thinks. That’s the plan. Kill him and escape. He had it wrong. All wrong.

“Puto,” the boy says, “you ask Jesus tonight, man, why it wasn’t shovel time for you. I should have lit you up, man, pulling that lame stuff. Ought to make you kiss this cuete,” he says, showing him the automatic.

It takes George a second to absorb these words, and even longer to comprehend the implications. And then he sees: They are not going to kill him. They never meant to kill him. This is a robbery, not a murder. They are here to jack him and his car.

For whatever reason, the boy is still staring, as if he expects George to explain, or even offer a word of thanks. And somehow he agrees.

“I thought you were someone else,” he tells the boy. They are both astonished by that—George that he has spoken and the kid by what the older man has said. The kid’s dark, quick eyes move around in bewilderment.

“Man,” he declares, and with that stomps on the accelerator. The Lexus, George’s private refuge, flies around a turn and out of sight.

He looks for something to sit on, but the closest thing is one of the concrete pillars, and he leans against it, waiting for the feeling to come back into his body. For a moment, he does nothing but breathe, each inhalation a supreme experience. In relief, he is weakening. His legs are overcooked, and slowly he lets his weight go and sags with his back against the pillar down to the filthy, oil-stained floor. He tries to review the entire incident, but there is only one lasting impression. He was wrong. Everything he thought was wrong. He has always believed he understood crime, the causes, the preparation, and the aftermath. But it turns out that, in thirty years, he has apparently learned nothing of any real use. Or accuracy. He misapprehended everything, resisted unnecessarily, and by so doing brought himself into the only mortal peril he actually faced.

Slowly his spirit seems to be creeping back into his body from the site nearby where it had been watching, preparing for his demise. Every physical possession is gone. He handed over not only his wallet but his house keys, even his reading glasses and his loose change. He does not have Patrice’s cell phone but can’t recall giving that to the boy and wonders if he may have left it in his chambers.

He never really understood, he thinks. He never fully comprehended. That in the end, or at the start, a human being is only this: a single humiliated fiber that wants desperately to live. He considers the messages he has been receiving and the foolhardy bravery he has tried to display. All pointless. At the moment of consequence, nothing matters but staying alive.

Patrice could have told him that. It was what she must have experienced when the doctor prodded beneath her larynx and said he didn’t care for what he felt. And so George Mason sits there on the gritty floor, thinking with regret and admiration about his wife.