The Good Father (24 page)

There was nothing noteworthy in the cardboard boxes. Stolen library books, a few pots and pans. Inside a trash bag full of clothes I found a bullet.

“Look at this,” I said.

Murray came in. “Take it. We’ll run some ballistics.”

I looked around for something to put it in, then realized how stupid that was. What was I worried about? Contaminating evidence? I wasn’t a cop. Would anyone believe that I, the accused’s father, had miraculously found the exonerating bullet in another man’s home, even if I produced it in a plastic bag? I slipped the bullet into my jacket pocket. Murray returned to the kitchen. Outside, we could hear kids playing basketball, the scuffling of their shoes, the sound of the ball caroming off the rim.

“Bingo,” Murray shouted.

I got up and went in the kitchen. Inside a drawer there was a newspaper article that had been cut out of the paper. There was a picture of Danny. The headline read
ASSASSINATION SUSPECT TO BE ARRAIGNED NEXT WEEK
.

I stared at the picture of my son. What did it mean? Did Cobb clip the article because he was connected to the murder, or simply because he recognized my son as a man he’d ridden a train with six months earlier?

Murray grabbed his phone and took a picture of the article in the drawer. Then he walked around the apartment photographing every bag and box. He knelt and shot the mattress, one corner propped up awkwardly against the wall, then went into the bathroom and looked inside the toilet tank. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the smooth weight of the bullet. There was something about being in this dark space that made the hair stand up on my arms.

“What now?” I asked.

Murray came out of the bathroom.

“How long until Danny’s hearing?”

I checked my watch.

“We’ve got ninety minutes,” I said.

Murray sat in one of the three chairs and thought about this.

“The guy clipped an article about the case,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s connected,” I said, but even as I said it my mind was racing.

“I’ll send the bullet to a guy I know,” Murray said, “see if we can link it to the murder weapon.”

I sat in the chair next to Murray’s. We made a strange sight, two men in suits sitting in the middle of a hobo’s flat. I thought about how the clues in a human mystery are nothing like the clues in a medical mystery. With medicine you are dealing with scientific facts. Tissue samples, blood tests. The human body is a finite entity, with a finite number of systems. There are external factors—environmental issues, exposure to chemicals, drug use, alcohol, questions of diet, and the introduction of outside pathogens—but the answers ultimately lie within the body. At worst—if the malady proves undiagnosable and thus untreatable—an autopsy can be done after death to determine the cause. And from this one learns the answer to the mystery.

But with a human mystery, it is difficult even to decide what constitutes a fact. A man rides a train. He is familiar with weapons of all kinds. In his home is a newspaper article that would appear to connect him to the mystery. That is a fact, but is it relevant? Is the symptom connected to the underlying malady?

And facts are only a piece of the puzzle. There are also issues of psychology and emotion. Cancer is cancer, no matter what you think about it or how you feel. It has no motive, no alibi. It operates according to a prescribed set of factors and is either treatable or not. But people are more complicated. Their actions are harder to understand, and even harder to predict. My son had been accused of a crime and was refusing to acknowledge his guilt or proclaim his innocence. That in itself was a fact, but a fact that proved what?

We sat in those chairs for forty minutes waiting for Cobb to come home. The sun threw shadows on the floor that crept slowly toward our feet. At 2:55 we stood and took one last look at the sum total of Cobb’s life, then ran to the car and drove to the courthouse.

We hit traffic on the highway, a wall of red brake lights stretching as far as the eye could see. A four-car pileup in the center lane at a downtown interchange. I searched the radio for news. Murray tried to switch lanes, but we were boxed in. For twenty-six minutes nothing moved. It was 3:25. Daniel’s arraignment started at four. I called Fran.

“At least half an hour,” I told her. “Whatever you can do to stall them.”

“I’m a housewife from Connecticut,” she said. “How exactly am I supposed to stall them?”

“I’m just saying,” I said. “If there’s anything—”

Her voice was tight. “It’s a zoo right now. The kids don’t understand why you’re not here.”

“I told you, Murray found Frederick Cobb, the veteran who was on the freight train with Danny.”

She sighed. I could almost hear her trying to decide how much of this conversation to have with me.

“They let us see Danny for five minutes,” she said. “He asked for you. Where you were. I told him you were following a lead, like we’re all characters in some hard-boiled detective novel now.”

My pulse quickened.

“What did he say?”

“He said they don’t feed him that much. He said that what they don’t tell you about prison is that you’re hungry all the time.”

I felt worry settle into my hands. I said, “Is he—can you get a message to him? Mention the names Frederick Cobb and Marvin Hoopler, see what he—”

“Paul,” she said.

I stopped. Silence built between us. She exhaled softly.

“I say this with all love, and I want you to listen to me very carefully. If you want to be here for Danny because you feel like you were never there for him when he was a kid, well then
you have to be
here—physically. You have to sit in that waiting room for hours at a time, and then take the five minutes they give you without complaining. And in the five minutes they give you, you have to hug your son, sit with him and hold his hand, and tell him you love him. Not talk strategy or pick his brain for details. You just have to hold him. Because that’s what he needs now. He has lawyers. He needs his father.”

Murray finally managed to nudge the nose of his car into the right-hand lane. The exit was a thousand yards ahead.

“Fuck it,” he said, and pulled onto the shoulder, gunning the SUV to fifty, racing past the frozen traffic.

“Okay,” I told Fran. “We’re moving. I’ll see you in twenty.”

“Paul,” she said. “Did you hear what I said?”

I rubbed my face with my free hand.

“I heard it,” I said, “and I’m—you’re not wrong. But I think what Danny needs more than anything right now is his freedom, and I’m—”

“No,” she said, “you’re not listening. You’re running around, chasing smoke, and doing everything you can to stay basically a thousand miles from all the emotions you don’t want to feel. Baby, I love you, but that’s what you’re doing, and I just—I worry that when this is over, you’re going to feel like you missed the chance to spend time with him.”

When this is over
. What she meant was, after the trial, after his time on death row. What she meant was after they executed my son.

“We’re taking city streets now,” I said. “Murray will drop me out front. Just don’t let them arraign him before I get there.”

I hung up. Murray blew through a yellow light, took a left turn too fast. The back of the car threatened to go into a skid but Murray corrected, as if he did this for a living.

“She’s pissed,” he said.

“No. Not pissed. Just … worried. She thinks I should be there, holding his hand instead of … what I’m doing.”

Murray pulled around a city bus, the SUV floating briefly into oncoming
traffic. Ahead of us, cars flashed their lights. Murray made a humming sound in his throat, corrected his course.

“Not to be, you know, a dick,” he said, “but that’s her job. Or Ellen’s. The mothers. You and I—we’re men. We act. That’s what we do. Their job is to nurture or whatever, and we—we protect our families. We provide for them. We fight. And anybody who tells you different—well, don’t even worry about that.”

He leaned on the horn, scaring half a dozen pedestrians out of the crosswalk.

“I’m beginning to understand why you’ve been divorced three times,” I said.

He smiled. I looked at the clock on the dashboard: 3:55.

“We’re not going to make it,” I said.

“Yes, we are,” he told me. “But you might want to close your eyes. It’s gonna get intense.”

At 4:07, Murray skidded to a stop outside the courthouse. There was a fist-size dent in the front right wheel well that hadn’t been there when we left Eagle Rock, and the inside of the car smelled of burning brake pads, but we were there. The area was choked with cars and pedestrians. Police barricades had been set up, the crowd pushed to either side of the courthouse steps. News vans were parked in the shade, dishes raised, cameras deployed, their feed sent in real time into the homes of millions of Americans.

“I’ll park the car and meet you inside,” Murray yelled to my back, and I slammed the door in his face.

I lost six minutes getting into the building, flashing my ID, waiting in line, another nine going through the metal detectors, first unloading my pockets, then taking off my jacket, finally my shoes. I’d had the sense—just barely—to leave the bullet we’d taken from Cobb’s apartment in the car.

I tried Fran’s phone over and over, but she wouldn’t answer. I had to assume that she was in court, that the proceedings had already begun.

The clock on the wall read 4:30 as I stumbled down the hall, trying to get my shoes and jacket back on without losing any more time. For the
first time in weeks I felt like we had a chance, like all the digging and arguing and the dogged refusal to lose hope was about to pay off.

My cell phone rang. The caller ID showed Murray’s name.

“I can’t talk,” I said. “I’m trying to get in there.”

“They found Cobb,” he told me.

“Who?”

“It was the fingers. Remember I said he lost three fingers in Afghanistan? Well, I had my guy comb hospitals and morgues. He just called. Cobb’s body is in Riverside.”

“His body?”

“He’s been there about three days. Cause of death looks like stabbing.”

I stopped walking. “He’s dead?”

On the other end of the phone I could hear Murray leaning on his horn.

“My guy’s getting the autopsy report,” he said, “but I’d say sometime Monday night our boy Cobb ran into the wrong end of a knife something like sixteen times.”

As the gist of what he was saying caught up with me, time seemed to stop. I felt myself going into a kind of shock. The sensation was physical, the flight response of an animal in the moment it realizes it has become prey.

“Murray.”

“Hold on,” he said. “I just found parking. I’ll be there in five minutes.” He hung up. I held the silent phone to my ear. Cobb was dead. What did it mean? Was this proof of something or just another detail? I felt the predator on my heels, its measured breathing getting closer, the thunder of heavy feet.

Up ahead I saw the courtroom doors fly open. Men and women poured out, walking quickly, some yelling into cell phones. I saw Fran emerge, pushing herself through the bodies. She looked around, saw me.

“Paul,” she said.

“There’s no time,” I told her. “Cobb’s dead. The vet. Somebody stabbed him on Monday. This is—we have to find Douglas. Danny’s lawyers need to get on this right away.”

“Paul,” she said again, more forcefully this time, worry on her face. “Danny pleaded guilty,” she said.

I stared, trying to understand. She held my eyes.

“The prosecutor presented the charges and the judge asked him how he pleaded, and Danny stood up and said,
Guilty
. And his lawyers started shouting. They asked for a recess. The judge said no. He asked Danny if he knew what it meant to plead guilty and did he need a moment to consult with his lawyers, and Danny said no. He understood. He said, ‘I killed him, and I don’t want to waste any more of anybody’s time talking about it.’ ”

A tunnel of darkness surrounded me.

“That’s …” I said. “No. He’s protecting them. It’s—don’t you see? He’s not …”

The thoughts were coming too fast to articulate. I felt the panic of the animal in the moment of capture, the mouth of the trap closing down.

“He pleaded guilty?” I said. None of it made any sense.

Fran grabbed me, pulling me to her, as if worried I might fall. Her hair smelled like apples. Behind her I could see Murray pushing his way through the crowd.

“Murray,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I just heard. We’ll get a psych evaluation for Danny. Sane people don’t confess to things like this.”

I pulled myself free from Fran’s grip.

“Unless he was—what if he was covering for them? Hoopler and—I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I made fists of my hands, punched myself in the legs, trying to think.

“Paul, please,” said Fran. “You’re starting to scare me.”

Murray took my elbow, pulled me to an empty corner.

“Look,” he told me. “This is bad, but it’s not the end of the world. The judge is going to order a psychiatric evaluation. He has to. If Danny’s unbalanced, or if he has another agenda here, we’ll know. And if he is, then we may have to have Danny declared mentally incompetent. Meanwhile we push Douglas to dig into Cobb and Hoopler.”

He kept hold of my arm, using himself as a ground, trying to keep me from floating off into the void. At the end of the hall I saw movement. A crowd of men in uniforms emerged from a doorway, escorting a shackled prisoner.

“Danny,” I called. I pulled away from Murray and pushed my way through the crowd. “Danny!”

At the end of the hall, my son turned. Our eyes met.

“It’s okay,” he called.

“Wait.”

“It’s okay.”

A man in a suit broke off from the pack and moved to intercept me.

“Sir,” he said. “You need to stop.”

“Please,” I said. “I just want to talk to him. Danny!”

“Sir, our transfer protocols are very specific.”

I felt like a man standing on a riverbank, watching his son wash away.

“Fuck that,” I said. “Danny!”

The agents tightened their grips and dragged my son toward the exit.