1. Apprehension They used to put dogs on the boys. Maybe they still do. The prisoners would shuffle in--leg shackles, handcuffs, belly chains, by the dozen--and there would be some kid with arm or side or neck in bandages, dirty after just a few hours at the jail, stained red-brown with seeping blood. It smelled like the kid was already losing something, like rot had already set in. Ben and Boris once went to a yard off Claiborne Avenue where a kid had gotten himself arrested. The police said he''d broken into a school to shoot basketballs in the dark gym. He ran when he heard the squad cars and hid under a filthy mattress in the summer-hot back bedroom of a shotgun, empty now for two years since the storm.
The police cordoned off the block and sent dogs in. Afterward there was blood on the mattress and blood all over the ankle-deep trash and shit on the floor. At First Appearances the kid had staples in his cheek, ear, hand, leg. Boris said: "He needs to see a doctor." The judge said: "He was in good enough shape to run. Fifteen thousand dollar bond, cash or surety." "It''s a misdemeanor and he''s eighteen, in school, he''s not a flight risk-- "Not anymore." Laughter from all the free men assembled.
"Fifteen thousand dollars, cash or surety." The police, in their glory--the brave first responders, the ones who stayed. The city was theirs. So they kicked the boys and men until they broke, beat them up against the hoods of cars. The blank windows like nobody was watching, a city without the constraints of society. The only record of their depredations was in their reports , filled with strange empty words in the shape of language but without any meaning: We relocated to the sideyard whereupon Officer Bronco alerted and assisted in the apprehension of the Black male. The dogs got names and the boys didn''t. It was always the boys who were dumb enough to run, through unsettled blocks, between abandoned garages, over broken fences, into vacant houses.
There were hiding places everywhere. The joke was that the police didn''t even need the dogs. They could have just waited. Boys only hide for a little while. Boys always run home in the end. 2. Perp Walk Robert held the gun in his hand the whole way home. Nobody--at least nobody who would come to court--saw him running and no cameras caught it either.
He didn''t throw out his sweatshirt but slept in it that Saturday night and wore it the next day when the story was all over the news and was still wearing it Monday morning when the police came to get him at school. It was, after all, his only sweatshirt. Ben would check, last thing every night and first thing every morning, for the passing of old clients and the advent of new ones. It started like this: Black Male Shot on St. Bernard Avenue . By the next news cycle: Shooting Claims Life of 16-Year-Old . That night they''d put the kid''s name in the papers, but usually someone would already have called Ben. He''d go see the mother with an aluminum tray of wings or whatever he could buy at the closest corner.
The front room of the house filled with relatives and neighbors and friends. He''d pick up some money on the way over because the family was always trying to figure out how to pay for the funeral. A couple days later if he had the courage to swing back by, the family would still be sitting around the living room with the blinds closed, trying to dream up money. That Monday morning after someone murdered Lillie Scott-- Recovery Leader Shot on Kerlerec-- Ben and Boris were up in their office catty-corner from the courthouse getting costumed up in their ties like grownups. "You saw that woman. In the Marigny." Ben, cleaning something white and flaky from his sleeve with saliva and a gray paper towel: "Maybe it was a boyfriend?" Loop and through, with a red silk number that looked expensive. Boris had been a fancy lawyer before New Orleans.
"It was one shot in the chest. Some kid fucked up a robbery." "No arrest?" "Not yet." Ben tucked two disposable pens in an inside pocket, one for himself and the other in case a client needed to sign something. He chewed his pens and didn''t want to give a client something he''d drooled all over. Or put something in his mouth that a client had held. He said: "This one''s yours." "I covered for you last week, my dude.
" "I was in trial. Which I lost. Pity me." "I bought you a drink." So there was Ben when the arrest was announced later that day-- 7th Ward Arrest in Scott Killing-- and the van pulled up outside the jail''s sally port. The thick-bodied deputies in the special transport unit moved the kid slow and the reporters crowded around. The public wanted to know. In January of 2008, the city was in one of those periods of painful sensitivity to its endemic violence, like waking with a start at midnight suddenly alert to the sounds in the darkness.
It was worse though than just a regular murder. The dead woman was a daughter of the city''s Creole royalty. She''d been walking home from her restaurant, one of the first new places to open after the storm. The Hot Potato went out of its way to hire people who were down on their luck: Just back to town, from the storm or from prison. Ben stopped short when the scrum broke and he saw who the kid was. He had his job to do, though. He swam through the reporters and talked directly into the kid''s ear. "I''m coming to see you.
Don''t talk to anyone until I get there." The gate rolled open and the deputies and reporters paused for more shouts and camera snaps. The TV people smelled like talcum powder. "Can you hear me?" His head hanging down. Ben, his lips inches from the boy''s ear: "Robert, it''s Ben Alder. Robert. Remember me?" Robert looked up. Ben had once gone into a jail cell and found a ten-year-old in handcuffs.
The boy cried until Ben brought him coloring books. That''s how it was. "Where''s Mr. Boris?" "I''m your lawyer." Imagine a kid, on public display for his evil, looking more dejected just because he found out you''re his lawyer. Ben said: "At least for right now." Quiet and dry: "Okay." "Listen.
You can''t use the phone. It''s all recorded." "Okay." "Not to your mom, not to anyone, until I see you." "Okay." "Say it back to me. Are you going to talk on the phone?" A headshake you could barely see: "No." "Are you going to talk to anyone about your arrest?" "No.
" "What are you going to do if someone asks?" "I could tell them I don''t know what happened." "That''s talking." "Okay." " I want my lawyer . Nothing else. That''s all you can say." Robert had given what the papers called a confession and Ben called a statement. Anyhow he''d told the police, on tape, that he killed Lillie Scott.
Murder was life in prison, and life meant life. A kid with wide, dark eyes. They pulled Robert away and took him in through the gate with his head down again and walked him across the driveway to a loading dock, the sheriff''s front door. There they stood for ten minutes, a deputy on each of Robert''s elbows, Robert with his head below his shoulders, waiting for someone to open up. Like everything else at the jail, it was built for scale and efficiency but operated by whim and chance. After the reporters had cleared, Ben sat down on some steps and called Boris. "Did you get him out?" "He''s on his way to Disneyworld." "Then this one doesn''t count.
You get the next one too." "It''s Robert Johnson." "My Robert Johnson?" "Ours." The sheriff had a special juvenile tier. That''s where they kept Robert, in double-bunked cells where the boys went naked from the waist up so nobody could pull their shirts over their heads and blind them in a fight. It was just a few minutes'' walk from the public defender''s office, past the police headquarters and a couple blocks of flooded-out jail buildings and empty lots. The faded teal and beige of the sheriff''s insignia stenciled on warehouse walls; weeds climbing chain-link fences; broken streets verging into fields of uneven green, a layer of sediment over everything. Pocked by pools of standing rainwater and banked by unkempt tumbles of razor wire.
Over against the highway: Rusted school buses and new dump trucks parked on a vast, cracked concrete slab where something incalculably heavy and indescribably awful had been lifted or scoured away. 3. Investigation At the beginning Ben had almost nothing from the police, just the same two pieces of paper they gave him for every arrest. On top was the face sheet , with a blurred little picture and some demographic and charge information. Behind the face sheet was the gist, because it gave just the gist of what happened, accor.