MURDER is like real estate. The key to it all is location, location, location. Kill a poor guy in the back streets of Washington, D.C., and they sigh and moan about life in the naked city. But kill a businessman in Georgetown, and you assault commerce. Everyone is pretty nervous right now, so when commerce is assaulted, the prosecution swoops down to guard our nation’s capital. If you’re the one they finger, you had better have an attorney like me.  Cleveland’s need for my services began with Benny’s trip to Georgetown’s hottest nightspot. By all accounts Benny Batiste had a wonderful time on his late-night jaunt to the Potomac Club. Unfortunately, things took a tumble when Benny walked out the door. Somebody cut his head off in the parking lot.

I inherited Benny’s problem a few hours later. Within minutes of his untimely demise, police scoured the city in search of the lady who left the club clutching Benny’s arm. Instead, they found Cleveland Barnes, pushing a shopping cart of empty cans down M Street. Mind you, recycle bin theft was no big crime in the District of Columbia. The officers fixed on something else. Cleveland wore a green army raincoat, a battered top hat, and bloodied Bally loafers. As the police discovered Benny without a head or shoes, Cleveland had big trouble, and I didn’t sleep.

5:03 A.M. I’d spent the night catching up on paperwork after a three-week trial, and hoped to rest a few hours before going to court. But no such luck.

The cell phone blared. I flicked it open, and he spoke before I could. 

“Attorney Stuart Clay?”

“Howard?” Howard Reynolds, Director of the Criminal Justice Act office.  “You’re the on-call CJA defender this month,” he said. There’s been a grizzly murder, the public defender has a conflict, and we need you now.”

“Not the on-call until September. For God’s sake, it’s July.”

“I know the month,” Howard barked back. “This is an emergency, and the Felony One judge on the case wants to appoint you. What part of that don’t you understand?”

I paused several seconds, tried to focus. Don’t bicker. Foolish for a CJA lawyer to cross Howard Reynolds at any hour. The judge picked me and nothing else mattered.

“Sorry, man. Long night.” I sighed and sat up. “A name would help.”

“Barnes.” His voice lightened. “Cleveland Barnes. They got him wearing the dead man’s Bally loafers! Now they’re waiting for you, Mr. Clay. Okay?”

“Sure, but I—”

“Sorry Clay, I’ve got other fish to fry. You wouldn’t believe last night’s lockup!”

The line went dead.
  
CHAPTER 2
DONNING yesterday’s shirt and still-knotted tie, I ignored the wrinkled cloth and sour smell, sipped cold coffee from a Styrofoam cup, and stepped into my loafers. Had to stuff the exhaustion. Somewhere. Reaching inside my coat I found a strand of black licorice, stuck it in my mouth, and gave a determined chomp. Truth is, I knew when I chose this life that 5:00 A.M. phone calls came with the turf.

The fax machine whirred. Howard’s cover sheet and police department “PD reports” printed out and came to rest in a stack beside the computer screen. I grabbed my suit coat off the hook on the door, stuffed the faxed pages into the inside pocket, and headed for the elevator.

Seconds later, my rumpled soul and mortal coil passed through the Indiana Avenue exit of 603 Pennsylvania Avenue, north building. I headed across Sixth Street toward the brooding shadow of the D.C. Superior Courthouse, a building that never slept, a building I called Paradise. The concrete form jutted up among the
Victorian houses in Judiciary Square. Inside, eighty-five judges and twenty-five magistrate judges tried to assert order over a sixty-three-square-mile parcel of land named the District of Columbia.

I walked through the metal detector, bid how-do to graying marshals, and made my way down toward the lockup. My steps echoed off escalators that wouldn’t turn on until 6:00 A.M. Reaching C level, I nodded to another three marshals and an Assistant U.S. Attorney scurrying toward the office where the next day’s cases
were prepared for presentation in court. I headed down a brightly lit hallway for 200 feet and entered the U.S. Marshal’s block.

A yawning marshal sniffed my bar card.

“Mr. Clay,” he growled. “I’ll warn you, it’s a full house. I can’t wait for this damned hot weather to break.”

He pointed to an orange metal door. An electronic lock buzzed. I pushed the thick door open, and followed the marshal down a long gray corridor toward a place we called the bullpen.

I knew what awaited me. A July night in the district produced a free-fire zone in many of the crumbling Victorian blocks and public housing projects. Street corners, back lots, and playgrounds teamed with the disenfranchised, young black, white, and Latin faces looking for a rush, looking for sex, looking to pull a vaporous smile off a sticky rock smoldering in a tin-foil pipe. These places and people were deadly, yet the seekers came, possessed by both a need for excitement and a nihilistic doubt of all tomorrows. They hung out, talked, smoked, searched for something missing in the day life. Guns were as common as crack dealers handing out little baggies for folded bills. It was normal to witness multiple drug sales, normal to hear the wail of sirens and see the strut of young flesh, normal to hear the sputter of gunfire and view a body fall and a
crowd disperse, followed by the cry of “five-O” and the flash of speeding police cars.

The mean streets were raked and groomed—managed, not tamed—by stressed-out cops who fought back the dark tide. Now, in the nearness of morning, the court prepared to assert order back over the mean streets, back over the darkness darker than night. It happened in this building, on this floor, at this place. My gut tensed as the stench and noise of the newly arrested ratcheted upward. We reached the bullpen. I stared through the bars at Dante’s Inferno. A smirking old man wriggled out of his jumpsuit, raised both arms and howled in laughter at a marshal. Shaking his fist, the marshal hissed into a handheld transmitter for backup. Laughs and catcalls filled the humid air, echoed back through barred cages and off the greasy concrete floor and walls. Inside several divided cages, the mad tide roared. Most in orange suits. Some in white. Some in
blue. One in a filthy rain coat. Dozens of the newly arrested congregated in large cells: all shapes, sizes, and colors, more than 200 men and women, strangely awake and excited, reeking the sour stench of street life.
My guide steered me toward another orange door. Another marshal waved from inside a Plexiglas and iron-framed kiosk. I heard the electronic lock buzz. We entered solitary confinement.

Halfway down the gray hall, past several metal doors with portal windows, we stopped. He grabbed a collection of long, thick keys chained to his belt. Clutching the right key, he drove it into the dry lock works and twisted. The marshal opened the door and revealed a chained, handcuffed man seated behind a rickety table.

Pointy dark eyes shone through foliage of crow’s feet, gray beard wire, and badly matted Rasta locks. He wore an orange jumpsuit and oversized paper slippers. Certainly not Bally’s. I took him to be about fifty-eight, weathered and filthy—but lucid.

After the marshal left and the door clanged shut, the man stared straight at me. Shock surged up my spine. His eyes flickered wildly, and then came back into focus.

He grinned and nodded.