The Laws of our Fathers by Scott Turow Read Free Book Online Page B

elegant suit, lectures Seth with a finger raised. 'But I follow the lady's advice. You remember Colette? "Who said you should be happy? Do your work." That's me, man. I work. I get paid. I don't fall in love with them. Some go out the courtroom door, some don't. I accept all collect calls from the penitentiary. But that's the end of my sympathy gig. Now, you've gone and made it your lifetime hobby to feel sorry for this young man, that's your thing. But don't be layin that on me.'
        'Hey, he's not my hobby. I've stayed in touch with him, that's all. He's always needed a little help. And besides, how would you feel? Guy reaches me from a pay phone. His mother's dead, the cops are hunting him for something he didn't do, and he can't call his own father for help, since he happens to be one of the twentieth century's leading assholes. That's pretty rugged.'
        'Hey, brother.' Hobie sweeps his hand. 'There eight million stories in the naked city. You've had it rugged. Lucy's had it rugged. You-all I feel sorry for. Folks in this place - most times it turns out they made their own trouble.'
        A guard, sent across to escort them to Department 7, where Nile is housed, has been watching their approach along the mottled bricks.
        'Which one of you's the reporter?' he asks. 'Come to interview me, man? Shit, somebody ought to. I'm not kidding. I been doing this twenty-three years, going on twenty-four. I seen some unbelievable shit.'
        The guard, a lanky man, laughs robustly at himself and falls in with them. He seems far too affable for the job. He is chewing a toothpick, which comes out of his mouth at the starting point of each stream of declarations. In the meantime, whooping voices tumble toward them from the fenced area of the jail play yard, where the inmates, hundreds of them, in their blue jumpsuits and slip-ons are shooting hoops or jiving with one another in milling clusters. There are three different courts, games at each net. In two side areas, a number of men are spotting around the weight benches. Seth surveys the population. They are long and short; some are fat; some bristle with prison muscles. A few of the inmates are staring with sullen contempt, while others hang on the chain links and call after them. 'Hey, lawyer, lawyer, man, you gotta take my case, man, man, I'm innocent, man, I didn't do nothin.' One thing: they are black. At a far remove, beneath one net, the Latinos are at play, and after some searching, Seth finally takes note of a covey of white guys, most of them with shaved scalps and visible tattoos. But here in Kindle County Municipal Jail, decades after the great Southern migrations, the sad facts speak for themselves.
        It is easy therefore to spot Nile, at the far side of the yard. He looks fatter than when Seth saw him last, three years ago. On someone of his age, Nile's potbelly seems a confession of weakness. His dun hair is long and matted, and he is smoking a cigarette. He rocks on his soles as he talks with three or four young black men. As always, nothing in Nile's aspect is as you might expect. Where is the grim, broken mood that would be natural, whether he was wrongly accused or enduring the internal upheaval that would follow arranging the murder of his own mother? The tall young man looks, if anything, at home. But that is Nile. Mr Inappropriate. And besides, as Seth himself knows, of all the great emotions, the least predictable in its effects is grief.
        The guard, Eddie, has to call Nile twice. One of the khaki-suited officers opens the locked gate to allow him to emerge.
        'Hey,' Nile says. He is awkward. He prepares to throw an arm around Seth, then thinks better of it. Seth reintroduces him to Hobie. It's been decades. 'Great,' Nile says. 'Great.' He rattles Hobie's hand with ungainly enthusiasm. Even for Seth, it is hard to know where to start. Condolences? Outrage over the circumstances?
        'So how are you?' Seth asks.