1 A thought sparked in the chaos of Bekker''smind. The jury . He caught it, mentally, like a quick hand snatching a flyfrom midair. Bekker slumped at the defense table, the center of thecircus. His vacant blue eyes rolled back, pale and wide as aplastic baby- doll''s, wandering around the interior of thecourtroom, snagging on a light fixture, catching on an electricaloutlet, sliding past the staring faces. His hair hadbeen cut jail house short, but they had let him keep the wildblond beard. An act of mercy: The beard disguised the tangledmass of pink scar tissue that crisscrossed his face. Inthe middle of the beard, his pink rosebud lips opened andclosed, like an eel''s, damp and glistening.
Bekker looked at the thought he''d caught: The jury .House wives, retirees, welfare trash. His peers , they calledthem. A ridiculous concept: He was a doctor of medicine.He stood at the top of his profession. He was respected .Bekker shook his head. Understand .
? The word tumbled from the judge- crow''s mouth andechoed in his mind. "Do you understand, Mr. Bekker?" What . ? The idiot flat- faced attorney pulled at Bekker''s sleeve:"Stand up." What . ? The prosecutor turned to stare at him, hate in her eyes.The hate touched him, reached him, and he opened hismind and let it flow back. I''d like to have you for five minutes,good sharp scalpel would open you up like a goddamn oyster: zip,zip.
Like a goddamn clam . The prosecutor felt Bekker''s interest. She was a hardwoman; she''d put six hundred men and women behind bars.Their petty threats and silly pleas no longer interested her.But she flinched and turned away from Bekker. What? Standing? Time now? Bekker struggled back. It was so hard. He''d let himselfgo during the trial.
He had no interest in it. Refused to testify.The outcome was fixed, and he had more serious problemsto deal with. Like survival in the cages of the HennepinCounty Jail, survival without his medicine. But now the time had come. His blood still moved too slowly, oozing through his arterieslike strawberry jam. He fought, and simultaneouslyfought to hide his struggle. Focus.
And he started, so slowly it was like walking throughpaste, trudging back to the courtroom. The trial had lastedfor twenty- one days, had dominated the papers and the television newscasts. The cameras had ambushed him, morning and night, hitting him in the face with their intolerable lights,the cameramen scuttling backward as they transferred him, inchains, between the jail and the courtroom. The courtroom was done in blond laminated wood,with the elevated judge''s bench at the head of the room, thejury box to the right, tables for the prosecution and defensein front of the judge. Behind the tables, a long rail dividedthe room in two. Forty uncomfortable spectator''s chairswere screwed to the floor behind the rail. The chairs wereoccupied an hour before arguments began, half of them allottedto the press, the other half given out on a first- comebasis. All during the trial, he could hear his name passingthrough the ranks of spectators: Bekker Bekker Bekker .
The jury filed out. None of them looked at him. They''dbe secluded, his peers, and after chatting for a decent interval,they''d come back and report him guilty of multiplecounts of first- degree murder. The verdict was inevitable.When it was in, the crow would put him away. The black asshole in the next cell had said it, in hisphony street dialect: "They gon slam yo'' nasty ass into OakPark, m''man. You live in a motherfuckin'' cage the size of amotherfuckin'' refrigerator wit a TV watching you everymove. You wanta take a shit, they watchin'' every move,they makin'' movies of it.
Nobody ever git outa Oak Park.It is a true motherfucker." But Bekker wasn''t going. The thought set him offagain, and he shook, fought to control it. Focus . He focused on the small parts: the gym shorts bitinginto the flesh at his waist. The razor head pressed againstthe back of his balls. The Sox cap, obtained in a trade forcigarettes, tucked under his belt.
His feet sweating in theridiculous running shoes. Running shoes and white sockswith his doctor''s pinstripes--he looked a fool and he knewit, hated it. Only a moron would wear white socks withpinstripes, but white socks and running shoes . no. Peoplewould be laughing at him. He could have worn his wing tips, one last time--a manis innocent until proven guilty--but he refused. Theydidn''t understand that. They thought it was another eccentricity,the plastic shoes with the seven- hundred- dollar suit.
They didn''t know. Focus . Everyone was standing now, the crow- suit staring, theattorney pulling at his sleeve. And here was RaymondShaltie. "On your feet," Shaltie said sharply, leaning over him.Shaltie was a sheriff''s deputy, an overweight time- server inan ill- fitting gray uniform. "How long?" Bekker asked the attorney, looking up,struggling to get the words out, his tongue thick in hismouth. "Shhh .
" The judge was talking, looking at them: ". standingby, and if you leave your numbers with my office, we''ll getin touch as soon as we get word from the jury ." The attorney nodded, looking straight ahead. Hewouldn''t meet Bekker''s eyes. Bekker had no chance. In hisheart, the attorney didn''t want him to have a chance.Bekker was nuts. Bekker needed prison.
Prison forever andseveral days more. "How long?" Bekker asked again. The judge had disappearedinto her chambers. Like to get her, too. "Can''t tell. They''ll have to consider the separate counts,"the attorney said. He was court- appointed, needed themoney. "We''ll come get you.
" Pig''s eye, they would. "Let''s go," said Shaltie. He took Bekker''s elbow, dug hisfingertips into the nexus of nerves above Bekker''s elbow,an old jailer''s trick to establish dominance. Unknowingly,Shaltie did Bekker a favor. With the sudden sharp pulse ofpain, Bekker snapped all the way back, quick and hard, likea handclap. His eyes flicked once around the room, his mind cold,its usual chaos squeezed into a high- pressure corner, wildthoughts raging like rats in a cage. Calculating. He put painin his voice, a childlike plea: "I need to go.
" "Okay." Shaltie nodded. Ray Shaltie wasn''t a bad man.He''d worked the courts for two de cades, and the experiencehad mellowed him--allowed him to see the humanside of even the worst of men. And Bekker was the worstof men. But Bekker was nevertheless human, Shaltie believed: He that is without sin among you, let him cast the firststone . Bekker was a man gone wrong, but still a man.And in words that bubbled from his mouth in a whinysingsong, Bekker told Shaltie about his hemorrhoids.
Jailfood was bad for them, Bekker said. All cheese and breadand pasta. Not enough roughage. He had to go. He always used the bathroom at noon, all through thetwenty- one days of the trial. Raymond Shaltie sympathized:He''d had them himself. Shaltie took Bekker by the arm andled him past the now empty jury box, Bekker shuffling,childlike, eyes unfocused. At the door, Shaltie turned him--docile, quiet, apparently gone to another world--and puton the handcuffs and then the leg chains.
Another deputywatched the pro cess, and when Bekker was locked up,drifted away, thinking of lunch. "Gotta go," Bekker said. His eyes turned up to RayShaltie. "You''ll be okay, you''ll be okay," Shaltie said. Shaltie''s tiehad soup stains on it, and flakes of dandruff spotted hisshoulders: an oaf, Bekker thought. Shaltie led Bekker out ofthe courtroom, Bekker doing the jail house shuffle, his legsrestricted to a thirty- inch stride. Behind the courtroom, anarrow hallway led to an internal stairway, and from there,to a holding cell. But to the left, through a service door, wasa tiny employees- only men''s room, with a sink, a urinal, asingle stall.
Shaltie followed Bekker into the men''s room. "Now,you''re okay ." A warning in his voice. Ray Shaltie wastoo old to fight. "Yes," Bekker said, his pale- blue eyes wandering in theirsockets. Behind the wandering eyes, his mind was movingeasily now, the adrenaline acting on his brain like a dose ofthe purest amphetamine. He turned, lifted his arms up andback, thrusting his wrists at Shaltie. Shaltie fitted the key,uncuffed the prisoner: Shaltie was breaking the rules, but aman can''t wipe himself if he''s wearing handcuffs.
Besides,where would Bekker go, high up here in the governmentbuilding, with the leg chains? He couldn''t run. And hiswildly bearded face was, for the moment at least, the mostrecognizable face in the Cities. Bekker shuffled into the stall, shut the door, dropped histrousers, sat down. Eyes sharp now, focused. They useddisposable safety razors in the jail, Bics. He''d broken thehandle off one, leaving only the head and a stub, easy tohide during the shakedowns. When he''d had a chance, he''dburned the stub with a match, rounding the edges, to makeit more comfortable to wear. This morning he''d taped itunder his balls, fixed with the end of a Band- Aid.
Now hepeeled the razor off himself, pulled the remaining tape offthe razor, and began hacking at his beard. He''d grown the beard to cover his furrowed face. Bekker,once so beautiful, the possessor of a classic Nordic face, apale, uninflected oval with rose lips, had been beaten into agrotesque gnome, torn to pieces and only poorly repaired. Davenport. Get Davenport . The fantasy seized him: openingDavenport, using the knife to peel the face, lifting the skinoff inch by inch. He fought it: Fantasies were for the lockup. He forcedDaven.