Bronx Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

watch the investigators at work. But in real life, having been unlucky enough to be arrested but lucky enough to have gotten out on bail, wouldn’t he want to stay as far away as he possibly could?
    It sure seemed that way to Jaywalker.
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    Monday’s meeting produced very little. While Darren’s recollection of his whereabouts since being released from jail was detailed and complete, mid-August was another matter. He’d been working nights at the post office, midnight to 8:00 a.m., to be exact. During the daytime, he was generally home alone, either sleeping or attending to chores. Charlene had been working days, and their son—whose name was Philip, but whom everyone called “Pooh”—was left in the care of Darren’s sister, Janie, at their parents’ house, the same house that was now the collateral on Darren’s bail bond. Nobody had any specific recollection regarding the first two dates in the indictment, August 16th—when two of the incidents had occurred—and August 17th. But September 5th stood out a bit. That was the day after Labor Day, and therefore the day Janie’s classes at school had resumed after summer vacation. So on that day, for the first time, Pooh had been left with a neighbor. Darren recalled having come home from work as usual, about 9:30 in the morning, and hearing Pooh crying next door. He’d called his mother and asked her if she thought he should go knock on the door. Inez had said no, that if he did that the woman would feel they didn’t trust her, and that anyway, the child would have to get used to the new arrangement. Darren had reluctantly accepted the advice, stayed in his apartment and gone to bed.
    â€œBut it was h-h-hard, ” he remembered.
    It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. Jaywalker jotted a note to himself to include a request for the precise time of each of the attacks in his motion papers.
    The meeting broke up. By that time, Jaywalker had fully succumbed to the Kingstons’ habit of embracing ateach greeting and parting. He particularly enjoyed hugging Marlin. Each time he felt the rough stubble of the older man’s beard against his face, Jaywalker was reminded of his grandfather, his father’s father, whose whiskers had felt like sandpaper and left his young cheeks glowing bright red. So Marlin’s hugs were extra-special.
    God, these were good people! Born black in a country that too often tended to be kinder by far to whites, living in a borough that in those days got commonly compared to a war zone, often unfavorably, they’d managed to carve out a life for themselves. They got up and went to work or school, or sometimes both. They took care of their children. From modest salaries, they somehow saved enough to buy a home. They didn’t seem to drink, use drugs, gamble, curse, get angry or do any of the other things that used to get so many of Jaywalker’s Legal Aid clients into trouble so often. In many ways, the Kingstons epitomized that most overworked of all clichés, the American Dream. They lived honest, hardworking and productive lives, day in and day out. They didn’t look to others to take care of them; they took care of themselves, and of each other. Now something terrible had happened to one of their number. Some outside force, not fully comprehensible in its awfulness and randomness, had suddenly reared up and threatened to destroy everything. Their reaction was as simple as it was immediate. Even as they’d reached out to Jaywalker for outside help, they’d drawn together even more tightly. They’d mustered their collective strengths, pooled their resources and drawn on their faith. That faith was not so much in a higher power as it was in the system itself. They trusted that the system, which they’d always believed in and lived by, would now protect them.
    But the system, Jaywalker knew only too well, protected no one. The system was