Gods and Fathers Read Free Page B

is when Michael condescended to visit him, if you could call it that, at his place in Pound Ridge, the heavily wooded, extremely quiet enclave fifty miles due north of New York City.
    “And you are?” Matt said to the taller of Michael’s friends.
    “This is Adnan,” Michael said, “and Ali. They work for Basil. We’re going out.”
    Matt stood motionless, looking first Adnan and then Ali in the eye, waiting for one of them to put a hand out, but neither did. Instead each nodded slightly and made half-hearted attempts at smiles. Fake smiles.
    “Where are you going?” Matt asked. He was curious because he knew of no place in the area that was hip enough for the likes of Michael and his new friends.
    Michael rolled his eyes at this question, then, shrugging his shoulders, said, “Greenwich, we’re not sure.” Turning to his two friends, he said, “come on up.”
    “Wait,” Matt said, before any of them could move.
    “What?” Michael said, the irritation in his voice sharp and unmistakable.
    “You need to move your car,” said Matt, his voice measured, under control. “It’s blocking the garage and it’s starting to snow.”
    Matt met Michael’s glare with one of his own, tired of these small battles but unable to stop engaging in them, even though the war had been lost long ago.
    “Sure, Dad, no problem,” Michael said, feigning agreeability, but making little effort to hide his real feeling, which Matt could see was closer to disgust than mere irritation. Because I asked him to move his car.
    Matt watched as the three went up to the second floor, which contained Michael’s room and a second bedroom that used to function as Matt’s office. He waited, pondering these two new, and different, friends of his son’s, until he heard the door to Michael’s room click shut. Then he retrieved the pizza and brought it into the kitchen, where he picked up his briefcase. Back in his study he returned Jon Healy’s call—without listening to the message—but the D.A. did not answer.
    He turned on his computer and, sipping the remains of his scotch, turned his mind away from Michael and onto work, something that had not been so easy to do when his troubles with his son first began, but that—for better or worse he could not be sure—had gotten easier over the years.
    He was trying a case in which an illegal Mexican immigrant had been charged with the rape and murder, by stabbing, of a young black prostitute in a courtyard of the Lillian Wald housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The NYPD had installed an extensive video surveillance system in and around the Wald Homes in 1997. Despite relentless vandalism, the camera in the courtyard of 12 Avenue D still worked ten years later, and the thirty-year-old defendant, Mauro Morales, had been caught on tape. Mauro offered an alibi defense through his grandmother. They were watching American Idol in her apartment in East Harlem. The tape was grainy. That wasn’t her grandson. He would never do such a thing.
    The problem for Mauro was that DNA taken from sperm found in the girl’s vagina matched his. Also, the jacket that the attacker was wearing on the tape, with a picture of John Lennon painted on the back clearly visible, was found in Mauro’s girlfriend’s place in Brooklyn. Fabric samples found at the scene matched this very jacket.
    The problem for Matt was that the judge trying the case, Pete Sullivan, had taken it upon himself to harshly cross-examine the grandmother, his tone of voice increasingly sarcastic and incredulous with each new question. Matt had gone easy on her. She was lying to help her grandson. The jury would see that, might even respect it. Also, it never paid to beat up old ladies in front of juries. They all had grandmothers. They might get mad enough to give your defendant a pass.
    In the middle of Sullivan’s questioning, Matt knocked a glass carafe of water onto the floor, shattering it. Everyone was startled. The bailiff