Darwin's Blade

“Trudy, I—” began Dar when she picked up the phone.

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “I didn’t catch it live, but Linda taped it for me. The commentators are going on about road rage.”

“Road rage!” shouted Dar. “Those bastards tried to kill me and then I—”

“You’re at Riverside, right?” interrupted Trudy again.

“Right.”

“I’ve got one of W.D.D’s associates on the way. You’ll give a deposition there at Riverside with the associate present and he’ll have you out in an hour.”

Dar stood and blinked at the phone. “Trudy, bail’s going to be about a billion dollars. Two men are dead. Dead live on Cha

“There’s more to this than meets the Insta-Cam,” said Trudy. “I’ve been on the phone. I know who the two guys were and why the CHP and county mounties aren’t releasing your name to the media. And why W.D.D. will be able to—”

“Who were they?” said Dar, realizing that he was shouting again. “Did they say on TV?”

“No, it wasn’t on TV and we’re all going to be further enlightened tomorrow morning at the San Diego deputy district attorney’s office,” said Trudy. “Nine A.M. You’ll be out on bail…the San Diego County DA already has a writ from one of his judges asking the Riverside County judge to be lenient. Don’t worry about media following you home…Your name isn’t going to be leaked until at least tomorrow.”

“But…” Dar said, and realized he did not know what else to say.

“Wait for W.D.D.’s associate,” said Trudy. “Go home and take a hot shower. Lawrence just called in and I let him know what’s going on. We’ll give you a call tonight and then you’ll get a good night’s sleep. It looks like we’ll all need it for tomorrow.”

W.D.D. Du Bois, pronounced “du-boyz,” was short, black, and brilliant, with a Martin Luther King mustache and a Da

Du Bois was not the attorney’s real name. Or, rather, it had not been at birth. Christened Willard Darren Dirks in Greenville, Alabama, W.D.D. had been born in the early 1940s with everything working against him—his race, his family’s rural poverty, the state he was born in, the IQ and attitude of most of the state’s white inhabitants, his parents’ illiteracy, the lousy segregated schools he attended—everything except his IQ, which was higher than most professional bowlers’ average score. When he was nine, young Willie Dirks discovered the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois (pronounced “du-boyz”) and had his own name legally changed by the time he was twenty. By that time he had gotten himself out of Alabama and through the University of Southern California and into UCLA’s law school. He was only the third Negro to graduate from that esteemed institution and he was the first to run a major law firm in Los Angeles consisting only of other black lawyers, associates, and staff.

The fact that this coincided perfectly with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a blizzard of new government-backed civil rights legislation, and Lyndon Johnson’s legislative steps toward a Great Society that required no-holds-barred legal battles on all fronts, helped W.D.D.’s practice but did not define it. His firm handled mostly civil cases, but W.D.D.’s first love was criminal law, and these were the few cases he still argued personally in court—the stranger the case, the more the appeal to Attorney Du Bois. It was well known—at least in legal circles—that Attorney Robert Shapiro had tried to bring Du Bois into the O. J. Simpson case before Joh

The deputy district attorney entered and took the chair at the head of the table. The politically ambitious Richard Allen Weid was sensitive about his last name, which was pronounced “weed.” His father had been a famous judge, so Richard could not just change his name, but he told people not to call him “Dick” even more frequently than Lawrence objected to “Larry.” Which guaranteed that—at least out of earshot—everyone in the DA’s office, in the downtown San Diego Justice Center, and in Southern California called him “Dick,” and more commonly, “Dickweed.”

“Sid” was a bigger surprise to Dar. The woman was attractive, in her late thirties, a little overweight in a nice way, professionally groomed but with an expression that seemed to suggest high intelligence filtered through restrained amusement at life. She reminded Dar of some character actress he really liked, but he could not for the life of him recall the actress’s name. Dar guessed this woman spelled her name “Sydney” with two y’s, and since she took the only other “power seat” at the table—the empty chair at the opposite end of the table from Dick Weid’s—she was obviously someone with serious clout.

Deputy DA Weid brought the meeting to order. “You all know why we’re here today. For those of you who may have been on duty and missed the news yesterday or this morning, a copy of Mr. Darwin Minor’s statement should be in front of you…and we’ve got this tape.”

Shit, thought Dar as the assistant’s assistant pulled the standard media cart with a half-inch VHS VCR and old monitor out of the corner and moved it to a place of pride next to the deputy DA’s chair. The assistant popped in the tape and Dick Weid wielded the remote.

Dar had not seen the news video the night before. Now he watched the Cha

When the Mercedes fell out of the camera’s view, the Cha

Deputy DA Weid used the reverse control on the remote to run the wreckage backward. The pieces of car leaped together and the car levitated back into the air, and then Weid stopped on a freeze-frame of the two men’s faces, one of them in the act of shouting at the helicopter in what appeared to be a cry of supplication. Dar saw every head in the room swivel toward him—even Lawrence’s and Trudy’s—and he felt the weight of every gaze. He considered asking, Didn’t their air bags save them? but decided to keep his mouth shut. Besides, three of the four front-seat air bags had deployed and deflated by the time the vehicle was airborne, making the front of the passenger compartment all the more pitiful in the video, as if it were draped inside with huge, empty condoms.