At two on Monday I am picking up peanut shells from my carpet when Clan saunters into my office. He has converted our office into a peanut warehouse Jimmy Carter himself could be proud of. He has agreed to go with me to the apartment of Gina Whitehall, my dependency neglect case, to see how difficult it might have been for the child to turn on the water. I have the trial later this week. The police have investigated the incident, and I don’t want to cross-examine a cop without having seen the place for myself.
“Are you still going out there with me, or are you coming to weasel out?”
“What a mess!” he exclaims, ignoring my question.
“It looks like those bars where they throw the shells on the floor.”
“Most of them are yours,” I say irritably.
“How much weight have you lost?”
Squeezing into one of my chairs, Clan snorts, his double chin wobbling like a helping of cranberry sauce, “Three pounds. You get sick of the damn things awfully fast.”
I throw a handful of shells into the wastepaper basket beside me and then, despite my best intentions, I take another peanut from my desk drawer.
Clan extracts a reddish substance from his teeth with a straightened paper clip and wipes it on his pants. We seem to be regressing into after-hours behavior without much prompting. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another nut, shaking his head.
“I hate these damn things.”
I grin at Clan. The son of a gun is irrepressible. His marriage is terrible; his law practice is at a standstill; he is a hundred pounds overweight; he has the emotional maturity of a five year old; and I wouldn’t trade his friendship for anything. As we talk, the phone rings. It is a psychologist friend I contacted at the university to see if there was any research on the reaction of small children to burns. I push the speaker button to let Clan hear. It is not as if he doesn’t know the client.
“Gideon,” Steve Huddleston says, his baritone voice not quite as low over the phone, “I thought I better get in touch with you. I can’t find anything specifically on reactions of small children to the sort of situation you described.”
Damn. I look at Clan and shake my head. I would have figured that with as much useless research as is cranked out in this country some academic psychologist would have zeroed in on this area, given all the attention to child abuse nowadays.
“What do you suggest?” I say glumly.
Gina Whitehall had better start preparing for a criminal trial. If her kid dies, she will be charged with murder.
I listen to Steve clear his throat and watch Clan draw a finger across his own. He ought to be handling this case.
Steve says, “If you’d like, I’d be willing to testify generally about the problem-solving ability of a child this age.
The fact is that a two and a half year old wouldn’t necessarily be able to figure out that she could escape the pain of the hot water by climbing out of the tub. The literature shows by that age a child just doesn’t have the reasoning ability, and I imagine the panic a child would feel wouldn’t improve it any either.”
Clan waggles his jowls at me in approval.
“You realize the client can’t afford to pay you an expert witness fee,” I say, making sure I’m not going to be hit with a bill down the road.
“All I want is a subpoena,” he says, “so I won’t have to take a vacation day.”
Spoken like a true state employee.
“No problem.” I smile, watching Clan pop another peanut into his mouth.
I’ll get him a subpoena, but I suspect I’ll forget about the statutory fee of thirty dollars. After all, he’ll still be receiving his salary from the state.
“Can you be prepared to back that statement up with some research?”
“That’ll be simple enough,” Steve says, sounding pleased to be part of this. Some professors love to testify.
“Do you want me to bring it?”
“Just know it,” I say. The Department of Human Services won’t be prepared to rebut it. There is no sense letting their attorney pick it apart. I give him the date and time and tell him I will be calling him back to go over it Thursday afternoon.
“Where do you find these guys?” Clan asks, genuine admiration in his voice.
“People like to help. You forget I worked for the state for years as a child abuse investigator. You get to know all kinds of folks. Let’s go,” I say, feeling a little better.
This doesn’t mean we’ll win, but at least I’ll have something to argue to the judge.
Clan looks sheepish as he says, “I can’t make it.”
I had a feeling he would wimp out on me. I ask, “Why the hell not?”
“I guess I feel too weird,” he says, looking down at the floor.
“I slept with Gina once at her apartment.”
I look at Clan in disbelief.
“You’re shitting me.”
Dan’s eyes dart around the room, landing everywhere but on my face.
“That’s a hell of a thing to do, isn’t it?”
I try to conjure up the scene: a fat, middle-aged, balding lawyer dropping his trousers to bed down a farm-girl whore who paid his fee with a screw. Now I understand better why he dropped her on me.
“Where was the kid?” I ask, wondering if my client’s child could have been playing in the tub and was burned while Clan was busy with her mother. I feel disgust creeping over me like a dirty fog.
“Day care, I think,” Clan says, his face red with embarrassment.
“I only did it once, but I still feel like an asshole about it.”
I think of the girl: except for her eyes, as uninteresting as a digital clock. I feel sorry for her, but Clan is my friend, and I feel worse for him. Brenda must be giving him hell to drive him to a whore, but he is possibly exposing her to AIDS.
“Did you use a rubber?”
“Two,” Clan says, breaming hard.
“I couldn’t feel a thing.”
“I’ve heard that’s more dangerous,” I say coldly, “because they break that way.”
Clan looks miserable.
“You know, if she reported me to the ethics people, they’d probably jerk my license for this one.”
I stand up, embarrassed for my friend. It hasn’t been too many months since Clan pleaded guilty in municipal court to shoplifting fifty cents’ worth of food.
“Lawyers have done a lot worse than snitched a Twinkie or bartered their fee,” I say loyally, putting the best spin I can on Dan’s activities.
Clan stands and waddles over to the door.
“That’s what’s pathetic about me. I’m so damn petty.”
Awkwardly, I clap him on the shoulder as he goes out ahead of me.
“No,” I say, turning out the light and locking the door, “your problem is you’re so damn human.”
Walking toward his office with his head down, he mutters, “In my case, I don’t see there’s a difference.”
I head down the hall for the elevators, thinking that at least Clan has the guts to admit it and the decency to be ashamed. The older we get, the crazier we become. At the front desk, Julia pops a bubble when I tell her I’m going to Gina’s house.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she says, checking her tiny lips in a compact mirror for remains of the explosion.
Don’t tell me that, I think. Julia is wearing a conservative and even elegant dark green paisley dress, but the top two buttons of her blouse are undone, revealing the top of a black lacy bra underneath.
“Maybe I’d be safer,” I say, smiling at the outrageous pretense that we are civilized, “if I didn’t do anything you would do.”
Julia makes a face but doesn’t respond. It is rare that I get the last word. As I stand before the elevators, smugly I glance back at her. She has made a circle with her right thumb and forefinger, and with her left index finger she moves it back and forth through the 0 she has formed, all the while shaking her head. A female client for one of the other attorneys on our floor is seated a few feet away from her desk and is watching Julia with a look of utter amazement. Is this really a law firm?
A light rain has begun to fall, further darkening my mood. I hope the weather clears before I return to Fayetteville on Wednesday for Dade to give Binkie a statement. The euphoria from the Alabama game has already begun to fade, and the question uppermost in my mind is how long it will take the university administration to re view the “J” Board’s decision. If I could get Binkie to drop the criminal charges against Dade, surely that would influence their decision. Dade is doing his part: the Hogs have jumped to fourth in the UPI Poll and fifth in the AP.
We play Auburn, ranked third in both polls, Saturday, and a win, if both Florida and Notre Dame lose, should put us on top. Surely the vice-chancellor and the chancellor are feeling some heat to let Dade finish the season when he is so clearly central to our chances. There isn’t a person in the state who didn’t feel the excitement when the Razorbacks won their first NCAA basketball championship.
With Clinton taking what seems to be a daily pounding by the media, it is about the only thing in the state to feel good about.
On 1-640 heading east I pass a billboard and see beaming down at me a slutty but expensive-looking model advertising pantyhose and think again of Julia’s parting gesture. No wonder women are cynical. They expect the worst from men and with good reason. We are the ones who commit the rapes, the murders, the never ending garden-variety domestic beatings that seldom get reported.
So what else is new? If we ever admitted to ourselves how little men have changed since we dropped down out of the trees, we might just give up on the spot.
I find Gina’s half of a duplex apartment easier than I thought I would. Just five minutes off 1-40 east on the road to Memphis, she is within walking distance of a pancake restaurant, a motel, and a gas station. So much for the zoning laws. On the other hand, given what she does for a living, her place is probably zoned commercial.
Gina comes to the door of her duplex dressed in a thin white T-shirt and purple short shorts that showcase her long legs. With big shoulders and a high waist, she gives the impression today of having a large frame rather than being overweight, as I remembered her in my office.
Dumbly, I realize she expects to have sex with me, too.
Why else would I have come to her place? Lawyers don’t usually make house calls. In my own mind, my motives are pure since I set this visit up before I knew Clan slept with her.
“Hi,” she says demurely, her round eyes reminding me of two blue buttons.
“Come on in.”
As I enter the room, a small black mutt comes up to me. Gina scoops up the dog and speaks baby talk to it. In her own apartment as she coos to the animal, she seems about twelve years old. The only piece of furniture in the darkened living room is a tattered tan couch. It is cold in here. This bleak area won’t qualify for House Beautiful, but since most people don’t use their living rooms either, why bother at all?
“I’d like to see the tub,” I announce instantly and presumably like her customers, follow her up a flight of stairs to my right. Ascending the steps, I observe that the couch is too short and narrow for a successful business transaction. Off to the left at the top of the stairs, I see what must be her bedroom. I have to check an impulse to enter it. I have never been in a prostitute’s room unless I count my Peace Corps days in Colombia. My main memory is of pictures of JFK and the Pope side by side, a piece of pottery resembling a coffee urn where she squatted in front of me afterward to wash herself, and a health card showing regular visits to the doctor to inspect her for VD. Before AIDS, prostitution seemed a business like any other, the customers wanting to dawdle and the sellers wanting to hurry them along. Since the advent of the HIV virus, the oldest profession must be like working on the bomb squad. All I re member about the Colombian whore I saw occasionally is that the door to her room was off its hinges. She said that while drunk she had broken it. I had no reason to doubt her.
Gina’s bathroom is cleaner than I expected, cleaner than my own, I’m sure.
“Tell me again why you left the baby alone,” I say, looking at the fixtures. Instead of a difficult knob a child would have to grasp to turn, there is only a single lever, perhaps the width of the blade of a kitchen knife, for hot and cold. Trying the lever, I find it moves easily and convince myself that a small child could turn it.
Gina sits down on the closed toilet seat and crosses her legs. We could be a couple debating who left the ring in the tub. She says, “All the towels were dirty. I remembered I had some clean ones in the dryer downstairs and I went down to get them.”
Logical enough, but would someone financially strapped as this girl have a washer and dryer? I make a mental note to check when I go downstairs.
“How long were you gone?”
“Just a minute or two,” she says, hugging herself.
I turn on the hot water full blast and look down at my watch to time how long it will take to partially fill the tub.
She has said there was only an inch or two of water. If that is true, it doesn’t make sense that the child would have a burn line right below her nipples if she had been forced to sit down in the water with her hips flat against the bottom of the tub. I have not seen anything in the re port from Social Services showing the depth of water at the time the child was burned. In four minutes the tub fills to about three inches of water. Perhaps she was gone longer than she is admitting. I turn off the water.
“Has anyone from Social Services timed how long it takes to fill the tub?” I ask, my face now bathed in sticky steam.
She hands me a towel to wipe my face.
“Not while I’ve been here,” she says. If the child were sitting up, I estimate it would take eight inches of water to burn her as the DHS report suggests.
I plunge my right hand into the water up to the wrist and jerk it out immediately. The flesh is stinging and red.
The pain must have been excruciating for the child. How could she not have tried to climb out if at all possible? I stand and run cold water over my wrist and look at my self in the bathroom mirror. My forehead feels as if it is covered with thick lard and my hair is plastered against my head. In the heat of the bathroom I don’t look any better than the typical middle-aged men who, drunk, and stinking with their exertions, must come in here to piss after having sweated out an orgasm in her. How do women stand to be prostitutes? Block it all out somehow.
How does this woman, innocent or guilty, bear to think about her child’s blistered flesh? The same way, I guess.
We go downstairs, and I ask for a glass of water. I follow her into the kitchen, and notice a utility room off to the right with a rusty washer and dryer. If she is lying, it isn’t about her domestic appliances.
“How is Glenetta doing?” I finally ask as I sit down in one of the two folding chairs at a card table by the refrigerator.
Like the bathroom, this small space has a used look and reflects something of the habits of the owner. Pinned against the door with magnets is a calendar whose motif is cats, a birthday card whose cover depicts two Chippendale-like (young with hairless chests) male models in minuscule but bulging briefs, and a picture of Glenetta.
The photo shows me child digging mischievously at an unseen object in the garbage can here in the kitchen.
Glenetta, sturdily built, in a red playsuit, has brown curly hair and her mother’s round eyes.
Following my gaze, Gina hands me tap water in a bright green plastic cup and says, “She’s a lot better. Just like you said, they watch every move I make when I go visit.”
We talk about the case for a while as I go over the questions she is likely to be asked on crossexamination.
Her credibility can make or break the case, and I emphasize this point more than once, thinking as I do that it is not unlike Dade’s situation in this respect. All this heavy duty science around, and most cases come down to a matter of whom you believe.
“You’ve got to convince the judge how much you care about Glenetta and that it was a single isolated act of negligence that could have happened to any parent,” I say.
“Nobody can do that except you.” The problem is that since the first time I talked with her she has displayed little outward emotion. Perhaps, this is how she is normally (I should ask Clan), but on Friday I want some anguish.
“That’s all it was,” she says, scanning my face coolly as if she is figuring how much to charge a customer or how long it will take to slop the hogs. Gina, who is wearing no makeup and only a swipe of lipstick, is living proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“I’ve got to go to D.Y.”s in a little bit. You want to go back upstairs?”
I give her a smile that is more embarrassed than real.
“I don’t know what Mr. Bailey told you about me,” I say, “but I don’t expect to be paid that way.”
“Oh,” she says, stroking the dog that has come into the room since we have been talking and has curled against her feet.
“I just figured that’s why you came out here.”
I realize now that everyone who sees me in court with this woman who knows her past will assume that I slept with her. I can’t do anything about that. I assure her, “I just wanted to get a visual picture of what happened. Do you have a camera?”
Startled perhaps by an involuntary reflex, the mutt jumps off and runs out of the room. Maybe I’m one of those weirdos who gets off on pictures instead of the real thing.
“I’ve got one,” she says cautiously, “but it doesn’t have any film.”
“Before the trial Friday,” I explain, “I want you to take some pictures of the bathtub and be sure to get the lever that regulates hot and cold, okay? I want the judge to see how easy it would have been for Glenetta to have turned on the hot water.”
Understanding finally that I’m not really a dirty old man, she nods.
“I can do that.”
At the door Gina gives me a genuine smile for the first time since I’ve met her.
“You really seem interested in trying to help me,” she says, smoothing a torn place in the mesh of the front door screen.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” I promise. I don’t want to be seen as merely going through the motions to get a fee in this case. Besides the fear that somebody will think I’m sleeping with her, I find I am motivated by my new status as a star football player’s attorney. Of course, if Dade is convicted, things will return to normal. You’re only as good as your last case. If these aren’t the most honorable of motives, I figure that since the road to hell is paved with good intentions, any psychological explanation for my accepting this financially unrewarding undertaking is so much window dressing.
I drive back to my office in a downpour, wondering again if I would have turned Gina down if I hadn’t slept with Amy Saturday night. People don’t steal food if there is enough to eat, but given my own rationalizations for my behavior over the years, I don’t figure I’m all that much different from Clan.
Dade and I are immediately ushered into Binkie Cross’s office Wednesday morning at eleven. Cross smiles at Dade, who is dressed in coal-black sweats, property of the Razorback Athletic Department, and offers his hand.
“That was a hell of a catch,” he can’t resist saying.
“How’d you hold onto the ball?”
Dade, as I have prepped him, smiles at this man who holds his life in his hands and grasps his outstretched palm as firmly as if he were catching a football. If Binkie wants to dismiss this case for lack of evidence, there is not a soul on earth who can stop him. Though he has probably answered that question fifty times now, Dade says modestly, “Lucky, I guess.”
“Hell, most receivers wouldn’t have been open,” Binkie says, pointing to a conference table on which rests a tape recorder.
“There wasn’t any luck to it.”
Par be it from me to argue the point. As we sit, Mike Cash enters the room and shuts the door behind him. We speak, but I don’t get up. If this kid hadn’t been such an eager beaver, we probably wouldn’t be here. Binkie says, “I’m gonna put him under oath and on tape, okay?”
This is a calculated risk, but I don’t see that we have much choice. If Dade wants to avoid a trial, he is going to have to cooperate. We begin, and Binkie proves to be a thorough questioner. By this time I have asked myself or heard most of what he gets out of Dade, but there are some things neither I nor the “J” Board learned, the most important of which concerns the clear suggestion that Dade may have had something to drink that night, after all.
“Are you familiar with Chuck’s Grill on Dickson?”
Binkie asks casually almost halfway through the inter view.
Dade immediately becomes uncomfortable and begins to mumble, which he has not been doing.
“I’ve been there a couple of times.”
“Did you go there the night this incident allegedly took place?”
Oh shit, I think, wondering whether to pull the plug on this little chat. Dade says in a barely audible voice, “Yeah.”
“Did you have anything to drink?”
“I don’t remember,” he says.
“I might have had a couple of beers.”
Son of a bitch! I yawn, as if this isn’t any news to me.
He can be impeached on this point if Binkie can get hold of the tape of the “J” Board hearing, which I suspect he can. Though the hearing was supposed to be confidential, not all those people can keep their mouths shut. Yet, this isn’t fatal, I tell myself. By itself it isn’t a case breaker.
The problem is, credibility is everything in this case. I can hear in my head already Binkie’s argument: Ladies and gentlemen, if the defendant is lying about one thing, what else is he lying about? Binkie establishes the time (about seven), and asks who was there, though Dade professes not to remember talking to anybody except Chuck.
Binkie asks Dade several questions about Eddie Stiles, and again Dade evidences some nervousness. Binkie implies that the elusive Eddie, at the least, by letting Dade and other team members use his apartment, is violating NCAA rules by extending benefits to athletes that aren’t being extended to other students. Par worse, Binkie leaves the impression that Eddie may be involved in drugs. He asks Dade directly, “Do you have any knowledge that Eddie Stiles is either directly or indirectly involved in the sale of illegal substances?”
Dade replies in the negative, but by the time we are through I am wondering how innocent my client really is.
He wouldn’t be the first or last player to have a drug problem. Yet, it is as if Binkie is merely warning Dade officially that he better stay away from Eddie. He has asked the questions on the record that he had to ask, but Binkie, like everybody else in this state, is a Razorback fan. Surely he doesn’t want the football program penalized I hope that is all there is to it. He tells me he should be getting in touch with me in a few days, and as we are about to leave his office, he shakes Dade’s hand again as if he isn’t too concerned about what he has learned. I nod again at Mike Cash, who apparently has orders not even to open his mouth.
After waiting not so patiently for Dade to give hair and saliva samples (it seems a waste of time now that he has given a formal statement admitting intercourse), I drive him back to the campus and give him hell for not leveling with me.
“This is how a defendant gets convicted in these kinds of cases!” I storm at him as I come to the light on Arkansas and Dickson.
“What else have you lied to me about?”
“Nothing!” Dade insists, looking at the window.
“I had forgotten about having a couple of beers. I drank them over an hour before I met Robin. It wasn’t a big deal.”
As the traffic thickens near the university, I wonder if this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Still, I’d rather find out now than be clobbered with it in trial.
“You can bet your last dollar the prosecutor will make every lie you tell a big deal if this case goes to trial.”
Dade is silent, perhaps because every time he has opened his mouth I have yelled at him. Perhaps it is my imagination, but as we drive through the campus on our way to Darby Hall, it seems as if the students walking along the streets are livelier, more animated. A couple of male students spot Dade as we stop at the light at the law school and yell at him, “Great game, Dade!” The win over Alabama has put a spring in their steps they didn’t have before. It is incredible that a game should matter so much, but it does. Too bad we couldn’t have had the trial on Sunday.
Before I drop Dade off in the parking lot next to his dorm, I ask him about Eddie Stiles.
“Level with me on this guy, okay? Did he ever give you drugs?”
“I didn’t know he even sold!” Dade says vehemently.
“He just let us use the place.”
“For your sake,” I say angrily, “I hope you’re telling the truth. You know you’ve got to stay away from people like that anybody who tries to give you a freebie of any kind. There’re a million people out there trying to use athletes.”
Chastened, he nods. I should know. By any honest definition I’m one of them. As Dade gets out, I make him promise to call me if he hears any information about Robin.
“Until we hear different, we’ve still got a trial date in January.”
“Do you think we’ll hear this week about what the school will do?” he asks.
“I don’t know what either the prosecutor or the university will do,” I confess. Politics within a university bureaucracy is as mysterious to me as the inside of a computer.
“But it seems to me that if you keep winning, it will be harder for them to want to punish you.” As soon as I say this, I realize more victories could have the opposite effect on the university. The school administration may bend over backward to make it appear that it is not making a decision based on our chances of playing in a major bowl on New Year’s Day.
Dade suddenly looks older than his twenty-one years.
How much more pressure can he stand? I ought to be happy if he just tells the truth. I leave him on the side walk outside his dorm and drive over to Ole Main, thinking I remember that Sarah has told me that she works until one on Wednesdays. Maybe she can grab some lunch with me.
Sarah is walking out the door as I come in. She says she has class in ten minutes but tells me there is a WAR rally again tonight and that I should come. I explain that I have cases piling up on my desk back home and don’t mention there is a possibility that Dade’s case could be dismissed. I don’t want to get her started. As students stream past us on their way to classes, I ask, “Did you hear about the polls? The Hogs are as high as fourth.”
She reaches over to pull off a thread from my sports coat, which after five years of constant wear doesn’t have many to give. I need to break down and buy some clothes. Maybe I could get Amy to go with me to keep me from buying stuff that looks like I’m getting buried in it.
“Dad,” Sarah says softly, “that’s what’s wrong with this place now. Sports is all anybody really cares about.
It’s absurd.”
She’s right. It is ridiculous, but according to Clan, so is having two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, and only one penis.
“You’re absolutely right,” I say, trying to keep things light, “but it beats armed insurrection.”
As I walk down the hall with her, she asks seriously, “Do you really think men are just so naturally aggressive they can’t help being violent?”
Part of me is glad she’s got class.
“I do better when I don’t think, babe,” I say, trying to finesse this subject.
“After about two seconds I get bogged down. If they haven’t figured this stuff out by now, I sure as heck don’t figure my two cents’ worth will make a dime’s worth of difference.”
She smiles indulgently, confident that her generation, or maybe even Paula Crawford by herself, will find the answers. If they do, I just hope women don’t line us up and shoot us. I give her a hug and tell her I will see her soon. She confides, “There’s a rumor going around that the administration will decide this week about Dade.”
Interested in this information, I ask the source, but am told it was just “some girls talking.” I leave and, forgetting that I haven’t eaten, drop by my “office” on Mountain Street and discuss with Barton the statement Dade gave this morning to Binkie.
Behind his desk, hands clasped behind his head, Bar ton rocks back in his swivel chair and stares at the ceiling
“If Dade is doing drugs,” Barton says, “there’s no way Binkie will cut him any slack. That’s one subject he’s tough as nails on.”
“Dade swears he’s not,” I say, still irritated by the revelations of an hour ago.
“I don’t know whether to believe him or not.”
Barton glances at his Rolex.
“These kids aren’t saints,” he says primly.
“They’re treated like gods when they win, and it’s easy for them to get used to it.”
Barton is busy, and I should get out of here. I need to think about this case before I do any more about it. From the library I call Binkie back and get him in his office.
“Are you getting ready to slap some new charges on Dade?” I ask bluntly as soon as he comes on the line.
“Obviously, you know a lot more about this situation than I do.”
“I wasn’t trying to sandbag you,” Binkie says, not quite apologetic.
“It’s just we’ve known for years the owner of Chuck’s Grill gives big-time players like Dade free drinks. A player with his reputation can’t go any where without somebody knowing who he is. And as far as drugs go, I can’t prove for sure yet that Eddie Stiles is dealing, but whether he is or isn’t, I’d make sure Dade stays as far away from him as humanly possible if I were you. Dade seems like a good kid. I’d hate to bust him for drugs, but I would. Real quick, too.”
“Tell me about Eddie,” I say, thinking I should pay him a visit before I get out of town. He and I could benefit from a heart-to-heart talk.
Binkie responds, his voice becoming slightly sarcastic.
“He’s one of those part-time students who never graduate and seems to have more money than he should. His thing is hanging with jocks. He pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana on a reduced charge in Oklahoma City a couple of years ago, but that’s his only record we know of.
Maybe he’s a wonderful guy and has a heart of gold, but I doubt it. I just hear his name a little too often to be convinced of it.”
Before I hang up, Binkie tells me that Eddie can usually be found at a bar named Slade’s, which is on the road to Springdale about five miles from campus.
“We talked to him during the investigation, but he didn’t give us any thing. He admitted he owned the house on Happy Hollow Road and sometimes let athletes use it. We know he rents a couple of other houses in Payetteville to students. That was it. That’s why we didn’t bother with a statement from him.”
I thank Binkie for the information and hang up, thinking he is probably one of the most decent prosecutors I’ve ever run across. What good will it do to put one more black male in prison? A lot of crime comes simply from being around the wrong people.
Instead of heading south out of town, I point the Blazer north toward the Missouri border. On both sides of the road is wall-to-wall commercial activity. Unlike the area of the state where I grew up, northwest Arkansas is booming, thanks in no small part to the thriving poultry industry. Still, the Arkansas Roosters doesn’t have quite the same ring. I find Slade’s in a shopping center that is crawling with customers. It seems an unlikely place for athletes, but inside it has student-friendly prices and its walls are lined with framed 8 X 10 pictures of Razorback stars all the way back to the sixties. I take a seat at the bar and order a beer from a pretty brunette in a football jersey and wait for my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. With a mix of mainly guys ranging from obvious students to construction worker types, Slade’s is doing a healthy business for a weekday afternoon. Maybe every body drinks free here. I wonder where Slade is. There’s not a male behind the bar, and I don’t see any blacks either and ask the barkeep if she has seen Eddie Stiles.
The girl, who appears to have a couple of fully inflated footballs stuffed under her jersey, ignores my gaze, which has lingered a little too long (I suspect it’s not the first time) and smiles pleasantly at me.
“I’ve seen him all afternoon. You passed him on your way in. He’s sitting in the first booth by himself.”
“Great!” I say, feeling equally pleasant. I pull out a five and leave it.
“I think I’ll go join him.”
She winks, happy with a three-dollar tip. So Eddie is a white guy, I think stupidly as I saunter back toward the entrance. I had assumed he was black and would look like some kind of dude who specializes in drive-by shootings when his drug deals go sour. Despite my liberal past, my preconceptions, unfailingly wrong, never fail to amaze me.
“Eddie,” I say sliding in across from him, “I’m Gideon Page. I’d like to visit with you for a few minutes.”
Eddie Stiles is a short, pudgy young man with watery gray eyes and with a hint of a mustache (or maybe it’s just dirt) above his lips. Though the temperature outside is pleasant, he is wearing an expensive dark blue two pocket chambray workshirt unbuttoned over a muted striped T. I can’t see his pants or his shoes, but Eddie apparently doesn’t need any help spending his money.
“You’re Dade’s lawyer,” he says, eagerly reaching for my hand.
Ridiculously flattered that he knows who I am, I allow him to pump my hand as if I were visiting royalty or a major dope supplier. I realize I was nervous about this encounter, but this kid is hardly an intimidating figure.
“Eddie, let me get to the point. I want you to stay away from Dade. I don’t want you to talk to him; I don’t want him using your house. I don’t know what your story is, but the prosecutor says you’re one of their favorite topics of conversation.”
Eddie, his soft face as innocent as a baby’s, whines, “I been stayin’ away from him! The cops think I sell drugs, but they’re crazy! They’d bust me so fast, man! It’s just that I like the Razorbacks. They’re great athletes. Dade could go pro right now. Are you gonna negotiate his contract if you beat the rape charge? It’d be worth a bundle.”
I look at this guy in amazement. Words tumble from his mouth like a string of firecrackers being shot off. I prefer him on the defensive.
“You’re violating NCAA rules,” I tell him, “by letting players use your house.”
Eddie taps his glass against the Formica tabletop like a judge gaveling an unruly lawyer out of order.
“No way, man! I let non athlete students use my house for parties. If I do that, there’s no violation.”
Eddie, like other criminals I have known, has an answer for everything.
“Listen, I can help Dade if you’ll let me. I saw Robin coming out of the house that night when Dade was supposed to have raped her. I’d just pulled into the yard and could see her face in the porch light. She wasn’t upset at all. She was smiling even.”
I believe that like I believe I’m going to grow wings and a halo. I knock back a slug of beer. What do guys like this do when they allegedly grow up? Become lobbyists, I guess. Always wanting to help somebody out.
“Some how, you failed to mention this to the cops.”
Eddie has his hands up as soon as I get the words out.
“They didn’t really ask. Those guys hate my guts. They even think I’m a fag. That’s bullshit. Ask Dade. He wouldn’t put up with that kind of shit.”
What a pathetic little creature.
“Sometime soon, when I’m back up here, I’d like Dade to show me inside the house where the rape was supposed to have happened, but you never seem to be at home. You must spend a lot of time at the library.”
Eddie smiles at my little joke.
“Anytime you say, man.
Anytime you say. Anything I can do to help, I will. Just call here and ask for Eddie.”
“I’ll do that,” I say and slide out of the booth and head for my car, figuring it will do no good to stop by Dickson Street and have a chat with the owner of Chuck’s Grill.
He’s not going to admit that he gives free drinks to star athletes. Dade will have to take responsibility for him’ self. I drive home, wondering if I’m any different from Chuck and Eddie. That little weasel acted as if he had known me forever.