“You looked shellshocked this afternoon.” Rainey giggles sympathetically into my ear on the telephone.
“You see these attorneys who smile into the camera as if their clients were announcing to run for President instead of having been charged with murder, but your teeth were clenched so tight I could barely understand you.”
Standing in the doorway of my kitchen as the ten o’clock news on Channel 4 ends, I hear the bathroom door shut, signaling the beginning of my daughter’s shower.
“Sarah told me I looked like a ventriloquist whose dummy just died,” I admit. After half a six-pack I can laugh at my performance-a little.
“Do you think Andy’s guilty?” I ask plaintively.
There is a short but pregnant pause. On the TV is a commercial for a douche. Damn. The way things are going on TV it won’t be long before they show a woman using it.
“Are you asking me?” Rainey asks, her voice almost high enough to shatter glass.
“I have no idea. People will do anything for money.”
“That’s for sure.” I nod, staring at the model’s face. She is so gorgeous I almost forget what the ad is all about. I wonder what she got paid.
“Are you watching Channel 4?” “Isn’t she a knockout?” Rainey says. I imagine her feet tucked under her on her couch, the way I have seen her dozens of times.
“Would you still think so,” I ask, “if she said, “I usually stink like hell, but this stuff works even on my worst days!”?
I mean, sometimes there are situations when it’s hard to open your mouth. I guess it’s no secret that I wasn’t prepared for Andy to be charged with murder. It’s hard to be objective.”
Rainey laughs, used to my nonsense.
“You’re his lawyer.
You’re not supposed to be.”
I carry the phone, whose cord could practically extend around the outside of the house, into the living room and bend down to turn off the TV. It’s been a long day.
“Of course I am,” I protest, ‘but my clients are always duping me.”
Whimsical as ever, Rainey sings to a tune from my youth, “
“Dupe! .. . Dupe! .. . Dupe of Earl’…. So you really think he’s been lying to you? He’s such a nice guy.”
“The “Duke of Earl,”
” I say, surprised she’s old enough to remember. What in the hell was that song all about? I like the Dupe of Earl better, too.
“Obviously, they think the mother is in on it, but they don’t have …” The phone beeps, indicating a call is waiting. I hate being interrupted, but Sarah pleaded and agreed to pay the extra amount from her job. Naturally, I haven’t collected since the first month.
“Just a second, okay?” I tell Rainey and push the button.
“Hello?”
“Gideon,” a female voice gushes, “you were just wonderful on TV tonight!”
I rack my brain and then realize. God forbid, it is my rat-burner divorce client, Mona Moneyhart. It seems as if she has tried to call me almost every day since she was in the office the first time, but this is the first call at home.
“Mona,” I say, my teeth on edge, “do you realize how late it is?”
“You weren’t asleep, were you?” she coos.
“I just had to tell you how proud I was when I saw you tonight. My son asked if you had false teeth and were ashamed of them, but I told him you talk like that when you’re trying to be firm with me.” She giggles at the very idea.
I open my mouth as wide as I can and still speak: “I…
am … on … another… line … I … have … to . hang … up … now….”
“That’s okay,” she says cheerfully.
“I’ll talk to you to morrow. ” I click Rainey back in. Why can’t I just tell her that if she calls me again I’ll put out a contract on her? Julia, no easy customer herself, now screens my calls, but Mona has be come a woman of a thousand voices and usually manages to get through.
“That was a client,” I tell Rainey.
“At ten-thirty at night?” she says.
“Sure.”
I sigh. I wouldn’t believe it either.
In bed that night I toss and turn and it dawns on me how little I have really thought about what happened in Andy’s case. At the Public Defender’s, we assumed that over 95 percent of our clients were guilty, and invariably they were.
The job consisted of seeing how much off the maximum sentence we could get for them, usually in a plea bargain.
From the beginning, I have assumed Andy was guilty of professional negligence but deliberate murder? Not in my wildest dreams. My brain shut down after that. If I’m going to survive in private practice, I won’t be able to afford the luxury of my assumptions. What have I done wrong here? I saw a nice guy in trouble, one who, I thought, reminds me a little of myself, in that he had fallen in love with a woman outside his race. Is that even true, or is that part of the plot, as well? Part of my problem, I realize belatedly, is perhaps my own latent racism in this case. Andy is a nice black man.
Well dressed, well spoken, he has been especially easy to like. How could a guy (especially a black one this sharp, my racist mind runs) be part of something so evil? I never let myself entertain the thought for five minutes. Yet the possibility has been there all along, and I have ignored it. Actu ally, it is not that I mind defending someone who is guilty (I accepted the game at the PD’s of figuring out what was the lie and what was the truth of my client’s story); what do I mind? (a), being taken for a fool, or (b), acting like a fool?
Probably (a), but to be charitable to myself, I’ll choose (b).
Well, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I yawn, finally sleepy, knowing I’ve been sleepwalking through this case. And yet Andy, as I’ve thought all along, may be not guilty of anything more than bad judgment. Tomorrow, I think, my head finally still on the pillow, I’ll get to work.
“Dad,” calls Sarah, who has been back from Camp Anytown for two weeks, “there’s someone to see you.”
I put down my coffee and the section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a front-page article about Andy and hurry into the living room. Surely not even a reporter would come to the house this time of day. Woogie’s furious barking at seven-thirty in the morning is particularly obnoxious. “Hush,” I holler at him as I come around the corner and see Mona Moneyhart standing inside the screen.
“I just brought you and your daughter some fresh blueberry muffins for your breakfast,” she says, handing Sarah a plastic bowl with a paper towel over it.
“Your dad’s my lawyer in my divorce,” she says smiling sweetly at Sarah, “and after I saw him on TV last night I was so proud of him I just had to get up early and whip these up.”
My eyes begin to tear as I smell the warm, slightly acidic odor of ripe blueberries hidden in the plastic. I think I’m going to throw up. Mona is dressed in almost nothing. In red running shorts cut high on the sides and a gray threadbare T-shirt labeled, as I feared, “Let Being Be!” she is braless and apparently pantyless as well. My stomach flips as I think of her oven. I feel sweat popping out on my forehead. I expect to see a rat’s tail dangling over the side of the bright blue bowl. When I do nothing except swallow, Sarah, who looks a little stunned herself, says brightly, “How nice of you to do this! They smell delicious.”
My mouth thick with the saliva that accompanies nausea, I finally manage weakly, “Sarah, this is Mrs. Moneyhart.”
My client beams as if she has been introduced to a member of the royal family. She offers Sarah her free hand.
“Do you want to be a famous lawyer like your dad?”
Sarah, realizing fast that Mona may not be a candidate for the world’s most well-adjusted person, extricates her hand after it has been given a vigorous pump, and says dryly, “One’s enough in the family. Dad, we’ve got to hurry.”
Turning to leave at last, Mona gives me a wink.
“Jealous of her daddy’s time. I don’t blame her one bit.”
Sarah looks at me as if I have invited a whore over for breakfast, but Mona, either happily oblivious or unconcerned, is bouncing out the door, her small breasts rolling around underneath the skimpy material covering her chest.
“Gideon, I’ll call you later.”
After she is gone, Sarah begins to take a muffin.
“God, she was weird! You’re beginning to drool!”
Swallowing hard, I snatch the muffins from her, shaking my head.
“You can’t eat these!”
Sarah herself is dressed for her second day of her senior year in a well-worn pair of Levi’s and a University of New Mexico T-shirt. (She contends, with logic on her side but little else, that students should be allowed to wear shorts if they are made to start school in August.) She stares at the offending muffins in my hand.
“Why? They look okay.”
Holding the bowl at arm’s length as if it were a container of nuclear waste, I carry it into the kitchen and force six muffins down the garbage disposal. I sit at the kitchen table and tell Sarah about the rat roast in my client’s oven. Sarah, who has inherited a low vomit threshold from me, places her hand over her mouth. Her eyes begin to tear, and she pushes away the bowl of Froot Loops she has poured for herself.
“Poor Daddy,” she says between her fingers.
“Are all your clients this bad?”
I look out the window, halfway expecting to see Mona turning cartwheels in the yard.
“People wouldn’t need lawyers if they didn’t have problems.”
Sarah carries her bowl to the sink and rinses it out.
“Please swear to me she’s not a new girlfriend!” she says.
“Thanks a lot,” I say archly, bending down to scratch Woogie, who also seems in need of reassurance.
“I don’t date my clients.” That’s crap, of course. I probably would if I liked one enough.
“What’s wrong with us?” Sarah asks dramatically over the dishwasher.
“Our love lives are the pits!”
I try not to smile. Sarah has gone perhaps only two weeks straight without a date since the dam broke over a year ago when she had her first boyfriend. At least she’s not dating anybody steady. That’s when I get nervous. I watch Woogie lick where his testicles used to be. Maybe that’s my solution.
“Nobody wants you when you’re old and gray.”
Sarah nods in agreement as she puts the bowl in the rack to dry.
“These little sophomore girls think they’re so cute.
They act like they’ve never seen boys before.”
I think of all the lawyers in Blackwell County. We seem to breed faster than rabbits.
“Competition is an overrated virtue in this country,” I say, glad that Sarah’s mind is back on her own business, and not mine. She was genuinely distressed when I showed her the paper earlier. I suppose I have talked more to Sarah about Andy than I have intended. I look down at the Democrat-Gazette. The headline looks like reading material for the blind: PSYCHOLOGIST AT STATE CENTER CHARGED WITH CAPITAL MURDER. Only the media love trouble more than the legal profession. Suddenly depressed, I stare unseeing out the window into my backyard. Maybe Andy thought of it as a mercy killing. “I hope Dr. Chapman’s not guilty of murder,” Sarah says, coming over to hug me.
“I know you like him.”
Absently, I pat my daughter’s back. How can I like somebody who has murdered a child?
Later, in my office after Andy’s bond hearing, I have occasion to ponder his defense. Clan, sprawled over two chairs across from me, growls, “You should have brought the muffins to work. I wouldn’t have sued you if I had gotten sick.”
Andy’s bond has risen from five thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars, but he arranged for a ten-thousand-dollar certified check as if he were a billionaire donating to his favorite tax write-off. I think back to the first bond hearing only a few weeks ago.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” I muse, now able to nurse a cup of coffee without my stomach heaving, “Bruton, who almost held me in contempt, accepted a bond worth peanuts, and Judge Tamower, who has the best reputation in the county, almost went through the roof when I tried to argue that Andy’s bond should stay at five thousand.”
“Jesus, Gideon,” Clan wheezes, “your guy’s probably a child murderer. She could have gone a lot higher. I think she’s got the hots for you. You should have seen the way she stared at you when you sat down.”
It’s hard not to laugh at Clan. He thinks that if a woman even blinks twice at a man she wants to go to bed with him.
“She was pissed,” I say, but the truth is I’m still delighted with our luck of the draw. I wouldn’t have kept on going so long about the bond if I didn’t think there was some chance I could push some guilt buttons. Before she took the bench, Harriet Tamower had the reputation, rare among our judges, as a liberal in Arkansas politics. At least she’ll give Andy a fair trial if she doesn’t bend over too far the other way, thinking she has to prove something.
The phone rings, and fearing it is my rat burner, I hand the phone to Clan. “If it’s Mona Moneyhart,” I say, my hand over the mouthpiece, “tell her I’m at St. Thomas having my stomach pumped.”
He snickers, but says in a surprisingly professional tone, “This is Clan Bailey.” A moment later, Dan’s eyes widen in anticipation. He hands me the phone, saying, “Olivia Le Master.”
I wait for Clan to get up and leave, but he is all ears. What the hell. He knows everything anyway. I push down the button on the speaker phone to allow him to hear.
“Olivia, this is Gideon.”
“I just want you to know,” she says in a firm voice, “that despite everything, Pam’s death really was an accident. You have to believe that.”
I put my finger to my lips as Clan rolls his eyes.
“There’s a lot you didn’t tell me.”
“We didn’t think you needed to know,” Olivia says, her voice sounding hollow and unconvincing through the speaker.
“Obviously,” Clan mouths, shaking his head. Suddenly, I realize that if Olivia were suddenly to implicate Andy, Clan would be a witness and could testify. How stupid can I be?
Of course he would never do that. Still, I am made nervous by his presence and say, “Olivia, why don’t you come to my office this afternoon? We need to talk face to face.”
Clan, leaning forward on his haunches, is on the edge of his two seats.
“Do you want to represent me?” she asks.
“Obviously, I’m a suspect.”
If I did, I might get the truth out of her. Clan nods vigorously, but I reply, “I’m sorry, Olivia. There’s a potential conflict of interest between you and Andy. I suggest you get your own attorney.” Clan jabs his finger repeatedly against his stiff shirt, which contains so much starch I can hear it. I shake my head. He knows too much about Andy already.
“Oh,” she says after a long silence.
“Well, let me call you back about this afternoon.”
“Fine,” I say and hang up.
Clan is about to have a fit. Rocking backward, his shirttail coming out of his pants, he reminds me of our days together in the Public Defender’s Office when he was a skinny slob instead of a fat one. “First you don’t bring the muffins; now, you knock me out of a great referral. What kind of friend are you?”
I begin to make notes of my conversation with Olivia on a yellow legal pad.
“If she’s set Andy up,” I say, “we wouldn’t be friends long.”
Clan, reverting to an old habit, wipes his face with the bottom of his shirt, a button-down pink pinpoint Oxford.
“So your guy’s guilty as hell, huh?”
I laugh, continuing to write. Clan is shrewder than he looks.
“He swears he’s not,” I say. Since early this morning an idea has been cooking in my brain.
“You know any lawyers in Benton who would check out Leon Robinson for me? I remember he testified at the probable cause hearing that’s where he’s from.”
“The aide who let the girl go?” Clan asks, a puzzled look peeping through the fat around his eyes.
“You think Olivia paid him to let go of her daughter?”
I shrug, throwing down my pen. It isn’t much of a conversation.
“I’ve got to start somewhere, don’t I? The trial’s less than four weeks away.” I did not ask for more time at the bond hearing, thinking the longer Jill Marymount has to poke around in this case the worse it will be.
Lost in thought, Clan, exposing his throat, looks at my ceiling. If he ever needs an emergency tracheotomy, somebody better have a whale knife. Finally, he says, “Let me work on this for a little bit. I went to school with a couple of guys who ended up in Saline County. Maybe Leon was promised some money instead of your client.”
The phone rings again. This time I don’t hand it to Clan, who seems permanently encamped in my office. It is Andy.
“I’ve just been fired,” he says, his voice discouraged. He had been told to report to David Spam’s office as soon as the hearing was over.
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” I say, drawing an imaginary knife across my neck for Dan’s benefit. Actually, I suspect if he wasn’t black, Andy would have been fired after he was charged with manslaughter. David Spath could only do so much for him. “Are you going to be able to make it to the trial?”
His voice a whisper, Andy says, “I’ve got all my vacation pay coming.”
“Good,” I say, shaking my head in wonder at my client’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of money. I couldn’t ask for any more if I were representing a cocaine dealer. Yet Jill has surely already checked to see if Olivia has transferred money to Andy.
“I’ll call the psychology board and tell them you’re voluntarily giving up your license until this is resolved. I don’t want them investigating this too, right now.”
“Whatever you think’s best,” Andy says, knowing the noose is being tightened.
“I think we need to do that. There’s no sense picking another fight right now.” We had had an informal deal with the board that it would not act against Andy until after the original criminal charge was disposed of, since David Spath had assured them that Andy would be permitted no professional contact with the residents at the Blackwell County HDC until after the trial. Now, with a charge of murder, we can’t very well expect the board to act as if nothing has changed. We arrange a time for him to come in tomorrow after I tell him about Olivia’s call.
“She sounded supportive,” I say, trying to cheer him up. Olivia had not come to Andy’s bond hearing, although I couldn’t honestly blame her. Talk about a media circus! With a case promising the revelation of secrets involving interracial sex, big bucks, and murder, what else can I expect? Kim Keogh had been there, her beautiful eyes silently accusing me of the worst sin a man can commit: I have never called her back. She had tried to be tough in her questions, but she is fundamentally too nice to be a good reporter, even for local TV, which doesn’t expect much except a nice hairdo. My conversation with Andy fizzles out. Being fired takes the wind out of whatever sails you have left.
As soon as I put the phone down, it rings again. Finally, Clan pushes up from his chairs to leave.
“Gideon,” Mona Moneyhart says, her voice brimming with disapproval, “I had to pretend I was a reporter for People magazine in order to get through today.”
I motion for Clan to sit down again and push the speaker button so he can hear. If I have to listen to her, he should too.
“Mona, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come over to the house.” Grinning happily, Clan collapses back into my chairs, a cheek on each one.
“Didn’t you and your daughter like the muffins? I made them from scratch.”
Clan whispers, running his fingers across my desk.
“I bet she did.” Even now, my eyes begin to tear as I imagine the ingredients.
“They were delicious,” I say weakly.
“Gideon, your little daughter is just precious! But you’re gonna have to watch her like a hawk. Girls her age are hideously promiscuous. It’s just so obvious she needs a mother.
Why haven’t you remarried? That’s the least you can do for her. Don’t you think she deserves a mother?”
His hand over his mouth, Clan begins to laugh uncontrollably, making a sound like a lawnmower motor trying unsuccessfully to start.
“Uh, uh, uh… uh.”
“What do you want?” I ask. I watch Dan’s red face as he begins to choke. I hope he dies.
“There’s no way I can live on two hundred dollars a week child support. I just can’t do it.”
Clan pulls out a handkerchief and mops his face. He has begun to make little hooting sounds.
“We’ve had this same conversation three times. He’s paying more temporary support than the child-support chart requires him to. His lawyer thinks he’s a fool.”
“He is a fool!” she begins to cry.
“What are those horrible sounds you’re making?”
I point to the door and Clan staggers out, his whole body shaking.
“Talk about fools,” he mouths as he goes out.