Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement

by Grif Stockley

  “I work out of the house my parents left me.” He hands me a letter from the city warning me that he is in violation of city ordinance #1437. “All I’m doing is advertising a legitimate business.”

  “Where do you live?” I ask, wondering who on the floor has a set of municipal ordinances. We have more laws in this country than ants.

  It’s hard to believe that we need every single one of them.

  “On the corner of Riverview and Dayton,” he says.

  “Even though it’s zoned residential, there’s a lot of traffic by there in the day. You’d be surprised how many people see it.”

  I don’t doubt that. I suspect that it hadn’t been up fifteen minutes before someone called city hall. This case is a loser, and I tell him so.

  “There’re all kinds of eloquent arguments that can be made on behalf of free speech and the free enterprise system, but I suspect it would be so much pissing in the wind. You could wind up spending a fortune trying to get a variance and falling flat on your face.”

  The kid gives me a sly smile.

  “I was thinking maybe you’d barter your fees.”

  I groan inwardly, thinking this is what my law practice has come to.

  “Follow me,” I say, standing up and heading for the door. Dan, I think,

  have I got a client for you!

  At home Tuesday night Angela calls to tell me that she has been invited to Atlanta to spend a week with an old college roommate. She is driving down Thursday morning. I wonder if she is trying to avoid me, but she sounds friendly enough. I want to talk about Saturday, but I manage to restrain myself. The quickest way to make her back off is to crowd her, especially when she has asked me not to do so. I tell her what is going on in the case and that I will be back in Bear Creek Thursday. She is keenly interested in the details and reads to me an article in the Bear Creek Times about the case. For the only source of news in Bear Creek, it is amazingly succinct and reports only the barest outline of the case. My recollection of the news media in Bear Creek is that its primary business was advertising revenue, and distinctly not investigative journalism or crusades of any kind. Since most of the stores that must advertise in the Times are probably in some way associated with Paul, I shouldn’t be surprised.

  Angela at eighteen would have been indignant at this article and charged a conspiracy between the media and the business community, but today she says that she is grateful no one is trying to exploit the already tense race relations in town. If Angela has changed, so have I. If anyone had told me I would make love to Angela in her brother-in-law’s bed thirty years after I left Bear Creek, I would have doubted his sanity. She promises to call me when she returns and hangs up. I go to bed and dream that we are making love in her house in Bear Creek. Someone was watching, but when I wake up, I can’t remember who it was.

  Darla Tate’s house is the first one on the right on Kentucky Avenue, less than a mile from Jefferson Academy, where she sends her sons. It is

  in a development that was relatively new when I was growing up, but like everything else here, it seems much smaller. The homes are modest A-frames with tiny yards. Darla’s house has siding, however, and is distinguished by a large pecan tree in front. Driving over, I have realized this woman can be a gold mine of information if I don’t make her defensive. Outside of his family, probably nobody spent more time with Willie. What I’m afraid I’ll find out, though, is that Willie, being Chinese, rarely confided in anyone except his wife.

  Darlatate comes to the door in a pair of baggy brown slacks. Now that I get a good look at her, I realize she is almost as tall as I am. Her oval face is partially obscured by long, straight hair of a hue that seems to have gone through several changes and is now the color of winter wheat. As I follow into her living room, she offers me a beer, which I regretfully decline. I don’t want this to turn into a party.

  “My boys are still at basketball practice,” she says.

  “They both play, but they can’t jump more than two inches between them.”

  I laugh, remembering that I would have liked to have played basketball at Subiaco, but I, too, had a vertical leap of an inch. What furniture she has is old, and a little worn. A couch, coffee table, TV and VCR, and recliner more than fill the room. Pictures of her boys in their football uniforms are on the walls. I sit on the couch while she plops down in the recliner and picks up a can of Bud Light by her feet.

  “They’re good-looking kids,” I say sincerely, wondering what the future holds for white adolescents. I think of Angela’s comments about her two sons. These two boys could easily end up at the plant like their mother.

  “They’re a handful,” she says, “especially without a father around.”

  Without any prompting, Darla explains that she waited until she was almost twenty-five to get married, and then her carefully chosen husband took off after just three years, leaving her to struggle through one marginal job after another until Southern Pride Meats came into existence five years ago.

  “That old man,” she volunteers fervently, referring to Willie, “was the most decent human being I’ve ever known. Even when he’d cut down on the number of hogs, he still kept our workers on the clock so they’d get a full paycheck. Two years ago, I was sick a whole winter, and he kept my check coming. That’s just how he was. There aren’t many white men who’d do that around here as far as I’m concerned.”

  I ask her if she minds if I take some notes, and begin to scribble furiously on my legal pad. Perhaps I can make her seem so blindly loyal to Willie that she would do anything to incriminate his killer.

  Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem like someone who would tell a lie when the truth is less convenient. Instead, she simply comes across as what she portrays herself to be: a profoundly grateful woman who needed a decent job to support her children.

  “He must have trusted you a lot,” I say, “or he wouldn’t have told you about the tape between him and Paul Taylor.”

  Darla winces as if I have struck her.

  “If I had known what was on the tape, he might still be alive today, but there was always a line I wasn’t permitted to cross. He just said to make sure Doris played a tape he had given her if anything mysterious happened to him. When I asked about it, he just gave me this look, and so I shut up.”

  Darla is a talker and requires no urging to gossip about the personnel in the plant, thus relieving me of the fear that she was so wedded to the idea that Class was the killer that she wouldn’t be willing to discuss anyone but him.

  “Harrison, one of the meat inspectors, hated Willie,” she says in response to a question about who, other than Bledsoe, could have killed her employer.

  “And, frankly, Willie hated him. Willie wrote to his boss and tried to get him fired. He was nitpicking us to death.”

  I ask about the other inspector, Frieda, who seemed that day in the plant almost apologetic about having to write up somebody. It was Harrison who noticed that Bledsoe’s knife was slightly out of place the day before.

  “Surely you’ve had this conversation with the sheriff or an investigator,” I say, delighted with this information.

  “It’s not in my statement, but I mentioned it the same morning the sheriff went through the plant with Harrison,” Darla says, gulping at her beer, “but the problem is that he’s got a pretty good alibi. See, he and Frieda commute all the way from Memphis every day. He couldn’t have

  made it back after the plant closed before Doris found Willie’s body.”

  I tap my pen against my pad. Some alibis are only as good as the amount of time it takes to understand what they’re built on.

  “Maybe Harrison has some kind of hold on Frieda. You think they could have been sleeping together?”

  Darla laughs out loud.

  “That little bitty peck 7

  erwood? Frieda’s no prize, but I sincerely doubt if she’s that desperate. She knows on a daily basis what an asshole Harrison is. I’m not gonna say it’d be impossible, but
a woman’s got to draw the line somewhere.”

  In an ideal world maybe—but from what I’ve seen of Frieda, it’s not hard for me to make that leap. While I write, Darla gets up to get another beer.

  “Are you sure you won’t have one?”

  I nod, having decided one won’t wipe me out, and a moment later take the Budweiser she hands me. If beer helps her keep talking, I’m not going to discourage her.

  “You ought to try to check out that illegal alien who ran off after the murder,” she says, snapping the top off her second can of Miller Lite in less than twenty minutes.

  “Now, if Class didn’t do it, that boy could have. But I’ll bet you a dollar to a doughnut he’s in Mexico, and nobody will ever find him.

  They haven’t got a clue.”

  I reach down into my briefcase and flip through to the back of the file where I find a copy of his work permit. Jorge Arrazola. I study his picture. In his early twenties, he is a nice enough looking kid but basically indistinguishable from a million of his countrymen. Dark, lots of hair, and a mustache. Darla gets up from her chair, stands by the arm of the couch, and looks over my shoulder.

  “This is an obvious fake, if you study it. Who knows what his name really is? But it doesn’t pay employers to study their identification papers too closely. Willie liked Mexicans and hired them whenever he had the chance. Typically, they’re the best workers in the plant.

  Jorge hardly spoke a work of English, and so we relied on Alvaro Ruiz to tell him what to do.”

  That name rings a bell, and I rummage through the file to find his statement. As I do, I ask, “Who is he?”

  “He’s worked for Willie ever since the plant opened and is like a godfather to the Mexicans who come through here. A real steady and sweet old guy. Jorge lived with him before he took off.

  I’d go talk to Alvaro if I were you.”

  I’ve scanned his statement once before and do so again. Darla adds, “Alvaro had another part-time job he went to after he got off at the plant.

  He worked as a butcher for Bear Creek’s one supermarket, so he was never a suspect.”

  In his statement Alvaro says that their usual arrangement after work was for Jorge to drop him off at Jenner’s Foodsaver and then come pick him up at six. That day Jorge had told him he was going fishing. Two days after the murder he put a battery and tires on an old truck he had in his front yard and was gone.

  “Did the sheriff really consider him a suspect?” I ask, squinting at the papers in the poor light.

  Darla returns to the couch.

  “I’ve heard they think he was just scared and took off. That’s what Alvaro figures, anyway. Since there was no robbery, it’s hard to figure his motive.”

  I sip at my beer.

  “Not unless somebody like Paul Taylor hired him to murder Willie,” I speculate.

  “He’d make a perfect hit man. A faceless Mexican who sticks around just long enough to collect his money, and within twenty-four hours has slipped back across the border never to be seen again.”

  Darla smiles.

  “You guys are something,” she says, a hint of admiration in her voice.

  “I can hear your closing argument right now.”

  It is never as easy as this, of course.

  “Tell me what you thought about Bledsoe. Did he seem like he was capable of murdering Willie to you?”

  Darla strokes the arm of the couch. She has a ring on her right hand, but the stone is a modest opal.

  “Frankly, no,” she says carefully.

  “Willie really liked Class. He wasn’t one of these wild-ass blacks who drives off to the Lady Luck a couple of times a week to throw away his paycheck and come in half drunk the next day. He was an excellent worker and could do anything you asked him. Always on time. Neat, clean, careful.

  Never cut himself. A model employee if you want to put it like that.

  If he did it, I don’t know why he did it.”

  If he did it. I ask, trying to sound offhand about it, “When you were in the bathroom and heard him on the telephone, could it have been someone else who just sounded like him?” “I know his voice,” Darla says, but her

  tone isn’t stubborn.

  “We worked together five years.”

  “Is it possible,” I ask, looking down at my pen, “that it could have been someone who sounded like him?”

  She is quiet for a moment.

  “I doubt it,” she says finally, “but I haven’t really tried to compare his voice to others. I just assumed it was Class because that’s who it sounded like.”

  “Obviously, that could be real important,” I say, beginning to hope she will help me.

  “I assume occasionally the workers come up to the front for things like to use the phone or something?”

  Darla takes another sip of her beer.

  “They come up to get their checks, sign forms, use the phone, stuff like that.”

  I’m reluctant to press her further right now.

  This won’t be my only visit, and the better she gets to know me and like me, the more likely she will be willing to say that it could have been someone else’s voice. I ask her if she knew Paul Taylor. She shrugs.

  “How could anybody not know him? When I was growing up, and, I guess, you, too, the Taylors were supposed to be one of the richest families in the state.”

  The front door flies open, and her two sons saunter in. They are lean, good-looking kids, tanned and lean with no stomachs. Dressed in jeans, flannel shirts but no jackets, and tennis shoes, they look from their mother to me and back to her.

  “Is this guy the lawyer?” the taller of the two asks, his voice protective.

  “This is Mr. Page,” Darla introduces me.

  I stand up. The boys eye me suspiciously, but politely introduce themselves as Arlen and Walker. Arlen, stockier and shorter, and whose upper lip hints at a thin mustache or maybe is just dirty, says anxiously to his mother, “You’re not getting fired, are you. Mom?”

  Darla laughs and makes a show of rolling her eyes.

  “No, for heaven’s sake. Listen, you two get back in the car and go get yourselves a pizza.

  Bring me back a couple of slices of pepperoni and sausage.” She reaches down into her purse, pulls out a twenty, and hands it to Walker, who jams it into his front pants pocket.

  “And I want all the change back, too.”

  Pleased by their good fortune, they both grin and are out the door.

  When she hears the door slam, she says quickly, “The plant’s losing money under Eddie. That hasn’t happened in years. It was a gold mine with old Willie running it.”

  She must be scared to death of losing her job.

  “They seem like real nice kids.” “They are,” she says, and tears suddenly fill her eyes.

  “It’s not easy alone.”

  “It must be hard raising boys,” I say, thinking about Angela.

  “I have a daughter a little older than your two, and we’ve been alone a long time, so I know what you mean. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. She’s a great kid, but if she told me tomorrow she’d shaved her head, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Darla is able to smile at this, and I return the conversation to the Taylors.

  “What was your take on Paul?” I ask.

  “I have to confess I’ve never been a big fan of him or Oscar.”

  Darla drains the last of her beer and seems to be thinking about getting up for another one.

  “I’ve got mixed emotions since he’s given work to my boys for the last two summers. Paul’s reputation is that if he wants something, he’s used to getting it,” she says, her voice bitter.

  “You’ve probably already heard that until a couple of years ago, he was the major stockholder of Farmer’s State Bank here. That’s how he was able to keep as much land as he did after they got in trouble. A lot of people who used to farm but don’t now, including my father, thanks to Paul, hate his guts for cutting off their loa
ns when things got bad.

  Of course he didn’t cut off his own. He played favorites and a lot of people still despise him for it. For one thing, he knew how much Willie was making, because four years ago when he expanded the plant he borrowed some money from Farmer’s and paid it back a year ahead of schedule. I think Paul’s been wanting the plant for years.”

  Damn. Why didn’t Angela tell me this? Like a dumb student finally catching on in school, it hits me that Dwight and Angela were among his favorites. I finally understand her reluctance to criticize him. But now that he’s no longer involved, the bank won’t loan her any more money.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “It got bought out last year,” Darla explains, “by an out-of-state bank, but they’ve kept the name. All this is common knowledge or gossip, depending on who you talk to.”

  It shouldn’t be hard to find out. Now I understand, too, where Paul got the money to try to buy Willie’s operation. Instead of getting back into the farming business on a large scale, Paul wanted a cash cow to milk,

  but Willie refused to sell, and being a Taylor, Paul wasn’t going to stand for that. My respect for Darla Tate grows by the second. Though she may still be country as all get out, she knows how things work in Bear Creek. And though she may not be willing to say it yet, I’m convinced she suspects Bledsoe may have been set up, and with a little massaging, may well say so, even if it means coming off her story that she heard his voice. We talk for a while longer, and she suggests the names of a couple of other workers she believes might have something to tell me. When her boys come back I thank her and say I’ll be in touch.

  She walks me out to the Blazer and hugging herself in the cold, says, “I hope this was helpful.

  I thought the world of that old man. If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  I assure her it was and drive away, congratulating myself on having the sense to start my investigation with Darlatate. Women like her—homely, dependable, and completely country—are always ignored in small towns. Truth be told, they’re the ones who don’t miss a trick. I wasn’t a snob and never underestimated the kids who came in from the country. They may not have had the social graces we did, but they were always watching what we did and obviously were keeping score.