Are you his lawyer?”
“Not in a million years.” I should have called Marty two months ago, but I see now I didn’t want to have this conversation. I wanted to believe we were victims. We may never talk about it, but Marty and I both know we could have looked after our mother better. Instead, we both got the hell out of Dodge. I realize now that guilt is one of the reasons I’ve worked so hard to scapegoat the Taylors. I demonized Paul because I didn’t want to have to deal with the fact that things were a mess at home, and I coped with them, as I always have, by leaving.
For the next twenty minutes I give Marty a sanitized version of my participation in the events in our old hometown for the last two months, omitting my own motives and Angela’s confessions and my involvement with her. Even without them, there is plenty of juice to the story, and, as I knew she would be, Marty is fascinated.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she demands when one of her clerks interrupts us to say it is time for her break.
“You’ve been too busy making money,” I say, getting in a final jab.
Despite my attitude, she wants me to come out for dinner so I can fill in the details, but I’m not ready for the third degree.
Marty can smell a rat as well as anybody, and I’m not ready to spill my guts to her.
“I’m too busy now. I’ll come out after the trial,” I say, standing up, “and tell you all about it.”
“You don’t think Paul did it, do you?” she asks, darkening the screen on her computer.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I say, still smarting from her speech.
Actually, right now I don’t, but I’m too irritated with this entire conversation to make her feel better.
“Paul isn’t exactly a knight in shining armor.”
“Neither are you,” my sister says dryly, “but I doubt if you’ve turned into a killer.”
Knowing I’m better off letting Marty have the last word, I leave. She would skewer me for my behavior in this case if she had the chance. If we talk more today, we will end up fighting.
At home all I can think about is how badly I’ve screwed up Doss’s defense. I have no idea what is going on in Bear Creek and haven’t since the moment I took the case. Sitting in the living room and staring out the window, I feel self-hatred begin to eat at me like an ulcer. Lawyers like me are a danger to the profession. This entire attempt to go home again has been a disaster, and I have only myself to blame. At least now I know why.
In desperation I dial Airs. Ting’s number to see if she will let me talk to her again. Surely, knowing Willie best, she knows more than she has told any of the investigators. My call, however, is answered by Connie, who is as cold as she was when I first went out there.
“Gideon, what is going on? Tommy says you haven’t found anything.
Are you going to argue that my mother murdered my father or not?”
Every couple of weeks I’ve called Tommy and reported to him. Each conversation is shorter than the last.
“I can’t imagine even suggesting it to a jury,” I say, not quite answering her.
“As frail as she is, it would be ludicrous.”
“Nobody cares about my mother or what this is doing to our family,” Connie says, angrily.
“That’s not true,” I say. But it is. The Tings have been forgotten.
“Bullshit! My mother spent her whole life watching my father walking a tightrope between whites and blacks and look what it got him! You must think we are idiots! I know my father wasn’t respected and neither was my mother.”
“I don’t agree, Connie,” I say, trying to mollify her.
“We all knew how hard your family worked.
People did respect y’all.”
Connie ignores me.
“They weren’t treated the same. And you know why! They weren’t white.
I don’t care how much Tommy pretends things were different. No matter how much we achieved, we were never really a part of Bear Creek. Nobody treated them or Tommy and me as social equals. I never had a date.
Neither did Tommy. Not that they would have let us go, but we weren’t asked either. My parents weren’t invited to any white person’s parties. To their credit, they wanted to be Chinese, while Tommy and I wanted to be white. It didn’t work for us, whatever Tommy says.”
This torrent of emotion is as unexpected as her coldness had been. I never saw her or Tommy angry. I ask, “Didn’t you marry a white guy?” “And it didn’t work,” Connie says.
“Once his family figured out what our status was in Bear Creek—they
were from Memphis—I was never accepted. I remember my future mother-in-law’s expression the first time she saw Ting’s Market.
She nearly fainted. In retrospect I’m amazed Alan had the nerve to go through with the wedding.
He never had any courage after that.”
I slump against the wall in the living room, wondering frantically how to salvage this conversation.
“Weren’t you a physicist by then?” I ask.
“I could have been the Empress of China at that point, and it wouldn’t have mattered,” she says sarcastically.
“His family had old Memphis money, and their son had scandalized them.
My parents weren’t happy with my choice either. I was expected to marry a nice Chinese boy from Mississippi.”
Connie and I were in the same boat.
“Rosa, my wife,” I say, “was about a quarter black. As soon as people figured that out, she didn’t have a chance.”
“I remember the gossip,” Connie says, her voice less heated.
“You were kind of a hero to me when you came back from the Peace Corps.”
I had no idea.
“You must have still been in college,” I say, trying to remember when the last time was I saw her.
“I had just graduated and was home for a couple of weeks,” she says.
“You were the talk of the town. Of course, she was described to me as being a lot darker than she was.”
Back then Connie must have viewed my marriage to Rosa as a hopeful sign that things were changing. And, in fact, they have, to a point.
“My sister told me later that one of the rumors going around was that I had married a pygmy from a Brazilian rain forest.”
Connie laughs for the first time.
“Bear Creek would have accepted a pygmy as long as she could pass for white.”
I look out my window into the park across the road. I’ve understood almost nothing until the last few days. I had an image of my family and I filtered out any memories of Bear Creek that didn’t agree with that image. Tommy has been wearing blinders, too.
“It must have been harder for your parents than it was for you and Tommy.”
“It’s all relative,” Connie instructs me.
“They made money here and saved almost every penny.
It allowed us kids to escape.”
I’m curious to know what her life is like now, but I’m afraid to ask.
Though she doesn’t seem quite as hostile as she did when we first began talking, there is still an edge to her voice that she doesn’t bother to hide. Blacks, not whites, have been the majority in each place she lived. Though for years they have been saying they were invisible to us, I’ve never admitted to what extent both races were merely background noise.
“If your mother can think of anything that could help find who your father’s murderer is,” I plead with her, “let me know, please. The only person at the plant who’s really been cooperative is the secretary, Darla Tate. Though she hasn’t actually helped his case any, she says your father liked Class, and he liked your father.” “That doesn’t prove anything,” Connie says.
“I’ll talk to Mother if you’ll promise not to accuse her of my father’s murder.”
It hardly seems as if I’m giving anything away—or getting anything, for that matter. Bonner has never considered her a suspect, and he went all through the house the night of the
murder.
“I promise,” I say, knowing Dick will suggest it to the jury if I don’t.
Connie hangs up, and I curse myself, knowing how badly I have served my client in this case. I should never have taken it. I couldn’t have screwed up any more than if I had stayed drunk for the last couple of months. The only thing I’m convinced of is that Class is simply trying to save his skin, and I haven’t given him any reason to act otherwise.
“You can’t let Class plead guilty,” I tell Lattice Bledsoe four days before her husband’s trial begins. She has warily invited me into her house as if I were an investigator instead of her husband’s defense attorney. She is seated on a brown tattered couch across from me.
“You know he didn’t kill Willie “He’s saying now he did,” she says, holding a two-year-old on her lap.
With no income coming i in, she baby sits during the day before she works the evening shift at the 7-Eleven. The child’s eyes are enormous brown pools. She leans back against Lattice and stares at me as if I am the first white person she has ever seen.
“I don’t really believe that and neither do you,” I say urgently.
“Almost the first words out of your mouth when I met you were something like, “I know my husband and he’s not a killer.”” “I don’t want him to die,” she says, keeping her voice even, but unable to keep tears from sliding down her cheeks.
I lean forward on my knees and argue, “Take away his explanation that Paul Taylor was going to give him Oldham’s Barbecue and there is absolutely no motive. Half a dozen witnesses, including Mrs. Ting, will have to testify that Willie liked Class, and Class liked Willie.
Without Doss’s testimony there is hardly any evidence of any plan for Class to be paid to kill him.”
The child, whose name is Tisha, is perhaps frightened by my tone, and puts her thumb in her mouth while Lattice reminds me, “Class says you told him once a jury doesn’t need a motive to convict.”
I, of course, have not been honest with Lattice or her husband about why I took this case. I am responsible for Class winding up in this position.
Whether I’ve actually said the words or not, I’ve wanted him to do exactly what he is doing.
“You have to convince Class that he simply has to trust the system,” I argue.
“I think he can persuade a jury he didn’t kill Willie. This isn’t going to be a lynch mob. There’ll be blacks on the jury, and no Chinese.”
Lattice pats Tisha for comfort.
“How do you know he didn’t kill him?” she whispers.
“You can’t be for sure. And neither can a jury. There’s gonna be a black sheriff and a black prosecutor sayin’ he did, and there’re a lot of black people who are ready to believe the worst about ourselves if it’s black people doing the accusing.”
I watch Tisha as she begins to fidget on Lattice’s lap.
“Before he can be convicted, twelve people have to believe that Class is capable of killing someone. If he can convince people he came here, and stayed, he won’t be convicted. No one is going to testify they saw him. I believed him the first time he told me he didn’t do it. Your marriage won’t survive him going to prison, no matter what you think now. You’re selling him short.”
I can see Latrice wavering.
“He won’t do me any good dead,” she says, but there is no conviction in her voice.
“Can you promise you’ll get him off?”
“Even if he is convicted,” I temporize, “I can’t imagine any jury will give Class the death penalty unless they think he was a paid killer.”
But even as I say this, I remember that Darla Tate, despite her testimony that there was a good relationship between Willie and Class, will make a strong, if reluctant, witness, for the prosecution. If the jury wants to, they can simply believe he was hired by someone else.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Latrice says.
I feel my face flush with shame. Under the circumstances, I can’t conceal my own bad motives any longer and admit, “Initially, the reason I took your husband’s case was that I wanted to see Paul Taylor convicted. Because of some things I thought he did to my family years
ago, I wasn’t at all surprised he was charged, and my thinking was originally that Class might be guilty, and if he could plead to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony, I would have done my job and gotten to see Paul Taylor paid back at the same time. But now I think the only reason Class wants to implicate Paul is that he’s afraid.”
Latrice gives me a hard stare.
“So you were ready to sell him out?”
I feel like a moth being pinned to the wall.
“Not sell him out,” I say, unable to meet her gaze.
“I just started off with a different agenda.”
Is that what it was? What words we lawyers use! It was a vendetta, pure and simple.
“Lucy Cunningham said you were pretty much like nearly every other white man she had met—out for yourself,” Lattice says, her voice resigned, “but that you’d probably do a good job eventually.”
I shrug, not having the heart any longer to defend myself. I’ve managed to accomplish nothing here while I waited, hoping Paul would shoot himself in the foot sooner or later. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve assumed my client’s testimony could make it happen if need be.
“I’ll do my best,” I say, not about to use the past tense.
Lattice draws air into her lungs and then exhales, rocking the child gently against her.
“I’ll talk to Class,” she agrees finally.
“He’s okay until he gets to feeling pressure, then he sometimes panics.”
Welcome to the club, I think but don’t say. I thank her and leave before she can change her mind. I want to get out of this place in a hurry.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Melvin Butterfield, resplendent in dark blue pinstripes, begins his opening statement to the jury, “the state of Arkansas will prove that on last September twenty-third, between the hours of two and four p.m.” Mr. Willie Ting, owner of Southern Pride Meats, was murdered in cold blood at his plant by the defendant Class Bledsoe. Further, the state will show that Class Bledsoe, who worked in Mr. Ting’s plant, was hired to commit this murder by the defendant Paul Taylor…”
What Lattice said to convince her husband to go to trial, I may never know. As I listen to Butterfield, I lean back in my seat and watch the faces of the jury. Six blacks and six whites. Dick struck blacks as fast as he could, and I struck whites, unable to shed my belief that blacks will be less likely to convict Class. The whites on the jury, each over forty, are from all over the county, only two are actually from Bear Creek. None of the individuals selected admit to knowing Paul Taylor other than casually. On voir dire Dick asked prospective jurors if anyone had applied for loans during the years Paul was on Farmer’s State Bank’s board of directors. When one old man from Rondo raised his hand,
Dick didn’t run the risk of asking him if he got the loan, but struck him after conferring with Paul, who has been whispering in his ear all morning. Yet if whites or blacks on the jury harbor any buried resentments toward his wealth, no one has admitted it. Judge Johnson, far from tilting in favor of Butterfield, allowed both Dick and me latitude in our questioning of prospective jurors.
From the way Johnson has handled the proceedings and our pretrial motions, he seems pissed at Butterfield, as if a promise somewhere along the line has not been fulfilled. I glance up at the judge, and he has his nose stuck up in the air like a man avoiding a bad smell.
I look over at Dick, who is doodling on a pad as he listens to Butterfield. Knowing now he can’t trust me, Dick hasn’t spoken to me in a week except to call me to discuss the order of our opening statements. Having already decided to say as little as possible, I have agreed to go second.
If I were absolutely sure that Butterfield wouldn’t offer Class a new deal in the middle of the trial and equally certain that Class wouldn’t take it, I would ha
ve no qualms about telling the jury that Class was going to deny there had been a conspiracy between him and Paul, but at this point I’m going to play things as close to the vest as possible.
While Butterfield briefly explains what the testimony of the FBI chemist will involve, I allow myself to think of the look on Angela’s face while she was being sworn in and led off to the witness room. She had the sad, resigned expression of someone who knows her world is about to come crashing down on her head and knows there’s nothing she can do about it. She never even looked in my direction. How can I love a woman I don’t
fully trust? Easy. Just watching the back of her head while she raised her right hand to take the oath made me wonder if romantic love between two people is programmed into the genes just like eye color.
After finishing his summary of the case against Class, Butterfield then turns from the lectern and faces Paul, whom Dick has seated to his right so the jury can watch him.
“Now, the state doesn’t believe for a moment that Class Bledsoe acted alone, we believe Bledsoe was hired by Paul Taylor,” Butterfield says, pointing his finger at Paul, and his voice rising, “because he wanted to buy Southern Pride Meats from Willie Ting and got turned down because Mr. Ting didn’t want to sell his very profitable business to someone who wasn’t Chinese. And when Willie Ting refused for the second time, the defendant Paul Taylor threatened to kill him.” A silence of perhaps ten seconds elapses as Butterfield stares hard at Paul, finally turns back to the jury, and continues.
“How do we know Paul Taylor threatened to kill him? Well, the fact is, Mr. Ting was so frightened by Paul Taylor that he made a tape of the conversation, and you will hear it for yourselves. Now, those of us in the criminal justice system fervently wish that Mr. Ting had given us this tape as soon as the threat was made—because if he had, he just might be alive today.”
Butterfield’s voice drops as if he is truly experiencing regret. He looks down at his hands gripping the sides of the podium and resumes forcefully, “But that wasn’t his way. His widow, Mrs. Doris Ting, will tell you that her husband always preferred to keep a low profile in the community and spend his free time with his family.
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