One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  She perched her butt on the edge of the defense table, distancing herself from the jury physically and psychically. She crossed her arms in front of her breasts, and crossed her feet at the ankles, long legs out in front of her. Her tone of voice was clipped, almost cold.

  "Let me repeat myself: Ignore me. I don't matter here. The judge and the U.S. Attorney don't matter. In fact, you and Tommy Griffin are the only people who matter here. (Let the prosecution wiggle around that one!) And truth is the only concept that matters. Not justice, not fairness, not equality. Truth: Who told the truth, who lied, and who do you believe. You are not being asked to do Tommy Griffin a favor, or to give him a break." Carole Ann was still as death. Nothing moved but her eyes, which traveled from juror to juror, once again, for the last time, finding, meeting, holding Hazel Copeland's gaze.

  "After all, why should you give Tommy Griffin a break when many of you have struggled and survived without so much as a howdy-do from another living soul? But Tommy doesn't need a break. Nor does he want one. He wants the truth. It's your job to give it to him." She stood up straight.

  "Thank you, Your Honor. I'm finished." And without another word or another glance at the jury box, Carole Ann took her seat at the defense table and turned her outward attention to the prosecution, though she later would remember nothing of his closing statement. She would remember little of her own, save that she was freezing cold throughout it, that her insides were shivering when she sat down, that her fingers and toes were as numb as if she'd jogged the entirety of Rock Creek Park in the middle of winter. She didn't remember the judge's instructions and charge to the jury—only that, because it was almost 11:30—they’d eat lunch first and then begin their deliberations at one o'clock that afternoon. She didn't remember the ride from the courthouse, through the snarled lunch-time traffic, north on Pennsylvania Avenue to the sleek high rise building that housed, on six floors, the law firm at which she was a full partner. She didn't remember returning to the enveloping comfort of her corner office with its panoramic views, or of asking for or drinking the pot of tea now empty before her on the table. She was aware only of observing herself from a hazy distance and being surprised at the behavior that seemed to be hers—and of enjoying the distance from herself—until the senior partner for litigation charged into her office.

  "What in Satan's hell do you think you were doing with that summation?" Bob Pritchard all but shouted at her, his wiry body twitching like a young spaniel puppy. Bob was sixty years old and as excitable about lawyering as a new inductee to the bar. "Of course, I heard it was masterful, as usual. But it wasn't what we rehearsed yesterday afternoon. And who the hell ever heard of a fifteen-minute summation?"

  Carole Ann slowly filled her lungs with air and just as slowly released it, and stood up from the couch and put her shoes back on. She still was numb inside, frozen, and Bob's friskiness not only was annoying, but his presence was intrusive. She didn't want to talk to him. She wanted to think about Hazel Copeland and traitors and innocence. But she was glad to learn how much time she'd actually spent with the jury—that was important to her—and she was about to tell Bob that fifteen minutes was sufficient for the innocent, when, puppy-like, he bounded on to the next topic, and followed her from the couch, across the plush, claret carpet, to her desk.

  "I hope you're hungry because Pat Delaney's on his way over with a catered lunch. A champagne lunch, I might add." And he actually licked his lips in anticipation.

  Carole Ann had deleted Delaney from her mind's storage disc and needed several seconds to drag her memory back to some place that recalled not only who he was, but that cared, since his embezzlement and corruption trial had been over for six months. He'd faced a thirteen-count indictment, and had been convicted on two of the least serious charges, resulting in a sentence of community service and a fine. Her closing argument in his defense had taken four-and-a-half hours, proving, in her mind, that her new theory relating innocence and the brevity of the closing argument had merit.

  "And?" she asked wearily. "What does he want?"

  "Just to see you, and to thank you for saving his ass." Bob tilted is head back, laughed and rubbed his hands together. "He can't sing your praises loudly enough. If it weren't for you, he'd be in prison right now."

  "Which is where he deserves to be," she said.

  "Where he des...what the hell kind of response is that?" Bob was not miscast as the overseer of the litigation department. He was a vigilant guardian of the firm's biggest revenue-producing department, and his mood changed from jocular to defensive in a heartbeat. "The man is our client and what he deserves is the best we have to offer!" he snapped at her.

  "The man stole a million-and-a-half dollars from his own construction company, causing the bankruptcy of his two partners, not to mention the failure of a half-finished senior citizens' home and the dissolution of his marriage," Carole Ann snapped back, aware but not caring that she was skating on very thin ice.

  "Since when has that mattered a damn bit?"

  "Since I almost lost Tommy Griffin, that's since when!" Carole Ann was so far out on thin ice that she couldn't have made it safely back before falling in and drowning even if she'd been trying, which she wasn't. She matched Pritchard's hostile glare, aware that he was looking more like a Rottweiler than a Jack Russell every second.

  "And let's get back to that, why don't we. I don't take kindly to my lawyers changing summations without notice, especially when I hear you that blamed lawyers for putting murderers back on the street. I got five calls from outside the firm. What do you think you were doing?" He bristled and almost imperceptibly widened his stance.

  "I just told you, Bob. Trying to save an innocent man. I know that's a rarity around here, so much so that I almost didn't recognize it when I saw it, and I almost lost it." Having the words leave her thoughts and come out of her mouth caused a return of the shivers.

  "Griffin is a pro bono case, for crying out loud! Pat Delaney paid this firm a lot of money."

  "Most of it stolen, no doubt."

  "The man is our client!" he thundered, all the cute terrier traits now replaced completely by the big-headed mastiff that was his true, if well-concealed, self, "and I'll not have you refer to any client of this firm in any way but respectfully!"

  "Tommy Griffin is our client, too, Bob. Our innocent client. Our innocent, pro bono client, I hasten to add." She was watching the blood rise in his face like mercury in a thermometer when her secretary, Cleo, opened the door and stuck her dread-locked head in. She gave Carole Ann the hooded-lid look that meant, "Is he being a pain in the ass again?" Then she smiled brilliantly at Bob, and excused herself for interrupting.

  "The Griffin jury is back. One hour and eleven minutes. It's a courthouse record. The car is waiting for you."

  Carole Ann allowed her mind to fill to overflowing with trivia. How could the car be waiting? The driver had barely had sufficient time to garage it. Had Cleo called for the car before telling Carole Ann the verdict was in? Wouldn't the driver be at lunch? At least she wouldn't be forced to eat at the same table with Pat Delaney. She was half-way downtown, awash in useless thoughts, when she realized it was a different car and a different driver. How many cars and drivers did the firm have, she wondered? Three hundred dollar an hour lawyers didn't worry about such things; they worried only that the car and driver were available when needed. Still, she wondered. This driver was a woman, a young white woman. All the other drivers were male, and older. And Black. Was this a new trend? As the color and gender of the legal profession changed, would it follow that the color and gender of those who served them would change also? Certainly Cleo was the first executive-level secretary in the firm with dreadlocks, a fact upon which the most senior of the senior partners never failed to comment whenever faced with her presence. Just as they never failed to comment upon the novelty of Carole Ann's own presence as a partner, as an equal, among their ranks.

  Carole Ann slowly scanned the packed courtroom. It was
a standing room only crowd, just as it had been a scant four hours earlier for her closing argument. She'd become accustomed to that; a good many of her clients were high-profile—like their crimes—and she was an expert performer. She knew that. She had worked hard over the years to perfect her technique. The spectator section was overflowing with people who appeared to be relatives and friends of Tommy and his family. The press section had filled to overflowing and was crowding the lawyers' section, which always produced tension. Carole Ann watched without particular interest as the members of the third and fourth estates challenged each other for the right to sit down. She realized that she no longer cared about such matters, and turned her attention to what did concern her.

  Tommy was nervous. He stole sideways glances at her, the first time he'd ever done that, and it reminded her again what a youngster he really was, despite his size and the size and weight of his problem. He slouched in his chair, again a behavioral departure, and he kept looking over his shoulder at his parents and grandparents and giving them so sickly a grin that the poor people must be weak with terror. She poked him in the ribs with her elbow and he straightened up and faced forward. Then, unable still to control his fidgets, he leaned over to her.

  "Do quick verdicts mean guilty or innocent? I don't remember," he whispered.

  "We'll know in a very few moments," she whispered back, and nodded toward to the concealed door in the side wall of the jury box which had just opened to present two guards, followed by the jury. They looked so relaxed and casual that Carole Ann went numb again, and fought with herself to understand the feeling and the reason for it. She'd never before regretted the return of a jury. Of course, she'd never before had one return in an hour and eleven minutes. Still, she struggled to give identity to the new feelings inside her.

  First and most certainly there was fear. She did not want this jury to find Tommy Griffin guilty, which she clearly understood was different from not wanting to lose the case. No part of any feeling that she was experiencing had anything to do with winning and losing, which also was new and different for her: Carole Ann liked winning, and, since she won more often than she lost, was accustomed to it. Then there was a sense of dread, which she understood to be connected directly to Hazel Copeland. If the jury decided that Tommy was guilty, then she, Carole Ann, was a traitor, and this she did not want to be. She'd rather lose than be branded a traitor in Hazel Copeland's belief system. Then there was the fatigue. Whatever the outcome, she didn't want to be inside a courtroom again for a very long time. These realizations she identified and accepted—welcomed—as valid, their strangeness notwithstanding.

  Instinctively Carole Ann stood, pulling Tommy up with her, when the judge entered, and just as instinctively, she sank back down when the judge sat, her legs suddenly unable to support her. Her eyes sought out Hazel Copeland. True to form, the woman sat tall and strong and impassive, her eyes focused on the judge, who was reaching for the folded paper upon which the few words of the verdict were inscribed. Again acting on instinct, Carole Ann rose and pulled Tommy up with her, aware that he had become dead weight. For the first time, he was afraid. She looked up at him, at his little-boy face at odds with the muscle builder's body, and smiled, and all the unfamiliar emotions drained from her. She took his hand and held it in both of hers, tightly, and waited.

  She never heard the words, "not guilty." She was watching Hazel Copeland's impassive mask of a face, and it wasn't until she heard Tommy's roar in her ear and felt the breath squeezed out of her as he lifted her and whirled her around that she understood what had happened.

  "Tommy, please put me down," she said calmly.

  "Yes, Ma'am," he said with his little boy grin, returning her to her feet but keeping her hands locked in his. "Thank you, Miss Gibson. From the bottom of my heart," he whispered to her, his eyes boring into hers, both of them ignoring the pandemonium around them. "You really came through for me."

  "Thank you, Tommy, for being the best client I've had in a long time," she said, returning his grin, and adding, "But you came through for yourself. Don't ever forget that."

  His eyes clouded and his grin faded. "I really am innocent, Miss Gibson. I really and truly did not do those things," he said to her with an intense, insistent ferocity.

  "I know that, Tommy," she said, puzzlement and concern in her voice and face, the question unasked.

  "I wasn't sure you did, not really, not until the end," he said, with the kind of little it-doesn't-matter shrug that carries tons of hurt and pain.

  "Then I apologize for that. I believed in your innocence from the beginning and I wish you'd known from the beginning if you didn't." The guilt washed over her in waves that felt and behaved like nausea. She controlled the dizziness.

  "Yes, Ma'am," he said. "Thank you again," he said, and, after a quick, self-conscious hug, turned to find his family.

  "Tommy!" she called before he'd taken a full pace away from her, her outstretched arm grabbing for him before his name sounded. "We need to talk in a couple of days about your future plans."

  "I'm a police officer, Miss Gibson."

  "They'll make your life a living, breathing hell if you go back there, Tommy," she hissed with a vehemence that she hadn't intended to convey.

  "Yes, Ma'am, I know that. But I'm reporting for duty tomorrow morning." He straightened his already perfect posture and squared his Muhammad Ali-like shoulders and fixed a determined frown on his handsome, young face and waited for her to try and talk him out of it.

  "Do you want me to go with you?" she asked instead.

  His grin was a thousand watts of pure joy. "Yes, Ma'am! I'd really appreciate it," he answered.

  "On one condition," she snapped in irritation.

  "Yes, Ma'am! What is it?" he responded, startled by the change in her.

  "Stop calling me 'Ma'am,' goddammit! I'm not that old!"

  "Yes, Ma'am! What should I call you, Ma'am?" He was laughing at her, laughing full and hard and purging himself of the long year of anguish and humiliation and frustration during which she knew there hadn't been much room or reason for mirth.

  "My friends call me C.A., Fish." They held each other in a brief but fierce embrace. Then she released him and told him to go and personally thank each of the jurors, especially Number Seven, and she described Hazel Copeland in detail, which made him frown at her, perplexed.

  "How come you know Number Seven so well? You been jury tampering?"

  "That's not cute, Fish. Or funny. And when you finish with the jurors, it'll be meet the media time."

  "Oh, shit," he groaned. "I hate those bastards. They tried and convicted and sentenced me a year ago. Why do I need to talk to them?"

  "To show them the error of their ways," Carole Ann responded with more calm than she felt, propelling him into the crush of well-wishers through which he'd have to travel to reach the jury box. Her dislike for reporters was legendary in legal circles. She had held fast to a policy of no interviews after being excoriated in a print article for having the dubious distinction of being "the black female who has become the attorney of choice for white collar white male criminals." The reporter pointed out, explicitly, that few if any residents of predominately-Black Washington, D.C. could afford her high-priced legal talents, ignoring totally that not only had she been responsible for forcing her law firm to support a pro-bono program, but that she shouldered a huge percentage of that burden, often having several cases at trial simultaneously, keeping her in hot water with judges in local and federal courts in D.C. as well as in the suburban jurisdictions of Maryland and Virginia. Also ignored in the article was the fact that her acquittal rate for her pro-bono clients—most of whom were Black and collarless—was higher than for her white collar white male clients. The reporter had set out to nail her, and succeeded. Her retaliation was never to speak—on or off the record—to another reporter, which, if anybody was keeping score (and Carole Ann certainly was) had her far ahead in points. She'd defended more than a dozen high profil
e criminal cases in the last several years, and had achieved an almost total press shut-out, virtually unheard of in Washington, where the press seemed to make the news instead of reporting it. She deliberately orchestrated her cases so that any leaks would have, of necessity, to come from the prosecution; and once, having proved that very thing, had had a case dismissed by a judge so furious that she'd sent a Maryland state's attorney to jail overnight for having leaked information to the press.

  Carole Ann followed Tommy, his parents and grandparents, other relatives and friends, out of the courthouse and into the sunny, spring afternoon, where they were met by a swarming, buzzing hive of reporters, who took turns, it seemed, trying to out-shout each other, each question more inane than the previous one: How do you feel, Tommy? Are you glad it's over, Tommy? What are your plans, Tommy? Do you feel vindicated, Tommy? How many wins is this for you, Carole Ann? How does it feel, Carole Ann? What's your next case, Carole Ann? She listened to their wails, amazed, as always, at the extent to which a once honorable profession had deteriorated, knowing that untold numbers of citizens had the same feeling about her own line of work.

  Carole Ann allowed Tommy to push her forward to the cluster of microphones, and he leaned down to whisper that he would not speak. She stood and waited for the shouting to cease. Then, a slight smile lifting the corners of her mouth, she made her first press statement in more than three years: "Despite your best efforts and worst examples, the jury in this case listened and weighed all the evidence and concluded that Tommy Griffin is innocent, both of the charges legally brought against him, and of the vile and slanderous innuendo printed and broadcast by you and your employers. We are grateful that the women and men of the jury possessed the dedicated citizenship required to give more than a month of their lives to vindicate an innocent man, and the good sense to ignore anything they've heard or read from you."