by Attica Locke
“Mr. Duffie?”
Wayne Duffie, the county clerk in charge of the elections division, among other things, stands so quickly that he wobbles a bit on his feet. In his fifties, he is as short as he is round, and has paired his brown slacks with a green sports coat, double-breasted, with gold-tone buttons, the uniform of a man content with the least amount of political power available to him, elected to count the votes that put other people into offices over his head. On his right ring finger, he wears a class ring, the metal cutting into the meat all around it. Jay can smell his cologne from here. “I’m afraid I’m at a bit of a loss here, Your Honor,” Duffie says. “This is unprecedented. I, uh, if I could, Your Honor, would like to elect Mr. Nichols to speak for the county, as it’s his office with which the complainant seems to have the problem.” He gestures toward Matt Nichols, who stands.
“If I may, Your Honor.”
“Go on.”
“Judge, this is just a stunt, of the highest order, and a waste of the court’s time. Mr. Porter’s client is charged with a homicide, indicted by a grand jury in this county. There is no evidence of some big conspiracy against Mr. Hathorne, or frankly that his legal troubles have anything to do with the election. Where Mr. Porter would like to suggest that our office is somehow using a murder charge to influence an election, from where I stand he appears to be using the timing of an election to get his client out of a capital murder charge.”
“That could not more greatly misstate my purpose here,” Jay says.
“Your Honor, his ‘purpose here’ is to create a diversion for his client. It’s a cheap stunt and a supreme show of disrespect to the people of this city.”
“Not when we’re talking about no less than the sanctity of the entire electoral process,” Jay says, standing, taking a gamble that Judge Little is not so close to retirement that he’s impervious to a good, old-fashioned argument about the power of a courtroom, the plain facts of why they’re all here, why, two hundred years on, men and women like Jay, Judge Little, Matt Nichols, and Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux even bother showing up. “My god, Judge, do you really think I would try something like this unless I thought that this is it, all I have? The court, Your Honor, this has always been the church of last resort, the place where we at least take a stab at doing the right thing, where we believe it’s even possible,” he says, pouring it on a little thick, sure, but only because he believes it. “All I’m asking is that my client get a fair trial, and Houston get a fair election.” Judge Little is quiet a moment, twirling his spectacles by one of the stems; tiny rectangles of glass, they are prisms playing tricks in the light, reflecting green one moment, a hard red the next. Behind him, Jay can hear the scratch of graphite on paper, reporters and a few of the spectators taking notes.
Finally, Judge Little speaks. “Do you have anything more than the girl working for Wolcott?”
“Do I need more?”
“Do you have proof, Counselor?” The judge lifts the stapled pages on his desk. “I’ve got the affidavits here from Pleasantville residents, the ones who saw the victim handing out these anti-Hathorne flyers, but where is the hard line between the flyers and Wolcott’s campaign? In theory, anybody could have printed up these deals,” he says, holding up one of the Buffalo Bayou development flyers, “anybody wanting to tip the scales in Wolcott’s favor.”
“My office is working on that right now,” Jay says.
He has both Rolly and Lon out in the streets, working every print shop from Galveston to Humble, north of the airport, trying to locate the one commissioned to design and print hundreds of flyers linking Hathorne to a bayou development project. “One of the problems with moving forward with an election on the current timetable is the possibility of never having the ‘hard’ answers. What happens if this trial is held in six months, or a year from now, and not only is my client acquitted, but it’s been proved that there was outright conspiracy on the part of the D.A., and she’s already sitting up in city hall?”
Judge Little sighs, looking from Jay to Nichols.
“He does have a point,” he says.
Jay wedges himself into this slim opening.
“Absent some action on the court’s part,” he says, “this murder case will hang over the whole election. It will taint the whole process.”
“It does stink,” the judge says. “A sitting D.A. running for office while prosecuting a member of the other candidate’s family, his campaign manager, no less? I can’t even imagine why she would, in the middle of the runoff campaign, leave herself open to something this messy unless she stood to gain.”
“We have an eyewitness, Your Honor,” Nichols says, very nearly losing his cool. He’s a state prosecutor used to criminal court judges bending over backward to see his every argument as just good old common sense. That they are even still talking about this appears to have stumped the young lawyer.
“You have an eyewitness who saw my client,” Jay says, “or an eyewitness who saw someone ‘matching his description’?” Which is the catchall phrase of lazy prosecutors everywhere.
Nichols makes a play for the judge’s equanimity, his levelheadedness in the face of the absurd. “What exactly is Mr. Porter asking the court to do, postpone a citywide election indefinitely?” he says.
“No, just until my client gets a trial.”
“Which is the same thing as putting it off indefinitely.”
Jay taps the counsel table with his fingertips. “My client is prepared to invoke his right to a speedy trial. We’re ready to go at any time, Your Honor.”
The judge raises an eyebrow, throwing this over to Nichols.
He’s waiting to see if Nichols is at least willing to play.
“What if we were able to move the runoff back a month, maybe two? Is that even feasible on your end?” the judge says, turning to Wayne Duffie. The county clerk stands, catching a side-winding stream of sweat off his brow with the palm of his hand and clearing his throat several times. After a long, partially rehearsed statement about the date of the runoff having been set for more than a calendar year, tradition holding that thirty days out from a general election, the county settles each and every draw with another go at the polls, he concedes that the final ballots are not actually due to be printed until next week, and, no, he can’t think of a single reason why the runoff election couldn’t be postponed.
“Mr. Nichols?”
“Your Honor, I don’t need to remind the court of the intricacies of trying a murder case. It’s not something the prosecutor’s office takes lightly, nor something that we can just throw together. I cannot try a capital case between now and December tenth, sir, nor do I think it’s fair to hold up a city election.”
“He can always drop the charges and refile after the election is over,” Jay says, which is what he really wanted all along: for Wolcott to drop this.
“And let a murderer–”
“Alleged, Your Honor.”
“–walk out the door? I’m sorry, Your Honor, but Alicia Nowell’s family, the ones that Mr. Porter claims to be so concerned about, they deserve justice, first and foremost. And justice, sir, justice does not wait.”
“I couldn’t agree more. My client and I are ready to go when you are.”
For the first time, Judge Little smiles.
The balls on this one, his expression says.
“I’m not gon’ rule today,” he says finally. “I’d ask for case law on the matter, but I suppose if you had it, you’d have already laid it out.” He looks back down at his copy of Jay’s motion, almost marveling at it, like a three-legged horse or a blind dog nosing its way through a maze, an honest-to-god wonder of nature. “I will say for the record, Mr. Porter, that I don’t for one second take the halting of a city election lightly. I can’t think of anything more grave than messing around with our democracy.” He looks down again at the papers and sighs, his pleasure in the morning’s enterprise slowly deflating, like a slow, whistling leak in a circus balloon. The show is over, and the cleanup
doesn’t look like nearly as much fun. He reminds all parties to hang near a phone for the next day or two, so his clerk can reach them. When it’s all over, Matt Nichols looks pleased–that is, until he turns and sees Jay Porter looking equally optimistic. It was a stunt, a shot a mile long. And Jay just argued his way into another day, another twenty-four hours. He packs the satchel briefcase, fingering the brass buckles to secure it. As he turns to leave, he sees Keith Morehead escorting the Robicheauxs out of the courtroom, a hand at the elbow of Maxine’s pink nursing uniform. She turns and glances back at Jay, a look as piercing as the last time their eyes met. Only it’s not vitriol he sees, but a kind of stumbling confusion, a haunting terror at the thought of losing her daughter all over again, not to men in dark cars, on the dark street corners of her worst nightmares, but to men in dark robes, men in suits, men who, inside the walls of this hallowed courthouse, will wrest from her daughter’s life what they can use and leave the rest, men who are no better to Maxine than the killer who snatched Alicia on the street.
CHAPTER 18
He pulls Lonnie off the road first.
Rolly agrees to put in another hour or so tracking down print shops, and then he’ll pick up Hollis’s tail when Alonzo clocks out of the tire shop in Aldine, where he’s been on shift since eight o’clock this morning. Rolly’s only news to report, after three days’ surveillance, is thin: “He wasn’t working last Tuesday, election night,” he says. “At least two of his coworkers willing to talk said he wasn’t on the schedule, but, hell, even if he was, place closes at seven, giving him plenty of time to get out to Pleasantville to snatch the girl.” A scenario, Jay knows, that does not match the grand jury testimony about the night in question, the eyewitness who fingered Neal. Rolly is embarrassed to admit that after three days he has no idea where Hollis was that night or any more details about the man’s nighttime activities. “Not much I can do staring at the man’s front windows.”
For the second time, he pushes for a different, more direct approach.
Jay still thinks it’s a bad idea.
“If this goes like I think it will, we may have a shot at interviewing him, even getting him on the stand,” he says. “You roll on him now and he might get cagey or, worse, he might run. I can’t afford to lose him, not yet.”
“You insult me, Counselor.”
“What are you going to do, give him a ride home in a Town Car? Buy him a drink at his favorite bar?”
“I got more tricks than that.”
“Save ’em.”
Rolly feigns uninterest. “It’s your money, Counselor.”
You don’t know the half, Jay thinks.
They agree to check in in an hour or so, before Jay flips his Motorola closed. He’s sitting in the front seat of his Land Cruiser, which is idling in the parking lot of the West Alabama Ice House, just over the fence from Lonnie’s duplex apartment. The saloon is little more than a red-and-white shack, a wood hut built sometime in the 1920s. The bar’s interior is a dark, low-ceilinged hall that’s lit by neon beer signs and the glow of five television sets. Most of the action happens outside, where faded red picnic tables practically spill out of the small front yard and into the rolling traffic on West Alabama. Around back is a wide dirt yard with more sticky tables and a big, black drum of a barbecue pit. It’s a place where the smoking of meat is holy, and cleanliness is next to whatever comes way after beer and football, a place where men and dogs are welcome. Lonnie is petting a dog when Jay finds her at a table in back, a black-and-brown boxer tied to the leg of a neighboring table. She’s wearing camel-colored square-toe boots, black jeans, and an ice blue T-shirt, her headlights poking out in the cooling November night. It’s a quarter after six, the sun rust red in the sky over the roof of the Ice House. Despite, or maybe because of, whatever in the world is going on with her and Amy, Lonnie is flirting openly with the dog’s owner, a dark-haired woman in a University of St. Thomas T-shirt, a denim skirt, and boots almost identical to Lonnie’s, only in a dark shade of gray. Lonnie makes a joke about swapping, winking. She’s in a good mood, stealing glances at the dark-haired woman, who Jay believes is way too young for Lonnie.
“Hey,” he says, sitting across the bench from her.
Lonnie turns, all business suddenly.
“The boyfriend’s out.”
“What?”
“Kenny, Alicia’s high school beau. He’s got an ironclad alibi. Turns out he was in Houston last Tuesday, with plans to meet up with Alicia at his parents’ place for a birthday dinner for his sister, but she never showed. He had a house full of folks who saw him all night, who know he was waiting on the girl.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Resner cleared him on his own, behind Detective Moore’s back.”
“He has doubts about the indictment?”
“Publicly, no. Privately, ‘doesn’t feel right,’ he said.”
“Why in the hell doesn’t he say something?”
“He did,” Lonnie says, “to me.”
She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans for a pack of smokes. “This is just the kind of thing he used to slip my way,” she says. “You don’t like how the top brass is running your case, you drop a line or two to the newspaper.”
“But Bartolomo’s not biting.”
She shakes her head, lighting up a Parliament. “The paper has its angle, and they’re sticking to it.” She throws her head back, exhaling. “Resner, it’s not his case. In-house, his hands are tied. He’s just doing me a favor, that’s all. When I mentioned we might subpoena the boyfriend, he said, ‘Don’t bother.’” Which leaves Alonzo Hollis as the only alternative suspect to present to a jury.
“What about the print shops?”
“I didn’t find shit,” she says, pulling from the same back pocket a sheet of notebook paper folded lengthwise. She opens it, laying it on the table, rings of leftover beer sweat soaking through. It’s her notes from the field. “I had Kingwood to downtown, then west to Meyer Park. Every Kwik Kopy and mom-and-pop, and I didn’t find anyone who knows a thing about the BBDP flyers.”
“Rolly didn’t either,” Jay says. “We’ll keep looking.”
Lonnie looks up, pointing over Jay’s shoulder. “There he is.”
Rob Urrea, the Hathorne campaign’s opp guy, was a onetime lifer at the Houston Post, where he and Lonnie Phillips met. She had graduated up to features by the time the owners sold the paper, and Rob was working the city politics beat he loved. He was one of the lucky ones who landed a job at the Chronicle when the Post died. “Lucky” being relative, Lonnie told Jay; those jobs were just for show, evidence of the publisher’s benevolence and civic integrity–which he touted in the pages of his own newspaper, mostly so he wouldn’t look like a vulture picking at the bones of his now dead rival. It was all bullshit, of course. Most of those folks were let go within six months. Rob is in his late fifties. His salt-and-pepper hair is heavy on the Brylcreem, and he seems emotionally worn out just by the walk to their table. He might have made a play for retirement if there had been anything to retire on. He got two weeks’ severance just like everybody else. He’s got, what, a month left on the Hathorne job, more if Jay is able to drag the election out, but other than that he’s already on to the next hustle. Lonnie lured him to the Ice House on the promise of sharing her leads in the journalism corner of the World Wide Web. “Aw, hell, Lon,” he says when he sees Jay at her picnic table. He lingers about three feet from the table, debating taking another step. The boxer is licking Lonnie’s fingers.
“Come on, Rob. She won’t bite.”
“Thought you was gonna buy me a couple of beers, catch up a little.” Deflated, he slaps his black messenger bag on top of the table before taking an open seat at the bench. “Guess everybody’s got an angle these days.”
“You know, for a guy doing opp research, you sure are earnest as fuck.”
“We just want to talk,” Jay says.
“What happened to your face?”
&n
bsp; “Occupational hazard.”
“For a lawyer?” Then he reconsiders Jay’s injuries in light of the morning’s events. “One trying to stop an election, I guess.” He shakes his head, not sure he wants to stick around for this. “Am I getting the leads or what?”
“Hold your horses.”
She signals one of the waitresses, a blond girl barely out of high school carrying a tin tray at her hip. “What can I get y’all?” she says.
Jay orders water.
“Dos Equis,” says Lon.
She orders two, thinking this is still on Sam’s dime.
Rob orders carne asada and ribs, and a stack of home-cut fries. “Beer too.”
He watches the girl’s backside as she walks away, then opens the front flap of his bag, pulling out a handkerchief. He wipes his nose, digging in deep.
“You wanted to talk,” he says. “Talk.”
“A. G. Hathorne,” Jay says.
Rob thinks on this a moment and then shrugs. He slides the handkerchief into his pocket. “I don’t have anything to tell.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
“We know Sam asked for a report on his own son,” Lonnie says.
Rob shakes his head, “Huh-uh,” he says.
Jay leans across the picnic table. “Look, I know you may have thought you had to protect Neal in some way. Nobody wants to hear shit about their dad, no matter how bad the stuff you’ve been imagining about the man for thirty years, but this is a potentially life-or-death situation for Neal. You want me to sugarcoat anything for him, I can. But I need to know what was in that report, what made him drop everything to go talk to his father that night.”
“You don’t understand,” Rob says. “There was no report, or rather there was nothing in it, certainly nothing that Sam didn’t already know.”
“Like what?”
“Drugs,” Rob says, matter-of-factly, as if he’s stunned that Jay hadn’t come to that conclusion on his own. “Guy’s a musician, after all,” he says, as if it were a medical condition, a curdling in the blood that can’t be helped.
