by Attica Locke
Jay lays the copy of the list of PAC donors on Charlie’s desk. “Then why are you donating to Wolcott’s campaign?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“America’s Tomorrow,” Jay says.
“What is this?” Charlie picks up the list, studying the printed names and then setting it back on his desktop without comment, except to say, “I would think it need not be said that I am no fan of Sandy Wolcott.” He tops off his scotch and again offers Jay a piece. From down the hall, Jay can hear the phone ringing at the receptionist’s desk. Charlie, his face florid and pink, his once sandy hair streaked with gray, like needles stacked in hay, looks as bitter as a man can, well aware that he inadvertently unleashed Sandy Wolcott on the world. Had she not beaten the Charlie Luckman in court, she would still be slogging through a caseload of rapes and burglaries and felony manslaughters and not at present be considered the front-runner to lead a city Jay would bet a hundred dollars she can hardly find her way around. She was Charlie’s monster. Well, Charlie’s and Oprah Winfrey’s. Charlie was humiliated, but his client, a prominent heart surgeon who used his considerable skills to gut his cheating wife, is sitting on death row. “It spooked me, losing like that,” Charlie says now, sipping his drink. He’s had a few doping cases since then, an outfielder from the Astros and a track star who almost lost every medal she won in Atlanta this summer, and he can count on his clients’ recreational drug use to keep him solvent for years, but murder, “I can’t do that shit anymore,” he says. He got married, became a father. “I’m in the goddamned PTA.” He raises his glass to Jay. “You’re a brave man. Or a fool.” He tosses back his toast. “I will say this. You have scared the ever-living shit out of quite a number of men in this town. They think you’re crazy. Or worse, reckless and undomesticated. You ever wanted to push your luck, ask for a cushy appointment, get on a board or two, now is the time to ask. Or, hell, don’t. I won’t say this other thing isn’t fun to watch. You got folks running scared,” he says, remarking on a quality he’d once had in hand and lost. Charlie has always had a grudging respect for Jay.
“What is America’s Tomorrow?”
“That?” He nods toward the donor list. “Thomas pulled me in on that.”
“Cole?”
Charlie nods. “He’s been telling everyone to get in early. First checks written, first names remembered when the time comes.” Charlie shrugs, glancing briefly at the phone lines flashing on his desk. “A Texan in Washington again, it could open up a lot of doors for folks down here, grease a lot of wheels. I figured I’d put in my down payment now, instead of playing catch-up in four years.” He looks up, his gaze hovering on the view outside his window, the bodies clad in Lycra. “Maybe a judgeship down the line,” he says, lost in his thoughts, some far-off dream for his future. “I might want something different one day,” he says.
“But what does any of this have to do with Wolcott?”
Charlie nearly laughs.
“Wolcott?” he says. “Oh, hell, nobody gives a shit about Wolcott. That money is for Reese Parker, a grant, shall we say, for her little experiment. She says she can deliver, that was the sales pitch. She and Cole, they had a bunch of high rollers out to his place, cocktails and fifty-dollar steaks, and she laid it out, the way the game is changing. The way elections are run, it’s all changing. It’s not precinct by precinct anymore, not for the ones who want to win. Four years from now, it’s going to come down to a handful of votes. ‘Trust me,’ she said. Folks were signing checks on the spot. We’re talking money to win the big prize.” He walks back to the bar behind his desk, hovering a little, as if he’s debating whether or not he has to behave himself if his wife is nowhere on the premises. “The mayor’s race,” he says, “this is just a test case for Reese Parker.”
Outside, Jay sits in his car, staring out the front window for a long time, so long in fact that Ellie starts to shift in her seat behind the wheel. “Dad?” She touches his arm, and he nods. I’m fine. But, still, he doesn’t move, looking through the windshield, playing in his mind an image of his last time in Pleasantville, when he’d seen Wolcott’s volunteers making an aggressive play for votes in what should have been enemy territory for a right-leaning political candidate; they were following a pattern of attack that Jay still doesn’t completely understand. What he does know is what he tells Lon when he calls her that night from his bedroom phone. “They’re trying to break Pleasantville.” The mighty 259 no more, he says, but a voting bloc that can be destabilized. The misleading flyers, the targeted approach in the streets–if they were able to do something similar in urban precincts across the country, pull votes that shouldn’t on paper belong to them, they could actually swing a national race. “This isn’t about Wolcott, or even about Houston. This is about the White House in 2000.”
“Holy shit, Jay.”
“Didn’t Parker work on Bush’s governor’s race last year?”
“She worked for Karl Rove’s firm for a bit.”
“We’ve had our eyes on the wrong game this whole time.”
Detective Herman “Hank” Moore takes the stand on Monday morning, the sixteenth, a day after a center-foldout story on the trial appeared in the pages of the Chronicle, written by Gregg Bartolomo and detailing the strengths of the state’s case against mayoral candidate Axel Hathorne’s nephew and campaign manager–evidence that he apparently watched in a different courtroom from the one Jay was in all of last week, so puffed up and laid out in a way most favorable to the D.A.’s office are the facts. But such is the power of the press: to get it right, or dangerously wrong. Nichols, in a blue suit, is especially smug this morning, moving with the assured strut of every prosecutor with a cop in the witness chair–which is as good as writing the testimony himself. He leans against the lectern, hands in his pockets, barely glancing at his notes, so certain is he that the detective’s testimony, with little help from the prosecutor, will roll out with ease to produce the desired effect. As Detective Moore takes an oath to tell the truth, Jay, at the defense table, glances behind him. Sam is not in the courtroom today, nor are his daughters; just Vivian and Axel are there. Ellie, with her dad’s permission, and after he had a weekend chat with her principal–“It’s good for her, Mr. Porter”–is sitting beside them. Lonnie is at the city’s central library on McKinney, using one of their computers to search for any more information on America’s Tomorrow.
Jay can feel the rat-a-tat-tat of Neal’s left knee, up and down, up and down, bumping up against the underside of the table. At the lectern, Nichols walks Moore through the evidence, none of it new to Jay. One, the girl was reported missing by her mother. Two, Neal Hathorne came to law enforcement’s attention because his phone number was in her pager, a call that came in shortly before she disappeared. Three, Mr. Hathorne lied about knowing the girl and about calling her. Last but not least, in a follow-up with neighbors of Elma Johnson’s, Magnus Carr positively identified the defendant as the man he saw struggling with the victim on the corner of Guinevere and Ledwicke. The jurors are as stone-faced as Jay has seen them to date. Worse, a few of the women look directly at Neal, with something new: contempt. Even one of the black men in the second row, the older one by a decade, is eyeing Neal differently. He’s frowning, his arms crossed, both hands tucked into his armpits. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before, but words out of a cop’s mouth are like nuggets of iron pyrite: everyone wants to believe it’s gold.
Jay is left with little room to maneuver on cross-examination, especially because in Neal’s first interview with law enforcement Jay was the only other witness in the room, and Moore knows it. “Detective Moore, isn’t it true that my client, Mr. Hathorne, said he didn’t remember meeting the victim?” he asks first.
“That’s what he said.”
Moore, in another interesting ensemble of slacks with a checkered sports coat, has his hands clasped together, resting in the center of his lap. His afro is neatly clipped, gray hairs greased and glistening in t
he fluorescent lights.
“And you would agree that saying he didn’t remember is different from asserting that he had never met the victim, Ms. Nowell, wouldn’t you?”
“A misdirect is a misdirect,” Moore says. “It wasn’t the truth.”
“Within moments of saying he hadn’t called the victim’s pager, my client made clear that he might have called the number by mistake, didn’t he?”
“I don’t remember it that way.”
And there’s no one here, besides Jay, to say otherwise.
Moore patiently waits for him to land a jab, seemingly enjoying the spectacle. He lifts his russet-colored tie, fiddling with a loose thread along the bottom before returning it to its place, and resting his hands again in his lap.
“Mr. Hathorne indicated to you that he was returning a call, didn’t he?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Which suggests, does it not, that the victim, Ms. Nowell, had previously reached out to Mr. Hathorne?” Out of the corner of his eye, Jay senses movement behind him, behind Nichols at the state’s table. He turns and sees Maxine Robicheaux leaning forward a little in her seat, a curious look on her face, part surprise and part fret. Had they really not put that together for her? That for Neal to have called Alicia’s pager, she had to have given him the number or left it for him at the campaign office, the number on his card.
“I don’t know what their relationship was,” Moore says.
“Did you check the phone records for the Hathorne campaign office?”
“We declined to get a warrant.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t think it was pertinent to our investigation.”
“You didn’t think it was pertinent to investigate why the victim called the defendant in the days leading up to her death?” He presents it as a given fact, which is what trips Moore up, his eyes going blank, as if they’re scrolling through reams of information about the case in the back of his head. He shifts in his chair.
“I, uh, don’t know that she did that.”
“You found a number of items in the victim’s purse, didn’t you?”
More shifting. “Yes.”
“The pager, of course.”
The thing with his tie again. “Yes.”
“Some cosmetics, a wallet, a little money?”
“Yes,” Moore says, glancing past Jay to Nichols. Behind him, Jay can hear the faint squeak of Nichols sitting at the edge of his chair. Jay walks to the clerk’s desk beside the bench, reaching into the evidence box for state’s exhibit no. 37, the BBDP flyer. He walks it to the witness stand, laying it faceup on the banister.
“This was also among the victim’s belongings, wasn’t it?”
Moore pushes the sheet of paper an inch or two away from him. “Yes.”
“If the victim had knowledge that these flyers, disparaging Axel Hathorne, were circulating around Pleasantville, wouldn’t that be a reason she might have reached out to Mr. Hathorne’s campaign manager, Neal, to let him know?”
“Objection, speculation.”
“Overruled,” Keppler says.
“I never said she called him,” Moore says.
“Well, you wouldn’t know because you didn’t check.”
After getting the detective to repeat, for the fifth or sixth time, that law enforcement found no physical evidence that tied Mr. Hathorne to Alicia Nowell and her murder, Jay sits down, telling the judge and the witness he has no further questions. Maxine Robicheaux, in the gallery, is staring at Jay, sudden doubt on her face. When Keith Morehead leads her and Mitchell out of the courtroom, she seems turned around, lost, even in the few steps it takes to get from her seat to the door. At the close of court, Nichols again asks for some heads-up as to whether Jay is planning to call any witnesses or mount a defense at all. Jay is cagey, knowing he doesn’t owe the prosecution a look at his playbook, the thing he has planned for day one of defense testimony.
“I want to go after Parker.”
“Absolutely not,” Sam says.
It’s after six o’clock, and they have all gathered in Jay’s office on the eve of what they believe will be Nichols’s announcement the following day that the state is resting its case. Sam even brought over a bottle of Macallan from his personal collection, so confident is he that they are that much closer to putting this whole awful thing behind them. Eddie Mae, who stayed long enough today to see Ellie off safely with Evelyn and Ben, passed out paper cups, and helped herself to a couple of swallows. Neal hasn’t held back either, downing three shots in as many minutes. Only Jay and Axel have refrained from drinking this early in the day, or this early in the judicial process, for that matter. Vivian stayed outside on the front porch, smoking a cigarette. Through the windows of the front parlor where they’re gathered, Jay can see her hugging herself against the night air. A few doors down, music is pouring out of the Diamond Lounge, a lick of blues guitar followed by a long harmonica note, a wounded man’s howl.
“I’m willing to give in on A.G., and anything else he might say on the stand,” Sam says. “I’m willing to forgive him anything if he comes through for Neal, but I think it’s a grave mistake to turn this into a crusade, especially when we’re so close to a win. When this is over, and Neal is acquitted, we can walk back into the mayor’s race, heads held high, knowing we didn’t sling mud.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“Neal,” Sam says, turning to his grandson.
Neal, warmed by the whiskey, is sweating. His skin looks dewy and flushed, as if he’d run a mile, as if he’s warming up to get back into a fight. “I don’t think we need it,” he says, nodding at his grandfather in agreement.
The candidate is leaning against the armrest of one of the room’s chairs, his long legs splayed out so far in front of him that the argyle design of his socks is visible. He has his arms crossed. “I feel that I, of all people, ought to abstain from a vote, given that it’s my campaign Dad is trying to protect, and the fact that I pushed for this, the injunction and all of it, putting Neal on the line. But let me ask, isn’t my brother’s testimony enough?”
“All we need to do is dismantle the eyewitness’s story,” Neal says.
“And A.G. does that.”
“Parker on the stand just confuses the issue,” Sam says.
Axel stands. “Or worse, like we’re making this all about politics.”
“It is about politics,” Jay says. “She sent that girl into Pleasantville with an agenda. And here’s your chance to air it in open court, what they’re doing.”
“Reese Parker isn’t the reason that girl was killed,” Sam says.
“You do understand what I’m telling you?” Jay says. “They put a mark on Pleasantville, a test case for the rest of the nation. Some of the biggest names in this city, in this state, including Cynthia Maddox, your supporter, they are funneling money into Wolcott’s campaign, not because they want her to win, but because they’re willing to fund Parker’s work to win the next election and the one after that. If you don’t make this plain right now, you will lose, understand? Not just the mayor’s race. But everything you fought for during the past forty-plus years. The power of your vote, the power of Pleasantville, you will lose it all.”
The room falls silent.
Axel lowers his head, looking queasy. Neal turns to his grandfather, everything, for him, hinging on Sam’s reaction. The man himself clenches his fists at his sides, his dark eyes narrowing behind his spectacles. “Which is why we need to get back out there and fight,” he says, “just like we always have.”
“Pop is right,” Neal says, nodding vigorously, too vigorously, Jay thinks.
“I’ll handle Cynthia,” Sam says.
Neal crosses to Jay, putting a hand on his attorney’s shoulder, standing so close that Jay can see the dots of sweat above his lip, can smell the whiskey on his breath. The fear is still there, in the quivering of his lower lip, the searching look in his desperate, bloodshot eyes. “Just ge
t A.G. on the stand.”
Jay spends the rest of his evening at St. Joseph’s, where Rolly is up and eating well, thanks to Marisol, who, thank god, really was just going for a cup of coffee. Tonight she brought him ceviche and a T-bone from Tampico, a cantina around the corner from his house in the Heights. He’s sitting up in bed, a robe over the bandages and a paper napkin tucked up under his chin. His black hair has been freshly washed and braided, also thanks to Marisol. She’s watching Jeopardy! on television, her butt in the hospital room’s only chair and her bare feet resting on the edge of the bed, near Rolly’s waist. Her man awake and alert, she’s dressed herself accordingly, in a tight sweater and black jeans. She said hello to Jay when he walked in and not much else. Rolly washes down his steak with a swig from a contraband bottle of Negra Modelo. He snatches the napkin from beneath his chin and wipes his mouth with it. “So what do you want to do?”
“You know what I want to do.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here, man?”
“Well, you were shot,” Jay says.
“My own damn fault.” Rolly sits up, using his fists to adjust his position in the bed and wincing from the residual pain in his left shoulder. “But if that earns me a window of grace, let me say my piece now. You think you can handle it?” He looks at Jay, a cockeyed grin forming across his plump, almost ladylike lips. “We’re friends, right? I mean, we can call each other that?”
“Yes, sir,” Jay says, smiling faintly.
“I like you, man, I might even love your ass,” Rolly says. “But anything I owed you for shit you’ve done for me, I paid back years ago. That ain’t why I’m here. I don’t need your money, I got a job, a good one. That ain’t it either. Hell, I’d pay you just to see you this up and at it again, this, I don’t know, alive again, man. This is you, Jay, this is where you belong, stirring shit the fuck up. And what I did not do all this for,” he says, gesturing at the white walls of the hospital room, the monitors, and, yes, the bandages, “is for you to come all this way only to half-ass it. Parker, her crew, they’re tromping on your legacy too, shit you and your boys marched for.” He stares down the length of the hospital bed to Jay, who is standing with his head down slightly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants, still in the suit he wore to court today.
