“I know you like him.”
Absently, I pat my daughter’s back. How can I like somebody who has murdered a child?
Later, in my office after Andy’s bond hearing, I have occasion to ponder his defense. Clan, sprawled over two chairs across from me, growls, “You should have brought the muffins to work. I wouldn’t have sued you if I had gotten sick.”
Andy’s bond has risen from five thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars, but he arranged for a ten-thousand-dollar certified check as if he were a billionaire donating to his favorite tax write-off. I think back to the first bond hearing only a few weeks ago.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” I muse, now able to nurse a cup of coffee without my stomach heaving, “Bruton, who almost held me in contempt, accepted a bond worth peanuts, and Judge Tamower, who has the best reputation in the county, almost went through the roof when I tried to argue that Andy’s bond should stay at five thousand.”
“Jesus, Gideon,” Clan wheezes, “your guy’s probably a child murderer. She could have gone a lot higher. I think she’s got the hots for you. You should have seen the way she stared at you when you sat down.”
It’s hard not to laugh at Clan. He thinks that if a woman even blinks twice at a man she wants to go to bed with him.
“She was pissed,” I say, but the truth is I’m still delighted with our luck of the draw. I wouldn’t have kept on going so long about the bond if I didn’t think there was some chance I could push some guilt buttons. Before she took the bench, Harriet Tamower had the reputation, rare among our judges, as a liberal in Arkansas politics. At least she’ll give Andy a fair trial if she doesn’t bend over too far the other way, thinking she has to prove something.
The phone rings, and fearing it is my rat burner, I hand the phone to Clan. “If it’s Mona Moneyhart,” I say, my hand over the mouthpiece, “tell her I’m at St. Thomas having my stomach pumped.”
He snickers, but says in a surprisingly professional tone, “This is Clan Bailey.” A moment later, Dan’s eyes widen in anticipation. He hands me the phone, saying, “Olivia Le Master.”
I wait for Clan to get up and leave, but he is all ears. What the hell. He knows everything anyway. I push down the button on the speaker phone to allow him to hear.
“Olivia, this is Gideon.”
“I just want you to know,” she says in a firm voice, “that despite everything, Pam’s death really was an accident. You have to believe that.”
I put my finger to my lips as Clan rolls his eyes.
“There’s a lot you didn’t tell me.”
“We didn’t think you needed to know,” Olivia says, her voice sounding hollow and unconvincing through the speaker.
“Obviously,” Clan mouths, shaking his head. Suddenly, I realize that if Olivia were suddenly to implicate Andy, Clan would be a witness and could testify. How stupid can I be?
Of course he would never do that. Still, I am made nervous by his presence and say, “Olivia, why don’t you come to my office this afternoon? We need to talk face to face.”
Clan, leaning forward on his haunches, is on the edge of his two seats.
“Do you want to represent me?” she asks.
“Obviously, I’m a suspect.”
If I did, I might get the truth out of her. Clan nods vigorously, but I reply, “I’m sorry, Olivia. There’s a potential conflict of interest between you and Andy. I suggest you get your own attorney.” Clan jabs his finger repeatedly against his stiff shirt, which contains so much starch I can hear it. I shake my head. He knows too much about Andy already.
“Oh,” she says after a long silence.
“Well, let me call you back about this afternoon.”
“Fine,” I say and hang up.
Clan is about to have a fit. Rocking backward, his shirttail coming out of his pants, he reminds me of our days together in the Public Defender’s Office when he was a skinny slob instead of a fat one. “First you don’t bring the muffins; now, you knock me out of a great referral. What kind of friend are you?”
I begin to make notes of my conversation with Olivia on a yellow legal pad.
“If she’s set Andy up,” I say, “we wouldn’t be friends long.”
Clan, reverting to an old habit, wipes his face with the bottom of his shirt, a button-down pink pinpoint Oxford.
“So your guy’s guilty as hell, huh?”
I laugh, continuing to write. Clan is shrewder than he looks.
“He swears he’s not,” I say. Since early this morning an idea has been cooking in my brain.
“You know any lawyers in Benton who would check out Leon Robinson for me? I remember he testified at the probable cause hearing that’s where he’s from.”
“The aide who let the girl go?” Clan asks, a puzzled look peeping through the fat around his eyes.
“You think Olivia paid him to let go of her daughter?”
I shrug, throwing down my pen. It isn’t much of a conversation.
“I’ve got to start somewhere, don’t I? The trial’s less than four weeks away.” I did not ask for more time at the bond hearing, thinking the longer Jill Marymount has to poke around in this case the worse it will be.
Lost in thought, Clan, exposing his throat, looks at my ceiling. If he ever needs an emergency tracheotomy, somebody better have a whale knife. Finally, he says, “Let me work on this for a little bit. I went to school with a couple of guys who ended up in Saline County. Maybe Leon was promised some money instead of your client.”
The phone rings again. This time I don’t hand it to Clan, who seems permanently encamped in my office. It is Andy.
“I’ve just been fired,” he says, his voice discouraged. He had been told to report to David Spam’s office as soon as the hearing was over.
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” I say, drawing an imaginary knife across my neck for Dan’s benefit. Actually, I suspect if he wasn’t black, Andy would have been fired after he was charged with manslaughter. David Spath could only do so much for him. “Are you going to be able to make it to the trial?”
His voice a whisper, Andy says, “I’ve got all my vacation pay coming.”
“Good,” I say, shaking my head in wonder at my client’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of money. I couldn’t ask for any more if I were representing a cocaine dealer. Yet Jill has surely already checked to see if Olivia has transferred money to Andy.
“I’ll call the psychology board and tell them you’re voluntarily giving up your license until this is resolved. I don’t want them investigating this too, right now.”
“Whatever you think’s best,” Andy says, knowing the noose is being tightened.
“I think we need to do that. There’s no sense picking another fight right now.” We had had an informal deal with the board that it would not act against Andy until after the original criminal charge was disposed of, since David Spath had assured them that Andy would be permitted no professional contact with the residents at the Blackwell County HDC until after the trial. Now, with a charge of murder, we can’t very well expect the board to act as if nothing has changed. We arrange a time for him to come in tomorrow after I tell him about Olivia’s call.
“She sounded supportive,” I say, trying to cheer him up. Olivia had not come to Andy’s bond hearing, although I couldn’t honestly blame her. Talk about a media circus! With a case promising the revelation of secrets involving interracial sex, big bucks, and murder, what else can I expect? Kim Keogh had been there, her beautiful eyes silently accusing me of the worst sin a man can commit: I have never called her back. She had tried to be tough in her questions, but she is fundamentally too nice to be a good reporter, even for local TV, which doesn’t expect much except a nice hairdo. My conversation with Andy fizzles out. Being fired takes the wind out of whatever sails you have left.
As soon as I put the phone down, it rings again. Finally, Clan pushes up from his chairs to leave.
“Gideon,” Mona Moneyhart says, her
voice brimming with disapproval, “I had to pretend I was a reporter for People magazine in order to get through today.”
I motion for Clan to sit down again and push the speaker button so he can hear. If I have to listen to her, he should too.
“Mona, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come over to the house.” Grinning happily, Clan collapses back into my chairs, a cheek on each one.
“Didn’t you and your daughter like the muffins? I made them from scratch.”
Clan whispers, running his fingers across my desk.
“I bet she did.” Even now, my eyes begin to tear as I imagine the ingredients.
“They were delicious,” I say weakly.
“Gideon, your little daughter is just precious! But you’re gonna have to watch her like a hawk. Girls her age are hideously promiscuous. It’s just so obvious she needs a mother.
Why haven’t you remarried? That’s the least you can do for her. Don’t you think she deserves a mother?”
His hand over his mouth, Clan begins to laugh uncontrollably, making a sound like a lawnmower motor trying unsuccessfully to start.
“Uh, uh, uh… uh.”
“What do you want?” I ask. I watch Dan’s red face as he begins to choke. I hope he dies.
“There’s no way I can live on two hundred dollars a week child support. I just can’t do it.”
Clan pulls out a handkerchief and mops his face. He has begun to make little hooting sounds.
“We’ve had this same conversation three times. He’s paying more temporary support than the child-support chart requires him to. His lawyer thinks he’s a fool.”
“He is a fool!” she begins to cry.
“What are those horrible sounds you’re making?”
I point to the door and Clan staggers out, his whole body shaking.
“Talk about fools,” he mouths as he goes out.
18
The sound of clicking billiard balls is the first thing I hear when I enter the Bull Run, which is only ten miles from the Blackwell County Human Development Center. The Bull Run is apparently one enormous room, with enough floor space to work on a 747. To my left, all in use, are six tables surrounded by almost as many women as men, which tells me I haven’t been in one of these places in years. Most every one, fat or thin, is dressed in denim, shod in cowboy boots, and hatted in Stetsons or baseball caps. Directly in front of me is a large dance floor (the two-step and Cotton-eyed Joe obviously require more space than the postage-stamp-sized dance floors of the clubs I’ve frequented over the years) and a vacant deejay booth with so much hardware that it looks like Mission Control in Houston. In front of the pool tables are over a score of mostly empty Formica-topped tables, each with a full complement of canvas-backed chairs. It is still a half hour before nine, so the dancing, which is advertised in foot-high red script over the Bull Run front door as “The Best Country in Central Arkansas” has not yet commenced To my right a brunette with a head of hair almost down to her tiny waist is bending over a shuffleboard table as she lines up a shot. The thumb and forefinger of her right hand encircle a blue-and-silver puck. She runs the disk back and forth over the smooth blond wood, which has been made slippery by sawdust, and then it flies from her hand, hitting nothing in the process and dropping off the end of the surface into the trough that rings the wood.
“She-it!” she exclaims to her opponent, an older guy who could have posed (with a little work on his gut) as the Marlboro Man in the old TV commercial.
As I head for the bar, the jukebox by the shuffleboard table begins an old favorite from my brief country music period:
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. Even her fast songs (and this isn’t one of them) seem to me slow and sad. A small plane could take off and land from the bar, and so, to avoid standing out in this still sparse crowd of about six drinkers, I plant myself on a red-cushioned stool toward the end nearer the entrance. Since it is a Saturday night, I would have figured on a bigger crowd, but there is still a little light outside, and I assume the real partying doesn’t begin until dark. Waiting for the barmaid (she has some ground to cover in this place), I am impressed by the selection of alcohol.
Besides what I’d expect in the way of whiskey and bourbon, within my sight there is gin, rum, vodka, wine, and even two liqueurs coffee and chocolate almond. Damn. Am I still in the South? But on the wall above the beer nozzles I spy a Confederate flag, and I know I’m in the right place.
The Bull Run, among other stories I’ve heard about it in the last twenty-four hours, has been rumored to be the de facto headquarters of a white-supremacist group known as the Trackers. It also is supposed to be Leon Robinson’s favorite watering hole. Remembering Yettie Lindsey’s remark to me about blacks, I decide Arkansas is a small place for whites as well. With only five days until the jury is impaneled my hopes of somehow implicating Leon Robinson in Pam Le Master’s death have come to nothing. There is no evidence that Leon has lied about his involvement, nothing to dispute his story that Pam simply jerked out of his grasp when she was shocked. Finally, Eben Crawford, who was a classmate of Dan’s in law school, phoned me yesterday and said that he has found out in bits and pieces that Leon is divorced, has no police record, is an avid turkey hunter, and likes to chase women at the Bull Run. We may not know much, but, by God, we know our neighbors’ business in the South. This would have been a snap if I had hired an investigator, but I didn’t even bring the subject up with Andy. If he knew what I was up to, he would fire me.
I order a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the barmaid, who gives me a friendly smile. Hell, if she isn’t one of the more attractive-looking women I’ve seen in a while! As far as rough places go, according to Eben, the Blue Run’s reputation is only middling, but there is already enough smoke in here to choke a horse, and the faces of women who tend bar don’t usually look this classy after a certain age. She has silky, soft blond hair and the kind of high cheekbones I ‘we seen in magazines advertising expensive perfume.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” the barmaid asks, sizing me up. She is about thirty, I would guess, and is wearing a T-shirt that says “Lobotomy Beer,” which is tucked neatly into skintight jeans.
I’m a breath away from asking the brainless question of what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, but manage instead, “You have on my daughter’s T-shirt.”
In the background. Tammy wails, ” The and little J-O-E will be goin’ away…. ” I wouldn’t mind a little trip with this woman. Her hands on her hips, she looks down at the front of her shirt, which swells out nicely.
“I’ll be danged if I don’t,” she drawls, grinning at me and showing a dimple in her left cheek.
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
I let some of the Pabst slip down. Cold with a nice sour bite. Until this moment, I have forgotten I used to like it.
Right now I wish I wasn’t supposed to be figuring out how to make Leon look like the worst racist this side of Mississippi.
I try not to stare at the woman, but I suspect she is used to it. With no admissible evidence to back it up, my plan has been reduced to suggesting to the jury that Leon hates blacks so much that he deliberately let go of Pam so she would attack Andy. My thinking is that if I can get a couple of blacks on the jury, at least one of them might hold out if I can obtain some evidence on this point. Is this cynical on my part? Without a doubt. I decide I’d better act before she gets too busy.
“She’ll be relieved,” I say finally, “it’s in good hands.”
The woman rolls her eyes as if this bullshit is about par for the course, but she doesn’t move away.
“I bet she will,” she says dryly. This woman has surely heard a lot of crap, but, like the smoke, it comes with the territory.
I put my mug down on a Coors pad.
“Actually, I’m looking for Charlene Newman. She ever come in here?” This morning at the Saline County Chancery clerk’s office, my plan appeared to come to a screeching halt. Leon’s ex-wi
fe, who I hoped would be willing to talk about Leon’s racial attitudes, has resumed using her maiden name and apparently left no forwarding address after the divorce was final.
Placing both hands on the bar (no ring I notice), Blondie raises her eyebrows in mock disapproval and confides, “You can do better than Charlene.”
Fighting the urge to smile at my good luck, I feign embarrassment
“My cousin went to high school with her,” I mutter and duck my head.
“He said now that I’m divorced I ought to look her up.”
Blondie shrugs and turns to the other barmaid a few feet away, who is drying glasses and putting them on a shelf behind her.
“Hey, Betty, where’d Charlene go after she and Leon split?” Blondie calls to her.
The much older woman, whose hair is a peroxide platinum, picks up a burning cigarette from the corner of the bar and puffs on it as she contemplates. Her strong face, wrinkled by smoking and age, has an indestructible quality to it, as if nothing in the last forty years has come as a surprise. “I heard Hot Springs,” she says, exhaling, her voice a throaty contralto.
“Who wants to know?”
I remain motionless, since I don’t want to attract attention to myself, but I’d like to leap across the bar and kiss her.
Blondie nods at me with her chin.
I gulp my beer, ready to leave. I’d just as soon Leon not hear too much about this conversation if I can help it. Betty, who is wearing a pair of starched jeans and a man’s long sleeved blue work shirt, cocks her hip at me.
“Shit, he can do better than Charlene.”
I lean across the bar. This woman reminds me of women I occasionally picked up in bars after Rosa died. Big in the chest, brassy, horny.
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