by Martin Clark
“Actually, the butt-crack plus fours don’t irritate me as much as gold chains and gold teeth.”
Pauletta smiled. “So are you going to let Artis go?”
“Sure. If he’s innocent.” Evers snapped his head up. “Oh, so … shit.” He slid his scotch away from the edge of the table. “So … that’s why you decided to come out and have a drink with me, isn’t it? You’re not really sure about all of this, either. Despite all the blast-furnace, mau-mauing, Nubian-dominatrix pushing and shoving at your office, you’re still a little in the dark about all this and about Ruth Esther English, aren’t you? Aren’t you? You’re trying to get a read on what I know.”
“I came because of your charm and power-tool poise, Judge Wheeling. Don’t sell yourself short. And, naturally, I came to help my client by encouraging you to take her up on her offer. I consider these bill-able hours.”
Evers took hold of his drink. “Right.” He finished the whiskey left in his glass and looked around for his futuristic waitress. “Let’s change the subject. Your family from around here?”
“I grew up here with my aunt. In a trailer. In a trailer park. The two of us.”
“In a trailer?”
“That’s what I said.” Pauletta’s voice had an edge to it. The last word was tense and sharp.
“With flamingoes and a yard car and a satellite dish?”
“I’m not ashamed of it. Do you see something wrong with that? Perhaps we should have made other arrangements—taken a home by the river, lolled with our spritzers under the big oaks.”
“I’m not being critical, not at all,” Evers said. “I think that it’s great. My brother lives in a trailer. He’s not all self-righteous about it, though.”
Pauletta didn’t smile, didn’t frown. She looked at Evers and didn’t speak.
“I just hope that you bought the aged black aunt with silver hair a new Lincoln when you won that first big trial.” Evers grinned at her.
“You’ll say just about anything, won’t you? You’re a loose cannon.”
Evers and Pauletta drank some more and danced again. Evers thought that he looked more at ease dancing now. He watched himself in a mirror when he and Pauletta were on the dance floor. This time, they both were drunk. “Entering the supernova stage,” Evers stated. When they returned to their table, they decided, after Evers suggested it, to start ordering hybrid drinks. A black Russian-greyhound for Evers, and a grasshopper-sunrise for Pauletta—“Looks like a bad Impressionist painting, I’ll bet,” she offered. The space waitress pointed out that the drinks would cost double the standard price, since the bartender would have to make each drink separately and then mix them together.
When their drinks came, Pauletta and Evers stopped talking to each other, just sat in their chairs sipping half-breed cocktails and listening to the music. Evers watched other couples dancing. Two men were trying to pick up the women at the next table over. He noticed that the men said “Aw, come on” a lot.
“These drinks really suck, don’t they?” Evers finally said.
“Whose idea was it to mix them up?”
“Mine, I guess. Sorry. Of course they’d be even worse if we were sober.”
“Are you a happy man, Mr. Wheeling?” Pauletta asked the question abruptly.
“What?”
“Are you happy?”
“Now, or in general?”
“In general.”
“Sure. Why? Why shouldn’t I be? My wife’s banging a stranger, and I’m in West Virginia. Are you concerned about my happiness as well as my balance?”
“Pardon?”
“Forget it,” said Evers.
“You seem a little—I don’t know—glum. Worn down. What’s wrong with you?”
“What page are you on?” Evers slurred the “g” in page. “Damn—do I sound drunk? I’m starting to feel pretty buzzed.”
“What page?”
“Your book theory,” he said.
“Oh. Just looking at the illustrations so far.”
“Don’t move your lips when you read, okay?” Evers had his hand on his glass, his palm touching it, his fingers arced. “What’s wrong with me is … is that I turned pale after Princeton and right after that discovered that, that, well … in a word, things happen. Houses burn, cars collide, your wife sleeps with a man who sells cows for a living. That’s it, really. The world happens and there’s no rhyme or reason. It just does.”
“You used two words, not one.”
“Part of it has to do with my wife. I really loved my wife. That was my first clue. Do I sound drunk?”
“Yes. And I would’ve guessed that you thrived on being pale. The whiter the better.”
“You don’t follow me, do you?”
“Not completely.”
“Just as well.” Evers paused, lifted his glass. The drink was bitter and strong.
“Maybe some of this is your fault. You seem passive and stubborn at the same time. And I’d bet you were that way with your wife, too.”
“Who knows.” He sighed and shrugged.
“See what I mean?”
“Do people like Al Sharpton and Marion Barry embarrass you?” Evers was looking past Pauletta, watching the bartender. He thought about ordering a different drink.
“Yeah. Sure.” Pauletta answered. “You guys got all the saints and stars—Jimmy Swaggert and Jesse Helms.”
“Let’s drink a tequila shot before we go. That should about put us over the top.”
“I’ve had enough; it would only make me sick.”
Neither Evers nor Pauletta was able to drive, so they left her car at the Galaxy 2000 and took a cab to her house. After they went inside, Evers sat down next to Pauletta on her living-room sofa. Pauletta brought a cup of coffee from the kitchen and set it on a table in front of Evers. He drank only a little. Evers smoked some of a cigarette and put it out by dropping it into the coffee left in his cup. The butt sizzled and then floated on the surface.
“May I spend the night with you, Miss Qwai?” Evers asked.
“You mean you want to stay here in my house?”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?” she asked.
“I want to stay with you.”
“I’ll be here, too.”
“In your bed,” Evers said. “I want to sleep with you.”
“You want to fuck me, Mr. Wheeling?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?” Pauletta’s face was close to Evers’.
“Yes, I want to.”
“To what?”
“To fuck you.”
“I see.” She turned her head, leaned through the little bit of space left between them and kissed Evers, lightly at first, then with her tongue. “A new realm for you, huh?”
“The dark ages.”
“Well, Mr. Wheeling, it’s not going to happen for you. Not now, not tonight. Sorry.”
“What’s not going to happen?” Evers wondered if his speech was slurred.
“No fuck. No dark ages. Maybe a night in my guest bedroom.”
“Oh?”
“That’s all.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“You’re being facetious,” Pauletta said.
“Oh no. I consider it real progress. I’ve never slept in the same house with a colored girl before.”
“It’s better than sleeping in the street outside the colored girl’s house.”
“Why no fuck?”
“I don’t like one-night stands, plus we’re drunk and it would put us in an uncomfortable position later.”
“But comfortable enough now.” Evers looked at Pauletta.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Well, if you change your mind in the middle of the night, creep in and get me, okay?”
“Don’t hold your breath waiting.”
“I will, though. And I might die from doing it. What would you do then?”
Evers slept poorly and woke up with a headache and plaintive stomach. When
he looked around Pauletta’s house, she was gone. No note, no explanation, no car. It occurred to him that he had tried to have sex with almost every woman he had met since leaving his wife. He decided that this was healthy, correct, moral, just and sane.
Evers left West Virginia about four o’clock and began to drive to Norton, alone and weary. A few weeks ago his wife had treated him poorly and changed some of the things he had thought were immutable. And now she was causing him to lose his mind. God keeps his hands in his pockets sometimes, divine laissez-faire. Things just tumble on. Evers pulled his car—a Datsun 280Z, old but in good shape—to the side of the road after an hour or so of driving. He got out of the Datsun and then got back into the passenger’s seat. He wanted to rest on the shoulder of the road, listen to traffic, watch the sky, think about his wife. Go over things in his mind….
While it was still night, a policeman rapped on the window and told Evers that he couldn’t park beside the highway, so he finished driving home before the sun rose and lay down on the sofa without taking off his shoes. He could not recall ever having been so tired, so torpid. He bit the corner of one of his fingernails and began thinking about college: the friends he’d never see again, who probably looked different now anyway; the quiet, unencumbered walk in the dark from the library across campus; getting drunk and playing bridge on a snowy afternoon, four nineteen-year-olds bidding and turning up beers in a cracker-box dormitory room; throwing a baseball around the quad after an exam; knocking on a girl’s door at three a.m.; passing by Nassau Hall early in the morning on his way to get a bagel and New York paper; songs he had heard at a certain time and a certain place, both now lost. Evers looked up at the ceiling in his apartment. “There’s nothing I can do about Jo Miller, about any of this,” he said.
FOUR
OH, SHIT.” THAT WAS ALL EVERS COULD SAY WHEN HE first saw Artis English; it just came out of his mouth—even though his lips didn’t move—not too loud, one part voice, three parts thought, not directed at anyone, more sough than words. After Artis’ case was called, the jailer had to go fetch him and bring him from his cell into the courtroom. When Artis walked through the metal door from lockup, he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and he was no more than five feet tall, fat, unkempt and dark-skinned. He had kinky black hair that was matted on one side and spiraled and twisted like black corkscrews near the crown of his head. Artis had thick lips and heavy eyebrows—a dark, moping, unraveled spot of a person. Evers was confounded; he gave Artis a slack-jawed, slapstick mug, his head down, eyes popped, neck stretched like a rubber chicken’s. Evers leaned toward his bailiff. “You sure this is the right guy? Artis English?”
“Yep.”
“Are you Mr. English?” Evers asked the man in the jumpsuit.
“Yeah.” Artis didn’t look up at Evers.
“Artis English?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, good. Have a … seat at counsel table with your attorney.”
Evers watched him walk across the room. His legs were in chains and his feet skidded over the floor; his shoes never came off the ground. Artis sat down beside his lawyer. James Turner was one of the better public defenders in Winston-Salem; he was usually prepared and smarter than most of the other attorneys. Tall and bald-headed, around fifty years old, Turner was polite when Evers met him from time to time, but not gregarious.
After his initial shock at seeing Artis, Evers began to feel better about the deal with Ruth Esther. Certainly the state police would be more discriminating with their plants and operatives—they would not cast a short, black troll in the role of an ethereal white woman’s brother. Evers was still convinced that something was queer, but now he felt fairly sure the police weren’t involved; they were hardly this creative. Evers tried to calm down. He opened Artis’ file and picked up a pencil. He thought about Toulouse-Lautrec, then imagined Artis in a beret, drinking warm wine in front of a bordello. “Would the lawyers approach, please?”
Turner walked to the bench, along with the district attorney, Paul Otis. Otis was one of ten deputy district attorneys in Winston-Salem. He had been hired about a year ago, and he had come to Winston-Salem after graduating from the University of North Carolina Law School. Evers had worked with Otis only a couple of times and didn’t know that much about him.
“Good morning, Judge.” Turner nodded at Evers. Otis spoke as well.
“Good morning.” Evers put his pencil down, then picked it up again. “Mr. Otis, I’ve already informed your boss that the family of Mr. English contacted me about his case. Since then, I’ve had some conversations with the Englishes’ family attorney as well. As you know, these things happen from time to time. Mr. Turner, I wanted to disclose everything to you as well. If either side wants me to disqualify myself, I will.” Evers spoke in a quick monotone. He squeezed the pencil in his hand.
“No need for that,” Turner said. “I appreciate your letting us know, though. They didn’t do anything rude or threatening, anything like that?”
“No. I can hear the case with an open mind. Nothing unpleasant happened. I always like to let everyone know when something like this transpires. As I said, I’ve already talked to the D.A.”
Turner folded his arms. “It’s not a problem for us; we appreciate your telling us about it.” He shifted his weight, took a step closer to Evers. “Judge, while we’re here, maybe we can streamline things a bit. We’ve filed a suppression motion to exclude the cocaine from my client’s trial. If you grant our motion, the case will be pretty much over in terms of guilt or innocence. Without the cocaine, I think we can all agree that the state has nowhere to go. If you deny our motion, then we will enter a guilty plea and ask for a presentence report.” Turner looked at Paul Otis. “That’s pretty much what we talked about, isn’t it, Paul?”
“That’s correct, Judge. James and I discussed it this morning.”
“What’s the basis of the motion? I saw it in the file.” Evers turned to the last paper in Artis’ folder.
“The police officer found three grams of cocaine in Mr. English’s car. We don’t think he had a right to search my client’s vehicle.”
Evers glanced at Artis, then at the lawyers. He tapped the court file with his fingers. “Good enough. I appreciate your narrowing the case down for me. It’s your motion, Mr. Turner. Call your witnesses and let’s hear it.”
“I’m only going to call the police officer. And, perhaps, my client.”
“Who’s the officer?” Evers asked.
“Warren Dillon,” said Turner. Both he and the district attorney watched for Evers’ reaction. Otis put his hands behind his back and briefly rocked forward on his feet.
“I thought that he was suspended,” Evers said. “Or at least … doing more administrative kinds of work.”
Otis spoke up. “The sheriff said that they had two complaints about him, one about some missing evidence, one about him losing the file on a really bad malicious wounding case. Evidently, the SBI cleared him on the problem with the evidence, and he just flat told the sheriff he’d made an error on the wounding case. Just misplaced his file, and the sheriff appreciated him telling the truth and admitting his mistake.”
“Everybody makes mistakes.” Turner grinned. “At any rate, he’s been back about three or four months. No new problems that I’m aware of.”
“Where is he?” Evers asked. “I don’t see him in the courtroom.”
“He’s at the sheriff’s office. I told him we’d let him know when he was needed. Mr. Turner subpoenaed him about two weeks ago.” Otis was up on the front of his feet again, tipping forward.
“Go ahead and get him here then,” Evers instructed the lawyers. “I’m ready when you gentlemen are.”
While waiting for Warren Dillon to arrive, Evers adjourned court and went into his office. He shut the door and stood in front of his desk. The office belonged to another judge, and Evers used it when he worked in Winston-Salem. He thought about looking in the drawers for a bottle and taking a drink, a
nd thought that it would be seedy and loutish, ripe, perfect for what he was contemplating doing. He looked at the books and diplomas in the room, the computer on a stand next to the window. He cracked the door and peered out into the courtroom, watched the deputies, lawyers and people talking. A lawyer he didn’t know, a young woman, had her hand on her client’s shoulder and was telling him something. The client wiped his eyes several times while his lawyer was talking to him.
“Officer Dillon’s here,” Evers heard one of the clerks announce out in the courtroom. “Go let Judge Wheeling know that we’re ready as soon as he is.”
Warren Dillon was a pale, white gibbon in a suit and vest. He had a small head, flat mouth, wide nose, pasty skin and a full black beard the same color and texture as his hair. The beard and hair were almost identical and circled his head, an unbroken, woolly ring that caused him to look like he had pushed his face through a tricycle tire. Dillon’s legs were long and spindly, his hands elongated and his wrists on hinges. When he sat down in the witness stand, he moved his head and eyes in tiny starts and jumps so his head seemed to constantly chase after his eyes, a staccato pursuit going on all over his face.
Turner stood up behind his table, beside Artis. “Good morning, Officer.”
“Good morning.” Dillon’s voice was squeaky and nasal, like his throat and teeth and tongue were in the middle of his head.
Turner moved a sheet of yellow paper on the desk. “You’re Officer Warren Dillon, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re employed by the Forsyth County Police Department?”
“Yes.” Dillon looked at Evers when he answered.
“And you were so employed on the third of last month?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have occasion, on that date, to come in contact with Artis English, the defendant seated on my left?” Turner pointed at Artis, and the small man seemed startled. Artis dipped his head, ducked and snarled like a stubby orange vampire sprinkled with holy water. Turner stared at Artis for a moment; Artis stayed crouched and wound, but his face became blank again. Turner’s expression didn’t change—he had seen a lot of things, seen his clients piss on the canvas cushion in the defendant’s chair and smother in the coils of Laocoönian lies, and he had learned to turn his back and walk right past the mess without hesitating or flinching.
