As usual, Brenda has the last word.
“I can’t imagine what they’d be,” she says, leading me into the den.
“Gideon’s here,” she informs her husband over the sound of a documentary on what appear to be dolphins and other sea creatures. My theory is we love animals because they can’t talk back. If they could, there’d be no end to their grievances against us. Wholesale slaughter not the least of them.
His head bent low over a bowl of cheese dip, Dan looks up with a sheepish expression. He has assured me he is on a strict diet.
“Come to check on me, huh?” he says, grinning.
“It’s gotten so bad in this country that you can’t even lie to your friends without them getting suspicious. Want a beer?” he says, punching the remote.
Beside Dan’s recliner, separated by a small table, is a couch that makes into a bed. As good friends as Dan and I have become, I have been in this room only a time or two before. Dan prefers to escape, and Brenda’s parties don’t include me. I can feel Brenda’s disapproval radiating next to me.
“Love one.” I’d drink an entire case if I thought I could get her goat.
Dan lifts his obese body half out of the chair and reaches to his left to open a door to a small refrigerator.
“Take your pick,” he says. From where I’m standing, I can see a six-pack of Miller Lite and at least as many soft drinks in cans. If he had a microwave in here, they could rent out the rest of the house.
“I’m going to bed,” Brenda announces, and Dan climbs out of his chair and pads across the room to pacify her. Obviously irritated, nevertheless she lets him kiss her on the cheek and pat her wide shoulders. Like so many fat women, she has a pretty face.
I go take a beer.
“Good night, Brenda.” I am tired and do not plan to stay long, but Brenda doesn’t have to know that.
She murmurs something I can’t pick up, and Dan disappears down the hall with her. I sink down on the couch and grab a chip from the bag of Lay’s beside me.
When he comes back, I say, “I didn’t mean to spoil her evening.”
Dan shrugs, an embarrassed grin coming to his lips.
“We got a TV in our room. She’ll be okay. What’s up?”
he asks, arranging himself in his chair. He speaks softly as if she might be listening through the wall. How do retired couples stand each other all day? Dan says he and Brenda can’t get through a weekend without at least one fight. Considering how long people live nowadays, it’s surprising there’s not something called eldercide.
“You gotta promise to keep your mouth shut,” I warn him, but before he can open his mouth, I fill him in on my visit to Chet’s office.
“What the hell do you think this is all about?” I ask, when I am finished.
Dan moves in on the cheese dip he had temporarily abandoned.
“Bracken’s sending you on a wild-goose chase,” he says instantly.
“He’s protecting Norman, obviously, and doesn’t want you sniffing around the church, because as soon as you do, you’re gonna find that nobody saw him during the time Wallace was killed.”
I sip on the Miller Lite after crunching into the chips.
I could add a couple of pounds tonight easy. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he be protecting Norman?”
Dan wipes his mouth on his sleeve.
“Somehow Norman found out about the porno, probably from Leigh,” he guesses, “and killed Wallace. As bad off as Bracken is, it’d be easy for Norman to convince him that Wallace was truly evil and deserved to die. For all we know, Norman has convinced Bracken that this is his ticket to paradise. This is Bracken’s last case. He doesn’t care that he’s covering up a murder. He just wants to go to heaven. Hell, it wouldn’t be the only time he’s pulled shit like this.”
I tap the can against my teeth. In a case that forever earned him the enmity of a former prosecutor, Chet hired a psychologist who had the reputation of fashioning his theories to fit the facts and won an acquittal for a major child abuser. Then there are the stories about violent paybacks. Though Dan and I are on the same wavelength, I try to play devil’s advocate. I argue, “But the guy just converted to Christianity. The last thing in the world he would do is get involved in a cover-up.”
Dan dips a chip into the cheese.
“Who in hell could be worse than a guy that profits from porno and corrupts his wife? Wallace sounds like a scumbag to me, and while these Bible churches preach love, they love the Old Testament’s eye for an eye.”
I sip at the beer, trying and failing to think of a decent reply. Violence is the easiest thing in the world to rationalize. Every time a handgun is sold in this country, somebody does that. Norman is no idiot. He easily could have heard about Bracken’s reputation for taking revenge. Chet probably told him. Even if leopards could change their spots, it wouldn’t happen overnight. I look at Dan, who is chewing thoughtfully and staring at the wall above the TV.
“Why would he ask me to help him? Somebody who’s trying to pull off a cover-up like this isn’t going to want another lawyer looking over his shoulder.”
Dan snorts, and when he speaks his voice is full of condescending mirth.
“Lawyers like you and me are the perfect cover. Bracken knows his reputation. He can say night is day and get guys like you and me to believe it.
When it comes down to it, he knows you’re not going to question him. He’s the great Chet Bracken. The only thing that can screw this up is him dying before the trial.”
I put down the beer can.
“Where this breaks down,” I say, “is they wouldn’t expose Leigh to a conviction.”
Dan rolls his eyes.
“What conviction? Leigh’s probably in on this, too. Where do you think she came up with the story about the death threat? Bracken fed it to her. By the time he gets through with Wallace’s reputation, the jury will be glad he’s dead. Hell, he’ll probably have you giving the closing argument while he sits back and pulls your strings. The guy’s slick as pig shit. He’s got you believing he just stumbled on Wallace’s porno deal. Look at the way he had his investigator discover this a week before the trial. He made you think that weirdo broke this case himself! Bracken probably rubbed his nose in it until he nearly suffocated.”
Dan belches. I lean back in my seat to get away as far as I can.
“What do you think I ought to do?” I ask, stung by his assessment of us. Hell, he’s right. Around Bracken I’ve been acting as if I were a first-grader afraid to raise his hand to ask to go to the bathroom.
Yet Dan and I are hardly the first persons in history to be intimidated by a forceful personality. Demagogues are made, not born, and in the South it has been a specialty.
Dan says, “Enjoy the ride. You don’t have any proof anything unethical has happened. Actually, if you put yourself in Bracken’s place for a moment, there’s no funny business going on at all. After all, it’s areal stretch to think Shane Norman would murder anyone, especially if he just converted you to Christianity.
So, naturally, Chet doesn’t want to smear him, and who can blame him for that? Norman has just opened the gates to eternal life to him, and now Chet is supposed to argue he’s a murderer? Get real. Our mentality is the reason the tabloid industry is alive and well in the United States. We’re happiest when somebody is making up some dirt about the rich and famous. We tell ourselves the most improbable gossip must be true because we’re jealous and envious of their success. chet’s got to send you to San Francisco.
What other leads are there?”
Tired, I rub my eyes, wondering which of Dan’s versions makes more sense. Like any decent lawyer, he can argue both sides of a case.
“So you really think I’m off base?” I ask.
He grins.
“Hell, no. I think this case stinks worse than I do.”
Ten minutes later, I am hustled out the door by Brenda, who reappears in her robe and slippers, looking like that old Vicki La
wrence character on TV.
“I’ve got to talk to my husband before I go to bed,” she tells me, daring either of us to argue.
Having heard enough of this, I drive home, my head spinning. Dan should have written a book on the Kennedy assassination. The only person who isn’t implicated, according to him, is Billy Graham, and if I mentioned his name, Dan would have me checking his alibi, too. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are an awful lot like the astrological predictions I read every day in the Democrat-Gazette. They have this amazing way of coinciding with our desires and prejudices. Dan couldn’t be more hostile to religion if he had been forced to watch Jim and Tammy Faye every day for the last twenty years. I realize that I’m not much different. You see all this stuff on TV and expect the worst out of everybody when the reality is that people are different.
Most of us have a line we refuse to cross. The man who preached about the work being done in Peru to help poor people wouldn’t shoot down his own son-in-law in cold blood; arguably, the greatest trial lawyer Blackwell County ever had wouldn’t orchestrate a murder.
Even if there were some benighted, bloodthirsty kingdom of heaven to gain, they have too much to lose on earth. For one thing, the risk of discovery is too great. People have a compulsion to talk. I’m living proof of the way people run their mouths. Chet has cross-examined too many informants not to know that.
When all is said and done, he wouldn’t want his kid to wake up one morning and, while looking for his baseball glove, find instead a newspaper article about how his stepfather cast doubt in his final case on all he had accomplished.
The truth is, jealousy accounts for the negative talk about Chet. No one has proved he has ever suborned perjury or arranged a single payback. So why do I feel so bad about this case? I think back to the one case Chet and I worked on together when I was at the Public Defender’s. What was the difference? He was as subtle as a steamroller, and that’s always been his reputation.
In Leigh’s case it is as if he were working with an archaeologist’s hammer, tapping here, tapping there. It could be his illness. Dan has confirmed what I have already suspected. The problem is that I don’t know what to do about it.
At home, Sarah is full of herself. Before I can tell her about San Francisco, she begins to talk about what the youth of Christian Life are doing.
“They don’t take ski trips or have lock-ins; they help a lot of people,” she says, instructing me as if I were a slow student.
“I’m not just talking about the foreign work trips. At the shelter downtown, for example, we baby-sit the kids while the parents go look for work.”
Go look for a bottle of Ripple, I think sourly.
“Is there security down there for you? Even many of the homeless won’t stay in places like that because they’re too dangerous.”
Seated on the couch with her English book, Sarah strokes Woogie until he is almost purring.
“There’re tons of kids around. But it’s not a social thing. We’re not down there to show off or hang out with friends.”
When I tell her that I am leaving for San Francisco, she becomes anxious (as I knew she would). It’s okay for her to run around, but she likes the old man to stay put.
“What for?” she asks.
“Isn’t this kind of at the last minute?”
I collect the day’s residue from the coffee table: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, an empty Coke can, the junk mail, including a plea from Greenpeace, one of Rosa’s favorite charities, which can’t take the hint after three years of silence from her.
“That’s one of the weird things about this case,” I say.
“It’s not making a lot of sense.”
Sarah’s back visibly stiffens, as if she is daring me to fight her again.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said about Pastor Norman. I know you can’t understand it, but a man who radiates so much joy and peace just isn’t capable of murder.”
I open my mouth to argue. Every man wears a mask at some time in his life. But do I really want my daughter to become as cynical as I am? Suddenly, I feel like an asshole. I knew I didn’t have any proof that Shane was involved, so why did I say it in the first place? Am I so weak that I have to accuse a man of murder because I am jealous of him? Obviously. How pathetic!
“You could be right,” I say insincerely.
“Sometimes defense lawyers try so hard to get our own clients off we forget other people are entitled to a presumption of innocence too.” I paste a smile on my face, wondering how disillusioned she will become if it turns out that Shane is the murderer. I don’t want to destroy her capacity for a less radical kind of faith, but I may not be able to have it both ways. Fearful she will pick up on my hypocrisy, I change the subject.
“Can you stay here, or can you find a friend?”
“I’ll call Rainey,” she says quickly.
Most kids her age would love to get their parents out of the house so they could have a party. Not Sarah. I know she is nervous about staying by herself. I came in late too many nights after her mother died for her to have a sense of security.
“You can have a friend over to stay,” I say, thinking of Sarah’s best friend. Donna Red den. Sarah hasn’t mentioned her in a couple of weeks.
“What about Donna? Wouldn’t her parents let her?”
Sarah wrinkles her nose at the thought.
“I don’t see Donna much these days. I’ll call Rainey. I saw her leaving the same time we did.”
Naturally. I try not to sigh audibly.
“Rainey’s probably a little mad at me.”
Sarah is on me like Woogie on peanut butter.
“What did you say to her?” she yelps.
Too damn much, I think.
“Pretty much what I told you,” I lie. I can’t bring myself to admit that I accused Rainey of interfering with her faith.
“I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to be prepared for the worst.”
Sarah heads for the phone in the kitchen.
“Daddy, you’re just incredible,” she says coldly, dialing Rainey’s number.
I’ve been called worse.
“Let me talk to her after you’ve asked her.”
I eavesdrop as Sarah talks to my old girlfriend. Sarah’s voice changes tone, becomes happier as she rattles on about her new “family.” I sit at the table, pretending I am reading Daffy’s notes.
“It’s great,” Sarah says.
“One of the men about Dad’s age hasn’t missed a mission trip in six years. He had everybody in stitches.
I was afraid I’d be scared to talk, but they all made me feel so comfortable, I jumped right in.”
Woogie comes over to the table, and I reach down to pet him. I wonder if Sarah will ask me to let this guy adopt her. Doesn’t she remember I was in the Peace Corps? That was two solid years, and I didn’t have a “family” supporting me. But I guess it doesn’t count, because we didn’t run around screaming “Praise Jesus!”
at the top of our voices.
By the time Sarah hands me the phone, I am mad again, but I try to fake it. All either of them will do is patronize me.
“Is it okay if she stays?” I ask.
“I’ll be back Sunday.”
“Of course,” Rainey says.
“You know it is.”
Her voice sounds so smug and sugary I want to vomit.
“If anything happens to me, I’d appreciate it if you’d call my sister. Sarah has her number.”
Rainey laughs.
“You’re so dramatic. It’s safer to fly than to drive downtown.”
For an instant I am tempted to tell her this case stinks worse now than it did when I talked to her a couple of hours ago, but I don’t feel particularly credible at the moment.
“Thanks,” I tell her. There are worse things than hard-core Christians, I tell myself, and hang up.
“that’s YOUR FLIGHT!”
It is good to hear Sarah’s voice rising
with an emotion other than anger. It seems as if ever since I have heard of Christian Life she and I have fought. My hands full, I nod with my chin at the gate. I still can’t believe Sarah is awake at this hour of the morning. Anything to get me away from her. A few people are still disappearing into United’s flight number 1639. Nuts. I’ve made it despite my best intentions. I hand my ticket to the woman behind the desk. My travel agent, Julia, neglected to obtain a boarding pass. The United representative, a stern, chubby-cheeked girl who appears to be only slightly older than Sarah, looks at me disapprovingly but hands me back the paper.
“It’s almost boarded!”
Sarah walks with me to the boarding line as if I were a child who needs to be reassured. I do.
“If we crash,” I say mournfully, “remember I’ve got two hundred thousand dollars in flight insurance. Get Dan to sue the hell out of them, anyway.”
Sarah giggles nervously.
“You’re not going to crash.”
Easy for her to say. She has only flown once. Her mother and I took her to Colombia to visit her grandmother when she was a kid.
“Maybe you can go live with your abuela in Barranquilla,” I tell her, rolling my r’s. When I spoke Spanish in the Peace Corps, I could see the campesinos literally wince at my eastern Arkansas accent.
“Marbel would love it.” A good Catholic, she’d put a stop to Christian Life in two seconds.
Sarah nudges me to give the flight attendant my pass.
“I’ll be fine.”
Since she is not eighteen, a guardian would be appointed for her if the plane vaporized. Dan won’t let her give the insurance money to Christian Life.
“I think you’re our last passenger,” the flight attendant says in an accusing tone.
What’s the big deal? Somebody has to be last. They would have been more than happy to overbook this turkey.
I hug Sarah hard and take a good look at her. Even in gray sweats, sleepy, and without makeup, she makes the flight attendant look like an undercooked bread stick.
“Be good!” I say needlessly. She’ll spend all her time at Christian Life.
Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction Page 14
