Time's Witness

by Michael Malone

  All in all, as I heard from Nora, it was a quiet finish for the State. Seated at the prosecutor's table, his arms folded, Mitch Bazemore was subdued; so unlike himself that Isaac started nibbling on the erasers of his pencil-teepee, no doubt tensely waiting for the sudden leaping charge that never came. But Mitch had a lot on his mind. I’d hit him with most of it at eight this morning when I’d met him in his office, and, among other unwelcome news, played him Justin's interrogation of Purley Newsome. He’d heard it out, without putting his fist through the wall. He’d just squeezed his biceps until his fingers turned as red, white, and blue as the flag he loved. When I’d finished, all he’d done was pull on his suit jacket and say, “I’m going to the hospital.” I told him that Justin was already at U.H., with two state troopers from Boone trying to get Purley to pinpoint exactly where in the Pisgah Forest Winston had supposedly buried that hiker.

  The D.A. walked out without a single comment on anything I’d said.

  Justin told me later that the grilling Bazemore had given Purley Newsome made our questioning look like a love-in. When Purley had started a coughing spasm under the attack, and the I.C.U. doctor had tried to evict Bazemore, the D.A. had physically shoved him out the door and told Wes Pendergraph that he’d have him suspended if he let anyone else in. Mitch showed up back at the municipal building just in time for court to open, five years older than when he’d left. So one possibility why he was so subdued all day was that the truth about his friend Otis Newsome had finally gotten to him. The other possibility, of course, was that the truth about the Julian Lewis people (and Neil Sadler was obviously their point man) had finally gotten to him. Or he’d finally put both truths together. In any case, when I checked in on the trial at noon, Mitch was moving as if somebody had kicked him in the stomach. He stood up slowly after Fattie left the stand, stared at the seal above Judge Hilliardson's head for a good minute, then said flatly, “Your Honor, the State rests.”

  Isaac looked surprised, but he quickly bowed to Mitch, then turned toward the bench and asked Hilliardson for an immediate ruling in favor of the defense. “I submit, Your Honor, that the State has made no prima facie case requiring jury action, because the State has offered no evidence, in proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that an act of premeditated murder was ever committed by George Hall against Robert Pym. And I therefore move that a directed verdict be entered for the defendant.” Isaac then limped earnestly forward and held out his arms to the bench as if the judge might hand him down the favorable verdict like a baby. All Hilliardson did was rub his nose and adjourn the court until after lunch, at which time he promised to announce his decision.

  I took Isaac and Nora across the street for a quick bite at Pogo's next door. I should say Officers John Emory, Nancy White, and I took them there, because I was now stuck with those two obsessive bodyguards preceding me with their hands on their holsters wherever I went, like I was Caesar or Huey Long. Unfortuitous analogies, I suppose. So the three of us had to wait outside in the June heat while John and Nancy checked out Pogo's, as if Winston might be witless enough to sit nibbling guacamole at a table for one in the most popular journalists’, law-enforcers’, and lawyers’ restaurant in town.

  As I finally pushed us in through the noisy noon crowd, Isaac scared me by getting the shakes, then suddenly losing his balance and falling against the coat counter.

  “I’m fine, leave me alone,” he growled while Nora and I led him to a corner table and got him seated. Loosening his tie, he struggled back into the seersucker jacket he’d taken off walking over. “Damn air-conditioning gave me a chill. I’m fine.” His face was gray, his brow beaded with unhealthy-looking sweat. A glance in a mirror told me I didn’t look much better; I’m too old or too young to get by on three hours of sleep.

  “He's not fine; he's a wreck,” Nora argued, handing Isaac a glass of water. “He's killing himself over this case. He never goes to bed, he's living on bourbon and cigarettes—”

  “Well, that's been true for fifty years,” I pointed out as Isaac grabbed a waiter by his jacket and cajoled him into bringing over a Jack Daniels as fast as he could. “Health is not a priority of his.”

  “The trial at hand is the first and only priority. Always.” He waggled a finger at Nora to underscore this lesson from the Book of Isaac.

  “No, not always,” she told him, softening the news with a rub of his shoulder. Nora appeared to be taking in stride the stares she was getting as the best-looking of the two women in the place, which was, as usual, a jammed hubbub of Hillston males talking business bull and civic slanders. I knew at least half the customers around me, including an unlikely trio in an intense tête-à-tête at a back table: Bubba Percy, Jack Molina, and Mayor Carl Yarborough. I waved, and in a minute Carl came over to our table to tell me he was “very pleased” (high praise from him) about the arrests of the Carolina Patriots. As he headed back to the corner, I asked Isaac, “What the hell you think those three’re doing together? Not one of them can stand the other two.”

  Isaac sadly sipped his bourbon. “Interesting,” he said, then stopped and stared at the tablecloth until the waiter took our orders with the surly rudeness on which Pogo's appeared to pride itself.

  “What's interesting?” I finally asked Isaac, who was stuck in his visionary trance. “Bubba's new pals? Your health? The decor?”

  “I was thinking of poor Otis Newsome.”

  “You mean the fact that he and a goodly number of the leading citizens of this town appear to have been up to their noses in a manure pile of graft, bribery, homicide cover-ups, arms-peddling to paramilitary extremists—”

  The old lawyer sighed. “No, I meant—if my deductions are right—it's interesting that an ostensible virtue, loyalty, was Otis's downfall. Loyally toadying up to Julian Lewis and Dyer Fanshaw since their college club days when he was hazing Negroes to impress them. Loyally funneling to Fanshaw all the city's paper contracts. Loyally protecting his brother Purley by asking Fanshaw to turn a blind eye to the illegal use of his trucks.”

  I sawed up my steak. “Right. Loyally planning blackmail and murder—”

  “My point was only that I imagine Otis's motivations were personal, rather than political. Thus his suicide. Whereas I imagine Mr. Fanshaw's motives have been neither personal nor political, but financial.”

  “Frankly, Isaac, I don’t give a good goddamn what their motivations were!”

  Nora gave me a look. “You know, you’re a very grouchy person.”

  “I’ve got a killer on the loose, okay? Its puts me a little on edge.” Isaac shrugged. “He's been on the loose for eight months. Why take it out on us?”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  We both finally grumbled to a halt, then talked about Mitch awhile. Over coffee, Nora asked her partner what he thought Shirley Hilliardson was going to do when court reopened thirty minutes from now, and he said, “He's going to overrule my motion for a directed verdict, and instruct us to put on our defense. Now, my dear,” he patted her hand, “the irony there, of course, is that had the State itself not brought up the issue of George's involvement in the smuggling, I suspect Hilliardson might just have stopped this whole mess right now. It's the implication of prior relationship between George and Bobby Pym that makes premeditated murder feasible, and, despite my”—he paused to relish the word— “dismantlement of Moonfoot Butler, old Shirley will not be able to discount the possibility that George and Pym fell out over the spoils.”

  I said, “Isn’t that exactly the possibility the State went to a lot of trouble to raise? What's so ironical?”

  “I rather think”—Isaac smiled smugly—“they regret their enthusiasm.”

  Nora noticed me eyeing her uneaten home fries and tilted them onto my plate. Then she said she thought they should head back to court if the waiter could be prevailed upon to accept our money, but Isaac told her to sit down again and have some more coffee. He kept glancing at the door, and mumbled, “All right, all right, all right, where ar
e they?”

  Naturally, I got no answer to “Where's who?”

  When the waiter did slouch over, it was not with the bill but a note on scratch paper for “Captain Mangum.” It said, “Come to the john. Bubba.” A look showed me that indeed Carl and Molina were now alone at their table. So I excused myself. “An assignation in the toilet with Bubba Percy.”

  “You care so little for motivations,” Isaac smiled. “I won’t ask you to speculate on Mr. Percy's. We’ll see you later, then. Take care of yourself, Slim.”

  “Get some sleep,” advised Nora.

  In the men's room, Bubba was reading graffiti on a stall door. I snarled at him. “What are you looking for, Bubba, a free blow job?” “Yeah, that's why I asked you to come back here. Listen, Mangum, thanks for telling me about Savile's fucking Klan raid last night.”

  “It was a surprise raid. Who did tell you?”

  “Savile. He loves to get his picture in the paper.” Percy unzipped his fashionable pants and headed for the urinal, fishing for his dick. “Can we get serious for a second?”

  “Can we wait ’til you finish taking a leak?…Bubba, why the hell are we meeting in here? Also while we’re at it, why the hell are you meeting out there with the mayor and Brookside's Socialist prime minister?”

  “You told me, play a role in the future of the state. Topple a junta. So, that's what I’m doing my bit for, friend.” Zipping up, he grinned at me. “Love of country. I got a couple of questions for your ears only.”

  “You couldn’t drop by the office?”

  “This won’t wait. Okay, I took your questions to Julian Lewis: he turns green and denies trying to stop the gov from reprieving Hall. But I’ve got sources, off the record, singing a whole different song. I took your questions to Fanshaw, and he turns green. So I sat down and did some hard addition—”

  “I hate to think I pushed you into taxing yourself, Bubba—”

  Two lawyers I knew slammed into the bathroom, stepped around us to the urinals side-by-side, and agreed, while peeing, to settle a malpractice suit out of court.

  When they left, Bubba put his foot up on the sink and thoughtfully brushed his suede shoe. “Mangum, I’d say, offhand, the sum total is, Julian D. Lewis is up to his balls in quicksand, and for a man who's supposed to be walking on the water with Jesus and Brodie Cheek, that's—”

  “Problematic.” I leaned on the sink, watched him pull out his comb and stroke it through his hair. “Is that what you and Carl and Jack Molina are discussing over burritos? Saving the state for Andy Brookside?”

  “Damn right. I’m giving them as much shit to throw as I can shovel out, as fast as I can dig.”

  I looked at him awhile. “You never ‘gave’ anything away in your life. You wouldn’t ‘give’ Mother Teresa your seat on a crowded bus.”

  He patted his hair, stuck his comb in his linen jacket. “Captain Cop, why don’t you let God divide the sheep from the goats? You’ve got a tendency to oversimplify. You’re not as pure as you think. I’m not as vacuous as I claim.” Pulling out a long, sleek wallet, he found an old snapshot of his teenaged self, auburn curls down to his shoulders, his bare arm around a bosomy flower child in her shift who was shaking an “Impeach Nixon” sign in the midst of what looked like a confused campus demonstration. “Gorgeous hair,” I said. “Yours, I mean.”

  “I cut it off for Jimmy Carter. I was a true believer, Mangum. Now, that surprises you.”

  I allowed that it did. “Who's the girl? Your first love?”

  He sighed. “Sandy? Yeah. Teaches economics at Stanford now. I never did get in her pants.”

  “Doesn’t look to me like she's wearing any.”

  “Hey, don’t be so crude.” He snatched back the photo.

  “‘Don’t be so crude?’” I threw up my arms. “Bubba, I’m impressed. I’m serious. If you’ll defend a lady's modesty, if you’d cut off your hair for your politics, maybe you would put God and country before Porsche and Pulitzer.”

  Grinning, he slipped the wallet back in his linen jacket. “Why not both? Listen, I help put Brookside in office, he’ll owe me. Okay, let me pick your brain.”

  “Help yourself.”

  The Lewis people, Bubba said, had apparently asked for a “confab” tomorrow with the Brookside people, at which time both sides were going to lay on the table a peek at their big guns. “They’re making noises that they’ve got napalm on Andy. They may think they’ve got enough to make him pull out. We may have more on them than they’re aware of. Negotiations. That's what détente is all about. So, look, Mangum, here's the deal.”

  “Ah, the deal. I was sort of wondering why we were in the john. But why aren’t the mayor and Jack Molina in here with us?”

  “Carl's an idealist” was his answer. It wasn’t true, but I thought it was kind of sweet that he thought so. Well, the deal was that Bubba and Jack had done a lot of talking in the last week: with Bubba shoveling into the Brookside camp as much Lewis compost as he could find; including the scuttlebutt that the Lewis people had hold of something nasty they were saving up to use against Andy. And with Jack, well, Jack giving Bubba the old “I’m going to bare my throat to your teeth” line, by telling him he bet he knew what that “something nasty” was—a videotape in which Andrew Theodore Brookside, “A New Leader for a New South,” was not wearing so much as his Medal of Honor as he led the New South into places it might not be ready to follow him. Bubba fluttered his long eyelashes parodically. “According to Molina, some Lewis people secretly filmed Andy humping a black hooker. You know, emulating J.F.K. has led to some serious Liberal image problems.”

  Laughing, I asked him if he believed there was such a tape. “From the right source, I’d believe the Pope was boffing the Queen of England. Now, Jack says that he thought he had the problem contained, but that you’ve told him otherwise. True? You know about this?”

  I nodded. “True, I know about it. True, the problem may not be contained. And if you know about it, they could be showing clips on channel seven tomorrow.”

  “Man, I just told you, I’ve picked my side of the bread to butter. Jack knows I’m not only going to sit on Randy Andy's folly, I’m going to sit on anybody I hear's gotten wind of it. And the lid's still on. ’Cause I would have heard some steam blowing around if it wasn’t. Nobody knows. Carl Yarborough in there, now, he doesn’t know.”

  I said they were certainly right to assume a family man like Carl shouldn’t find out, either; though his upset might have less to do with idealism than not wanting to put all his eggs in a basket with a time bomb. And I asked if Jack Molina had also told him why he’d thought he had “the problem contained.”

  “Molina said it was up to you to tell me or not, or how much to tell me. Said whatever you told me would be the way it was.” Bubba patted my sternum. “It amazes me, how so many people seem to have a lot of respect for you, Mangum. Just amazes me. So, (a) what's the background? And, (b), is there a copy of this fuck film loose?”

  I thought about it, then told him I knew where two copies were, but it was of course possible that Lewis had access to a copy, which could mean they’d run off a thousand more. Though it seemed to me, if Lewis did have a copy, a little more steam would have leaked out by now. So they could be bluffing. But if Bubba wanted to see this film, he could ask Jack Molina to play it for him, because Jack had one of the copies. He’d taken it from Cooper Hall's files after Cooper's death. Bubba whistled through his teeth. “Cooper Hall?! Hold it. I may be jaded, but I don’t believe Cooper Hall made this movie!”

  I said he hadn’t. Then I decided something. I knew Bubba Percy wasn’t going to leak anything I told him not to. He was too dependent on me for information. What was more interesting was I realized that—pompadour, crass grin, and all—I trusted Bubba. I mean, I wouldn’t trust him with my sister or my dog or my car or my personal life, but I did trust him with the news. So I gave him some background on the making and trading of that videotape. While I talked, he kept forgetting
to breathe, and had to suck in sudden gulps of air. I said that if I could prove a direct connection between Lewis and the people who’d had that tape made, then Lewis would have more things to worry about than slippage in the polls. Bubba shrugged this off. “You’ll never prove a connection. If he does have a copy, his mucky-mucks’ll say it arrived through the mail in a brown wrapper. And Julian’ll say he didn’t know squat about it and how he's shocked out of the few wits he has.”

  I shrugged. “On the other hand, he may tell his mucky-mucks to drop the whole show-and-tell rather than risk the exposure of his fanny, as well as Brookside's. Frankly, Bubba, where's Adlai Stevenson?”

  “You’ve gotta have hair to win now. The camera's gotta love you.” He glanced at his own hair in the mirror, and gave it a caress. “Okay, thanks, Mangum. You gave me more than I was figuring on.”

  “So you’ll owe me one more. And you’re welcome. Just don’t print anything without checking with me.”

  “You got it. By the way, how much of this flying feces has Rosethorn got his patty-paws on?”

  “Probably more than you. He thinks faster.”

  “Gonna be wild in that courtroom then. Let me go grab a good seat. Catch you later.” Shaking a crease in his trousers free, he headed for the door, then turned around. “Hey, you said two copies of ‘Debbie Does Andy.’ You know who's got the other one?”

  “Yeah, I do. Me.”

  “You?” Bubba's eyebrow went up. “Just for bedside viewing? Or what should I tell Brookside's boys you want? Commissioner of police? Soybean monopoly? Would you settle for the Biltmore Mansion?”

  I grinned. “You know what I want. I want a state of equal opportunity, liberty, and justice for all.”

  Bubba shook his head at me. “You don’t ask much, do you, el Capitan?”