Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause (42 page)

“Your …” Andy begins.

The judge loses her temper.

“I don’t want to hear from you, Dr. Chapman,” she yells, pointing a finger at him.

“If you didn’t want a lawyer, you should have thought about that a long time before today. I’m not allowing you to represent yourself; I’m not allowing Mr. Page to quit as your attorney, and I don’t want you to speak here or in my courtroom again until you’re spoken to! Is that clear?”

Andy shakes his head.

“Then I refuse to participate in this trial any further.”

Judge Tamower looks at me and then back at Andy as if she wants to make pressed meat of both of us. Lawyers are supposed to be able to control their clients, and defendants dressed as nicely as Andy are supposed to behave themselves and go to prison, if not with smiles on their faces, at least with stoic calm. It is not as if I am back at the Public Defender representing some dope-crazed space cadet.

“That’s fine with me,” she says grimly.

“You can spend it in a holding cell.”

Great! I can hear the talk on the street: Page can’t even keep his clients out of jail during their trials. I look at Jill and send her a silent prayer: we’re both lawyers, even if we hate each other’s guts right now. There is a smirk on her face as if she is daring me to keep Andy company. Desperately, I look over at the huge bailiff, who seems more than willing and able to take each of us under one arm, and notice the clock. It is after four.

“Judge, it’s getting late. Why don’t we quit for the day, so I can have a chance to talk to Dr. Chapman?

This is a capital case, after all.”

I have said the magic words without ever having mentioned the dreaded word: appeal. It could go on forever if she screws up. No judge likes to be reversed, especially this woman. A thin, bloodless smile comes to the judge’s lips.

“That’s the first good idea,” she says firmly, “you’ve had all day, Mr. Page.”

Oh yeah, Clan, this woman has the hots for me all right. I nod, grateful beyond words I don’t have to go back out there to the defense table alone.

in my office, Morris listens to my account of our conversation with the judge and then looks at his brother as if Andy had told Judge Tamower he had seen her mother in a Juarez whorehouse.

“You’re one crazy nigger,” Morris tells his brother.

“We’re trying to save your ass, and you want to fuck it up with this stupid shit! You think you’re gonna have a rat’s-ass chance in hell sitting in a cell while your lawyer does a solo act. That’s bullshit, man!”

In a rare concession to the pressure he must be feeling, Andy loosens his tie.

“I don’t expect you to understand this either, Morris.”

Morris, seated across from his brother, has his feet up on my desk. He puts them down on the floor and gets up to pace.

“I understand this,” he says, his dark face anguished.

“You’re the most selfish motherfucker who’s ever had the nerve to draw a breath! Have you thought one Goddamned minute about what it’s gonna do to me, knowing you’re in prison for the rest of your life or a piece of fried meat in the ground? Forget our mother and daddy’s memory; forget their families. They’re mostly dead. What good are you gonna do anybody in prison? We don’t need another nigger convict.

You’re throwing away the one chance you have! Even if by some miracle you walk, the white assholes who run these things are gonna bust their asses to keep you from being a psychologist again, and then what will all those shit for brains you’re so crazy about do? You think white folks care about a nigger retard? Bullshit! I’ve been out there and seen the way those little black monkeys climb all over you. Who’s gonna give a shit about them while you’re in prison getting fucked up the ass by some crazy dude who’ll pile-drive you into the concrete after he’s stretched your asshole to the size of a manhole cover? This ain’t the time,” he pleads, his voice winding down to a whisper,” ‘to tell white folks what a shitty place for us this country is.”

Morris, to my amazement, is almost in tears. His eyes are red, and his voice is so hoarse I can barely hear him.

He probably doesn’t understand Andy much better than I do, but there is no doubt about the love he feels for him.

Andy shifts uncomfortably in his chair but says nothing. I don’t get it. Andy isn’t stopping at cutting off his nose to spite his face; he’s taking his eyes and ears, too. People who actually do things this drastic on principle are, in my experience, few and far between. The last one in the legal profession was Thomas More.

“We’ve got a chance, Andy,” I say, filling the silence.

“But you’ve got to stay and fight.

If you don’t stick around to explain your side of the story, the prosecutor will fill in the blanks for the jury on closing argument.”

Like some kind of black Buddha, Andy stills himself and draws his hands together beneath his trim goatee. I look at Morris, who, judging by the agonized look on his face, has withdrawn into his own private hell.

“I know you feel I’m betraying you, Andy,” I say, from behind my desk, “but at some point you simply have to start trusting me.”

From behind his hands, Andy says bitterly, “Olivia trusted me, and look what she’s getting.”

I slam my fist on my desk in frustration at this man.

“She betrayed you!” I yell at him.

“She had the opportunity to convince the jury she is still passionately committed to you even though her child is dead, and she lied!”

Wearily, Andy shakes his head, “She’s ashamed,” he says, his voice under control.

“She can’t imagine people would understand how she could be involved with anyone right now, much less a black man, after what has happened.”

He has just admitted that the woman he supposedly loves is as racist as the rest of us. I look at Morris for support, but he merely shrugs, as if his brother were another species. I still believe that Olivia is calibrating her performance as best she can, but I don’t dare risk fighting this battle again. Andy, I decide, is a lost cause.

Yet, even as I think this, I remember the shame I felt in having an affair with a married friend of Rosa’s just two weeks after Rosa’s death. What was that all about? Probably grief, loneliness, lust. All I know is that I would never have admitted it in court to a group of strangers sitting in judgment over me. Maybe it’s possible that Olivia, despite everything I know about her, is as innocent as Andy thinks. But I represent Andy, not Olivia, and my job is not to judge the moral purity of a witness’s soul but to be an advocate for my client. While Andy may feel he has the luxury of philosophizing about the motives of Olivia, I do not.

“You’re going to have to decide,” I say harshly, getting up from behind my desk, “whether you want to fight for your freedom or be a martyr. You can’t do both.”

Andy is silent for once as if he is about to give up on the idea of trying to make me understand he sees no conflict between the two. I leave the two brothers in my office and go to Dan’s office to use his telephone to call Charlene Newman to tell her she will have to testify that Leon told her he was in the Trackers. After a tearful phone call from her, I agreed not to subpoena her, so that Leon would not find out she might be a witness.

“Leon will find out within two hours if I’m subpoenaed,” she had told me. That gives me a lot of confidence in our law enforcement officers, but since they seldom make it into the Blackwell County Country Club, they have to be members of something. Leon has not been in contact with her, proving, I suppose, that the female bartenders at the Bull Run are, if not quite feminists, more loyal to their own sex than to their own race, since they apparently have not told Leon I was looking for his ex-wife.

Seated behind his desk like Humpty Dumpty in a special oversized chair, Clan, happy as ever to eavesdrop, observes cheerfully, “You’re doing a hell of a job! Keep this up, and you’ll give a new meaning to criminal defense work.”

I dial Charlene’s number.

“Shit happens when your client gives his home address as Uranus,” I say glumly.

Great. No answer.

“Do me a favor and try this number every fifteen minutes until you leave for the day. If a woman answers, come get me.” I hand Clan a slip of paper with Charlene’s number on it.

Clan squints at the number. He needs reading glasses but won’t get them, claiming he is too vain about his looks.

“You can’t turn a sow’s cunt into a silk purse,” he says, his face now sympathetic.

“I think that’s a sow’s ear,” I say, happy to smile for the first time today.

“The weird pan is that my client may really be a silk purse.”

“Sure,” Clan says breezily, “and the Cubs’ll win the World Series.”

I am home by seven (with nothing resolved), my briefcase crammed with work, and exhaustion begins to creep up like a shot of Novocain. Walking in the front door to find Woogie and Sarah curled up on the couch, I feel as though I have been gone a lifetime.

“What happened?”

Sarah asks, anxiously twisting a lock of her springy black hair, which she had decided to let grow. Woogie, probably disturbed from a nap, merely looks grumpy.

“Are you really getting fired? Kim Keogh made it sound on TV like it was a disaster today. You seemed a little desperate in the interview.”

Well, what the hell? The truth hurts.

“I don’t know whether I am or not,” I say, peeling off my suit coat and tie. I’d love a beer, but with so much work to do I don’t dare drink one, tired as I am.

“Has anyone called?” I ask, going into the kitchen for a glass of water. Tomor row I’m probably going to look like the biggest idiot ever. I pour myself a glass of water from the tap, realizing how petty my thoughts are. My client and my girl friend could end up dying, and I am worried about how I am going to come across on TV when I’m asked why Andy chose to spend the rest of his trial in a jail cell instead of with his lawyer. Self-hatred begins to work into those spaces of my brain not overcome by my growing lethargy.

“Rainey dropped by a casserole about thirty minutes ago,” Sarah says, following me into the kitchen.

“She said she wasn’t coming over tonight, but that she’d be all right. I’m sure she wants you to call her.”

I do. Her voice sounds calmer.

“Thanks for last night,” she says, declining my offer to come over and eat her own cooking and to spend the night again.

“I

need to spend some time by myself tonight.”

I doubt that, but I can understand why she isn’t hungry

“I’ll call you later,” I say, watching Sarah turn on the oven to heat up her gift to us.

“You can always change your mind.”

“Thanks,” she says, her voice warm with gratitude.

“I

may do that.”

Knowing she can come over if she needs to is half the battle.

“How’re you doing?” I ask, wishing desperately that last night was only a bad dream. “Better than you,” Rainey answers, for a moment her old saucy self. “It was all Kim Keogh could do on the six o’clock news to keep from laughing out loud when she reported that Andy wanted to represent himself. What’s going on?”

I permit myself a broad smile, delighted she can tease me.

Though it is a breach of my relationship with Andy, I tell her why he feels I’ve betrayed him.

“He’s got a death wish you wouldn’t believe,” I conclude, wondering for the first time if he does. Martyrs don’t lose much time getting on my nerves.

“He’s always been like that,” Rainey says.

“He spoke out against affirmative action when he was a psych examiner at the state hospital.”

I suppress a sigh. What an attractive political candidate he would make to whites. And unlike other first-time candidates, he would have a record to run on thirty years in the Arkansas prison system.

“What did you do today?” I ask, remembering how quickly she fell asleep last night.

“Went to work,” she says.

“Your talking was better than a sleeping pill.”

I laugh. Even if we had wanted to have sex, we wouldn’t have dared. Rosa used to say the walls in our house are so thin that if she so much as coughed in our bedroom it would be damp in Sarah’s room for a week. It felt good just to lie next to her for a few minutes. I thank her for the casserole and hang up, feeling good for the first time since I went to work this morning, and then I try Charlene Newman’s number again, giving up on the tenth ring. I should never have agreed not to subpoena her, but I was afraid she would lie if I forced her to testify. All she would have to answer is that she had never told me that Leon was a member of the Trackers I do not remember if she was ever willing to come out and say directly that he was. While I wait for the casserole to heat, I worry that I have misunderstood the conversation with her that day in Hot Springs. What difference does it make? She isn’t coming anyway. Damn. I’d fuck up a wet dream.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asks, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“You’re sitting there like a zombie.”

I look up and force a smile, hearing the anxiety in her voice. God, she is pretty.

“What would you think if I quit my job and became a janitor?”

Sarah laughs indulgently.

“No way! You can barely change a light bulb.”

“Thanks,” I say, pretending not to be hurt. I can usually manage a light bulb all right, but the truth is that I’m not fit to do another damn thing in my life except run my mouth. I get up and try Charlene’s number again. Where the hell is she? I sit down, trying not to sigh. Rainey’s casserole is delicious, but I can’t eat it. As I push chicken, cheese, and broccoli around on my plate and try to keep a conversation going with Sarah, some weird things start to occur. The phone rings twice while we are eating, but all there is when I answer is a click.

“What is it?” Sarah asks, watching my face carefully the second time I put the phone down.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say. I debate telling her. Probably nothing.

After dinner, Sarah, her black eyes no longer trusting me, comes again into the kitchen where I am working on the table and says, “Something’s going on outside. I can hear a lot more cars and trucks going past our house than usual.”