Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (24 page)

Chet flinches as if he is in pain. Probably no one has ever talked to him this way. Most likely no one has ever needed to.

“You’re right,” he says finally.

“I’ll do it.”

“The sooner the better.” I feel a sense of relief. For the first time I realize he probably has asked for help on the case because he sensed the dilemma he was in but couldn’t bring himself to face it squarely. From now on, I need to be more aggressive, not less. He’s been looking for somebody to stand up to him, and until now I’ve been entirely too deferential. For the next fifteen minutes I tell him about my trip to San Francisco, concluding, “For what it’s worth, and it doesn’t seem much, the investigator is willing to come testify.”

Chet, who has listened intently, nods, saying, “We can do a lot with this. A local jury would love to believe some thug from California killed Wallace.”

Damn it, he still is looking for a way out of having to check out Shane. Unaccustomed to sitting in the chair I provide clients, I shift around trying to find a comfortable spot. No wonder they are always squirming My conversation with Harold Broadnax comes racing back to me. Bracken points so many fingers during a trial you’d think he was a freak in a carnival.

“It’s better than nothing,” I admit.

Chet grunts noncommittally and pushes himself out of his chair. He looks like a scarecrow. He says wryly, “Thanks for the conversation. I’ve got to run by the pharmacy. I know the way out. I’ll call you.”

I am afraid to press him further. The son of a bitch.

He knows I’m right. Shane Norman is like some sacred cow that roams the streets while people starve. I stew in my office for a minute and then go try to find Dan to run this latest development by him. Maybe I am overreacting.

I don’t think so, but if anyone will tell me, Dan will. He is not in his office, and I buzz Julia.

“Where’s Dan?” I ask, realizing how rare it is to see her on the defensive. It is good for her.

“He was headed for the crapper,” she says, snickering, “but he wouldn’t admit it. He’s been gone fifteen minutes. Maybe you better check on him. You know how the King died.”

“I doubt if Dan is on as many drugs,” I say dryly. I’m sure Julia is referring to a magazine account that Elvis was on the commode when he bought it.

“You never know,” Julia chirps, her voice malicious, “people fool ya all the time. By the way, Chet Bracken is starting to get on my nerves good. He looked like he was about to puke his guts out when he came by here on his way to the elevators. You’re making the guy sick to his stomach.”

Out of the mouths of babes, I think. I concede, “I’ve been known to have that effect.”

“Tell me about it,” Julia agrees.

“Most of your clients look a lot more worried coming out of your office than when they went in. Here’s Humpty Dumpty now. Hey, Dan, you the one been stinking up the joint? The cleaning people are having fits, according to Uncle Roy.

They’re wanting to charge extra to do the crappers on this floor. It’s like there’s mass food poisoning every day up here. If you guys would get paying clients who could afford their own toilets, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

I try to imagine Dan’s expression as Julia interrogates him. Julia’s main qualification for her position is her bloodline. Her uncle, Roy Rogers (not the cowboy, she was quick to assure me), owns the building.

“Up yours, too. By the way, Zorro is panting for you, as usual.” I wore an old black suit I found in my closet one day last week, and I’ve been Zorro ever since.

“I hope there aren’t too many people in the waiting room, Julia,” I say, fascinated as usual by the horror show. Julia will be working here until she is ninety.

What a joy she will be then.

“As of this moment,” Julia yelps into my ear, “I’m off duty, Zorro, so button it up.”

I look down at my watch. It is exactly five o’clock.

Asking Julia to stay five minutes late is like asking one of the lawyers on the floor to add more paper to the copier. Don’t waste your breath. Dan wobbles into my office, patting his stomach.

“I think I swallowed a hand grenade at lunch,” he moans.

“What’s up?”

An upset stomach doesn’t prohibit him from wandering over to the window to check to see if any of our female neighbors from the Adcock Building are about.

“Shit,” he mutters, disappointed. He turns and plops down in the chair across from me.

“Why do they leave so early?” he says.

“No wonder this country is going down the tubes. I didn’t expect to see any of them standing there naked. I just wanted a memory to tide me over till I return to this hellhole. Is that asking too much of life?”

I am too wired to bullshit and tell him about the last two days. Dan has been the main advocate for a conspiracy between Shane and Chet.

“He’s scared shitless what he’ll find. What in the hell do I do?”

Dan shifts in his seat as if he is trying to ease out a fart.

“You really talked to Bracken that way?” he asks admiringly.

“I didn’t think you had it in you.”

I prop my feet up on my desk.

“I didn’t have any choice.”

Dan shakes his head.

“While you were in San Francisco, I thought a lot about this case. You’re reacting the way you are because you’d like to see Shane take a direct hit. Why? Your kid. You resent the hell out of Norman because he’s stolen Sarah away from you. It’s natural, and I don’t blame you, but let’s face it: murder is not how the guy makes his living.”

To say I’m perplexed is an understatement. It was Dan who first hatched this theory. I pick up a paper clip from my drawer and begin to straighten it. Is he right?

Perhaps. But that doesn’t mean Shane couldn’t have done it. Preachers aren’t immune to violence. Hell, when I was in the Peace Corps, one of the most famous Colombian revolutionaries was a Catholic priest.

“So I’m biased,” I ask, trying not to sound irritated, “what’s your excuse?”

Dan chokes off a belch. He seems about to explode. I wonder if he’s been talking to Brenda about the case.

Probably. She throws a wet blanket over everything. Dan grins.

“You know how I am about conspiracies. Hell, I think Jackie had Jack bumped off because she was sick of him screwing around.”

“Supposedly, I was hired,” I say sarcastically, “in this case to help get Leigh off. I’m getting the distinct impression that while I was out of town the rules changed.

Maybe even before I left.”

Dan places his right hand over his stomach as if it were a seismograph attempting to measure an earthquake.

“You gotta admit you’re dealing with a club you’re not a member of.”

I smile for the first time all day. If nothing else, Dan is good at pointing out the obvious. “Tell me something I don’t know. The judge probably knows more about this case than I do.”

“Who you got?” Dan wants to know. I can see his stomach jumping from the other side of my desk.

“Grider,” I say.

“It’ll be a circus.” George Grider is the kind of judge who lets lawyers in his courtroom savage each other like wild animals. He is intelligent and comes from an old Blackwell County family but seems to get some kind of perverse pleasure out of the hostility that is generated in the courtroom. Twenty years ago he was a prosecutor, and he generally comes down in the middle with his rulings on evidence and procedure. The trick is getting him to come down at all.

My guess is that he likes the publicity that his hands-off approach spawns.

“A mud bath all right,” Dan acknowledges.

“Maybe you ought to tell Chet adios on this one. It looks like he wants to stick you with his first loss so he can go out a winner.”

“If he would let me, I could win this damn thing!” I practically shout.

Dan stands up and leans against the wall. Apparently, he feels better if his stomach is pointed downhill.

“Maybe that’s bullshit, too. He might not be sick at all.”

There Dan goes again.

“He’s sick all right,” I say.

Still, I’m in the dark about that as much as I am on everything else.

“But he could live another two years, as far as I know.”

“Hell, Leigh probably did it,” Dan says.

“Women have a million reasons to put us out of our misery. The surprising thing is that you don’t see it more often.” He grins at me.

“You know, I forget what an ambitious fucker you are. You pretend to be a sap like the rest of us on this floor, and yet behind all that eastern Arkansas corn pone you’re eaten up with this stuff.”

I have to bite my tongue. The bottom line is that you’re a talker, not a doer, my friend, I think.

“Not like Chet Bracken used to be.”

“You’re working on it,” Dan pushes himself to a vertical position.

“I’m out of here. I think I’ll go have my stomach pumped.”

Dan’s wrinkled shirt bulges out over his pants like a plastic garbage bag.

“Rosa used to say that’s not a lot of fun.”

Dan winks at me.

“Hey, I’m stupid, but I’m not crazy. I’ll just go home and eat until I pop open.”

I grab my coat. I might as well leave, too. On the freeway, I realize just how much Bracken has got my number. He knows how much I want to stay in and do this case. Shit, if he knows that, he also knows whether Norman has an alibi. But maybe not. I don’t trust anyone on this case, including myself.

In the waiting room a guy as bald as an egg stands up and says, “Mr. Page, I just got out yesterday from St.

Thomas. I found the papers you wanted.”

Rich Blessing? I stammer, “Good to see you. Let’s go on back to my office, and I’ll take a look.” He falls in step alongside of me, and I steal another glance at him.

Without his toupee, he didn’t have much hair, but now he looks like a retired caretaker for a nuclear power plant.

“How’re you feeling?” I ask, turning on the light in my office.

“Better,” he says, handing me an envelope.

“I was having a nervous breakdown because of my toupee. I began dreaming I kept having to chase it. My doctor got me admitted to the psychiatric wing at St. Thomas, but now that I’m out, I’ve decided to make a clean sweep of it,” he says, pointing to his head.

Given permission, I take a good look. Sweep, hell.

His skull looks like one of Woogie’s dog bones.

“Whatever helps you make it through the night,” I mutter, before I realize how bad I sound. I open the envelope and find, among more testimonials, a warranty. In the third paragraph, in big block letters, it says: DO NOT WEAR

IN WATER OR OUTSIDE ON DAYS WHEN WIND

IS EXPECTED TO EXCEED TWENTY MILES AN

HOUR.

“How windy was it that day when it came off?”

I ask, handing him the document containing the warranty.

“Practically a hurricane,” he says cheerfully as he begins to read.

I let him read in silence and watch his face fall.

“I

never saw this.”

“We could try to argue the salesman misrepresented it to you,” I say, my heart not really in it.

Blessing stands up and shrugs.

“He didn’t. Actually, I don’t think I want to sue now. After a week of being on the funny farm with some really sick people I realize how inconsequential hair is.”

“Good,” I say, and hand him all his papers. I’ll get rich next time. I’ve got a more important case to worry about. I just hope Blessing can make a living.

At home I have trouble concealing my rotten mood.

It is Sarah’s night to cook, but when I look in the refrigerator to take out a beer all I see are food stains and a quart of milk three days past the date on the carton. As Sarah comes into the kitchen, I complain, “Why aren’t you putting stuff on the list?”

Sarah pushes up the sleeves on her wind suit and washes her hands in the sink.

“I don’t see your handwriting up there either,” she says mildly.

“Bad day, Daddy?”

I stare at her back. That kind of remark would have been considered impudent when I was her age. It seems as if I have no control over anything. Beginning with the custody deal this morning, followed by my meeting with Leigh this afternoon, and then just now with Chet, I have no power to affect events. I say candidly, “I think I’m upset because the more work I do on Leigh’s case, the more I’m convinced she’s covering up for her father, and yet there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.”

Drying her hands on a dish towel, my daughter turns and admonishes me, “If there’s no evidence of his involvement you can’t do anything.”

I pour myself a glass of water instead of the beer I want. I shouldn’t be talking to her about the case, but I can’t seem to resist rubbing her nose in it.

“You’ve got to promise to keep quiet about what I’m going to tell you, but I’ve found out this afternoon your pastor had every reason to want his son-in-law dead.” I launch into an abbreviated version of my conversation with Leigh and add the highlights of my talk with Shane before I went to San Francisco.

“Shane Norman is a lot more likely suspect than his daughter,” I conclude, knowing I’ve exaggerated a few things, but not by much.

“You’re going to argue in court that he’s the murderer!” Sarah guesses, her voice high enough to shatter the glass in my hand.

“That’s so wrong. You’d destroy an innocent man’s reputation to win a case. You’re horrible, Daddy!”

Without thinking, I slap Sarah across the face. Instantly I regret it. I haven’t spanked her since she was five years old and ran out into the street. Still, I am sick of her high-and-mighty attitude.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Stunned, for an instant she stands watching me, un able to comprehend I have hit her, then bursts into tears and runs from the kitchen into her room.

“Sarah!” I yell, but she shuts her door. I can’t believe I have raised a hand to her. Yet she has no business talking to me like that. I go to her door and open it. She has thrown her self face down across her bed. I look around her room.

Clothes are strewn on the floor; Coke cans are every where; even the collage of her friends on the wall by her bed is askew. She is still such a child.

“I’m not the lead counsel in this case. Chet has no intention of making the argument that Shane Norman is implicated.”