Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause (26 page)

The right side of her face pressed against her arms which cradle her drawn-up knees, Rainey looks like a sleepy child.

“Who in their right mind would?” she asks, breathing deeply in the dense air.

“Some day historians will look back and regard lawyers as the dinosaurs of our culture. All you did was eat and fight. This country better learn quickly we can’t afford you, or we all better start learning Japanese and Korean

Absently, I lick my spoon, which has long been clean, and taste nothing but plastic.

“We’re like cops: nobody likes us until you need us.”

Rainey raises her head and gazes up at the stars again.

“That’s the problem. We only think we need you because nobody trusts each other in this country. It’s everybody for themselves. That’s what is killing us as a society. There’s no sense we’re part of each other. It’s white against black; rich against poor; everybody against everybody and nobody for each other. We don’t even have large families anymore. I think it’s a pretty sterile mentality we have in the United States with all this never-ending individualism.”

I am surprised at the passion in her voice. Rainey doesn’t make many speeches; yet, I have heard this again recently.

Where? Sarah’s letter, of course. Us against society. Well, that’s how it looks to me. Yawning, I lean back on my elbows until I am almost horizontal on the concrete stoop.

“It’seas ier said than done,” I say, knowing I sound glib, but there is no quick cure for the national mind-set that is enshrined in so much patriotic nonsense.

Rainey takes my cup from my hand and places her smaller container inside it.

“You’re just scared that Sarah will go off to college and never come back.”

I nod. Scared to death.

for my first meeting with Andy in over a week I can tell him that it appears we have an expert witness. A psychologist in New Orleans has referred a colleague, who, in the spirit of the calling card of an old TV gunslinger, has implied that he “Has Electricity, Will Travel.” A series of phone calls has also produced a resume and a potential fee ($ 150 an hour, plus $300 an hour in court and travel and hotel expenses).

Dr. Kent Goza, a clinical psychologist with a private practice, in the suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi, has insisted to me that he successfully uses shock treatments to stop head banging and other self-destructive behaviors in retarded children and is sending me the research (as yet unpublished) to prove it. Once again, thank God for Mississippi.

In the main office on the grounds of the Human Development Center, I am told by the woman at the reception desk that Andy has just been called into a meeting and is not available at the moment. Even though I am still the enemy, this country woman is basically too friendly to be rude and confides, “He said to tell you he tried to call you but you had already left your office.” Separated by a dirty pane of glass (is there a fear the residents will steal a notepad or the visitor sign-in sheet?), we smile at each other for the first time. I notice her nameplate on her desk: Mattie Moss. With a name like that, she must be closer to sixty than to forty, though as it seemed to me the first time I came here, her emerald eyes appear ageless behind her indestructible-looking steel-frame glasses.

“That’s okay,” I assure her. I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting anyway.

“Is Yettie Lindsey in?”

As I say this, Yettie walks by and allows me to follow her to her office. I note that this view of her is as positively reinforcing as the front. She is wearing a pair of jeans whose snug fit would make the principal shareholders of Levi Strauss weep with happiness over the design of their product. Yettie is none too pleased to talk to me but has consented to give me ten minutes. I don’t need more than that; I just want to check in with her to make sure Jill or someone from her office hasn’t been snooping around. A male resident, an older man of thirty, whose ears and face seem to have been at one time caught in a vise, passes me and sniggers as if he knows what I am thinking. Irritated by Yettie’s coldness (though I under stand it), I give him a jaunty salute as if to say that all men, regardless of their mental age, think with their dicks, so what’s the big deal about a normal brain?

Yettie’s office, formerly lime green, is now the color of pumpkin pie. Though I’m hardly an artist, I think I would have taken a raise instead. On the wall behind her desk is an elaborate bright yellow God’s Eye, which I apparently didn’t notice before because I was too busy concentrating on her rather well-endowed chest. For all I know, the ornament on the wall may have been nailed into place five minutes ago, but her expression, sullen as a sulking child’s, as she orders me to sit, indicates she is not in the mood to suffer a fool gladly.

I sit down in the one seat available to me: an unpadded and corroding metal folding chair and instantly wish we were conducting this chat on our feet. It is as if I can feel bits of iron working into my butt. Since she hasn’t offered me coffee (I’m not going to have trouble staying awake in this chair), I resist making a snide comment and simply ask, “How are you doing?” I find that I mean it. Her honesty last time has produced in me a sympathy for her (despite her hostility) I wouldn’t believe existed. Maybe, though, it is that she looks as delicious as a chocolate ice cream cone would taste right about now. I have gotten in the habit of walking across the street with Clan to Beaumont Drugs for ice cream at about three in the afternoon. Hunger, as Clan points out almost on a daily basis, unlike sexual desire, can be satisfied any time and in public.

“I’ve been better,” she says abruptly, though examining her fingernails as if she had all the time in the world.

“What do you want now?”

I look up at the God’s Eye instead of her blue cotton knit sweater and try to think of a believable lie, but can’t and offer the truth instead.

“I was out here to see Andy, but he’s in a meeting, and so I just thought I’d stop by to see what you think of a co-worker.”

From beside her desk she picks up a ball of yarn and knitting needles and astonishes me by beginning to knit on what I take to be an orange sweater. I hadn’t seen a woman her age knit since Rosa and realize the God’s Eye is probably her handiwork.

“What’re you talking about?” she asks suspiciously, making tiny clicking noises with the ivory-colored needles.

Now that I’m out here, I might as well ask something that has been in the back of my mind since the probable cause hearing, but I’m not sure how to put the question. Leon Robinson, in some ways, is directly responsible for Pam’s death. He could help Andy enormously if he would cooperate.

“What do you think of Leon?” I ask lamely, my mind a desert. This girl, still hardly a woman to me at my age, is an oasis for my eyes, however, and I forsake the God’s Eye to stare shamelessly at her sensual fall mouth and oddly colored irises of green, yellow, and brown.

“I can’t stand him,” Yettie says, not missing a beat with the needles that she flashes and whirls like small swords. Two swift thrusts and she would have two more eyes for her collection.

My eyelids throb spastically at the thought of the damage the needles could do to them, while my mind goes back to the hearing. The sight of Leon’s crying suddenly has stayed with me. I was touched by his emotion and thought he could be brought around to testify if I knew how to handle him right. He was hostile, but I thought I understood the reason, since he had taken care of Pam for years. Maybe there are some feelings of guilt I can exploit.

“He didn’t seem so bad,” I say, rubbing my left eye to still it. Perhaps she will give me a clue to his personality.

“How come?”

“He hates blacks,” Yettie says flatly, not even bothering to look at me. Rosa wasn’t as dark as Yettie, but there is something that reminds me of her. Maybe her body.

I am fascinated by the needles: I can’t follow them at all.

God, she is bitter. Does she like anybody? For all I know, the sweater is for herself. “How do you know?” I ask, more urgently than I intend. “Has he ever said or done anything?”

Yettie shrugs, refusing to look at me. I could develop an ego problem around this woman. The needles click for what seems like a full minute. Finally she says, “You can just tell.”

I suppress a sigh and decide to leave. More female intuition.

It seems to me a lot of blacks think all whites are racists. It gets old after a while. I doubt if I would be too crazy about blacks if the only one around was Yettie Lindsey.

Still, I may need her.

“My wife used to knit,” I say, leaning forward to get a better look at her hands.

“She wasn’t as fast as you, though.”

Yettie puts down the needles and looks at her watch.

“Anything else?” she says.

Andy comes for me in half an hour. During that time it seems I have gotten more information out of Homer, my retarded escort the first time I was here, than from Yettie Lindsey. Homer, who saw me sitting in the waiting room on his way outside, greeted me as if I had come to take him home. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand a word he said. He didn’t seem to mind as long I kept smiling. I wish I could make everybody that glad to see me.

Andy doesn’t seem any happier to see me than Yettie was.

“Got called to a meeting,” he explains tersely. We walk side by side in the wide corridor to his office, our silence interrupted only by a retarded man who greets Andy with such genuine enthusiasm that Dale Carnegie himself (were he not dead) would approve of his effort. Though I am on Andy’s shit list, Jake, who looks normal except for his crossed eyes and jug-handle ears, is not: My client lets Jake pump his hand as though both of them expected oil to spurt from Andy mouth. I know Andy resents my talking to Olivia about his affair. Clients want you to help them, but they hate like hell for you to do it.

Andy’s office, I see, has not been repainted. In fact, the room has an even more temporary look than it did before.

On his desk is a cardboard box filled with books as if he were moving in or moving out. Before I can comment, he lights into me.

“You had no right to ask Olivia about our relationship!”

he says, closing the door behind him. His voice is under control but just barely. Standing in front of his door, he has balled both his fists, but I doubt he has ever physically fought another man. Even with his face stretched tight with anger, he looks too elegant. His goatee and mustache look freshly trimmed this morning, and there is not even the hint of a wrinkle in his tan poplin slacks. Mine always make me look as though I have an accordion on my lap five minutes after I’ve put them on. I can imagine Andy fighting a duel with pistols at fifty paces but not in a street bawl.

I turn my back on him and sit down across from his desk, wondering how to handle him. The best defense is a good offense, especially with a cream puff like Andy. As he comes around behind his desk, I say softly, “You sure as hell weren’t going to tell me.” Though his office is at the end of the hall and the door is closed, there is no sense trying to sell some tickets to this conversation.

“I hope you’re not going to tell me an affair with Olivia isn’t relevant to your case.”

Andy is more formally dressed than the last time I visited him here, in a turquoise gingham shirt, blue sports coat, and maroon tie. All heated up, he discards the coat.

“It won’t be if no one knows about it!” he says, still taking time in his rage to hang up his jacket properly and place it on the coat rack in the corner by the door. Neatness counts with this guy, I think, as he goes back behind his desk.

“I suppose,” I say sarcastically, “that you think nobody has a clue to what’s going on.”

Folding his arms across his chest like a used-car dealer who won’t let a sucker get his money back, Andy purses his lips and says disdainfully, “Nobody can prove a thing.”

I resist a smile. This attempted guile has its own charm in a man who usually displays the naivete of a scientist: Who, me blow up the world? This bomb is purely for research purposes. Andy must have lead an unusually sheltered life for a black person. The ones I have encountered have no illusions about whitey’s power.

“If the prosecutor ever gets hold of it, she’ll bring your used rubbers into court if she has to.”

Andy narrows his eyes at me in pure hatred. There has never been a messenger of bad news in the history of the world who hasn’t been despised, and I’m no exception. I know how crude I must sound, but he has to start living in the real world.

I fairly yell at him: “Don’t you realize you have to tell me the things that will affect this case? I can’t represent you in the dark. I ‘m not a magician who can pull a trick out of a hat at the last moment and save you, goddamn it! Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether you’re shacking up with the Queen of England, but you can be awfully damn sure the prosecutor is going to try to get that information to the jury, especially since the Queen is white.”

Andy’s expression changes from one of contempt to disgust.

“I know all that,” he says wearily and leans back hard in his chair.

I continue to press him.

“You don’t act like it. You’re the one who doesn’t want race to be an issue at your trial,” I say, remembering his words.

“I can’t do it without your help.”

This last point seems to mollify him somewhat, and his face loses some of its intensity. He shifts restlessly, as if he is trying without success to think of a comeback. “You could have asked me first,” he says lamely.

This is a minor point to concede, and I try to do so graciously.

“I should have,” I admit, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t tell me the truth and would try to stop me from talking to Olivia about it.”

A frown spreads over Andy’s face as he looks at me for a long moment and then says, in a voice stiff with formality, “I’ve given you absolutely no reason to distrust me.”

I soften my tone and try to smile at him.

“My experience is that we all lie when we’re cornered, Andy. It’s really nothing personal.” Candor is an overrated virtue, since often I resort to it when I need to manipulate somebody, I think, but don’t say.