Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (12 page)

Dan rolls back the cuffs of his shirt two folds, revealing fat, hairy wrists.

“Why the hell not?” he muses.

“He’s setting himself up for a malpractice claim and incompetence of counsel charges if Leigh doesn’t get off.”

“His estate,” I remind him.

“I wonder if I’ve got some duty to tell Norman about Bracken. The truth is, Chet hasn’t done shit on this case, and Norman tells me just now that he called Leigh at home the morning of the murder and heard her voice in the background. The cops don’t know this yet, but it’s just one more thing that can cook Leigh’s goose. Chet didn’t know either.”

Dan reaches in his desk and pulls out a Snickers. It is not even ten yet. He offers it to me, but I shake my head. As he peels off the paper, he says, “If I were you, I’d have a heart-to-heart with Bracken. If this case is headed for the toilet, you’re the one who’s gonna be flushed.”

I begin to wonder if I have made a serious mistake in agreeing to second chair this case. A neon sign inside my head is blinking the word “sucker.” This was to be my ticket to the big leagues. The way it is shaping up it looks like a bush-league game for last place. I fight back a momentary wave of panic. As Dan ingests the chocolate in two bites, I am reminded of the night he called from the jail to tell me he was arrested at a convenience store for stealing a Twinkie. Some people can’t tell the truth even if you hand them a script. Dan, for all his faults, can’t tell a lie.

“On top of everything else, Norman admits he can’t find a thing on Wallace either,” I complain.

“Other than stealing Norman’s daughter under false pretenses. Art was a model citizen.

Even Norman admits nobody had a motive to snuff him except himself. Of course, he was smiling when he said this.”

Dan wipes brown goo from the corners of his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. With all his practice, I mink he’d learn to hit the target.

“You check out his alibi?”

I shrug. How can Brenda stand to make love to him?

She is no Barbie but hardly a Petunia Pig either.

“He says he called from the church.”

Dan finds a corner of his handkerchief to blow his nose.

“That one didn’t wash for Leigh,” he points out “Who all saw him that morning? You just said he hated Wallace’s guts.”

If I had been in his position, I would have hated my son-in-law’s guts, too, but I doubt I would have killed him. Norman isn’t areal suspect, as far as I’m concerned.

He has far too much to lose. Even assuming he lost his temper big time, the image he has of himself wouldn’t allow him to shoot the man his daughter loved. As different as Norman and I are, I mink I understand the guy. If Sarah marries a rich creep, I’ll get her the best divorce lawyer his money can buy. Sooner or later, despite the woman-obey-your-husband garbage fundamentalists love, Norman, I’m convinced, would have come around to trying to talk Leigh into a divorce.

I reach behind me and open a window to let in some air. Dan has a great view of the Arkansas River. He tells me he will switch offices any time I want. He’d rather have my view any day.

“Come on, Dan,” I say mildly, “get real. Norman’s a lover, not a fighter.”

Dan reaches into his desk again but only to pull out a paper clip. He straightens it and begins to pick his teeth.

“How else was he gonna get his kid back? To Norman, Wallace was the Devil incarnate. What could damn a person more in a preacher’s eyes than a man who uses God for his own ends, especially if it involves the person he loves best?”

Dan is forgetting that preachers are supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner, and that usually precludes murdering him. I breathe deeply. There is a slight odor of mildew in the room. Some of these boxes have probably been sitting here for years. I indulge Dan, knowing he has to get this crap out of his system or he will never shut up. I point out, “But Norman wouldn’t set up Leigh to take the rap.”

Dan, loving the role of the great hypothesizer, says, “Norman wasn’t setting her up. He calls her at home, makes her feel guilty. She goes back to the church, and he slips out and goes to their house and offs Wallace, thinking she’ll never be charged, but the cops screw it up because they can’t figure out who else to nail. Norman thinks this will be a snap, but he gets the best criminal defense lawyer in town anyway. What he doesn’t know is the best is eaten up with cancer and can barely answer the bell.”

From Dan’s window I can see a barge coming into view. He’s got a point. Preachers have been known to commit murder for more sordid reasons than protecting their daughters. Not too long ago I read about a minister who killed his wife to run off with another woman. Yet, Norman, like myself, I realize, would try to talk somebody to death before he would shoot him. To humor him, I say, “I’ll check his alibi, but surely Chet has already done that much.”

Dan runs his tongue over his teeth to get every last bit of sugar, chuckling, “But talk about biting the hand that’s feeding you.”

I protest, “I haven’t bitten it yet.” Actually, it’s Bracken who is bothering me more than anything. Even if he has been sick, I can’t believe he has done such a sorry job. I realize I have been intimidated by his reputation.

If I’m going to keep from making a fool of myself at the trial, I’ll have to stop acting like I’m the messenger boy in this case. To give Chet credit, he isn’t hiding his lack of effort from me. In fact. he is practically rubbing my nose in it. Why? Can it be that he wants me to take over the role of lead counsel and can’t bring himself to say so? Men are harder to read than women. In our sex, the ego is like a five-hundred-pound gorilla guarding the door to the rest of the psyche.

Women are more vulnerable.

“By the way, the wife’s a lush. She’s functional, but she keeps her tank topped during the day. She was lit the afternoon I saw Leigh, and Rainey confirmed she has a problem. Norman didn’t mention it.”

Dan grimaces. I have confirmed his prejudices. He says, “Of course not. These guys go halfway around the world while their families go to hell in a hand-basket.”

Julia sticks her head in the door.

“Can’t you stay in your office thirty minutes by yourself?” she scolds me.

“I thought you were having a heart attack in the crapper. Mrs. Chestnut’s been waiting for ten minutes while I’ve been trying to find you.” Julia looks at Dan and shakes her head.

“That’s how Elvis died, straining on the pot. That’s how you fat boys check out a lot of times, you know.”

Dan grits his teeth, pretending to strain. I stand up, trying to remember mrs. Chestnut’s problem. Some kind of contract dispute. I follow Julia into the waiting room for my client.

“Thanks for looking for me.”

She turns and grins.

“It was just an excuse to see Dan . It’s like visiting a preschool every time I go back there.”

mrs. Chestnut is a sweet-looking old lady with oldfashioned puffed sleeves and a floral-patterned skirt that almost touches the floor. Jewelry and pearls give her a nice rich look. Though she was extremely vague about her problem over the phone, she expressed the hope that she wouldn’t have to go to court. I hope so, too. I can’t read a contract without yawning. She sits primly in my small office, and I wish, not for the first time, my furnishings were classier. Judging by her clothes and her address in western Blackwell County, I wouldn’t mind probating her estate.

“An acquaintance gave me your name, Mr. Page,” she says, smiling pleasantly at me. This is the kind of woman who takes a cruise every summer and whose major interest on board is the stock-market report.

Money has a way of announcing itself, even to me.

“Good,” I say hopefully, glad to hear my name is getting around.

“What can I do for you?”

A timid smile comes to her lips.

“I signed up Bernard Junior for spiritual development classes,” she says, her voice delicate and shy, “and I’ve been extremely disappointed with the results.”

Sometimes, I think I’m losing my hearing. This is one of them. What on earth? Bernard Junior must be hooked up with a correspondence course with one of those New Age groups in California. Maybe Dan can enroll, too.

“Is that a grandson?” I ask.

“Absolutely not,” she says, looking me in the eye, daring me to laugh.

“Bernard Junior is a pit bull.”

I fight to retain control of myself. This is a gag Dan and Julia are pulling. The potential for spiritual development in the humans who frequent this office is almost nil. Pit bulls may have a little better chance, but not much. Still, I can’t risk not taking this woman seriously.

She could be loaded.

“I wasn’t aware anyone in Blackwell County,” I say, not believing I’m saying this with a straight face, “gave, uh, pets classes in spiritual development.”

“Oh yes!” mrs. Chestnut says firmly.

“And it’s not for just any animal. Canines only. And then only dogs over five pounds.”

No chihuahuas need apply. She is serious. There is too much dignity in her voice, even if she is totally and certifiably mentally ill, for this to be a lie.

“Who does this?” I ask. Somehow, I don’t see this presumably capitalistic endeavor as a part of corporate America.

“I’ve seen ads for obedience school but never for spiritual development.” Each time I say the words I realize I am close to hysteria. I wish I had the nerve to ask if I could record this interview so someone would believe it.

“Purely word of mouth, no advertising,” mrs. Chestnut says. Carefully groomed, with every hair in place, she is attractive for someone surely in her seventies.

“Not every dog is accepted.”

Woogie probably couldn’t get in. He meets the weight limit, but beyond that, I doubt if there’s much to work with. Undoubtedly, I’m a bad influence on him. I can’t bring myself to take any notes.

“Did Bernard Junior make any progress at all?”

mrs. Chestnut shrugs dejectedly.

“At first he seemed to,” she says, “but after about the third week he was back to his old self, scratching and licking his privates, that sort of business.” With this revelation, mrs. Chestnut wrinkles her nose at the thought of Bernard Junior’s backsliding.

“It was as if he just didn’t seem to think it was worth it.”

I know the feeling. If virtue is its own reward, we need new door prizes. I try to sit as erect as mrs. Chest nut, but no dice. My spine could be stretched on a rack for a week but it would still look as if I were slouching.

She seems to be reluctant to tell me who fleeced her, so I ask, “Were you told what the classes consisted of, or was that a trade secret, kind of like the formula for Coca-Cola?”

“Oh dear me, no!” mrs. Chestnut informs me, a frown of disapproval crossing her face.

“We were allowed to observe the first hour. Unfortunately, Bernard Junior went to sleep during the introductory lecture, but we were told that was to be expected at first.”

As if I were talking to a normal person, I hear myself sympathizing, “I’ve nodded off at a lecture or two my self.” Unfortunately for my clients, law school was one big snooze, which, come to think of it, was full of Bernard Juniors.

mrs. Chestnut complains, “I spent five hundred dollars; and to watch him now, you’d swear he didn’t get a thing out of it. The instructor said sometimes he even kept Bernard Junior in during the exercise period, but I can’t see that helped him.”

Five hundred dollars! That would buy a lot of Puppy Chow. The think method. Right here in River City.

“How many were in a class?” I get the feeling that Bernard Junior might have been the only one to pay tuition.

“Just five at a time,” mrs. Chestnut says.

“Small classes for small minds, Mr. Von Jason said.”

Not in the presence of Bernard Junior, I hope. That would crush a spirit, no matter how many classes he attended. I can’t bring myself to talk about fees.

“Would you like for me to make a phone call and see if I can get your money back?” I’m not putting anything down on paper. As soon as I do, it will probably start showing up on billboards all over Blackwell County as the most elaborate pre-April Fool joke ever played.

Eagerly, mrs. Chestnut digs in her purse and hands me a business card. In script it says:

Canine Spiritual Development By Appointment Only Jason 683-9888

Keeping a somber expression in place (this could be me someday sitting across the desk, I have decided), I dial the number and push the button on the speaker phone so mrs. Chestnut can hear. A male voice, cultured yet friendly, instructs that Jason is busy teaching a class but not to worry: he will call as soon as possible.

I manage to leave my name and number without giggling.

“That was Jason’s voice!” mrs. Chestnut says excitedly.

“He’s always talking in the third person.”

Why am I not surprised?

“Why don’t you call me tomorrow?” I say, standing to indicate the interview is over.

mrs. Chestnut looks disappointed but asks, “How much do I owe you?”

I shake my head.

“If I can get your money back with a phone call, there won’t be a charge.” What am I saying?

I should have told her my fee was two thousand dollars just to get rid of her.

I walk her to the elevators. In the hall she says, “I know you think this is silly, but Bernard Junior is really my best friend. Nobody wants to listen to an old woman. My children are so busy, and all my friends talk about is their illnesses and their children’s divorces, which seem endless, and it seemed the least I could do for Bernard Junior. After all, we send our own children to Sunday school when they’re practically babies, and Bernard Junior is smarter man a lot of children his age.

Would you like me to bring him next time?”

The door opens, and I say hastily, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” All I need is a pit bull attacking clients.

“I’ll call you when I hear something.”

In the reception area in front of a handful of clients waiting for other lawyers, Julia asks loudly, “What’d she want? Unlike your other clients, she seemed harm less enough.”

How reassuring Julia is. You’d make an ideal prison matron, I think, but do not say.