Time's Witness (65 page)

“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?”

Walking back to my table with a friendly wave at Yarborough and Molina, I found Nora seated there alone, drinking a glass of wine in an exhilarated state. She smiled at me. “What was that, a drug bust?”

“You heard of Yalta. The Council of Trent. The Treaty of Versailles. Well, that was the Treaty of Pogo's Urinal. Where's the Fat Man?”

The green tilt up of her eyes lifted even more. “Cuddy. Isaac Rosethorn's amazing. You know who just walked in here and asked
to talk? Neil Sadler and the attorney general. The attorney general! They want to discuss a nolo contendere plea from George. To second degree. They’ll drop murder one right now.
If
we don’t put on a defense.”

I sat down.

“Right!” she said. “And the thing is, Isaac knew it was coming. He was
waiting
for them.”

“What about Mitch Bazemore?”

“He wasn’t with them.”

“Right.…So much for a pure conservative heart.”

When I asked Nora if the State had given any reason for its sudden generosity, she said they’d given a lot of reasons. “But right now I bet Isaac's in the D.A.'s office making them eat dirt over the
real
reason.” With a downright violent gleam of victory in her eyes,
she pulled a sheaf of papers from her new briefcase. The top one was a list of witnesses subpoenaed by Isaac Rosethorn for the defense in S. vs. Hall 2179 N.C. It was a long list. It included Purley Newsome, Lana Pym, Sergeant Charles Mennehy, Assistant D.A. Neil Sadler, Mr. Dyer Fanshaw, Warden Zackery Carpenter of Dollard Prison, and the lieutenant governor of the state of North Carolina, Julian Dollard Lewis.

She laughed from pleasure. “
God, I love him.
So, what do you think he's going to do? Bargain them down to voluntary manslaughter for a nolo contendere?”

John Emory strode inside Pogo's and tapped his watch at me. I pulled out Nora's chair and handed her her briefcase. “Honey, nothing on God's occasionally green earth is going to make that old man give up a chance to make a speech to that jury.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It's late, and it's Friday, and we’re all hot and tired, and we’re all ready to go stretch out somewhere with a glass of something cool. I need to sit down and get off this bad leg. And I know you twelve good people would love to
stand up.
And get off those hard chairs!

“So I’m going to keep my opening remarks as short and lean as a fat old Southern lawyer can manage. Not as short as the prosecution would have liked. Because they didn’t want me to make any opening remarks
at all!
They didn’t want you to hear any defense
at
all!
They wanted George Hall to come back in here this afternoon,
throw up his arms, and say, ‘All right. I’m not going to argue with you. As long as it's not
death
, give me whatever you folks decide on in a back room, and I’ll go along.’ Well, by God, they don’t know George Hall, and by God, they don’t know me!”

The thunder of Isaac Rosethorn's baritone rumbled up through the sixteen handsome chandeliers hanging from the forty-foot ceiling of the court. At the sound, people stirred in the long tiered rows of seats. This was what they’d come for. The grand old man, putting on—according to today's
Hillston Star
—“his last defense.” Hands in his rumpled jacket, his dark, deep eyes glittering, slowly he walked from George's side across to the table where District Attorney Mitchell Bazemore sat stiff as a rod, his cheeks flushed, and where Assistant D.A. Neil Sadler sat with the same bland smile
that was on the face of the assistant attorney general, who now sat beside him.

“No, sir. They don’t.” Isaac leaned over Mitch, shook his head sorrowfully, then slowly limped, the shoe on his weak leg scuffing the floor, all the way back—past Nomi Hall motionless in black, past the press table where Bubba Percy grinned as he wrote, past Miss Bee Turner at her desk, and old Mr. Walkington at his recorder, past a whole row of rapt Haver law students—all the way back to the jury box, where he quietly placed his hands on the rail. Isaac looked at each face in the box. Gave each a solemn nod. Women. Men. Blacks. Whites. Lindquist, the school principal, who was foreman. The elderly farm widow who’d stopped turning her shoulder on the black man seated beside her. Mrs. Boren, who never let go of the purse in her lap. Isaac sighed. “And, ladies and gentlemen, if the prosecution thinks that, they don’t know
you!
If they think you have sat here these long weeks, sacrificing time and convenience and money, sat here and not
cared
whether you heard George's side of the story or not, then they have sadly misjudged the citizens of Haver County. Haven’t they? I’ve been with you day by day for weeks now, and I’ve seen the earnest, hard-thinking diligence with which you have accepted the sacred duty placed upon you by this great state. The duty to well and truly try this case, to seek the truth, to find it, and to judge it!”

“The old hypocrite,” I whispered to Alice MacLeod, beside me in a side row. “It was just noon today when
he
asked the judge to render a directed verdict and throw out the case.”

“The jury probably doesn’t know what a directed verdict is,” Alice whispered back, as she struggled in vain for a comfortable position. She was pregnant now, and starting to complain about a variety of dissatisfactions—from indigestion to heat rash to her husband. Eventually, she gave up, mumbling as she left, “Justin and this little bastard got me into this and what do they care? I’ll see you at Trinity tonight.”

I sat there deciding they must already know the baby was a boy; would anyone call a
girl
baby a “little bastard”? So I missed the next few Rosethorn sentences. I doubt anybody else did. Every seat in the huge courtroom was filled, and silent, although it
was
late—quarter
to four—and afternoon sun streamed in hot yellow light through the western windows. Court hadn’t even reconvened until 3:30, because until then all the counsels had been sequestered first in the D.A.'s office, then in the judge's chambers. What they’d been doing in there was anybody's guess. I sure couldn’t figure it out, and hadn’t had a chance to ask. One thing was clear. The trial wasn’t over. As far as Isaac was concerned, it was probably just beginning.

Zeke Caleb had stepped into my office half an hour ago and said, “You wanted me to let you know—well, Miss Bee's downstairs now, calling court to order.” I’d been talking all afternoon with agents from the FBI, SBI, and the ATF, while off in the holding cell the Carolina Patriots and their lawyer screamed about the exorbitant bail set by Judge Dolores Roche. His argument that she’d used “reverse racial discrimination” against those heavily armed white supremacists hadn’t gone down too well with a black female New Deal Democrat like old Dolores.

When I’d slipped through the side door into the first row of the courtroom, Shirley Hilliardson was already giving a lecture to the jury, the details of which, as Alice had deduced, they didn’t seem to be following too closely. He explained to them sternly that he was overruling the motion that a directed verdict be entered for the defense. At that point, Isaac stood and calmly took exception to the ruling. “So noted,” said the judge. Then he stroked the side of his hawk's nose awhile, then he announced with no more affect than if he were reading a phone book, that counsel for the State had instructed the bench that, at this juncture, on the basis of the evidence, the prosecution no longer wished to seek the death penalty against the defendant, but was prepared to accept a verdict of guilty of murder in the
second
degree.

The news ricocheted around the room like the loud frantic flutter of birds trying to escape. Some spectators cheered, some hissed. Reporters ran outside for phones. I thought, well, damn, Isaac did agree to the nolo contendere, and I was surprised by how much the fact disappointed me. But then, slow as molasses, the old man strolled up to the bench, and Sadler, the assistant D.A., ran up there after him. While they talked, Judge Hilliardson nodded a few times, the twist on his blade of a mouth indecipherable. After both
sides returned to their respective tables, Hilliardson rapped his gavel to quiet the fluttering. “I take it then, Counselor,” he said to Rosethorn, each word sliced through that sharp mouth. “The defense does not rest?”

With his hand on George Hall's shoulder, Isaac shook his white mane of hair. “Your Honor, that is correct. The defense will offer evidence against the charge of murder in the second degree. Or indeed, in
any
degree.”

My breath rushed out. He was going to fight.

But what had happened then at the bargaining table? Last I’d heard from Nora, the A.G.'s deal was “second degree” in exchange for
no
defense.

“Are you prepared now to make an opening statement, Counselor?”