but beggars can’t be choosers.
Bruton is on the spot. If the prosecutor isn’t worried, why should he be? It’s not as if Chapman has been charged with an intentional act or is likely to get drunk and run out and shock another child. Shaking his bald head in disbelief, Bruton folds quietly.
“If you’re willing to live with that recommendation, it’s fine with me. Let’s set this for a hearing so we can move on.”
I nod at Bobba, who is surely following direct orders from Jill Marymount. Is this a sop to the black community or what? I suppose this is Jill’s way of saying to blacks that this charge is nothing personal. Obviously, she hasn’t done her self any favors politically by charging a black male with a Ph.D. Blacks constitute about twenty percent of the population in Blackwell County, and it’s not as if there is an assembly line somewhere in Arkansas turning out minority doctoral candidates.
“Your Honor, “Bobba says, how about Monday morning?”
Bruton goes through the pretense of consulting his docket.
He can bump traffic cases any time. He looks at me but does not condescend to speak after our most recent exchange. He won’t permit me to believe, nor should I, that I have had anything to do with the outcome of this hearing. He has acquiesced in a low bond in spite of, not because of, my representation.
“What time?” I ask, more to force him to speak to me than needing to know the time. Bruton will make it the first order of business so Bobba can get back to misdemeanor court.
“Nine o’clock Monday. Court’s in recess for ten minutes,” he rasps indistinctly. We are like children who have to have the last word. He rises, and still without looking at me, departs for his chambers.
As soon as Bruton shuts the door behind him, Andy shakes his head at me and says quietly, “Gideon, don’t ever raise the issue of race again while you’re defending me.”
This instruction seems a little dramatic. I assume he is pissed because of my motion that Bruton recuse himself. I do not want to admit that it was done on the spur of the moment and out of spite. I sit down next to him so I can whisper.
“You have to keep a bastard like Bruton honest or he’ll run over you the entire time.”
Andy picks a piece of dirt from his jumpsuit. He is not fooled.
“We’ll talk about it later,” he says calmly.
“The prosecutor saved me some money.”
Instead of having to use a bail bondsman, my client saves himself five hundred dollars by putting up a cash bond. Where is he getting his money? If Bruton had jailed me for contempt, I’d be there until Labor Day; in contrast, Andy has forked over more money than I’ve made all summer. While we were waiting for his hearing to begin, he agreed to pay me a $5,000 retainer and $100 an hour. With any other client charged with causing someone’s death, I’d be suspicious as hell. The criminal defendants I’ve represented don’t seem the type to join the Christmas savings club at their place of employment. As I wait down in the jail for Andy to change, I wonder about his instructions not to raise the racial issue in his case. Where does this guy think he is? Throughout the proceeding, he sat as erect and proud as a king, even a bit detached from it all. Arrogance won’t do at all in front of a mostly white jury in this case. The girl was white. I don’t want him to beg for forgiveness; but he will have to warm up, or they won’t give a damn.
Andy’s clothes, now that he is out of his jumpsuit, should be badly wrinkled, but he manages to look as if he has stepped out of an ad for L. L. Bean, as fresh as a sprig of mint. He is wearing a tailored olive-green suit over a Hathaway canary-yellow shirt and a gold-and-green tie. As we walk upstairs from the jail, I notice for the first time an attractive white woman waiting for us by the door that leads back into the courtroom. I need no introduction. Olivia Le Master, as poised as a high-fashion model, looks just like her real estate ads. She is a tall, lithe woman with permed black hair that reaches the collar of a white blouse. A green peasant skirt comes to her ankles. On her feet arc a pair of white Birkenstocks. Though she is too flat-chested for my taste, I think I could make an exception.
Her gray eyes, framed by dark eyebrows, seem puzzled.
She asks Andy, “I missed it, didn’t I?”
His eyes are on the reporters who are waiting at the other end of the hall for him to come out the front door. I have already advised him to make no comment. He says softly, not looking at her, “Just barely. Why don’t we talk later?”
Following his gaze down the hall she nods and steps inside the courtroom before the media sees her. I find it extraordinary she is anywhere within ten miles of this courthouse.
The nightmare it must bring back to her! Yet why shouldn’t she be supportive? Andy was willing to try to help her child-perhaps the only professional willing to try something out of the ordinary. If I can persuade her to testify for him, she can be his ticket to an acquittal.
“That was the child’s mother,” Andy says coolly, adjusting his tie as we begin to walk toward the front door.
“I’ll introduce you later.”
Almost immediately, we are engulfed by the media. My favorite. Channel 11’s Kim Keogh, is here this morning. I have never seen her in person before, but she is even more gorgeous than on camera. All the other women reporters on television look as if they can barely hold up their heads because of all their makeup, but this woman looks as natural and friendly as a three-month-old cocker spaniel. Rainey, who watches the news more than I do, insists that Kim Keogh wears plenty of makeup but that it is so skillfully applied you can’t tell. I hope she is the last one to interview me. I’d like to get to know her. As I expected, I get questions about my motion that Judge Bruton disqualify himself; but I refuse to be baited into divulging anything that will get me into further trouble, saying only that it is the appearance of bias that I alleged. If I had any guts, I’d tell them that Judge Bruton has been swapping racist jokes back in his chambers for years.
Instead, I defuse the issue as best I can. With one client to my name, I don’t need to have the reputation among the judges that I’ve become a troublemaker, even though it is common knowledge in the bar that Bruton is an ignorant fool who has no business on the bench.
I get my wish. Kim Keogh is the last television reporter to approach and asks if she can have a brief interview with me. The others, women and men alike, have come on in their questions as though Sam Donaldson had just dropped by their studios for a pep talk, but Kim is almost laid back despite being dressed to the teeth. She is wearing a hunter-green suede jacket over a fall-length burgundy skirt. Her white blouse is one of those rayon jobs with the buttons at the back of the neck. Her dry-cleaning bill alone for this outfit probably cost more than my J. C. Penney suit. While her camera man is fiddling with her equipment, she asks me if I am the attorney who defended the man who shot Senator Anderson. Flattered beyond all reason to be remembered by her, I tell her that was my fifteen minutes of fame. Even her questions while the camera is on are more about me than the case, and I manage to get in that I have just gone into solo practice. I notice she is wearing no rings on the fingers that are holding the microphone in front of my face and wonder if I have the nerve to call her. It probably will depend on what she says about me.
After the interview, breathing her perfume (she smells faintly of magnolia blossoms), I ask, “How’d I do?”
She gives me a dazzling smile and says under her breath, “If this gets on the air and brings you any business, you ought to buy me lunch.”
I need no farther encouragement.
“It’s a deal,” I say, wondering if she has noticed my bald spot yet. If she was in the courtroom, she couldn’t miss it. The back of my head is beginning to look like a giant sand trap. She can’t be more than thirty, but maybe she likes the mature type. After Rosa died, I decided that I wouldn’t embarrass myself by asking out a woman more than a decade my junior. Like most of my good intentions, that didn’t last long.
As Andy and I watch her walk out the door with her cameraman he observes, “I wish all interviews were that friendly.”
Andy, I’ve noticed, doesn’t miss much. I force myself to look at him and pretend it was all business.
“You’re going to need all the friends like that we can get.”
He nods soberly.
“Would you like to go somewhere and talk to Olivia now? I know she wants to talk to you.”
“Sure,” I say, wishing I had known she was coming. If this case is going to be pre tried in the media by the
