to be modest.
“Tell me briefly what happened, so I can get a bond hearing and get you out of here.”
Chapman, also watching the same pair of hands, says softly against my ear, “It’s pretty complicated. Did you read about the girl at the Human Development Center who was electrocuted a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yes,” I say instantly. I can’t let go of the contrast to my daughter: Sarah, whose Colombian mother, now dead, was a product of a sublime mix of Indian, Spanish, and Negro blood, is stunningly beautiful, with curly coal- colored hair.
My daughter, an almost spooky replica of her mother, is Rosa’s exact height, five feet four, and has the same lush figure. The child at the Blackwell County Human Development Center, severely retarded (I can only imagine what she looked like), had mutilated herself by constantly hitting her face. My recollection of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article was that her death involved an attempt to stop the self-mutilation. I am not particularly religious (although I was raised a Catholic and got through a Catholic boarding school), but I remember offering up a prayer of gratitude for my daughter’s wholeness.
“Wasn’t that an accident?” I ask, still watching the hands on the bars. Prom time to time I can see a woman’s chin.
“Of course it was!” Chapman says emphatically, his voice a boom box in the narrow hall.
“But I’ve been charged with manslaughter.”
I lean my head back against the wall, trying to recall the maximum length of sentence. Fifteen years. Shit! Well, that will show you do-gooders. Must be some kind of crusade from the new prosecutor, Jill Marymount, the first woman ever to hold the office in Blackwell County.
“Do you know why?” I ask, my question as innocent as a first-grader’s.
The digits on each side of a middle finger which is now sticking out between the bars of the window peel back, and a hoarse voice cries: “Sit on this, mothafuckers!”
Crinkling his brow in apparent distaste. Chapman seems, behind his glasses and beard, truly offended. I doubt if he has ever been in jail. He appears much too disapproving.
“That woman ought to be in the state hospital,” he observes.
“Can’t we talk about this later?” he asks, his deep voice as plaintive as a farmer’s prayer to end a drought.
For the first time, the full face of the female prisoner comes into view behind the bars. She appears insane, her white hair shooting in all directions, and I recall that prisoners who are obviously ill are kept closer to the jailers’ cage in the front.
“Of course,” I say and stand. What do I expect to get from this man right now?
“Have you got some way to make bond?”
As Chapman rises, the old woman pleads, “Get my black ass outa here, white boy! I can’t stand it any longer!”
I look at my watch, wondering if I can get a bond hearing this afternoon. Chapman, his voice anxious but assertive, says, “And I can pay your fee, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I shrug, pretending nonchalance, but no words have sounded sweeter today. Yet if he works for the state, he can’t be too loaded. Maybe he’s on contract.
“I’ll see if I can get a hearing this afternoon.”
Chapman releases so much air in a sigh he seems almost to shrink.
“I’d appreciate that.”
As I turn to leave, he grabs at my sleeve.
“Do you have a card?”
I suppress a groan, knowing I must get this over with, before I waste any time on this case. I look him in the eye, hoping I’ll know how to put this.
“This is my last day at Mays amp; Burton,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“I’m in private practice as of this moment.”
Against the background noise. Chapman studies me for a long moment. Fuck those bastards. He’s my client, I think, wondering what else I should say to convince him to stay with me. Finally, he says, “Good. You’ll have plenty of time to work on my case.”
For the first time all day, I smile. “That’s one way to look at it,” I say, virtually admitting that I was fired. Yet, as I go upstairs, I feel confident. He wanted me, not Mays amp; Burton. It’s a good feeling.
2
Upstairs I look for the municipal court prosecutor to deter mine the possibility of a bond hearing this afternoon. A bailiff advises me he is winding up a trial and should be available in half an hour, and I walk across the street to the county courthouse and take the world’s slowest elevator to the third floor.
The Blackwell County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has undergone a major change since my entry into private practice. About six months ago, Phil Harper, who had been the head PA during my brief legal career (I didn’t go to law school until the ripe old age of thirty-seven), accepted an appointment to fill an unexpected vacancy on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and a woman from his staff was appointed to fill his place. A woman for this traditionally male job initially seemed a dubious selection, but the choice has proved astute in these days of voter sensitivity to family is sues. Jill Mary mount has turned the office into a crusade against domestic violence, a favorite concern of the media, since the Supreme Court struck down a statute giving civil courts broad powers to punish husbands who abused their wives.
I know Jill only slightly. While I was at the PD’s Office, she was assigned to juvenile court. Outer Mongolia for an ambitious assistant prosecuting attorney with political aspirations. After Phil finally allowed her to begin handling felonies, she quickly made her reputation with a string of highly publicized child-abuse prosecutions. And when he resigned, Jill, only two years ago virtually unknown, became the obvious choice to break the male stranglehold on the position of prosecutor.
However, it is not to Jill Marymount’s office that I go.
“Is Amy Gilchrist in?” I ask the receptionist at the prosecutor’s office. Of fifteen assistant prosecuting attorneys in the office, Amy is the one I know best. While I was making my own modest reputation as a public defender in the case that has brought me Andy Chapman as a client, I learned to trust Amy, who seemed to be Phil Harper’s favorite. If I approach her now before the case heats up, she can tell me what the political climate is like inside Jill’s shop. Specific information about Chapman’s charge can wait a few minutes. I want to get some idea of how much this case means to Jill Marymount. I think Amy will tell me, if she can.
“You can go back to her office, Mr. Page,” the receptionist tells me.
“She just walked in.”
Flattered to be remembered by a woman I now see infrequently, I smile and make my way back to Amy’s office and find her returning a stack of law books to the shelves that line the hallway.
“Gideon!” she exclaims and gives me a quick smile, her eyes as mischievous as ever.
“How’s the ambulance-chasing business?”
Some women make you glad to be alive. Amy is one of them. Dressed in royal blue from head to toe, Amy’s firm, compact presence radiates a soothing cheerfulness. Despite an occasional flare up in the courtroom when I was going against her regularly at the Public Defender’s office, we re main good friends.
“As of today, it’s a one-man act,” I say, following her into her office and shutting the door behind me. Her office is filled, as usual, with pictures of her parents and five older sisters, and now, obviously, some nieces and nephews. No photograph of Mr. Right. Still in her late twenties, she has plenty of time. Briefly, I explain my situation, sounding, I hope, more cheerful than I feel.
“So have you come to apply for a job?” Amy asks, tilting back in her chair that always seems to swallow her.
The question takes me by surprise. I have never considered working this side of the street. Why not? It is not a point of honor, or is it? I do not think of myself as a crusader for the proverbial “little guy” (whoever that is), but that is always the side where I end up. I lean forward and rest my arms against her desk.
