process.
“Yettie supposedly used to have a thing for your client,” she says, “but apparently he wouldn’t give her the time of day.”
I watch as some teenage boys who don’t look old enough to shave pull up to the red light in a 280 Z and then scratch off.
“Why wouldn’t he?” I ask, thinking I know the answer.
“She’s attractive, young, and available. At least she wasn’t wearing a ring.”
Rainey snaps her spoon against the table, splintering it into two jagged pieces of plastic.
“What you mean is that she’s got a figure that would wear out the elastic in your jockey shorts.”
Somebody has given Rainey a good description of her. I dig into my yogurt. “If a woman that good-looking were to come on to me…” I say, letting my voice trail off.
My friend takes her napkin and wipes her mouth.
“It doesn’t take much to set you off,” she says.
“Maybe she just wasn’t his type.”
An M amp;M goes down the wrong way, and I launch into a fit of coughing after I say, “I think he’s the type who likes white women.”
Rainey watches me unsympathetically as I hack until I think I’m going into convulsions.
“That sounds so racist. I thought you were married to a black woman yourself. Is that how you choose women by color?”
Her voice is sharp, even hostile. I wonder what I have said that is so offensive to her.
“Not particularly, but some white women, for example, prefer black men,” I say, trying to defuse the subject. “It’s just a matter of taste.”
Rainey sniffs, as if this subject is far more complicated than my simple-minded statement implied.
“Anyway, he has never even asked her out once and it pissed her royally, ac cording to my sources.”
I try one M amp;M at a time.
“Have you heard any rumors about my client and Olivia Le Master?”
“No,” Rainey says irritably.
“You know, I might as well get on your payroll.”
I wish I could afford her. On the way to her house to drop her off, I get Rainey to promise she won’t breathe a word of what I’m about to tell her and then give her the whole story.
If I am violating any of Andy’s confidences, then so be it. I would trust her with my life. We pull up in front of her house and sit in the dark in the car until I finish.
“Do you think there’s a chance anything funny could have been going on, or was it just an accident?” I ask.
Rainey sits with her back against the door of the Blazer.
Apparently mollified that I have told her about the case, she says, “It’s all too problematical. If that aide who was holding her hadn’t let go, Pam wouldn’t have been electrocuted.”
My eyes have begun to adjust to the darkness. I respond with my latest theory, “Unless he was in on it, too.”
Rainey snorts, “You’re beginning to sound like those people who still write books about the Kennedy assassinations.”
I grin in the darkness, yet I am serious. Ever since the Hart Anderson murder, I see conspiracies everywhere.
“Well, what do you think happened, based on what I’ve told you?”
Rainey opens her door, and the dim, dirty car light comes on, causing her face to appear harsh and prematurely old.
“It sounds like a tragic accident to me, but I know I think that your client should never have shocked that child!”
Her tone is almost shrill, on the verge of being out of control. Why is she so mad? I wasn’t the one who used a cattle prod. Irritated, I shoot back, “Hindsight doesn’t take much courage. If she had been your child, wouldn’t you want somebody to try to give her as normal a life as possible?”
Rainey fairly yells, “Not that way, for God’s sake!” She pushes open the door and takes a deep breath.
“I guess I’m just tired, Gideon. I’m sorry.”
Tired myself, I take her at her word. “That’s okay,” I say.
She must be getting her period. Poor women.
“I’ll call you this weekend and let you know how my date goes.”
“Fine,” she says shortly, and I wait until I see the light in her house go on before I drive off. It is a bad sign that Rainey’s reaction is so unsympathetic to Andy. Other than being much more liberal, Rainey shares many of the characteristics of the average Blackwell County juror: a middle-aged white female who has at least one child. If she thinks that Andy is in trouble, I suspect he is. I wish I knew the guy well enough for him to level with me. But maybe he has.
Can’t a black man try to help a white female without everyone thinking that sex is involved?
I turn into my driveway and walk into my stale, hot house.
Woogie stretches but does not get up to greet me as I turn on the light.
“The dog days of summer,” I say to him. He makes a squeaking sound that I take to be assent. I drink a beer and go to bed.
12
Kim Keogh’s apartment (only two blocks south of Rainey house) is much smaller than I had imagined and quite a bit funkier, too. In fact, it appears to be hardly more than a one-room efficiency. Maybe there is a bedroom, though from the couch where I am sitting I cannot identify which door leads to it. On the wall behind me, on each wall actually, are blown-up pictures of old-time movie stars: Marilyn Monroe, dark Gable, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, William Holden, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, but also current ones like Robert Redford, Cher, Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, and my favorite, Michelle Pfeiffer.
We managed to do nicely at dinner-a seafood place on the Arkansas River, where she considerately declined my invitation to order lobster and instead had catfish and salad.
She talked mostly about herself (which is fine with me, since in the back of my mind I am worried she will try to pump me about Andy’s case). Despite Rainey’s snide comment about how well she conceals her makeup, she is gorgeous-beautiful blond hair and the longest natural eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a human. She is sitting encouragingly close to me on the couch, which is so slick it seems inevitable that we slide toward each other.
“I was going to be a model,” she says, sipping on a glass of white wine while I drink beer, ‘but I wanted to do something really meaningful with my life, you know what I mean?”
“Sure.” I nod, thinking that her ambition to be a TV anchor would be judged, when the big meltdown comes, hardly to have qualified, but there is no doubt this woman takes herself quite seriously. And for all I know, she may be the next Barbara Walters.
She is wearing a jade cotton jersey dress that comes modestly below her knees. There is something touching to me about ambitious women who are in fields where they are required to rely on their looks. She has said enough for me to realize she has enormous doubts about herself, and with good reason. She seems to sense that it is only a matter of time before someone notices a few wrinkles that can’t be hidden-and asks her to start filling in on the 6 a.m. farm show. I find myself giving her a pep talk about how much she has achieved already.
“Half the women in Arkansas would switch places with you in a New York minute,” I tell her.
“You’re beautiful, poised, and talented. What else do you want, for God’s sake?” I do not add intelligent, because it is apparent she is probably below average in this department which will probably be her professional death.
For this rhetorical question, she has already thought about an answer. She crosses her legs and balances
