the muffins; now, you knock me out of a great referral. What kind of friend are you?”
I begin to make notes of my conversation with Olivia on a yellow legal pad.
“If she’s set Andy up,” I say, “we wouldn’t be friends long.”
Clan, reverting to an old habit, wipes his face with the bottom of his shirt, a button-down pink pinpoint Oxford.
“So your guy’s guilty as hell, huh?”
I laugh, continuing to write. Clan is shrewder than he looks.
“He swears he’s not,” I say. Since early this morning an idea has been cooking in my brain.
“You know any lawyers in Benton who would check out Leon Robinson for me? I remember he testified at the probable cause hearing that’s where he’s from.”
“The aide who let the girl go?” Clan asks, a puzzled look peeping through the fat around his eyes.
“You think Olivia paid him to let go of her daughter?”
I shrug, throwing down my pen. It isn’t much of a conversation.
“I’ve got to start somewhere, don’t I? The trial’s less than four weeks away.” I did not ask for more time at the bond hearing, thinking the longer Jill Marymount has to poke around in this case the worse it will be.
Lost in thought, Clan, exposing his throat, looks at my ceiling. If he ever needs an emergency tracheotomy, somebody better have a whale knife. Finally, he says, “Let me work on this for a little bit. I went to school with a couple of guys who ended up in Saline County. Maybe Leon was promised some money instead of your client.”
The phone rings again. This time I don’t hand it to Clan, who seems permanently encamped in my office. It is Andy.
“I’ve just been fired,” he says, his voice discouraged. He had been told to report to David Spam’s office as soon as the hearing was over.
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” I say, drawing an imaginary knife across my neck for Dan’s benefit. Actually, I suspect if he wasn’t black, Andy would have been fired after he was charged with manslaughter. David Spath could only do so much for him. “Are you going to be able to make it to the trial?”
His voice a whisper, Andy says, “I’ve got all my vacation pay coming.”
“Good,” I say, shaking my head in wonder at my client’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of money. I couldn’t ask for any more if I were representing a cocaine dealer. Yet Jill has surely already checked to see if Olivia has transferred money to Andy.
“I’ll call the psychology board and tell them you’re voluntarily giving up your license until this is resolved. I don’t want them investigating this too, right now.”
“Whatever you think’s best,” Andy says, knowing the noose is being tightened.
“I think we need to do that. There’s no sense picking another fight right now.” We had had an informal deal with the board that it would not act against Andy until after the original criminal charge was disposed of, since David Spath had assured them that Andy would be permitted no professional contact with the residents at the Blackwell County HDC until after the trial. Now, with a charge of murder, we can’t very well expect the board to act as if nothing has changed. We arrange a time for him to come in tomorrow after I tell him about Olivia’s call.
“She sounded supportive,” I say, trying to cheer him up. Olivia had not come to Andy’s bond hearing, although I couldn’t honestly blame her. Talk about a media circus! With a case promising the revelation of secrets involving interracial sex, big bucks, and murder, what else can I expect? Kim Keogh had been there, her beautiful eyes silently accusing me of the worst sin a man can commit: I have never called her back. She had tried to be tough in her questions, but she is fundamentally too nice to be a good reporter, even for local TV, which doesn’t expect much except a nice hairdo. My conversation with Andy fizzles out. Being fired takes the wind out of whatever sails you have left.
As soon as I put the phone down, it rings again. Finally, Clan pushes up from his chairs to leave.
“Gideon,” Mona Moneyhart says, her voice brimming with disapproval, “I had to pretend I was a reporter for People magazine in order to get through today.”
I motion for Clan to sit down again and push the speaker button so he can hear. If I have to listen to her, he should too.
“Mona, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come over to the house.” Grinning happily, Clan collapses back into my chairs, a cheek on each one.
“Didn’t you and your daughter like the muffins? I made them from scratch.”
Clan whispers, running his fingers across my desk.
“I bet she did.” Even now, my eyes begin to tear as I imagine the ingredients.
“They were delicious,” I say weakly.
“Gideon, your little daughter is just precious! But you’re gonna have to watch her like a hawk. Girls her age are hideously promiscuous. It’s just so obvious she needs a mother.
Why haven’t you remarried? That’s the least you can do for her. Don’t you think she deserves a mother?”
His hand over his mouth, Clan begins to laugh uncontrollably, making a sound like a lawnmower motor trying unsuccessfully to start.
“Uh, uh, uh… uh.”
“What do you want?” I ask. I watch Dan’s red face as he begins to choke. I hope he dies.
“There’s no way I can live on two hundred dollars a week child support. I just can’t do it.”
Clan pulls out a handkerchief and mops his face. He has begun to make little hooting sounds.
“We’ve had this same conversation three times. He’s paying more temporary support than the child-support chart requires him to. His lawyer thinks he’s a fool.”
“He is a fool!” she begins to cry.
“What are those horrible sounds you’re making?”
I point to the door and Clan staggers out, his whole body shaking.
“Talk about fools,” he mouths as he goes out.
18
The sound of clicking billiard balls is the first thing I hear when I enter the Bull Run, which is only ten miles from the Blackwell County Human Development Center. The Bull Run is apparently one enormous room, with enough floor space to work on a 747. To my left, all in use, are six tables surrounded by almost as many women as men, which tells me I haven’t been in one of these places in years. Most every one, fat or thin, is dressed in denim, shod in cowboy boots, and hatted in Stetsons or baseball caps. Directly in front of me is a large dance floor (the two-step and Cotton-eyed Joe obviously require more space than the postage-stamp-sized dance floors of the clubs I’ve frequented over the years) and a vacant deejay booth with so much hardware that it looks like Mission Control in Houston. In front of the pool tables are over a score of mostly empty Formica-topped tables, each with a full complement of canvas-backed chairs. It is still a half hour before nine, so the dancing, which is advertised in foot-high red script over the Bull Run front door as “The Best Country in Central Arkansas” has not yet commenced To my right a brunette with a head of hair almost down to her tiny waist is bending over a shuffleboard table as she lines up a shot. The thumb and forefinger of her right hand encircle a blue-and-silver puck. She runs the disk back and forth over the smooth blond wood, which has been made slippery by sawdust, and then it flies from her hand, hitting nothing in the process and dropping off the end of the surface into the trough that rings the wood.
“She-it!” she exclaims to her opponent, an older guy who could have posed (with a little work on his gut) as the Marlboro Man in the old TV commercial.
As I head for the bar, the jukebox by the shuffleboard table begins an old favorite from my brief country music period:
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. Even her fast songs (and this isn’t one of them) seem to me slow and sad. A small plane could take off and land from the bar, and so, to avoid standing out in this still sparse crowd of about six drinkers, I plant myself on a red-cushioned stool toward the end nearer the entrance. Since it is a
