the floor. I yawn, hoping Sarah won’t retail this all over St.
Michael’s. The way gossip spreads, when I wake up Father Curtis with the earnest pop eyes and bad breath will be standing over me, administering the last rites. I can’t stop yawning Good, sleep. Blessed sleep.
19
I am awakened out of a fuzzy dream by the sound of the telephone ringing in the kitchen. I was dreaming I was in a boxing ring, and my opponent (some guy I don’t recognize) kept hitting me after the bell. Stiff as Sheetrock, I limp into the kitchen, remembering that Sarah said she and Chris were going to McDonald’s after Mass. Did I tell her I was driving to Hot Springs this afternoon? I can’t remember.
“Hello,” I say, clearing my throat, my raspy voice more a moan than a greeting.
“Gideon,” a female voice says, “it’s Kim Keogh. Did I wake you?”
Guilt feelings for not having called her rouse me from my lethargy. If she’s calling to give me some hell, it’s just another chicken coming home to roost. I look down at Woogie, whose own expression seems downright scornful. You deserve this call, jerk. “Well,” I say, my tongue seeking out the hole where my tooth was, “I had to get up to go to Hot Springs this after noon.” Go ahead and ream me out. I’m leaving anyway.
Her voice is soft, almost a whisper.
“Have you got a minute
Mournfully, I run my fingers over my wrecked face, yet grateful I still have one. How did my nose survive? Last night when it was being ground into the tar of the parking lot, I was certain it would be in the shape of a pretzel this morning.
She still wants to go out with me! Maybe she thinks I’ll die this time.
“Sure,” I say.
“I’ve been meaning to call you.”
There is a pause as if she is filing this lie away for future reference.
“I have a proposition for you,” she says finally.
“Want to hear it?”
This is amazing, I think. I’ve treated her like shit, and she’s going to invite me over for lunch. Maybe I can eat with a bag over my head. I’m not up to competing with the movie stars on the walls of her apartment today.
“I’m all ears,” I say, a little cocky, thinking this isn’t too far from the truth.
The left one, at least, feels the size of a small boxcar. Even as bad as I feel, I’m all for being propositioned.
“I’ve got some information that can affect your case, but if I give it to you and you can use it,” she says, her voice firm and steady, “I’ll want you to agree that when the trial is over you and Andrew Chapman will give me an exclusive interview on camera.”
I try to think what she could possibly have. I can’t imagine.
“You’re asking me,” I complain mildly, “to buy a pig in a poke.” I’m not anxious to make this kind of bargain.
Since I’ve been in private practice, I’ve tried to be friendly to all the reporters who cover the courts. Free advertising is the best kind.
“Besides, I can’t bind my client without talking to him anyway.”
Kim, not a subtle negotiator, asks, “What about you?”
After last night I’m not as eager to jump in headfirst.
“Let me talk to Andy first,” I insist.
“He’s the kind of guy who would regard this as a form of reverse blackmail if he’s not handled right.”
Kim sounds as young as Sarah.
“Are you serious?”
I shift from my right to my left leg. Even my hips are sore.
“You claim to have useful information but won’t part with it without a price,” I point out delicately.
“But I suspect most of us would regard this as a part of the American free-enterprise system.”
Her voice frosty, Kim retorts, “It’s my professional duty to try to get a story nobody else gets.”
I try flexing my knees to ease the pressure on my spine, wondering if I might need to go to a chiropractor. The media, God bless it, have perfected the maxim that the ends justify the means. Surely, if most reporters made a decent living, the general public would hate them as much as it hates lawyers.
“How come you can’t break this on your own?” I ask, changing the subject. If I hurt her feelings too much, I’ll scare her off.
“I can’t confirm it,” she admits.
“If this is just a rumor, I’ll get sued for libel.”
Ah, it might be about Olivia, I realize. I’m getting an appetite. Still searching for a painless position, I lean back against the kitchen wall.
“It’s your station they’d be interested in suing.”
Kim, perhaps sensing my interest now, asks, “You want to come over about seven if you’re back from Hot Springs?”
I look at my watch. It is only noon. I’ll have plenty of time.
“Sure,” I say, “but you’ll have to disregard my appearance. I’ve been going through a second childhood recently and have acquired a few nicks since you saw me last.”
Guessing, Kim says pleasantly, “Somebody beat the shit out of you, huh?” Her voice contains no hint of surprise, as if she expects lawyers to brawl.
Embarrassed, I admit, “Something like that.” I guess she doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out the damage middle-aged men can do to themselves.
After I hang up I immediately dial Andy’s number but get no answer. I wonder if he is at church. Do psychologists believe in God, or has Freud shamed them out of it? I’ll try to reach him later, I decide, and stumble toward the bathroom to see if I can shave without screaming.
As I reach the outskirts of the tourist town of Hot Springs, a torturous two-day stage coach drive in the 1840s but only an hour’s drive to the northwest from the house this afternoon, I think that it would be an interesting, even exciting, place to live-over a century ago. In the 1880s rival gambling interests shot it out on Central Avenue; Al Capone sedately walked the streets in the 1920s. Along Central, the main drag, illegal gambling flourished alongside still viable attractions such as Bath House Row, the Arlington Hotel, and first-class horse racing at Oaklawn Park. And all along the way, showbiz people as bizarre as Phineas Bamum’s midget, General Tom Thumb, trooped into town over the years for the purpose of entertaining luminaries as diverse as Yankee Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman and Helen Keller. How could Baptists have so much fan? It apparently got to be too much for the state, for in the 1960s, under the administration of the so-called black-sheep Rockefeller brother, Winthrop (though he had more integrity and compassion than many of us wanted), Arkansas’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, the state police conducted a series of late-night raids, confiscating slot machines by the carload, and suddenly, after a century of notoriety and excitement, Hot Springs, left with only its natural beauty and legalized horse track, became respectable and now confines itself to the normal appetites of more typical small-town corruption and tamer tourist entertainments such as I.Q. Zoo, the Alligator Farm, and the Mid-America Museum.
In ten minutes I am standing in front of the door to Charlene Newman’s apartment and am presumably separated from her by only the length of a security chain. I got her number from the telephone company, and less than two hours ago called her and told her the truth-that I am a lawyer in a criminal case in which her ex-husband is a witness and needed to drive over and talk to her in absolute confidence.
She said okay, but now that I am here, if this is Charlene Newman behind the door (my introduction of myself has elicited no response), she is having second thoughts. Perhaps it is die neighborhood that invites such caution. It is in a seedy, cheap part of the downtown area. The hallway in her apartment building is dimly lit, dirty, and is as confining as the inside of the corroding, stained gutter that runs along the outside roof. After almost a
