Suddenly, I get it. Somebody has contacted his boss, who has put him on a leash so short his feet don’t even touch the ground. I’d go to the judge, but there’s nothing in the rules of criminal procedure that says I’m entitled to see the file five minutes after the arraignment.
“What if Dade agreed to give you a statement this morning? Can’t I at least read what the girl said?”
Cash, his face stiff as poker, says, “Mr. Cross will be back in forty-eight hours. You’ll have to talk to him.”
I look at a picture of his wife or girlfriend on his desk.
Young and pretty, like him. Ordinarily, I could work up a little sympathy for him but not today. His rashness has caused all kinds of trouble.
“I thought he was going to be gone another week,” I say, not bothering to hide the contempt for this kid I’m beginning to feel in my panic.
Coach Carter can’t wait two more days. He probably is feeling too much pressure already.
5
I stand up.
“Let’s go, Dade,” I say, trying to get out of here before my tongue gets the better of me. Cash is humiliated enough already. Anything I say will get back to Cross, and I don’t want to alienate him before I’ve had a chance to talk to him. Cash shrugs, knowing he can’t very well protest my lack of cooperation.
I find a phone and call Carter in his office and explain what has happened. He doesn’t seem as upset as I thought he would a sign, I’m afraid, that he has already made up his mind, or that somebody has already made it up for him.
“I’ll have a statement out about Dade’s status before practice this afternoon,” he says curtly.
My fears are confirmed.
“It still doesn’t change the facts. Dade’s innocent until proven guilty, and that’s the way the system ought to work on campus as well.”
Carter pauses as if this statement is so naive that he won’t dignify it by responding.
“I’ve got to get off,” he says abruptly and hangs up.
In the Blazer, driving back to the campus, I try to put the best gloss on things I can.
“I don’t think he’ll take away your scholarship until the case is tried. The worst he’ll probably do is suspend you from the team.”
Dade looks out the window on Dickson Street at the D-Lux. Best cheeseburgers in Fayetteville. I spent many pleasant hours drinking beer there my senior year. He says glumly, “I might as well transfer.”
He still hasn’t got it in his head that he may be transferring to the Arkansas State Penitentiary next semester.
Yet, it’s better that he not get depressed. He won’t be any help, and I will need all I can get before this case is over with.
“Don’t start getting your head down, Dade,” I warn him.
“If you start acting like you’re guilty, that’s what people will believe. I can’t have you acting all down-in the-mouth in public. Even if things don’t go our way at first, we’ve got to keep fighting. I think eventually you’re going to be cleared. If it takes a trial, so be it. Next year this time will just be a bad dream.”
His attractive face still somber, he asks, “Do you really believe that?”
I stop at the light at the intersection of Arkansas and Dickson at the edge of the campus. Hell no, I don’t. If he weren’t black, I might. How many blacks in Arkansas have ever won a rape trial involving a white woman?
None that I know of. The best thing we can do is to keep this case from going to trial. And while that’s possible, it seems like a long shot.
“Sure I do,” I lie glibly.
“It doesn’t really matter what Coach Carter does today. You and I are in this for the long haul.” If by some stroke of luck this case has a happy ending, I hope he remembers that. I let him out at the jock dorm after getting his promise to keep his mouth shut and to call me as soon as he hears from Carter.
I head back downtown to Barton Sanders’s office. This is the kind of case where insiders have a distinct advantage. I know there are attorneys up here who have represented athletes, and I need to pick their brains. I suspect, however, they have more to do today than spoon-feed me on how to help my client.
Barton can be counted on to be behind his desk on Mountain Street, just a block from the courthouse, and I am received without a wait. Extending his small, pudgy, ink-stained hand to me, he asks immediately, “Did you get hold of Carter?”
I sit down across from him, my eyes already glazing over at all the abstracts that surround him. How does he read this stuff day after day?
“We met last night,” I say, and bring him up to date. Barton listens wideeyed as a child. Clearly, this is what he would like to be doing in stead of getting filthy rich. At my request, he makes phone calls to three attorneys who have represented jocks in either disciplinary proceedings with the university or criminal cases. Typically, nobody is in his office. You can never find a lawyer when you need one, I think glumly. I should have gotten Barton to call one of these guys night before last, but my ego told me I didn’t need any help. I ought to call Roy Cunningham and punt this case. I don’t know what I am doing. Worse, I don’t know where to start.
Over lunch at a cafe two doors down from his office, I ask Barton, “Are there some more buttons I should be pushing?”
Our waitress is an elderly woman who takes our order and kids with Barton, an obvious regular. After she leaves, he says, “I think you’re stuck for the moment. I wouldn’t want to be Carter right now for love or money.
He’s got to dump his best player on the eve of the Tennessee game. What I’ve heard in the last twenty-four hours is that if he leaves Dade on the team, he’ll be crucified. Five years ago maybe he could have gotten away with it; now, it’s a different ball game. The talk is that the university got such a black eye after the ninety-one incident that it can’t afford to do nothing. And since Dade’s already been charged, that makes it ten times worse.”
I am eager to talk, but a client of Barton’s comes over, and invites himself to sit down and proceeds to discuss some land transaction near Beaver Lake for an entire hour. Barton looks at me apologetically, but he must be on this guy’s clock, because he pays his client the same rapt attention he gave me in his office. Finally we escape, with me somehow stuck with the check. I catch up with Barton on the street, thinking I am out of my league up here.
“I’m really sorry,” Barton says sincerely, his warm puppy eyes moist in the bright noontime glare.
“There’s a few million dollars involved on this deal, and I couldn’t blow him off.”
A few million. Is that all?
“He wasn’t worried about confidentiality,” I mutter, although I couldn’t understand a thing they were talking about. I’d still be trying to pass the real property course if Barton hadn’t tutored me. Of course, I helped get him through trial advocacy. Hardly tit for tat, given our incomes now; but if he thinks he owes me, I won’t discourage him.
“He probably thought you were an associate and were charging the firm,” Barton says, laughing, as we return to his office. While he picks up his messages, I marvel at all the wasted space. He is by himself, and yet he has a small office building all to himself. On the walls are photographs of the area including Beaver Lake, the President’s retreat for a couple of days his first summer in office, and numerous aerial shots of the Ozarks. Knowing Barton, I suspect he is trying to figure out a way to buy northwest Arkansas for himself and his clients and lease it to the rest of the state.
One of the pink slips is from a lawyer Barton called to help me, and from his desk he gets him on the speakerphone, explaining who I am and what is happening in Dade’s case. I have never heard of Bliss Young, but then, I doubt if he has heard of me.
After a few inane pleasantries, I blurt, “Is there any body I should be calling? What should I be doing now?”
