Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause (2 page)

Still, it was a living and held out the hope of something better down the line. Now I know I should have checked them out better. Yet, at the time I was under some pressure to get out of the PD’s Office. “If you want to drop by later this afternoon,” Oscar mumbles ‘we’ll have your personal items from your office boxed up at the front desk.”

I’ve had it.

“You run a class act, Oscar,” I say, letting Martha precede me out his door. I give him a look of pure hatred. I hadn’t realized until now how much I have sucked up to the partners. It feels good not to have to smile anymore.

Oscar’s face turns the color of a bruised peach, but he doesn’t have the nerve to respond, and I don’t blame him.

Thirty seconds later, unemployed for the first time in my life, and beginning to realize it, I am standing on the side walk in front of the Blair Building, as stunned as a witness to a bomb blast. I look up at the eighth-story windows, wondering if this is a bad dream. Martha is inside, presumably still crying in the bathroom, where she fled after leaving Oscar’s office. At least she has a husband. Where am I going after I leave the jail? I don’t have an office anymore. Dr.

Chapman, whoever the hell he is, will be impressed with his new lawyer. Well, Doctor, actually I’m practicing out of my car these days. Those bastards at Mays & Burton! American capitalism at its best.

As I cross the street at Chase and Fry, heat radiates from the pavement as though someone had poured on gasoline and ignited it. Central Arkansas in the summer is a twenty-four-hour steam bath. By the time I walk the four blocks to the municipal courts building and to the jail housed beneath it, my nicest shirt, an Egyptian broadcloth with burgundy stripes, is clinging to me through my undershirt like wet toilet paper. Fortunately, I didn’t see a single person I knew on the streets, since everybody with an IQ over 7 is standing over a vent in their offices, wondering why I’ve chosen to stagger around outside in the middle of the afternoon in 101-degree heat.

At the window inside the municipal courts building (which has all the charm of a bus station, someone has spilled a bag of popcorn on the scuffed marble floor), I write down my home address, obtain a red attorney’s pass, and clip it to the lapel of my sports coat. As I wind around the maze of offices toward the stairs that lead to the jail, I try to compose myself for my first interview in solo practice, but my mind is still in Oscar’s office, as I tell him what I think of such shabby treatment after over a year of busting my balls for him and his firm. The fuckers—I hope they never win another case.

At the rate they’re going, it’s not an idle thought.

It is only when I enter the secured part of the jail that my mind snaps back to the present. Instantly, I have my old feeling of claustrophobia as I approach the window. As a former Blackwell County public defender for a couple of years, I am no stranger to this facility, which, unlike other detention facilities in the county, has always given me the creeps. It is like being confined in a small pen full of attack dogs: too many angry people (cops, prisoners, detainees, drunks, persons with mental illness, and lawyers) compete in too small a space simply for a place to exchange information.

It is the constant noise that puts me on edge. I’ve never heard anyone speak in a normal tone.

Though I haven’t been gone from criminal practice that long, I recognize none of the jailers on this shift. Jailers don’t exactly get to be a defense lawyer’s best friends, but there is no sense in alienating them unnecessarily. I know some lawyers who spend hours waiting for their clients. I doubt if it is by accident.

“You’ll have to talk to him on that bench,” a pudgy black guy who comes to my armpit tells me, pointing with his chin to a gray wooden structure in front of us. He must be one of the civilian jailers. Why hire a rookie, spend all the money and time to train him, and stick him down in the jail to dispense medications and serve food? It only took us a couple of millennia to figure out the economics of it. “We’re out of space again.”

The new jail is under construction, but it isn’t the sort of job there’ll be a lot of overtime on to get completed. Not a real sympathetic constituency, as a friend at the PD’s Office used to say. I don’t argue, even though a federal case could probably be made of it. If this guy’s a doctor, I should have him out on bond this afternoon. I sit down on the bench and wait, feeling absurdly pleased. I have forgotten how much I missed criminal law.

In two minutes Dr. Andrew Chapman appears before me in a bright orange jumpsuit, and I almost keel over in amazement he is black. I didn’t have a clue from his voice, a wonderful, deep baritone. One thing is for sure: Chapman is not from the eastern part of the state, the Delta, where I grew up.

“I’m Andrew Chapman,” he says, holding out his right hand, which swallows mine, though we’re the same height at just under six feet.

“Sorry about the bench,” I tell him needlessly, sitting down. Some guys look rumpled in a brand-new tailored thousand-dollar suit: Chapman, on the other hand, is the type who can look good in a prison outfit. In his early thirties, I estimate, a decade younger than myself. Chapman has a lean, muscular body with no stomach (he’ll have one when he’s my age), a neat, carefully trimmed goatee, and reading glasses pushed down low on the end of his nose, all of which combine to make him look like a young Ed Bradley from “60 Minutes.” The resemblance ends there. My potential client has none of the world-weariness of Ed, who is beginning to look as if he has crossed too many time zones. De spite his apparent youth, and despite this setting. Chapman has the dignity of a much older man. Sitting erect next to me on the bench, he says quietly, “Aren’t you the lawyer who over a year ago got off with a light sentence the man who murdered the state senator?”

I watch the cell bars in the window across from us as a pair of black hands grips them. From here I cannot see a face, but the fingers wrapped around the metal look feminine. In front of our bench the place is a zoo, with prisoners and their keepers passing back and forth, making it hard to hear.

“Yeah, that was mine when I was at the public defender’s,” I whisper, pleased that the Anderson case still has some mileage. It was a famous case at the time, getting me my job at Mays & Burton. Hart Anderson was perhaps on his way to becoming governor of Arkansas when he was shot down in his own home by a man who was being treated for mental illness by Andersen’s wife. The plea bargain I worked out for my client, a delivery man for a food-catering service, was, under the circumstances, almost a case of blackmail, but this is not the time 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 & 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 & Burton. It’s a good feeling.

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.