Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion (2 page)

Cunningham sighs and looks at his knees.

“My wife and I told him a million times to stay away from white girls. They’re guaranteed trouble. I saw him in the jail for a little while yesterday afternoon. He said this girl practically attacked him.”

“Had he been friends with her before this took place?”

I ask. With grainy pouches underneath his eyes blacker than the rest of his visible skin, Cunningham looks as if he hasn’t gotten much sleep in the last twenty-four hours. He probably hasn’t. St. Francis County, only thirty miles west of Memphis, is over a five-hour drive from Fayetteville, which is close to the Oklahoma border in the northwest corner of the state.

“He knew her a little just because she was a cheerleader,” he says, smoothing out a wrinkle in his khaki pants, “but he’d had a speech class with her the previous spring, and he said they had worked together some. But that was all until this semester. They have another class together this fall, but he hadn’t talked to her much until the last couple of weeks.”

“Are you sure he hadn’t had sex with her before this incident?” I ask bluntly, guessing their relationship may have more of a history than the father knows. It sounds like date rape to me. If Dade had been warned to stay away from white girls, he might have a hard time admitting he ignored his father’s advice.

Roy Cunningham stifles a yawn.

“I as’t him. He says he didn’t. He says they were studying together at a friend’s house off campus. He said she was all over him from the time she got over there.”

I jot down what he says, knowing there is a lot more to this situation than I’m hearing. If I want this case, I’ve got to give the Cunningham brothers a reason to hire me.

“Has his bond been set?” I ask, wondering what James Cunningham thinks of me. We’ve lived on the same street for years and have barely nodded since Rosa’s death.

When she was alive, we went to a few parties in the neighborhood, but I never felt comfortable around the black males. Too much history and not enough future. I always had the feeling I was on their turf and never felt quite welcome. Still, one on one he seems like a nice guy, and Rosa liked his wife.

James answers, “It’s fifty thousand. I’ve told Roy I’d help him take care of the bond once we got a lawyer for Dade.”

I wonder if James is calling the shots on this job. I wish I had been more friendly over the years.

“Good,” I say.

“The sooner he’s out of jail, the better.” I ask Roy, “Do you know anything about the girl?”

Anger comes into Roy’s voice.

“All Dade had time to tell me was that her name is Robin Perry and she’s from Texarkana. She didn’t even go to the cops until the next morning.”

“It sounds like a classic case of a woman changing her mind after the fact,” I suggest, knowing that this is what the father wants to believe; in this instance it is plausible.

The girl may have decided to scratch an itch and later realized Dade wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Not the end of the world in most cases, but this particular guy is black, which her parents would probably object to and would give credence to the questionable things that hap pen in the Razorback athletic program. In ‘91 there was a major incident in the athletic dorm involving a white woman and four black Razorback scholarship basketball players that is still talked about. No charges were filed because the woman was admittedly drunk and couldn’t get her details straight, but it sent shock waves through the entire state. Who knows? Perhaps Robin Perry had mixed emotions at the time and convinced herself that she had tried to resist. Maybe we can put some pressure on the girl to drop the charge or at least reduce it. What if it had been Sarah? Would she pull a stunt like that? I can’t imagine it.

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Roy says, as his brother nods in agreement.

“Do you know if alcohol was involved?” I ask Roy. It is obvious that he thinks of his son as a victim.

“Dade said he hadn’t had nothing to drink,” he says defensively

“I was thinking the girl might have possibly been drinking before she got there,” I respond quickly, noting this is a touchy area with the father. His problem or his son’s? Alcohol and women don’t make for the greatest combination in the world. I’ve had a few problems in that area myself.

“She could have,” James Cunningham says, his voice sounding like his brother’s. Eastern Arkansas is like Mississippi The Delta clings to your speech like rich soil.

“Even if he did,” Roy says, his voice low and sullen, “my boy never raped nobody. I didn’t raise my son to be a fool! He knows he doesn’t need to force a woman. Just like you said, he’s always had ‘em runnin’ after him.”

I glance at my neighbor, who appears slightly uncomfortable at these remarks. Less sophisticated, or perhaps just more honest, Roy Cunningham isn’t worried about how he is coming across to me. His son doesn’t rape, be cause women line up to go to bed with him. Yet, in truth, he may be right. If women stopped wanting sex, we’d take it anyway. On the Discovery channel last week there was a program on apes in Saudi Arabia. The females seemed so loving and protective, so human. The dominant males were insanely jealous, forming harems of up to twelve females and demanding and getting sex at will.

“You know this is different,” James says to his brother.

“If the girl had been black, it would have been next to the funnies.”

I look up to see a black woman standing in the door way.

“Hello, Gideon,” she greets me warmly.

“How’re you doin’?” James’s wife smiles as if I were their best friend.

Glad for the interruption, I stand up and speak, relieved I can call her name.

“Gloria, how are you?” My neighbor’s wife is an attractive woman. Her almond colored eyes are always smiling, and ever since I’ve lived in the neighborhood she has maintained a willowy, svelte figure. She is a conscientious gardener, and her long, magnificent legs have piqued my interest every spring while she tends the roses, azaleas, pansies, and violets that bloom in the front yard. Today, her legs are hidden by baggy blue slacks. Rosa had always commented on her flowers and if she knew Woogie had shit on them, she’d be livid at me. She only allowed him to defecate in our backyard and handled his turds as casually as if they were leftover breakfast sausages. I gag if they are the least bit soft, but as a registered nurse, she dealt with far worse on a daily basis.

“I’m doing fine,” Gloria says, putting her hands in her pockets.

“How’s Sarah? She’s a sophomore, isn’t she?”

I marvel at how much she knows. I can’t even come close to remembering the names of their children. I used to try harder at this sort of thing. We had deliberately chosen to live in a mixed neighborhood that the block busters hadn’t finished off. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia back in Arkansas with a wife of mixed blood, I was going to make the old sixties dream of racial harmony come true in Blackwell County, the socalled “civilized center” of Arkansas. Had I been mat naive? Obviously so.

“She’s staying busy. In addition to cheerleading for the jayvees, she lucked into a good job at the university this summer working for a sociology professor who’s got a big grant, and she’s still working part-time for him some this fall.” I wonder at this arrangement. Sarah is gorgeous and friendly and utterly unqualified to do more than run a copy machine. Dr.

Birdseed, or whatever his name is, probably hasn’t employed a male in years.

James clears his throat. His wife has interrupted for long enough.

“How much longer are you going to be?”

she says to him, her voice now businesslike, even cold.

Husbands and wives. He mumbles something I don’t pick up. She nods and smiles at me.

“Tell Sarah hello for me.”

“Sure,” I say, sitting down as she leaves the room.

Whatever transpired, I’m apparently not being invited for dinner. I’ve forgotten that couples develop their own code. Rosa could give an entire lecture on almost empty leftover food containers by raising her eyebrow and sighing in her dramatic Latin way. I’m surprised that Gloria is not included in this conversation. She works in the federal district clerk’s office and knows more lawyers than I do. Yet, she didn’t even acknowledge her brother-in-law.

Maybe they don’t get along. The message I got was that she’s spent years civilizing James; Roy and his family are a lost cause, and she’s not real crazy about her husband putting up the bond. But that’s reading a lot into it. Family dynamics are usually unresolved mysteries. I think of my only sister, Marty, who lives less than an hour north of here: we haven’t seen each other but one time in the last year. History alone ought to bind us, but somehow it always ends up getting in the way.

I continue to ask questions, but I don’t get much more information about the incident. Roy got up there too late to have a normal visit. He mostly tells me about Dade and can’t keep the pride from his voice as he describes his son’s athletic ability.

“A recruiter from Michigan told me when Dade was in high school there were wide receivers in the pros who didn’t have his speed and hands. I should have sent him up there, goddamn it. There would have been enough women there to keep him happy.”

Black women, he means, I realize. The Ozarks are good for chickens but not cotton, with the result that historically few blacks have resided in the northwest corner of the state, a fact that rival recruiters probably don’t overlook in their pitch to young men in their sexual prime. At six feet two and two hundred pounds, Dade has always gotten his share of attention from white girls, his father assures me.

“I told him to leave ‘em alone,” he repeats, shaking his head.

“With the shit that’s happened up there, that’s just looking for trouble.”

I know what he means. Every few years there seems to be a major incident involving Razorback athletics. Yet Roy must know that as important as the Razorbacks are in the scheme of things in this state, you can’t expect them just to stay cooped up in their rooms all year and only be let out on game days.

“Was he home this past summer, or did he stay in Fayetteville?” I ask, wondering again how well Dade might have known the girl. Despite his father’s injunction, this might have been a lovers’ quarrel that got out of hand.

“I had him home working in the store,” Roy says, edging forward on the couch.

“He didn’t want to be there though.”

I can understand why a twenty year old spoiled rotten by the special life of the big-time college athlete wouldn’t want to go home to share a room for the summer with his siblings in one of the poorest counties in the Delta. Sarah didn’t want to come home either. My feelings were a little hurt, but I tell myself I understand.

She’s got her own life to lead, and it doesn’t include pre tending she’s fourteen again, which is the age she claims I treat her as if she’s home longer than a weekend.

“He sounds like a real good kid,” I say, meaning it. What did the other lawyers promise him? I don’t know enough about this case to talk about it. I would brag about my success in rape trials, but I don’t have but a couple of out right acquittals in this area. Most of these cases plead out without going to court.

“He’s a hell of a good boy,” Roy says, his voice flat, as he looks down at his watch. He has at least a two-hour drive ahead of him. Outside, he has a Ford pickup that looks ten years old.

“Is he doing okay in school?”

“Right on schedule,” his father informs me in a mono tone. He seems about to stand up.

“He’s not just up there to play football. We want him to graduate.”

I’ve got to say something quick or I’m going to lose him.

“I can see the possibility of getting this worked out,” I say, more decisively than I feel.

“The plain truth is that the Razorbacks need Dade more than he needs them.

This is our best start since Ken Hatfield took them to back-to-back Cotton Bowls when they were still in the Southwest Conference. Dade is too important to the offense simply to kiss off the rest of the year without a very good reason, and the football program has been down too long to pretend this year isn’t crucial. My recollection is that when the incident occurred in ninety-one involving the basketball team, it was right before the NCAA tournament and none of the players got punished until after it was over. That was a year we thought we had an excel lent chance to go to the “Final Four.” He hasn’t been kicked off the team yet, has he?” I ask, recalling that the article in the paper said neither the university nor Coach Carter had any comment, but the matter was being investigated.

“If Carter has the discretion to keep him on the team, maybe he can finish the season. If we can talk the girl into dropping the charge or, in the worst-case scenario, get the prosecutor to allow us to plead to a reduced charge and get probation, all he’d have to worry about is any disciplinary action by the university. And then he could threaten to turn pro and skip his senior year. That ought to keep any punishment by the school to something reasonable. All that really happened the next year to the players in the ninety-one incident was that they had to sit out a few games at the start of the next season.”

Roy Cunningham looks at me respectfully for the first time.

“The school hasn’t said nothin’ about him being off the team, as far as I know.”

“Well, we need to get busy as soon as possible,” I say, trying to apply a little pressure.

“How much can you afford to pay?”

Roy steals a look at his brother.

“Five thousand dollars,” he answers quietly.

“If my wife and I hired you, when can you start?”

Five thousand dollars for a case involving as much work as this one will is chicken feed but the publicity alone will be worth it.

“Immediately” I say, deciding on the spot not to tie my representation on the rape charge to a deal to represent him on a pro contract as his agent.

Something tells me that this may have already been tried and failed.

Without looking again at his brother, Roy nods.

“That sounds good to me. Let me go call my wife, and I’ll be right back.”