Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion (3 page)

He goes out of the room, followed by his brother, and I am left to think about this case. I am probably in over my head. If the university decides tomorrow that Dade will be kicked off the team and even out of school, what can I do that will be worth a pitcher of warm spit? I am just remembering that in 1978 Lou Holtz, when he coached the Razorbacks, applied the socalled do-right rule, and kicked three black starters off the team who had been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct involving a white coed in the athletic dorm. The university was promptly taken to federal court by two of the state’s most famous civil rights lawyers to get the players back on the team in time for the Orange Bowl against Oklahoma. I can’t remember the details, but they didn’t succeed, and yet the Razorbacks went on to crush Oklahoma 31 to 6, which was poetic justice in the eyes of many white

Arkansans. It seems to me the players weren’t even charged. The story was, as usual, the Razorbacks. Why did James suggest me? There are plenty of lawyers who have bigger names and more resources. As a solo practitioner, I’m going to have my hands full. Yet, why look a gift horse in the mouth? This case could lead to a whole new career.

While I am pondering these questions, Roy returns and tells me that I am now representing his son. Ten minutes later I am escorted to the door, having promised to drive to Fayetteville in the morning after I see a client. In return I have commitments from the Cunningham brothers for my fee and bond money. I need to think, and I drive north twenty-five blocks across town to a junior high school track that attracts dozens of joggers and walkers, most of them upscale whites from the neighborhood. I’ve fantasized for years that I would meet one of the women who come here, but it never happens. Some are very attractive, but I never quite manage to start a conversation that gets beyond the weather. Many of them are twenty years younger, and I look like a cardiac victim after ten minutes on the track, which may have something to do with it.

There is a good crowd tonight, and I stretch my muscles out on the grass of the football field inside the track while gawking at a blonde in pink spandex who is circling the track at a six-minute clip. Although I was a distance runner over thirty years ago at Subiaco Academy, a small Catholic boarding school in western Arkansas, I would be hard-pressed to stay even with her tonight. At five feet eleven, I am carrying saddlebags that could take a packhorse across the Rockies. If I were able to knock off fifteen pounds around my middle, I’d be in a position to work out seriously.

As I begin to run, I replay the conversation with the Cunningham brothers and wonder whether I’d be any different if I had a son. How can a man believe his child has committed the crime of rape? Yet, Roy is obviously more comfortable with his son’s sexuality than I am with Sarah’s. Dade Cunningham has to beat women off with a stick. I’d be livid if I found out Sarah was involved with her professor. It happens. Lawyers with clients, doctors with patients, teachers with students. Dominance. Control We love to call the shots. A form of rape, I guess. I think of those Saudi apes. The females bent over and sub missive. The penises were startling in their resemblance to ours and brutal as jackhammers.

I build up some speed, but I can’t catch up with the blonde tonight. Twenty-five yards ahead of me, she is running easily, her hair swinging behind her in a ponytail. I pass an old man who must be in his seventies. Not an ounce of body fat on him, but he is running in slow motion. He winces at me as if to say it doesn’t matter how much care you take of yourself: the genetic clock in side your body is ticking away like a time bomb. If aliens are looking down on the track, they must be scratching their heads. Why would any sane species chase each other around and around until they nearly pass out?

I glance at my Timex. If I step it up a bit, maybe I can catch up with the blonde. As she rounds the curve by the goalposts on the east end, her long legs scissor the air.

Sweat streams off my face like water cascading over a spillway. I am gaining on her, but my breathing is becoming ragged, and I can barely see. I pull to within ten yards of her. From the rear she looks great. Fantastic legs and ass. There is something about women who run. It is as if she senses someone is chasing her and she picks up the pace. As I come to the curve at the west end, a sharp pain grabs my side and suddenly I feel weak. Only five yards separate us. My eyes seem about to swim out of my head, but I squint to see the outline of her left breast on the curve. Packaged by the spandex, it looks magnificent.

She could be a model working out. I accelerate and am within two yards of her when my stomach turns over. I feel about to throw up. Immediately, I pull up and step off the track into the football field. Have I given myself a stroke? I put my hands on my hips and slowly make my way across the grass toward the bleachers on the north side. You idiot, I think to myself. What was I going to do if I caught up to her? I wipe my eyes with my shirt and realize I could have killed myself. My stomach feels better but my legs are wobbly.

As I cross the track to ascend the bleachers to the only exit, the blonde passes in front of me and is every bit as lovely in full profile as she appeared from behind. Fully focused on maintaining her long stride, she doesn’t even glance in my direction. She doesn’t know I’m alive.

“Hey, Gideon! You look terrible!”

Still half blinded by the sweat pouring off my head into my eyes, I look up toward the stands and see grinning at me my old friend and fellow lawyer Amy Gilchrist. We keep bumping into each other. First, classes in night law school, then she was in the prosecutor’s office while I was at the public defender’s, and we had some cases against each other. Now she’s in private practice, a grunt just like myself, hustling for cases and hoping the bills don’t come in all at once. I stagger across the surface of the track toward her. Her right leg is stretched across the metal railing that separates the bleachers from the track. She bends at the waist, making her torso parallel to her leg. Amy is short, compact, and cute as a but ton. If I weren’t almost twenty years older, I would have hit on her somewhere along the line in the last four years.

“If you were any more subtle, Gilchrist,” I say, wiping my face with my arm, “you’d be mistaken for a blow torch.”

Amy touches the toes of her Nikes, a feat I haven’t managed in years. Dressed in short shorts, a T-shirt that advertises a 10K race in Hot Springs, and spotless shoes, she looks damn good.

“You looked like you were chasing that blonde,” she says, nodding with her chin toward the east end of the track.

“But she was too fast for you.”

I climb the concrete steps and collapse on the first row beside her.

“Everybody’s too fast for me,” I say, too tired to lie.

“You need some water,” she says handing me the plastic container beside her.

“And your hair looks like it’s been electrocuted.”

Instinctively, I feel my head. My hair is mashed up on the sides and I smooth it down. My bald spot feels like the size of a crater on the moon. I must look like a jogger from hell. No wonder the blonde speeded up.

“Gilchrist, how have I been coping without you?” I say, taking a swig of water from the blue jug. If she is worried about germs, she shouldn’t have offered.

“Obviously not very well,” she says humorously, her eyes on the runners passing in front of us.

“I’ve been waiting for years for the opportunity to straighten you out, but you’ve never called me.”

I cut my eyes at her to see if she is serious. Amy is the kind of woman who is so likable and friendly she seems as if she is flirting with every man within ten yards of her.

Reluctant to invest too much in this conversation, I banter “I’ve always been afraid I’d have a heart attack and you wouldn’t try to revive me.”

Her blue eyes, round as two dimes, twinkle mischievously.

“It would depend on how you did. You’re not that old.”

I take another pull at the water. We are having quite a randy chat for friends.

“Aren’t you still a Holy Roller or whatever?” I ask rudely, but wanting to know. Over a year ago through an odd combination of circumstances I saw Amy at a service of the largest fundamentalist church in Blackwell County. I was in attendance as part of my preparation for defending a murder case; Amy was there apparently because she wanted to be. My girlfriend at the time had astounded me by joining the church, causing irreparable harm to our relationship.

“Nope,” she says, apparently not offended. She smiles.

“I’m still searching though.”

“Aren’t we all?” I respond tritely, but relieved. My own search is a little closer to home. For the most part I gave up on religion after Rosa died of breast cancer.

“So, your place or mine?” I kid, forcing her to be serious.

She giggles deliciously.

“Aren’t you still seeing Rainey McCorkle?”

Some women love to flirt if they think you’re safe.

“Rainey and I could never work things out,” I say truth fully.

“We haven’t gone out in months.” Occasionally, she phones to ask about Sarah. Sometimes, I hear a wistfulness in her voice, but basically, she has decided she needs to find a man with fewer warts. For my part, I want someone who needs fewer certainties.

Amy removes her leg from the rail and gives me a dazzling smile as she heads down the steps to the track.

“Well, give me a ring sometime.”

“I will,” I call after her, deciding to break my selfimposed vow not to go out with women as young as Amy. Since they haven’t exactly been lining up outside the house, it has been an easy pledge to keep. I decide to go home, though I’ve hardly worked out. If she compares me with some of the guys circling the track, she could easily change her mind.

After a shower I put on a pair of pants and a T-shirt and call a much younger classmate who graduated law school with me from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Barton Sanders is the only lawyer I know in Fayetteville.

Most graduates migrate to the center of the state, but Bar ton moved to Fayetteville to take advantage of a real estate operation that was already thriving under his father-in-law. Rich and well connected. Barton is a dye ding-the-wool Hog fan and may be able to help me jump start this case if he is willing. Though we are not close, we were friends in law school and I have been by to see him a couple of times since Sarah has been in school at

Fayetteville. His wife calls him to the phone, and I tell him I am representing Dade Cunningham.

“No shit?” Barton exclaims, his voice high and reedy as usual.

“That’s incredible!”

I ask him to fill me in on what he has heard. Although he is excited to be in the loop, it turns out he doesn’t know much more than Roy Cunningham.

“It’s like there’s a news blackout at the university—while they stew about this thing. The girl’s father is a big Baptist,” he says, supplying me with one fact I didn’t have.

“Lots of money. The girl is a looker, too. Have you seen any games this year?”

“Only the one in Little Rock,” I answer, delighted there have been no announcements that Dade has been suspended. The fact is things have been so slow lately that I haven’t really been able to afford the trips this year to Fayetteville, but I don’t let Barton know it.

“Do you have any idea how well Coach Carter would react to a phone call from me? I want to slow this down before they make any decisions that would be hard to reverse.”

“Let me make some calls, and I’ll find out,” Barton volunteers.

“I know a couple of guys who know him pretty well. Carter’s the type of guy who might be willing to talk about this, but I bet he’s getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups to drop him from the team. The old do-right rule. With all the crap in the past, this is a real PR problem for the school.”

“I know,” I concede, “but Cunningham’s the difference between the Sugar Bowl and another .500 season. All I want to do is talk to Carter. I’ve read that he sticks up for the players.” Years earlier Dale Carter had brought Houston a couple of almost undefeated seasons but had a problem with the bottle and got run off. He dried out and had been coaching quarterbacks with a number of teams when Jack Burke, the Razorbacks’ athletic director, tapped him in the spring to revive the team after a number of bad seasons.

“He does,” Barton agrees.

“In his interviews, he always says he knows what it’s like to be down. I’ll see if I can get his number. It’s probably unlisted.”

“Thanks, Barton,” I say.

“I appreciate it.”

“I’m always glad to help a real lawyer,” Barton says slavishly.

“Barton, you make more in a day than I make in a month,” I remind him. Barton (who was advised by our trial advocacy professor not even to try crossexamining a dead dog because he got so flustered in class), has the kind of mind that can trace a chain of title practically without pencil and paper. I could have five computers working night and day and never get a parcel of land back further than three owners without becoming hopelessly confused. The last time I saw him he had on a Rolex and a gold ring that ought to be locked up in Fort Knox. The metal on my body couldn’t even buy me lunch.

“Don’t kid me, Gideon,” he says.

“I read about you in the papers. You’re the real thing.”

Why discourage him? If he wants to believe what he sees on the tube, that’s his problem.

“Whatever you can find out,” I say, “I’ll be in your debt.”

“No problem,” he says, his voice rushing on to another topic.

“Here’s something that might help. Did you notice this case was actually filed by the assistant prosecuting attorney, a kid by the name of Mike Cash? Our prosecutor is on vacation for three weeks in the wilds of Canada.

There’s a feeling that Mike should have waited until Binkie Cross got back in town to bring this kind of charge. There’s a rumor going around he has a sister who was raped and he’s got an itchy trigger finger when he comes to that kind of crime.”

This is welcome news. There is nothing to say that a charge can’t be dismissed. I thank him and hang up so he can get on the phone. While I’m waiting, I call Sarah to let her know I’ll be coming up tomorrow. She answers on the fifth ring and sounds sleepy. It is only seven-thirty.