Time's Witness (11 page)

At 2:30, I met the shift in the squad room where Zeke had sat Newsome down in a front seat. I went over some routine business, then said I wanted everybody to listen hard for any rumors about Klan rumblings, any talk connected to the Hall reprieve. “We don’t want another Trinity Church incident, okay? It makes Hillston look bad, it makes you and me look bad. Now, one last thing before I turn you loose to fight off crime and Christmas shoppers.”

Then thirty police officers, eight of them women, sat soberfaced at their plastic desks while I wrote “A, B, C” on the blackboard. “This, girls and boys, is a pop quiz. Question: Harassing folks
because they’re different colored and better educated than you is something (A) the police do? (B) assholes do? (C) nobody in this room had better ever do again? I’d like Officer Newsome to step up here and check off the right answer. Purley, I’m gonna give you a hint: don’t pick ‘A.’”

Purley Newsome—good-looking if you like big, dumb blonds— slumped surly and thick-faced down in his chair.

I said, “Purley, we have just talked a Haver student, whose car registration you apparently mistook for your chewing tobacco, and whose papa happens to be a
judge
, out of filing a million-dollar suit against you for false arrest. We finally beat him down to one condition that seems downright mild-mannered considering early on he was asking for one of your
ears.
One condition. You’re going to eat that speeding ticket for dessert. Zeke, give him the ticket.”

Newsome laughed, but stopped when nobody joined in. “You’re crazy out of your skull, you think that,” he spluttered and pushed back hard in his chair.

“Well, your other option is to resign. I’ll certainly understand, and be willing to accept your resignation.”

He just stared at me, shaking his head like a truculent bull. I gave him a silent count of ten before I yelled, “
Then get the fuck up
here, you prickhead!
”

That brought him to his feet; bullies are suckers for bullying. But he stalled and took a high tone. “I’m not sinking down to your level.”

“You want to clarify that, Purley?”

“Regarding your verbalization.”

I smiled. “How ’bout this: I’d appreciate your coming up here, Officer Prickhead—before I rip that badge off your fat shirt, and shove your fat ass through the goddamn window!”

“You’re gonna be sorry” was the best he could do, when he slouched past me over to Zeke.

“That's harsh,” I said. “I’m glad you warned me.”

Not a soul cracked a grin while Purley balled up the speeding ticket, crammed it into his mouth, and stomped back to his seat, his cheek bulged out like a blowfish. I saw him spit it out in a trashcan when he left, but I didn’t push the point; at least he used the can.

After I dismissed the squad, Zeke shook his head. “That black boy from Kingston, his daddy didn’t say a word to me about suing us for a million dollars if Purley didn’t eat the ticket. He was pretty mad though.”

“Right. And when the city comptroller, Otis Newsome, comes down here in a hissie about me harassing his baby brother, you tell him we’re just lucky Hillston didn’t get slapped with another mess like the one he hushed up when Baby Purley told that seventeen-year-old girl he’d tear up her traffic violation if she’d do him a ‘personal favor.’ Okay? Remind Otis of that.”

“Yes, sir.” Zeke frowned uneasily. “You mean you made that bit up about the judge's suing us to scare Purley?”

“Truth is a mountain, Sergeant. Sometimes you got to drive up on a windin’ road.”

“I guess.” He didn’t believe it for a minute, which is why when Nancy White asked him if he thought she was a little overweight, he said, “’Bout eleven pounds.”

A few minutes later, Zeke knocked at my office and stooped under the doorsill. “Mrs. Brookside here for you, Chief.” He stepped back as she came in, looking at her like she was a kind of flower he’d never seen. Lee was wearing a lilac wool suit with a blue and gold necklace. Light Carolina blue, about the color of my shirt and new tie.

I said, “Hi, Lee—”

She said, “Hi, oh, don’t get up,” and hurried to a chair before I could get out of mine. “You see,” she nodded, “you were wrong. Governor Wollston did reprieve George Hall.”

“Well, every decade or so, I’m wrong about something.”

We stared at each other, both of us, I think, trying to look past a stranger to find the person we’d seen there years ago. Then she tilted sideways to glance at the poster behind me, and laughed. “Elvis! I remember you loved Elvis. And, oh, who was that woman singer?”

“Patsy Cline.”

“Right. Patsy Cline. Country.”

“Like they say, ‘when country wasn’t cool.’ You liked Johnny Mathis.”

“Did I?”

“Um hum. I told you it wouldn’t last.”

I studied her studying my office, and wished I’d put away the sweaters and cleared off the Styrofoam coffee cups and all the crumbled candy bar wrappers that had missed the basket. When I get nervous, I talk. While she wandered around the room, I heard myself sounding like a tour guide in a hurry for lunch. “And that chess set's from Costa Rica; see, the pawns are peasants. When I left there, I gave a guy my car for it. ’Course, you never saw my car. And that plaster bust up here's supposed to be genuine Rodin, according to this street vendor in Paris who sold it to me for ten dollars.”

“Oh, Cuddy.” Lee's laugh didn’t sound familiar, and I wasn’t sure if I’d forgotten or she’d changed it. “I tried to imagine,” she put down one of the bright-painted pawns, “what your police captain's office would look like. It looks like you. Books and a blackboard.”

“No folks chained to the wall and a bowl full of black-jacks?”

“You obviously haven’t given up those awful candy bars.”

“I tend not to give up on things.”

The room felt too quiet after we stopped smiling. She stepped back to her chair. Nothing came to mind, so I said, “Could I get you some coffee? That glass of tea maybe?”

She didn’t seem to catch the allusion, but kept tilting her head to feel an earring as if she was afraid she was going to lose it. “No, no thanks. There's a real reason I came.”

“Well, now, I sort of figured that, Mrs. Brookside. You haven’t exactly gotten in touch to shoot the breeze over the decades.”

“Neither have you.” Her lips pressed together in a way I could still recognize as anger, and pink streaked across her cheekbones.

“True.” I started drawing triangles on a notepad. “My sergeant said something about ‘official problem.’ You haven’t been stealing loose grapes from the A&P again, have you?”

She looked up, smiled, then frowned the joke off. “Last night…” I nodded when she paused, wondering what in the world she was going to say. I sure didn’t expect what she did say. “At the Club last night, you seemed aware of how much pressure there's been on Andy to take a public stand against the Hall execution.”

“I’ve heard a little about it.”

“Not just the Hall case, but against the death penalty itself. Jack
Molina, for example…” She stopped; I watched her right hand twisting her wedding ring.

“Jack Molina…,” I prodded her, “I know him.”

“Well, you can imagine Jack's position. There's also tremendous pressure, both on and off Andy's staff,
not
to take any such stand: that the polls say, in this state, it will cost him the election. This isn’t New York.”

“That's true. But listen here, New York would have its old electric chair back popping sparks like Frankenstein in a thunderstorm if it wasn’t for their governor's veto. Amazing how people with principle can make a difference every now and then.” She didn’t answer. I felt uncomfortable behind my desk, so I walked over to lean by the window. Pigeons waddled a few steps away, but didn’t bother leaving. Finally I asked her, “So, which side of that pressure are you on?”

Her chair swiveled to face me. “Neither. I’m a politician's wife…as it turns out.”

I said, “I’m not real sure I know what you mean by that.”

“It means, doesn’t it, I’m on my husband's side.” Window light struck her face and she frowned trying to see me. “On it. At it.”

Last night came back. The little signal of Brookside's “Shall we?” with a tiny touch on her arm. The years of reception lines and meals with strangers that had fine-honed the shorthand. “Okay,” I said. “So which side of the pressure is your husband on?”

“Personally, he's convinced by studies that prove the death penalty is not a deterrent. And that it's discriminatory.” The way she said it didn’t make it sound too personal.

“Um hum. And is he going to say so?”

Her answer was a preview of a speech. Monday in Winston-Salem, Brookside would talk to a banquet of black businessmen. He would remark on the rights of all Americans to adequate legal counsel for as long as necessary, regardless of ability to pay—now the state's obliged to pick up the bill only through a first round of appeals, after which court-appointed defenders usually skip away fast, since there's neither loot nor laurel to be gained by sticking it out with indigent convicts. At this point in his speech, Brookside would mention George Hall as a case in point: that having lost his
first appeal, he had lost his public defender, and had lost years before obtaining new counsel. Brookside would then say that he applauded Governor Wollston's decision to stay George Hall's execution, and would urge the governor now to offer clemency.

It made me wonder what Brookside had planned
yesterday
on saying at this banquet, since until last midnight nobody had any reason to think George Hall wouldn’t be dead and buried by Monday morning, and way beyond the clemency of Wollston or anybody else. I almost said so, but stopped myself.

Plus, it sounded to me like Brookside was still fox-trotting on the fence rail, but of course that's the trick of political balance: his comments on capital punishment would be limited (apparently against Molina's urging) to Hall's case alone.

“The staff's been arguing all morning,” Lee said, “how even saying this much is going to cost Andy votes.”

Not a one, I thought, that Brookside had a blind polevaulter's chance of winning anyhow, but I didn’t say that either. All the while Lee spoke, light in a dance on her hair, her eyes lowered against the sun, I hadn’t a clue if she felt this upcoming speech of her husband's was the best thing she’d heard since Kennedy's inaugural, or political suicide, or a mediocre mishmash, which made me realize how dumb it was to think I knew who this woman was just because a long time ago we’d talked on the phone for hours every night ’til my bones would ache from lying on the cold kitchen floor. A long time ago, I knew the quickest detail of her feelings: fret over a grade, tears over a lost ring her grandmother left her, pleasure at a stepfather's rare compliment. Now, here was this woman with sad eyes and elegant clothes, a photogenic politician's photogenic and very rich wife, and a stranger. I didn’t know what she thought, or wanted, or didn’t want, or even what she’d done with her life except marry an amateur mountain climber who’d died, and a college president who wanted to be governor.

Coming around to sit on a corner of my desk, I rearranged a set of little fold-out photos—Mama and Daddy on their wedding day, my sister Vivian's yearbook portrait; a snapshot of some kids I’d taught in Costa Rica in front of our school's new shade tree; a photo I took of Justin and Alice at Williamsburg.

Out of the blue, Lee said, “He’ll be a good governor. If you think Andy is only president of Haver University because of my name, you’re wrong. He had offers from
Washington
he turned down.”

“I don’t doubt it. And if you think your name didn’t help a
heap
, here
and
in Washington, you’d be wrong too, because let me tell you—”

“That's not the—”

“It is too the point, and—”

We both stopped, and laughed at the same time. “God, Cuddy, can you believe we’re already arguing again just like we used to?”

“Hey, what else are old friends for?”

She moved to the front of the desk, and looked at the photograph of my parents. “For good advice…like always? That's what I hope.”

“Okay. Did you want to ask my advice about this speech, or what?”

And she surprised me by saying, “Somebody's threatened to kill Andy.” She held up a hand to stop my response, then reached into a small leather purse and took out an envelope. “I know, I know. Public figures are always vulnerable, but…”

“Who threatened him?”

“It's a letter. And I feel a little, well, guilty, coming to you without his knowledge. Because he thinks it's silly to take this seriously.” She handed me the crumpled dime-store white envelope, penciled “BROOKSIDE.” “It was stuck under the windshield wiper of his car, on campus. Andy started to tear it up, but I asked to see it. It gave me the creeps.”

I tapped the letter out, and shook it open by a corner. Also in pencil, printed in block letters on paper torn from a spiral notebook, was an unsigned message, which I read aloud. It was succinct.

BROOKSIDE.

WE DON’T WANT ATHIEST YANKEE COON-LOVERS RUNNING OUR STATE. WE KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR KIND. REMEMBER DALLAS. 11/22/63. THIS IS A WARNING.

I said, “That last bit sounds a little redundant, doesn’t it?”

Lee leaned over the desk toward me. “This is a direct threat, doesn’t it sound like that to you? The Kennedy thing? I told him to
call the police, the FBI, but he just kept saying, it's a typical nut, it's a scare tactic.” She crossed her arms tightly, her fingers rubbing the lilac wool. “He said he’d been finding them like that since he announced, telling him to get out of the governor's race. I was so upset I called Jack, but he…I guess what I’m asking is, would you come see Andy? Tell him he can’t make light of this.” She lifted a hand toward me, then let it fall to her side. “It's like the sky-diving, and the rest of it.”

“Excuse me? What?”

“That speedboat he races.”

“What are you talking about, Lee?”

“About risks, needing danger, liking it.” She sank into her chair. “He misses the war, isn’t that strange?”

I pulled back on my hair. “Well, honey, it's strange to me. But if there weren’t the kind of guys who’re going to miss wars when they’re over, starting wars probably wouldn’t be so popular.”