“My job right now is to give you the best advice I can. If I thought Dade could beat this charge, I’d be the first to say so.”
“You’re selling my boy out!” Roy cries, his face anguished
I feel certain he would like to fire me, but at this late date the judge wouldn’t permit Dade to get another lawyer. The bell on the front door jingles loudly, and Roy stalks off to the front, followed by Dade, who is furious with me. Somehow, I have to make Lucy trust my judgment. I wait until Dade clears the doorway and then I whisper, “The reason I took this case was that I hoped I could get it dismissed and you’d hire me as Dade’s agent when he turned professional. I know that wasn’t the most noble reason on earth for undertaking to defend him on his rape charge, but you need to understand that it was in my interest to try this case. The truth is, the closer the trial gets, the less likely it is that Dade will escape serving some significant time. I can’t in good conscience tell him to go to trial. The only way to avoid that risk is to accept the prosecutor’s offer and concentrate on getting this behind him as soon as possible.”
Lucy shakes her head in apparent disbelief.
“So that was your motivation?” she asks, her eyes suddenly bright with tears.
“You were out to exploit him from the beginning
“For God’s sake, Lucy!” I cry, feeling my face burning.
“I’m no different from any other lawyer in this state.
If I can make a buck, I’ll do it. If there’s something wrong with that, you’re going to have to put most of this country out of its misery. All I’m trying to say is that Dade should take this offer and then get on with his life.
The prisons are filled with people who either entered into a plea bargain or wish they had. If you’re looking for a hero, I nominate the man who’s prosecuting Dade. After this morning, I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for our chances to knock this case down to carnal abuse and a six-year sentence, but the prosecutor made this offer because he said Robin’s parents have finally been convinced not to put their child through a trial if they can get this deal.”
These sentiments have come straight from my gut, and I am out of breath when I finish. Lucy makes a small fist with her right hand but shows no other emotion.
“I thought you’d be different.”
“Well, I’m not,” I say hoarsely.
“I can’t change history.
By the way, I’m sorry about your grandmother. My daughter thinks that under the circumstances she was raped. I guess she was. I can’t do anything about that, just as I can’t really do anything about the kind of person who will serve on Dade’s jury. All I can do is tell you what’s likely to happen to Dade if he goes to trial.”
She unclenches her hand.
“You’re putting your racism on that jury,” she says fiercely.
“That’s what’s making you afraid.”
Is that what I’m doing?
“I know what people are like,” I say, breaking it down as simply as I can.
“And so do you.”
Her jaw flexing in anger and her dark eyes flashing, she leans across the table to shake a long black finger in my face.
“I don’t want my son in prison, you hear me!”
Pushing up from the table with both hands, she walks past me and through the door. I am already tired, and it is not even nine o’clock. I close my eyes, wishing I had kept my mouth shut about what has motivated me in this case. In the other room, I hear all three talking at once, Lucy’s voice the loudest. I strain to hear but can’t distinguish more than a few words. I hear Lucy saying, “If you didn’t do it …” and then her voice is drowned out by Roy and Dade.
Just moments later, all three are back, surrounding the table. Dade glares at me as if I were a prisoner who had been charged with some heinous crime.
“I want to go to trial,” he announces.
“I’m innocent.”
I judge by the expression on Lucy’s face that she is fully supportive of this decision.
“That’s fine with me,” I say automatically.
“I’ll do the best job I can.”
“See that you do,” Roy adds, in a menacing tone.
I don’t like to be bullied by anyone, especially a client who isn’t paying me a third of what a case is worth, but Roy, I have the feeling, is out of the loop here. This is between Dade and his mother, I surmise, without any hard evidence to support my intuition. I have the distinct feeling he has chosen to do what he thinks will maintain her image of him. To save his pride, Roy has been given his say, but it is his mother whom Dade wants to please. As I am leaving, ten minutes later, only Lashondra, who is re arranging toilet paper on the shelf next to bar soap, waves good-bye. If she were the client, I’d feel a lot better.
Furious, I gun the Blazer hard westward through the desolate flatness of the Arkansas Delta, already feeling the pressure imposed by Dade’s decision. I know who will be the fall guy in this scenario. Yet, damn it, would he really be risking a trial if he weren’t innocent? Dade and Lucy will drive to Fayetteville Sunday morning so we can work on his testimony. Roy will stay in Hughes to keep the grocery open. Damn. He can’t even take off to see his son’s trial.
I call Binkie from my office and give him the bad news.
“I think, he’s making a mistake, Gideon,” Binkie says, sounding disappointed.
“I do, too,” I confess, as I pull Dade’s file from my briefcase. I had hoped when I walked into my office there would be a phone call from Lucy. There is nothing else to say and I hang up with a sick feeling in my stomach.
Gordon Dyson is waiting for me outside Judge Butler’s chambers with an embarrassed grin on his face. This shouldn’t take long even if “Gucci” shows up. I shake hands with Dyson, who hands me an envelope, presumably my fee.
“How is your son taking this?”
Dyson smiles.
“He’s pissed as hell. He called his mother, but I talked to her and it’s okay. I don’t think he’s even gonna show.”
I take off my overcoat in the poorly ventilated building.
The Blackwell County courthouse is undergoing extensive repairs, and the building the county is using has all the charm of a bus station in a third world country.
We enter the judge’s outside office, and his secretary tells us to go right on back. The judge will take Mr.
Dyson’s testimony in his chambers.
Sonny Butler is an ex-prosecutor and likes cops. He greets my client like an old friend, and I relax, knowing this will be a piece of cake. Across Sonny’s massive desk they chat, each bragging about how well he is doing.
Why the hell not? Cop to businessman, prosecutor to judge. They both have prospered as a result of crime.
Butler is not a bad judge for a man who claimed during his recent campaign that any person who didn’t believe in the death penalty would change his mind if his wife were raped and killed in front of him. His opponent, my old boss at the public defender’s office, Greta Darby, cracked that it was hard to tell whether Sonny was running for judge or executioner. To know Greta is to hate her, and I voted for Sonny, despite his ranting during the campaign.
Sonny kids Gordon about evicting his son and needles him gently about his failure to prosecute him under Arkansas’s criminal eviction statute, the only one left in the country, according to Clan.
“His mother would have killed me,” Gordon says sheepishly, which makes me realize he had considered it At this moment a woman charges into the room, followed by a college-age kid who has to be “Gucci.” My client’s face, now ashen, tells me it is his wife.
“Dora Lou, what are you doing back here?”
“I couldn’t let you throw our son out on the street!” she cries dramatically. It is obvious she has had no sleep for some time. She must have come straight from the airport.
Her bright orange jumpsuit, the color county prisoners wear, is badly wrinkled. Beneath her reddened eyes are plum-colored pouches that emphasize the rest of her under baked pie crust of a face. In contrast, Dyson’s son is wearing an immaculate blue pinstriped three-piece suit.