“I was just leaving.” I pick up my briefcase, leaving Dan to tilt at another windmill. Arkansas has, Dan tells me, (he worst landlord-tenant laws in the nation and the distinction of being the only state in the country literally to criminalize the nonpayment of rent. Charles Dickens would have loved us, Dan has said on more than one occasion after cataloging our situation. In addition to the “criminal eviction law,” Blackwell County has other delights for debtors-hot-check laws whose enforcement turns our overcrowded jails into debtors’ prisons, a recent law that allows landlords to consider tenants’ property abandoned and subject to seizure after nonpayment of rent, and now we are practically the only state that does not recognize either judicially or by statute an implied warranty ‹ habitability in rental property.
“Nineteenth century Hell, we’re talking feudalism, boy!” Dan cackles woefully about once a week.
Christian Life is not a collection of buildings; it is like one of those new towns that seems to have been created all at once. The flowers, trees, and buildings all look freshly put down. I pull in behind chet’s Mercedes in front of a two-story brick house whose trim is newly painted. Given its location (western Blackwell County, naturally), the mortgage on this property probably exceeds the national budget of some small countries.
“Shades of Jim and Tammy Bakker,” I say under my breath, noticing the exquisitely cared for lawn of Christian Life’s senior minister, Shane Norman, who presumably lives here rent free with his wife, Pearl. For all I know, however, they own the entire property outright and charge the congregation rent on the acres of parking that we passed on the way in. Ironically enough, given its self-proclaimed Biblical literalism, from the outside the church itself looks like a Greek temple, surrounded as it is by columns vaguely reminiscent of pictures of the Parthenon. With all the starvation and suffering in the world, how do churches justify their wealth? Wasn’t Jesus poor? One of the church columns alone has enough marble in it to pay for a well in Somalia. The Vatican could sell its art collection and probably provide housing for a small country with the proceeds.
The trouble with people who have money and power is that you are always expected to kiss their asses if you want any of it. Obviously, it pisses me off that I have had to drive out here. What in the hell is Leigh Wallace’s problem that she can’t make it down to chet’s office? Talk about kissing ass. And totally unlike Chet An old story about him is that if he doesn’t like a judge, he won’t even nod to him or her outside the courtroom. Shane Norman must have really done a number on him. I’m not sure why I’m feeling so superior I’d probably be groveling too, if I were in Chet’s shoes and measuring time in perhaps weeks instead of years. The plan is for him to introduce me and then say he has to go to court.
Why he thinks I’ll be able to induce her to talk is be yond me, but it’s his money and his case. Unlike her father, Leigh may not accept Chet’s eleventh-hour conversion and therefore may not be able to bring her self to trust him as her attorney. She didn’t hire him;
her father did. Norman may think Chet can steam roll her through to an acquittal when all she wants to do is plead guilty and throw herself on the mercy of the court. Representing children is a tricky business. It is easy to forget who the client is if you are getting the check from the parent. At least one thing is for certain:
children are the same everywhere. Leigh Wallace may not like who her father has hired as her lawyer, but it hasn’t kept her from moving back in with her parents According to Chet, she moved home two days after the murder.
As I meet our client, I think to myself that there are a few women (Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny comes to mind) who always look good under any circumstances. I suspect Leigh Wallace may be one of these women. Still, she has altered her appearance from the day of her husband’s death. If I correctly recall her picture in the paper the day of her arrest, she had shoulder-length hair, was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and looked ravishing. Today her body is concealed by a long turquoise-and-beige Mexicanlooking dress, her dark, glossy hair piled up on her head like some diva’s. She looks spectacular but seems a de cade older than her twenty-three years and a hell of a lot more sophisticated than I expected.
Chet wastes no time in making his getaway, and she and I are left alone like a mismatched couple on a blind date. I look around the living room and barely restrain myself from gawking. Somehow, I had expected the walls of the home of a fundamentalist minister to be decorated with religious art of the Jesus-flying-off-on-a-cloud variety. Though I am hardly a connoisseur of interior design, even I have an inkling of the quality of the wall hangings, tapestries, sculptures, and paintings that are on display in the living room. Most, if not all, have something of the foreign or exotic about them. My eyes come to rest upon an oil painting of a scene I recognize from my Peace Corps days in Colombia a famous Spanish fort in Cartagena that is a mandatory stop for sightseers.
“Gifts to my father,” my hostess says in response to my poorly disguised amazement.
“Symbols of gratitude from his mission trips on which he takes Christian Life families to work for the poor.”
“Have you ever gone with him?” I ask, letting my eyes move to her face, thinking they didn’t come from the poor. She is perfectly made up and exudes a fragrance that suggests rose petals. Is this for me or for herself? Chet hasn’t prepared me for her at all. I expected her perhaps to be subdued, but there is some thing standoffish in her manner. Usually, criminal defendants want instant reassurance you can help them, whereas Leigh Wallace seems as if she could care less.
“Every year for the past five,” she says, walking ahead of me into a formal dining room, “until this one.”
A massive mahogany table whose wood is nearly obscured by a Spanish lace cloth dominates the room, and I find myself wanting to touch the shiny surface. It is as if she is a tour guide who is answering the same questions for the millionth time in a well-rehearsed, detached voice.
I look in vain for pictures of her father perhaps exhorting the faithful from the pulpit or mixing cement for the masses in a foreign land, but there is not even a snapshot of a family dog.
“Would you care for some coffee or something to drink, Mr. Page?” she asks, stroking the lace with her fingers. Though she has on a ring, an opal, I spy no wedding band. A silver bracelet adorns her wrist. Her red fingernails are perfectly manicured Hardly the weeds of a grieving widow and certainly not the getup I had pictured of the daughter of a Bible-toting Jesus freak. In fact, Leigh’s dark, dramatic features remind me of nothing so much as those of a well-to-do, haughty Colombian beauty. Even shop girls dressed to the teeth in the larger cities on the northern coast, and the ones who could afford it decked themselves out in a way that eclipsed their paler American counterparts. Though I am not particularly thirsty or in need of further stimulation this windy March afternoon, perhaps we could use something to break the ice.
“Coffee would be great,” I tell her and follow her into the kitchen, which gleams with copper pots and pans hanging from the walls like foreign artifacts.
The perfect hostess, she gives me a steaming cup of dark roasted coffee and offers me a piece of German chocolate cake. Accepting both, I make myself at home at her kitchen table. Sitting across from me, sipping at a glass of water, she asks, “Are you a Christian, Mr. Page?”
I suppress a sigh, remembering my earlier thought that she might mistrust Chet because of his Johnnycome-lately attitude toward fundamentalist Christianity.
Fearful that the answer to this question guards the gate to a genuine conversation about the case, I push aside my desire to question its relevance.
“Does Catholicism count?” I ask lightly, hoping to avoid an inquisition.