When Jessie comes out of the bathroom (fully clothed, thank goodness), I point to the empty chair across from me. She yawns, and I steal a look at my bed, glad it looks as hard to get into as an aspirin bottle.
Finally, she sits down and looks out the window onto the city.
“There are some bad people living in this town,” she says, and begins to tell me about her investigation of the arson of a business in Oakland called Bay Videos.
“The company I work for won’t pay off on the excuse the place was torched. The owner of Bay Videos was screaming he was making money hand over fist and had no reason to burn down his own place. He said from the beginning that Jack Ott had done it and tried to kill him, too, but the cops yawned and went back to sleep. They don’t put the demise of a porno store at the top of their list to investigate thoroughly.
Though a couple of people could have been killed, no one was, so basically the cops’ position is that this is a private matter for our lawyers if they want to get into it.”
I write the name “Jack Ott” down on the hotel stationery.
It was Jack Ott whom Art Wallace had ripped off. I ask, “So did Jack Ott do it?”
Jessie leans forward with a conspirator’s smile and says, “I’m coming to that. I begin to check out Bay Videos’ story and sure enough, I start hearing the name Jack Ott. To make a long story short. Jack Ott is one of the biggest porn distributors on the Coast, and Jack likes to make his money the oldfashioned way-by eliminating the competition. Now, the kind of stuff these guys deal in would undoubtedly be considered obscene and therefore illegal in Arkansas, but here, by our enlightened community standards, it’s just considered a little strong. Nobody who’s actually in the business likes to make any noise, because the feds get involved once it starts moving interstate. That kind of bust is great PR for the FBI.”
I begin to doodle. I am already losing the thread.
“So if nobody’s talking for the record, what’s the point?”
Jessie reaches into her pants pocket and pulls out a small tape recorder.
“I got the guy who actually torched the place for Jack on tape. You want to hear it?” she says, her voice rising like Sarah’s when she’s excited.
“Give me a little background first,” I say, dumb founded by her claim. John-Boy never got into these contretemps.
“Why would a guy like that say anything in an investigator’s presence that would implicate him self?”
“Well” Jessie grins, standing to take off her suit coat “that’s a long story, too, but suffice it to say Robert Evan didn’t know what I was or who I was, or that I always wear a wire. Want to see?” She begins to un button her blouse.
“No, no, I believe you,” I say hastily, horrified that perhaps she has been taping our conversation.
“So you’ve been recording us, too?”
She nods, not embarrassed in the slightest.
“I like to have a record.” She presses the play button, and I hear a boozy male voice that is impossible to understand against a background noise of rock guitars and other conversations. I get a few words and actually hear the name of Jack Ott, but that’s all. When she turns it off, I shake my head.
“I didn’t get it.”
Undaunted, she rewinds it.
“You’ve got to listen to it more than once. The guy that burned Bay Videos was scared shitless of Jack Ott. You can hear it in his voice.” She plays it again, twice more, and I begin to pick it up though I can’t quite get every word. ” “Hell, yeah … I … burned Bay Videos … for Ott…. You don’t quit… him…. He wanted me … to off the guy but he got out.” ” I stare at the tape, wondering if this is admissible to show that Art Wallace truly had something to fear from Jack Ott. Coupled with Leigh’s testimony that Art had told her that he was in trouble for not coming up with the two hundred thousand he skimmed from Ott, a jury might be persuaded to believe someone else had killed him. I doubt if Robert Evan will volunteer to repeat what I’ve just heard.
“So where is Sir Robert now?”
Jessie reaches again into her bag and hands me a piece of paper.
“He’s dead. Drug overdose.” I put on my reading glasses and hold the article up to the light.
It is a brief story from a January San Francisco Chronicle and says just enough to confirm her statement.
“If my partner and I think it will do any good, would you be willing to come to Arkansas for the trial and bring your tape with you?”
Jessie rewinds the machine and grins at me.
“Is it true that people go barefoot in public?”
“Just in the summertime,” I say. This woman is a piece of work.
“Well, why not?” she responds with a sly smile.
“What else do you want me to do? I can hot-wire a car, disconnect a burglar alarm. I can even crack a safe.”
I put down the paper and stare. Is she pulling my leg?
Probably not. I wouldn’t be surprised if this woman had done some time.
“Just testify,” I say.
“Just testify.”
She looks disappointed.
On the flight home the next day the winds out of Denver bounce the plane like a yo-yo. “… encountering a little turbulence …” the captain tells us in a glum voice that on a routine flight would suggest he is merely battling a hangover.
“A little, my ass!” shrieks my seatmate, a copy machine sales manager from Oklahoma City.
“It feels like this damn thing’s attached to a bungee cord.”
Next to a window, I look out to see if we are about to slam into the Rockies. Since nothing but soupy yellow clouds are visible, I force my attention back to the file in front of me and to the custody trial I have on Friday. Ordinary hatreds between a man and a woman. As bizarre as the Leigh Wallace case has become, there is something comforting about a case that consists largely of garden-variety malice.
“Somebody, get me a towel, damn it!” my seatmate pleads. Queasy myself, I keep my eyes glued to the page of notes in front of me and try not to breathe. Get me home, Lord, and I’ll never leave again.
8
“If either of you insists on trying this case,” Teresa Mason, the guardian ad litem appointed to represent my client’s child, says, her eyes-flashing, “I’m going to recommend foster care. Wayne, your client beat this child black-and-blue, and, Gideon, your client let him, and I’ve got the records from Cook County Social Services to prove it.”
I want to lean over and kiss Teresa. She has done her homework. I was prepared to win this case and have nightmares the rest of my life. Wayne Oglesby, glancing over at our clients seated with their witnesses on opposite sides of the courtroom, blusters, “They’re not admissible It’s all hearsay.”
Teresa, who must be a third of Wayne’s size, scoffs, “Give it up, Wayne. I’ll just ask for a continuance and get them certified. You know the judge will grant it if I ask him. I just got them in the mail this morning.”
Wayne, an ex-tight end for the Arkansas State Indians swells up like a toad, somehow reminding me of Jabba the Hutt in one of the Star Wars movies. I know he is thinking that Teresa is a meddling little bitch, but thank God for lawyers who take this role seriously.
Both Wayne and I have known that neither of our clients was fit to have custody, but we were prepared to tear little Bobby McNair apart this morning in the name of representing them.
“What do you want?” I ask Teresa, knowing I can shove down my client’s throat whatever she recommends.
Salina McNair can no more resist the male species than Dan can stay on a diet. Away from dominant, brutish men, whom she attracts like flies on fresh roadkill, Salina is a marginally decent mother; however, she won’t or can’t protect her son from the hideous guys who seem to line up at her door. In my bones I’ve known this for the last month, but pretended she only needed one more fresh start, despite watching the dynamics between her and the asshole who insisted on coming to my office with her each time I interviewed her. Over Teresa’s shoulder I get a glimpse of him now, all draped around Salina. He would have locked Bobby down in the cellar after a week, and she would have told herself, “Gee, all of a sudden, Bobby likes to play where it’s nice and dark.”