“It’s not true?” asked Watson.
“My boy’s deaf. Born that way. Couldn’t hear the space shuttle if it took off in the backyard. Deaf as a box of rocks, which means he can’t talk neither. So, the oral school here in town, they teach deaf kids to talk and read lips and they don’t use sign on them. Now, we coulda sent him there, or we coulda sent him up to Fulton at the residential school. Let him be with his own kind and learn sign. What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” said Watson with a frown.
“Some doctors and teachers claim you ain’t supposed to use sign language on your kid if you ever want them to learn to talk. They had a deaf girl on 60 Minutes who learned to talk. And as soon as I seen the girl talking, that was what I wanted. So I decided to keep him away from sign and give the oral school a try.”
“OK,” said Watson, studying his client’s twitching facial muscles and trembling hands.
“That girl on 60 Minutes was happy,” said Whitlow, “because she could lip-read and talk.”
This sounded like one of those syllogisms from a formal argument. But a premise seemed to be missing, and Watson was therefore uncertain of the conclusion. Either the sudden ability to lip-read and talk had made the girl happy, or happiness was impossible for her until she could lip-read and talk. More important, for Watson, either sign language had something to do with homicide, or his client was nuts.
“I decided about the oral school and I paid for it,” said Whitlow. “Mary don’t care about nothing but cold beer and Days of Our Lives. According to her, Charlie was deaf because my uncle was deaf, so it was my problem. She didn’t give two turdballs either way. Now, all of the sudden, she’s Miss Sign Language with a sign language instructor? I shoulda seen it coming,” he said, banging the table. “Then Charlie flunked out of the oral place. Next thing I know, all this bullshit happened.”
“Because he flunked the oral school? Because of the sign language instructor?” asked Watson, trying not to sound like he needed some serious help with the story.
Whitlow sneered and nearly spit sideways. “He weren’t no fuckin’ sign language instructor, lawyer. I told you that.”
“Well?” asked Watson. “Then who was he?”
Whitlow took a deep breath, as if about to tell him, then shook his head in disgust. “Forget it.”
“Maybe you were defending yourself or your wife against an intruder in your home. You didn’t sign a confession, did you? You didn’t give them a statement, did you?”
Whitlow shook his head. “I ain’t dumb enough to talk to the cops. Only the Queen of Sheba, Mary Whitlow, is dumb enough for that. She’s trying to fuck me good and proper,” he said, squaring his shoulders and hyperventilating through his nose. “She’s trying to fuck us all! We’ll see about that.” He pointed at himself in bitter triumph. “We’ll see about that.”
Watson sat up and pushed the computer aside.
“At this early stage,” said Watson carefully, “I don’t really want to know if you did it—and if you did it, I don’t want to know why you did it, yet.”
“If I did it?” cried Whitlow. “What would you do?”
What would you do? There it was for the third time. The cardinal inquiry of the nonprofessional. Clients and patients routinely asked this question; doctors and lawyers did not answer it. It was an oral invitation to a professional malpractice suit.
“If we decide you should take the stand in your own defense,” said Watson, “the Rules of Professional Responsibility will not permit me to … A lawyer cannot knowingly present perjured testimony to the court.”
“I think I just got amnesia,” said Whitlow with a sharp, scared laugh.
“That’s entirely possible,” said Watson brightly. “Severe psychological trauma can induce amnesia to concurrent events. Which brings me to my next proposition. There are expert witnesses, doctors or psychiatrists, who can test you for certain mitigating factors. Medical, or psychological disorders, which may have manifested themselves in uncontrollable behaviors.”
“I have amnesia,” said Whitlow. “And I’m nuts.”
“I’ll find out more about the medical or psychological defenses,” said Watson, “and then I will advise you about whether the tests will help us. I’ll need your medical history. Any psychiatric treatment? Are you taking any medications?”
“Dilantin,” said Whitlow. “I used to have fits awhile back.”
“Fits?”
“Seizures,” he said. “Epilepsy, I guess, but not bad. Only twice, I guess.”
Watson opened the file containing his notes from his first meeting with Dr. Palmquist. There it was: “If we’re lucky there’s a history of epilepsy or seizure activity.”
Watson retrieved the medical release form Dr. Palmquist had given him, put a pen on it, and pushed it across the table to Whitlow.
“How often do you take Dilantin?”
“Every day,” he said. “Sometimes I forget, but I generally take it. And they give it to me in here, too. I had the bottle on me when they brought me in.”
“And how long have you been taking it?”
“Since my one year at the community college. My first seizure. Six, seven years.”
“How about medical records of these seizures? Where can I find those?”
“Seen lotsa doctors,” said Whitlow, “mostly at Doc-in-the-Boxes. Can’t remember them all. I guess I went to the clinic at Southwest Tech the first time. Then … Hell I can’t remember them all. You want me to sign this,” he asked, “for the medical records?”
“Yes,” said Watson. “Did you take your medicine on the day … of the murder?”
Whitlow looked over Watson’s shoulder. “Would that be good? Or bad? Or do I have amnesia?” Watson held the paper for him, while he signed the release. “I’ll try and remember whether I took my medicine. This seizure shit might be important, huh?”
“I don’t know,” said Watson, placing the form back into his briefcase. “Maybe. I’ve talked to one doctor. She seemed to think seizures might be important.”
“In that case,” said Whitlow, “I still have amnesia. I can’t remember why I’m nuts. I don’t know if I took the medicine or not, and maybe I forgot a lot of jumbo seizures.”
“How about the infection you complained to the guard about?” asked Watson.
“Oh,” said Whitlow, looking off the edge of the table. “That’s some other medicine I’m needing. It’s personal. It’s got nothing to do with seizures or being crazy. It’s just a piss infection. No big deal. They said I can have medicine once they get done testing my piss.”
Watson typed “urinary tract infection” into the computer.
“So, you got ‘Lucy Martinez’ written down in your computer?” asked Whitlow.
Watson nodded.
“And my car’s a ninety-two Ford Taurus. Gray. No plates, like I said.”
“And you need to know what?” asked Watson, typing in the information.
“Just tell them you are the owner and can you come pick it up,” said Whitlow. “Fort Sheridan Base Towing and Vehicle Impound Lot, Craig, Missouri. If it’s being held for evidence, they’ll tell you no you can’t get it. If they say bring the title in, register her, and she’s yours, that means it’s in the general impound lot.”
Watson typed. “And this helps us do what? Get you some money?”
“Never mind money,” said Whitlow. “Let’s say it will help me get some evidence for my side of the story.”
“Which is?”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to know if I did it,” complained Whitlow, “and then you said that if I done it, you don’t want to know why I done it, yet?”
“Right,” said Watson, chagrined. “Never mind. I’ll try to find out about the car.”
“That would really, really help,” said Whitlow.
He squirmed again in his chair. “Fuck me,” he scowled, “I gotta piss right now.” He picked up the phone and tucked it between his chin and his sho
ulder.
“Piss,” he said angrily. “I gotta piss again.”
He lifted his chin, let the receiver drop back into his hands, and hung it up. Then he raised his manacled hands, put the unlit cigarette in his mouth, and steadied it.
“Are you gonna light this?” he asked.
Watson saw the tattoo on the left forearm, which was now facing out and lit by the fluorescent ceiling fixtures: a mauve heart spidered in black coronary arteries, which zigzagged around the heart and unfurled in a small bouquet of snake heads spewing forked tongues around the purple text, JESUS HATES NIGGERS.
Watson stared at the tattoo and panicked. He heard the sage and seasoned voice of Arthur Mahoney within him: This is a bad client.
“Match,” said Whitlow. “Hello, lawyer?”
Watson, still staring at the tattoo, lit the match and held it to the end of the cigarette. Whitlow took a drag and blew out the flame with a puff of smoke and foul breath. Watson dropped it in a round steel ashtray and watched a white fume rise from the charred tip.
Why had he, a fairly bright bulb, ignored the advice of a senior partner with forty years on him? Watson wondered. The head of the litigation department at Stern, Pale & Covin, one of the best lawyers at the best law firm in St. Louis, Arthur Mahoney was right. The sun rises in the east, water flows downhill, this is a bad client.
Whitlow offered him the other cigarette.
“No thanks,” Watson said with a wave.
“Go ahead,” said Whitlow. “I’m a Christian.”
“I noticed,” said Watson.
Whitlow took a puff. Watson inspected the purple heart attack on the dirty white arm while his client exhaled blue streams of smoke.
“The tattoo,” said Watson.
“Yeah,” said Whitlow, glancing down and flexing muscles under the inky flesh. “Only cost me forty bucks, because the guy was a buddy.”
Whitlow took another puff and turned his arm for a better view. His face suddenly went limp, and he glanced up at Watson. “Hey, this won’t … This don’t mean anything, does it? I mean …”
Watson took a big breath and eyed the computer’s battery gauge.
“I saw it hanging on the wall of a tattoo hut where I went to get some ink done ten years ago,” he stuttered, flushing in splotches and squirming in his chair. “I thought it was funny. It’s a goddamn joke!”
Watson mentally slipped into law exam mode: May the government compel the display of the defendant’s tattoo and enter it into evidence, or would that violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself?
“Am I fucked?” pleaded Whitlow. “I’m remembering something. I’m remembering that a girl I used to date gave me this tattoo once while I was asleep.”
Watson sighed.
“Look,” begged Whitlow, “it don’t say ‘I Hate Niggers,’ does it? Read it, lawyer! It says, ‘Jesus Hates Niggers.’ What if it said ‘Jesus Loves You’? It don’t mean I love you, does it?”
CHAPTER 7
Less than twenty-four hours after meeting with his tattooed client, Watson was on cellular hold, waiting for Myrna Schweich—the only criminal lawyer he knew personally—who had taken another call. He had the receiver of his communicator pressed to his ear, trying to listen for her return while following Rachel Palmquist’s faxed page of directions as he hiked through the interlocking corridors and lobbies of the Ignatius medical-industrial complex, dodging swarms of patients in street clothes and striding lab personnel in white coats. He’d worked for Myrna the summer between first- and second-year law school, had done research and written an appellate brief for her—his only brush with the criminal law—before leaving for Stern, Pale and the big bucks, according to Sandra’s wishes. But he often looked back longingly at the path not taken. Two or three of his law school classmates had gone into criminal law. And when he saw them at lunch, or at happy hours, or parties, they seemed to be having all the fun—if wild stories were any indication. Watson and the rest of the studious, law review types from the top of the class were working at huge firms, reading ERISA regulations or summarizing the depositions of forty plaintiffs whose panic disorders were allegedly caused by inhaling fumes from CleanWhite’s toilet bowl cleaners or from eating too much monosodium glutamate at Wu Fong’s.
He had called Myrna the day before, after Judge Stang had made it clear the Whitlow case was his and Arthur had made it equally clear that he wanted the case disposed of at the first opportunity. Myrna had already heard about his appointment. She had offered to look at the complaint and affidavit and the military police reports that Joe had received from the government’s lawyers, to maybe give him some pointers. He’d faxed them to her, and now he was calling for advice.
While waiting for her to come back on the line, he was reminded of her incongruous, near comic appearance—she was less than five feet tall, with orange hair, tiny freckled hands, and childlike features. She had big blue eyes that were always aimed up at him from at least a foot lower than what was usually called stature. If you didn’t know her, diminutive came to mind—until she opened her mouth. From four-eleven land, Myrna projected an aura of absolute authority. She picked up words like clubs and used them to beat the bloody shit out of men who were twice her size. She’d been trained in the trenches at the county public defender’s office for a few years and then had gone solo. Just before she’d put him on hold, he’d asked her the typical rookie criminal lawyer question: What if his client was guilty as charged?
Myrna came back on the line and resumed control where she’d left off. “It doesn’t matter if he’s guilty,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a racist. Nothing matters, except making the prosecution prove every single element of their bullshit case. Your job is to make the government do its job. Because if you don’t, then tomorrow we might as well move to Russia, where they can arrest anybody they want, including defense lawyers, and put them in jail.”
Myrna was a real lawyer, not a glorified businessperson. He had visited her office in Clayton several times to pick up research assignments. She had a .357 magnum loaded with Rhino hollowpoints in her right-hand desk drawer and a minirefrigerator stocked with Heinekens. She left the office every day at five o’clock sharp, and went home to her two little girls, who didn’t know much about what Mommy did for a living. Like almost everyone else, her husband was afraid of her. He worked nights as a cardiac pump tech out at Barnes Hospital and spent the rest of the time saying, “Yes, Myrna.”
Watson had met the girls once at Myrna’s office after he’d graduated. Both were redheads, like their mom. “Are you going to be a lawyer for people with lots of problems, too?” they had asked him.
“No,” he’d said, “I’m going to be a lawyer for people with lots of money.”
Myrna’s voice nattering in the earpiece of his communicator brought him back to the present: “You gotta make the government do its job.”
“But what if they prove he’s a racist,” argued Watson, “and what if they prove he called the victim a, you know,” he said, jerking his head around and dodging a clutch of nurses on the skywalk, “and what if they prove he killed him. Then?”
“Then geese farts,” said Myrna. “If you find a guy in bed with your wife you’re gonna call him a nigger, a honky, an asshole, an ugly fuckhead, a rotten douche bag, a filthy cocksucker, and anything else you can think of before you kill him. That doesn’t mean you killed him because he’s a nigger, a honky, an asshole, an ugly fuckhead, a rotten douche bag, and a filthy cocksucker—does it?”
Watson spun around again, wondering if anybody else in the swarm of medical-center pedestrian traffic could hear Myrna’s legendary profanity.
“Suppose the victim sucked cocks,” said Myrna. “OK? He’s bisexual or homo, or whatever. He sucked cocks, and we can prove he sucked cocks. We put Joe Blow on the stand, and we ask him, ‘Did the victim suck cocks?’ And Joe says, ‘Yes, Your Honor, in fact he sucked my c
ock on several occasions.’ OK? Now, your guy calls the victim a cocksucker and shoots him. Does that mean he shot him because he’s a cocksucker? Does that come under hatred because of sexual orientation, or whatever? Only if you’re a prosecutor. Your guy shot the victim because the SOB was porking the old lady in the wedding bed! And if you let them tag him for anything else, you’re not a lawyer, you’re a dickless, glorified paralegal in silk stockings. Christ Jesus! My clients are all black, and I have to explain to a mostly white jury why they carjack decent people, shoot them, and take their money. You? You have to explain why a white guy might want to shoot a black guy who’s shtuping his wife in living color. Mother of Christ!”
“OK,” said Watson, gasping for breath, “never mind name-calling. What about the medical?”
“Check out the medical,” Myrna said patiently. “What’s to lose? But stop letting that old fart down there fuck with you. What’s his name? Mahoney? Baloney? Fuck Mahoney. Must I explain?”
“OK, OK,” said Watson, “What else?”
“I breezed through those field reports you faxed me in about eight minutes, before I ran out to a hearing. Coupla things, then I gotta go. If it’s a rape, where’s the mess? The MP reports make it sound like a Holiday Inn after the maid came. And—big question alert!—where was the gun? Did he have to go somewhere and get it? If so, is he thinking the whole time about how much he hates deaf niggers and how nothing would give him more pleasure than killing his wife’s special friend? Or was it right there loaded in the nightstand? If it’s an affair, why didn’t Mr. Hothead Racist kill her, too? Or at least beat her up real good? Then blame everything on the nigger? ABC. That’s what usually happens. You talked to this guy, didn’t you? Is he real dumb?”
“I can’t tell yet,” said Watson. “He’s either dumb, or smart enough to play dumb.”
“There’s a line in that second MP report,” she said. “What’s it say? Something about a nursery monitor? Hold it.” He heard her pawing through papers on the other end of the line. “Yeah, here we go: ‘Before leaving the premises with the suspect in custody, an operational nursery monitor was found in the living room of the quarters. Responding officers checked the premises for unattended children or infants. None present. Suspect states he has one seven-year-old son, who was visiting relatives.’ ”
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