Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement

by Grif Stockley

  Tommy responds, “What’s your point?”

  In the background I can hear a child’s voice. I lost contact with him years ago and don’t know if he is married, single, or working in an orphanage.

  “That Paul is slick as pig shit and if you let him, he will skate out of this just like he’s done his whole life,” I say crudely.

  “My guess is that he’s guilty as hell and hired someone else to kill your father and set up Class Bledsoe. So far his only mistake is that he didn’t realize he was being taped. I know Paul. He plans to be laughing at all of us when this is over.”

  His voice sounding as if it is coming over string and a tin can instead of telephone wire, he asks, “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing, really,” I say quickly.

  “I could get an order from the judge to let me go through the plant and inspect the murder scene, but what I’d like to do is to have as much cooperation from your workers as possible. I suspect they won’t give me the time of day unless your family tells them that it is all right to be

  as candid as possible with me. If I don’t get anything, then fine. But I’d hate to overlook some leads if it can be avoided.

  Once a prosecutor files charges, law enforcement gets hunkered down to prove the case, and it’s hard to make them look elsewhere. If you could call your cousin and ask him to talk to your workers after I inspect the plant so that when I begin to interview them, they’ll be more open with me, it would help.”

  The phone crackles and snaps in my hand like it is about to burst into flames. If I were paranoid, I would think the line was somehow tapped already.

  “Let me think about this,” Tommy says finally.

  “I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the case.”

  “They don’t have a strong one against Paul,” I say urgently, leafing through the file in my lap.

  “All they can show is Bledsoe has worked for him a long time. The only thing your secretary at the plant says is that she overheard Bledsoe say that he had gotten the money, but nobody knows what that was about.

  For all I know, he may have been stealing from the plant, but that doesn’t mean he was the murderer. All they have on Paul is the tape, and Paul can explain it away in five minutes on the witness stand. It’s ambiguous.

  He’s going to walk away from all of this.”

  “What I have trouble understanding,” Tommy says cautiously, “is why a man like that would risk so much.”

  I have trouble with that aspect, too, but I say, “I don’t know how often you and Connie have been in Bear Creek recently, but I’m finding out it’s changed a lot since I grew up here.” “It’s changed, all right,” Tommy says humorlessly.

  Sensing that he is willing to talk, I ask him what he does for a living, and he tells me that he has a commercial real estate firm in D.C. It sounds as if he is doing quite well, which I don’t doubt. He had the sort of mind that could make sense of the tax code but never tried to intimidate you with his intelligence. I ask what Connie does and learn that she is a physicist in Memphis who measures the amount of radiation given to cancer patients. She has been driving over on the weekends to stay with their mother, who has been ill for the last several years and whose health has not. been improved by her husband’s murder. I am sure he will be on the phone to them after this call.

  Before I hang up, he asks, “Is there a trial date?”

  I explain that Class has to be formally arraigned first and tell him that despite the circumstances it was good to talk to him. We were friends once; maybe we can be again once this is all over. I place the phone on the table and lean back against the bed and watch Vanna swishing back and forth on the screen. How little it takes to entertain me. Before I can take a sip of bourbon, the phone rings, and I pick it up, hoping it’s not Betty telling me she’ll bring down some extra towels.

  “Gideon,” Paul Taylor begins, “damn, I’m glad you’re in this case. Can you believe the shit I’m in?” Who told him I was here? I stare at Vanna’s backside while I try to absorb what he is saying.

  Can he still be this arrogant after all these years?

  Does he truly not know how I feel about him? Of course, he doesn’t.

  Paul, I realize now, is the type who, regardless of what he does, can always rationalize his actions.

  “You’re in some shit all right.

  Does Dick know you’re calling me? I shouldn’t be visiting with you without his okay.” “Hell, sure he does,” he says casually.

  “We’re on the same side of this, right?”

  If Angela has talked to him, she didn’t say how I feel about him.

  “Of course!” I say as if his charge is one huge mistake.

  “But what on earth did you do to piss off the new order, Paul? Unless somebody is playing a huge practical joke, I’d say somebody doesn’t like you.”

  He laughs, but the sound coming through the phone is not a merry one.

  “This is the new order, all right! Can you believe we have niggers

  running Bear Creek? When we were kids, could you have ever imagined the sheriff, prosecuting attorney, and judge would have black faces when we got to be our parents’ ages?”

  Paul has some nerve mentioning my parents in the same breath with his.

  I realize I better take advantage of this moment while I can.

  “Paul, did you have some dealings with my client I don’t know about?” I ask.

  Paul’s voice becomes intense.

  “What’s he saying, Gideon?”

  If I had known I was going to have this opportunity, I would have tried to figure out how to trap him. My mind races for a way to get him to admit that he hired Class or someone else to kill Willie.

  “Well, of course, he can’t very well deny once having worked for you, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about the details. I just got hired yesterday. It sounds as if you had some contact with him after old Willie was killed. Is that right?”

  “Why don’t you come by the house for a drink after supper, Gideon?”

  Paul asks, his voice polite.

  “I’ll call Dick, and we can do a little brainstorming—unless you have plans tonight.”

  I wonder if something in my tone warned him away or he simply found out what he needed to know. I can’t very well turn him down.

  “What time?” I ask, checking my watch. Hell, I wish he would invite me to eat. I’m getting hungry.

  “About eight,” he says.

  “You know where we live now?”

  I confess I don’t, and he says that he has moved into town.

  “We sold Riverdale years ago.

  We live in the old Yates house. You know where that is.”

  “I remember.” Bear Creek’s one mansion.

  What a piece of work this guy is. I’d love to ask about Mae, but I ask about Jill instead, and he tells me that she is “just wonderful” and abruptly gets off the phone. I put down the receiver without having gotten to ask how he knew I was at the Bear Creek Inn. All I can figure is that gossip travels the speed of light over here. For all I know, Betty may have called ten people since I checked in. I remind myself to be careful. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll be the one who will end up getting screwed.

  I don’t need to arrive at his house thinking that Paul was a great guy after all, and I pour out my bourbon and Coke in the sink. I decide to

  shower and get out of the clothes I’m wearing today. Friday night.

  Nobody in eastern Arkansas is wearing a suit unless he or she is getting married tonight or buried tomorrow. As I place the pants and jacket on a plastic hanger, I am reminded of Amy, who bought this suit as her Christmas present to me for my rape trial in Fayetteville. She is probably feeding Jessie about now. She is delightful and fundamentally a good person, but all those nudes! What is that about?

  Sex or art? If Sarah comes home for Easter in her Volkswagen with a trunk full of photographs of herself wearing just her birthday suit, w
hat will I do? Shoot us both, probably. In the shower I look at my shrunken penis and marvel at its capacity to get me into trouble. Such an ignoble-looking piece of equipment, and, to my mind, visual refutation that humans are somehow endowed with some kind of special nobility among the animal kingdom.

  Ten minutes later, wearing a pair of khakis that aren’t too badly wrinkled, I ride into town and eat at Charlie’s Pizza, an establishment whose most inviting feature, among all the computer games, is an old-fashioned pinball machine. I resist the urge to play it, preferring not to call any more attention to myself than I already have. Of course, I might as well be wearing a neon sign around my neck. Everyone in here, no more than twenty, and mostly teenagers, is obviously a regular. When I was a kid, Friday night in February meant basketball. I guess it still does, and with all the private schools in the Delta, sports are almost as segregated as they were when I was growing up. Integration was supposed to bring us together; arguably, nothing has driven us further apart.

  Forty-five minutes later, after a cheese-and-sausage pizza that has burned the roof of my mouth, I make a turn onto Scott Street and realize I have missed the entrance to Paul’s drive.

  Maybe I don’t remember Bear Creek as well as I thought. I turn around and pull into a curved driveway that sits on a full acre of land, only two blocks from downtown Bear Creek. Three stories, brick, with a formal garden and a couple of birdbaths, this house doesn’t look like it is owned by someone who has suffered from financial reverses. What I keep forgetting, however, is how depressed prices must be over here.

  Paul probably got this for a third of what he would have to pay for its equivalent in Blackwell County.

  As I press the doorbell, I realize I am fall of anxiety, My family must have been so inconsequential to the Taylors that Paul doesn’t have the slightest idea of the impact he has had on the lives of my mother or me. I wonder what my sister Marty remembers about Paul. As big a pain in the butt as that conversation will be, I should call her and find out. Naturally, Jill comes to the door, though I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see her. I always liked her, and feel awkward seeing her under these circumstances.

  “Hello, Gideon,” she says warmly, obviously thinking I am here to help her husband. She gives me a hug, touching me for the first time in our lives. Though once a high-school beauty, now she is almost gaunt, and her once-lovely face is stretched tight against her skull, giving her the look of a middle-aged woman with an incurable disease. Living with Paul has obviously taken a toll.

  “Hi, Jill,” I say, and become immediately tongue-tied. I should have insisted on meeting Paul in his office. Though I never knew Jill as well as I would have liked, she was a caring, decent girl from a good background who just happened to be born with beautiful olive skin and the loveliest brown eyes in the entire Delta. I cannot help but wonder what her rival Mae Terry looks like after all these years in a wheelchair. Though she has never met her, Jill asks about Sarah as if I were their next door neighbor who had just returned from a trip with his child to Disneyland.

  Sean, their son, is not in evidence, making me wonder if he has been hustled out of town to stay with Jill’s parents until his father’s life calms down a bit. What do you say to your child when you’ve been charged with murder? Sorry for making your life a nightmare, but mine is hell, too, so what about a little sympathy? Not if he’s twelve. I can’t help feeling a little sorry for Jill and Sean, but not sorry enough to resist sticking it to Paul if there is any way I can do it.

  As she, chatting all the while, leads me through a formal dining room with a table that could seat twenty, it is apparent she has done her homework about me in the last twenty-four hours. Whatever her husband truly thinks of me, I am to be courted. She opens the door into a den, and I see Dick Dickerson, who stands up as I enter the room. I haven’t seen him in thirty years, but he is recognizable because of his uncanny resemblance to “ole Bullet Head,” Gerald Ford, but unlike the former president with his reputation for ungainliness, Dick can do more than walk and chew gum at the same time. With the grace of a tiger, Dick meets me in the middle of the room and catches my hand before I can spread my fingers.

  “Good to see you, Gideon. You’re doing some good legal work these days,” he says, crunching my knuckles.

  “Your mother and daddy would be proud.”

  “Thank you, Dick,” I say, flattered despite myself.

  “Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.

  How are you?”

  Behind me I hear Paul’s voice, “Jill, can you get Gideon a drink?”

  Jill smiles wanly at her husband, who has come in behind us. As Angela has said, he looks in great shape. His blond hair has gone sandy but there is still lots of it, and his stomach is enviably flat under a pair of faded button-up jeans. I wonder what it must be like for her as she visibly ages and he gets more handsome. She asks me, “What would you like?”

  I notice that Dick has nothing on the table beside his chair, and say I’ll take some decaf if she has some. Paul protests, but I shake my head.

  Something tells me that I am going to want to remember this conversation at least until this trial is over.

  Before Paul allows me to sit down he pumps my hand vigorously and looks me in the eye.

  “I appreciate you coming by on short notice, Gideon. Dick and I both feel the sooner we start going down the same path the better.”

  “No problem,” I say as I sit down on a black leather couch across from Dick and look around the room. On the walls are photographs of the whole family captured in activities that range from duck hunting to posing with Corliss Williamson, the former Razorback great. Jill smiles gamely in all of them as if to say, whose life goes as planned?

  Paul, clutching what appears to be scotch and water, takes a seat on the couch by me. I might need a drink too if I were charged with first-degree murder.

  “Gideon, Paul says you haven’t had much of a conversation with your client yet,” Dick says, pulling up a yellow legal pad from the briefcase beside his Barcalounger.

  “Is he saying anything?”

  They seem so eager to know if Bledsoe is going to implicate Paul that it is hard to avoid the feeling that both he and my client are guilty as hell.

  “Other than he didn’t do it and that someone is framing him, not much.” “Does he have any ideas,” Dick asks, taking notes, “who that might be?”

  Jill returns with a steaming mug that has painted on it Arkansas Razorbacks—National Champs ‘93-‘94. I wait until she leaves, since I’m not sure how much she is supposed to hear. It is difficult for me to gauge their relationship.

  Maybe his screwing around with Mae Terry is no threat to her. If your rival is confined to a wheelchair, it probably is easy to believe all you are missing when he goes out the door to her house is some good conversation. I answer, “He doesn’t know. I don’t get the impression that Bledsoe is working on a doctorate in nuclear physics.”

  Paul snickers appreciatively, but I detect some nervousness behind it.

  If he has a deal with Bledsoe to keep his mouth shut, so far, so good, but there is a long way to go.

  “It could have been any of the workers at the plant,” Dick suggests.

  “Or possibly someone who didn’t even work there. I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility that Doris could have killed her husband and set up your client.”

  I cannot remember the last time I saw Airs.

  Ting. It has to be at least thirty years ago and must have been in their store. Her English was not as good as her husband’s, but she seemed to be there every time he was. Connie said her mother has been ill. I can’t imagine she would kill her husband, but as a defense attorney I can’t exclude anyone I can reasonably point a finger at. But I do not want to admit that I am seeing her tomorrow and have already been on the phone with Connie and Tommy.

  “Anything’s possible,” I say, knowing that Dick wants to tell me how to do this case.

  Dick frowns
at this lack of enthusiasm and says, “We know you have a primary duty to your client, but I think if we coordinate our defenses, it’ll be in both our interests to do so.”

  The last thing Dick wants me to argue to the jury is that Paul may have hired someone else to kill Willie and is the one setting up Bledsoe Why not pretend to cooperate as long as I can get away with it? It may be the only way I can get Paul. I respond, “I don’t know why we can’t do that.

  Bledsoe insists that he is innocent and that he didn’t cook up any conspiracy with Paul.”

  After this exchange, Dick visibly relaxes. Paul has obviously professed his innocence, but until now, Dick couldn’t be positive that Class hasn’t confessed to me that he murdered Willie and implicated Paul. For the next hour we talk generally about the case, and I use the opportunity to ask about the connections after the murder between Class and Paul, who, as expected, minimizes them.

  “Before he was arrested, I didn’t even know Oldham had hired Class,” he says, “to help him with the restaurant. Talk to Oldham—he’ll tell you. I own the restaurant, but I treat him like an independent contractor, so I won’t have to worry with a bunch of niggers getting drunk out there and shooting each other and then suing the deep pocket.

  Oldham can hire anybody he wants. I guess I saw Class out there a couple of times in the last few months but I don’t remember if I even spoke to him or not. I didn’t give a shit.

  Class had worked for me years ago, and he had enough sense to deliver appliances and install them, so I figured he could make change and slice barbecue, and I didn’t worry about it. My deal with Oldham was that he pay me five hundred dollars every month, and as long as he did that, I didn’t care what he did.”

  Do Dick or I believe this? I doubt it. I try to remember what Butterfield told me: Bledsoe had claimed he didn’t know Paul owned Oldham’s.

  Dick explains that in the file there is a statement from Henry Oldham in which he denies being told by Paul to hire Class, but Oldham admits that Paul made several trips to get barbecue during the time around the date of the murder.