“I’m Jessie St. vrain,” she says, “and I’m starving.”
I try not to look surprised. Is everybody here androgynous?
“Good,” I say.
“We’re eating on my boss’s money.”
We sit at a table against a mirror, and I can’t get away from wondering whether Jessie is really a woman.
Harold, I remember, used the word “gal,” but I’m beginning to wonder if that holds much significance around here. Shit, maybe this is Richard Thomas’s son or daughter. Jessie’s lips are full but unpainted. John Boy wore more makeup than this woman. Jessie is mercifully oblivious to my confusion and treats me like a visiting cousin.
“Have you gotten to see anything? Ride the cable cars? We could have gone to Fisherman’s Wharf, but the prices are such a rip-off.”
I look at the menu. More expensive than home but not bad. I close it and get what I always order at home:
sweet-and-sour pork. My tastes would put a lot of people out of work, Rainey has observed. Jessie, obviously a veteran, makes several suggestions and sighs in frustration at my choice. She orders squid.
“How do you know Harold?” she asks, pouring us each a cup of tea as if we were a long-married couple who know each other’s routines.
“Isn’t he wild? I just love his show, especially that little one they call the Louisville Slugger.
If you do only one thing, you should catch it.”
Afraid to admit I already have, I say, “I’ve known Harold a while. He said you have an interesting story.”
Jessie gives me a frown, as if I have committed some horrible breach of etiquette.
“Have you got to be some place at five-thirty?” she asks, disapproval in her green eyes.
“Not at all,” I concede. Lighten up, I think. My plane doesn’t leave until tomorrow afternoon. Jessie is like a Mexican businessman. We’re supposed to entertain each other before we do a deal. I order a beer for me and sake for her. What the hell? I tell her I found the Louisville Slugger attractive, too.
“It made me feel a little weird though,” I confide.
“I have enough trouble with the opposite sex without having to worry if it’s truly opposite
Jessie laughs, revealing lovely teeth. I decide she is pretty in an unusual way. I haven’t been out with a woman who is as petite and graceful as she is in years.
Perish the thought. The last thing I need to do is go to bed with her. Even the idea of masturbation in this city makes me break into a cold sweat. Dan told me, not entirely joking, that I was running a risk by changing my underwear. I suspect that is a risk I’ll take. As she spoons her soup, Jessie begins to tell me her life story.
She is divorced but no kids. A frustrated artist, she draws in her spare time, and proving it, she whips out a pad and pen and sketches my face while we are waiting for the rest of our dinner. While she draws, she tells me she has lived everywhere except the South.
“No offense, but I’ve avoided it like the plague. We drove through Alabama and Mississippi once, and you just seem so backward and poor. Granted the prices here make you think you’re living in Russia, but the diversity is just fantastic!”
I smile, trying to avoid feeling defensive. I’m here to persuade Jessie to testify, not start a new Civil War.
Still, I can feel my hackles rising. Condescension toward Southerners is a lifelong obsession of mine.
“Yeah, the Rodney King thing,” I say, getting into my Arkansas Delta accent, “made me want to load up my old pickup and five kids and move on out. It’s hard not to get nostalgic for the old days when you see a beating like that.”
Our waiter, a frazzled Asian kid who seems accustomed to moving at the speed of light, throws on the table two egg rolls that resemble dried dog turds. Jessie downs her sake before attacking her portion. She smiles to make sure I’m joking. To keep her going, I show a few teeth. She says, “I’m afraid I’d just vegetate even in a place like Atlanta. Mainly, you just have two races, still living separate and unequal, African-Americans oppressed as ever.”
Since we are eating in a ghetto made up of a race that as far as I know has never had a governor and seems to wield little political power, I observe, “Tell me about it.
That black mayor in Atlanta rants and raves, but you know how crackers are down South. It’s a living hell all right.”
Smiling shyly, she tears off her drawing, signs it at the bottom, and pushes it at me. I’m astonished at the likeness: I’ve been told I look a little like Nick Nolte but never took it seriously until this moment.
“Not bad,” I tell her, trying not to squint. I don’t want to ruin the effect by putting on reading glasses.
The drawing somehow serves to bring about a truce, and we eat our meal in relative harmony. I tell her about Sarah and her current flirtation with fundamentalism.
As expected, Jessie expresses horror, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her own beliefs weren’t just as extreme, if Doonesbury’s Boopsie is any guide to California. At least Sarah hasn’t told me she is into “channeling” yet.
I don’t want to start a fight, so I don’t ask Jessie about her religion and am relieved when she doesn’t relate any out-of-body experiences. After dinner she reads me her fortune: ” “You find beauty in simple things. Do not neglect this gift.” ” She smiles, and I wonder if I am one of the simple things. I read her mine. ” “A wise man and his tongue are never parted.” ” Draining her third sake, she says, with a snicker, “Only with great difficulty.”
Jessie suggests that we talk at my hotel and takes my arm in a proprietary way as we walk back toward Powell Street. I confess I am nervous. From a distance she looks so much like a boy I know we are taken for a homosexual couple. Because of my acceptance of Skip, I thought I didn’t have any prejudice, but I feel myself blushing when I get a glance from tourists.
“There’s a couple of ‘em,” I can imagine them saying.
But maybe they are thinking, “Nick Nolte I didn’t know he was gay.”
Inside the Fairfield Hotel, I feel sweat soaking my undershirt.
“You want to talk in the bar?” I ask, my voice sounding plaintive even to me.
Looking up at me with her clear emerald eyes, she murmurs, “I’d feel better if we talked in your room.”
A bellman, an Asian guy in his early twenties, catches my eye and grins. He must want a tip to keep his mouth shut. I’m not doing anything wrong, I want to scream at the top of my voice. I take my hands out of my pockets as if this somehow will indicate my good faith.
“Okay,” I sigh.
“Let’s go.”
Feeling as though the entire staff of the hotel is watching us, I follow her onto the elevator and keep my eyes on the floor until the door shuts. On the sixth floor there are no guests roaming the halls, and I unlock the door to my room, relieved not to have encountered one.
Like a couple returning from a night on the town, we both head for the bathroom. Though my bladder feels like an overheated inner tube, I defer, and she says companionably, “I’m about to bust.”
Hoping things won’t get any stranger, I look around the room, wondering how to get as far away from the bed as possible. There are two chairs, and I drag them over to the window and place them a yard apart and sit down. Though I have brought a pint of bourbon, alcohol is the last thing this little party needs right now. Once she leaves, I may not even go out for ice.
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 h
and 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.”
“Salina’s sister will take him,” Teresa says firmly.
“The home study’s not bad, but each of your clients will have to kick in for support. She can’t do it by herself.”
“No fucking way,” Wayne grunts under his breath.
“He’ll never go for it.”
“That’s okay with me,” Teres
a shoots back. “Tell him the social worker in Chicago has promised me she will file criminal charges for assault if he gets custody.”
Wayne picks at a herpes cold sore as big as a dime on his lip. He knows this may be a bluff, but it is something his client will have to think about. His distaste for Teresa is obvious, but she couldn’t have him more firmly by the balls if she were holding on with a set of pliers. Rick Crawford, the chancery judge who appointed Teresa to represent the kid, would believe her over Wayne or me even if we had the entire United States Supreme Court as character witnesses for our clients.
“Let me go talk to him,” Wayne mutters as he gets up.
I can’t resist winking at Teresa as soon as Wayne’s back is turned. Teresa is one of the better-looking female attorneys in Blackwell County, and is happily married with four kids. She glares at me.
“How can you represent a woman like that, Gideon?” she hisses at me as I start to push up from my chair to go talk to Salina.
“She should have her cunt sewn shut and you know it!”
The fierceness of her words shocks me as much as her profanity. Teresa and her husband, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital with a national reputation, appear regularly in the society pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I shrug.
“Women who want custody of their kids don’t seem at first blush public enemy number one.”
From a manila folder Teresa throws out on the table pictures of Bobby that turn my stomach. His buttocks look like hamburger meat.
“I haven’t seen these,” I say, feeling my face turn warm.
Teresa shakes her finger at me.
“Your client doesn’t have any business even trying to raise a hamster.”
I finger the pictures, trying not to wince.
“She’s had a hell of a life herself,” I say weakly. Actually, I do not know this, but only suspect it from some of my client’s comments.
“That doesn’t give her the right to let her child suffer like this,” she says harshly.
“I’m not kidding. She should be sterilized.”
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