by Noel Obiora
“No, I don’t I’m afraid.”
“Okay, I will let Kate know. She is the senior attorney on the case—”
“Don’t worry. I will be calling her directly,” the lawyer had said and hung up before Amy could respond.
Amy could tell Mr. Ross was the lawyer who was so rude to her yesterday. She was still irritated by the ethical compromise he had forced on her because Kate insisted that the contract be returned to the record company. After the phone call with the recording company attorney, Amy had become very curious about the lawyer’s rude behavior and made copies of both the recording contract and the rental agreement, which she took with her to read at home.
•••
Nothing else was scheduled for People v. Jackson, Amy told herself when she got back to her office and sat down to contemplate next steps. An idle business card by her telephone caught her attention and she picked it up. It was Cassandra Rayburn’s card, on which Amy had written the number Melissa gave her for Kenneth. She had still not called him. What would she say to him, after so long? What was he expecting from trying so hard to reach her? She wondered how he had changed. It made her anxious to think it had taken her this long to call him. She picked up the phone and began to dial his number.
8
A Feminine Elan
When Amy returned from work, Thomas’s vehicle was idling quietly in front of her apartment building. She had not wanted him to visit, but seeing him standing there, five feet eleven inches of an arrow straight frame, in a dark blue suit and dark sunglasses, she was glad he had come. Partly the dutiful girlfriend and partly desirous of the escape he offered from People v. Jackson, she put her arms around him and felt every inch of her body alight as they kissed. He was about to pull away, but she strapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth. The expression on his face, when she finally stopped and leaned back to look at him, pleased her. Without saying a word, she held his hand and started walking toward her apartment. She asked him about his trip, when he had left New York, and where he was staying.
He was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Pasadena, he said and asked her to come and stay with him. She agreed and on getting to her apartment, grabbed a ready-packed travel bag into which she threw a couple of dresses and shoes. She checked her voicemail again. Her brother Edward was coming to Los Angeles the following week. There was someone he wanted her to meet. It made her smile. Thomas watched her, as though he was trying to understand what was going on. As they were leaving her apartment, just as she was about to open the door, she closed it again, and threw her arms around his neck. This time, he led their slow dance to the inaudible beats of their racing hearts and the soft rhythm of her panting breaths. She had to stop him. Pausing for the applause that was her heartbeat to subside, she turned around, opened the door, and walked out. Thomas took a deep breath, exhaled, straightened his suit, and smiled to himself. Then he followed her out, letting the door shut on its own.
It was, after all, her decision to keep him at arms’ length while he courted her. Even then, mostly at Alana’s urging, did she overcome her cold feet on the first few dates. He had proposed to her over the three weeks’ vacation she took before starting her new position, but she had turned him down because she could not be sure that he would have proposed had she not told him about the compromise she made with her Catholic faith. Earlier in their courtship when he expressed his frustrations with the pace of their relationship, she told him she had made herself a promise not to engage in premarital sex unless she was certain that she was headed to the alter with the person. After her failed engagement, she had struggled to make sense of her own promise. The flesh being weak and marriage no longer a priority of hers, the promise was becoming harder to keep. More than anyone, since she broke up with Richard, Thomas had tried her patience the most.
She often felt this uncontrollable descent to decadence, like a form of self-flagellation, when she allowed herself to recall the young man she was almost with in college, whose name had recently resurfaced after she thought she had finally forgotten him. For years after college, when she thought of him her imagination went to prurient extremes she would never allow herself in person. She had not allowed herself to date him, because of perceived family strictures that would have made a union between them impossible. Her charmed life, she had thought, came at the cost of certain freedoms.
A woman had answered the phone when she finally called the number Melissa gave her, and that woman’s voice recurred in Amy’s mind. Had she called his home or his office? Melissa never stated which number she got from him. She had nervously said she would call back later, without leaving her number.
Until she embraced Thomas and later gave in to him at the Ritz, she had not known she was on the verge of a cathartic sexual implosion. It was official then, or was it?
After dinner and tea, they retreated to bed. Amy fell silent, as though preparing herself to sleep, her back turned to him, one part shyness and one part guilt in a manner and to an extent she had not expected.
“So, what’s going on?” Thomas asked. He had been unusually reticent all evening, speaking through many silences and facial expressions. When Amy did not respond, he ran his hand over her back up to her shoulder and squeezed gently. Amy pulled her shoulders up to her ears and turned around smiling. “What’s going on?” he repeated.
Amy still did not say anything. She looked into his eyes, the center of their blue seemed to look past her, searching the inner depths of hers, and she let them.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Who said I don’t?”
“You’re not speaking.”
She placed her hand on the middle of his chest. “You’re not listening.”
“Then help me.”
Amy shook her head slowly. Suddenly, she was close to tears and she could not explain why. Thomas reached out to hold her and Amy moved closer into his embrace and buried her face on his chest. They lay that way for a while before she turned around and wiped her eyes and let him spoon her.
“I know you said you didn’t want me to visit while you are dealing with this new job. You didn’t want to lean on me emotionally.”
“So, why did you come?”
“Your mother told me someone at the new office appeared to have hand-picked you for a test.”
Amy fell quiet for a while. Thomas also appeared to be done speaking.
“I came into the office to find a really exciting case waiting for me. But then the senior deputy on the case seems to want to do the opposite of everything I think is the right thing to do.”
“Can you get off the case?”
“My first assignment, my first week? Besides, I don’t want off the case.”
“Then call her bullshit on it.”
“I don’t make any decisions on the case, that means I don’t get to call bullshit on anything.”
“So, what’ll you do?”
“Just what I have been doing. Kate, that’s her name, actually instructed me to withhold evidence.”
“Did you?”
“Well, not literally,” Amy said, and nodded.
“No!”
“Yes.”
“What?”
She told Thomas about the general liability insurance policy she had to turn over to the recording company attorney instead of making it available to the defendant’s attorney to pay for the defense. Thomas explained that he could get around that problem and instruct the insurance company to pay the defendant, if Amy wanted. His companies included a clearing house for major insurance companies.
“As much as I want to do the right thing, I think this man killed her in cold blood, too, and I’m not getting out of my way to do anything for him.”
She turned around and kissed him. “Thanks, though,” she said.
“What’s Kate’s last name?”
Amy shook h
er head.
“Let’s talk about something else.”
9
Bauchet Street
The unopened letter in the case was both divine intervention and the Devil’s handiwork to Paul’s family. Sister Ramatu said it was nothing short of a miracle the letter appeared to show that her son did not know Goldie was dead. “Why else would he be writing her after she was already dead?” Mallam Jackson said the Devil planted it to test his faith. In either case, both had God on the job already. Kenneth first learned of what happened at the arraignment from Jo, who drove straight to Norwalk from the hearing. She had asked Nancy which court Kenneth went to and made the drive to find Kenneth at the Norwalk Superior Courthouse during lunch.
“What do you think it could be?” she asked. “Delayed mail?”
“Did you ask Paul?”
“I couldn’t see him before they took him away,” Jo said, and after a long pause, added, “And, I’m afraid to ask. Ken, this case is growing tentacles by the minute, and we haven’t secured the attorney’s fees yet. Even if we had the money, Mr. Jones will burn through it before trial.”
Jo was emotional as she recounted what happened in court. Kenneth told her that Paul must have told his lawyers what was in the letter, if he wrote it.
“You can’t have his attorneys arguing that the letter should not be opened without knowing what’s in it,” Kenneth said.
“Ken, Paul doesn’t write shit down unless he’s really angry. That’s what his songwriting is about, to calm him down. He never writes a letter to say, ‘I love you.’ If he wrote that woman, it’s not good. It is not something nice he was saying to her. He’s impulsive and hotheaded.”
“Regardless, he must come clean about the letter to his attorneys.”
“Will you ask him?”
“It’s better if his attorney asks him, that way it’s protected attorney-client information.”
“You’re an attorney, Ken.”
“But I’m not his attorney.”
After a while, Jo muttered, “Yet.” Kenneth smiled, and forced a smile from Jo. “Please go and see him,” she pleaded.
“How about Big?”
“What about him?”
“Could he have sent the letter after Goldie died?”
“I don’t think so. He couldn’t stand the hold that woman had on Paul.”
It took promising to go and see Paul soon for Kenneth to gracefully excuse himself from the meeting with Jo, but he wanted to know what Big knew about the letter before going to see Paul.
Big had driven Sister Ramatu to court but stayed in the parking lot. His blood pressure couldn’t handle the hearing, he told her. When Kenneth got to Cool Jo’s Café on his way from Norwalk Superior Courthouse, Big seemed excited to see him. He stood astride with his arms wide open and his mouth agape, cheerfully reeking of alcohol.
“Mudderfucker, where you been? You missed some fireworks. Mr. Jones came to the hearing.” He gave Kenneth a big hug and almost squeezed the breath out of him. “You were fucking wrong about Mr. Jones. He was representing, big time.”
He pulled Kenneth’s arm along as he went inside the club. The bar was empty except for a bottle of Courvoisier and a single glass on the counter. Big pointed behind the bar as though he was offering Kenneth a drink, but Kenneth shook his head.
“Paul’s happy you’s gonna visit him. He’s looking forward to it,” Big said. When Kenneth said nothing, Big continued, “You still going, right?”
“Of course I’m going. That’s why I’m here.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No. What do you know about this letter they say he sent after she died?”
“Them mudderfuckers are crackheads, Kenny. Why Paul gonna write her a letter? She lives down that freeway, right there, and most nights we know which nightclub to find her. It’s probably some old mail she ain’t opened yet.”
“I thought they said the post date on the envelope was recent?”
“It was?”
“Paul didn’t say anything?”
“No, they’re recording his business and shit in that jailhouse, I wasn’t gonna ask him. But I didn’t send it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, that’s not what I’m asking,” Kenneth said and got up to leave. “Does Cool Jo’s have a secretary?”
“Yeah…this girl comes in three times a week to put things in order and get us ready for the weekend.”
“She still—”
“Oh, nigga wait. You see that shit right there is why you need to be one of Paul’s lawyers.”
They were walking toward the exit as they talked about the secretary, but Big had stopped to make his last point. Kenneth stopped as well.
“Because I asked you about the secretary?”
“Mr. Jones never asked those questions you asking. Come to think of it, this whole shit turns on whether Paul was right here the night that woman died, like he said he was, and Mr. Jones has never seen the inside of this club. Hasn’t even bothered to stop by, and his office is down the street from here. We need you on this case.”
“Has Mallam hired Mr. Jones?”
“No, the family is divided. Jo wants you and she thinks Paul does, too.”
“And Mallam has the money for Mr. Jones?”
“Shoot, you should have seen the press in the courtroom. You know Mr. Jones wants to be a celebrity.”
“He’s not gonna do it for the publicity, Big.”
“For experience, Kenny, can’t you work with him? Just be in it for the family.”
“You don’t have the money for Mr. Jones, how you gonna have the money for the two of us?”
“We are gonna get the money, Kenny. We are gonna do a concert like ‘Live Aid’ for Paul, selling ‘Free Paul Jackson’ T-shirts and pins and shit. We’ll come up with the money, I guarantee you,” Big said.
•••
Kenneth cleared his schedule to visit Paul on Friday because the sheriff might move him away from the central jail. Most defendants whose trials are not imminent are held at the Pitchess Detention Center of the Los Angeles County Jails, about forty miles north of Los Angeles, in the mountains off the freeway to Northern California. Kenneth was afraid that Paul might be moved to Pitchess due to weekend overcrowding, and he did not want to drive that far to see him when he could do so at the jailhouse on Bouchet Street.
Bauchet Street is in the northeasterly end of downtown Los Angeles, around the corner from the train station. It crosses Alameda Street one block north of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. On one side of Alameda, Bauchet Street crawls around a mini-mart and continues along a filthy back street the city had long since forgotten. In the opposite direction, it dead-ends fifty feet from the jailhouse. Opportunists abound here like maggots, drawn to the misery of those incarcerated and their families.
Kenneth had not been to the central jail on Bauchet Street in a while, but he recalled it well from his first few months in private practice. Most lawyers go through their entire careers in Los Angeles never knowing it exists. Of the few who know it, only the young criminal lawyers starting their careers go there regularly to hone their skills and pay their dues. Until the defendant/accused meets and approves an unknown attorney, most families will not open their wallets for his services. Moreover, the poor young lawyers have state competition from the free services of the public defender’s office. Ordinarily, a defendant would not qualify for representation by the public defender if he can afford private counsel, but in most cases, like Paul Jackson’s, immediate and extended family members retain the private counsel, not the destitute defendant. Kenneth hurried into the receiving area, where two deputy sheriffs made him empty his pockets, patted him down, and asked him to take off his belt before he went through the metal detector.
“It doesn’t ring,” he protested, but they just looked at him. Kenneth
took his belt off and held his pants up with angry fists.
“Your shoes!” one deputy snapped at him. Kenneth wondered why he bothered giving them his bar card showing that he was an attorney. He obeyed them anyway, taking off his shoes and placing them in a plastic container. He walked through the metal detector, dressed himself again, and proceeded to the visitor’s lounge. The visitor’s area of the jail was a hall of about sixty square feet where prisoners and their guests met without a partition between them. This meeting place seemed temporarily set up due to ongoing construction at the jailhouse and the décor appeared to have been inspired by a high school cafeteria. Benches lined the lengths of twelve-by-six-foot tables put end to end from one wall to the other with two or three feet of space between them.
Most of the tables were not occupied. After a brief wait, the sheriff led Paul Jackson into the meeting room. Wearing pink jumpers with his hands in handcuffs, he looked toward Kenneth as he waited for final clearance from an approaching guard. His eyes looked like they fell deeper into their sockets for lack of sleep, his six-feet-two inches height looked shorter, perhaps because he was slightly hunched. The guard took off his handcuffs from one hand and cuffed the other hand to one leg of the table where Kenneth sat. Kenneth patted him on the shoulder and squeezed his left hand, the free hand.
“They been treating you well?”
“As good as it gets, I guess.”
“Hang in there, they can’t break us like this anymore,” Kenneth said. Paul smiled.
“Look at you, sounding like your momma’s son all of a sudden.”
“Ma sends her love, by the way.”
“Tell her I appreciate all the support she’s been giving my mom.”
“I will.”
“Can you do my case with your professor friend?”
“Yes. But like I told Jo, I can’t do it without the funds to pay the professor and run my office,” Kenneth said, watching Paul, whose eyes drifted away from Kenneth to another table and somewhere beyond their visit. “Paul, you know I started at the public defender’s office. There are still some senior attorney’s there I call for advice on my criminal cases once in a while. They’ll do a good job for you.”