Exposure

by Therese Fowler

  As if that helped in the least.

  While Anthony might have been said to be a decent actor when onstage, playing a role all day—a role he hadn’t wanted, hadn’t tried out for—wore him down until, at three o’clock, he hardly cared that the rest of his afternoon and a portion of his evening were going to be taken up by legal consultations. They had to choose a lawyer, and fast, or he’d be at the courthouse next Wednesday morning with little idea about what was going to happen or how he was supposed to handle it. The court had a website, and he’d found an FAQ page on what to expect, but that was geared to people who’d been arrested for DWI or speeding or other misdemeanors that, if you pled guilty, could result in fines, and maybe license points lost, but not jail time.

  The site presumed that most defendants would appear without counsel. He didn’t have the first clue on how to represent himself, or whether he’d get a chance to explain to the judge what was really going on, or whether if he did, the judge would give a damn. Probably Amelia’s father played poker with all the judges. He almost certainly sold them their cars, and likely had contributed money to a lot of political campaigns. Without a lawyer looking after his interests, Anthony would be as vulnerable as an orchid in a blizzard, to use one of his grandfather’s sayings. He was sorry his grandfather wasn’t around to lend his wisdom directly.

  Anthony’s mother met him at home. He’d changed clothes, not into shorts and a T-shirt, which he’d usually choose after ditching his school uniform, but into the pressed khakis and golf shirt she’d bought last night and left on his bed. The combination of the outfit and the reason for wearing it made him a prep and a perp at the same time. Shakespeare, he thought, could have had a lot of fun with that wordplay setup.

  “You look great,” his mother said, trying to smile; the furrows between her eyes were more truthful than her words or tone.

  “So do you,” he said honestly. She was in a conservative black-and-white outfit: tailored pants, white blouse, black ribbed cardigan, simple silver hoops in her ears. A confident woman, not at all the type whose son could need a criminal attorney.

  The white-knuckled way she clutched the notebook, though, in which she’d jotted the names, addresses, phone numbers, and appointment times, told a different story. He wanted to tell her to relax, and would have, if he’d had less guilt working on him. As it was, that she’d tried talking to the Wilkeses, that she’d made the appointments with the lawyers, that she’d bought him the new clothes he was wearing, that she’d run interference with Braddock, all on his behalf, made him feel that he was, to say the least, a disappointing and unworthy son.

  She said, “We’ll have to take advantage of our appearance and get dinner someplace nice when we’re done.” This statement, so reasonable-sounding when she made it, would become more of a rueful joke once they were through.

  The first of the lawyers they saw was a partner in a law firm comprised of four names so ordinary that the firm’s name could have been a joke. Misters Jones, Johnson, Peterson, and Brown had offices as nondescript as their names, and Brady Johnson, when he came into the conference room wearing a dark gray suit with a light gray shirt and a tie with a background of blue so pale that it was almost white, was bland as well. His face was round and smooth and, though he didn’t seem that large overall, his chin merged into his neck without even a line of separation. His voice, when he spoke, was monotone.

  “You’re Andy?” he said, extending his hand across the faux-mahogany table.

  “Anthony.”

  “Right.” They shook hands, then Johnson tugged his jacket straight, undid its button, and sat down at the head of the table.

  “This is my mom, Kim Winter.”

  Johnson nodded at her. “Unfortunate situation,” he said, glancing at the legal pad he’d carried in. “Tell me what happened.”

  Anthony gave a short summary, saying that Amelia was his girlfriend, that she’d asked for the photos—though not when, or why, and he didn’t describe them except to say he’d been undressed.

  The attorney made notes as he listened, then said, “Do you have your arrest warrant?”

  Anthony looked at his mother; she shook her head. “Nobody said to bring it. I gave all the details to the woman who answered my call and made the appointment.”

  Johnson skimmed the legal pad again, then lifted its top page, to find nothing written beneath. He folded his hands atop the pad. “What’s the statute they pegged you with?”

  “I—do you mean, what’s the charge?” Anthony asked.

  “The charge, yes.”

  “It’s like, ‘harmful dissemination to a minor,’ something like that.”

  Johnson raised his eyebrows as if to say, What sort of imbecile doesn’t know what he’s charged with? He said, with exaggerated patience, “The trouble with these kinds of charges is, some are felonies and some are misdemeanors. Without knowing exactly which one yours is, the advice I give you today won’t be very specific.”

  “It’s a misdemeanor,” Anthony said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah—that is, that’s what it said on the warrant, and I looked it up, so …”

  “All right, then, we’ll work with that. To represent you on a misdemeanor, the fee begins at twenty-five hundred. When are you supposed to appear?”

  Anthony was startled by the amount Johnson had just quoted. Two thousand five hundred dollars. Two thousand. Plus five hundred more. It took him a moment before he caught up with the question and said, “In court?”

  “Yes,” Johnson said with a slight smile, or maybe it was a smirk.

  Anthony said, “Next Wednesday, at nine A.M.”

  His mother added, “Is that normal, for it to be so soon? Doesn’t it take time to, well, design a defense, prepare—whatever it is you’d need to prepare?”

  “Mrs.”—he consulted the pad, stifling a yawn—“Winter, this is a misdemeanor, and regardless, it’s not as if there will be a trial.”

  “I’m not saying there would. But … what will there be?” she asked.

  “A conversation with the prosecutor. We meet that morning in court, we decide what makes sense, agree on terms—my job being to see that Anthony gets the minimum punishment possible. It’s a few minutes, and then you’re out.”

  Anthony bristled. “Minimum punishment? Why should I be punished at all? The charge is crap.”

  “Listen, what I said, that’s just an outline. If you retained me,” he said, sounding as if watching paint dry would be more interesting to him, “I’d need to review the charge, get a statement from you, see what case law there is, and go from there.” He rolled his chair away from the table, stood, and offered his hand again. “I have another appointment, so, thank you for coming by. Let us know what you decide. We can’t wait to get to work for you,” he said as Anthony grasped his hand reluctantly. “Angie will show you out.”

  Neither Anthony nor his mother spoke until they were in her car.

  “What did you think?”

  “I wanted to kick him.”

  “He didn’t inspire confidence, did he?” his mother said.

  Anthony shook his head. “And that’s a lot of money to ask for just talking to the prosecutor for five minutes.”

  “It is. But we don’t really have a choice, do we? Anyway, I have a few dollars put aside. We’ll manage.”

  “I’m not letting you pay.”

  She said, “Keep your money for school.”

  “School, right,” he said, staring out the window. “NYU’s gonna want to put my application at the top of the pile.”

  Their appointment with the second attorney was a rerun of the first, except that this man, Stevenson Hadley, was half again as old, twice as fat, and about ten times wealthier (if his shiny suit, silk tie, and four rings he wore were to be believed) than Brady Johnson. His fee was four thousand, he told them, glancing up from his notes as if to see whether he’d dissuaded them, possibly freeing himself up for something more interesting. When ne
ither Anthony nor his mother protested, the attorney added that he was reasonably certain that he himself would be able to make Anthony’s hearing date, though it was possible that something would come up and he’d have to send an associate. “Let Stacy know what you decide,” he said, rising. “Now I have an appointment, so I’ll have to leave you.”

  “What were we, then?” Anthony said as Hadley disappeared into another conference room.

  “Filler,” his mother replied. “Let’s go.”

  Across downtown, they parked in an empty public lot as the sun dropped behind the buildings around them. They crossed a street empty of its earlier traffic and entered the offices of the third attorney, Mariana Davis, with low hopes.

  Inside the glass door was a desk, behind which sat a woman with the darkest skin Anthony had ever seen. Her eyes and her teeth stood out vividly as she smiled in greeting. “You’re the Winters?” she asked. An enormous striped cat sat at the edge of her desk, its tail hanging over the side and thumping against the wood. Anthony petted it as his mother answered, “Yes. We’re a little early.”

  “That’s fine. Have a seat. Mariana will be free shortly.”

  The waiting area was pleasant and well lighted, oriented as it was next to a window with a view of the street. A trio of wide-leafed potted plants were centered in the window, above which were tall white letters, backward to Anthony’s view, reading Davis & Associates, Attorneys at Law. Integrity, Commitment, Results.

  Right, he thought, sitting down in a simple but new chair. Great slogan, but was he really supposed to buy it? More accurate would be, Indifference, Condescension, Reluctance, if what they’d seen so far today was representative of criminal attorneys—and they’d all be happy to lighten your wallet while you decided which was the truth.

  His mother sat beside him. “Not bad,” she said. “The plants are a nice touch.”

  They each chose a magazine from among the dozen or so that had been fanned across a corner table. Five minutes passed, then ten, and when they’d waited twenty minutes, Anthony dropped his Newsweek back onto the table and said, “What if I just save us a few grand and represent myself?”

  “Oh no, son, you don’t want to do that.”

  Anthony looked up. A tall black woman in a pin-striped brown skirt and crisp blue blouse stood in the waiting room’s doorway. Her dark hair was long and pulled back into a neat, girlish ponytail, but her eyes were all business. She said, “The prosecutor would eat you for breakfast. I’m Mariana Davis.” She offered her hand and Anthony stood up to shake it. “Come on with me and we’ll see if we can’t get you out of the fix you’re in.”

  The Davis & Associates conference room looked largely the same as the other two had. Anthony wondered how many people had sat in this room sweating figuratively and literally, as he was doing now.

  “Did you bring your arrest warrant?” the attorney asked.

  “No, but it’s a misdemeanor, and my court date is Wednesday, and the charge is, I think, ‘disseminating harmful materials to a minor.’ ”

  “Well,” Ms. Davis said, sitting back. “What makes me think you’ve run through this a time or two before now?”

  Anthony said, “Everyone asks the same questions. I’m just trying to save time.”

  “Good. All right, then, here’s what I know: the charge, North Carolina Statute 14-190.15, Disseminating harmful material to minors, is a Class 1 misdemeanor, which under certain circumstances is punishable by jail time. The DA really had to go digging to find this one,” she said. “Who, pardon my language, did you piss off?”

  Anthony smiled slightly. “Do you know Harlan Wilkes?”

  “Wilkes, of Wilkes BMW, etcetera?”

  “He’s the one.”

  “Hmm. So maybe that explains it,” she said. At his questioning look, she elaborated. “Why the local five o’clock news led with the story, just a few minutes before you got here. You look older in your mug shot.”

  “Bad lighting,” he muttered, fighting the sinking feeling in his gut.

  “His picture was on the news?” his mother said. “How in the world—?”

  “It’s all public record, Ms. Winter, and the charge is … unusual and provocative, so even if Wilkes isn’t engineering coverage, the charge would stand out amongst the usual list of speeding tickets and DWIs and minor assaults and failures to appear in court. It being the lead story, though—”

  “What did they say?” his mother said, asking the question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. The fewer details you knew, the less real a thing seemed.

  “They said that he’d been arrested for allegedly providing pornographic materials, featuring himself, to an underage girl at a prominent private high school. Basically,” she said, assessing Anthony with a gaze that he thought didn’t miss much, “they made you out as a sleazeball.”

  “How can that be fair?” he said, and as he spoke, his phone buzzed. The display showed an unfamiliar number. He let the call go unanswered.

  “It’s not fair,” Ms. Davis said. “But our media gets a lot more mileage out of convicting the accused right off, haven’t you noticed? The Duke lacrosse situation, for example.”

  “What can we do to fight back?” his mother asked. Anthony’s phone buzzed again, this time with a text message. Channel 11 news: Want ur side of story, it read. How well do u know the girl?

  “How did they get my number?” he said, dropping his phone onto the conference table. “The news is texting me.”

  Ms. Davis said, “You start by saying nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to anyone—the cops, the news, your neighbors, your coworkers. And you hire me.”

  Anthony hated the distress that was being etched, bit by bit, into his mother’s face with each encounter today, each little smoke bomb of discouraging people and words and events exploding around them. He told the attorney, “From what the others said, I guess your job is to get me a minimal punishment, but what’s the full penalty? You know, if I’m convicted?”

  “You’ve never been arrested before, for anything?”

  He shook his head. She said, “Then some type of probation, community service for sure—and this is a worst-case scenario, but since this is considered a sex crime, you could be required to register as a sex offender.”

  “A sex offender?” His mother was half out of her chair. “You cannot be serious!”

  Ms. Davis held up one hand. “I am, but your reaction is exactly correct. Which is why my aim would be to get the charges dropped.”

  Anthony said, “All right: you’re hired.”

  “I’m not cheap,” Ms. Davis added. “My fee is five thousand dollars for serious misdemeanors like this one.”

  “Which I presume you then earn,” his mother said hotly, “based on that scenario you just described.”

  “I can’t guarantee any particular outcome—no attorney can, so if you’ve heard otherwise, don’t believe it. The county’s prosecutor is what we refer to as a ‘victim’s DA,’ and procedural rules make it doubly hard for defense attorneys. I won’t even be able to see the police report before the hearing. But I care deeply about justice and about providing effective counsel, and I’m happy to show you past clients’ testimonials on that account.”

  Anthony watched her face carefully. This was no spiel—or if it was, she was so convincing that it really didn’t matter. If any attorney they’d met today could restore normalcy to his life, Mariana Davis was the one. “You’re hired,” he said again. There might be others like her, and they might charge less—but they might charge more, and how many of these consultations would he and his mother have to endure before they knew they’d found the right lawyer?

  “Just tell me what I need to do.”

  “Well, to start, your mom sketched out the situation when she set the appointment, and I have some notes on that, but why don’t you take it from the top for me. How did you get to be on Harlan Wilkes’s bad side?”

  Anthony pushed his hands through his hair and imagined, des
pite himself, the news broadcast and his mug shot, now the evening’s sensational story for all those parents prepping dinner for their families, all the retired people who liked getting their news early, people who kept their radios tuned to 101.5 and heard the local news broadcast live. Undoing this mess was going to be even more of an ordeal than he’d imagined.

  He said, “I got on his bad side by falling in love with his daughter.”

  “That,” the attorney said, “is going to be a tough one to fix.”

  12

  WILDFIRE STARTS SMALL—FROM A DROPPED CIGARETTE, someone burning leaves or trash, a single lick of lightning to a vulnerable tree—and then spreads in every opportune direction, eventually becoming so hot that nothing short of a torrent, man-made or otherwise, can put it out. To travel, it needs little more than favorable conditions and available fuel to feed on, and will grow without conscience, disregarding wildlife, structures, prayer.

  Kim, having spilled coffee on herself just before she’d been about to leave the house, was running late on Thursday morning. The faculty parking lot was full and quiet when she arrived, but she could see students still outside the building, savoring their final few minutes of free time before being tasked with schoolwork. Her mind was already on that work, on the assignments she’d failed to grade the night before, on her plans for what she’d be doing in each of the classes she taught—all things that had been planned out previously but which, given Anthony’s arrest, were refusing to stick with her very well. Fortunately, her day began with Art Studio, more supervisory than instructional. She’d get her act together once she finished taking attendance and had the students on task.

  She passed a group of whispering teens and went inside, heading directly to her first-period classroom. The fire that would in time threaten to consume everything she’d ever valued in her life was still small, still for the most part contained, and its spread was at first invisible to her. She rushed through the hallways, her mind on the clock, not feeling any of the fire’s heat, not yet aware that news of Anthony’s arrest was already moving from student to student to teacher to secretary to maintenance worker to friend, relative, neighbor, parent at the speed of a whispered aside, a forwarded news website link, a text message, a chuckle or sneer or concerned “Did you hear …?” over a four-dollar latte at a coffee shop up the road.