Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  “Walk away from the table, Charlie,” Cole says, irritated.

  “Well, aren’t you full of grace?”

  He stands, lifting his late-morning cocktail with one hand and attempting to button his jacket with the other. Suit tails flapping, his shirt slightly untucked, he crosses the dining room, stopping at a few other tables to pull the same routine, dropping in unannounced and uninvited. Thomas Cole stubs out his cigarette. He lifts the glass of bourbon and takes a hearty sip, tapping a finger on the newspaper’s front-page story as he swallows.

  “You got a lot of people worked up over this. Sam put you up to it?”

  “Sam wasn’t too keen on it, matter of fact.”

  Cole nods approvingly. “Confrontation isn’t much his style. More flies with honey, and all that,” he says, belching softly. “He’s a decent man, if a little foolish, trading an extraordinary amount of power for the mess of politics played in the light of day. Axel’s strong, but naive, and Sam is too hot to see a Hathorne in city hall to appreciate what he’s giving up as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ player.”

  “Every man’s dream,” Jay says, rolling his eyes.

  “Maybe you don’t know Sam as well as you think you do. I’m holding out hope some of his spirit of reciprocity has rubbed off on you,” Cole says. “You don’t want this court case, Porter, this injunction. Trust me when I tell you you’re wading in water over your head. You don’t want this for your career.”

  To which Jay only grins. “I don’t have a career,” he says, leaning back, his hands clasped behind his head, feeling punch-drunk still, hours after the beating. “You’re looking at a retired man, Cole,” he says, glancing at the plush dining room, the fine china and crystal. “What does this setup cost–ten, twenty grand a year? It’ll be a stretch, but I guess I can manage. What do you say, Cole? You and me, members of the same club? They got a basketball court in here?”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  “We’ll let a judge decide that.”

  “It’ll never work,” Cole says. “There’s not a single goddamned judge in Harris County who’s going to halt an election over what you’re talking about.”

  “A candidate using her position as district attorney to discredit a member of her opponent’s family and campaign team? To influence a city election?”

  “Bullshit,” Cole says, raising his voice for the first time. He glances furtively around the room, meeting the curious eyes of the men at neighboring tables. He lowers his voice, pushing the vase of flowers to the side. He leans forward, half his torso reaching across the table in Jay’s direction. “You’re wrong to hold this up as a crusade. There’s serious evidence against that kid.”

  “Now, see, how would you know that?” Jay says. “Last I checked, grand jury testimony is sealed. Hell, I won’t even see it till discovery. So unless you’re prepared to admit to having an inside track to the district attorney’s office, the head of which you just so happen to be backing in the mayor’s race, I don’t see how you could know the details of what went on in that grand jury room.” Jay points to the newspaper, to his picture on the front page. “You know what else I find interesting? How quickly this story made it into print. The Chronicle goes to bed at what, eight, nine o’clock at the latest?” he says. “The district court is dark by five thirty. There would have been no way for Bartolomo to fact-check any of what he got straight from Reese Parker’s mouth the second she and I finished talking. And yet here it is, for the whole city to read.”

  “So?”

  “So I didn’t file those papers until this morning.”

  Jay leans across the table too, getting within a few inches of Cole’s tanned face. “You know what I think? I think you’re all playing a game with this whole process–you, Wolcott, Parker, with help from Houston’s journalistic finest.”

  “It’s not too late to withdraw the motion,” Cole says. Jay ignores him, pushing back from the table as he buttons his suit jacket. “Perhaps there’s something we can still work out, Mr. Porter. I’m certainly willing to concede that our civil matter has dragged on longer than it should have. If we were able to speed up a final resolution for your clients, maybe I could get you to reconsider.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jay says. He stands to leave. “Call off your boy.”

  “Mr. Porter, if I wanted to”–Cole searches for the right word–“neutralize you, I can promise you’d look a hell of a lot worse than you do now. You’re standing up right now on my say-so, and don’t forget it.” He reaches for a gold-plated lighter in his front pocket. He sets the blue flame against the end of a fresh cigarette, burning through half the tobacco with the first drag. “They have enough for a conviction, you know,” he says, as if he’s tossing Jay a lifeline.

  “You talking about the phone number in the girl’s pager? He admits to dialing it unknowingly. Doesn’t mean anything,” Jay says, turning away.

  “I’m talking about the eyewitness.”

  Jay stops at this, that thick, rich carpet like quicksand. He feels himself sinking. Slowly, he turns toward Cole, trying to inch forward, if only to shorten the distance, to keep the man’s voice from drifting too far past this one table. “There was an eyewitness on the stand,” Cole says, admitting for the moment his insider knowledge of the grand jury testimony. “A local out there saw him struggling with the girl on the corner where she was last seen.”

  “Saw Neal?”

  “It’s all under seal,” Cole says. “But not for long.”

  Jay cocks his head to the side, disbelief being his first anchor against the wild tide of panic rising in his chest. “God damn it,” he mutters as he walks out.

  When Jay walks into campaign headquarters twenty minutes later, the candidate has his long legs tucked under a vinyl-topped card table. He is working the phones, his poll numbers having taken enough of a hit on the news of his nephew’s arrest that direct contact with individual voters is about the only thing that might swing things back in his favor. Texans are, for the most part, a friendly bunch, and Jay guesses as many as half of the names on that call sheet will at least hear Axel out. There are men and women milling about, block walkers waiting on the day’s assignment, hovering near a grease-stained box of cold doughnuts. One woman, her blue Hathorne T-shirt knotted fashionably on her right hip, has a packet of nondairy creamer in her hand, opened sideways like a bag of Fun Dip. She licks the white powder off her index finger. The man standing next to her hasn’t yet committed to the campaign T-shirt. His is tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, the tail hanging out like a flag, an accessory he hasn’t yet pledged any allegiance to, not until someone shows up with a roll of twenties to distribute. Marcie, on the phone at her desk against the back wall, is rolling a wad of Kleenex over the ripples of fat on the back of her neck, mopping sweat. The room is poorly ventilated. Even with the front door propped open, it’s warm and smells of damp carpet. Axel has rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, a constellation of sweat drops under each arm seeping through the fabric. “Yes, ma’am,” he says into the phone. He nods, listening to her side. “Well, that’s been my priority since I entered this race. We’re going to make neighborhoods like yours safe again. If I make it to city hall, with your help we can prioritize city resources in such a way that–” Cut off, he leans back in his chair, listening, the tops of his knees knocking the underside of the table. “My team has done nothing to interfere with the investigation, ma’am.” He rubs his face in exasperation. “I want to find the girl’s killer as much as anyone.”

  Jay walks past the phone bank, past the copy machine and Marcie’s cluttered desk, all the way to an unlocked metal door, behind which appears to be the only private space in campaign headquarters and the place where Jay guesses he’ll find his client. He enters a small room lined with bolts of upholstery fabric. He passes two long folding tables, both sagging in the center of the weight of boxes and boxes of campaign paraphernalia, buttons and T-shirts, plus reams of copier paper. Besides
the dusty fabric, there’s a hospital-size scale in here, a blue Coleman cooler, a broken vacuum cleaner, and a stack of two-by-fours. Jay doesn’t know what this place was before the campaign rented it, or what it will return to after the polls finally close on this twisted little election. Neal is laid out across a three-foot-long red pleather couch, his legs hanging off the arm of one side and his right forearm covering his eyes.

  “Sit up,” Jay says.

  He grabs a chair from one of the folding tables and turns it to face the couch. He sits down, kicking his foot against the base of the couch to wake up his client. “You do understand that I’m about to walk into state court to try to stop an election?” he says. “And so far, man, I’ve taken you at your word.”

  Neal swings his feet to the floor, rising suddenly.

  The door behind Jay opens, and Axel walks in.

  Jay never takes his eyes off his client. “Leave us alone.”

  “It’s okay,” Neal says. “He can stay.”

  “There’s an eyewitness,” Jay says.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “What’s going on?” Axel says, hands on his hips.

  “Somebody got on the stand in front of the grand jury and testified that they saw you and the girl struggling, right at the corner of Guinevere and Ledwicke.”

  “They’re lying . . . or just plain confused.”

  “Who is it?” Axe says.

  “Something you want to tell me?” Jay asks Neal.

  “I wasn’t there,” Neal says, raising his voice. “Didn’t you talk to A.G.?”

  Surprised, Axel turns from Jay to his nephew. “What?”

  “Yes,” Jay says, glancing at Axel then back at Neal, who’s now on his feet. “And guess what? He doesn’t seem the least bit interested in reclaiming his rightful spot in the Hathorne line, especially if it means testifying in open court.”

  “I wasn’t there!”

  “You talked to A.G.?” Axel says.

  Neal looks at his uncle but doesn’t say anything.

  Jay can’t exactly read the look between them, but Axel, whose skin is usually a warm maple color, looks downright ashen. “A.G.’s here, in Houston?”

  “Tell me this,” Jay says to Neal. “Why Tuesday night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why were you so hot to see him last Tuesday? You said yourself you were in the middle of a massive get-out-the-vote effort that day. So with the polls still open, why did you take a detour to the Playboy Club in Third Ward? Why that night to talk to your father for the first time?”

  Neal looks at the ground.

  He’s still reluctant to go any further.

  “You got to give me something here.”

  Neal sighs. “We got a call from Rob Urrea.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Our opp guy,” Axel says.

  “He had a report on A.G.”

  “Jesus,” Axel mumbles, reaching for the nearest chair to sit down.

  “What kind of report?”

  “I don’t know,” Neal says. “I didn’t order it.”

  “Sam did,” Axel says, guessing.

  Neal nods. “And Rob swore he wasn’t at liberty to share it.”

  “Opposition research,” Jay says. “There something there?” Was there some bit on his younger son that Sam Hathorne wanted safely contained, typed up, and presented to him personally? “I need to see that report,” he says.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Harris County District Civil Court has long set, by its own bylaws, an ancillary judge, a name assigned and rotated every two weeks, to handle emergency motions, and Judge Irwin Little, through no choice of his own, got this one. A “doozy,” he calls it from the bench. He leans his pudgy torso all the way back in his leather chair, resting his hands on the mound of belly beneath his black robe, waiting to be entertained. He took an oath to uphold the United States Constitution and administer fair justice to all, but it doesn’t mean he’s not entitled to a show every now and then. And that’s what this is, of course, a farce, a joke in poor taste, at least according to the morning’s front-page headline: “Amid Trailing Poll Numbers Hathorne Bid to Halt Election Seen as ‘Hail Mary’ Pass.” After a docket of garden-variety requests for temporary restraining orders, this one ought to be interesting.

  The 152nd Civil Court is packed this Thursday morning, just one day after Jay filed the motion to request an oral hearing on the matter. From his perch at the bench, Judge Little has a clear view of the gathered spectators: Dick Urton, the sitting mayor, plus multiple representatives from the campaigns of the candidates looking to replace him, including Reese Parker in the front row of the gallery, sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom from Jay, who is seated alone at a table just ahead of the bar. The only faces from the Hathorne campaign are those of Marcie, the communications director, and Stan, the moneyman. Axel thought his presence would be cheap. And Sam, well, Jay has no idea where Sam is. He’s slipped through Jay’s fingers of late, slow to return his calls. Jay did not demand that Neal be present for this. “In fact, it’s probably better that you’re not,” he told his client. “You’re not the one on trial here.” To which Neal plaintively replied, “Not yet.” In addition to press from the Houston paper as well as the Morning News in Dallas and a reporter from the New Orleans bureau of the New York Times, there’s on-air talent in the room too, a rarity. Melanie Lawson from Channel 13 is here. So is Dan O’Rourke from Channel 2, the NBC station. Jay recognized two people from the CBS affiliate coming off the elevator when he arrived this morning. Besides the high-profile lookiloos, there’s also a gathering of prominent local attorneys, men and women who approach this as they might a wacky sporting event, or a high-flying circus act: part of the pleasure of watching is the possibility of total disaster, a very public fall. Johnetta Paul is here too, having filed a last-minute companion brief demanding to be heard on the matter, as did two other city council members who are up for reelection and prepared to argue orally all the ways postponing a city election just three weeks away would adversely affect their chances at the polls. Technically, only Jay and the county’s elections clerk have been selected to address the bench, although Matt Nichols, the D.A. prosecuting the Nowell case, is sitting openly at the same table with the county clerk.

  Jay is up first.

  He’s nervous, sure he is.

  He’s got a full house at his back.

  Last he turned and stole a glance, he could see that Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux had squeezed themselves onto a slim sliver of wood at the edge of the bench nearest the back of the courtroom, as if they weren’t sure how much space they were allowed to take, how much this particular hearing has to do with them, or justice for their daughter. Maxine looks to have come straight from work. She’s wearing slightly stained, pale pink scrubs from the previous night’s shift. She cranes her neck slightly, trying to see over the crowd. Her husband is wearing a heavily starched plaid shirt. Mitchell put himself together for this, shaved and ran a pair of clippers along his hairline. He sits staring straight ahead. In all the television interviews, all the pleas for help and justice for their daughter, Jay has never heard the man speak. On the opposite side of Maxine, Pastor Keith Morehead is holding tightly to the woman’s hand. He has, over the last few days, become the family’s unofficial spokesperson, claiming, as a man of the cloth, to be unaligned politically and therefore able to offer, without earthly distraction, spiritual counsel to Alicia’s parents in their hour of need. Jay does not try to make eye contact with Maxine, not sure she would understand that he has pledged himself to her as much as he has to his client, not sure Maxine Robicheaux would cross the street to spit on his shoes. Still, as he looks down at his notes to start, he hears the words, a whisper at his back. Do it for them.

  “Morning, Your Honor,” he says, his speech tightened by the pain still throbbing in his jaw. He had to chew a handful of aspirin just to get through this. Citing paragraphs one through three of his motion, a copy o
f which rests on the judge’s desk, Jay lays out his argument, enumerating the ways the court is in danger of allowing a mayoral candidate to use her office as district attorney to infect and influence a city election, an act of malfeasance with wide-ranging implications for millions of individuals. Letting the election go forward under the current circumstances, “threatens irreparable harm to the entire electoral process in which the citizens of Houston are putting their faith, not to mention harm to my client and the family of Alicia Nowell, who are victims here as well. They’re being used, sir,” he says from his place behind the counsel table. “Thank you,” he says, before returning to his seat.

  The courtroom is remarkably still.

  Not a cough, not a twitch, from the gallery.

  For a brief moment, Jay can hear nothing but the soft sigh of air coming from the vents overhead. Even the judge’s clerk has momentarily stopped her typing. It may be the first time that most of the people in this courtroom are hearing the actual details behind the filing for this injunction, particularly the fact that the dead girl was working for Sandy Wolcott, a fact that Wolcott never disclosed to the police and that the Chronicle never reported. Irwin Little has been doing this long enough to give no premature signal from the bench, but it’s clear that he too has had his eyes opened. He leans forward, rolling his leather chair a few inches closer to his desk. He takes a second look at the motion in front of him, or maybe his first look, Jay thinks. The judge reads for a few moments, silently to himself, the desk’s slim microphone picking up the sound of his slow breathing.

  Finally, he peels off his reading glasses.