Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  Neal, sitting beside Jay, closes his eyes. He knows what’s coming.

  “I want to discuss the night of the general election, November fifth. Were you working in the campaign office that day, Ms. Hardaway?”

  “I was coordinating GOTV, get out the vote, from the main office, that’s right. I was in contact with precinct captains throughout the day, but I was mostly in the office, yes,” she says, glancing over at Neal, almost leading Nichols right into his next question. Was the defendant in the office that day?

  “He was in and out,” she says. “Election days are pretty hectic.”

  “Well, let’s narrow our focus then, shall we? Was Mr. Hathorne in the office on the evening of November fifth, around eight forty-five?” Nichols says, verbally drawing a line under the time Alicia Nowell was last seen across town.

  “No, he had left the office almost two hours earlier. He asked me to take him off the schedule for the rest of the day.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Highly,” Tonya says. “He said he would be on his cell phone. I didn’t see him again until after the polls closed, when he met up with the family and top staff at a viewing party at one of the donors’ homes.”

  “And did you try to reach the defendant during the time he was missing?”

  “Objection, assumes facts not in evidence, that my client was ‘missing,’ rather than simply in a place that was none of this witness’s business.”

  “Objection, Your Honor, to counsel’s argumentative tone.”

  “Overruled,” Judge Keppler says, making a face at the objection to the objection. To Jay, she says, “Defense counsel’s objection is sustained, but he is admonished to refer to the witness in a more respectful tone.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Jay can only imagine Ellie behind him, thoroughly enjoying herself, having found the one place on earth where her dad’s mouth actually gets him into trouble. Nichols, in a charcoal suit today, steps forward a few inches past the lectern, turning his back to Jay, as if he could block him out that way. Tonya shifts in her seat, adjusting the stiff neckline of her dress. Nichols asks her, “Did you try to reach Mr. Hathorne on the evening of November fifth?”

  “Several times.”

  “And?”

  “He never answered his mobile phone or pager.”

  Nichols glances back at his notes on the lectern, letting her words linger for a bit. Then, looking up, he asks her when she stopped working for the Hathorne camp. “After the girl went missing,” Tonya says, “Neal fired me.”

  It’s a specious presentation of the facts, suggesting causality where none has been proved. But it isn’t worth the spotlight a verbal objection would put on it.

  Jay stays in his chair.

  “Do you know why you were fired, Ms. Hardaway?”

  “For talking to a cop about Neal.”

  Neal’s knee finds and nudges Jay’s beneath the table.

  Jay nods without turning to look at his client.

  He’ll handle it.

  “You had discussed Mr. Hathorne’s sudden absence from contact with the campaign staff on Tuesday, November fifth, with Detective Moore?”

  “Yes. He came into the office and asked about some of the staff, including Neal, and he asked questions about the schedule on the night of the fifth.”

  “And how long after that were you let go from the campaign?”

  “It was that afternoon.”

  “I don’t have anything further, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Porter?”

  “Ms. Hardaway,” Jay says as he stands. He walks to the lectern, slapping down his legal pad. “The Hathorne campaign has a strict policy regarding the chain of command when it comes to communicating on behalf of the organization, isn’t that right?” He looks up, staring at the witness.

  “That’s right.”

  “In fact, it’s in writing and known to all staff members that no one in the office is allowed to speak on behalf of the campaign, or distribute an in-house memorandum, such as a campaign schedule, to anyone, without going through Marcie Hall, the communications director, or Mr. Hathorne, the campaign manager, or the candidate himself, isn’t that correct, Ms. Hardaway?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it is a misconception and a false impression to give this jury to suggest that it was talking to law enforcement about Mr. Hathorne’s whereabouts that got you fired, when, really, you weren’t following the rules.”

  Tonya shrugs. “I talked to a cop, I got fired.”

  “Which would make a nice title of a country song maybe, but not necessarily the way it happened, is it?”

  “Objection, Your Honor, argumentative,” Nichols says, standing again, hands on his trim, athletic hips. He actually turns and glances at Jay, a pointed look of gleeful anticipation on his face, a sibling awaiting the punishment of an eternal foe. “Sustained,” Judge Keppler says sternly. “Be careful here, Mr. Porter.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Jay turns to address the witness again. He knows he’s taking it out on her, the whole charade of this trial, his impatience with the slow drip of Isn’t it true? and Didn’t you? and with the yawning gulf between where they’re standing and the truth.

  “Where are you working now, ma’am?”

  Nichols is on his feet again. “Objection, beyond the scope of direct.”

  “Her employment was the whole point of direct.”

  “Overruled.”

  Tonya looks at the judge, then the D.A., hesitating.

  “That means you can answer,” Jay tells her.

  Tonya sits up a little straighter. “I am currently the field director for the campaign to elect Sandra Wolcott.”

  “Working for the opposition, huh?”

  “It’s a job.”

  “Might also suggest a lingering bitterness toward the Hathorne campaign, my client in particular,” Jay says, gesturing toward Neal, who glares at Tonya.

  “Like I said, it’s a job.”

  “Okay,” Jay says, turning to grab, from the corner of the defense table, a single sheet of paper labeled STATE’S EXHIBIT NO. 37. “Permission to approach, Your Honor.” Nichols immediately calls for a sidebar at the bench.

  At her desk, Judge Keppler peers down at the exhibit, a single sheet of paper.

  Nichols, standing next to the court reporter at the bench, says, “This is a murder trial, not a dissection of election politics. This has no business here.”

  “This is part of the state’s evidence. It was in the girl’s purse.”

  “He’s trying to prove something without laying any foundation for it.”

  “I want to ask a simple question as relates to her employment with Hathorne. I’m not going to ask her to authenticate the document, just if she’s seen it before, in the course of her employment with the Hathorne campaign.”

  “I’ll allow it,” Judge Keppler says.

  Jay lays the BBDP flyer in front of the witness. As he walks back to the lectern, he sees Sam Hathorne leaning over the bar to whisper something to his grandson. “Have you seen this before, Ms. Hardaway?” he asks. She nods, says yes, and sets it on the corner of the wooden banister in front of her.

  “Can you tell the jury what this is?”

  Tonya sighs, pressing her lips together for a moment.

  It’s clear this is an area she wasn’t expecting to get into.

  “It’s a flyer, something that came to the campaign’s attention.”

  “A flyer that was circulating around Pleasantville, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why was this of significance to the campaign?”

  “We all thought it was a stunt by one of the other campaigns.”

  “Which campaign, Ms. Hardaway?”

  Tonya looks down for a second, fiddling with the hem of her dress, where it rests just above her knee. “We all thought it was the Wolcott campaign.”

  “Including you?”

  Following a small, sharp e
xhale, Tonya says, “Yes.”

  They break for the day earlier than usual, following a quick conference at the bench to discuss the pace of the schedule, Nichols wanting to know if Jay plans to call any witnesses, so he might prepare. Jay assures the judge no decision has been made as to whether he’ll offer a defense, and Nichols, put on the spot by Judge Keppler, admits he has plans to call only one more witness before the state rests. Jay is momentarily stunned by the news. The state’s case, laid out in open court, is even weaker than he thought, not so much a condemnation of Neal as a light scolding for not doing everyone the courtesy of at least appearing less guilty, making Nichols stand up and sit down, stand up and sit down for the past two days. Neal, leaving the courtroom with his uncle and family, shows the first hint of a smile in days. He looks at his lawyer and gives him a grin, lopsided and unsure, but hopeful nonetheless. Sam pats Jay on the back on their way out. Axel’s sisters are not in court today, but Vivian, in a teal coatdress, the color deep and stormy, holds her grandson’s hand as they exit the courtroom. Ellie, slinging her backpack onto her shoulder, follows her dad down the fifth-floor hallway to the side stairs, both of them avoiding the crowd at the elevator bank. Outside, the air is cold, Houston being famously late to the fall dance, waiting until the second week of December to wring the last of the summer’s humidity from the air. It’s dropped below fifty for the first time since last Christmas. There’s a curling wind snaking through the high-rise buildings downtown, rolling sideways down the length of Franklin Street, lifting wayward leaves and gum wrappers along the curbs. As they approach the Land Cruiser, parked in a twelve-dollar-a-day lot on Caroline, Ellie, in her cotton sweater, shivers. Jay peels off his suit jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. Then he hands her the car keys. “Now?” she says. She seems nervous, not just because she’s never driven downtown, but also because she senses another talk coming on. She’s slow to put herself behind the wheel. By the time she’s in place for this impromptu driving lesson, Jay already has his seat belt on in the passenger seat, the photocopied list of donors to America’s Tomorrow sitting faceup on his lap.

  Earlier Lonnie left a message on his cell phone, calling from Rolly’s hospital room to say that Rob Urrea had never heard of the PAC but was spooked by the donor list. “I definitely picked the wrong horse,” he said, before wondering openly if he could break his contract with Hathorne. If it were up to him, Jay would fire his ass. While Urrea was busy digging into Wolcott’s sexual imbroglios, a group of high-profile political players had dipped a toe in the city’s mayor’s race, unseen. They included ProFerma, Thomas Cole, and Cynthia Maddox. Three of the biggest headaches in Jay’s life were tangled up in this somehow.

  Ellie puts the key into the ignition. The engine turns, rumbling softly, and lighting up the radio console. KCOH is running a predinner debate on its boards: “Christmas or Kwanzaa, people?” The host, Big Mike, chuckles at his own personal act of provocation. He announces the phone lines are open, before playing a scratchy recording of Otis Redding’s “White Christmas.” The horns sting Jay, so painful are the memories riding on that sound. He had just gotten used to the idea of the tree–erect, but undecorated still, in a corner of their living room–and now there’s music too, the breadth of his loss finding a new sense to explore. It kills him to think that there are notes of his life that will never be played again, save by rolling in circles in his mind, old recordings on a turntable.

  Ellie pulls the car out of its parking space, narrowly missing the tail end of a Subaru as she turns the wheel. Jay tells her to make a right turn out of the lot, as Big Mike announces the first caller, Danielle, from Northside Village. “Now, I’m a Christian, y’all, but I do think we need to have our own celebrations.”

  The next caller, Don, from Fifth Ward, takes it a step further, starting with “Assalamu ’laikum, brother,” before launching into a lecture about Christ being a tool to keep the black man down since slavery time. “Brother Farrakhan is our true prophet and the Nation of Islam our true religious home.”

  “You telling me you never gon’ eat another Christmas ham?” Big Mike says, with no small amount of skepticism. “You had me up till that point.”

  “Naw, brother, I’m done with that hog.”

  “I’ll eat his, shoot,” the next caller, “Bullet, they call me,” says. “I was raised in the church, I was raised in Christ, and I’m gon’ eat what the lord provide, pork, beef, or chicken. We got to raise these kids out here with Jesus.”

  Jay reaches for the knob, turning down the volume.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he says. “Don’t you ever walk out of school and get on a city bus without telling me where you are, you understand me?”

  “Okay.”

  “ ’Cause I could show you autopsy photos of what happens to a girl walking around this city alone–”

  “I said, ‘Okay.’”

  “I’m serious, El.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know what you and your mother talked about, at the end, I don’t know what she said to you, but I need you to understand–”

  “Stop it!” she says. She slams on the brakes, fifteen feet short of the nearest stoplight, leaving the two of them stranded, a stone stuck in the sand against the tide of traffic pulling around them. “Stop talking about her! Just stop!” Jay stares at her across the front seat, not sure which one of them is going to break into tears first. “Why don’t you want to talk about your mother, Ellie?”

  “I can’t,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “I can’t do this.”

  He takes off his seat belt. “You want me to drive?”

  She grips the steering wheel, her eyes watering.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Daddy.”

  Tears falling, she appears unsure, literally, of how to go forward. Jay reaches over and touches her right hand on the wheel. “Come on,” he says, telling her to come off the brakes, to start moving slowly. “You can do this, Ellie. Just drive.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “Here, turn here,” Jay says, gesturing for Ellie to pull into a small parking lot off Bissonnet, worrying too late that the only open space, one of three slots, is too narrow for the Land Cruiser, at least in a novice’s hands. But Ellie does fine, missing the other car in the lot and only barely scraping his front bumper on the concrete barrier between the parking lot and the wooden fence bordering it.

  “What are we doing here?” she says, peering past her father.

  They are parked in front of a shaded house on a stretch of Bissonnet, between Main Street and Greenbriar, once residential and now a tony spot for art galleries and florists, high-end psychiatrists and, yes, lawyers, cozy bungalows and Craftsman homes made over for the commercial needs of the upper class. This one is a narrow white two-story with black shutters and a flat roof, a line of Japanese maples out front, their plum-colored leaves shivering in the twilight. Hanging from a post just a few feet from Jay’s car is a swinging sign that reads: CHARLIE LUCKMAN, ESQ. Of the dozens of names on the list of PAC donors, his is oddly the only one Jay trusts. Charlie Luckman may be a lot of things, but a liar is not necessarily one of them, at least not where Jay is concerned. A long time ago, Charlie went out on a limb when he didn’t have to, when he and Jay were established adversaries in court, by giving him inside knowledge about Thomas Cole, information that solved a mystery and saved Jay’s ass. Ellie asks to stay in the car, but Jay tells her to follow him. Inside, the carpet is thick, the walls as creamy as churned milk, and there is a smell of cigars and good coffee, a Mexican blend, strong and faintly sweet. The soft light in here is as gentle as a madam’s reassuring touch, letting any virgin souls crossing the threshold know that they’re safe here, that there’s no safer place in the world, actually, than a defense attorney’s office. There’s a wall of Texas license plates going back to the 1930s behind the receptionist’s desk, which itself is empty, with only a small Tiffany lamp on top illuminating open magazines, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Acros
s the front parlor, above the studded leather couches, there are framed prints, cowboys and ranch scenes, a steer in a stand of prairie grass. “Carla!” Jay can hear Charlie, calling from a back office. He tells Ellie to have a seat on one of the leather sofas.

  Following Charlie’s voice, he starts down the nearest hallway.

  “Carla, honey, is that you?”

  Charlie’s office is a long rectangle along the south side of the building, the desk halfway to the back wall. He’s sitting with his feet up, the heels of his buttery calfskin boots pointing toward the office’s one window; the view is a direct shot into the dance studio next door, a line of women in leotards visible from here. Charlie, seeing Jay, sits up. “Where the hell is Carla?”

  “Your receptionist?”

  “My wife,” he says, standing and walking to the door, sticking his neck out into the hall, her absence more alarming to him, apparently, than the unexpected presence of Jay Porter in his office.

  “Your wife is your receptionist?”

  “You know a better way to keep track of her?”

  Standing in the doorway a few inches from Jay, Charlie adjusts his necktie. Seeing Ellie on the couch in the reception area, he frowns. “God, is that a client?”

  “That’s my daughter.”

  Charlie, his black-and-red-striped tie wrenched between his hands, steps back, taking a good look at Jay for the first time, then looking, again, at Ellie. “Where the fuck is Carla?” he barks, walking back to his desk. He picks up the phone, pressing a few buttons. “There a silver Mercedes out there?”

  “No.”

  “God damn it,” he says, slamming down the phone. “I swear, I can’t keep her ass out of Neiman Marcus to save my life.” Throughout the office, there are photos of Charlie and the wife, a tall, thin brunette with caramel-colored skin, and a shot of the two of them and their twin boys. The office decor also includes dozens of glossy images of Luckman with his celebrity clients over the years: an Oilers quarterback, the anchor of a local morning TV show, and the bassist of a bluegrass band out of Austin. Charlie pours himself a drink from a tray on the leather-and-wood sideboard behind his desk, dropping a spoonful of Carnation milk into his scotch. He offers the same to Jay, who declines. “So, Mr. Smith goes to Washington,” Charlie says, smirking. “How’s politics treating you? I heard you’re riding a sinking ship in Keppler’s courtroom. I’d be down there to take a look for myself, but I don’t really give a shit.” He sips the milky scotch.