Probable Cause g-2

by Grif Stockley

  There is an air of unreality in the room. We might as well be rehearsing Our Town for the high school senior class play.

  More sullen than she has a right to be, Olivia asks, “How specific do I have to get?”

  With her Queen of England attitude, this woman is fast getting on my nerves. I explode at her: “Tomorrow’s going to be the second most horrible day in your lives! Jill Marymount will eat you alive, and the judge is going to let her, no matter how many objections I make, so you better be prepared to be pretty goddamned specific if you want to come out of this with any credibility. You’re going to need an explanation for everything that both of you did starting from the day you met and ending with this meeting today, and if you’re not prepared to do that, you better keep off the witness stand.”

  For the first time since I met her, Olivia looks scared, as if she is about to cry. I can’t say that I blame her. I can’t always explain my own life even to myself, much less to the people I love. How much more difficult would it be for her to have to justify her life to twelve people, some of whom will regard her as an evil witch as soon as Jill finishes her opening statement. Pour boiling water on one child and then give him up? Put her other child in an institution? Have her shocked? Love a man (a black one, for God’s sake!) who is willing to send enough electricity into the child’s body to kill her? Even if you forget the damn money, how innocent can she be if she is willing to admit to all of that? If I didn’t dislike Olivia so much, I’d feel sorry for her.

  My speech gets some results, after a bit of hemming and hawing, and for the next two hours I get to play the role of Jill Marymount and ask every question I can think of that will incriminate either of them. When I am finished, I don’t have a clue as to what a jury will do with Olivia’s testimony, but at least she has a complete story.

  “Are you in love,” I finish up, as mockingly as I can, “with the defendant at this very moment?”

  Love! The burdens we place on that word. Olivia, exhausted as we all are, shakes her head.

  “I don’t know how I feel anymore.”

  At one time I would have believed her, but no longer. I now think she has manipulated Andy every step of the way.

  Her past has grown too long. Honesty, a scantily clad virtue usually born of necessity, is Andy’s only hope. The trouble is that people lie so much it is hard to recognize the truth when it appears. Without enthusiasm, I follow Olivia’s rehearsal with an abbreviated reprise of my opening statement: “Whether you approve of it or not, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happened and why it happened….” On the assumption she will testify as she has rehearsed, I summarize many of the events from Olivia’s perspective, but barely mention the issue of race. If I can put enough of a tragic spin on Olivia’s story, perhaps the white women on the jury (and they should be in the majority) will empathize with her enough to realize that if their circumstances had been different, they could have been faced with the same choices.

  Though I do not say it (so as not to set off Andy), I firmly believe white women are less racist than white men.

  By six o’clock, when we have finished, the emotional climate in the room precludes idle chitchat. Olivia looks as if she has learned she has two months to live, and Andy doesn’t seem much better. Saying goodbye in the conference room, I let Andy escort Karen and Olivia to the elevators and go look for Morris. He is in my office, on the phone, with his feet propped up on my desk. Barely glancing up at me, he continues his conversation, apparently to someone in one of his businesses in Atlanta. I wonder if I’m paying for his calls.

  His speech is laced with the most profane epithets and scatological references imaginable. Yet at this moment I’d rather talk to him than to his brother.

  When Andy returns a moment later, he tells me he wants to talk to me, and we return to the conference room and sit down on opposite sides of the table.

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” he demands, his voice angry, “what you were going to say to Olivia?”

  I am sick of his defending her, but I keep my voice level.

  “I didn’t want you to tip her off. As far as I’m concerned she’s still got a lot of explaining to do.” At this moment Morris walks in and sits down beside me. It is as if he and I are the relatives in this case.

  “She doesn’t owe you the time of day,” Andy says, his voice more hostile than I’ve ever heard it.

  “Her life’s been a living hell, and all you can do is try to set her up.” Quickly, for Morris’s benefit, he recounts Olivia’s latest problems.

  Morris, who has nervously begun to drum the table with the knuckles of his right hand, stops.

  “You’re still fucking the bitch,” he says sharply, “aren’t you, brother?”

  As if charged with electricity, Andy’s eyelids flutter twice, as obvious as a stammer.

  “Hell, no.”

  The hell he isn’t! I can’t believe I have been so stupid. By the way Olivia had been acting, I was certain they weren’t seeing each other.

  “Of course, he is!” I say to Morris, jabbing his arm with my finger.

  “She’s still playing him like a goddamn violin.” Why didn’t I see this? Andy’s so pussy whipped he can’t remember his own name. Needlessly, I add, “She couldn’t manipulate him any better if he were a hand puppet.”

  Morris shakes his head mournfully at his brother.

  “You stupid, stupid little nigger.”

  Andy pushes back from the table and in an agonized tone, pleads, “Can’t either of you understand that I love this woman? Olivia’s gone through more in the last sixteen years than most people endure their entire lives. Neither of you knows her at all!”

  I look at this man, who is as intelligent as anybody I know, and wonder how he can possibly be this dumb. Black people have been getting screwed by whites in Arkansas for more than 150 years, but Andy is competing to be this year’s poster child.

  “She’s about to love you to death,” I say, more to Morris than to him.

  Morris chuckles ruefully, looking at his brother.

  “The boy’s been fucked blind. The bitch could shoot six people dead, and you’d say her finger just got stuck while she was testing her gun.”

  Andy stares balefully at his brother as if they were picking up an old argument. “I don’t really expect you to understand, Mo,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  “You’ve always hated yourself as much as you hate whites.”

  In a bored tone, Morris replies, “Now, don’t start trying to fuck with me, boy. I came to terms with myself a long time ago. I’m not gonna be the one with my pecker hanging out in the middle of the courtroom tomorrow.”

  Anxious to avoid open warfare, I put my hand on Morris’s arm to restrain him.

  “Andy, if there’s more to this than an accident,” I say quietly, “there’s still time to make a deal with Jill Marymount.”

  With a look of utter disdain, Andy stalks out of the room.

  Morris watches him go and surprises me by commenting after Andy is out of earshot, “He probably does love her.

  He’s never happier than when he’s taking care of a cripple.”

  I stand up and stretch. My back feels as if it has calcified since this morning. After this trial I’ve got to start getting some exercise again.

  “I wish now I’d insisted that you sat in on this,” I say.

  “I can’t figure her out, but I doubt if Olivia Le Master fits into the category of a cripple.”

  Twisting his hands outward Morris pops a thick, hairy knuckle and stares at his fingers.

  “Oh, I can see how the bitch could get all twisted.”

  I walk over to the window and stare at the street. Morris has put me in my place-he doesn’t seem the compassionate type, but even he is willing to concede Olivia has had a hard time of it.

  “Maybe so,” I admit, “but lots of people with retarded children don’t go to the extremes she has, and I’m not even talking about whether she’s guilty o
f murder.”

  Morris scratches his sparse, graying hair.

  “I don’t know,” he mutters softly, ‘you white folks don’t handle bad shit too good sometimes. When that silver spoon gets taken away from you, it’s mighty easy to get withdrawal symptoms.”

  “Could be,” I shrug, unwilling to argue. As long as he is writing the checks, Morris is free to put a racial spin on whatever he wants. For all I know, he may be right. If you don’t expect much, you sure as hell can’t claim to be disappointed.

  And yet there is his brother, who refuses to interpret anything through the lens of racism. Why should I be surprised?

  We all do what works.

  “You think Andy would let himself be talked into taking Pam’s life?” I ask, lowering my voice.

  Morris stands and comes over to the window by me.

  “He wouldn’t do it for the money,” he whispers, “but damned if he couldn’t think of a whole shit load of other reasons.”

  I look down on the rapidly emptying street and think of the nightly preoccupations that await these people who are still scurrying out of the Layman Building. TV. Children.

  Some will work. Maybe a few will even read a book. How many are going home to have sex outside of marriage with someone of a different race?

  “What do you think your chances are?” Sarah asks. She had come into the kitchen for a glass of milk. As the product of a mixed marriage, Sarah would be the ideal person to try this case for Andy. She wouldn’t have to say a word to get across Andy’s point that race should not be an issue in this trial.

  I look up from the table, which is covered with my papers.

  Though I have nailed down their stories (Andy admits to five

  “meetings” with Olivia since he was initially charged;

  through Karen, Olivia agrees with this number), our case stinks. As soon as Andy opens his mouth, he will be on the defensive. Once the jury hears about the money Olivia was to receive upon Pam’s death, that is all it will be thinking about. Yettie will testify that she heard Olivia say Pam would be better off dead than alive, etc.” etc. Jill will build facts and motives on top of each other until they reach the top of the courthouse. And then the jury will hear they have slept together as recently as last week.

  “About the same,” I say, smiling at my daughter, who is wearing ragged cutoffs and a T-shirt the size of a circus tent, “as the chances of the universe randomly coming into being.”

  Woogie, his long nails tap-dancing on the linoleum, has ambled in from the couch perhaps to hear this discussion, but more likely in hopes that Sarah is opening the door to get him a snack. Sarah, who has attended Mass every Sunday since returning from Camp Anytown, cracks, “Well, they must be pretty good since it happened.”

  I watch Sarah, who now has a white mustache, unwrap from its plastic a slice of cheese, break it in two, and throw the smaller part to Woogie, who catches and swallows it in a single motion.

  “Do you do this often?” I ask, exhausted, and wanting but unable even for an instant to forget the trial.

  Ah, the science of reinforcement. Somehow, it’s difficult to imagine Albert Einstein with a cattle prod in his hand.

  “If all you were allowed to eat was dog food,” Sarah says reasonably, “you’d hope somebody would throw you a little cheese, too.”

  “He doesn’t even taste it,” I protest, putting down my pen and watching it roll off the table.

  “It’s like throwing him a quarter every time you do it.”

  “More like a dime,” Sarah says, throwing him the rest of the slice to spite me.

  This commentary on my cheapness rolls straight off my back. I bend down to pick up my pen.

  “If you want to chip in for your food, it’s fine with me.”

  Sarah gives me a stricken look.

  “Are things that bad?”

  “They’re great,” I lie. To hell with Andy, I think. I ought to be worrying about myself. If he goes down the tubes, my venture into private practice may not be far behind him. Getting your client the death penalty doesn’t make for such a great referral.

  “I’ve got more clients at this stage than I ever dreamed.” Too bad they don’t pay. I refuse to worry Sarah.

  My mother worried about money so much after my father died I thought at any moment I would be sent into the streets to beg for bread. It was never that bad, and if she had been a little less dramatic, I might not be such a tightwad now. I want Sarah to enjoy her senior year and not spend her time wondering whether I can pay the mortgage. The phone rings.

  As my daughter flies to the phone, I say, “See, there’s a client now.”

  In one fluid motion Sarah shuts the refrigerator door and snatches the phone from the wall as if she is expecting the President to call and give us his opinion on our finances instead of one of a half-dozen nightly calls she receives from her friends.

  “Hi!”

  Sarah’s features knit into an uncharacteristic frown.

  “Just a moment, please,” she says, bringing the phone, its cord a long corkscrew tail, to the table for me.

  “I’ve heard this voice, but I can’t place it.”

  Mona Moneyhart, I think dejectedly as I take the phone and identify myself.

  “Gideon,” Mona says, her voice, its normal breathy tone, now that she has me on the phone, “your little daughter doesn’t let you get far away from her, does she?”

  “Mona,” I say angrily, “I’m getting ready for a murder trial that starts tomorrow, and I haven’t got time to listen to you. What do you want?”

  “Why, Gideon,” Mona says, “you’ve never been ugly to me before. Is your little daughter having a fit about something?”

  I get Sarah to smile as I roll my eyes back in my head.

  “It’s nine-thirty, Mona. What’s the problem?”

  “I just wanted to tell you,” she says sounding like Shirley Temple as a child, “that Steve and I have reconciled. We’re together now. Would you like to talk to him?”

  “No, no, that’s all right,” I say hastily, imagining Steve desperately setting rattraps out all over the kitchen, tightening screws on the stove, doing whatever he can to guard against the inevitable morning he will be again served rat muffins for breakfast.

  “Congratulations! I’ll call his lawyer as soon as I can.”

  “You can keep all the money I’ve paid you,” Mona says.

  “It’s not worth suing you over.”

  “Thanks,” I say, winking at Sarah. I figure with all her calls I’ve made about twenty dollars an hour off her case at this point.

  “I honestly feel I’ve earned it.”

  “And you know I haven’t got that kind of time,” she declares.

  “You know my motto.”

  “I sure do know your motto,” I say, repeating the words simultaneously with Sarah, who has guessed our caller. “Let Being Be!”

  After Sarah hangs up the phone for me, she leans back against the kitchen wall and asks seriously, “Do you think she could be committed to the state hospital?”

  “Not even close,” I say, thinking of all the clients I used to represent out there.

  “She’s probably as sane as the rest of us. Just a little more obsessed.”

  Sarah laughs. It doesn’t take much to be weird in her eyes.

  Still, Mona Moneyhart seems the genuine article.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sarah is bringing me the phone again.

  “Rainey,” she says approvingly.

  “She’s probably calling to wish you luck.”

  I smile, thinking of the differences between women. Mona Moneyhart is the original client from hell; Rainey makes me glad just thinking about her.

  “Gideon,” Rainey says, her voice solemn and small, “I promised myself I wouldn’t bother you with this tonight, but I’m so scared. I had a mammogram this afternoon, and my doctor has arranged for me to see a surgeon next week.”

  I can’t take this. I’m just not going to be able to
go through it again. I wait for Sarah to disappear around the corner of the kitchen. In the moment this takes, all the fear and panic come back. It is as if Sarah has taken all the oxygen from the air with her.

  “Who’s your doctor?” I ask, knowing I should be saying something else.

  “Connie Havens,” Rainey says, mentioning the name of a busy gynecologist who is the only female in a group of five men.

  I have never heard her voice sound so dead. Usually, it is like a musical instrument. Even when she is exhausted from a week’s work, she still usually manages to sound like a piano being played with one hand.

  “How long have you known you had a lump in your breast?” I ask, trying not to accuse her. Rosa, who, as a nurse, had absolutely no excuse, was lax about examining her breasts monthly, even though she knew the statistics. Women, I read the month before Rosa died, wait an average of five to six months before going to the doctor after they discover they may have a problem. During this time the tumor can grow from the size of a pea to the diameter of a golf ball or much larger.

  “I didn’t know,” Rainey says.

  “It was just a part of a regular checkup.”

  My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women Rainey’s age.

  “Did she say how big the lump was?” The beauty of a mammogram is that it can pick up tumors small enough to be cured.

  “You won’t believe this,” Rainey says, her voice a whisper, “but she told me and I’ve forgotten. Something like four centimeters or six.”

  If I remember what I’ve read, that number can make a huge difference in her chances, assuming the tumor is malignant.

  I look across the lighted kitchen to the darkness in the den. I feel myself becoming angry. Rainey knows enough to get all the information she needs.

  “Maybe it’s just a cyst.”

  “I’ve been going to Connie for years,” Rainey says dully.

  “I know when she’s worried.”

  I feel like I ‘m suffocating and reach over with one hand to push up the window across from the table. It has finally turned cool this week. A gust of air rushes over the window sill through the screen as if it were being sucked in by a pump. Rosa’s doctor had been certain she had a malignancy.