Somehow I keep my mouth shut. At least the sanctimonious asshole has the decency to shake hands. Besides, who knows why the jury didn’t convict him of murder or at least ; manslaughter? They may not even know themselves. As Kim I Keogh opens her lovely mouth to ask her first question, I think again that I’d take Morris any day.
24
The surgery waiting room at St. Thomas is so littered with the debris of the slow passage of time (paper cups, magazines, newspapers, gum and candy wrappers) that I am re minded slightly of the Blackwell County Social Services office where I once plied my trade as a child-abuse investigator. The difference, of course, is the clientele. St. Thomas is for mostly the middle class and rich who have private insurance Down the street is University Hospital, which handles mostly Medicaid patients and people without insurance.
Judging by his bemused manner. Dr. Brownlee, Rainey’s surgeon, seems to regard me as something of a chump: I keep getting involved with women who have breast cancer.
Correction. May have breast cancer. Only a biopsy can tell for sure, he said repeatedly, but by his haste in scheduling Rainey’s surgery Brownlee left no doubt what he thought.
Strangely inarticulate for a man who surely earns several hundred thousand dollars a year, Brownlee apparently lets his knife do his talking.
Things have moved with such haste that I am the only family or friend Rainey has in the waiting room. Before being wheeled into the operating room, Rainey told me to bend down and then whispered into my ear that she loved me.
Since I had told her the same thing the night before, it was not as if the subject hadn’t been mentioned. Still, better late than never.
Stopping my heart, the female volunteer sitting behind the scarred, wooden desk at the front of the room calls out, “Mr.
Page?”
I find I can barely force myself out of the chair, so heavy is the fear weighing down on me. “You have a phone call over there,” she says, pointing to a pay phone booth in the corner .
“Thanks,” I say, feeling a momentary reprieve. I have promised to call Rainey’s daughter immediately, but I won’t be surprised if she couldn’t wait.
“Hello,” I say, my voice feeling slightly rusty from disuse.
“Any word?” Dan asks, his high voice cracking against my ear. “Not yet,” I report, looking out at the exhausted and anxious faces around me. Good ol’ Dan, I think. He would have come with me but he has to be in court this morning.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.”
We talk for a few moments, and I then go sit down, thinking a friend like Dan can be a pain in the butt (he asked me over the weekend to represent him before the bar ethics committee if it decides to bother with him because of his Twinkie conviction), but I wouldn’t trade him for the world. We don’t talk much about serious issues except our cases, but he knows what is important to me. The ethics committee won’t do much, maybe send out a letter of admonition, its lowest level of action. Compared with what some lawyers have stolen, a Twinkie isn’t much to get excited about.
I drink my third cup of coffee and stare unseeing at the pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, trying to think about anything except what’s occurring in one of the rooms next to me. The papers have been full of stories about Andy’s trial. One of the jurors has talked since the verdict, and his comments have proved rather enlightening. Emerson Clawson, one of the white males who kept yawning during my closing argument, has told a reporter for the Democrat Gazette that it never seemed like a murder case to him.
Shocking that pitiful child was just a stupid thing to do, a case of poor judgment. Still, as awful as that kid’s life was, you could see why somebody would try it. Why such a light sentence? Why not put him in jail to warn people like Andy not to experiment with children’s lives, as Jill had demanded of the jury? According to Clawson, the jury figured that somebody has to work with those poor devils and it might as well be somebody who gives a damn and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Sure, Chapman had screwed up, but you have to remember he had the kid’s mother panting all over him. As far as he was concerned, the dumbest part of the trial had been the defendant’s lawyer trying to make an issue of the aide being in the Trackers. He didn’t blame Chapman for wanting to fire his lawyer. Lawyers are always trying to use the issue of race in Blackwell County for one reason or another. The prosecutor, he told the reporter, apparently rather indignantly, was right about one thing: cheap tricks like that don’t work there. Sure they don’t.
The night after the trial I called Amy Gilchrist who told me that from the beginning Jill had been convinced that Leon was in on it-that she was certain he had been paid off by Andy and Olivia but never found the slightest evidence to prove it. When Leon hadn’t shown up for work this past Monday, Jill, according to Amy, had nodded and collected a five-dollar bet from Kerr. When she checked with his landlord, she was told that Leon hadn’t bothered to ask for his deposit back and had left no forwarding address. Without any evidence to charge him, Jill had been stuck with Leon’s story, and then I had really messed things up when I found out about Leon being in the Trackers. She had ended up having to defend a man she thought was guilty as sin! Conspiracies!
How prosecutors love them! Jill would really be agitated if I told her that last night I got a call from California from Charlene telling me she had called Leon and he had gotten on the plane Sunday afternoon.
“I wouldn’t of tried to hurt him so bad if I didn’t still love him.” I could tell Jill this, but she wouldn’t believe Charlene. Since I heard Leon laughing in the background, I do. Jill’s problem is she’s too logical. As the song goes, “The things we do for love!”
After spilling the beans on her boss, Amy had said she was leaving the Prosecutor’s office next month. Now that she’d had the abortion, she had no future there. The Layman Building has space, I told her. Yet I am dismayed at the thought of one more lawyer competing for business against me. Amy confided that sometimes she dreams she is having the baby. Regret is the price of freedom, my mother used to say, but I didn’t drop this pearl of wisdom on Amy, who promised to come by and see me. Before I hung up, I asked her about the possibility of Olivia being prosecuted. Given the view of the jury that the child’s death was accidental, Amy confided, Jill has given up. In turn, she asked me if I thought Olivia and Andy would get back together. I doubt it, I told her, not after her testimony. Andy may be capable of love-but forgiveness? I’m not so sure.
Benign. The sweetest word in the English language. Outside the hospital, I roll up the window of the Blazer on my side to keep out the cool rain. My passenger however sticks her bare arm out the window and waves it around like a naughty child. Her face is wet and shining.
“You don’t have to go back to work after you take me home,” she says shyly.
I smile. My face is wet, too.
“I guess I don’t,” I say.
There is something to be said for private practice after all.