Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause (31 page)

“She-it!” she exclaims to her opponent, an older guy who could have posed (with a little work on his gut) as the Marlboro Man in the old TV commercial.

As I head for the bar, the jukebox by the shuffleboard table begins an old favorite from my brief country music period:

“D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. Even her fast songs (and this isn’t one of them) seem to me slow and sad. A small plane could take off and land from the bar, and so, to avoid standing out in this still sparse crowd of about six drinkers, I plant myself on a red-cushioned stool toward the end nearer the entrance. Since it is a Saturday night, I would have figured on a bigger crowd, but there is still a little light outside, and I assume the real partying doesn’t begin until dark. Waiting for the barmaid (she has some ground to cover in this place), I am impressed by the selection of alcohol.

Besides what I’d expect in the way of whiskey and bourbon, within my sight there is gin, rum, vodka, wine, and even two liqueurs coffee and chocolate almond. Damn. Am I still in the South? But on the wall above the beer nozzles I spy a Confederate flag, and I know I’m in the right place.

The Bull Run, among other stories I’ve heard about it in the last twenty-four hours, has been rumored to be the de facto headquarters of a white-supremacist group known as the Trackers. It also is supposed to be Leon Robinson’s favorite watering hole. Remembering Yettie Lindsey’s remark to me about blacks, I decide Arkansas is a small place for whites as well. With only five days until the jury is impaneled my hopes of somehow implicating Leon Robinson in Pam Le Master’s death have come to nothing. There is no evidence that Leon has lied about his involvement, nothing to dispute his story that Pam simply jerked out of his grasp when she was shocked. Finally, Eben Crawford, who was a classmate of Dan’s in law school, phoned me yesterday and said that he has found out in bits and pieces that Leon is divorced, has no police record, is an avid turkey hunter, and likes to chase women at the Bull Run. We may not know much, but, by God, we know our neighbors’ business in the South. This would have been a snap if I had hired an investigator, but I didn’t even bring the subject up with Andy. If he knew what I was up to, he would fire me.

I order a Pabst Blue Ribbon from the barmaid, who gives me a friendly smile. Hell, if she isn’t one of the more attractive-looking women I’ve seen in a while! As far as rough places go, according to Eben, the Blue Run’s reputation is only middling, but there is already enough smoke in here to choke a horse, and the faces of women who tend bar don’t usually look this classy after a certain age. She has silky, soft blond hair and the kind of high cheekbones I ‘we seen in magazines advertising expensive perfume.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” the barmaid asks, sizing me up. She is about thirty, I would guess, and is wearing a T-shirt that says “Lobotomy Beer,” which is tucked neatly into skintight jeans.

I’m a breath away from asking the brainless question of what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, but manage instead, “You have on my daughter’s T-shirt.”

In the background. Tammy wails, ” The and little J-O-E will be goin’ away…. ” I wouldn’t mind a little trip with this woman. Her hands on her hips, she looks down at the front of her shirt, which swells out nicely.

“I’ll be danged if I don’t,” she drawls, grinning at me and showing a dimple in her left cheek.

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

I let some of the Pabst slip down. Cold with a nice sour bite. Until this moment, I have forgotten I used to like it.

Right now I wish I wasn’t supposed to be figuring out how to make Leon look like the worst racist this side of Mississippi.

I try not to stare at the woman, but I suspect she is used to it. With no admissible evidence to back it up, my plan has been reduced to suggesting to the jury that Leon hates blacks so much that he deliberately let go of Pam so she would attack Andy. My thinking is that if I can get a couple of blacks on the jury, at least one of them might hold out if I can obtain some evidence on this point. Is this cynical on my part? Without a doubt. I decide I’d better act before she gets too busy.

“She’ll be relieved,” I say finally, “it’s in good hands.”

The woman rolls her eyes as if this bullshit is about par for the course, but she doesn’t move away.

“I bet she will,” she says dryly. This woman has surely heard a lot of crap, but, like the smoke, it comes with the territory.

I put my mug down on a Coors pad.

“Actually, I’m looking for Charlene Newman. She ever come in here?” This morning at the Saline County Chancery clerk’s office, my plan appeared to come to a screeching halt. Leon’s ex-wife, who I hoped would be willing to talk about Leon’s racial attitudes, has resumed using her maiden name and apparently left no forwarding address after the divorce was final.

Placing both hands on the bar (no ring I notice), Blondie raises her eyebrows in mock disapproval and confides, “You can do better than Charlene.”

Fighting the urge to smile at my good luck, I feign embarrassment

“My cousin went to high school with her,” I mutter and duck my head.

“He said now that I’m divorced I ought to look her up.”

Blondie shrugs and turns to the other barmaid a few feet away, who is drying glasses and putting them on a shelf behind her.

“Hey, Betty, where’d Charlene go after she and Leon split?” Blondie calls to her.

The much older woman, whose hair is a peroxide platinum, picks up a burning cigarette from the corner of the bar and puffs on it as she contemplates. Her strong face, wrinkled by smoking and age, has an indestructible quality to it, as if nothing in the last forty years has come as a surprise. “I heard Hot Springs,” she says, exhaling, her voice a throaty contralto.

“Who wants to know?”

I remain motionless, since I don’t want to attract attention to myself, but I’d like to leap across the bar and kiss her.

Blondie nods at me with her chin.

I gulp my beer, ready to leave. I’d just as soon Leon not hear too much about this conversation if I can help it. Betty, who is wearing a pair of starched jeans and a man’s long sleeved blue work shirt, cocks her hip at me.

“Shit, he can do better than Charlene.”

I lean across the bar. This woman reminds me of women I occasionally picked up in bars after Rosa died. Big in the chest, brassy, horny.

“You don’t sound like,” I say, unable to resist opening my mouth, “Charlene’s best friend.”

Folding her arms across her breasts, Betty, friendly until now, gives me a hard stare, as if whatever signals she was putting out have suddenly been switched off.

“Charlene’s okay,” she says, her voice now scratchy and defensive.

“You old guys are something, you know it?”

Old? Thanks a lot. I turn to Blondie, but her eyes have turned cold, too. What is going on here? One minute we were getting along great, and the next I have become their worst nightmare. I turn and stare directly into the eyes of Leon Robinson.

“What are you doin’ here?” he says. It is not really so much a question as a demand. Leon is an inch or two shorter than I am, perhaps ten pounds lighter, but fifteen years younger. He is wearing a red Razorback cap jammed down over his eyes that proclaims “Woo Pig, Sooie!”

For some reason I look down at his cowboy boots, I suppose, hoping the toes aren’t reinforced by steel. I may not be on my feet much longer. Cover your balls, I think. Even if by some miracle I can take out Leon, I suspect he has a few friends here, and I don’t see any of mine. Discretion, every lawyer learns in his career, is sometimes the better part of valor. The odds of the women covering for me (assuming he hasn’t already overheard them) are abysmal, but if I want to be a good liar, I have to take a few risks in life.

“I was just visiting a friend in Benton and stopped by on my way home. Can I buy you a beer? I’d like to talk to you about the case you testified in almost two months ago,” I say, hoping I’m coming across like a friendly aluminum-siding salesman who is having more luck today than he can stand. I can feel a river of sweat pouring down my sides under my arms. The Bull Run must have air-conditioning problems, too.

Leon runs his right thumb past his nose, a gesture whose significance I can’t interpret. He puts his hands on his hips and makes a snorting sound as if he has caught the odor of fresh road kill.

“Randi, this is the son of a bitch who’s defending that nigger that killed Pam.” Although there was not much noise at the bar before, I can now hear all the way across the dance floor the sound of a cue ball kissing a break.

No more Tammy either. She and Little J-O-E have slipped out the back door.

I should throw a punch now (I ‘d like to salvage some honor if I can), but my fear that every male in here will kick me in the face is still too strong. I glance around me. The bar, which seemed fairly empty when I sat down, has attracted a nice crowd, or maybe it is that everyone just seems a little closer to me. Ever since I’ve been an adult I have owned only one weapon, and it’s suddenly stuck against the roof of my mouth. Which is Randi? The real blonde, I bet.

Blondie reaches across the bar and touches Leon’s bare arm.

“Take him outside, Leon,” she whispers.

“They’ll try to shut us down if there’s another fight in here.”

In no hurry now to leave, I pick up my mug and tilt it back as far as I can to get the last of the beer. “What’s your problem with blacks, Leon?”

Leon gives me a snotty grin and turns and crooks his finger at a man at the door. Either he wasn’t there when I came in or I was temporarily blind. By his size, I judge he can have only two possible occupations—a nose guard for the Cowboys or a bouncer.

Accepting the fact that my question will likely go unanswered for the moment, I try to remember precisely where I parked the Blazer and stride to the door with Leon and several others close behind me. Something just tells me that Leon may not be my only opponent. Don’t run, you chickenshit, I think, and manage to saunter past the doorman, who, as I pass by, helpfully takes my arm and shoves me through the door into the sweltering September night. If I can make it to the car quickly enough, maybe they will let me leave, In the few minutes I was in the bar, it has grown dark. The lights in the asphalt parking lot behind the Bull Run will win no security awards this year, but I have plenty of company as I head for the Blazer. I estimate seven men have come outside. As I stick my right hand into my pocket for my keys, Leon clouts me with a right to my jaw, sending me careening on top of the Blazer. Unable to free my hand, I roll off onto the pavement on the other side. For a moment I think of running. What prevents me is the fear that they have guns in their vehicles and I will be run down and shot.

The others are fanning out around me, so there is no escape.

If I had only Leon to fight, it might not be too bad. Furious at letting myself get pole axed without being in a position to defend myself, I come around the car and pop him directly in the nose as he lunges for me. I couldn’t hit him that square in the face if I fought him another ten years.

For perhaps three seconds Leon stops and feels his nose as if this wasn’t supposed to happen. I hope I have broken it.

Behind me, a hoarse voice commands, “Get the son of a bitch, Leon!”

I should plow into him, but I am hoping he won’t have the sense to realize how lucky my punch was. If he quits now, we’ll be even, like two small countries who have fired one missile each, and are thinking of declaring victory and announcing the end of the war. My hands are raised in the classic fighter pose, my right guarding my aching jaw, my left forward. Every boy pretends at one time to be a prize fighter, but in my case it is strictly for show. At various times Sarah and I have pretended to box. Even with my own daughter I have difficulty warding off blows before we collapse against each other laughing at the silliness of what we are doing. It is too dark to see Leon’s eyes, but I think he is afraid.

Another voice is more insistent.

“Get the fucker!” It is shrill, and I wonder if it is that of a woman, but I don’t dare take my eyes from Leon to search for the speaker. Leon’s hands are up in front of his face, but he looks as awkward and silly as I do. A coward, now, I’m convinced, he will be sure to attack if he thinks I’m not looking. The old saying pops into my head: “One’s afraid to fight, and the other is glad of it.”

Probably fearful of what will happen if he doesn’t, Leon comes for me, swinging furiously. As with Sarah, I block most of his wild blows, but a couple slip in, including a crisp chop on my right ear. In this kamikaze assault, I panic, for getting to swing at him. Instinctively, I try to wrestle him to the asphalt, hoping my weight and advantage will help me.

Caught off guard (he is no more a fighter than I am), Leon trips and I fall on top of him driving my elbow into his stomach as we go down. His head hits the parking lot with a sickening pop, and for a flash of an instant, I think I have knocked him out, but the asshole immediately tries to bite me while I pin his arms in the classic grade-school style. My last coherent thought before the others get to me is that I won.

Only when I am kicked in the balls and kidneys do I scream for help, thinking in a moment of extreme panic that I am being killed. The noise is frightening. One man is crying, “Kill the dumb shit!” and there is yelling and snarling sounds that verge on the inhuman. After three blows to my mouth with somebody’s fist, a front tooth flies out across my face, and I wonder if I will lose consciousness but don’t. A beating takes energy, and apparently it is too hot for my attackers to really enjoy it, for after a couple of minutes (though it seems much longer), they suddenly stop.

Someone says, “Let’s get the shit out of here!”

Leon bends down and whispers, “Don’t you ever come back here, you motherfuckin’ bastard! You hear me?”

I raise a hand to signal that I do, and lie panting in the dim light, feeling my entire body begin to radiate pain. I wait until I hear cars pulling out of the lot, and stagger to my feet, dazed, but deeply grateful I am alive.