Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement (11 page)

you already.”

“I miss you, too,” I say.

“We’ll have fun tomorrow night.” She knows something is wrong. I do, too.

After I get Amy off the phone, I look up Mrs. Ting’s number and give her a call, but it is Connie, Tommy’s younger sister, who answers. I haven’t seen her since I moved away. My main memory is of a busty, ponytailed girl in a white T-shirt who practiced cheers on the sidewalk while Tommy and I played tennis. Cute as a ladybug, she was even smarter than her brother. She must have already heard the news that I’m representing Bledsoe, for there is an understandable lack of warmth in her voice as she explains that tonight would not be a good time to see her mother. She puts the phone down and then tells me that I can come by tomorrow morning about ten.

“I’m really sorry about your father, Connie. I know he was a good man.” She doesn’t respond. I ask and get Tommy’s number in Maryland before she practically hangs up on me. I wonder what she is doing now.

Surely, she didn’t stay in Bear Creek.

I put down the phone, feeling as if I am a salesman who is accustomed to regarding the rudeness of the human race as normal.

Disappointed that I have not been able to establish any rapport with Connie, I dial Tommy’s number. When I go through that plant, I want the workers to open up and talk to me. If Class has been set up by Paul,

someone out there may know who did it. I recognize Tommy’s voice as soon as he answers the phone. Even after all these years, and despite having been born in the United States, Tommy has never quite managed to sound like he was a Caucasian. There was always a slight burr in his speech, and that is what I hear now.

“Tommy, this is Gideon Page,” I announce.

“I assume Connie’s told you I’ve been retained to represent Class Bledsoe.”

There is silence on the other end while he absorbs the fact that he is getting a phone call from the attorney who represents his father’s alleged murderer. Finally, he says, “She called me this morning.”

I tell him that I am genuinely sorry that his father has been killed.

“I had nothing but the profoundest respect for him. All of you worked so hard and did so well that I drew inspiration just knowing you. I can remember how persistent you were when we used to play tennis. You were Michael Chang before there even was one.”

“Why are you calling me, Gideon?” he asks.

“Shouldn’t you be dealing with the prosecuting attorney?”

I watch as a gorgeous blonde flits all over the national weather map.

What he wants to say, but is too polite, is, if you have such admiration for us, why are you taking the case of the man who murdered my father?

“I am,” I say.

“But I know you want the right person to be convicted of your father’s murder. If my client did it, the jury should convict him, but he swears he was set up, and I think that’s a real possibility.” “Why?” Tommy asks, his voice unyielding.

“My father’s blood was on his knife. He has no alibi, I’ve heard he wouldn’t take a polygraph test.”

“I’m just starting to investigate this. Tommy,” I say, watching the blonde draw squiggles over the Rockies, “but it’s obvious that Paul could have hired any number of people in that plant to murder your father and pin it on Bledsoe, who seems like a decent man but probably isn’t the brightest guy down there.”

“So at least you’re convinced Paul Taylor was behind this,” Tommy says, his voice fading in and out, “because he thought he could buy the plant for a fraction of its worth.”

“I’ve heard the tape,” I say, watching the blonde flash her best Karen Mcguiness smile, and return the program to the black newscaster.

“I know you have. What do you think?” “He threatened my father,” Tommy says, his voice not at all confident, “but I don’t know if there is enough to tie him to the murder.”

“I don’t know how well you knew Paul,” I say, “but that entire family has spent a lifetime cheating people out of their land and property.” I

briefly tell Tommy about my family’s financial dealings with the Taylors.

“You may not be aware of this, but in the last several years they lost a lot of their land. He needed your father’s business to maintain his lifestyle. I understand it was quite profitable.”

Tommy responds, “What’s your point?”

In the background I can hear a child’s voice. I lost contact with him years ago and don’t know if he is married, single, or working in an orphanage.

“That Paul is slick as pig shit and if you let him, he will skate out of this just like he’s done his whole life,” I say crudely.

“My guess is that he’s guilty as hell and hired someone else to kill your father and set up Class Bledsoe. So far his only mistake is that he didn’t realize he was being taped. I know Paul. He plans to be laughing at all of us when this is over.”

His voice sounding as if it is coming over string and a tin can instead of telephone wire, he asks, “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing, really,” I say quickly.

“I could get an order from the judge to let me go through the plant and inspect the murder scene, but what I’d like to do is to have as much cooperation from your workers as possible. I suspect they won’t give me the time of day unless your family tells them that it is all right to be

as candid as possible with me. If I don’t get anything, then fine. But I’d hate to overlook some leads if it can be avoided.

Once a prosecutor files charges, law enforcement gets hunkered down to prove the case, and it’s hard to make them look elsewhere. If you could call your cousin and ask him to talk to your workers after I inspect the plant so that when I begin to interview them, they’ll be more open with me, it would help.”

The phone crackles and snaps in my hand like it is about to burst into flames. If I were paranoid, I would think the line was somehow tapped already.

“Let me think about this,” Tommy says finally.

“I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the case.”

“They don’t have a strong one against Paul,” I say urgently, leafing through the file in my lap.

“All they can show is Bledsoe has worked for him a long time. The only thing your secretary at the plant says is that she overheard Bledsoe say that he had gotten the money, but nobody knows what that was about.

For all I know, he may have been stealing from the plant, but that doesn’t mean he was the murderer. All they have on Paul is the tape, and Paul can explain it away in five minutes on the witness stand. It’s ambiguous.

He’s going to walk away from all of this.”

“What I have trouble understanding,” Tommy says cautiously, “is why a man like that would risk so much.”

I have trouble with that aspect, too, but I say, “I don’t know how often you and Connie have been in Bear Creek recently, but I’m finding out it’s changed a lot since I grew up here.” “It’s changed, all right,” Tommy says humorlessly.

Sensing that he is willing to talk, I ask him what he does for a living, and he tells me that he has a commercial real estate firm in D.C. It sounds as if he is doing quite well, which I don’t doubt. He had the sort of mind that could make sense of the tax code but never tried to intimidate you with his intelligence. I ask what Connie does and learn that she is a physicist in Memphis who measures the amount of radiation given to cancer patients. She has been driving over on the weekends to stay with their mother, who has been ill for the last several years and whose health has not. been improved by her husband’s murder. I am sure he will be on the phone to them after this call.

Before I hang up, he asks, “Is there a trial date?”

I explain that Class has to be formally arraigned first and tell him that despite the circumstances it was good to talk to him. We were friends once; maybe we can be again once this is all over. I place the phone on the table and lean back against the bed and watch Vanna swishing back and forth on the screen. How little it takes to entertain me. Before I can take a sip of bourbon, the phone rings, and I pick it up, hoping it’s not Betty telling me she’ll bring down some extra towels.

“Gideon,” Paul Taylor begins, “damn, I’m glad you’re in this case. Can you believe the shit I’m in?” Who told him I was here? I stare at Vanna’s backside while I try to absorb what he is saying.

Can he still be this arrogant after all these years?

Does he truly not know how I feel about him? Of course, he doesn’t.

Paul, I realize now, is the type who, regardless of what he does, can always rationalize his actions.

“You’re in some shit all right.

Does Dick know you’re calling me? I shouldn’t be visiting with you without his okay.” “Hell, sure he does,” he says casually.

“We’re on the same side of this, right?”

If Angela has talked to him, she didn’t say how I feel about him.

“Of course!” I say as if his charge is one huge mistake.

“But what on earth did you do to piss off the new order, Paul? Unless somebody is playing a huge practical joke, I’d say somebody doesn’t like you.”

He laughs, but the sound coming through the phone is not a merry one.

“This is the new order, all right! Can you believe we have niggers

running Bear Creek? When we were kids, could you have ever imagined the sheriff, prosecuting attorney, and judge would have black faces when we got to be our parents’ ages?”

Paul has some nerve mentioning my parents in the same breath with his.

I realize I better take advantage of this moment while I can.

“Paul, did you have some dealings with my client I don’t know about?” I ask.

Paul’s voice becomes intense.

“What’s he saying, Gideon?”

If I had known I was going to have this opportunity, I would have tried to figure out how to trap him. My mind races for a way to get him to admit that he hired Class or someone else to kill Willie.

“Well, of course, he can’t very well deny once having worked for you, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about the details. I just got hired yesterday. It sounds as if you had some contact with him after old Willie was killed. Is that right?”

“Why don’t you come by the house for a drink after supper, Gideon?”

Paul asks, his voice polite.

“I’ll call Dick, and we can do a little brainstorming—unless you have plans tonight.”

I wonder if something in my tone warned him away or he simply found out what he needed to know. I can’t very well turn him down.

“What time?” I ask, checking my watch. Hell, I wish he would invite me to eat. I’m getting hungry.

“About eight,” he says.

“You know where we live now?”

I confess I don’t, and he says that he has moved into town.

“We sold Riverdale years ago.

We live in the old Yates house. You know where that is.”

“I remember.” Bear Creek’s one mansion.

What a piece of work this guy is. I’d love to ask about Mae, but I ask about Jill instead, and he tells me that she is “just wonderful” and abruptly gets off the phone. I put down the receiver without having gotten to ask how he knew I was at the Bear Creek Inn. All I can figure is that gossip travels the speed of light over here. For all I know, Betty may have called ten people since I checked in. I remind myself to be careful. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll be the one who will end up getting screwed.

I don’t need to arrive at his house thinking that Paul was a great guy after all, and I pour out my bourbon and Coke in the sink. I decide to

shower and get out of the clothes I’m wearing today. Friday night.

Nobody in eastern Arkansas is wearing a suit unless he or she is getting married tonight or buried tomorrow. As I place the pants and jacket on a plastic hanger, I am reminded of Amy, who bought this suit as her Christmas present to me for my rape trial in Fayetteville. She is probably feeding Jessie about now. She is delightful and fundamentally a good person, but all those nudes! What is that about?

Sex or art? If Sarah comes home for Easter in her Volkswagen with a trunk full of photographs of herself wearing just her birthday suit, what will I do? Shoot us both, probably. In the shower I look at my shrunken penis and marvel at its capacity to get me into trouble. Such an ignoble-looking piece of equipment, and, to my mind, visual refutation that humans are somehow endowed with some kind of special nobility among the animal kingdom.

Ten minutes later, wearing a pair of khakis that aren’t too badly wrinkled, I ride into town and eat at Charlie’s Pizza, an establishment whose most inviting feature, among all the computer games, is an old-fashioned pinball machine. I resist the urge to play it, preferring not to call any more attention to myself than I already have. Of course, I might as well be wearing a neon sign around my neck. Everyone in here, no more than twenty, and mostly teenagers, is obviously a regular. When I was a kid, Friday night in February meant basketball. I guess it still does, and with all the private schools in the Delta, sports are almost as segregated as they were when I was growing up. Integration was supposed to bring us together; arguably, nothing has driven us further apart.

Forty-five minutes later, after a cheese-and-sausage pizza that has burned the roof of my mouth, I make a turn onto Scott Street and realize I have missed the entrance to Paul’s drive.

Maybe I don’t remember Bear Creek as well as I thought. I turn around and pull into a curved driveway that sits on a full acre of land, only two blocks from downtown Bear Creek. Three stories, brick, with a formal garden and a couple of birdbaths, this house doesn’t look like it is owned by someone who has suffered from financial reverses. What I keep forgetting, however, is how depressed prices must be over here.

Paul probably got this for a third of what he would have to pay for its equivalent in Blackwell County.

As I press the doorbell, I realize I am fall of anxiety, My family must have been so inconsequential to the Taylors that Paul doesn’t have the slightest idea of the impact he has had on the lives of my mother or me. I wonder what my sister Marty remembers about Paul. As big a pain in the butt as that conversation will be, I should call her and find out. Naturally, Jill comes to the door, though I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see her. I always liked her, and feel awkward seeing her under these circumstances.