Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 (22 page)

Albright had written, directed and together with Nat delivered one of the most practiced, phony dramatic scenes of sentimental crud I had been forced to endure in many a moon. I stood and approached the witness stand with the stone face of a sphinx.

“Mr. Simms? Are you able to continue?”

“Yes.”
Sniff!

“Would you like a moment to compose yourself?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Okay, then. Mr. Simms? How would you describe the first ten years of your marriage? Were they happy ones?”

“Yes. Very happy. I mean, we fought and all, like most people do, but overall they were good years.” Nat blew his nose loudly and took another tissue from the box nearby.

“The first fifteen?”

“Um, that’s hard to remember exactly…”

“Please answer the question to the best of your recollection.”

“Pretty good, I guess.”

“You were in love with each other?”

“Yes. We were.”

“Good. So these drug and alcohol problems really just surfaced in the last two years?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Did you ever try to get help for your wife? I mean, get her into a substance abuse program? Seek some psychiatric medical help for the problems that led her to use Prozac in the first place?”

“Um, no,” Nat said, in a mumble.

“Could you speak up so that the reporter can correctly transcribe your reply, Mr. Simms?”

“I said, no, I did not.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Simms. You say you were happily married for fifteen years, that you were in love with your wife, and when she seemed to be having some kind of trouble, for the very first time in your marriage
she’s troubled,
and you took no action to help her. Is that correct?”

The courtroom was so quiet that when someone cleared their throat, it was very distracting. Nat looked at Albright hoping for a signal. I glanced at Albright who was reading his notes, unaware that Nat wanted coaching. Nat shifted in his chair and gave a calloused response.

“Look, Rebecca was living
The Life of Riley
. What kind of problems could she have that are real problems? It was all a bunch of bull.”

“I see. Well, maybe she had a problem with your adulterous behavior.”

“Objection!” Albright said.

“Sustained,” Judge Shelby said. “Counsel will avoid conjecture.”

“It’s not conjecture, your honor. I’d like to enter into evidence the following: over two hundred fifty receipts from various motels in the Highway 17 locale, twenty-five hundred dollars of SunCom cell phone bills for calls made between Nat Simm’s cell phone and Charlene Johnson’s cell phone and receipts from various adult novelty stores, including the purchases of edible panties and flavored massage oil.”

The clerk, a lovely lady who probably ironed altar linens for the bishop of Charleston, took a deep breath and accepted the first box.

Nat smirked, and unfortunately for him, at that moment the judge was fixated on his face. His smirk ratcheted her ire up about ten notches. Harry Albright stared at the ceiling in dismay.

“Mr. Simms?” the judge said. “Would you like to give us an explanation for these expenditures?”

“Uh, uh…well, you see, your honor, Charlene Johnson has been working for my family’s business for many years. And she gets these headaches. Real bad headaches. Just terrible for her.”

“Yes?” the judge said as though she were waiting for the first drop of ketchup to leave the newly opened bottle.

“Yes, well, we, um, that is, I would send her off to a nearby motel to rest because she lives all the way up the road in Orangeburg and…”

Judge Shelby rested the side of her face on the heel of her hand and stared at Nat.

“Do you realize that you are under oath, Mr. Simms?” she said.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“And do you know what it means to testify under oath, Mr. Simms?”

“Yes.”

“Just so there will be no confusion, Mr. Simms, it means you have to tell the truth or you will be found in contempt of court, fined and sent to jail. Now, would counsel like to repeat the question? What was the question anyway?”

“Uh, Judge, actually you were asking the questions. But I guess I could pick it up with another,” I said and turned back to face Nat. “Mr. Simms, are you now or were you ever engaged in an extramarital affair with Charlene Johnson?”

“Uh, uh, not really. I mean, we spent some time together. We were friends and I could talk to her about anything. When Rebecca started going all crazy she would listen to me and try to help me figure out what to do. I never meant for Charlene to think there was anything more to it than that. You know how women always want more than you want to give, right?”

Judge Shelby and I exchanged the incredulous kind of look that only two women can when confronted with a low-down lying dog of a chauvinist.

I took a breath, crossed my arms and looked at Nat Simms in the eye. “All I’m looking for here is a yes or no answer. We will get to the details later. So is it a yes or a no, Mr. Simms?”

“I would have to say it’s a no. Yes, it’s a no.”

“Excuse me,” Judge Shelby said, “was that a no?”

“That is correct, your honor,” I said.

Judge Shelby made a note for herself, probably noting Nat’s lie, and looked up for us to continue.

“Mr. Simms, how do you account for the purchase of the edible panties and the flavored massage oil?”

Judge Shelby closed her eyes for a brief moment and shook her head.

“Oh, that? Those were gag gifts for a buddy of mine. He was getting married and we gave him a bachelor party.”

The judge made another note for herself.

I said, “All right then. Your honor? I’d like to enter the following into evidence: these are charges and receipts for a number of plastic surgery procedures—breast augmentation, collagen implants for the chin and cheeks, abdominoplasty, which is a tummy tuck, gluteoplasty, a surgical lifting of the buttocks, rhinoplasty, which is a nose job, a series of twenty-eight sessions of microdermabrasion to remove sun damage from the face, neck and décolleté”—I paused for a breath and continued—“a series of ten sessions of Botox injections, otoplasty, which is the surgical procedure of pinning back of protruding ears and a bill for dental resurfacing of the teeth. All of these procedures were performed on Charlene Johnson and paid for by Nat Simms.”

“Great heavens!” the judge said in a gasp. “Is this true, Mr. Simms?”

“Look, Judge, I can explain…”

“Please do!”

Well, Nat went on with some new cock-and-bull story about how Charlene had never had good dental care. Her family lived out in the country and didn’t have access to a good dentist. And her ears had always bugged her, and her nose too. Once she got those things fixed she got it in her mind that she wanted to start appearing in the television ads for the business with him, since the old man said he didn’t want to do them anymore, that he was getting too damn old to have his face up there on the television set while decent people were trying to eat their supper. She thought better bosoms might give her some star quality.

Nat said he didn’t have the heart to tell her that she would probably never make a TV ad with him, but he helped her, he said, because he felt sorry for her and that was all there was to it. Yep, that was all there was to it.

Nat continued his prattle and the entire courtroom listened, jaws dropped and eyes wide. Just when the growing collective of minds gathered thought we had heard the headlines of tomorrow’s
National Enquirer,
the courtroom door swung open and there was Charlene Johnson. She was handcuffed and nearly hyperventilating in resentment and the language of her new improved body spoke volumes—she was as proud of herself as a Las Vegas showgirl and as angry a woman as I had ever seen. A rumble of commentary broke out and Judge Shelby slammed her gavel for order.

I couldn’t wait to get Charlene on the witness stand.

T
HERE
was a little chaos, and then the courtroom settled down. Charlene was brought before the judge. As she made her way toward the bench, head tossed back in defiance, there was a pronounced pump to the swing in her backyard. Every eye was on her bright pink clinging jersey dress, which left little to the imagination. Her black patent leather pumps had three-inch heels and tied around the ankle. The surgeon had taken her gravity-defying breasts to awe-inspiring dimensions and had given new definition to the term
booty
. I imagined the rear landscaping was intended for balance as much as anything else. Lord knows, if she hadn’t been anchored into those shoes and toting ballast in the northeast quadrant to equal the southwest, friends and family would’ve made another career picking her up off the floor.

Good taste had taken a holiday.

Once again, as the snickering and whispering reached a new crescendo, Judge Shelby found it necessary to restore order with a whack of her gavel. Try as she did to maintain a straight face, the smile of judgmental self-righteousness crept into the corners of her mouth. Even Sandra Day O’Connor would’ve tossed the court a perceptible sign of amusement.

Nat was still on the witness stand and I told him he could step down for the moment.

“Are you Charlene Johnson?” Judge Shelby said.

“Yeah, and I don’t understand why you all had to drag me into this. I ain’t…”

“You were subpoenaed, Ms. Johnson,
obviously
as a hostile witness…”

“I ain’t gonna get in the middle of his shit…”

“You will refrain from the use of foul language in the courtroom…”

“Well, that’s all this is, you know…”

“And you will not interrupt the judge.”

Charlene became silent and turned to face Nat, seething with anger.

Charlene, who had great difficulty with the whole concept of speaking only when spoken to said, “You wanna know what’s going on here? I’ll tell you plain and simple. This man is a bas—”

The judge held up her hand as a sign for Charlene to stop talking, then sighed with the war-weary face of a judge who has done battle with all manner of wronged women and who held particular disdain for those who lacked reasonable decorum.

“Counselor? Shall we swear in your witness?”

“By all means,” I said.

This wasn’t the order in which I intended to take the testimony of my witnesses, but several factors came into play. Charlene was looking like a flight risk. Before she caught the next plane to Hawaii, I wanted her on the record. Second, Charlene was obviously furious with Nat and ready to napalm his credibility. It was best to capture her point of view while the napalm was still fresh and frothy. And last, I didn’t want her found in contempt of court, hustled off to a holding cell, building a temper tantrum the size of the Sears Tower and then refusing to testify.
That
would’ve been a disaster. Besides, Judge Shelby was smart enough to put all the pieces together without me following my prearranged menu.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth…”

“Yew ken betcha yer bottom dollar on
that
!”

“Please answer
I do
.”

“I
do
.”

As I gathered my thoughts to begin interrogating Charlene, I thought to myself,
Oh, my God in heaven, this is a first. I’ve got a certifiable nut bag on the stand and there’s no predicting and very little controlling what will happen!
But I took comfort in the fact that Shelby was a cool head and if things started getting crazy, she’d call a halt to it. I approached the bench.

I went through the normal beginning questions for the benefit of the transcript and the folks in the peanut gallery and looked back to see Julian slip through the door and stand against the back wall. He was going to love this, I thought.

“So, Ms. Johnson, can you describe the nature of your relationship with Nat Simms?”

“Right here in front of all these uptight people?”

Charlene smiled from ear to ear and the air thickened with rumbles of guffaws and snickers. A slam of the gavel quieted things down.

An unsmiling Judge Shelby turned to Charlene. “The witness will kindly answer the question without trying to entertain the courtroom.”

Charlene closed her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. “I worked for him.”

I cleared my throat and began again. “And the length of your employ?”

“Over seven years. I came to work for him right out of high school. First I was answering phones in the service department, and then I got myself promoted up to the receptionist in the sales department. Now I organize contracts, titles, leases and everything else that has to do with buying a car after the salesman has cut the deal.”

I decided to start out with a bomb and let old Charlene know that she was near the edge of the cliff.

“Okay, let me understand this a little more fully, Ms. Johnson. If someone comes into Simms Autoworld and buys a car, you’re the person who gives him the contract to sign…”

“Right, right, right, and I try to sell him extended warranty if it’s a used car and all that stuff.”

“And how successful are you at selling extended warranties? I mean, don’t people generally resist those?”

“Objection! The question is irrelevant!”

“Where are we going here, Ms. Thurmond?”

“I am trying to establish the character of the witness, the level of her responsibility and her value to the business. We know she has longevity with the company, but I gotta tell you, your honor, if you’ll just indulge me for a few minutes, the reason for this line of questioning will become clear.”

“Overruled.”

“Thank you,” I said and turned back to Charlene. I had to look away again because her eye makeup was applied with such gusto it was off-putting. I couldn’t imagine how a woman could even get
that
much mascara on normal lashes. They looked like awnings. Ridiculous.

“Does that mean I should answer the question?”

“Please. Just tell the court how successful you were in selling extended warranties.”

“Well, before I got my new titties, I wasn’t too good at it at all.” Gasping and laughter filled the air. Then, in a moment of unbridled horror for the genteel, she actually cupped her synthetic mammaries.

The gavel slammed once more, and Judge Shelby said, “Ms. Johnson, this is the last time I am going to remind you not to use coarse and vulgar language or to behave in a coarse and vulgar manner in my courtroom. The next time you say something so crass or make a motion so crass, you will be fined in contempt of court and sit in county jail for thirty days. Is that clear?” She shook her head and looked at me. “Proceed.”

“I’m sure your breast augmentation helped your confidence and, therefore, your sales. But before we discuss your various plastic surgery procedures, I’m wondering about something else. Did you ever have the occasion to receive a deposit check from a customer simply made out to Nat Simms and not Simms’s Autoworld?”

“Of course, it happened all the time.” Charlene’s face was blood red. Maybe it was sinking in that this wasn’t a joke or a show.

“And what did you do with those checks?”

“Objection!”

I felt like saying,
Oh, put a sock in it, Harry,
but I looked to the judge, who understood exactly where I was going, and she said, “Overruled.”

Charlene sat there wondering if answering the question would implicate her in a crime.

“Please answer the question, Ms. Johnson.”

“Nope. I ain’t got a lawyer, and if I tell the truth I might get myself in trouble, so I ain’t answering that question.”

Harry and Nat were whispering to each other.

“You have to answer the question, Ms. Johnson,” I said.

“Objection! Let the witness be informed that she can take protection from self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.”

Charlene looked confused at first and then remembered what she had done during her deposition. In addition, I guessed she had watched
Judge Judy
or
LA Law
often enough to recall that she didn’t have to testify against herself. She looked over at Nat and Harry, with their self-satisfied faces, because they had saved Nat by reminding Charlene of her rights. Charlene might have been a screaming redneck, but she wasn’t totally stupid. And she was furious with Nat for her own reasons.

She said, “Look, I’ll tell y’all whatever y’all want to know, but I want to be impuned, okay?”

“You mean you want witness protection? Immunity?”

“Yep. That’s it.”

Harry Albright almost burst his carotid artery with his objections, and finally after five minutes in Judge Shelby’s chambers it was settled. The judge ruled that Charlene Johnson had complete immunity.

“This is a divorce hearing, not the Enron fiasco. I want to hear what Ms. Johnson has to say. End of story.”

When we reentered the courtroom, the public seating area was filled. I suspected that while cell phones weren’t ringing, people were text-messaging each other in a fury to come watch the spectacle.

The hearing resumed.

“I had asked you, Ms. Johnson, what you did in the case of a check simply made out to Nat Simms instead of Simms’s Autoworld?”

“I deposited them.”

“In the company’s account?”

“Sometimes.”

“And where did they go at other times?”

“In other accounts that me and Nat set up for our own selves.”

Nat put his head in his hands and Albright shook his head.

I entered the accounts into evidence from four different banks, and Judge Shelby was smoldering. As a general rule, judges and the laws of the land don’t take kindly to embezzlement and tax evasion. But Shelby said nothing then. She simply listened.

“And what did you and Mr. Simms do with that money?”

“Well, all sorts of things. Mostly we had fun with it.”

“I see. Did it pay for your hotel rooms?”

“Yes, it did.”

“And dinners in nice restaurants?”

“Yes.”

“Are you involved in a romantic relationship with Mr. Simms?”

“I was, but we broke up. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

“What was? Breaking up with him or getting involved with him in the first place?”

“Getting involved with him. Look, at first he just wanted to flirt. I could understand that. That’s how men are. They like to flatter you and then you flatter them back and then they think they’re hot sh—, you know what I mean? I didn’t say the word but you know what I meant, right?”

Judge Shelby looked over her reading glasses down at Charlene and said, “The court thanks you for your restraint, Ms. Johnson. Please continue.”

“Well, Nat started telling me that I’d be so pretty if my ears got fixed, and I said, well, you know I can’t afford to do that! Shoot, he only paid me seven dollars and sixty cents an hour. So he said, look, I can pay for it, so I said okay. Then it was my nose and my teeth. By that time we were very hot and heavy and he said he wanted to marry me. But then he seemed to be losing interest, so that’s when I went and got my chest fixed. And doncha know it, he came sniffing around again like a hungry dog just looking for a place to bury his nose. And I guess I fell in love with the son of a…gun. Son of a gun’s okay, right?”

I couldn’t believe it, but I was almost feeling sorry for Charlene. But not for too long.

“Didn’t you know he was married and had children?”

“Of course I knew that! Everybody knew that! But he lived in this beautiful house in downtown Charleston and he had two beautiful children that he said we could raise together. A nice house and a family was all I ever wanted in this whole world, and I knew
I’d
never get it. Not unless a miracle happened. Bagging Nat Simms seemed like a miracle to a girl like me. I didn’t care if he wanted to have sex three times a day or how he wanted to do it either. All I wanted was to be in that house fixing his dinners and reading story books to little innocent children, making them all happy.”

I paused for a moment thinking of the thousands of women like Charlene who could so easily justify the wreckage they caused. Was it in the name of love or loneliness or greed?

“But I gather things didn’t work out?”

“First of all, it wasn’t very nice. I mean, I know that his wife is as homely as a hog, I’m sorry to say it…”

Rebecca gasped and I knew she was probably on the verge of crying, just listening to Charlene. What woman wouldn’t be upset?

“And she doesn’t nurture Nat like he needs, but after I spent a few days with those children, I didn’t want no part of it. Nope, I quit.”

“I see. Could you explain to the court what caused this change in your feelings?”

“Look, I can’t have my own kids, but that don’t make it right to steal another woman’s family. It was bad enough to be taking her husband, but he didn’t love her anymore, and I figured they would wind up divorced anyway. So that wasn’t such a big deal. The real killer was that Nat just didn’t want to give her anything after all those years she put up with them. No, no. Once I got in that house I saw a very different side of Nat Simms and I didn’t like it at all.”

“So, you say he didn’t want to give his wife what you considered to be a fair settlement and you had some guilt over taking her children away from her? And these things upset you. Is that correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right. And they all bossed me around like I was the maid! Nat never said a word about the sassing and all to his kids. He just smiled and said, well, if they want to go to the mall, take them! I didn’t get into this whole mess to be somebody’s chauffeur! He was supposed to love me and respect me, and he didn’t. Then we all started fighting, and finally I just said to hell with it. It wasn’t worth it just to live in a big house.”

Charlene shot the judge a look, and Judge Shelby was so entranced by the story she was hearing that she blew off Charlene’s careless use of the word
hell
. Maybe she agreed with her.

“So, we may assume that the relationship is over now?” I said.

“You may assume that for sure, but there’s something else to say that you didn’t ask me about.”