Black Water Rising (3 page)

“Are you okay?” Bernie asks gently.

Jay's eyes skim the woman's body, her arms, her legs, her face.

She has not been shot, he sees right away. The skin beneath her neck is red and swollen, but Jay can't be sure if that was his doing—when he grabbed her in the water—or someone else's. Other than that, there isn't a scratch on her. She looks up, aware that Jay is watching her, and tightens the grip on her purse, as if she half-expects him to make a clean snatch and run away with it. He senses this white woman is afraid of him. He ignores the insult, stuffing his rising anger, an emotion that will in no way serve him.

“Where is he?” he asks.

Still she doesn't speak.

“Where
is
he?” Jay asks again, harder this time.

“I don't know,” she says, opening her mouth for the first time, her voice sweet but raw, like a rusty church bell swinging on its hinge. “I ran, I just ran.”

Jay, still thinking there's a gun somewhere close by, turns to the old man in the baseball cap. “Start the boat,” he orders the captain. “Now.”

The old man slips through the cabin door, and a few moments later, Jay hears the engine start. He turns back to the woman. “What happened to you?”

She lowers her eyes, her face taking on a hot, crimson color.

She is too shamed, it seems, to look him in the eye.

“He attack you?”

“Jay,” Bernie says softly. She shakes her head at her husband, a silent suggestion that whatever went on behind those trees, maybe this woman, terrified and shaking, is not ready to say it out loud, in mixed company no less. Jay nods, backing off, but he doesn't take his eyes off the stranger. She lost her shoes somewhere in the water, but Jay can tell by the cut and fabric of her dress that it isn't cheap. She's also missing an earring. Its twin is round and gold with a diamond in the center. There's a diamond on her ring finger too—right hand, not left—a rock three times bigger than the one Bernie is wearing. Her purse, the one she won't let go of, has little
G
's printed all over it. It's Italian, Jay knows, like the ones those rich insurance company lawyers carry into the courtroom.

Eyeing the clothes and the rock, Jay asks, “Where were you?”

“Excuse me?” the woman says, a surprising edge in her voice.

“Where were you coming from?”

She stares at him blankly, as if she doesn't understand the question, but Jay catches an unmistakable flash of recognition in her copper-colored eyes. He thinks she knows exactly what he's asking: what was a woman like you doing in a neighborhood like this, 'round about midnight, alone?

She cuts her eyes away from Jay, turning to Bernie instead. “Is there a washroom I can use?”

Bernie points to a swinging door across the room. It stops short of the floor, offering little privacy except for a small painted sign that says
OCCUPIED
, a smiley face drawn inside the
O
. Bernie offers the paper napkins again. The woman is slow to move, her body stiff, like a broken doll, held together at this late hour by sheer will, as if she's afraid that any tiny motion might break her
in two. And she won't let go of her purse. Bernie reaches for the handbag, as if to set it on the table for the woman. But the move startles her. She lets out a small cry in protest, her eyes alight with a kind of panic. Bernie lets go of the purse instantly, and the bag tumbles from both their hands. They all watch as it falls onto the floor, landing with surprising softness. Its mouth open to the room, the purse, Jay sees, is empty. It contains nothing, not a lipstick case or a book of matches, not even house keys or a few coins. Like her missing shoes and earring, it seems the contents of the woman's purse were lost somewhere in the bayou. Lost, or
dumped,
he thinks, the word occurring to him unexpectedly, lodging itself stubbornly in the back of his mind, like a sharp pebble in his shoe.

Bernie and the woman reach for the purse at the same time.

“Don't touch it,” Jay blurts. “Don't touch a thing.”

Just leave it alone, he thinks.

The woman picks up her bag. She stands, turning her back to them, and slips behind the bathroom door. Jay can hear the metal latch catch on the other side. The old man is now leaning against the cabin door, smoking another cigarette, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He nods toward the white woman, her legs showing beneath the bathroom door, then looks at Jay and shrugs. “Ain't nothing to do now,” he says. “Just ride her on in, I guess.”

 

Jay watches her in the rearview mirror.

She's in the backseat, eyes closed, turning her diamond ring over and over, fingering the icy stone as if it were a talisman or a rosary, something to bring luck or a promise of redemption. They're only a few blocks from the central station. They ride in silence, the stranger in the back and Bernie in the front passen
ger seat. Jay keeps the Buick Skylark at an even thirty-five miles an hour, careful not to draw any undue attention. He's keenly aware of the irony, his fear of being stopped by cops on his way to a police station. But driving a strange white woman, whose name he never got, at this time of night, in
this
city, makes him edgy, cautious. He wouldn't have offered to drive her at all if Bernie hadn't insisted. His clothes are still wet with the stink of the bayou.

There's no one in front of the police station when he pulls up to the curb.

Jay parks the car, but leaves the engine running.

Downtown's central police station is an older building, a rarity in a city that has a curious habit of razing its own history. The station was built in early midcentury, before the city was a boomtown, before the postwar explosion of American highways made gas the most coveted commodity in the country, before 1973 and the embargo, before the crisis, before oil made Houston.

“Should we go in?” Bernie asks, her face turned to her husband.

The woman in the backseat opens her eyes. They meet Jay's in the rearview mirror. “I'm fine from here.” Her voice is mannered, calm. “Thank you.”

She steps out of the car and walks up the first steps to the police station, then stops. She's gathering her strength maybe, or, Jay thinks, she's stalling.

“You think she's okay?” Bernie asks.

Jay puts the car in drive, fresh sweat breaking across his brow.

Just the idea of being anywhere near a police station at this time of night, looking like a ragged dog, tangled up in some white woman's mess makes him more than a little dizzy. He knows
firsthand the long, creative arm of Southern law enforcement, knows when he ought to keep his mouth shut.

He locks the doors and pulls away from the curb, stealing a final glance in his rearview mirror. He watches the woman standing alone in front of the police station and wonders if she's going inside.

Monday morning, the hooker shows up wearing a neck brace. Jay takes one look at it and tells her to get rid of it. She starts to take it off right there in the hallway. “Not here,” he says, surprised, again, by how much instruction she needs. He looks up and down the hallway, making sure opposing counsel hasn't witnessed this whole routine, his client's backstage preparations. He nods toward the ladies' washroom across the way. “And don't let anybody see you.”

The hearing is due to start in three minutes, and it won't look good for them to be late before this judge. Jay is going to need as much goodwill and mercy as the court will see fit to offer. His case is as thin as ice milk, and they all know it. He runs his finger along the crease of his suit pants, a poly-fiber blend
made exclusively for JCPenney, and the nicest pair he owns. He smooths his shirt beneath his jacket, lifting his arms slightly to check the moisture level in his pits. He feels hot and slightly off his game. He's had the same headache since he crawled out of the bayou Saturday night, a dull ache behind his ears, a near constant pain that nags at him, a vague feeling that something is wrong.

It's just a hearing, he reminds himself.
Just get Hicks to agree to a trial.

He stares at the closed door to the ladies' washroom and wonders if he ought to send someone in after his client.

But the fourth-floor hallway is nearly deserted.

Monday mornings at the civil courthouse are usually slow going. The place lacks the focus or feeling of purpose of the criminal courthouse, a building that practically crackles with the electric energy of righteous indignation, a feeling running under everything, even the most mundane office tasks, that something huge is at stake. There are murderers and rapists in the hallways, crooks and thieves roaming the building; there are handcuffs and officers with guns. The spectacle alone is enough to fill everyone with a sense of heroic purpose, or at least a heated feeling of excitement. In a civil courtroom, there is only one thing at stake: money. Questions of right or wrong, who did what to whom, are stripped of their morality here and reduced to a numerical equation. What is your pain worth? What's the going rate for sorrow? If it's not your money or pain that's at stake, it's kind of hard to get too fired up about the proceedings, nor do they draw much of a crowd. Judge Hicks's courtroom is nearly empty when Jay walks in, save for the bailiff and the court reporter and Charlie Luckman, who is sitting at the defense table in a cream-colored suit and tan 'gators, the only one in the room wearing a smile.

“Where's your client?” he asks Jay.

“Where's yours?” Jay nods toward the empty seat next to Luckman.

“I advised my client not to attend, lest we give these proceedings more weight than they deserve,” Charlie says, twisting a gold pinky ring on his right hand, just above his thick knuckle. “And anyway, I got the cop,” he adds, picking up an affidavit lying on the defense table, next to his shiny leather briefcase. “I told Mr. Cummings not to dignify the charges with his presence. He is, after all, out doing important work for this community.”

Jay's papers are held together in a sagging accordion file folder. He lays them on the table in front of him. “Maybe your client should have thought about his position in the community, his wife even, before he put a hooker in his car.”

“What hooker, Mr. Porter?” Charlie says with a wink.

The door to the judge's chambers opens. The clerk comes out first, then the judge. They all stand. Jay turns and looks over his shoulder. His client is just now entering the gallery, the neck brace on open display in her right hand. As she approaches Jay, she whispers, rather loudly, that she had the damnedest time getting the thing off. Jay closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He's up first.

On the stand, the hooker has a name: Dana Moreland. And a new profession: “escort.” She speaks softly, with a practiced vulnerability that Jay knows she's been working on over the weekends, like trying to learn a new dance step in time for the prom. This is her moment in the spotlight after all, her chance to tell it the way she wants it heard. Her story: a friend set her up with a Mr. J. T. Cummings (“No, sir, he is not present in the courtroom”; Jay wants that on record). She agreed to meet him in the parking lot of a Long John Silver on the north side of town. They negotiated a price and drove off in his car. She then asked her “date” to take her to Gilley's, out 225, in Pasadena. She'd
seen
Urban Cowboy
at least ten times and wanted to dance at the place where John Travolta and Debra Winger got married. For a couple of line dances and a b.j., J.T. was happy to oblige. (“A ‘b.j.'?” Jay asks, 'cause he has to. She leans forward on the stand, into the microphone, as if she's going to demonstrate right then and there. “A blow job,” she explains.) Her “date” drove her some twenty, thirty miles outside the city limits (“no small thing, gas being as high as a dollar thirty-five a gallon in some parts”). They were having such a good time at the club that Mr. Cummings lost himself and drank one or two (“maybe it was three”) Long Islands past his limit, and on the way home, he was weaving and driving erratically. She asked him several times to please pull over. But he refused, and she was, after all, in his employ. Somewhere along the way home, Jay's client reports, Mr. Cummings got into a one-car accident: he hit a telephone pole.

“And where were you at the time of the accident?”

“In his lap.”

The court reporter looks up. The bailiff cracks a smile.

“Well, really…just my head.”

The judge lets out a little cough.

They're all laughing at him, Jay thinks, with his JCPenney suit and his shitty case. He's heard this story a dozen times, and it has never sounded more ridiculous than it does right now, with her on the stand. He frankly never expected the case to get this far. He was sure just the mention of Ms. Moreland's name and profession to the defendant's lawyer, the fact that she claimed any association with Mr. Cummings, would be enough for an instant settlement. He actually imagined the whole thing would be handled in a single phone call. But he grossly underestimated Charlie Luckman's propensity for bluff calling.

Jay looks down at his notes. “An Officer Erikson arrived on the scene?”

“A state trooper, yes.”

“And when he discovered Mr. Cummings behind the wheel, drunk, with your head wedged between his legs…what did Officer Erikson do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“He was practically apologizing to the guy.”

“And what did you make of that?”

“That he recognized J.T., and he didn't want to get him in any trouble.”

Jay is waiting on the objection: “calls for speculation,” “lack of foundation,” “irrelevance”…something. But when he catches Luckman out of the corner of his eye, Charlie is leaned way back in his chair watching the whole thing like a sporting event he is only mildly interested in.

“He offered you no medical attention?”

“No, sir.”

“So, the extent of your injuries that night may never be fully known, since you did not get immediate medical attention?”

Again, he waits for it: “witness is not a medical expert.”

But Charlie says nothing.

He just watches as Jay guides this train wreck, walking his client through the rest of her testimony—a description of her injuries, aches and pains, and seemingly a million reasons why she never made it to a doctor. His final question: It was Mr. Cummings who put your head in his lap, was it not?

“I definitely wasn't down there for my health.”

By now, she's lost the rhythm of the whole routine. The vulnerability is gone and a huskiness has crept back into her voice. Jay can suddenly imagine all the laps she's ever had her head in, can see her whole career in full color.

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Charlie passes on a cross-exam. For his direct, he walks a stapled stack of papers to the judge's bench: the cop's affidavit and the original police report. The judge reads the pages in silence while they all wait. The court reporter checks a chipped nail. The bailiff looks at his watch. Out in the hallway, they can hear rubber soles squeaking on the linoleum and one side of an argument about who has the best catfish plate, Delfina's on Main or Guido's.

Finally, Judge Hicks looks up, looks right at Jay.

“The cop pulled him over for a busted taillight.”

“Yes, Your Honor, but—”

“There's nothing in here about an accident, no mention that Ms. Moreland was even
in
the defendant's car.”

“Your Honor,” Charlie says. “Defense respectfully requests the court to grant a motion for summary judgment and to dismiss all claims at this time.”

“Slow down, Counselor,” the judge says.

He turns to Jay as if he's not sure what Jay expects him to do in this situation. Jay clears his throat. “It is our contention, Your Honor, that Officer Erikson, catching Mr. Cummings, a port commissioner and a former city councilman, in a ‘compromising' position, wrote Mr. Cummings a ticket for a minor infraction, carefully leaving out the fact that Mr. Cummings was drunk and had a lady friend in the car, a woman other than his wife.”

“So she's claiming the
cop
broke the law too?” Charlie says.

The judge holds up a hand to keep Charlie out of it. He asks Jay, “And you can prove this how?”

“The testimony of Ms. Moreland clearly states—”

“My client has never even met the plaintiff, Your Honor,” Charlie interrupts.

Judge Hicks looks at Jay. “You do have something other than the girl, right? Some other evidence? A witness, something?”

“I'm working on it.”

Judge Hicks lets out a sigh, a tight little puff of air, like he's passed gas after a bad meal, like they've all wasted his entire morning. He looks back and forth between Charlie and Jay, then waves defense counsel to the bench, calling him by his first name. Jay wonders how well the two men know each other. Charlie, in his mid-forties now, is a former prosecutor with some renown in the city. He was almost elected district attorney of Harris County, Texas, twice in his heyday, the same years he won Texas Prosecutor of the Year and had a near perfect conviction record. And now, as a defense attorney, he's in the peculiar (and rather lucrative) position of being on friendly terms with nearly every prosecutor and judge in the county. Jay watches the two men, their heads pressed together at the judge's bench, both doughy about the jowls and pink with summer heat, as if they each spent the weekend playing golf—together, for all Jay knows. The two men are whispering, sharing words he can't hear.

The hooker tugs on his jacket sleeve. “What's that all about?”

Jay ignores her.

A few seconds later, Charlie walks back to the defense table, smiling.

The judge intertwines his fingers, pressing his palms together. “Mr. Porter, I don't suppose I need to remind you that Mr. Cummings is an important member of our community. If this is some sort of extortion attempt—”

“No, Your Honor.”

“And if I let this go to trial, put a man like Mr. Cummings on the stand, you better come to the table with more than you walked in here with today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm not interested in wasting the court's time or Mr. Cummings's.”

The judge looks down at the cop's affidavit again and the police report. He looks up at the hooker sitting next to Jay. “It's her word against his.”

“The basis of every trial I've ever come across, Your Honor. Somebody's word against somebody else's.”

The judge stares at Jay for what seems like an hour.

Then he nods, deciding it. “I'm gon' let it stand.”

At the defense table, Charlie Luckman clears his throat rather loudly.

The judge, rising from his seat, pretends not to hear him.

The court reporter stretches her arms. The bailiff makes a quick phone call. The hooker asks for a ride home. Jay glances at his watch. He hasn't been to the office all day, but he agrees to the ride anyway. He doesn't need her walking and possibly picking up another notch on her rap sheet before they even get to trial.

On his way out of the courtroom, he feels a hand on his back.

“I admire your fortitude, Porter,” Charlie says, throwing charm on top of any hard feelings. “Maybe we can work something out on this deal after all.”

“Talk to your client,” Jay says. “Let me know.”

 

He arrives at his office already behind for the day. His head is throbbing, and there's nothing in his desk but an old bottle of Pepto and a tin of Sucrets lozenges. For lunch, he has a couple of bags of Fritos out of the vending machine in the strip mall where he works. He eats them alone at his desk.

Eddie Mae, his secretary, is MIA, today leaving a note about
her grandbaby's dentist appointment. He's on his own with the phones.

He interviews two potential clients.

The first is a woman in her seventies who slipped on a black grape in the produce section of a Safeway mart. He's pretty excited about this one, until he asks the woman about her legal history. It turns out that in the last sixteen months, the woman slipped on a cantaloupe at Kroger, depilatory cream at Walgreens, and soapy water at a car wash on Griggs. When he tells her he won't be taking her case, she calls him a fool. “I won them cases, sugar, every last one.”

He wishes he could say the rejection was some great act of legal integrity. The truth is, the case would cost him more than he would make, Safeway being a national corporation with deep pockets and a bevy of in-house attorneys, one for every day of the week if they want. They would assuredly do their best to tie up the case with court hearings and brief filings and depositions for everybody from the store's manager to his client's high school boyfriend. Jay, a one-man operation, doesn't have that kind of time for anything but a sure thing.