Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement (31 page)

She wipes sweat from her upper lip, reminding me of Class wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“Class has confessed to you, hasn’t he?”

she guesses. She knew I was going to see him.

I know I have been talking too much to her.

Angela has pumped me for details on a regular basis.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I say, unable to look at her. She has always been able to read me like a book.

Angela reaches over and grips my arm.

“He’s not trying to say that Paul is involved, is he?”

I stand up abruptly and pour my tea out on the ground. This was a terrible idea.

“I can’t talk about it. I need to get home.” “Paul didn’t do it,” she says.

“I know he didn’t!”

Angela is practically shouting at me. I look around to see who is listening.

“How could you possibly know for sure?”

She shakes her head, and begins to cry.

“Let’s go inside. I can’t talk out here.”

She runs into the house, and I follow, now prepared for her to tell me she doesn’t want to see me anymore. She sits down at the kitchen table and motions for me to do the same. When I do, she wipes her eyes with a tissue and says, “Gideon, I’m absolutely certain that Paul didn’t kill Willie I haven’t told you this, but Paul said to me the day after Willie

died, and this is an exact quote: “If somebody hadn’t killed the old son of a bitch, I might have done it myself.””

“Are you serious?” I say, leaning across the table toward her. I am dumbfounded that she hasn’t told me this before now.

Angela nods.

“But don’t you see? He was joking!

I know it makes him look bad, but it proves he didn’t kill him. When I told him how horrible he sounded, he said he wouldn’t have harmed a hair on his head.”

“Why didn’t you say something before now?” I demand.

“That doesn’t prove he didn’t have Willie murdered. He was giving himself a cover in case something backfired down the line.

Something must have scared him, and he started constructing an escape hatch.”

Angela shakes her head furiously.

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard you say! That’s not what he meant at all!”

“Listen to me,” I say, excitedly.

“I’ve got to call you as a witness. A jury has to hear this. Where were

you? Had he taken you out to lunch?” “No,” she says, her voice now frigid.

“We were in bed at the Peabody Hotel. Paul and I had been lovers for over a year.”

I collapse against the back of my chair, my face tingling as if she has just slapped me. Damn it, why didn’t I figure this out? She has talked about him nonstop for three months.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I gasp. I’m suddenly lightheaded, as if the blood in my brain has thinned into water.

She puts both hands to her face and begins to cry.

“I didn’t want to lose you! But Gideon, I know Paul. He would never have somebody killed. You’ve got to believe that.”

I clench my fists, which have become the color of mayonnaise.

“You couldn’t wait,” I cry, “until your husband died to crawl into bed with him?”

At the time Willie was murdered, Dwight had just two months to live.

Angela begins to sob, but I don’t give a damn.

I fight back a wave of nausea before yelling, “Why did you do it? Is Paul that great in the sack?”

Angela stares at a spot to the right of my head and forces out the words, “I got involved with him originally so we’d get our loan. But it became more than that.”

More than that. I look at this woman. Thirty years ago she was the most idealistic person I’d ever known. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“Was Dwight in on this little plan?” I ask sarcastically, opening my hands and watching blood rushing into my fingers. I feel my face go beet-red as the shock of what she has told me transforms into rage.

Angela puts her head down on her arms as her body is racked by spasms.

I am tempted to grab her by the hair and shake her. Why has she done this to me?

“Though he would have, Dwight didn’t actually die from the cancer,” she says in a tiny voice.

“Cecil suspected I was involved with Paul and told him. After Dwight confronted me, and I admitted Paul and I were lovers, he took an overdose of pills that night and never woke up.”

“Oh, shit!” I gasp, feeling my breath coming in short bursts. The guilt she must feel! Despite my own rapidly growing feeling that Angela is like an old-fashioned grifter and I am the gullible dupe in some ancient con game, I can’t help but have some sympathy for her. I force myself to take a calming breath and wonder if this is for real or part of an act that involves Paul. If she would betray her husband of thirty years, surely she would betray me.

When she can speak again, she says, “Cecil knows how Dwight died, but I begged him not to tell the boys. They’d never forgive me.”

I feel a numbness creeping up my chest, my body unable to keep up with all I am hearing.

“Cecil’s blackmailing you, isn’t he? He’s forcing you to sell him the land.”

Angela clears her throat and sighs heavily.

“Yes.”

Now I comprehend why we rode out to Cecil’s and screwed in his bed.

“You hate him, don’t you?”

She nods but doesn’t speak. If I make her testify, everything will come out, including my own conduct. My mind races as I review my options.

Damn it! I feel like some wild animal caught in a trap that can’t escape unless it gnaws off a leg. It is too late to try to withdraw.

Johnson wouldn’t let me.

“When did it end with Paul,” I ask, my own voice tight.

“Or has it ended?”

“We were never together again after Paul said that,” she says, her eyes searching mine.

“Dwight was getting sicker, and I felt terrible. It’s only been since I met you again that I’ve begun to admit to myself how deprived I felt all those years. I’ve finally admitted to myself what a sham of a marriage I had.”

I stare at her in amazement.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, incredulously.

“You said Dwight was as close to a saint as any man you ever knew.”

Angela stares past me at the diplomas on my wall.

“A plastic one,” she says, her voice bitter.

“Dwight never let himself entertain a real doubt in his life. He had this image of the way our lives were supposed to go, and no matter how ridiculous the reality, nothing interfered with it. Yet, by most standards, he was considered a wonderful man. He worked hard, went to church, loved his children, and kept every emotion he’d ever had bottled inside twenty-four hours a day. I think now that he was scared to death of life the whole time we were married, but his defense mechanisms were so strong he never admitted it. When I finally got through my head you weren’t going to propose, instead of going back east, I went after Dwight because he seemed to be the nicest guy around. I probably did it to spite you. I didn’t know I’d never get closer to him than I am to my cat. True enough, Paul is a womanizing son of a bitch, but I found out

he was wonderfully human, and I was starving for somebody real. It wasn’t until after I got involved with him that I even had an inkling of how much I had allowed myself to miss in life.”

My emotions begin to whirl around me like a dust storm. Put side by side with Paul, Dwight, to ninety-five percent of the population, sounds like a bargain, but something in me is stirred by Angela’s story. Her confession makes me realize how I, too, have always tried to idealize women, making them either Madonnas or whores. I should be repulsed by what Angela has told me, but I’m not sure what I feel.

“It sounds to me like you’re still in love with Paul.”

Angela brushes her hair back from her face and gives me a grim smile.

“I know this sounds terribly callous, but he was just a wake-up call. I can do much better than Paul Taylor. I love you, Gideon.”

Angela’s intensity forces me to drop my eyes.

I’ve been waiting to hear these words for two months, but given the moment, I’d be a fool to believe them right now. The problem is, I’m in love with her. I stand up, and say, “I need to go home and think about all of this, Angela.”

She stares at me and nods.

“I know.”

I leave her sitting at the table and let myself out of the house,

thinking I am a damn fool. How could I get myself in such a mess?

My phone is ringing when I walk through the door in my house. It is Dickerson, who wastes no time in getting to the point.

“Angela called Paul.

According to him, she says that Class is going to make a deal and testify against him.”

“You better talk to Angela,” I say, stalling, “and get the facts. I didn’t tell her that. She’s just worried that her friend Paul is going down.” I have no idea how much Dick knows about their relationship. I doubt if Paul has told him the truth, but maybe he has by now.

“What I want to know, Gideon,” Dick says harshly, “is whether your client is going to testify against Paul. Either he is or he isn’t.”

“I don’t know,” I reply, “and that’s the truth.

He may feel he has no alternative.”

“He’ll be perjuring himself,” Dick says fiercely.

“Paul may be many things, but he’s not a murderer.”

I have heard that too many times.

“How in the fuck do you know, Dick?” I blast into the phone.

“Unless I’m a total idiot, Paul has lied to you already about this case, so I wouldn’t be so damn sure if I were you.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” he sputters.

I can’t imagine that Paul hasn’t admitted to him by now that he was having an affair with Angela. On the other hand, perhaps he has, and Dick merely wants to see if Angela’s confession matches Dick’s. Well, I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. He can talk to Angela if he wants. I’ve been humiliated enough already.

“Dick,” I say, knowing I am enraging him, “it’s not up to me to figure out this case for you.”

There is a deadly silence on the other end.

“If you are suborning perjury in this case,” Dick finally says, “I will spend the rest of my life seeing that you never practice law again. And if I hear of you talking to Paul again without my permission, you can be sure you’ll be reported to the committee on professional conduct.”

I feel my forehead grow warm. If Bledsoe goes through with his plan to implicate Paul and then a year from now begins to suffer from a guilty conscience, I know one person who will take him seriously. I wonder how close I have come to encouraging Class to lie. A good lawyer could argue that I put the idea in his head because I wanted revenge against Paul. And Dick is definitely a good lawyer.

“I think I’d spend some time on this case if I were you, Dick.”

Dick sputters into the phone that I better tell him what Bledsoe is going to do. For the first time since I have known him, there is a sound of desperation in his voice. He knows that he didn’t have time to take this case. He knows now that he will have to prepare for the worst, regardless of what I say. Finally, he concludes by saying, “Your mother would be ashamed of you, Gideon. I’m glad she’s not here to watch how you’re handling yourself.”

I’m glad she isn’t either, but I’m not about to admit it and give Dick that kind of satisfaction.

He’s such a holier-than-thou prick he makes me want to puke. Abruptly, I tell him I have to get off the phone and do some work, and hang up.

To hell with the old fart.

At three o’clock the next afternoon I’m on the road to Bear Creek.

Judge Greer, who has a history of heart trouble, became sick on the bench and abruptly declared a mistrial, freeing me to focus on Doss’s case. I’m headed straight for Oldham’s Barbecue. I was out there a month ago and got nothing out of him, but maybe I didn’t ask the right question. Henry Oldham is nothing like his nephew. A tall, light-colored elderly man with short, white hair, he was a high school math teacher who, according to Class, lost his job when the schools were first desegregated and then was hired back when blacks got control of the school board. He retired from teaching three years ago and worked out his arrangement with Paul. On my way to his restaurant, I pass the Cotton Boll, and suddenly it hits me that the one person who may put some things in perspective for me is an old gay man who never had much

respect for my abilities. I have been out of synch for most of this case, and I don’t know why. My recollection of what went on in Bear Creek when I was growing up doesn’t seem to jibe with what others rem em her. Maybe Mr. Carpenter, who has spent his life on the outside looking in, can clue me in. I will stop by here as soon as I finish with Oldham.

Oldham’s Barbecue is a nondescript whitish concrete block house out Highway 1 just inside Bear Creek’s city limits. There are five vehicles parked in the gravel out front, and I realize I have arrived at the worst possible time to talk to him.

Inside there are only six plain vanilla tables and metal chairs on a concrete floor. Most of Oldham’s business is carry-out. Uke last time, a black girl who surely isn’t out of high school is at the counter handing over Styrofoam containers to a black customer, with two behind him. I remember that before Oldham was out back tending his cookers. I retrace my steps, go around the north side of the building, and almost run into Oldham, who is leaning up against the wall smoking a cigarette. The smell of barbecue is delicious. I tell him I realize he can’t talk but a minute or two, but that it is important to his nephew’s case. He gives me a look of scandalized distaste. Clearly, the last thing he wants to do is be called as a witness. Throwing his cigarette into the grass beside him, he says, “I told you everything I know last time.”

Knowing I won’t get much out of him, I ask the most important question first.

“Mr. Oldham, all I want to know is whether Paul Taylor had talked to you about retiring at any time or giving up your arrangement with him, either before or after Willie Ting was murdered.”

“Why do you want to know?” he grunts, irritably.

“All I can tell you is that it’s important to your nephew’s case.”