The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (48 page)

The permission to search through her drawers, and the drawers
in
her drawers, had not made Eliot feel closer to Didi. It was very possible he was the first person she had ever asked to dress her, and it was equally possible he was the hundredth. Sharing was not satisfying, not a gift, as it had been with Andi, because Didi seemed to have no problem expounding upon intimacies with strangers, or at any rate what others would regard as intimacies. She knew little about Eliot, and he was certain she would have been open to hearing him if he had wished to talk, but since he didn't volunteer the information she didn't pry. It was all part of Didi's composure, her smiling effortlessness which meant their relationship was not
fraught
.

They were strolling along Lake Michigan that afternoon, sometimes hand in hand, none of the clandestine measures that he and Andi had taken in Indianapolis, or that he and Didi had taken in Red Bank for that matter, and this public display of affection soothed for the moment his nagging curiosity about what Didi did in her spare time when he was not around, and with whom. A seagull alighted in front of them as Eliot had asked Didi if she had considered going into law enforcement.

She frowned. “A
lady cop?
No! Why?”

From her reaction he was tentative about continuing, but there was no turning back now. “When I went through your closet, I saw those handcuffs.” She had had to double over holding her stomach, the ache of her laughter.

Now he hears the phone ringing in the office next to him, followed by Beau's voice loud through the wall: “
Monday?
Now it's
Monday?
”

“I better go,” Eliot says, realizing he'd been on the line a good seven minutes.

“Alright, but first I have a little story for you. A priest, a rabbi, and a cracker judge are all sent to meet St. Peter.”

He is grinning in anticipation when there's a knock.

“Come in.”

“Sorry to bother you. Beau needs some documents in triplicate right away and I'm out of carbon paper. Do you have any?” Andi is businesslike, unsmiling.

Her kindness this morning about the children's case had not only been a comfort to him but also a relief to see something close to tenderness in her eyes. Their relationship had deteriorated to this chilly remoteness, more Andi's doing than his, especially after he had begun feeling pretty gratified by his new Windy City distraction and just wished for bygones to be bygones back home.

And right now he has no time for dramatics, his mouth watering for Didi's punch line. He indicates the file cabinet. “Go ahead and check.” As she does, he grins into the receiver. “Okay, give it to me.” Eliot is fussily organized, and alphabetically a file is marked CARBON PAPER. Andi turns to him again. “I'm sorry.”

He looks at her.

“There's only two sheets left.”

He waves dismissively, implying for her to take them both and leave, his mind focused on following the details of the gag. Suddenly he explodes in laughter. “No, I
had
n't heard it. Our jokes are
clean
in Indianapolis!” Andi leaves, quietly shutting the door behind her.

Late morning, Eliot walks to the conference room and finds Andi using her fifteen-minute break to read a chapter in one of her law books. She doesn't look up. He notices how tired she seems, dark circles. Returning with the cup of coffee he poured, he overhears Beau in Winston's office, bellowing about some judge who put them off for months and now suddenly has set the hearing for just after the weekend.

Eliot works through lunch. He had inadvertently left his door cracked, and hears Will go out to ask Andi something. The conversation begins professionally, but then Will must have said something funny because Andi starts laughing. It continues, the murmur of their voices and her giggling and it begins to irritate Eliot, distracting him from his work. The two have developed a rather flirty relationship as of late, or perhaps it was always there but has come to flower since she and Eliot stopped seeing each other. Andi and this married man, father of five. None of Eliot's business but what
is
his business is the fact that he can't concentrate because of their frivolousness. He could just close the door but he likes Will and doesn't want to antagonize him, nor does he want Andi to mistake the gesture as some act of jealousy on his part, so he waits out their talk which goes on a good twelve minutes. When Will finally returns to his office, Eliot allows about three more minutes, buffer time to prove he is not responding to them, before quietly closing his door.

He leaves for the hospital at one, and at 1:25, five minutes early, he stands outside the room. He tells the white police officer that he is the patient's attorney and is permitted entrance.

The man lying on the bed is motionless but awake. He breathes heavily and even. He is covered in a sheet, his right arm on top of it, everything bandaged from his biceps to his fingertips. A handcuff is locked around the bars at the foot of the bed, the shackle attached to something under the sheet, presumably the patient's ankle. The only visible flesh, his neck and face, is completely black and blue, and there's an awkward shape to his head as if the side of it had been flattened. His nose and lower lip are split open, his left eye swollen completely shut, the blood vessels in his right eye bright and appearing to be on the point of bursting. But something is working behind that eye because the man has managed to fix it on Eliot.

On a chair next to the client sits a thin woman in her late forties, a careworn face. She stands. “You Mr. Campbell?”

“Yes.”

“Sam. This the lawyer.” She turns to Eliot. “I'm Petronia Daughtery, and this is my son Samuel Daughtery.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Daughtery.” According to the file this would be the proper address, though there was no clarification of a
Mr.
Daughtery excepting her son. Eliot shakes her hand. “How do you do, Mr. Daughtery.”

Samuel Daughtery closes his right eye, holding it for about three seconds.

“He jus acknowledgin you. Usually that means yes. He blink twice fast for no.”

“I'm sorry this happened to you, Mr. Daughtery.”

Sam Daughtery stares at his attorney.

“May I have a few moments alone with your son?”

“He jus blinked twice.”

Eliot had missed it, having turned to the mother.

“Would you prefer if your mother stayed?”

Sam Daughtery holds his right eye closed.

“Alright. Please sit down, Mrs. Daughtery.” Eliot sees another chair on the other side of the room and walks over to pick it up for himself. He tries to think what his first question will be since the intended “What happened?” is obviously not going to work.

“Mr. Daughtery. Do you understand the charges that have been brought against you? Possession of a concealed weapon? Racketeering? Resisting arrest, I am not yet asking whether you committed any of these crimes, only, do you understand the charges?”

Sam Daughtery holds his right eye closed.

“As your attorney I am here to help you as best I can. I can only do that if you are honest with me. Anything I don't know that comes out later can only hurt us. Do you understand?”

Sam Daughtery holds his right eye closed.

“At the time of your arrest, were you in possession of a gun?”

Sam Daughtery blinks twice.

“At the time of your arrest, were you in possession of betting slips pertaining to the numbers racket?”

Sam Daughtery blinks twice.

“At the time of your arrest, did you resist the officers in any way?”

Sam Daughtery looks at his mother.

“I think he needs you to be more specific.”

“Did you hit the officers?”

Sam Daughtery blinks twice.

“Kick the officers?”

Sam Daughtery blinks twice.

“Strike the officers in any way?”

Sam Daughtery blinks twice.

“So you did not resist the officers.”

Sam Daughtery looks at his mother.

“People who was nearby tole me he said, ‘I know my rights! I get to talk to a lawyer!'” She raises her volume when she quotes her son, her eyes burning into the officer standing at the door. The officer faces away. If he hears her, he makes no indication of it.

“Is that what you said, Mr. Daughtery?”

Sam Daughtery holds his right eye closed.

“Didn't he have a right to say that?”

“Yes, he had a right to say that. And did they reply?”

Sam Daughtery holds his right eye closed.

“I imagine they said a lot of things, Mr. Daughtery, and we can talk about that in a few days when you have healed a bit. But for now, with a simple yes or no, can you tell me what was their reply when you asked for a lawyer? When you demanded they recognize your rights?”

There is a movement, something slowly sliding under the sheet. With great effort and apparent considerable pain he pulls it out, his left arm, and lifts it, tight and strong, in reply to Eliot's inquiry, the answer the police officers gave him when he asked about his rights: a fist.

It's three by the time Eliot gets back to Winston Douglas. Andi is not at her desk. Then Eliot hears Beau's voice booming from his office, formulating a letter so Andi must be trapped in there taking dictation. Eliot shuts his office door, jotting notes regarding the information he had garnered at the hospital. Around 3:45 he jumps when Beau's door slams open. “Andi! Get in here
now!
”

Eliot had never heard such a belligerent tone from Beau. He hears Andi enter his neighbor's office, then Beau spewing a hysterical tirade wherein such phrases as “dumb secretary” and “dumb office girl” are tossed about liberally. From bits and pieces, Eliot gathers that some simple but crucial error was made and, by virtue of the carbon paper, Andi had triplicated her mistake exponentially. The rant is terrible but brief, or cut short when Andi runs crying out of Beau's office. Eliot had never seen her cry, and he flies out of his own office. Will is already standing there, staring stunned at Beau's open door, and Winston is in the room trying to calm Beau down. Eliot dashes to the bathroom and knocks. “Andi. Andi, are you alright?”

A silence, Andi instantly cutting off her sobs, seeming to have been caught by surprise and thus further humiliated to know that everyone has heard the incident though they would have had to have been in a coma to have missed it. Her voice is small. “Yes.” When she emerges several minutes later, she is startled to see Eliot still standing there. Her eyes are red, swollen. “I have to go to the office supply store and buy more carbon paper, we're out.”

“I can do it. Do you want me to do it?”

From Beau's office they hear Winston. “No, Beau, I am
not
firing her!”

She is instantly sobbing again. “He kept me here all night! He knew Tuesday and Thursday evenings I had class but he said he had his deadline today, I missed my exam! I flunked my exam! And now the Opal case is moved up to Monday—” She bawls fully a moment, then abruptly suppresses it. “I gotta get to the office supply store before it closes,” and she quickly walks out.

Eliot keeps his door open the remainder of the day, his eye on Andi retyping Beau's documents. It's already five and her pile is huge. She has taken no notice of Eliot's attention as she is anxiously focused on not making another blunder. The elevator sounds, and Andi and Eliot look up.

She wears a dazzling red dress, sleeveless and provocatively cut at the neckline, snugly fit to clarify every curve from shoulder to hem, the latter barely concealing the knees. Gold hoops dangling around her wrists, a white hat accessorized with a red sash, red gloves, and four-inch shining red heels. But most striking as she steps toward the entrance to Winston Douglas is something in her eyes, in her closed-mouth smile: confidence. This is what causes Andi, and Eliot in his office, to inadvertently stand.

“May I—” The receptionist does not get the question out. She has never before seen Didi, but now she looks at the visitor staring at Eliot, and at Eliot staring at the visitor, and Andi needs to ask nothing. The two women are standing next to each other, Andi wearing an outfit as drab gray as her mood, and in an instant Eliot finally sees Andi's age, and knows now what Andi had understood all along, why she never really wanted to go to Gary with him, to take that step: the universes that divide them. She sits, resuming her typing, the rat-tat seeming to underscore her despondency.

“What are you—” He too gets stuck mid-question.

“What am I doing here? I don't know. I told that stupid travel agent ‘Chicago' and look. She sends me to Indianapolis,” all the while striding toward his office as if she had been here a thousand times before. They shut the door and when, after a long period of quiet, a burst of their laughter causes Andi to mistype, she calmly tears out the sheet and replaces it, resigned to be sitting here another long night. When she calls to order her dinner for the third time this week, the man already knows chicken chow mein before she says it.

 

12

She points her index finger at him. “Tell me what you're thinking.”

Lying on her side, torso propped up by elbow, cheek leaning against fist. Their naked bodies covered by the flowery hotel spread. She teases him about his wandering mind. Just a game to her, keep him on his toes.

Plenty of injustice in their American world. That's why she became a lawyer, that's why she had volunteered her time, her
self,
for the little boys. But less consequential concerns that drive those who can afford it to analysis and those who can't to Jesus—she is immune to such trivialities, tossing it all off with a laugh. He has never before met someone who had her priorities so straight, and he tells her this now,
that
was what he had been thinking.

He's surprised to see her smile fade. She rolls over onto her back. “Hmm.”

When she'd called this morning, she was dialing him from this hotel room. She'd hoped he would be with her here last night, but of course he never picked up his home phone. So she devised the strategy to show up end-of-day at his office, spending the afternoon exploring Indianapolis. He waits for her to say how boring it all was, but then Didi can make any place an adventure if she sets her mind to it. As an art and architecture enthusiast, she made visits to the Tudor-Gothic Scottish Rite Cathedral, the neoclassical Soldiers & Sailors Monument, the art deco state library, and, since she was in the capital, of course the Parthenon-inspired statehouse. She was charmed to walk the various bridges crossing the canal, and finally made certain to hit Walker Theatre on The Avenue. Afterward, she quickly found the little boutique to purchase the red dress just in time to hop into a cab to the east side, step into his firm promptly at five, and drag him away in case he had any intention of working late to catch up on all those damn divorce cases. In his car to the hotel they were giddy with anticipation, but when she put her key into the door and they entered, glimpsing the charming décor and the beckoning queen-size bed, they'd stopped short. Something was wrong, something vital forgotten. And then without speaking it they knew, and for two hours they sat at the table discussing Max and Jordan's case, what they'd done right and their missteps, not wallowing in guilt but rather evaluating the process as objectively as they could. And when at last the topic felt exhausted for the present, their brains picked over and worn out,
then
they had sex. And then they had sex again.

“Whatever you see, or think you see. I wasn't born into it. Yes, I went to a nice North Carolina Negro college, and I was in the esteemed sorority with all the other light-skinned rich girls. Not exactly maverick thinking on my part. And we felt superior to the dark poor girls and all that, and the boys made us feel superior the way they were always up under us, and some of the dark poor girls made us feel superior with their envy. But of course we knew deep down it was all a ruse.” Her eyes on the ceiling fan, her mind far away. “This girl. Renaissance Art, junior year. I'd wondered if her parents were Africans, that's how coal black she was.
Stunning.
Even with our twisted ideas of American beauty, no one could dispute that girl was anything but gorgeous
.
Transfer student from California, she didn't know anything about me. Turned out she was brilliant as well as beautiful, an international studies major with a four-oh average who took an upperclass overview of Leonardo and Michelangelo and the van Eycks for the hell of it. And once she happened to catch my eye, and I tried to smile, I was embarrassed because I realized I had been staring, I mean she was so striking. And she returned my smile with this look, this.
Contempt.
With one glance she pegged me, a frivolous girl desperate to fit in, and desperate to be thought of as anything but that.” Didi makes herself dizzy, her eyes fixed on one blade circling the fan.

He is aware she has given him a gift, perhaps the first ever.
This
story she would not tell just anyone.

“Were you pre-law?”

She laughs. “Those days I wasn't thinking about anything but my MRS degree. Art history.” Her eyes lower, toward the framed flowers still life above the desk. “And then Emmett Till. I'd just graduated.” She sits up, arms outside the covers hugging her legs. “Those pictures. He was a
kid
, and that.
Thing.
That mutilated, disfigured
thing
that was left after those goddamn bastards were through with him, and suddenly at twenty-two I'm infused with purpose. And my rich daddy pulled some strings and a week later I'm sitting in a Chicago classroom jotting notes on the Magna Carta.” She turns to Eliot, his eyes fixed on her. She smiles. “So what's with you and your secretary?”

He stiffens. “What?”

“‘What?' ‘Who?'
The woman who practically fell off her chair when I walked in today. Not that I didn't have my suspicions before. When a receptionist puts you on hold all she says is ‘Just a moment,' but I sure have noticed how the tone of ‘Just a moment's changed since you and I started screwing.”

“I
doubt—
”

“Don't get me wrong, she's always professional. Can't say I knew for sure until this afternoon, the way she looked at me, the way she looked at you. For a prude, you sure seem to have trouble keeping your pants up.”

“Yes! You're right, okay? Something happened between us, it's over.”

“Not for her.”

“Things take time. She's having a rough go of it now.” He sighs. “There's this jackass at work—”

“There always is.”

“And she's going to school.
Law
school,
and
working full-time. I try to be sympathetic.”

Didi gazes at him. “What's her name?”

“Andi.” He picks up the room service menu from his night table. “Wanna order in?”

“So what's she interested in? I'd think after her insider look at public interest law she'd be sprinting to a corporation.”

He studies the offerings, relieved to see several reasonably priced entrees. “Pretty much going for the same stuff as us.” He shrugs. “Says she'd like to work toward legalizing abortion.”

“Good for her.”

Eliot looks up.

“This old sharecropper woman where I grew up.” Didi absently scratches an insect bite on her arm. “Her whole life in mourning after her sharecropper daughter died trying to prevent her eighth child because she and her sharecropper husband and her seven sharecropper kids were already starving.” She shakes her head. “Should have been done in a hospital. Safe.”

He is quiet.

“What?”

He swallows. “Just for the record. If it happened, you wouldn't be alone. I don't run away from my responsibilities.”

“What are you talking about?” The hairs around her face gently blowing with the whipping fan.

“If you became pregnant. I'd marry you.”

She stares at him, her mouth agape, then roars in laughter, falling onto her back. “Well!
There
's a comfort.”

“What?”

“Eliot! A kid wouldn't change
your
life.”

“Of
course—
”

“And which of us is gonna be staying home to raise it while the other continues practicing law?
I
have work to do
too,
you know!” A fly buzzes near her face and she harshly swats it away.

He speaks quietly. “There's that birth control pill.”

“Honey, we're just gonna have to keep making do with my diaphragm cuz I don't touch
nothin
the first year the FDA approves it, let somebody else be the guinea pig.” She stretches. “Your boss seems like a nice guy. Letting her go home early.”

“Who?”

“Andi.”

“Oh. Yeah, Beau would have made her work all night,
again.
Winston loves him, or at least feels loyal to him. Beau's been there since the beginning. So he gets mostly free rein, but once in a while he goes too far, has to be pulled back. Never saw him so crazy like today though.”

“It must be more than loyalty if Winston's kept him on.”

“Yeah, I'm sure he's great at his job, luckily I've never had the pleasure to be assigned to work closely with him.” Eliot goes back to the menu. “I don't want to spend the rest of the evening talking about Beau Greene. You want steak or chicken?”

“What did Winston say about the outcome of the case?”

He looks at her, then gazes out the window. “That our arguments were sound. That we'd done our job and it all came down to the judge. But then all I gave him were the legal facts. Not the important stuff.”

“What's the important stuff?”

A streetlamp weak, flickering. “The boys. They have no concept. We took Claudette out for a late lunch the afternoon I got there, eight days before the hearing. She said when Sawyer had given the disposition orders, her son clearly heard the judge's words, that they would be sent away until twenty-one, and yet three days later Jordan asked the guards, ‘Is it almost time for me to see my mama?'” His eyes lower. “I didn't tell Winston when Farn announced his decision there had been that momentary silence of disbelief. And then as the guards started dragging Jordan and Max away, the mothers began wailing and the fathers began moaning and Jordan started bawling, screaming for his mother, only now fully comprehending that he was going right back to the reformatory, and Max. The guard leading Max toward the door and he turns around to tell his mother, ‘Don't give my fire truck away.' Max, who may be a grown man before he's released, and at the exit he turns again: ‘Don't give my scooter away.'”

His steak is well done, hers medium rare. They eat at the table, she in her robe, he in his underwear. Then she calls the front desk, and he's surprised when minutes later a small watermelon is delivered.

“I bought it earlier, asked them to chill it.” She eagerly slices the fruit. “Growing up, it was my favorite. And when I came to school in the North, it was the first thing I disowned. Afraid it made me look bumpkin. Pickaninny. Recently I've reclaimed it. Looks like a sweet one.” She glances up to find him staring at her, and points her finger. “Tell me what you're thinking.”

He looks down. “I can't.”

“You must.”

His voice cracks. “I was thinking how lucky I am to have found you.”

“Yes, you're the luckiest man on earth. Now here's the thing. Am I on the train back to Chicago in the morning or am I staying at your place tomorrow night? Because my budget can withstand two hotel nights, but that's the limit.”

“Oh.” He looks around, their fleeting lap of luxury. “
I'll
pay.”

“You'll pay starting tomorrow night.
Or
we go to your apartment. Unless you're hiding a wife there.”

He smiles. “I need to clean it.”

“Oh you're such a neat freak! Alright, you get your butt home in the morning to dust your knickknack shelves while I do some more shopping. We'll meet for lunch, then a museum. Your condolence party officially ends tonight, tomorrow begins my gainful-employment celebration so
you'll
be taking
me
to a nice restaurant for dinner, then back to your place. A plan?”

“A plan.”

“Okay. Now. Inspired by the watermelon, let's talk about the South.”

The main reason she had wanted to get together, besides gratifying their carnality, was to make sure he doesn't give up on the balmy states. It could be discouraging, a case involving innocent children and
still
the forces of evil triumph, but it is only if we continue to fight the good fight that those forces will eventually subside, wither, and die. It will be a long struggle, progress would be slow, but there would be progress. There are school systems six years post-
Brown
that still refuse to integrate, there are poll taxes and fraudulent tests designed to deny Negroes the vote. Much to be done, and they could use every good lawyer out there and she assures him from her observations over the last months that he is a
superb
lawyer, and this embarrasses him. Of course there's also plenty to do above the Cotton Belt, God does she know that. But the atrocities occurring in the Northeast and Midwest ghettos still pale in comparison to the savage collective White Power of Georgia and Alabama and Louisiana and Mississippi.

“Okay, there's my pitch.” He looks down, his eyes fixed on the watermelon rind. “What?”

“Did you know Clarence Darrow once bribed a juror?”

She stares.
“Really?”

“Evidence points that way.”

“When?”

“Nineteen twelve. Labor disputes. Two white brothers blew up the
L.A. Times
building. If they were found guilty and it was pretty clear they would be, the AFL feared it would bring down unions in the whole country.”

“The McNamara Brothers, I've read of it. People died. Right?”

“Twenty-one. A hundred injured.”

She takes this in. Then looks at him. “And Darrow
bribed
a juror?”

“Appears so.”

She shakes her head. “God.” She considers it again.
“God!”

“Okay. What if it was a colored man accused of raping a white woman, South Carolina. No physical evidence, no credible circumstantial
evidence, every damn person in the courtroom knows he didn't commit the crime, that likely a crime was not committed at all, and still this poor farmer, this father of five sent to the chair. That is if he's lucky enough to make it there before the mob gets him. Same old story, right? But what if an opportunity arose. Slip a few bucks to a juror. What's the ethical choice? Stick to the book and let an innocent man die? Or fudge a little, and possibly save an innocent life. Is respect for the law more important than justice?”