The Quiet Game (48 page)

“I’ll do it, Mr. Cage. But you get your tail off Leo Marston’s property right this minute, before he puts a load of rock salt in your butt. Or worse.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I click End and touch Caitlin’s arm. “She’s sending the police.”

“They won’t make it in time. The gate’s closed, and they won’t be able to get through.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Make Marston
want
them to get here.”

She pulls free of my grip and bulls her way through the hedge. Seconds later, the sound of shattering glass reverberates across the floodlit lawn.

Leo goes rigid before the fireplace, his ears pricked. Caitlin’s rock smashed the window of another room, and he is unsure of what he heard.

Then another hundred-fifty-year-old pane smashes, this one less than ten feet from Marston. He stares at the broken window, looks back at the fireplace, then hurries out of the room.

Caitlin is standing in the drive like a pitcher on the mound, right arm cocked, a rock in her hand. She may not know what Leo is going after, but I do. And from the gallery Marston could pick her off firing from the waist.

I charge through the prickly hedge and run onto the lawn. “Get your ass under cover!”

Her cocked arm fires, and another pane shatters into irreparable shards. I sprint the last few yards and grab her arm, dragging her toward a thicket of azaleas. Just as we plow into the bushes, the front door of Tuscany crashes open and Leo bellows into the night:

“Where are you, you gutless sons of bitches? Come out and fight like goddamn men!”

I have to give him credit. At this moment most Natchezians are huddled in their houses, terrified of a race war. For all Leo knows, a gang of crazed rioters smashed his windows and is now waiting to pick him off from the bushes. Yet there he stands, shotgun in hand, defending his castle like Horatius at the bridge. He shouts twice more, then fires blindly into the night. I cover Caitlin with my body as the shotgun booms through the trees like a cannon. After five shots Leo shouts a final curse, then goes back inside, slamming the door behind him.

God only knows what Maude and Livy are thinking. Surely one of them must have called the police and opened the gate by now.

“Get off,”
Caitlin groans from beneath me.
“I can’t breathe.”

I roll off and scrabble to my knees in the azaleas.

She smiles up at me, breathing fast and shallow. “That wasn’t exactly how I’ve pictured us getting horizontal together.”

“Me either.”

The smile vanishes. “Marston can still burn those files before the cops get here.”

“There’s nothing we can do to stop him.”

“Give me your gun.”

“No way, no how. You’re a menace.”

She sighs in frustration and rolls over to watch the mansion while we wait for the police.

Before long, three uniformed cops come racing up the driveway on foot. They rap on the great door, which Leo answers shouting at full volume, condemning the police department as a useless bunch of fools and high school dropouts. From their body language, the responding officers do not appear to be reacting favorably to his words. As he continues his tirade, two squad cars roar up the drive and stop before the front steps, which are bookended by Negro lawn jockey hitching posts. A black patrolman gets out of the first cruiser and opens his passenger door.

Circuit Judge Eunice B. Franklin emerges, looking like hell warmed over. She’s wearing boxy blue jeans, an Ole Miss sweatshirt, hair curlers tied beneath a blue scarf, and she looks pissed. I pull Caitlin to her feet and hurry toward the gallery. When we arrive, Leo is lambasting Judge Franklin in the same superior tone he used with the police. Franklin seems to be enduring it with remarkable equanimity.

When Leo recognizes me standing behind the judge, his face flushes bright red. There’s murder in his eyes, and everyone on the gallery sees it.

“Did you smash my windows, Cage?” he yells.

“Don’t say anything, counselor,” Judge Franklin orders me. She turns back to Marston. “Leo, the issue tonight is files. Did you remove any files from your office tonight and attempt to burn them?”

At last comprehension dawns in Marston’s eyes. “Did that bastard tell you that?”

Caitlin aims the video camera at Leo’s face. “I have it all on tape, Judge Franklin. You can watch it right now, if you’d like.”

Franklin looks back at Marston. “You want to rethink your answer, Leo?”

Marston draws himself up like a feudal lord being forced by a priest to deal civilly with serfs. “I brought some files home from my office. Old junk. Tax records, bad-debt files.”

Franklin nods patiently, but her jaw is set. “Then you won’t mind if these officers take them down to my chambers for safekeeping. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding, but it’ll save you the trouble of hauling away the ashes.”

Leo blocks the door with his considerable bulk, his arms outstretched from post to post. “Eunice, I think you and I should have a private word.”

Franklin glances at the video camera. “Turn that off, Ms. Masters.”

“I’m sorry, Judge, but the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees my right to do what I am doing now.”

Judges do not react well to defiance. Eunice Franklin reddens a shade, and for a moment I fear she is about to order Caitlin’s arrest. To my surprise, she turns to Marston and says, “Clear that door, Leo.”

Marston’s hard blue eyes lock onto Franklin’s. “Eunice, you’d better think about what—”

“Officer Washington,” she cuts in, “go in there and confiscate whatever files you find. Take them straight to my chambers.”

Two cops push past Marston, whose only choices are to stand aside or defy the orders of a judge by assaulting police officers. He stands aside, his face red with fury. Eunice Franklin will pay a heavy price for this, but my sympathy is limited. Dilemmas like these are the price of backroom politics. With a final savage glare in my direction, Marston stomps back into the dark reaches of his mansion.

Judge Franklin pokes me in the chest, her eyes cold. “I want you in my chambers at nine a.m., mister.” She points to Caitlin. “I want that videotape there as well.”

“Will Marston be there?” I ask.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Destroying evidence is a felony, Judge.”

Franklin’s lips tighten until all I can see is the spiderwork of lines around her mouth, the result of years of smoking cigarettes. As we stare at each other, a patrolwoman carries a charred box of files through the front door.

“Go home, Mr. Cage,” orders Judge Franklin. “And you will pay restitution for any physical damage to this property.”

I am about to follow her advice when Livy walks through the front door of Tuscany. In a voice that could shave a peach, she says, “Judge, my name is Livy Marston Sutter. I’m here as counsel for my father, Leo Marston. Those boxes contain files of Marston, Sims clients, and thus enjoy the protection of attorney-client privilege.”

Judge Franklin is momentarily taken aback, but she recovers quickly. “They’ll be as safe in my chambers as they will anywhere.”

Livy looks past her to me. “Penn? Would you please tell me what’s going on here?”

I stand mute before her. Tonight’s events have cast us as enemies, but even at this awkward moment part of me remains inside her, linking us in the most primitive way.

“You tell me, Livy.”

“Who broke our windows?”

“I did,” Caitlin says, as though she would welcome another lawsuit.

Livy gives her a glance of disdain. “What’s Lois Lane doing here?”

Caitlin holds up the video camera. “Making home movies, sweet cheeks. I don’t think you’re going to like them.”

“That’s it,” says Franklin. “Get out of here, both of you. Go back inside, Ms. Sutter.”

“Your father was trying to destroy evidence, Livy. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Evidence? You mean those old tax records? Daddy told me the day I got back that he needed to clean out his old files. I helped him because of his bad back.”

Is she really trying to convince me that her motives are pure? Or is she using my presence as an opportunity to try to mitigate her culpability in the presence of Judge Franklin?

“I said this meeting is over,” snaps Franklin.

I take Caitlin’s arm above the elbow and lead her away from the house. Soon we’re in darkness, surrounded by the smells of wet grass and decaying leaves. The pulse in her brachial artery is pounding like a tom-tom.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Instead of answering, I turn back and gaze through the dripping trees at Tuscany. What was once a temple of memory is now alien to me. The gallery that once hosted so many lawn parties now creaks under the tramp of police boots, and the sweet air of the grounds carries the tang of gunpowder. After five generations of seclusion, the world outside the gates has crashed through to Tuscany with a vengeance.

My gaze drifts upward, to the third floor, where a solitary light glows in a high window. Framed in that window is an amorphous shape that confuses me at first, but at last resolves into something human. It’s the harridan head of Maude Marston, once a celebrated beauty, now a wreck, ravaged by emotional pain and by the alcohol she uses to blunt it. As Caitlin takes my arm and pulls me along the drive, I remember Dwight Stone’s penchant for quotes, and I think,
What havoc hath he wrought in this great house?

The two days after Judge Marston’s attempt to destroy the files pass in a blur of work that reminds me what it is to be a working lawyer. At nine o’clock Friday morning, Judge Franklin and I agree to an unconventional compromise worthy of Solomon. Without giving reasons, she makes it clear that she prefers not to charge Leo with obstruction of justice or contempt of court. Before I can argue this point, she tells me she considered recusing herself from the case but rejected the idea because Marston played as big a part in getting the black circuit judge elected as he did Judge Franklin. We both know I can go to the judicial oversight committee to plead for relief, but I sense that Eunice Franklin intends to offer me something.

What she offers is the boxes Marston tried to destroy, one of which contains three legal files, as Livy indicated. Marston’s blatant attempt to destroy them has convinced Judge Franklin that he was attempting to hide evidence of criminal activity. She feels that a case can be made to the court of appeal that Marston’s act justifies giving me access to these records. Moreover, Leo himself has agreed to this arrangement rather than be charged with obstruction or contempt. This tells me that the files, while probably damaging to Marston’s reputation, will not contain proof of complicity in Del Payton’s murder.

This agreement accomplished, the judge and I spend a few minutes getting to know each other. Eunice Franklin is fifty-six years old, and graduated from the Ole Miss Law School a year before Del Payton was killed. I can only imagine what she must have endured during her three years at that temple of Southern male traditionalism. She is a bit defensive about her court, and my “big-time” experience in Houston seems to be the cause of this. She warns me that she will run her courtroom with at least as much discipline as I am accustomed to in “the big city,” and perhaps more. She will tolerate no antics or theatrics, either from myself or from Marston’s attorney.

Leo will be represented by Blake Sims, the son of Creswell Sims, his partner of forty years. Judge Franklin has already instructed Sims that, considering the
early trial date his client requested and got, they should have all discovery materials in my hands by the close of the business day.

She expresses strong misgivings about my intention to represent myself at trial, but says she cannot stop me from sabotaging my case if that is my intent. She defends the trial date along the lines I predicted to Caitlin, and adds that the recent racial tensions and violence played a part in her decision. With the mayoral election only four weeks away, she wants my inflammatory statements about the Payton murder resolved and hopefully forgotten by the time the voters walk into the polling booths on November 3.

Leaving her chambers, I feel a little better about the situation than I did walking in. Judge Franklin owes Marston some favors, but Leo’s attempt to destroy evidence has made her angry. Under the blaze of scrutiny this trial will draw, Eunice may stiffen her backbone and run a relatively impartial court.

The media frenzy is already underway. Tying men like John Portman and Leo Marston to a dead black man is like waving a red cape in front of a herd of bulls. Twenty-four hours after my accusations hit the paper, Mississippi resumed its role as whipping boy for the nation on race. Celebrated authors and academics weighed in with windy and self-righteous op-ed pieces in every major paper from New York to Los Angeles. At the close of last night’s newscast, a somber-faced Dan Rather recalled his days covering civil rights in Mississippi. Black media stars roundly condemned the state, speaking as though the lynchings of the distant past were still daily occurrences.

Contrary opinions were few, and the battle was becoming embarrassingly one-sided until this morning, when into the fray charged my old friend Sam Jacobs, the self-styled Mississippi Jew, who in a half-humorous letter to the
New York Times
pointed out that while Mississippi might seem behind the times to outsiders, it actually had its collective finger on the pulse of America. The Magnolia State, Sam opined, had given the world William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, and Tennessee Williams. And while that holy trinity of American culture ought to be enough for anybody, for skeptics there were also Robert Johnson, Richard Wright, Jimmy Rodgers, and Muddy Waters; Leontyne Price, Charley Pride, Tammy Wynette, and John Grisham; Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, four Miss Americas, and Oprah Winfrey. And while boneheaded nuisances like the Ku Klux Klan had committed atrocities to shame the South Africans, and slavery had come near to breaking an entire people, you couldn’t by God refine gold without a fire. The state of Israel was created from the ashes of the Holocaust, and Mississippi was on its way to redemption. Why, the legacy of blues music alone, declared Sam, which was jazz and rock ’n’ roll, had done more to end the Cold War than all the thin-blooded diplomats ever minted at Harvard and Yale.