Without Prejudice (9 page)

They sat in silence for a moment, sipping their coffee. ‘It was good to see you in the coffee shop,’ Duval said.

‘It was good to see you, too,’ Robert said, but curtly. Go on, he thought, spit it out and tell me what you want. He wondered how much cash he had in his wallet. ‘Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?’

Duval didn’t say anything at first. He was leaning forward now, holding his coffee, eyes on the floor. And then to Robert’s horror this tall middle-aged man put his head in his hands and started to cry. Sobbing quietly, his shoulders shuddering. Robert’s impatience evapor-ated, and he felt awful at how brusque he’d been. He wished he could comfort him. He wasn’t used to seeing a grown man cry – not like this anyway, inexplicably, in his office at the end of a working day.

Duval’s shoulders stopped moving, and then he lifted his head and rubbed his eyes with his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What’s the matter, Duval? Are things tough right now?’

He shook his head and looked away. He seemed embarrassed. Then he said in barely more than a whisper, ‘I’m just so lonely.’

‘You must have had friends where you were,’ Robert said cautiously. ‘It would make sense if you missed them.’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head with insistence. ‘In Stateville a man ain’t got no friends – not real ones. Anybody tell you the opposite is lying.’

‘How about Jermaine, and his family?’

‘They’re good to me; I can’t complain. Wasn’t for Jermaine I’d be living in some halfway house or shelter. I don’t know,’ he said wearily, as if facing a predicament he couldn’t fathom. He looked at Robert, then at his own hand, as if it could help him find the right words. ‘The thing is, Vanetta was the one who visited me. Jermaine would only come every other year or so. My momma would come sometimes, but she never won her battle with junk. It was Vanetta who stuck by me all those years. And I always thought when I got out I’d be living with her. I can’t tell you how long I planned that.’ His voice went flat and his eyes turned dull. ‘Then she passed.’

For a moment, Robert thought Duval might break down again. ‘Listen,’ he said gently, ‘everything’s going to be okay. It’s just going to take a while. You’re making a hell of a big adjustment. You need to find a job to keep you occupied and make some money.’

‘I had me a job for a while. Three days,’ Duval added with a small derisory snort. ‘Fixing up the attic for some old lady lives down the block from Jermaine. Then she says all of a sudden, “Sorry, I can’t be using you no more.” I said, “Is something wrong with my work?” No, that wasn’t the problem. So I asked her what
was
the problem. At first she wouldn’t tell me. Then finally she says that her daughter was coming to stay, and she didn’t think it would be a good idea if I was to be in the house with her. She said I might be tempted. I asked her, “tempted to what?” She just shook her head. She tried to pay me for an extra day but I wouldn’t take her money.

‘Then I got work at the launderette, fixing the machines – that kinda thing. There’s a Vietnamese lady to do the laundry for people who just drop it off, and when it’s busy I helped her out loading the clothes and switching them to the dryer. Then some girl in the neighbourhood starts whispering to the Vietnamese lady and next thing I know I’m out the door. Shit – I ain’t done nothing wrong.’

Robert wanted to sound encouraging. ‘Look at it this way – you’ve found some work. I know it hasn’t lasted, but one of these jobs will stick.’

‘Maybe,’ said Duval, though he sounded sceptical. He seemed to have pulled himself together; he was sitting more upright now, and you couldn’t tell that he’d been crying. ‘I’m sorry that I got upset. And I shouldn’t have bothered you here.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Robert.

‘I got no one to talk to. Jermaine, he’s busy, and if things go wrong he don’t really want to know. He just wants me to get enough money to move into my own place. I can tell – they don’t really make me feel at home.’

Robert thought for a moment, suddenly aware that he was treating this as if he had an unhappy member of staff before him, not an ex-con with beat prospects he happened to have known almost forty years before. ‘Look, if you think talking to somebody would help, you can always call me.’

‘I don’t want no money.’

‘I know that. I’m just offering you my ear. You can pay for the coffee.’ He smiled to make it clear this was a joke.

‘You’ve known me since I was little, Bobby. Why, I told somebody once you was the only white friend I ever had.’

Poor bastard, thought Robert. Duval was calmer now. He said, ‘Though it seems like you always be helping me. I ain’t never done much for you.’

‘I don’t know about that. Anyway, isn’t that what friends are for?’

‘Sure is. Say, you remember those three kids in the back yard at Blackstone?’

‘Yeah.’ He didn’t want to, but he did.

‘You saved my ass that time. You was brave. They were going to hurt me bad if you hadn’t been there. That dark nigger, he was mean.’

He was slightly stunned that Duval had said ‘nigger’. ‘I didn’t do that much.’ He paused, finding himself drawn in by memories, none of them nice. ‘Did I ever tell you they came back?’

‘No.’ Duval seemed startled. ‘When?’

‘About a year later. I wasn’t so brave that time.’

‘They hurt you?’

‘They did their best.’ He smiled insincerely, and Duval laughed.

He realised someone was at the door – it was Dorothy. She must have been listening, though she made a show of knocking on the open door to announce herself. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, and looked over at Duval.

He felt he had to introduce them. ‘Dorothy, this is Duval Morgan.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Dorothy said crisply. Duval didn’t stand up, though he managed a thin smile. Robert watched, intrigued, as they gave each other long appraising looks, some kind of weighing-up going on that he didn’t understand. He felt effaced by this exchange, like a referee in a boxing ring after he’s made the fighters tap gloves before the opening bell rings, then moves away, suddenly invisible.

At last Dorothy turned to Robert. ‘I spoke with the coach. I’m seeing him next week.’

‘Oh, good,’ he said, though the memoirs of Bud Carlson seemed less urgent right now. ‘Let me know how it goes.’ She nodded, taking a final look at Duval as she left the room.

Duval asked in a semi-whisper, ‘She work here?’

‘She does.’

‘You a lucky man,’ Duval said, in a richly lecherous voice. And Robert was so struck to think someone actually fancied the woman he considered such a pain in the ass that he found himself joining Duval in raucous laughter, which must have travelled down the hall to Dorothy’s office.

5

Two days later Robert’s phone rang as he was getting ready to go home early for the weekend. It was raining hard, heavy drops smeared the windows of his office, and would no doubt snarl up the Friday-night traffic on the Drive. He planned to leave early to beat the rush.

‘Hey, man, it’s Duval.’

‘You okay?’ he asked, trying to keep impatience out of his voice.

‘I’m all right. Might have me a job.’

‘Glad to hear it. Doing what?’

‘I’ll tell you if it comes through. Don’t want to jinx my chances.’

Robert was about to suggest meeting the following week – anything so he could get away – when Duval said, his voice turning husky, ‘Bobby, you remember what I said when we were leaving the coffee shop?’

‘I do.’ The last thing he wanted to get into.

‘Well, you see, I’m going to need a lawyer if I’m going to get anywhere with this. Do you think you could find me one?’

‘I don’t know, Duval. I’ve only been back—’

‘You must know some lawyers.’ No note of pleading to the voice, just a flat statement of fact.

‘The thing is, Duval, I’m not sure how much a lawyer can do. I’m worried you’ll just be disappointed.’

There was a long pause. ‘Let me take that chance.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ It seemed impossible to say no.

‘I could find him a lawyer,’ said Anna. They were in bed that night, the lights off, lying half-wrapped in each other – it had been weeks since they had last made love. The rain had stopped, replaced by a warm muggy front, and they had pushed the blankets down, leaving only a sheet for cover. Through the screened open window a mild breeze off the lake cooled the room like a low fan.

‘I don’t want to encourage Duval – he’d just be wasting time and money.’

‘If he’s not working much, time isn’t a problem, is it?’

‘He needs to get on with his life. Not go backwards. What difference would it make now?’

She put her head on his arm, her soft hair splayed out over one side of his chest. ‘I had a look at the file, you know.’

He sighed. ‘What was in it?’

‘Not a lot. The names of witnesses, and lawyers, and the name of the judge. Arthur Bronstein. He’s dead – I found an obituary in the
Tribune
archive.’

‘You went to the archive?’ He knew he sounded irritated, but he was.

‘No, I Googled him. And I didn’t have to go to 26th and California for the file. They were willing to fax me the contents.’

‘Anyone else listed?’

‘The witnesses. Mainly cops – I suppose the ones who first found the girl and then the ones who interviewed her when she IDed Duval.’ Her voice hesitated, skipping a beat. ‘And I found the name of the girl.’

He remembered her appearance on the stand. She’d had long, straight auburn hair, a pale complexion with girlish freckles on both cheeks. Her appearance had seemed neither sexy, the unwarranted male expectation in rape cases, nor virginal. Just drab, a limp sadness to her face that her physical carriage – she walked awkwardly, one shoulder sloping slightly down – did nothing to dispel.

‘What was it?’

‘Peggy Mohan.’

‘I wonder what happened to her.’

‘Google wasn’t much help, unless she won the 400-metre relay at Boise High School last year.’

So Anna had been looking. He couldn’t understand why she was getting so involved. Hadn’t she plenty to do already, between her job and looking after Sophie and, hopefully, him?

‘There was also a Peggy Mohan in Paris who teaches English for foreign learners. Do you think that’s the equivalent of those cards in the windows of London newsagents, offering “French lessons”?’

He gave a small grunting laugh and stretched his hand down and laid it, half-cupped, half-taut on the soft surface of Anna’s belly. He could not dislodge the image of the Peggy Mohan he had seen. She had sat rigid in the witness box, her voice monotonic at first, as subdued as her clothes. Yet within minutes Robert had been perched on the edge of his seat, oblivious to everything except the horrifying words of her story.

He said, ‘After what happened, I can’t blame her for hiding.’

6

On Saturday morning he let Anna lie in while he cooked pancakes with lemon and sugar for Sophie. They’d established that Anna would stay at home, waiting for Mr Pica, the plumber – since as she said, ‘I want to be present at an unprecedented event – a plumber coming out on a Saturday.’

He hurried Sophie through breakfast, since he wanted to beat the inevitable crowds at their first stop in Hyde Park, the Museum of Science and Industry. She was already dressed, but wasn’t wearing her usual day camp gear of khaki shorts, T-shirt, and baseball cap. ‘Those are smart,’ he said of her white trousers.

‘Mom bought them for me.’ He noticed she wore a blouse with a collar, and then the penny dropped. She wanted to look grown up for this expedition.

They drove along the Outer Drive with the lake crystal blue and the air windless and clear. After they passed the vast soulless convention centre of McCormick Place, the lake front turned into a series of green parks, strung together like a links course along the shore.

‘Nobody’s there,’ said Sophie, pointing at them.

It was still early, not even nine o’clock. Glancing to his left, Robert could only see a few men walking their dogs. ‘It’ll start to get busy later on. People come out in their cars and have barbecues – see the grills they can use? And they play touch football and frisbee. When we come back later you’ll see what I mean.’

‘Could we have a barbecue there?’

‘Well, maybe not right here, but we can have a barbecue at the dunes.’

‘Can’t we come here?’

He shrugged. How much did you say, how much did you ignore? ‘It’s not that safe over there for you and me.’

‘Why?’ she asked, with her mother’s tenacity. He admired the trait, though it made him feel that nothing he said was taken at face value.

‘It just isn’t,’ he said shortly. He didn’t want to say it was because they were white and the parks there were strictly African-American. He thought of his conversation with Anna, her complaint that so much of the city seemed off limits. It was depressing after so many years to find this kind of de facto apartheid surviving, but it would be reckless to act as if it did not exist.

The museum was the one surviving building from the 1893 World’s Fair. It was a Chicago Parthenon, with Corinthian columns and an enormous gabled roof. Long crumbling inside and out, the museum had recently been entirely renovated. Robert parked the Passat in a new underground lot that could have belonged to one of the swanky condominium towers on the North Side.