Illegal Motion g-4 Read online

  I laugh, trying to picture her in her office. She is in the Kincaid Building two blocks west of the courthouse.

  Mostly a domestic law practice. Women attorneys seem to settle into it, though she knows as much, if not more, criminal law than I do.

  “Can we eat first?” I ask.

  “Are you busy Saturday?”

  “I have to warn you that I’m on a ten-thousand-calorie a day diet,” she says.

  “You might want to check the limits on your Visa card.”

  I think of her trim, compact body. Maybe she’s really fat, and it’s all being held in by a giant safety pin. I don’t think so. She didn’t have that much on last night, and what I saw looked firm.

  “Where do you put it?” I ask admiringly. If I eat a single cookie, I can see the outline of it in my stomach for days.

  “In my mouth,” she says.

  “I’m busy right now. Call me Saturday, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say and hang up, a little disappointed. I had wanted to brag that I was going to Fayetteville to represent Dade Cunningham, but maybe it will impress her more when she reads it in the papers. I stand up and retrieve my briefcase from the top of the filing cabinet, realizing I am abnormally pleased. It’s time to quit thinking Rainey and I will get back together. A part of me is still in love with her, but some things aren’t meant to be. Amy sounds like she’ll be fun. Why have I avoided younger women so religiously since Rosa died? Fear of looking stupid, I guess. Am I worried what Sarah will think? Act your age. Dad. She would like for me to be neutered, I’m sure. Poor baby. In my parents’ day, when nobody got divorced, we didn’t have to worry about our parents humiliating us quite so much. Now we act as crazy as our children. No wonder the country is on the verge of anarchy.

  3

  As dade cunningham and I come out of the Washington County courthouse into clear, dazzling October sunlight, I look around for the media, but apparently the word of his release hasn’t gotten around.

  “What happens now?” Dade Cunningham whispers respectfully beside me. He is quite a specimen. Under his T-shirt his shoulders look like slabs of frozen beef. For a wide receiver he is more muscled-up than I would have imagined. His father is much darker, his features more Negroid than his son’s. Dade, I realize, looks remarkably like Jason Kidd, the incredible point guard recruited hard by the Hogs who ended up at California and turned pro after just two years. I wonder about his mother. I can’t imagine she is white, but she can’t be far from it.

  “We’re going to my motel to talk.” I have checked into the Ozark Inn, a dump on College Avenue that actually looks okay on the outside. Inside, it’s better not to look too close. If cleanliness is next to godliness, the Ozark is not exactly on the highway to heaven. But for twenty-five bucks I didn’t expect the Taj Mahal, nor did I get it.

  Dade nods gloomily, but based on our conversation so far, I realize he doesn’t have the slightest idea of the obstacles ahead. He will be arraigned tomorrow afternoon.

  Now all we have to do is get out of here without saying anything to the media that will piss anybody off.

  “If any body asks you a question,” I instruct him, “just say your lawyer has told you not to comment.”

  Dade slows his long stride to match mine. He is a good three inches taller, and makes me feel as if I’m hobbling along on a walker.

  “Even to my friends?” he asks naively.

  “Nothing about what happened between you and Robin Perry,” I say, realizing I may be advising him to spill his guts to his coach later on today. Yet, he can’t tell his story too often, or he will trip himself up for sure.

  In my room at the Ozark just down the street from the courthouse, I call Coach Carter’s office to leave my number and then Sarah to suggest we tentatively agree to meet for dinner at seven in the restaurant at the Fayetteville Hilton. I wouldn’t mind going by to see her room after all, I’m paying for it but she dismisses the suggestion.

  “You don’t want to come up here,” she humors me.

  “It looks like I’m doing the laundry for the whole dorm.”

  Deftly, she changes the subject.

  “Did you get Dade out of jail?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it at seven,” I say.

  “We’re going to talk right now.”

  My daughter groans.

  “It’ll be on the news, won’t it?”

  “Probably,” I say, feeling guilty. This is supposed to be her turf now. Yet, why doesn’t she feel pride that her old man is in the news with a hot client? I guess I understand.

  If love and hate are emotional kinfolks, pride and embarrassment share a common ancestor as well. It always surprises me that I want her praise and approval as much as she wants mine.

  “Dade won’t be coming to dinner, will he?” she asks, her tone clearly indicating her preference.

  I look over at Dade, who is pretending not to be listening I haven’t given any thought as to how he will be seen by other students. Given her own bloodlines, Sarah is hardly a racist, but she wouldn’t be wild about going to dinner with somebody who has been charged with raping a classmate. She knows all too well that the overwhelming number of the people I represent are guilty of some thing.

  “No, and I may have to cancel. I’ll call if I do.”

  “Okay,” Sarah says with obvious relief.

  “I’ll see you at seven. You think you can find the Hilton?”

  “Even I can find some things,” I say. Neither of us is noted for having a sense of direction. I hang up, thinking that Sarah has rarely displayed any subtlety in my presence What she is like with others I can only imagine.

  Perhaps because of her mother’s early death, no third party has buffered our relationship. There has been no mutual interpreter. Sometimes in the past, her senior year in high school especially, emotions passed between us unfiltered by thought, creating situations that were often turbulent.

  I hang up and suggest Dade call home from my room.

  Collect, I tell him. I’m not getting enough to pay his phone bills, too.

  Now it is my turn to eavesdrop. I am referred to as the “lawyer.” He looks over at me from the one chair in the room and says into the phone that “we’re going to talk.” I am reminded of my conversations with Sarah when she’s not in a mood to talk. Dade, I notice, is more respectful than my daughter, limiting his infrequent responses to “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am.” After a few moments, with a pained expression, he hands me the phone.

  “She wants to say something to you.”

  Expecting the accent of a poorly educated eastern Arkansas black woman, I am surprised to hear a rich contralto voice that rings with authority, though it still retains the drawl of the Delta.

  “Mr. Page, what happens now? Is he out of school?”

  “We’ll have to see about that,” I say.

  “I wanted to talk to him first.” I haven’t even considered the possibility that the university would not want him to come back to school. I’ve only worried whether he will be kicked off the team.

  “The incident happened off campus,” I continue “so ordinarily I would imagine it would be handled like any criminal matter. This might be different. I’ll just have to find out and let you know.”

  “I’ve told Dade to do exactly what you say,” she in forms me, “but we expect you to consult with us. When will you be in your office again? I want to meet with you face-to-face.”

  There is no give in this woman’s voice. No wonder Dade didn’t want to come home during the summer.

  “Friday,” I tell her. Why are black women so much stronger than black men? If Roy Cunningham is in the house, he must be in the bathroom. I haven’t heard a peep out of him.

  “Do you and your husband want to come over then?”

  “One of us has to be in our store,” she says.

  “I’ll see you Friday at ten. Roy has your card, doesn’t he?”

  I find myself saying, “Yes, ma’am,” and grin at
her son. After I hang up, I tell him, “Your mother doesn’t mince words, does she?”

  Dade arches his muscular frame and yawns, showing strong white teeth. I doubt if he got any sleep last night.

  “I’m surprised she let you off the phone so soon. She wanted me to go to Memphis so I’d be closer to home.”

  “I’m from eastern Arkansas, too,” I tell him to let him know we have something in common. If you’re from the Delta, Memphis means more to you than Blackwell County.

  Dade ignores my attempt at camaraderie.

  “Did she sound mad?”

  “A little,” I tell him.

  “A rape charge is serious business.”

  “Robin didn’t do nothin’ she didn’t want to do!” Dade shoots back, now rigid in the chair.

  He must be scared to death. With the image of Rodney King’s beating by the LA cops forever embedded in the national consciousness, the literature of white justice is getting richer all the time. Why should he trust the system when he has up-to-the-minute documentation that it is still brutal beyond his worst nightmare? At this point I am just another white face who will be telling him what to do. I need to humanize myself to this kid if he is going to trust me. Probably he thinks of me as another coach. If he wants playing time, he’d better make me happy, and in this situation that means telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Convincing him that all I want to hear is the truth might not be so easy. I pull out a yellow legal pad from my briefcase and begin to make some notes, first establishing that he refused to give a formal statement to the police without a lawyer being present. Thank God for TV. He sounds so vehement that I find that I tend to believe he is innocent. I want to. Rape is too ugly a crime to pretend criminal defense work is just another way to make a living.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me when you first met Robin?” I suggest.

  Instead of immediately answering, Dade bends down to tie a shoelace on his Nikes.

  “How come,” he asks, obviously not yet comfortable with me, “they hired you?

  Are you famous or something?”

  “I’ve won some cases,” I allow, “but I’m a neighbor of your Uncle James. He introduced me to your father.”

  Dade looks skeptical.

  “You live on the same street?”

  He knows as well as I do that there are few integrated neighborhoods anywhere in Arkansas.

  “I was married to a woman darker than you are,” I explain, and give him a mini-version of my marriage to Rosa. I conclude by saying, “My daughter Sarah is a cheerleader for the junior varsity.”

  “Sarah Page is your daughter?” Dade asks in amazement.

  “I know who she is. Man, she’s a …” His voice trails off.

  “A beautiful young woman,” I help him. What would he have said? A fox. A cunt? I know how guys talk about women. Or at least think, since some of us, anyway, have been forced to become so politically correct in our speech. As my friend Clan says, it’s still okay to want pussy, you just can’t say the word.

  “Yeah,” says Dade, a smile coming to his face for the first time.

  “She’s real nice.”

  Her body, he must mean, since they hardly know each other. I realize I’m glad he isn’t coming to dinner with us.

  Why? Racism? Or is it that I don’t want him sizing her up like a piece of meat? Yet, I’ve done the same a thou sand times when I’ve thought I wasn’t being observed.

  There’s a difference though. I’ve never raped anybody.

  Dade Cunningham may have. I understand now why Sarah would be uncomfortable.

  “She’s a super kid.”

  “Yeah,” Dade mutters, not at all expecting a dinner invitation nor perhaps even remotely desiring one unless I am going to pick up the check. What was I thinking when I mentioned it to Sarah? Most of my clients I wouldn’t trust to take out my garbage. Is it because this kid is a Razorback? Or have I gotten to be too impressed with the notoriety of defending high-visibility clients?

  “What happened?” I prompt him.

  He sets his jaw, and as he talks I can now hear his mother’s voice.

  “Robin was in my communications class last spring. We sat next to each other and got to be friends in that class. She was okay. I’d be nervous right before I had to make a speech, and she’d talk to me, kind of calm me down. After the pros, I want to be a sports announcer like Greg Gumbel. Anyway, I started coming to class early, so Robin and I could go over stuff if I had a speech or something. It was easy for her. She talked all the time anyway. Some white girls you know are laughing at you as soon as they’re out of sight. She wasn’t like that.”

  He pauses, and I ask, “Anybody in the class know y’all were working together?” I remember my own anxiety in a speech class taught by a retired Army colonel from Illinois My small-town eastern Arkansas accent sounded to me stupid and hicky. Try as I might, I couldn’t pronounce a single vowel to suit him.

  “Mr. Page,” he said the last week of school, “you turn single letters into whole words.” I can imagine Dade’s embarrassment and consternation if he got an asshole like Colonel Davis. No matter how intelligent he may be, Dade has already given himself away by saying “wid” for “with,”

  “chew” for “you.” Perhaps, when he really concentrates, he can sound the “s” on all his verbs, but I know from my own experience it is difficult to worry about form and sub stance at the same time.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “We’d just meet in the class room early, since it was empty. It wasn’t an everyday thing. She’d practice on me, too, when it was her turn.”

  I try to form an image in my mind of the scene he has described. With his strong chin and firm mouth Dade is undeniably handsome. Throw in his coffee-with-cream six-foot-two-inch frame, his earnest manner, and status as a Razorback, and it is easy to see why even the whitest coed in the state would be interested.

  “Did she flirt with you?”

  “You mean, did she come on to me?” Dade asks, slinging his leg over the chair, which seems built for endurance rather than comfort.

  “We kidded around some. I know it’s hard to believe, but I thought it was just a friendship thing. She was good in that class and could watch and tell you exactly what you were doin’ wrong and how to fix it.”

  I put my pen down. This kid is growing on me. He doesn’t put out the arrogant, in-your-face trash I’m accustomed to seeing on TV from some black athletes. Yet, I know I’m seeing the side he shows to his coaches.

  “Did you see her outside of class last spring?”

  The chair groans as Dade shifts his weight.

  “I invited her to a party off campus over at a friend’s place. She and a roommate came. Jus’ a couple guys from the team and two girls. Nothing happened.”

  “Tell me about it,” I encourage him.

  “Did you have sex with her that night? I hear she’s pretty goodlooking.”

  “I didn’t even touch her, man!” Dade says vehemently.

  “It was jus’ a party. I invited her, kind of to thank her for her help.”

  “What were the names of the people there?” I ask, noting his aggrieved tone. Maybe he can’t admit he was attracted to her because of his father’s admonition to stay away from white girls.

  “I’m going to need to talk to as many people as possible. The more I know about this the better off you’ll be.”

  Dade rubs his right hand over his face. This isn’t his idea of fun, obviously.

  “It was jus’ Harris and Tyrone and Tawanna and Doris. I don’t even remember her room mate’s name.”

  I try to get comfortable on the bed. This is going to be like pulling teeth.

  “Who are Harris and Tyrone and what are their last names?”

  “Harris Warford and Tyrone Jones. They’re on the team, but they don’t play much. Tawanna Lindsey was with Harris that night. Doris Macy wasn’t with anybody.

  She just kind of hangs around Ta
wanna. We cooked some ribs and drank a couple of beers. That’s all I remember.

  We ate and listened to some music, talked some. Robin’s roommate, I remember, knew a lot about sports. She asked a million questions about different team members, stuff like that.”

  “Whose place was it?” I ask, writing furiously.

  “Eddie Stiles. He’s a student,” Dade says.

  “He actually wasn’t there for the party. He jus’ lets us use it sometimes-to get away from the dorm.”

  “Did you want to have sex with her in the spring?” I ask.

  “She must have liked you, or she wouldn’t have come.”

  “I don’t know!” Dade answers irritably.

  “Nothin’ happened.

  It was just kind of a social thing.”

  Denial. I’ve never seen anybody operate without it.

  “Dade, it’s okay if you liked her sexually even the first moment you saw her. It’s human nature. We are attracted to certain people. We can’t help it. All the lectures in the world can’t change that. A jury would understand that. In fact, I doubt if they would believe you if you didn’t admit you were attracted to her.”

  Dade leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs, staring straight ahead.

  “We were jus’ friends-that’s all.”

  I see I have a lot of work to do, but it can’t be done all in one day.

  “Did you see her again outside of class in the spring?”

  He shakes his head vehemently.

  “Jus’ that one time.

  School was about out, and we had exams. I went home.”

  “Did you call her or ask her to do something before summer came and she couldn’t?”

  “I might of called her once, but outside of class I didn’t see her.”

  This kid has been brainwashed more than he realizes, but so far he is so sincere I feel good about him. Even if he is lying about his feelings, a jury in a normal case could get beyond that. The trouble is that he is black.

  They’ll have to get beyond that first.

  “So how did you be gin to have contact this fall?”

  Dade folds his arms across his broad chest.