Gibbon's Decline and Fall (29 page)

“Dr. Belmont didn't know about the rape. Lolly only answered … sort of answered Dr. Belmont's questions. I picked up on some things Belmont didn't seem to hear. Belmont didn't mention rape in her report.”

Privately, Carolyn thought that Dr. Belmont had probably done whatever she had been directed to do by Jagger's office, no more and no less. Dr. Belmont did a lot of business for the DA's office. Neither her selection nor that of Vince Harmston as defense attorney had been coincidental. Judge Rombauer had appointed them both, and it was a known fact that Jagger had never lost a case before Judge Rombauer.

When she had almost finished her lunch, Carolyn set down her fork and leaned on her elbows, speaking softly. “I've asked the DFC to help me with this. Jessamine and Ophy are going to testify. Bettiann has offered some funding help. I need a couple of researchers and some investigative work when time comes for jury selection. Bettiann's offered to help pay for it.”

“I didn't realize it would be quite so … nasty.”

“It's going to be damned hard work and very unpleasant! Jagger is never content merely to win. He likes to leave blood on the ground.”

When they had paid their bill and reached the sidewalk, Carolyn commented, “I really think it'll be better to leave Lolly Ashaler in jail. She's safer there. There she can get
bathed and fed and decently clothed. That's more than I can guarantee outside.”

“Once the media knows you're defending her …”

“If this case is being publicized, they could come after me like coyotes after a rabbit, yes. I'll worry about that when the time comes.”

They hugged briefly, then turned away in opposite directions, Stace to return to her work, Carolyn toward the parking garage. Since thinking about Jagger had already ruined her day, she might as well sink the rest of it in a visit to Lolly.

She drove south on sun-spangled pavement, watching dust devils chasing one another across the dry soil between the shrubby growths. There were those who said these deserts had been grasslands once, overgrazed by cows into their present state of desiccation. After the rains, in July and August, the desert would bloom with fragile green and sturdy gold, evanescent grass and almost immortal rabbit brush. However dead and lifeless things looked, the magical rain always made them bloom.

There had been no magical rain to make Lolly bloom. When Carolyn got to the interview room, after stopping to have a few words with Josh, Lolly was already there, slumping in the chair as though she had not moved since the time before, as dead and as arid as the desert.

“How are you feeling?” Carolyn asked.

A shrug. A sideways glance.

“I wanted to talk about whether we should try to get you out, Lolly.”

“Try to? They said I can. Get out.”

“They? Who?”

“Those womens in there. They say I can have bail.”

“You can have bail if you have five thousand dollars, Lolly. Do you have that?”

Long silence. “They said like a hunnert, maybe.”

“The judge set your bail at fifty thousand. That means you have to have five thousand to pay a bondsman.”

“You goin' to pay it?”

“Me?” She fought down rueful laughter. Laughter would be a mistake.

“You. Ainchu my lawyer?”

“Lawyers don't pay bail, Lolly. Besides, if you get out, you may be hurt. Even killed. The boys who raped you know you're going to testify. They know they could be arrested.”

The girl looked up, no longer quiescent, scenting danger. “They rather get ridda me. They don' like the tanks.”

“The hibernation tanks?”

“They hate the STOP tanks worse. Like bein' dead but awake at the same time.”

“So you're better off here, aren't you?”

“Yeah.” It was said almost with relief, as though some nagging worry had been in an instant identified and dispelled.

“How's the food?” Carolyn asked.

“Pretty good. We had mash potato las' night. We had turkey-burgers. They was pretty good.” Her voice came awake, almost cheerful. “They's a woman here, she works in the kitchen, she gives me extra stuff 'f I do her, you know.”

Carolyn did know. The distaste showed in her face.

“Hey. I gotta live, you know! You got no right tellin' me—”

“I wasn't telling you. I was just thinking if the district attorney's office finds out you've been doing a little sideline prostitution, it's going to make it harder for me to keep you out of the tanks.”

“Me?” The astonishment was real and unalloyed. “Me! They don' tank girls!”

“Yes. They do. Not many, but they do. Women who kill children they do. Juries don't like putting women to death, or putting them in prison for life, but they don't mind putting them in the tanks. It's quicker and more certain than the death penalty, Lolly.” The same effect, without all the controversy.

Sullen once more. Thoughtful, though, the brows drawn in. There was a brain struggling for light under that mop of hair. IQ about eighty, maybe. Maybe born that way, but more likely stifled from whatever it might have been with a more challenging rearing.

“There's a beauty shop in the jail, isn't there, Lolly?”

“Yeah. Place we can wash our hair, do it up. Gotta pay, though, for the stuff.”

“Get a haircut, if you can. I'll pay for it.”

Suspicion, the sullen expression, back. “Why I gotta cut it?”

“You don't have to. I thought you might like to.”

“Don' like to.”

She's fifteen, Carolyn reminded herself. Outside, she's an amoral little hooker. Inside, she's fifteen.

“There are some questions I need to ask.”

“Awright. You can ask.” A little defiance there.

“Before the boys raped you on the Fourth of July, had you ever had sex, Lolly?”

“Yeah. A few times.”

“Who with?”

“I dunno names. Guy, he offer me money if I do 'im. Tha's all.”

“Oral sex?”

“Wha'?”

“With your mouth?”

“Yeah.”

“Not the other way?”

“No. Well, maybe. A few times.”

“Because you wanted to?”

“Nah! Why'd I wan' to? It's jus', if he ask me nice an' I say no, then he beat on me and do it anyhow, so I get hurt two places. If I say yes, then at leas' I don' get hit.”

Carolyn swallowed deeply. “Did you ever use birth control, rubbers, anything like that?”

“One guy, he had rubbers. He says maybe I got AIDS.”

“Do you know about birth control?”

“Know it's a rich people's thing. They tryin' a wipe us out.”

“Who told you that?”

“People. They come around, they say birth control's tryin' a wipe us out.”

“Who's ‘us,' Lolly? Who do you mean?”

“Us. Us black people.”

“But you're not black. You're white—like we say here, Anglo.”

Lolly looked confused. “The people that come aroun', they was black.”

“The ones who told you not to use birth control.”

“They was black. They tol' me birth control is genocide.” She said the word almost proudly. “Genocide. They tryin' wipe us out, an' we got to follow the Leader an' keep our women pure an' populate the world.”

“They were Black Muslims?”

“They said they was Army of God people. Because it's a new thousan' years, time for us holy people to rise up.”

The hair rose on the back of Carolyn's neck. She swallowed painfully. “But if you're not black …”

“Us poor people gonna rise up, too. They got no right to
keep us from havin' babies. They owe us, they gotta feed us an' all the babies, an' the more babies we got, the stronger we get.”

“But you didn't want to have a baby.”

“I didn' have the stuff.…”

Carolyn sighed, sat back. “Just for a minute, Lolly, think about it. If people are sick, we try to get rid of the sickness. If people are poor, we try to get rid of the poverty. Is that bad?”

“Gettin' ridda me, that's bad.”

“Not getting rid of you. Stopping you from being poor.”

“How you gonna do that 'less you get ridda me?”

Good question. How could one ever stop Lolly from being poor? Carolyn tried to find an answer as she put her papers away, coming up with nothing at all. “I brought you some candy. It's all right. I showed it to the guard outside. You can take it.”

She did take it, a quick snatch, like an animal, afraid some other animal would get it first. She did not say thank you. On her way out Carolyn stopped across the hall, at the double doors leading into the tank room. Halfway down the aisle between the racks a slender Hispanic woman knelt in prayer, one hand resting on the tank just above her, the other, wound in a rosary, striking at her breast, once, twice, three times. She looked familiar. Carolyn stared, surprised to recognize a former housekeeper, Emilia Gonzales.

“Emilia?” She opened the door and slipped into the vast room. “Emilia?”

The head turned, the blind eyes gradually became aware. “Ms. Shepherd? Carolyn?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Teofilo. He's here.” She gestured.

Carolyn joined her beside the tank. Inside the glass the handsome face slept, serenely unaware. She remembered an olive-skinned boy with eyes like stars and a beautiful smile, playing with the dogs in the driveway while his mother did the cleaning. Emilia had worked for Hal and Carolyn for almost five years and was one of the few people who ever called her Ms. Shepherd.

“Your boy? He was just a baby last time I saw him.”

“He grew up,” Emilia said.

The clock marked the years until end of sentence. Twenty-nine years, ten months, eleven days. Illegal firearm sales. Assault on a police officer. Flight to avoid prosecution.

“I will be old when he gets out. Too old.” Tears leaked from her eyes, finding accustomed runnels down cheeks long eroded by tears.

“Emilia, I'm so sorry. I didn't know.”

“I went to your office. They said you retired.”

“They should have called me at home.”

“I looked. Your name isn't in the book.”

As it wasn't. Damn it, Jerry should have called. He knew how close she'd always felt to Emilia!

“Was there an appeal, Emilia?”

“The lawyer, he said it wouldn't work.”

“What happened?”

“He find this gun when we cleaning out my brother's house, after my brother die. It belong to my brother, Geraldo, so Teo took it to sell it to a man. The man was a policeman, he grab Teo, Teo got scared, he push him and run away.”

“I'll see what I can do. Who was your lawyer?”

“His name is Harmston. He didn't do nothing for us. Teo's brothers, they want to do something, you know, something crazy. Get him out somehow. I say no, no, is enough we got one boy lost.”

Carolyn hugged her, patted her. Damn. This boy didn't belong here! Harmston. That lazy, stupid bastard.

“Emilia, I've got a case right now, but I swear, as soon as I'm through, I'll do something about this. I promise!”

“God bless you if you do, oh, yes.” Released, Emilia knelt once more, her hand going to her breast as before. She was visiting this tank as she would a grave. For all intents and purposes, her son Teo was dead.

Josh was watching from the end of the aisle nearest the door, shaking his head sadly.

“She's got a kid in there.”

“Yes,” Carolyn said. “I know him. He doesn't belong in here, Josh.”

“I know him and his brothers. Nice kid. He don't belong in there, that's for sure. Come over here.” He led the way down a side aisle. “Look there.”

He pointed out three tanks, all together. Behind the faceplates children's faces looked out at her—beardless, slender, not more than thirteen or fourteen years old. Cisneros, Diego, Ravenna. For a moment she was astray, in a dream. She had been here before, seen this before.…

“Kids,” said Josh. “Babies. I know for a fact these three
guys wasn't the ones who robbed that store, but old God Almighty Rombauer, he likes somebody in the tank, never mind is it the right one. Some days I get to thinkin', if I knew for sure which was which, I could empty out a lot of those tanks and pop me somebody in that belongs here. Not like it used to be, guards and gates and all. Only live people we've got here are the ones waiting trial. Nobody'd ever know.”

“You could do that?” She stared at him, intrigued by the idea. “Just untank somebody?”

He put on a conspiratorial face, whispering, “Not hard. I've seen 'em do it. You just poke a few buttons, wait awhile, help the guy out, then you sterilize the case and set the buttons for the next one. The stuff you shoot 'em with before you put 'em in the tank, it's right there in the storeroom. There's nothing to it.”

“Poor Teo. You're right about there being some bad people, Josh. And there's some that aren't bad who get called bad.”

“You tellin' me? Lots of people in here don't belong here. These three kids? They're here because Rombauer didn't want them where they could talk about what happened to 'em in judge's chambers. You know what I mean.”

Her jaw dropped. She, like everyone else who frequented the courthouse, had heard rumors. “Rombauer … he abused them?”

“He told 'em to come to a little party in his office and he'd shorten their sentences.”

“How do you know?”

“Cisneros's sister. She comes to see 'em every week or so. Her brother told her, she told me. Course, we all know about old Bugger-Boy Rombauer. He's been that way forever.”

“Oh, I wish I could prove that.”

“Jagger can prove it, that's why his cases go so good. This guy of his, Dale Martin, ex-cop, ex–Green Beret, ex-a lot of things. Does a little spyin', you know. Maybe breaks a arm here or there. He drinks too much sometimes, talks a little too much. He says the DA planted a camera and got some pictures.”