Indefensible (13 page)

Kenny's truck is here, a Toyota four-wheel-drive pickup with knobby tires and chrome stacks and suspension so high, the running board hits me at midshin. He bought it this summer and keeps a photo of it in his wallet. Kenny likes things with motors. It annoys him that the lake up at our cabin doesn't allow powerboats. He wants to buy a Jet Ski.

Kenny watches TV in the other room while Flora makes dinner. Bill-the-Dog comes over to greet me, then spots Tina and veers off to give her a good sniffing. Flora seizes Tina's hand and holds on while she gazes at Tina with wide, entreating eyes that, in this instance, mean,
Maybe you'll marry my husband and phone me when he's being a jerk, and we'll be best friends, and spend hours talking about him, and about Lizzy, and about buying organic and sustainable groceries.

The hem of Tina's charcoal skirt is above the knees, which gives Bill-the-Dog an advantage. Since Tina's hands are busy being squeezed by Flora, Bill's head goes under the skirt and, complete with a full-body wag, delivers the most enthusiastic of greetings.

“Oh!” Tina squeaks, but she is heroic: She twists at the waist, maneuvering her hip between Bill's enthusiastic snout and its target while maintaining eye and hand contact with Flora for a few seconds. Then she goes to her knees and pats the ecstatic Bill, who rolls into position for a tummy rub. “Ooooh, such a happy woggy,” Tina says.

“This is Bill,” Flora says. “Bill-the-Dog.”

“Ooooh, such a fuzzy-wuzzy woggy.”

I yell up the stairs for Lizzy.

“One minute, Dad.”

“Tina has a trial tomorrow.”

“I'll hurry.”

Flora looks back and forth between Tina and me. “Are you two—”

“Sharing a ride,” I say. “We both had business at Ellisville.”

Flora has the kettle on. “Preference?” she asks, handing Tina a basket of herbal tea.

“I'm gonna haul some brick for Flora,” Kenny yells from the other room.

“Brick?”

“I'm building a patio out back,” Flora says. “Won't that be nice?” She puts tea on the table. “Kenny, will you have tea, honey?”

Flora, Tina, and I sit and pour tea. The kitchen smells of curry. There is unshucked corn on the counter.

I go into the other room and sit on the couch beside Kenny and punch him affectionately on the arm, and he punches me back, and we get into a momentary brawl and end up restraining each other, all four hands jumbled into a knot as we sit there trying to get an advantage over each other. It lasts a few seconds before we break apart. But what we were really doing, I think, in a manly, aggressive, competitive way, was holding hands. I get up and turn toward the kitchen.

“Wipe the floor with you if I wanted,” he says.

“Crush you like a worm,” I say.

On the table in the kitchen, Flora has set out tea for everyone.

“Kenny,” I say, “come have tea.”

The TV stays on, but he walks in. “Hi, Tina.”

“Isn't this nice,” Flora says. “All of us here together.”

“Lovely home,” Tina says.

“You'll stay for dinner,” Flora says.

“Couldn't possibly,” I say. “Tina has a trial tomorrow.”

“Lloyd will be here,” Flora adds, as if that should be an inducement.

“I met Lloyd,” Tina says. “The doctor.”

“Well, he was, but he got disillusioned with Western medicine, and when he used a more ethical approach, it threatened other doctors, so they had him disbarred.”

“Wrong word,” I say quietly. “Lawyers get disbarred. Doctors get, um, I don't know, something else.”

“Because heaven forbid some doctor doesn't prescribe enough pills. Prescribe, prescribe, prescribe. It was all too much for him, and he didn't have enough strength left to fight them. He just let them take his license. But he's been an immense help with my practice.”

“You're a doctor?”

“MSW, dear, personal counseling. He's helped me with a more whole-body approach to wellness.”

“Lizzy,” I yell.

“We're going to dig out all that dirt,” Kenny says, pointing out the back door. “Flatten it, you know, put down sand, then brick. Be really nice for barbecues in summer.”

“Hi, Daddy,” Lizzy says, then she spots Tina and stops to consider the situation.

“Just economizing,” I say. “Tina and I both had business at Ellisville.”

“They're staying for dinner,” Flora says. “Isn't that nice?”

“Not decided yet.”

“I've got homework,” Lizzy says.

“And Tina's trial. I think we should—”

“I'm ready to go, Daddy.”

“How is your friend?” Tina asks Lizzy. “The one with leukemia.”

“Seamus. He just e-mailed me that they've found a match for his blood type.”

“You could help us dig,” Kenny says. “We're starting tonight, me and Flo and Lloyd.”

“Love to, Kenny,” I say, “but just can't do it tonight. We'll do something soon, though. A dinner or something. Okay?”

I know how much Kenny wants to have us stay and all work on the digging together. He loves these “family” projects. His real family was a train wreck of alcoholism and domestic violence. And even though what Flora and I have to offer is a tepid imitation of normal family life, it's miles closer than anything else Kenny has been part of. In “family” pictures taken during the fifteen years he's been part of our lives, Kenny is grinning like he just won the lottery, always managing to have his arm around one of us. And in the pics from when Lizzy was a baby, it is often Kenny, a cowlick-headed boy of ten or eleven or twelve, who is holding her, making sure he has her facing the camera. I remember how he used to take one of her chubby arms in his hand and flop it up and down.
Wave,
he'd say to her,
wave at the camera.

“I love your hair,” Flora says to Tina. This is a complicated statement. Flora doesn't love Tina's hair because it's the most unattractive haircut in history, and if Flora were being honest, she'd say Tina's head looks like the hind end of a sheepdog shaved for rectal surgery. But Flora isn't lying, either, because she has found Tina's hair so disruptive to her misperception that Tina and I are
together
(meaning Tina and Lizzy will also be
together
) that she has performed an instantaneous rejiggering of everything she's ever thought about hair, and she actually does love it at this moment, on this person. “It's so . . .” Flora says, and she stops to search for a concept. Finally, she makes two fists and jabs them at each other, “Uumph,” she says.

And Flora is right. That's exactly what it is.

“Thank you,” Tina says.

Tina, Lizzy, and I go out to the car. Lizzy calls Bill-the-Dog, who bounds over, ready for whatever comes next. Bill is officially Lizzy's dog; she usually accompanies Lizzy back and forth between the two homes.

“Wait,” I say, remembering Tina's never-used backseat.

“What?” Lizzy and Tina say together.

“Nothing.” And we all get in. Lizzy is in back with our shedding, slobbering, unaccountably ecstatic Bill. Tina turns around in the driveway, and I catch sight of the tiny sign near the flagstone walk. It had faded, but now I see it is repainted with pink and orange letters and a trim of green ivy:
WELCOME TO MIDDLE EARTH.

T
he next morning, I drive Lizzy out to school in Turner. Traffic is slow. I get back to the Federal building just as Tina's trial is starting. I turn my cell off and walk into the courtroom to hear opening arguments.

Tamika Curtis reminds me of an animal that has curled up to protect itself after being snatched from home. Tamika
has
been snatched, and thanks to Kendall Vance's bullheadedness, she'll be gone for a long time. Tina made a good offer: seventy-eight to ninety-seven months. Tamika could serve her six and a half to eight years and get out, maybe with some job training, in time to recover her kids from foster care. But Kendall wouldn't go along, arrogant prick. He says he won't let us leave Tamika's daughters motherless. He's taking the case to trial. I can't imagine what he hopes to accomplish, because there's no viable defense. It'll be a bloodbath. It's cruel to raise Tamika's hopes and crueler yet to double her prison time just to stroke his own ego.

Tina gives her opening: “To children, the innocents in the schoolyard, street drugs are the looming death skulking outside the gate.” I see Kendall ready to rise in objection, because this kind of stuff—though standard for a closing argument—is on the ragged edge of acceptable openings. Which means everybody does it, but you have to move quickly, jumping to the next point before opposing counsel objects. Tina jumps.

“The evidence will show that the defendant did knowingly and intentionally participate in the manufacture of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute said methamphetamine . . .” And on she grinds, gesturing alternately toward the jury and the defendant at regular intervals, like an industrial robot delivering spot welds.

What the evidence will show is that while some eager-eyed entrepreneurs were in the kitchen cooking up a batch of meth, Tamika Curtis was out front smashing a ceramic cup with a hammer. Meth gets boiled, and some roughage—such as the porcelain chunks that Tamika was providing—helps break up the raw ingredients. For her labors, Tamika was to earn a share of the product, though not the profits from its sale. And though the evidence is sketchier, the government believes she took her runny-nosed children with her to different pharmacies, buying up Sudafed (which provides pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient for meth).

Tina finishes quickly and sits down. Kendall stands. He starts with boilerplate about presumption of innocence and keeping an open mind. He's good. He doesn't lecture—he discusses, informs. “What the evidence will show,” he says in a voice weary with the government's preposterousness, “is that some people were manufacturing methamphetamine, and they got caught. The evidence will show that to buy their way out of long prison terms, these criminals had to cooperate. Cooperate! Meaning they had to inform on someone else. But what do you do when everybody has been caught and there's no one left to inform on? What do you do when you've sworn a blood oath not to rat on your friends? (Pause.) You invent someone. (Pause.) And whom do you invent? (Pause.) How about one of the users whose life you've been ruining anyway? Someone you've been selling your poison to all along . . .”

He's smooth. But Tina will win—not because she's better but because Tamika is guilty, we have the witnesses to prove it, and juries like to convict in drug crimes. Tina is a good trial lawyer because she is organized and she prepares diligently. But she lacks Kendall's native understanding of jury psychology, and she lacks his talents as a performer. Tina is a workman in the courtroom; Kendall is an artist.

I go upstairs to my office. I haven't checked in since leaving for the prison yesterday afternoon. Janice hands me a stack of
While You Were Out
slips. I had calls from Special Agent Chip d'Villafranca, Captain Dorsey of the Troopers, Upton (right there in the next office), Kendall Vance (my nemesis), TMU (my mentor), Hollis
Phippin, and Flora. I start with Chip, get his voice mail, leave a quick message, and move on to Dorsey.

“ 'Bout time,” Dorsey says. “I've been trying all three of you. Chip, Upton, and you. I got news and nobody to share it with.”

“Got me now, Cap'n.”

“Here's the deal. Our search of Scud Illman's home turned up an old rag spattered with blood. We've matched the blood to Seth Coen.”

“Beautiful.”

“And more. In the garage, they found a cash register receipt crumpled up behind the trash barrels. It was for the purchase of a pack of Camels, time- and date-stamped to two-oh-two
A.M.
on June third, at the Seven-Eleven right across from Seymour Apartments.”

“Oof.”

“Dollars to doughnuts, Scud already had Phippin in the trunk, then he drove over to pick up Coen, buys a pack of cigs, then off to the reservoir.”

“We've got to find his car. If it's not already smelted.”

“Working on it. Let's talk this through with Chip and Upton. I'm meeting Chip at two o'clock at the Rain Tree. Join us. Or better yet, meet me there at one-thirty.”

I agree, and we sign off.

•  •  •

On my way out of the building to meet Dorsey, I stop in the courtroom again. Tina has a state trooper on the stand:

“. . . and what, if anything, did you see when you entered the kitchen?”

“Well, there was the stove, and there was this big, like, kettle . . .”

The trooper is young. He's good-looking, with a casual overhang of hair, and he looks familiar, but I can't place him. He describes what he saw in the kitchen—an obvious meth-cooking operation. Tina doesn't work him hard on the details. He's obviously not a critical witness. She finishes. Kendall stands up. “I just have a few questions, Officer Penhale . . .”

Penhale. He's the trooper who drove Lizzy and Kenny and Cassandra home from the reservoir that day. That's why he looks familiar. His hair is longer now.

“Do you recognize this woman?” Kendall Vance asks, indicating Tamika Curtis.

“No, sir.”

“No? You didn't see her the day you busted the meth lab?”

“No, sir.”

Kendall hammers on this for several minutes. He establishes that Tamika Curtis was arrested only after being named by the main guys. The cops never saw her.

I leave to meet Dorsey.

•  •  •

The Rain Tree Grill is in the old Rokeby Mills building on the river. The Rain Tree and a few other businesses, like Liquidation Sales and an army/navy surplus, moved in decades ago, but a few years back the whole complex was bought up, quaint gaslights were installed, and all the tenants except for the Rain Tree were booted to make room for boutiques. I don't see Dorsey, so I sit at the bar. You can smell the charcoal grill, and beer and coffee and clams, and the resin-y smell of unpainted wooden walls. The place has the peaceful feel of midday, when lunch is over and dinner hasn't started. Steve, the owner, rolls up behind the bar.