Pleasantville (16 page)

Lonnie rolls her eyes. “Is she for real?”

“Dad.”

It's Ellie, tapping him on the shoulder.

She's pointing toward Tilgham Street, where the Hathornes' black Cadillac is parked. Vivian and her eldest daughter, Ola, slide into the rear as Axel climbs into the front. Frankie, the Hathornes' driver, is coming up the church walk toward Jay. He pulls off his hat, wipes a film of sweat from his freckled brow, and speaks, so softly that Jay has to ask him to repeat himself. “Sam wants you to take a ride with us to the house. Says it's urgent.” Frankie's eyes dart left and right, looking at the crowd, the pastor nearby. “He said to come get you right away.”

“What's this about?”

“I'm just saying what he told me to say, sir.”

“I've got my kids here.”

“I can take them,” Lonnie says, as Ben arrives holding a hot link wrapped in a slice of white bread in each of his small hands. “I mean, if you need it.”

Jay looks at Ben, then Ellie. “You guys okay?”

Ellie nods, and Lonnie puts an arm around Ben.

Jay turns to Frankie. “I'll follow you.”

The ride is just a few short blocks.

He parks his Land Cruiser behind the Cadillac, right in front of Sam Hathorne's house. Axel's out of the car first. As he makes his way up the front walk, he doesn't look at Jay. Vivian and Ola decline to exit the car, and Frankie remains behind the wheel, letting the Cadillac's engine idle softly.

Jay lingers in his car, hesitating for a few seconds, a bad feeling in his gut. Finally, he climbs out, heading for the house. Inside, he finds Sam and Axel in the living room, Sam with his back to the door, standing by the bar, pouring himself a drink. “Absolutely not,” he's saying to his son. “You stay as far the hell away from this as possible, for as long as possible. Wolcott gave us a head start with the press. She swears she had nothing to do with it, has promised to recuse herself from any supervision of the case.” He's still wearing his hat and his overcoat.

“What's going on?” Jay says.

Sam throws back the scotch. “Neal's been arrested.”

“I still think I should go down there,” Axel says.

“Arrested for what?”

“Obstruction.”

“The Nowell girl?”

“They think he knows more than he's saying.”

“He's in custody?”

“Downtown.”

“They picked him up at his house, six o'clock this morning, not even an hour after the girl was found,” Axel says. “No way this isn't Wolcott's doing.”

“I wouldn't have thought she'd go this low,” Sam says.

“Then it's Parker.”

“Either way, he's in trouble.”

“They're holding him?” Jay asks, slightly incredulous.

Sam pours another drink.

“Slow down, Dad.”

“He'll bail out today,” Sam says. “They'll arraign him tomorrow.”

He throws back the drink, setting the tumbler on the bar top. With his back still partially turned, he pauses in silence, taking a moment that only he knows the meaning of, staring at family photographs along the wall, his grown kids. Jay has
never seen him so retiring, so waylaid by an emotion Jay can name only as dread. Sam turns to look at him, lifting his gray fedora to perfect its position on the slim pompadour on his head. “I appreciate what you did for Neal the other day. But he needs a lawyer
now
more than ever.”

Jay looks between the two men, both of whom are staring back at him, waiting for him to do the simple arithmetic of why he's been summoned here.

They can't be serious, he thinks.

“He needs a criminal defense lawyer,” he says.

“What he needs is someone to get him through the next thirty-six hours,” Sam says. “Wolcott swore she gave us a head start, no leaks to the press, but–”

“We have no reason to trust her.”

“And, one way or another, by tomorrow, the paper will have the story.”

“If not sooner,” Axel says. “I can't see any reason why she and Parker would fabricate a charge and then not call the goddamned newspaper themselves.”

“We don't know they did that, Axe.”

“The woman has a whole prosecutor's office at her disposal. And twenty-six days before the runoff, my campaign manager and nephew gets arrested for withholding evidence in the investigation into what is now a
murder
in the very neighborhood where her opponent was raised. It's front-page news.”

Axel is pacing, fuming.

“We don't think the charges are of any substance,” Sam says calmly. “We just want to get out ahead of the story, protect Neal, and also protect the campaign, of course. But the clock is already running on this thing.”

“Where's Marcie, your press aide?”

“You're the only one we've told,” Axel says.

“Me?”

“We need you to do us this favor.”

“People
like
you, Jay,” Sam says. “They trust you, think you're a man who's always on the right side of things. Neal walks into a courtroom tomorrow, you at his side, and it sends a message to the city that a man, a good man, a man Pleasantville has chosen to honor and to protect their interests, is standing by Neal. It sends a message that a whole community is standing by the Hathornes, a message to Wolcott in particular, making her question her tactics, how far she wants to push things, what with a voting bloc at play.”

“You want to use me as a prop?”

“I want you to do me a favor.”

“It's thirty-six hours,” Axel says. “They're never going to take this to trial. They might even drop the charges before this goes to court, after squeezing a few front-page stories out of it. I'm fairly certain this will all blow over tomorrow.”

“We just need to help my grandson, who, smart as he is, does not know as well as you and I what can go wrong inside a police station, let alone a courtroom, how quickly things can get out of control. We just need to get Neal out of that police station, and out of this whole mess safely,” Sam says. “You have a son, don't you, Jay?”

“Stop,” Jay says. He doesn't need that kind of pitch.

“I'm begging here, Jay, and I
don't
beg. And I never forget a favor.”

“You must have at least fifteen lawyers you could call, all with more criminal experience than me, all more than willing to take your money.”

“And don't think the press doesn't know it too,” Axel says.

“It's a bad play.” Sam is shaking his head. “I don't want anyone thinking I'm buying Neal's way out of something, or that we're hiding behind money, or that he has anything to
hide at all. If we bring a gun to a knife fight, people will make more of it than it is, start asking questions about Neal.”

“Questions like what?”

Jay looks at Sam, and at Axel.

They're too quiet, he thinks.

“You know where he was Tuesday night?”

“He says he was working,” Sam says.

“Work that he didn't bother to put on the campaign schedule?”

“I have no reason not to believe him.”

“They found his number in her pager, you know. Did it ever occur to you that the cops might be right, that Neal knows more than he's saying?”

“It's a stunt, Jay.”

“I hate to back you into this,” Axel says. “I hate to trade on our past.”

“But there's no one else for this,” Sam says. “You as Neal's lawyer in the courtroom, you'll put an indignant spin on the arrest, messing with Neal on a bullshit obstruction charge while there's a killer still out there. It's a thing of gold you got, really. A reputation like yours can be worth a lot of money.”

“I don't want your money.”

“That's the beauty of it,” Sam says, smirking a bit and slurring his words, looking, despite the circumstances, almost pleased with himself. “You're clean, son. Not a soul in Harris County thinks Jay Porter does anything for money.” He reaches into his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes, wobbling a bit on his bad leg, ignoring his son's advice to slow down on the scotch. “But you and I know better, don't we, Jay?” he says, lighting a cigarette. He exhales, blowing a hot breath of nicotine and liquor in Jay's direction. “For what it's worth, I think Jelly Lopez is a fool for turning his back on you, and I am alarmed by the number of plaintiffs who've been swayed by Ricardo Aguilar's promise
of a pipe dream, more signing that petition every day I'm told. I'd certainly be willing to do everything in my power to stem the tide, reverse it even.” He comes closer, moving his short bowlegs like fragile twigs, using the edge of a nearby chair to steady himself. “How much have you laid out on Pleasantville so far? It must be in the hundreds of thousands by now. Tell me, Jay, has it hit a million yet?”

Jay puts out a hand, anything to make him stop talking.

“Thirty-six hours,” he says.

He'll take the deal on the table, his name and likeness in exchange for Pleasantville, his retirement plan, his ticket out.
I can wait
, he thinks.
I can wait it out, B, long as it takes
. He nods toward the open bottle of scotch. “Pour me one of those too.”

“Everything okay?”
Lonnie asks, when he comes for the kids.

“I'll let you know tomorrow.”

He's known Lonnie a good fifteen years and Neal Hathorne a matter of days, but Neal is his client now, and, for better or worse, there are things he's not at liberty to discuss, not now at least. He thanks her for the afternoon, walking his kids outside to the curb. Over the roof of her crumbling, redbrick duplex, he can hear the hum of the Cowboys and 49ers game playing on the outdoor speakers at the Ice House on West Alabama, the bar's patio abutting the rear border of Lonnie's weed-choked backyard. The howl of beer-soaked cheer floats over the wooden fence. They're smoking links and brisket on a grill behind the bar's kitchen. Starving, Jay takes the kids to James Coney Island for chili dogs on the way home. Walking into the house later, he tells them he needs them up and at 'em early tomorrow, something big going on for him downtown. “I don't have school, remember?” Ellie says, clearing away the leftover breakfast dishes without being asked, either out of genuine contrition
for her outburst this morning or to soften this reminder that she was suspended from school. Jay had completely forgotten. He sighs, trying to figure just how this is going to work. He doesn't want her home alone, not with the mysterious man in the Z on the loose. “I guess this means you're coming with me,” he says. “Dress for court.”

“What does that mean?”

“No jeans.”

The formal charges
of obstructing a government operation into the investigation of the death of Alicia Ann Nowell are to be read at one thirty this afternoon, sandwiched into a docket filled with DWIs and domestic-assault charges, and any other leftovers from the weekend arrests. Jay has arranged to meet Neal an hour before that, when most court watchers are out to lunch. He's to come alone, no campaign staff, as too many of them together at one time might as well be a campaign event; Neal on his own will draw far less attention.

Jay will be waiting.

Until then, he's holed up at his office on Brazos.

Eddie Mae has made a proper fuss over Ellie, bringing her glasses of lemon tea and letting her use the desktop computer.
Ellie's been asking Jay for an e-mail account for a few months now. “Maybe,” he tells Eddie Mae, “it's something you can set up for her,” as Jay doesn't know the first thing about how one would go about sending a message from one computer to another. He stows himself away upstairs, in the conference room, picking through the old Cole Oil files, still trying to see if anything's been stolen. A little after ten, he hears Eddie Mae coming up the stairs, the ancient wood steps creaking beneath her weight and the thick soles of her Clarks. About halfway, she stops and demands he meet her there, holding out a box full of invoices when he starts down the stairs. “It's everything. Every receipt for which we were billed on
Ainsley v. Cole Oil Industries
, from trial prep through litigation, years' worth.”

“Thanks.”

“And Jelly Lopez called,” she says with a sigh, leaning her weight against the carved stair railing. “He'll put it all in writing, but he's officially informing you that he's releasing you of your duties as his attorney. His words, not mine. He wants his name off the suit, and he wants copies of any of the official case filings with his name on them, as well as a copy of his initial interview, his client forms, and his deposition. You got six more calls just like it. Rodriguez, Vega, Patricia Rios, plus Fred Poynter, Ned Werner, and Jim Wainwright.”

That last one hurts. “Jim? Are you sure?”

“Don't shoot the messenger.”

He tells her not to copy a thing. “Don't promise anybody anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

He takes the box of invoices back into the conference room.

He spreads them out across an open corner of the table. Hotel receipts, rental car slips, office supply delivery notices, plus a whole accordion file folder's worth of billing from experts and extralegal help. Most of it is organized by date. It
was late April 1982 when he went to meet a Nathan Petty in Arizona. Petty's name was on a list of former residents of the neighborhood across from the old Crystal-Smith Salt Company and the salt mines where Cole Oil had been illegally storing crude oil for years. Like dozens of others, Petty and his wife, Hannah, were bought out by a development company that for months had been courting local residents, pressing them to sell the homes they'd lived in for decades. The company originally said it was planning to build a shopping mall on the site, then a beauty college. Erman Ainsley, stubborn as shoe leather, was the only one who refused to sell. It was their chance meeting, his and Jay's, that led to the lawsuit–Ainsley's tales of a pretty young real estate agent sashaying through the streets of his neighborhood, batting eyelashes through sales pitch after sales pitch, that allowed Jay to lay the final piece in a puzzle he'd been worrying over for days. Crucial to proving the conspiracy was the testimony of Ainsley and the other men and women living across from the salt mines, detailing the deception of one Elise Linsey, representative and sole employee, it turned out, of Stardale Development Company. The development company was nothing but a front for Cole Oil, a scheme to cover what it had been doing when crude oil started coming up in Ainsley's neighbors' backyards; Elise Linsey was a plaything of Thomas Cole's, a lover and disciple. It just had to be proved that the shell company was pushing for the home sales, faking countless property inspections, never mentioning the toxic ground just a few feet below the surface, where black oil was seeping from the unstable salt mines.

Which is why Nathan Petty presented a problem for Jay, when he finally located Petty living in a suburb of Phoenix. Mr. Petty seemed to remember a different sequence of events from every single one of his former neighbors–or rather he
couldn't with any consistency remember the sequence of any events at all. Had Stardale pressured him to sell, or had
he
, in fact, been the one to reach out to Stardale? An improbability that left open the possibility that Stardale was not a vulture swooping down on unsuspecting homeowners at the behest of Cole Industries, but a legitimate business. “The thing is, I just can't remember how I got that gal's card,” Petty had said to Jay. A good defense lawyer could make a meal out of this single crumb, if he or she was crafty enough. Petty's shitty memory was enough to win the case for Cole. Jay had been all set to take the man's deposition when he suddenly hesitated, stepping outside to call his wife for guidance. Two minutes later he was standing on the man's front porch telling the hired court reporter, who'd arrived late, that he wouldn't need her services after all. She shrugged and lugged her machine back to her Toyota Celica. The Phoenix-based agency billed Jay for the day anyway, because he'd canceled at the last minute. He is right now staring at the invoice, the only proof that he ever called a court reporter, with the implied intention to depose a witness, to the address of Nathan Petty–a man who, as far as opposing counsel was concerned, had never been found. “Do it for them,” Bernie whispered to him that night, when he made it back to Houston.
Do it for your clients.
She told him he shouldn't tank his whole case because of the faulty memory of a senile old man (who died before a verdict was ever read, before anyone but Jay knew he had been residing in Phoenix for years). She came close to suggesting he had a
moral
obligation to omit this one fact in service to a higher truth, more substantive and meaningful than what usually manages to squeeze its way through the cracks in the rules of law. But Jay Porter was the one with the bar card, the one who took an oath to uphold those very rules, including but not limited to the rules of discovery. He was the one who knew better.

He folds the yellowing invoice, lining up the edges with precision, and tucks it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The agency itself surely has its own copy. Someone would just have to know to look for it. The question is whether or not Thomas Cole hired someone to break into Jay's office and snoop around for proof, whether he already knows about Nathan Petty.

Neal is
late, of course.

Jay glances at his watch, then at his daughter, who is leaning against the tiled wall of the seventeenth floor of the courthouse, hands in the pockets of her denim skirt, perhaps thinking she should have listened when he told her to bring a book. “I'm bored,” she says, staring down the tiled hallway at the lawyers lugging scuffed briefcases, and at the spectators and jurors loitering near the washrooms. He smiles at her, trying not to show his nerves, embarrassed by them in some way, a fish afraid to swim. He hasn't been in a courtroom since Bernie died, hasn't been in this very courthouse since before Ellie was born. It's warmer than he remembers; the lights are brighter too. But the smell is the same: coffee and industrial-grade disinfectant, and the musk of fear. It brings back a thousand memories, petty theft and solicitation, misdemeanor assault and the like, criminal cases that were the bottom rung of his practice for years. “Hey, you know about computers, right?” he says to Ellie, remembering her hunched over Eddie Mae's desk. “You want to do your dad a favor?” Ellie comes off the wall with a shrug. Jay reaches for a slip of paper from his jacket pocket. On it, he scribbles the name Ricardo Aguilar.

According to the state bar directory, a copy of which Jay keeps on a shelf behind his desk, Mr. Aguilar has been licensed to practice law for only three years and lists as his primary field “criminal law,” which Jay finds odd to say the least. He has no
idea if Aguilar has ever tried a
civil
case, let alone a class action suit as big as Pleasantville's. But at least here, in the
criminal
courthouse, he can access Aguilar's entire history as a defense lawyer. He sends Ellie down to the third floor. “Log on to one of the terminals and type in this name,” he says. “Tell one of the clerks to print out everything that comes up.”

Ellie nods, a tiny smile cracking through the facade of teenage weariness. She seems surprised, excited even, to be asked. “I can do that,” she says.

“I know.”

Jay watches her go, and he waits.

He's already been into and out of the 209th District Court twice, once looking for Neal when he first arrived, and then again fifteen minutes later so he could introduce himself to the judge's clerk, because he remembered that's how it's done. From her, he received a copy of the official complaint against his client, filed by the D.A. handling the matter, plus what little discovery exists at this stage. All of it–the arrest report, Detective Hank Moore's statement on the issue of probable cause, and notes from his interviews with Neal Hathorne and Tonya Hardaway, field director for the Hathorne campaign–is barely five pages long, but not without its share of surprises.

“You fired her?” he says when Neal finally arrives in wrinkled slacks and shirtsleeves, looking as though he's just come from the campaign office. He stares at the papers in Jay's hand and then makes a grab for them.

“Where did you get this?”

“Come with me,” Jay says, pulling him down the hall.

Inside the seventeenth-floor men's room, he checks stalls one through five, all empty, then puts his back against the washroom door, turning to face Neal.

“You fired your field director a day after she talked to Detective Moore.”

“I would have fired her for talking to my grandmother without running it by me first. You can't do that kind of shit in the middle of a campaign.”

“It looks bad, Neal,” Jay says. “It looks like obstruction.”

“This is all Reese Parker, you understand that, don't you? The arrest, using Wolcott's office to file charges on
me
. This will go down in history as one of the boldest moves that's ever been pulled, having the opposing candidate's campaign manager arrested,” he says. “My kids will be talking about this.”

“Tonya gave them a copy of the schedule, Neal. Tuesday night, all key campaign staff can be tracked by the minute, everyone except you, from about seven to nine thirty that night. So again, where were you, Neal?”

Neal rolls his eyes at Jay's earnestness, his honest belief that there's anything to this little judicial charade. “Let's just get this over with,” he says, pushing past Jay, through the washroom door and into the hall.

They are not even speaking to each other when they enter the courtroom, which is packed after lunch. Gregg Bartolomo is here, having received a tip in time to hear the judge call the first item on the afternoon's calendar. But the sight of Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux in the second row of the gallery is Jay's first clue that something is wrong. Why, he thinks, are they here for an arraignment on an obstruction charge? Maxine, in a white T-shirt like the one she wore the morning of the search, is staring at Jay. The judge, nearing seventy, his pale, freckled pate shining under fluorescent bulbs, enters and takes a seat at the bench, calling the Hathorne matter first. “Do we have counsel present?” he says. He looks over the black rims of his reading glasses.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Jay says.

“Is the defendant present?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, approach, please.”

There's a small wooden gate between the gallery and the well. Jay holds it open for Neal, nudging him to the defense table on the left. On the other side of a lectern, the assistant district attorney handling the matter has his head in a stack of paperwork at the state's table. “All right,” the judge says. “I've got here
State of Texas v. Neal Patrick Hathorne
.” He looks up. “Appearances?”

“Jay Porter for the defense.”

“Matt Nichols for the state, Your Honor.”

The judge looks at Jay. “Is your client ready to be arraigned, Counselor?”

Neal speaks before Jay has a chance to. “No, Your Honor.”

Jay turns to his client. “What are you doing?”

“Mr. Porter?”

“Your Honor, can you give us a minute?”

“A very short minute.”

Neal, the former law student, lowers his voice. “I want to defer my arraignment,” he whispers to Jay. “The runoff is in twenty-five days. If they still want to charge me, they can charge me after Axel's elected mayor.”

Fine, Jay thinks.

That's way past his thirty-six hours.

“Judge, on the matter of the obstruction charge,” he says, “we'd ask for a deferred arraignment on this. My client has already posted bond to the court.”

“I'm sorry,” the judge says, looking down at his papers. “I'm looking here at a charge of capital murder.” He looks up, ripping off his reading glasses, staring down at Jay and his client. “What are you two talking about?”

The assistant D.A., Mr. Nichols, a sandy-haired lawyer in his
thirties, raises a hand. “That's my fault, Your Honor, Mr. Porter doesn't have a copy of the amended complaint. This came down from the grand jury this morning.”

“What's going on?” Neal whispers in disbelief.

Jay feels his stomach sink. “They think you did it.”

“What?” He looks at his lawyer, then the judge. “Are they serious?”

“They have an indictment.”

“This is absurd.”