The Other Shoe (34 page)

“Remember before? When I said I'd do anything? You know, those jailers, they never said a word to me, not one word. Never mentioned it—not even Tubby—you'd think they could've at least told me he wasn't up to snuff, or . . . not like I could do anything about it, but, ever, and he still hasn't put me on that list, either. His guest list? He just won't let me see him at all. Yeah, we'd better get it over with. Anything. That's what I said I'd do, and that's what I'll do. To get it over with.”

“I'm sure you would.”

“Well . . . ? Tell me what it takes. From me? To get this whole deal out of everybody's hair. And over with, that would be the main thing.”

“Again, I can't advise you on that. Except, I suppose I might just offer some friendly advice, some very general advice—don't do anything dumb.” At various times and in various ways, the lawyer attempted to smile; she had never in Karen's presence succeeded.

“The one thing I won't do is go to Henry's trial and testify against him.”

“You'd have to take the stand at least. They can throw you in jail until you do.”

“Okay. Then how would you, like, stop the trial?” Karen wanted to sound smarter, or truer, or more decisive. She always sounded so much better when she was talking to herself.

“That's not in our hands. Meyers could dismiss it, but I've put it to him, you know, and he tells me he'd dismiss if Henry wanted to say he was defending himself—or you. Defending you. Henry doesn't seem to want to say that.”

“Still won't? He was in a fog; I doubt he even knows what to say.”

“He doesn't want to say anything now. Nothing. Last time I spoke to Henry, he'd decided that he'd waited too long. He's decided anything he might say now would be a lie, and so now, even though they're really kind of bending over backward to give him an easy way out of this, he won't take it.”

“Yeah, but weren't you sayin', ‘Be quiet'? You told him that, I bet. I bet you told him more than once.”

“I did, and it was the right advice at the time.”

“
Everybody
. They were all pretty much sayin', I thought, you don't have to talk, or you shouldn't talk, or it was kinda like that. So now he won't talk. See?”

“Right. But now there's another way to go. It would be a lot more of a sure thing. He could even say he doesn't remember what happened, and I'm pretty sure we could get him out of jail. Something could be arranged. But he won't. He won't say anything now. And you hate to browbeat the poor guy because he does seem to be kind of fading, but at the same time, you want him out. I did tell him to not talk, and I did really emphasize it. But now we should be considering just anything that would get him out of there, so what was good advice when I gave it, is now—we have other options.”

“But if he doesn't, then that leaves you with a trial, huh? Gotta do it?”

“Right. That and the fact that there's been an opening in the judge's calendar. We might as well take it while we can.”

“But you could lose?”

“Yes. It's always possible. In fact, to tell you the truth, I usually lose.”

“And it would be murder then? They could call it murder if you lost?”

“Deliberate homicide. Yes.”

“Wow. Wouldn't that be just about it for Henry? I mean, he's gone, whatatheycallit? Up the river? Or, I mean, how would that go?”

“I'm not thinking about that right now. I want to prevent it. I
should
prevent it if I do my job right. You know, our clients call the shots—whether we go to trial or not, that's their call to make, and our clients aren't necessarily too smart about it, or use very good judgment, so we go in on a lot of unwinnable cases, lost causes. PDs do. We lose a lot at trial. But the case that really scares you is the one you know you should win, and this is . . . I probably shouldn't be telling you all this. Really, Henry could say almost anything, I think—even confess—and we'd have him out of there for good in just a couple of days. And he's, well he's in pretty tough shape, Karen. So I've advised him that he's got a way out. Several ways. But they'd all require him to say a little something.”

“I could,” she offered. “I'd say whatever they wanted me to say. Hell, let's get doin' it.”

“It wouldn't be enough. Any self-defense kind of claim, they'd have to hear it from Henry himself. He'd have to say why he thought he needed to . . . They'd kind of have to know what he was thinking. But he doesn't want to talk. Plain and simple—he's done talking, and for all I know that could still be the best idea, the best approach. Almost always is.”

“The trouble with Henry—he'll get an idea, he gets some idea in his head and then he chews himself up with it. He gets these crazy standards for himself. You leave him with his thoughts, or whatever those are, and this is what can happen. No time at all, and he's got himself to where you can't even help him very much. You know what? I think what I better do is just go ahead and tell 'em it was me. I think I better tell 'em I . . . ”

“Whooah, no,” said the lawyer. “Don't. Not if it's not true. Once again—you have the right to remain silent—but you don't have the right to lie.”

“Well, that's not too convenient, is it? How do you know I'd be lying? How do you even know what I was gonna say?”

“I don't. What I'd really like to do is just continue to bask in my ignorance, okay? This is a strange, strange . . . Henry is a very unusual . . . and you . . . I just have a hard time imagining that either one of you would do anything too awful. I like you both quite a bit, and I'm not too sure I haven't let it cloud my judgment a little bit, but I just don't see how they can prove a crime. Against anyone. I'm talking about the way I see things—as they are now—with what we all know now.” The lawyer checked her swing, hung with her hands high on the chains and, much weighted, she appeared to stare down some new thought. Karen also stopped, never wishing to interfere; in the absence of the necessary miracle, she still held out hope for a better plan, and she watched what she took to be the clouds of a forming strategy skid across the lawyer's face. But it was soon clear that the lawyer was only entertaining second thoughts, and to no good purpose, and it made Karen a little angry.

“So what about that sanity thing? What was all that about?”

“I was buying time.”

“You didn't think he was . . . he didn't understand?”

“No. I never thought that at all. I was just buying time.”

“Time for what?”

“For nothing, as it turns out. Turns out the best thing to do is just get on with it. Hope we get an acquittal. He's put us in quite a must-win situation here. And then, on top of all that—and maybe this'll make you feel a little better—he won't see me anymore. This last week he's just . . . He won't talk to me, won't talk to anybody. Apparently he's got all he can do just to tolerate it in there. I don't know exactly what his situation is because he won't even consent to see the physician's assistant. So, we're going through with it. Win or lose, we get him out of that county jail, and anything would be an improvement over that.”

N
AT HATED HER
noticeably more each Friday when she made her weekly round through the jail, met with him in the holding cell, and pissed on yet another fond scheme. His hopes. This week it had been compulsion. What about compulsion? If certain mistakes forced themselves on him, what then? How could a person like that possibly be held responsible?

It was, she told him gently, no defense under Montana law. Today Giselle must be careful of disappointing him too much or too harshly, because today she needed his help. She was not, however, certain that she could even pretend patience with him for as long as it might take to gain his cooperation; Nat's wheedling never failed to strike a proud pink nerve in her. His instincts were pure and prescient, and young Nat had discovered at once that irrational corner of his lawyer's soul where she might be convinced that the jail was filled with her fumblings. He never failed to imply that if only she were to try a little harder, if only she were more imaginative, then the innocents would be free, and the gloomy authorities hereabouts might occasionally be thwarted. Nat had disremembered how, in order to avoid having reams of evidence and a small horde of enraged witnesses pass under the judge's badly offended nose, he himself had enunciated his guilt. Under oath and in open court he had offered an almost boastful admission of the holes in his enterprises; he'd acknowledged that the Ginny LaFleaur Lingerie and Fine Fragrance Company was long out of business when he'd acted as its agent. Thermo Nuclonic Plastics, he confessed, had never existed outside his imagination.

“It was basically a concept,” he explained, “but, Your Honor, at some point, everything in trade starts out as a concept. This is economics.”

Nat had told the court that the catchphrase he'd developed—Plastics for the Hottest Eternity—had been very successful, and now he hoped to pay his debt to society and then perhaps find work in
the advertising field because he thought he might have a talent for it. Having said all this, he'd been sentenced, and, weekly since that sentence had been passed, he had been telling Giselle Meany that he could not and should not bear it. Whenever she met with him, he made her feel that she was the one who wished him punished, and that she had devised it, and that it was being carried out at her ongoing insistence. For Nat, there was no connection between anything he might have done or failed to do and his current residence, and after long exposure to it, it was very hard for Giselle not to openly loathe him, but she wanted something of him today.

“I'm losing it in here,” he now claimed. “Would that make any difference? To anybody?”

“Well, I can't get you out because you don't like it. They don't
want
you to like it.” Off in the laundry room, Tubby's tennis shoes were tumbling in the dryer. She spoke up. She was forever raising her voice. “That's sort of the point of the whole exercise. For them. You have to be good in here, Nat. It's quite important. Best thing I can tell you right now—you're probably a lot tougher than you think you are. It won't be pleasant, I'm sure, but you'll make it. You know you will.”

His shoulders sagged another few degrees. He was just plump in his orange jumper. “I now know how tough I am. Exactly how tough. Which is something I was never all that interested in finding out.”

He was a vapor never meant to be contained. He was a fart. Giselle reminded herself that the cheat would be, for his own purposes, a beating heart and striving lungs and raw confusion like anyone else. “The thing is, and I don't mean to be high-handed or anything, but the thing is, you are just not a very gifted criminal. When you get out of this, you might consider going straight. I mean, you leave such a trail.” A slug's trail, that damning slick behind him. “Receipts and everything else? You go out of your way to make such a vivid first impression. I
wonder, do you even really
try
to get away with it? I mean, maybe I could get the guy from mental health in here to see you. I guess I could do that, if you want.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that's . . .
finally
an idea.”

“He wouldn't get you out of here, though, not unless it was to send you up to Warm Springs. Indefinitely. But maybe he could prescribe something for you, if you really need it.”

“No. No. Absolutely no pills. Or—wait a minute—no. No. Not for me, thank you. Psychiatrists and all those types, they've never done me any good. No one has. This is getting—I
have
to get out of here, that's the only thing that would really work for me.” Even Nat, she was sure, could not fake despair so stark as this, but did he have to flog her with it?

“You're personable enough. Maybe you'd do well in the service industry. Did you ever think about something like that?”

He brightened. “What a coincidence. I have. I was
just
thinking the exact same thing. I'd start at the bottom, of course, washing dishes, whatever it took, whatever they needed me to do. I'd just pitch in and learn the business, and—sure, put me to work. Doesn't that make all the sense in the world? Start to rebuild my life? One brick at a time, as they say. What about a work furlough?”

“Do you have a job? A job offer?”

“No, but I could get one real fast.”

“They won't parole you to look for work.”

“Maybe you could . . . ”

“No,” she said. “I'm sorry. I think your deal is sealed. It is what you agreed to.”

“You don't know what it's like.”

“I'm sitting in it,” she said. Close, reverberant, smelly—the lockup shook her every time she came into it, and even with that, she could leave. In fact, she arranged her regular visits to the jail for this hour of
the day just so that she might go straight home afterward and shower. She made a point of shaking her clients' hands. “No, I don't know what it's like. Doesn't mean I don't sympathize with your situation. There's just nothing I can do about it. I'd guess this is probably not the best time to ask you for a favor, but I really need you to do something for me.”