Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion (7 page)

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 Tawanna. 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.

“She’s a cheerleader, so I’d see her at pep rallies, and I was in this course called public speaking with her. She didn’t get friendly like she was last semester until a couple of weeks ago, and then we started working together like we did before.”

“So it was her idea,” I conclude, watching his face carefully. This kid seems incapable of guile, but I remind myself I’ve had plenty of clients who had no difficulty believing their own lies.

“Now it seems that way,” he says thoughtfully.

“She’d talk at the first of the semester, but it was like she was too busy.”

“Had you asked her to work together, and she hadn’t wanted to, or what?” So far it seems that Robin called the shots.

“Not really,” Dade replies casually.

“You can jus’ tell.”

This kid is more sensitive than a lot of guys his age.

His light color may have something to do with that. Thus far, he seems about as far from a rapist as I can imagine.

“So you just started working together again?”

“Yeah,” he says blankly.

“We had a big speech coming up, and we agreed to get together and work on it a little bit the night before.”

“Whose idea was that?” I ask.

“Well, this fall we didn’t have a chance to practice be fore class. She had something before ten. I guess I did.”

“So did you suggest a place or she?” Robin could have easily manipulated this conversation. Dade seems as naive as most boys about girls. Yet, even if he is not, he gives the appearance of having been reluctant to push too hard.

“I remember talking about our rooms,” Dade says, “but you can’t study there with all the shit that goes on. I guess I suggested Eddie’s house if he wasn’t going to be there.”

Robin could have easily made this idea inevitable without saying a word about it. If this case goes to trial, one mother on the jury with a son the right age could hang up the case. Mothers know what idiots their male children can be.

“Who’s this Eddie again? What’s his last name and where’s his apartment?”

“House,” Dade answers.

“It’s a rented house on Happy Hollow Road. I don’t even know if it’s in the city limits.

Eddie Stiles. He’s just a student that kind of hangs around the players a lot. He’s okay. He lets guys use it pretty much whenever they want.”

“Is he rich?” I guess, wondering how common this arrangement is. With all the wannabes and hangers-on surrounding the Razorbacks, it can’t be terribly unusual.

I wonder if any NCAA rules are being violated.

“I heard his family owns a big funeral home in Tulsa,” Dade admits.

“He drives a new Cutlass.”

I wonder if he is black, but at this stage it seems rude to ask. I don’t want to turn Dade off. A lot of white kids have too much money; why shouldn’t one or two blacks?

“I take it that he wasn’t around that night?”

“I didn’t see him the whole day,” Dade says.

I assume the cops have talked to Eddie. He could help or hurt. Either way, I need to talk to him.

“Did you drive over together?”

“She said she’d meet me there,” Dade says.

I wonder about Robin’s motive. It sounds as if she wanted to be able to leave if Dade got out of hand. I am writing with my legal pad on my knees, and the bed creaks every time I shift my weight. Too bad the Ozark’s decorating budget didn’t allow for a table.

“Why don’t you just tell me from the moment she showed up what happened?”

Dade grabs the sides of his chair.

“It wasn’t ten minutes before she had forgot about the speech. You can tell when a girl wants to be fucked, jus’ the way she looks and acts.”

I interrupt, “How was she dressed?” I need to see a picture of Robin, so I can get an image in my mind of what happened.

“Skirt and sweater,” he says.

“She always dressed up, even for class.”

I remember seeing Robin, but it was from Row 42 in War Memorial Stadium at Little Rock during the Memphis game two weeks ago. As bad as my eyes are getting, I could have been standing next to her and not have recognized her.

“Did you have anything to drink,” I ask, “or could you tell if she had been drinking?” A good answer would be helpful here. If she had been juicing herself up beforehand, it would at least be arguable she had more than studying on her mind.

“I smelled wine on her breath, but we didn’t have any thing at Eddie’s. It happened pretty fast.”

“Did Eddie just leave his place unlocked?” I ask, glad I didn’t have a friend like Eddie in college. I got in enough trouble.

“He gave me a key,” Dade says.

“A couple of guys had them.”

I think I’m getting the picture.

“So it wasn’t uncommon to take girls over there.” Robin shouldn’t have been there. No woman asks for rape, a logical impossibility if there ever was one, but perhaps someone on the jury will want to punish her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they had really wanted to find a place on campus to study, it would have been easy enough.

“Not really,” Dade says.

“You got to get off campus sometimes.”

“So you’ve slept with girls over there before?” I say bluntly.

Dade makes an angry face for the first time.

“I didn’t rape nobody though. If you’re an athlete on this campus, you can get girls. That’s no shit.”

“Were you attracted to her?” I ask again, knowing this is a sore point with him, given the lectures he must have received from his parents.

I hear Dade’s stomach growl. Jail is a great place to be gin a diet. Patting his stomach through his wrinkled shirt, he says, “She wasn’t my type. A little thin, you know what I mean? No titties, no butt. I like girls with meat on ‘em.”

I scribble as fast as I can.

“So what did she do?” I ask, knowing there are a hundred details to fill in. But Dade seems in no mood at this first meeting to write a book on the subject.

He looks at a spot on the ceiling and says emphatically, “She wanted it. She came over to the sofa and took this paper out of my hand and sat down by me. She started writing on it, and talking, kind of bumping against me on the sofa. Hell, I knew what she wanted and I kissed her.

And before I knew it we were in the shower and damn she was hot! Shit! What else could I do? I only fucked her once, and then she got out of bed and took off like a bat out of hell. It was like she got what she came for, and that was all she wanted. While we were doin’ it, she didn’t complain or tell me to stop or nothin’.”