Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion by Grif Stockley Page B

like any criminal matter. This might be different. I’ll just have to find out and let you know.”
    “I’ve told Dade to do exactly what you say,” she in forms me, “but we expect you to consult with us. When will you be in your office again? I want to meet with you face-to-face.”
    There is no give in this woman’s voice. No wonder Dade didn’t want to come home during the summer.
    “Friday,” I tell her. Why are black women so much stronger than black men? If Roy Cunningham is in the house, he must be in the bathroom. I haven’t heard a peep out of him.
    “Do you and your husband want to come over then?”
    “One of us has to be in our store,” she says.
    “I’ll see you Friday at ten. Roy has your card, doesn’t he?”
    I find myself saying, “Yes, ma’am,” and grin at her son. After I hang up, I tell him, “Your mother doesn’t mince words, does she?”
    Dade arches his muscular frame and yawns, showing strong white teeth. I doubt if he got any sleep last night.
    “I’m surprised she let you off the phone so soon. She wanted me to go to Memphis so I’d be closer to home.”
    “I’m from eastern Arkansas, too,” I tell him to let him know we have something in common. If you’re from the Delta, Memphis means more to you than Blackwell County.
    Dade ignores my attempt at camaraderie.
    “Did she sound mad?”
    “A little,” I tell him.
    “A rape charge is serious business.”
    “Robin didn’t do nothin’ she didn’t want to do!” Dade shoots back, now rigid in the chair.
    He must be scared to death. With the image of Rodney King’s beating by the LA cops forever embedded in the national consciousness, the literature of white justice is getting richer all the time. Why should he trust the system when he has up-to-the-minute documentation that it is still brutal beyond his worst nightmare? At this point I am just another white face who will be telling him what to do. I need to humanize myself to this kid if he is going to trust me. Probably he thinks of me as another coach. If he wants playing time, he’d better make me happy, and in this situation that means telling me what he thinks I want to hear. Convincing him that all I want to hear is the truth might not be so easy. I pull out a yellow legal pad from my briefcase and begin to make some notes, first establishing that he refused to give a formal statement to the police without a lawyer being present. Thank God for TV. He sounds so vehement that I find that I tend to believe he is innocent. I want to. Rape is too ugly a crime to pretend criminal defense work is just another way to make a living.
    “Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me when you first met Robin?” I suggest.
    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