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"He&039;s crazy"
"What&039;re you working on?"
"I&039; the brief to support our position that the
details of the rape should be discussed before the jury It looks good, at this point"
"When will you finish it?"
"Is there soot another chore, soal pad away and listened
"The State&039;s psychiatrist will be Dr Wilbert Rode-heaver, head of staff at Whitfield He&039;s been there forever, and has testifed in hundreds of cases I want you to dig a little and see how often his name appears in court decisions"
"Fve already run across his name"
"Good As you know, the only cases we read about from the Supreme Court are the ones where the defendant at trial was convicted and has appealed The acquittals are not reported I&039;mfrom?"
"I have a hunch Rodeheaver is very reluctant to give an opinion that a defendant was legally insane There&039;s a chance he&039;s never done it Even in cases where the defendant was clearly crazy and did not knohat he was doing I&039;d like to ask Rodeheaver, on cross-examination, about so wrong with an obviously sick man, and the jury acquitted him"
"Those cases will be very hard to find"
"I know, but you can do it, Row Ark I&039;ve watched you work for a week now, and I know you can do it"
"I&039;m flattered, boss"
"You may have to make phone calls to attorneys around the state who&039;ve crossed Rodeheaver before It&039;ll be hard, Row Ark, but get it done"
"Yes, boss I&039;m sure you wanted it yesterday"
"Not really I doubt if we&039;ll get to Rodeheaver next week, so you have some time"
"I don&039;t kno to act You ent?"
"No, but that rape brief is"
"Yes, boss"
"Have you had lunch?"
"I&039;ry"
"Good Don&039;t make any plans for dinner"
"What does that ot an idea"
"Sort of like a date?"
"No, sort of like a business lunch with two professionals"
Jake packed two briefcases and left "I&039;ll be at Lu-cien&039;s," he told her, "but don&039;t call unless it&039;s a dire eency Don&039;t tell anyone where I a on?"
"The jury"
Lucien had passed out drunk in the swing on the porch, and Sallie was not around Jake helped himself to the spacious study upstairs Lucien had more law books in his home than most lawyers had in their offices He unpacked his mess in a chair, and on the desk he placed an alphabetical list of the jurors, a stack of three-by-five notecards, and several Magic Markers
The first nae print across the top of a notecard with a blue Magic Marker Blue for ender Under Acker&039;s nae, about forty Married to his second wife, three children, two daughters Runs a shway in Clanton Wife, secretary at a bank Drives a pickup Likes to hunt Wears cowboy boots Pretty nice guy Atcavage had gone to the hardware store Thursday to get a look at Barry Acker Said he looked okay, talked like he had some education Jake wrote the number nine by the name Acker
Jake was impressed with his research Surely Buckley would not be as thorough
The next name was Bill Andrews What a name There were six of them in the phonebook Jake knew one, Harry Rex knew another one, and Ozzie knew a black one, but nobody knehich one got the summons He pvut a question mark by the name
Gerald Ault Jake smiled when he wrote the nah his office a few years back when the bank foreclosed on his house in Clanton His as stricken with kidney disease, and the medical bills broke them He was an intellectual, educated at Princeton,
where he met his wife She was from Ford County, the only child of a once prominent family of fools who had invested all their money in railroads He arrived in Ford County just in tio under, and the easy life he had ht school for a while, then ran the library, then worked as a clerk in the courthouse He developed an aversion to hard work Then his wife got sick, and they lost their modest house He noorked in a convenience store
Jake knew so about Gerald Ault that no one else knew As a child in Pennsylvania, his faht while they slept, the house caught fire A passingthe Aults The fire spread quickly, and when Gerald and his brother awoke they were trapped in their upstairs bedroom They ran to theand screas yelled helplessly from the front lawn Flames poured from everyin the house except for their bedrooarden hose, dashed into the burning house, fought the flah the bedroorabbed Gerald and his brother, and juround Miraculously, they were not hurt They thanked hier, whose skin was black He was the first Negro the children had ever seen
Gerald Ault was one of the fehite people in Ford County who truly loved black people Jake put a ten by his nah the jury list,each juror in the box and in deliberation, talking to each one He rated theot an autoher than the wohtly higher than the uneducated; the liberals, both of thes
He eli about one hundred and eleven of the prospective jurors Surely, Buckley could not know soon Ethel&039;s machine when Jake returned from Lucien&039;s She turned it off, closed the law books she was typing from, and watched him
"Where&039;s dinner?" she asked with a wicked s a road trip"
"All right! Where to?"
"Have you ever been to Robinsonville, Mississippi?"
"No, but I&039; but cotton, soybeans, and a great little restaurant"
"What&039;s the dress code?"
Jake inspected her She wore the usual-jeans, neatly starched and faded, no socks, a navy button-down that was four sizes too big but tucked in nicely above her slender hips
"You look fine," he said
They turned off the copier and the lights and left Clanton in the Saab Jake stopped at a liquor store in the black section of town and bought a six-pack of Coors and a tall, cold bottle of Chablis
"You have to bring your own bottle to this place," he explained as they left town The sun was setting into the highway ahead, and Jake flipped down the sun visors Ellen played bartender and opened two cans
"How far is this place?" she asked
"Hour and a half"
"Hour and a half! I&039;"
"Then fill up on beer Believe me it&039;s worth it"
"What&039;s on the s, and charbroiled catfish"
She sipped on the beer "We&039;ll see"
Jake stepped on the gas, and they raced across bridges over the countless tributaries of Lake Chatulla They clireen kudzu They flew around corners and dodged pulpwood truckstheir last runs of the day Jake opened the sunroof, lowered the s and let the wind blow Ellen leaned back in the seat and dosed her eyes Her thick, wavy hair swirled around her face
"Look, Row Ark, this dinner is strictly business-"
"Sure, sure"
"I mean it I&039;m the employer, you&039;re the e et any lustful ideas in your ERA, sexually liberated brain"
"Sounds like you&039;re the one with the ideas"
"Nope I just knohat you&039;re thinking"
"How do you knohat I&039;? Why do you assu a big seduction scene?"
"Just keep your hands to yourself I&039;eous ho&039;d kill if she thought I was fooling around"
"Okay, let&039;s pretend to be friends Just two friends having dinner"
"That doesn&039;t work in the South A male friend cannot have dinner with a female friend if the male friend has a wife It just doesn&039;t work down here"
"Why not?"
"Because men don&039;t have fele man in the entire South who is oes back to the Civil War"
"I think it goes back to the Dark Ages Why are Southern women so jealous?"
"Because that&039;s the e&039;ve trained them They learned from us If my wife met a male friend for lunch or dinner, I&039;d tear his head off and file for divorce She learned it from me"
"That makes absolutely no sense"
"Of course it doesn&039;t"
"Your wife has no male friends?"
"None that I know of If you learn of any, let me know"
"And you have no female friends?"
"Why would I want female friends? They can&039;t talk about football, or duck hunting, or politics, or lawsuits, or anything that I want to talk about They talk about kids, clothes, recipes, coupons, furniture, stuff I know nothing about No, I don&039;t have any female friends Don&039;t want any"
"That&039;s what I love about the South The people are so tolerant"
"Thank you"
"Do you have any Jewish friends?"
"I don&039;t know of any in Ford County I had a real good friend in law school, Ira Tauber, from New Jersey We were very close I love Jews Jesus was a Jew, you know I&039;ve never understood anti-Semitism"
"My God, you are a liberal How about, uh, homosexuals?"
"I feel sorry for the But that&039;s their problem"
"Could you have a ho as he didn&039;t tell me"
"Nope, you&039;re a Republican"
She took his empty can and threw it in the back seat She opened two one, and the heavy, humid air felt cool at ninety miles an hour
"So we can&039;t be friends?" she said
"Nope"
"Nor lovers"
"Please I&039; to drive"
"So what are we?"
"I&039;m the lawyer, you&039;re the law clerk I&039;m the employer, you&039;re the eofer"
"You&039;re the male, I&039;m the female"
Jake admired her jeans and bulky shirt "There&039;s not much doubt about that"
Ellen shook her head and stared at theby Jake sotiated a series of intersections on the rural, deserted highways and, suddenly, the hills disappeared and the land became flat
"What&039;s the name of the restaurant?" she asked
"The Hollywood"
"The what?"
"The Hollywood"
"Why is it called that?"
"It was once located in a small town a few miles away by the name of Hollywood, Mississippi It burned, and they moved it to Robinsonville They still call it the Hollywood"
"What&039;s so great about it?"
"Great food, great reat atmosphere, and it&039;s a
thousanddinner with a strange and beautiful woofer"
"A strange and beautiful gofer"
Ellen sh her hair At another intersection, he turned left and headed west until they found a settles sat empty on one side of the road, and across the street, all by itself, was an old dry goods store with a dozen cars parked around it and rabbed the bottle of Chablis and escorted his law clerk up the steps, onto the front porch, and inside the building
Next to the door was a se, where a beautiful old black lady, Merle, sat at her piano and sang "Rainy Night in Georgia" Three long rows of tables ran to the front and stopped next to the stage The tables were half full, and a waitress in the back poured beer from a pitcher and motioned for them to come on in She seated them in the rear, at a small table with a red-checkered tablecloth
"Y&039;all want some fried dill pickles, honey?" she asked Jake
"Yes! Two orders"
Ellen frowned and looked at Jake "Fried dill pickles?"
"Yes, of course They don&039;t serve the?"
"Everything that&039;s worth eating If you don&039;t like them, I&039;ll eat them"
A yell went up fro or so The restaurant
"The good thing about the Hollywood," Jake explained, "is that you canas you want, and nobody cares When you get a table here, it&039;s yours for the night They&039;ll start singing and dancing in a minute"
Jake ordered sauteed shrimp and charbroiled catfish for both of thes The waitress hurried back with the Chablis and two chilled glasses They toasted Carl Lee Hailey and his insane mind
"Whatta you think of Bass?" Jake asked
"He&039;s the perfect witness He&039;ll say anything ant him to say"
"Does that bother you?"
"It would if he was a fact witness But he&039;s an expert, and he can get by with his opinions Who will challenge him?"
"Is he believable?"
"When he&039;s sober We talked twice this week On lues-day he was lucid and helpful On Wednesday, he was drunk and indifferent I think he&039;ll be as helpful as any psychiatrist we could find He doesn&039;t care what the truth is, and he&039;ll tell us ant to hear"
"Does he think Carl Lee was legally insane?"