“I’m talking about the Chicago judicial system. I know it sounds bad, but this was a judge asking for the money. This was the real world, not some moot court.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I tried to find that seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“How did you go about that?”
“First, I asked Mama for it. I was pretty sure she still had some money squirreled away. But she wouldn’t lift a finger to help Daddy, not by then. After her mother died in ’96, she lost a lot of empathy for Mr. Junius Jelks.”
And why was that? I wonder. But Shad doesn’t ask the question.
“So where did you get the money for the bribe?” he asks instead.
“From the escrow account of one of my clients.”
“You embezzled the money?”
“Yes, sir.”
A collective grunt of judgment comes from the gallery, but the tale is far from over. Redemption is still possible for our abused urchin.
“And what happened when you tried to pay the bribe?” Shad asks.
“The judge’s bagman took the money. But just by bad luck, my client learned I had dipped into his account, and he went after me. Before I knew what had happened, I’d been suspended, and Daddy had been sentenced to fifteen years without parole.”
“What happed to the money?”
“What do you think? The judge and his bagman played dumb. They’re probably still laughing today.”
“You must have had some hard feelings toward Junius Jelks by that time.”
“Not really, to tell you the truth. Not then. I thought we’d both been screwed by the system. I mean, he was guilty of fraud, sure, and I of embezzlement. But in my eyes, what that judge did was ten times worse. Abusing the public trust for his own gain?”
“Will you ever be allowed to practice law again?”
“Maybe. I hope so. First I have to pay restitution, but that’s hard to do when I can’t practice law to earn the money. It’s a catch-22.”
“Your mother wouldn’t help you pay the restitution?”
“No, sir. She thought I would just give the money to Daddy. Which he was asking me to do. He wanted to hire another lawyer and try to go after that crooked judge.”
“But you did ask your mother for the money?”
“Yes, sir. She flew into a rage. She said she wouldn’t waste one dollar trying to help Junius Jelks. They’d found her cancer by then, and she was pretty depressed. I think she blamed Daddy for most of the bad that had happened to us. She was screaming that he’d ruined my legal career.”
“Did you not blame Junius Jelks for that?”
“Not like she did.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I felt like there was something wrong inside of Mama. She had some kind of hate for Daddy that I didn’t understand. I thought it was her hate that had cursed us, somehow.”
“How did Jelks react when you told him you couldn’t get money for an attorney?”
“He went crazy. He was facing fifteen years of hard time.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He told me I was useless. A waste of good air. Then he said that didn’t surprise him, ’cause I wasn’t no son of his anyway.”
“How did you react to that?”
“I thought he was kidding. But then something happened to his face, and I knew he wasn’t. It was like the mask came off. The last one. He’d worn masks all his life, conning people. He was a master of disguise, never showing who he really was. But that day I saw the real Junius Jelks. And there was nothing in his eyes but anger, fear, and hatred.”
“Did you ask him who your real father was?”
Lincoln nods.
Judge Elder says, “Please give a verbal response.”
Lincoln looks up at the judge. “Is it all right to use profanity?”
“You can repeat what he told you.”
“He told me that Mama had been raped by a bunch of Ku Klux Klansmen back in Mississippi. He said one of those cracker bastards was my father.”
“Oh, Lord,” cries an older black woman from behind me, and a dozen other people join her.
“Junius said he’d lied to me all those years because Mama wanted him to, but he was done with her now, and me, too. He didn’t want me thinking he was my daddy anymore. He said it made him sick to look at me. Every time he looked at me, he saw some dirty-ass klukker. Said he always had.”
Murmurs of sympathy and condemnation rise in volume behind me.
“Did you believe what he’d told you?” Shad asks.
“Not at first.”
“Why not?”
“Well . . . because I don’t look white. Or even half white.”
“Did you ask your mother about the Klan story?”
“Yes. She denied it. She told me that the rape had happened, but that none of those men were my father. She said my father was a man she’d met when she first got to Chicago.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I wasn’t sure. I wanted to believe her. I asked if he was white or black. She said black. She said he’d been a married man, but he was dead by then, so there was no use telling me his name.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I believed her about the Klan part. But I didn’t believe my real father was dead, whoever he was. I sensed she was lying to me. To protect me, maybe, but lying all the same.”
“How did you sense it?”
“I can always tell when people are lying. It’s something I learned working cons with Junius Jelks. Don’t ever try lying to a grifter. They always know. That ability helped me a lot in court.”
“But, Mr. Turner, you’ve already told us that your mother had been successfully lying to you throughout your life, and you didn’t know it. Now you say you always know when someone is lying? How do you account for that?”
Lincoln’s eyelids slide halfway down over his eyes as he ponders this. After about twenty seconds, he blinks and looks around like a man awaking from a trance. “I’ll tell you. When a woman who never lies tells her first lie . . . nobody questions it. Nobody catches on, because they can’t even imagine that person trying to deceive them. It’s the Big Lie. But inside a family, see? And that’s why I never caught on. My mama never lied. So the one thing she did lie about, I never picked up on—even though she had lied about it every day of my life.”
Shad nods soberly. “Now, to clarify, Lincoln, this conversation with your mother about the Ku Klux Klan rape took place how long ago?”
“Seven months ago. About four months before she died.”
“And your mother had already been diagnosed with lung cancer?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you react to all she’d said?”
“I started pulling away from her. Pushing her away, I guess.”
“Even though she was terminally ill?”
“Yes. I’m not proud of it, but I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d been lying to me since I was a child. My whole life had been a lie.”
“What was your next clue to your true paternity?”
“As Mama got sicker, I had to start taking over some of her affairs. That’s when I discovered a box hidden in her apartment, filled with old records, souvenirs, and memorabilia. James Turner’s war medal was in there, the real James Turner. There were a couple of letters, too, and some photocopies of checks from the 1970s.”
“Were the letters signed?”
“No.”
“What name was on the checks?”
“Thomas Cage, M.D.”