“Dad!”
“Never mind,” he says. “Forget it.”
He hangs up on Mrs. King.
“Eddie Mae!”
He calls her into his office and begs her to take Ellie to pick up Ben from school, to try to kill an hour or so. “You all right here on your own?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Dad, what’s going on?”
“Just go, El.”
He locks the front door when they’re gone and turns to Neal, sitting on the antique sofa, newly humbled from his brush with lockup, his clothes damp and wrinkled with sweat, circles of it spreading under his arms. He leans forward, head in his hands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Do not listen to a word Sam says. You need a lawyer, and you need a lawyer now. Forget the campaign, your uncle. You need to protect yourself.”
“I don’t understand how this is happening.”
“I’ll tell you how: your phone number in her pager, the fact that yours was one of the last calls before she went missing, and the gap in the schedule, not to mention your failure to disclose any of this to Detective Moore. It’s circumstantial, and it’s thin, but it’s there. They don’t have any physical evidence. But the autopsy isn’t set until tomorrow. That could change, I guess.”
Neal shakes his head at what Jay is suggesting.
“I never touched that girl.”
There’s a loud knock on the front door.
Here they come, Jay thinks. He unlocks the door and lets in Sam and Axel, but blocks Marcie, the communications director, and Stan, the campaign’s finance director, from entering the building. “They can wait outside,” he says, closing the door on them and relocking it. He turns to Sam and Axel. “Your time is up,” he says. “Neal needs a criminal lawyer, and a damn good one.”
Sam’s face is damp with perspiration.
Axel too looks as if he might have run all the way here.
“Can we just sit somewhere and talk?” he says, looking out the window, where Marcie and Stan have a view of this confidential meeting from the front porch. Jay shows them down the hall to his private office. Neal is the only one who sits, picking a chair directly across from Jay’s desk. The others choose to stand. Because the heating system is funny in this place, Jay’s office is always a good ten degrees warmer than the rest of the house. Sam, sweating, removes his overcoat, tossing it onto the back of a chair. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Jay says.
“Tell me you have something to drink at least.”
“You’re not staying.”
Pacing the office, Axel seems utterly mystified, shaking his head over and over again. “You can’t take someone to trial on what they have.”
“You can if you don’t care if you win,” Jay says. “This isn’t about a trial.”
“The D.A.’s office hasn’t even set a date,” Neal says.
“They’re going to let this sit out there,” Sam says, “on the front page of the newspaper, until the runoff. It’s a goddamned death sentence for the campaign.”
“But why me?” Neal says.
“They saw an opportunity, and they took it,” Sam says.
Jay asks Neal again. “Where were you Tuesday night?”
“Wait a minute,” Sam says, stepping forward. “Before we get into potentially privileged information, we need to know that you’re on board.”
“With what?”
“We want you to represent Neal.”
“I’m not a criminal lawyer.”
“You were.”
“Stickups and joyrides, sure, kids caught with a quarter ounce of weed. But I can’t try a capital murder case.” He nearly laughs at the idea, looking around the room, waiting for the others to join in, to hear how absurd it sounds. “Look, if you want to call their bluff, call their bluff. Hell, get an injunction to stop the election, invoke your right to a speedy trial, and hold them to it. Make Wolcott and Parker put up or shut up. But you don’t need me for that.”
You can almost hear a pin drop.
Neal looks at his grandfather. “Can we do that? Stop the election?”
“This is America,” Jay says. “You can sue anybody over anything.”
“Jesus, that’s good,” Axel says. “It’s brilliant.”
“It’s dangerous, son,” Sam says, looking uncharacteristically tentative and unsure. “We could lose the small lead we have. We could lose.”
“We lost our lead the second they indicted Neal. But Jay is right. This is exactly the way this needs to be approached, a crusade against an injustice, to Neal personally, and to the city politically,” Axe says, taking control of his campaign, maybe for the first time. “That’s why it’s got to be you, Jay. Former civil rights activist, from rabble-rouser to lawyer with a conscience, working the courts in the people’s best interests. You’d almost be as big a story as the crime itself.”
Jay winces at the thought, the crassness of the offer.
“I’m not interested.”
“Otherwise, it’s some Johnnie Cochran–type dream team.”
Sam shakes his head. “We can’t play this slick.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Axel says.
Jay shakes his head, adamant. “I can’t go to trial, okay?”
“Yes,” Sam says, his voice taking on an edge. “I think there are a number of your civil clients who are afraid of that very fact. Look, we need you, Jay, so let me make plain that my offer yesterday, to help squash the defecting faction in Pleasantville, the ones that want resolution quick and are willing to trade you in to get it? Well, it goes both ways, Jay. I’m just as happy to use my influence to give my blessing to Ricardo Aguilar.”
Jay, in no uncertain terms, tells Sam to get the fuck out of his office.
Sam nods, unfazed. He doesn’t move, though, not right away. “Let me ask you something, Jay. Do you really think my grandson killed Alicia Nowell?”
“I never touched that girl,” Neal says again.