Trials tell a story, of course, at least two sides of one, the witness list playing like chapter headings, signposts along the way, directing your attention this way or that. By the Sunday night before voir dire, Jay has interviewed everyone on the state’s list of potential witnesses, all except for Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux, who have refused the three overtures Jay has made, twice reaching out to the family directly and once going through Keith Morehead, who is still acting as their media and legal liaison. Jay’s team lost a little steam this week when another seven days passed with them no closer to tracking down the printer that manufactured hundreds and hundreds of flyers; their hoped-for evidence linking the flyers, Alicia Nowell, and the Wolcott campaign through an invoice or eyewitness testimony is, at present, still outside their reach. With little time left on the clock, they are literally defense-less at this point, hanging their hat on the weakness of the state’s physical case, which is no guarantee of anything; they have zero presentable evidence of another perpetrator, nothing to buttress the standard I didn’t do it.
Meanwhile, Axel dropped another four points in the latest poll.
It was Sam’s suggestion that they halt the campaign until after the trial.
“We’re just bleeding money,” he said in Jay’s office yesterday.
It was meeting that had ostensibly been set in an effort to craft a visual strategy for the family during the trial. Since none of them was likely to be called as a witness, they were free to sit through its entirety, which was Jay’s suggestion, as their absence would do more damage than any of them could imagine. But before long the gathering had devolved into naked debate about the political ramifications of Axel sitting in the courtroom day after day. His core advisers were now down to a party of three–Marcie, the communications director; Sam; and a highly distracted Neal–as Stan the moneyman and Russell Weingate had both quietly left the campaign the week after the injunction. Marcie and Sam disagreed about calling a halt to the campaign. “Unless you’re just going to hand the whole thing over to Wolcott,” she said. But they both believed that Axel should sit in the front row of the gallery, righteous and upright, for opening statements only, then make a show of his complete faith in the system and his nephew’s lawyer to handle the rest. If he sits there for the length of the trial, which would certainly last a week, maybe two, voters will only be reminded that he’s unemployed, that he hasn’t held a leadership position in years. Sam wanted to reprise the idea of Axel getting his picture taken in the streets, out there looking for the real killer.
“I want him there,” Neal said.
“Sure,” Sam said, nodding at the obvious wisdom of it.
His hands, though, were shaking.
By then, he’d heard word that their potential savior was his ex-junkie of a son, A.G., illegitimate and angry as all get-out with his father.
“That does it,” Axel said, with a thin smile in Neal’s direction. “I’ll be there.”
Jay told them to arrive early and wear black.
He saw them to the door, where Sam lingered, sending his family ahead and waiting until they were all the way down the hall before asking to speak with Jay alone. The older man shut the door and asked, “Where’s my money?” Jay walked to his desk and opened the top drawer, pulling out Sam’s check.
“This one’s on me.”
Sam, frowning, took the check, folding it in half and tucking it into the inside pocket of his coat. “If you mess this up for my grandson–”
“Good-bye, Sam.”
When he was alone again, Jay did his own form of prayer, playing side 2 of Belle Blue, dropping the needle on “My Back Is My Best Side,” track number 5. “Come on, man,” he whispered to the sound of A.G.’s voice, willing him to go against the spirit of the man in the song, one who’s ever on the run. “Come on.”
It’s not that all hope is lost.
It’s that Jay won’t have faith in A.G. until he’s in the witness chair.
And even then, it’s a toss-up.
Rolly has assured Jay he has the situation under control, their peripatetic subject under his direct supervision. Last night he’d planted his girl, the amply endowed, doe-eyed mother of three and grandmother of five, at the bar at the Playboy Club in a V-neck T-shirt the color of grape bubble gum and a tight pair of jeans. She had teased her cinnamon-colored hair, even touched up the roots, and been given strict instructions to bat her eyelashes in one direction and one direction only, holding nothing back. She was probably A.G.’s age or older, and he fell for the whole picture: a gal, no, a woman, who knew blues, but not enough to recognize him–that Rolly figured would only make him skittish–and who was on her own for the night, willing to wait around until he got off shift. All she had to do was get him to walk her to her truck, parked on Rosalie Street, and Rolly would take care of the rest. Jay asks Rolly to stop the story there, not wanting to hear another word, lest he pick up his own kidnapping charge before Neal’s trial. He does, however, anonymously send a plate of hot links from Lott’s Barbecue to room 209 at the Holiday Inn on Broadway, where A.G. is holed up. Rolly’s second hand, a driver of his by the name of Bitty who did time with him way back when, is currently stationed outside the hotel room door. Jay sends along a fifth of Hennessy as well, and a flight of tobacco: Kool menthol, Camels, and a carton of Newports, whichever his pleasure.
Meanwhile, Ricardo Aguilar has been dodging Jay, ignoring his calls, always “out” when Jay stops by his office, even staying clear of his own house, and with trial preparations kicking Jay’s ass, his resources are stretched way too thin to pin Aguilar down. He’s in the wind, and so is his heavy, T. J. Cobb.