Vanishing Acts

  "Your Honor, it's true that I have a personal relationship with Delia Hopkins. But it will not affect this case in any capacity, in spite of Ms. Wasserstein's specious allegations. Yes, Delia asks me about her father--but it's how he looks, and if he's being treated all right--questions that would be important on a personal level, and not a professional one."

  "We could ask Delia to corroborate that," Emma says tartly, "but she's probably already been coached in what to say."

  I turn to the judge. "Your Honor, I'll give you my word, and if that's not good enough, I'll swear under oath that I'm not violating any ethical measures here. If anything, I have even more responsibility to my client, because I'm trying to keep his daughter's best interests a priority as well."

  Emma folds her arms above the shelf of her belly. "You're too close to this case to do a decent job."

  "That's ridiculous," I argue. "That's like saying that you can't try a child kidnapping case because you're about to drop your own baby any second, and your emotions might keep you from being objective. But if I said that out loud, I'd be skating on pretty thin ice, wouldn't I? You'd accuse me of being prejudicial and sexist and outright anachronistic, wouldn't you?"

  "All right, Mr. Talcott, shut your mouth before I wire your jaw closed for you," Judge Noble orders. "I'm making a finding on this right now. Your first obligation is to your client, not your fiancee. However, the State has to show me that you're actively engaging in witness tampering for me to actually remove you from this case, and Ms. Wasserstein has not proven that ... yet. So you may remain Andrew Hopkins's attorney, Mr. Talcott, but make no mistake--every time you come into my courtroom, I'm going to be watching you. Every time you open your mouth, I'm going to be caressing my Rules of Professional Conduct. And if you make one wrong move, I'm going to refer you to the State Conduct Committee so fast you won't know what hit you." He picks up his jar of peanut butter. "Oh, hell," Judge Noble says, and he sticks two fingers into the Jif and scoops out a dollop to eat. "Adjourned."

  When Emma Wasserstein gets up and drops her papers all over the floor, I lean down to grab them for her. "Watch your back, you hick," she murmurs.

  I straighten. "Excuse me?"

  The judge watches us over the rim of his glasses. "I said, Nice comeback, Eric," Emma replies, and she smiles and waddles out of the room.

  When I get home, Sophie is in the front yard, painting a prickly pear cactus pink. Her hands are small enough to weave the brush between the spines. I am sure that in this state, what she's doing is probably a felony, but frankly I am not in the mood to take any more family members onto my caseload. I pull the car up beside our elongated tin can and step out into the searing heat. Ruthann and Delia sit on nylon-woven folding chairs in the dust between our trailers, and Greta is sprawled in an exhausted puddle close to the paint can. "Why is Sophie painting the cactus?"

  Delia shrugs. "Because it wanted to be pink."

  "Ah." I squat down next to Sophie. "Who told you that?"

  "Duh," Sophie says, with the kind of ennui that only four-year-olds can pull off. "Magdelena."

  "Magdelena?"

  "The cactus." She points to a saguaro a few feet to the left. "That's Rufus, and the little one with a white beard is Papa Joe."

  I turn to Ruthann. "You name your cacti?"

  "Of course not ... their parents do." She winks at me. "There's cold tea inside, if you want some."

  I walk into her trailer and feel my way through the cabinets, past buttons and beads and rawhide-tied bundles of dried herbs, until I find a clean jelly jar. The pitcher of tea sweats on the counter; I fill my glass to the brim and am about to take a sip when the phone rings. After a moment I find the receiver under a stack of brown bananas. "Hello?"

  "Is Ruthann Masawistiwa there?" a voice asks.

  "Just a sec. Who's calling?"

  "The Virginia Piper Cancer Center."

  Cancer Center? I step to the door of the trailer. "Ruthann, it's for you."

  She is wielding the paintbrush for Sophie, trying to work color under the tight armpit of the cactus. "Take a message, Sikyatavo. I'm busy with Picasso, here."

  "I think they really need to speak to you."

  She gives Sophie the paintbrush and steps into the trailer, letting the screen door slam behind her. I hold out the phone. "It's the hospital," I say quietly.

  She looks at me for a long moment. "Wrong number," she barks into the receiver, and then punches the off button. I am quite certain that she doesn't realize she's folded her arm like a bird's wing, tucked over her left breast.

  We all have our secrets, I suppose.

  She keeps staring at me, until I incline my head just the tiniest bit, a promise to keep her confidence. When the phone rings again, she leans over and pulls the cord out of the wall. "Wrong number," she says.

  "Yes," I say quietly. "It happens all the time to me."

  *

  The McCormick Railroad Park is not crowded by the time we get there, just before sunset. With its combination playground-carousel-miniature-steam-engine ride, the sprawling recreational area is a hot spot for the kindergarten set. Delia invites Fitz to come along; and I invite Ruthann, who pulls her junk-lined trench coat out of her cavernous purse and begins to solicit her resale wares to tired mothers.

  I wait on the sidelines as Fitz and Delia take Sophie onto the carousel. She scrambles up onto a white horse with its neck straining forward. "Come on," Fitz yells to me. "What have you got to lose?"

  "My dignity?"

  Fitz swings onto a powder pink pony. "A guy who's secure in his manhood wouldn't be sitting out there like a loser."

  I laugh. "Yeah, and do you want me to hold your purse while you're on the ride?"

  Sophie fidgets on top of her horse as Delia tries to strap her in. "Nobody else has to wear the seat belt," she complains. Delia chooses a black stallion beside Fitz's. I listen as the music tinkles to life and the carousel begins to vibrate.

  I won't admit this to any of them, but carousels scare the hell out of me. That calliope melody, and the way all the carved wooden horses seem to be in great pain--their eyes rolling wild, their yellow teeth bared, their bodies straining. As the carousel turns, the mirrored pillar in the center winks. Sophie comes into view and waves to me. Behind her, Delia and Fitz pretend to be jockeys, leaning forward on their horses.

  The acne-pitted kid manning the controls flips the switch, and the carousel begins to wheeze to a stop. Sophie leans forward, caressing the plaster mane. Fitz and Delia appear again, standing up in the stirrups for a last stretch at the brass ring. They're batting at each other's hands and laughing. There's an S-curved steel bar at the top of the carousel that makes one of their horses rise as the other falls. It looks like they're moving separately, but they're not.

  Two days later I land in the office of Sheriff Jack: head of the Maricopa County Jail system and general media hound, with a personality so colorful he could give up his day job and become a disco strobe light. Everything I've heard about him is, regretfully, true, from the spittoon that he keeps on his desk (and uses liberally) to the framed photos of himself with every living Republican president to the bologna sandwich he himself eats for lunch, along with his prisoners. "Let me get this straight," he says, his amusement booming from beneath his bristled mustache, "your client refuses to see you?"

  "Yes, sir," I say.

  "But you wouldn't take no for an answer."

  I shift on my chair. "I'm afraid not, sir."

  "And Sergeant Concannon says that you ..." He looks down at a piece of paper in front of him. "Sweet-talked her in an effort to get access to the inmate's pod." He glances up. "Sweet-talked?"

  "She's a very handsome woman," I say, swallowing.

  "She's a hell of a detention officer, but she's about as pretty as the business end of a donkey. A man less tolerant than myself might consider that sexual harassment."

  The last thing I need is to have Sheriff Jack calling Judge Noble and having a little chat.
"Well, sir," I say, "I find older women attractive. Especially those who are ... diamonds in the rough."

  "Sergeant Concannon's so rough the carbons are still forming. Try again, boy."

  "Did I mention I have a friend who's a journalist from New Hampshire's largest paper, who'd like to write about you?" I will pay Fitz, if I have to. Hugely.

  Sheriff Jack laughs out loud. "I like you, Talcott."

  I smile politely. "About my client, sir."

  "Sheriff Jack," he corrects. "What about him?"

  "If I could just be brought up to his cell, even for five minutes, I think I could convince him that he ought to sit down with me for the sake of his own case."

  "We don't allow attorneys into the pods. Unless, of course, they're criminals." He thinks for a second. "Maybe we should put the attorneys in the pods."

  "Sheriff." I meet his gaze. "I'd really like to have the opportunity to speak to Andrew Hopkins."

  There is a beat of silence. "A journalist, you said?"

  "Award-winning," I lie.

  He gets to his feet. "Oh, hell. I need a good laugh."

  Sheriff Jack himself escorts me to the elevator, up to the second floor. This is different from the visitation room; here, a central control tower monitors four spider arms that house the inmates. There are locks everywhere.

  Everyone knows who Sheriff Jack is--as we walk through the halls, detention officers greet him, but even more impressively, so do the inmates. "Yo, yo, Sea Rag," he says, as we pass a man who is being signed into his pod again.

  "'Sup, Dawg," the man replies, grinning.

  Sheriff Jack turns to me proudly. "I speak it all. Ebonics, Spanish, you name it. I can say Get your ass in line in six different languages."

  He puts his hand on a doorknob that buzzes, and then opens. Another inmate, this one wearing a pink tank top, slouches on a chair with his nose buried in The Fountainhead. Up and down his arms words are tattooed: Weiss Macht. "Put your shirt on," Sheriff Jack orders.

  We walk down a hallway that opens into a large, two-tiered room. Each side of the square holds an enclosed pod--barred cells on top, a common area on bottom. What it resembles--what a jail always resembles--is a human zoo. The animals are busy doing their own thing--sleeping, eating, socializing. Some of them notice me, some of them choose not to. It's really the only power they have left.

  Sheriff Jack walks up into the control tower while I wait at the bottom of the stairs. A pair of black inmates start rapping, putting on a show for me.

  I'm the O.G. Mr. Wop

  On the trigga nonstop

  Bust a cap on a cop

  And watch his punk ass drop.

  A 187 that's what it was

  Greetin' all homies with the word of Cuzz

  I was dressed in blue

  Since the age of two

  Down for my 'hood

  'Cause it's the thing to do.

  To their right, an old man with white hair cascading past his shoulders is making elaborate hand motions to catch the attention of one of the detention officers. Behind the glass, his frail arm movements look like a modern dance performance.

  Suddenly the sheriff is standing next to me again. "The good news is, your client isn't in there."

  "Where is he?"

  Sheriff Jack smiles. "Well, that's the bad news, boy. Disciplinary segregation."

  Disciplinary segregation is on level three, house two, in pods A and D. Andrew knows I am coming before he sees me; prisoners can sniff out lawyers at a distance, and my arrival has created a hum in the air. He stands with his back deliberately toward me as I am led to his cell. "I don't want to speak to him, Sergeant Doucette," he tells the detention officer.

  She looks at me, bored. "He doesn't want to speak to you."

  I stare at Andrew's back. "Well, that's fine by me. Because God knows I don't feel like hearing what the hell landed you in lockdown."

  He turns around and stares at me for a long moment. "Let him in."

  Sheriff Jack has said nothing about me being let into a cell; I can see the detention officer thinking the same thing. If Andrew and I are going to have a traditional attorney/client visit, it is supposed to be upstairs in one of the conference rooms. Finally, she shrugs--if one lawyer gets strangled by his own client, the detention officers would probably consider it a good start. When she opens the barred slider, it grates, like fingernails on a blackboard. I step into the tiny space, and Doucette rams the door home behind me.

  Immediately, I jump. Even knowing I can leave at any time, it's uncomfortable; there is barely enough room for one man, much less two. Andrew sits down on the bunk, leaving me a small stool. "What are you doing in here?" I ask quietly.

  "Self-preservation."

  "I'm just trying to save you, too."

  "Are you sure about that?" Andrew says.

  Time is elastic, in jail. It can stretch to the length of a highway; it can beat like a pulse. It can expand, a sponge, thick enough to make the few inches between two people feel like a continent. "I shouldn't have gotten angry at you the other day," I admit. "This case isn't about me."

  "I think we both know that's a lie," Andrew says.

  He is right, on all counts. I am an alcoholic, representing a man who ran away from one. I am the child of an alcoholic, who didn't get to escape.

  But I'm also a father who wonders what I'd do in the same situation. I'm a victim of my own mistakes, holding fast to a second chance.

  I glance around the tiny Spartan room where Andrew has come for protection. We do all kinds of things to safeguard ourselves: lie to the people we love; split hairs to justify our actions; take punishment instead of waiting for it to be given to us. Andrew may be the one who's been charged, but we are both being tried.

  I hold his gaze. "Andrew," I say soberly, "let's start over."

  Andrew

  In jail, a black inmate will call a white inmate peckerwood, cracker, honky, redneck. He'll call a Mexican a spic.

  A white inmate will call a black inmate a nigger, a monkey, a spook, a toad. He'll call a Mexican a beaner.

  A Mexican will call a black inmate miyate, which means big black bean; or yanta, tire; or terron, shark. He'll call a white inmate a gringo.

  In jail, everyone comes with a label. It's up to you to peel it off.

  The maximum security pod is made up of fifteen cells--five white, five Hispanic, four black, and the one that holds Concise and me. Considering themselves at a disadvantage, the blacks begin a campaign to get me traded for someone with the right color skin. They stand at the entrance to the dayroom, waiting for an officer to come in on his habitual twenty-five-minute walk, to plead their case.

  I wander around the dayroom, not really fitting anywhere. The television is tuned to C-SPAN, one of the five channels we are allowed, and a reporter is discussing the good fortune of turkeys. "Presidentially pardoned turkeys have reason to give thanks today," the woman says. "Animal welfare activists at PETA said on Monday that Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia, has promised better treatment of Katie, the female pardoned by President Bush as part of last November's holiday tradition. The second turkey pardoned died last week, after living in substandard conditions."

  Elephant Mike, the Aryan Brotherhood probate in control in Sticks's absence, turns up the volume. Enormous and muscular, with a shaved head and a spider tattooed onto the back of his scalp, he was one of the henchmen who came with Sticks to attack me in the bathroom. "Hey, what's the address for PETA?" he says. "Maybe they can get us better conditions."

  The reporter beams at the camera. "Katie will be given a heated coop, more straw for bedding, extra vegetables and fruit, and some chickens in her pen for mental stimulation."

  Elephant Mike crosses his arms. "Look at that. For stimulation, they get chicks, and we get spics."

  A Mexican stands up and walks past Elephant Mike, kicks his chair. "Gringo," he mutters. "Chenga su madre."

  As I walk past Elephant Mike, he grabs my shirt. "Sticks wanted me to
give you a message." I don't bother asking how Sticks, a whole floor away from us and in lockdown twenty-three hours out of the day, might be able to get word to Elephant Mike. There are ways to communicate in jail, from talking through the ventilation ducts in the bathrooms to slipping a note to someone at an AA meeting who will carry it elsewhere. "In here, you stick with your own kind."

  "I thought I made it pretty clear that you aren't my kind," I reply.

  "I'm telling you this for your own protection."

  Without responding, I start to walk away. I take two steps, and then find myself flattened against the wall. "At any minute, a fight might break out, and when that happens, you don't want to be beside a guy who may turn on you. All's I'm saying is, you're asking to get yourself in a wreck if you don't get it right, Grandpa."

  A voice comes over the intercom. "Mike, what are you doing?" the detention officer asks.

  "Dancing," he says, letting go of me.

  The officer sighs. "Stick to the waltz."

  Elephant Mike shoves me and walks off.

  I clench my fists so that no one will realize my hands are shaking. If this were any ordinary Thursday, I would have gotten to my office by eight-thirty. I would have called over to Wexton Farms--the assisted living community--to see if there was anything I needed to know about--recently hospitalized people, delays in the transit shuttle, dietary restrictions. I would have checked with the kitchen to see what was on the menu for the day and welcomed the day's entertainment--a lecturer from Dartmouth or a watercolor artist, sharing his or her passion with the seniors. I would have procrastinated by looking up news stories on the Internet about you and Greta and your rescues; I would have dusted off the picture of Sophie sitting on the corner of my desk. I would spend the day with people who valued whatever time they had left, instead of people who bitterly counted it down.

  I head up the stairs to the cell. Concise is huddled on the floor around a cardboard box where he keeps his canteen possessions. At the sound of my footsteps he shoves what looks like a piece of bread underneath the bottom bunk. "I'm busy in here. Step."

  It smells like oranges in the cell. "What do you know about Elephant Mike?"

  Concise glances at me. "He think he's some tank boss but he's just doin' a mud check. You know, see if you stick up for yourself, or put grass under you." He seems to remember that he is not supposed to be helping me, but rather doing his best to get me into another cell. "If the dawgs find you in here, you gonna be hemmed up."