“At her place of business. Perhaps.”
“Which is?”
“Simms Autoworld out on Highway 17 South.”
She flipped through the papers a little more. “She is employed by your client, Mr. Albright?”
“Yes, she is,” Albright said.
“She is the paramour of Mr. Simms,” I said.
Judge Shelby shot me a look, which at first seemed like rockets from hell would rain down all over me, and then her face softened. She turned to the deputy sheriff standing in the area of the bench.
“Well, let’s just see if one of Charleston’s finest can bring her in. I just hate it when we invite someone to a party and they don’t show up. Let’s go get her. Now.”
The deputy nodded and spoke into his two-way radio. Another officer appeared, took Charlene’s name and address from the judge and left. Charlene was about to have a bad day. The story of her being arrested and taken away in handcuffs would do very little to elevate her social status among her new neighbors on Tradd Street.
Judge Shelby spoke again. “Can we get this underway until Ms. Johnson joins us?”
Harry Albright stood and gave a brief opening statement that was so foul it made me wonder how he could live with himself.
“Your honor, my client Nathaniel Simms, a leader in this community, is a fine man. As everyone knows, Simm’s Autoworld has spearheaded more charitable events than any other privately owned corporation in Charleston. His generosity is renowned. He is loved and respected throughout the community by people from all walks of life. And yet sadly, there is no joy to be found in his own home. The atmosphere has deteriorated to one of walking on eggshells to avoid the rage of his wife. His wife is cold and withholds affection. In addition she has become a drunk, a drug addict and a harpy. Their relationship has become so intolerable and eroded to such a point that he feels compelled to seek divorce, permanent custody of their two children and seeks to repair the children’s self-esteem and general mental health by keeping them in their own home. Thank you.” Harry Albright sighed dramatically, shot me a look and took his seat.
I stood and positioned myself in front of the judge, made eye contact with her and then turned back to Harry and Nat.
“Your honor? I think it was Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof who, through the genius of Tennessee Williams, coined the phrase bull and mendacity. If you lived to be one hundred and twenty-seven years old, you would never meet a finer lady than Rebecca Simms. She is neither a drunk nor a drug addict. She is no more a harpy than the average mother who tries to get her children to perform normal, age-appropriate household chores. No, your honor, my colleague’s description of Rebecca Simms is bull and mendacity, which we can easily prove.” I turned back to Judge Shelby. “It is her husband, Nat Simms, who is the scoundrel here. He is an adulterer. He is verbally and physically abusive. He is intimidating and threatening, but perhaps the most heinous in his long list of sinful acts is the way he has misused his God-given talent for selling by manipulating the affections of their children to turn them against their own mother. My client wants this divorce as much or more than Nathaniel Simms does, but she deserves custody of her children, her home and a fair settlement. Thank you.”
I gave Harry Albright a cold stare and took my seat.
Albright called his first witness. Nat. The judge swore Nat in and he took the stand. They went through the preliminary business of Nat identifying himself, his residence and so on, and then Harry’s horns popped into view. Beelzebub had arrived.
“Mr. Simms, can you please explain to the court why you are suing your wife, Rebecca Simms, for divorce? And why you are seeking custody of the children on the grounds of habitual drunkenness including the use of narcotics?”
“Oh, my God, it’s just so sad,” Nat said. “Rebecca was ruining the lives of our children as she ruint her own self. Every day I would come home from work and find her lying on the couch, passed out while the children were running wild, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. Dishes was piled up in the sink and the whole house was a pigsty. Then I come to find out that she’s taking these pills…”
“I’d like to enter this pill bottle into evidence,” Harry Albright said.
The clerk took the bottle, filed and marked it.
“Let the record show that this bottle of one hundred and twenty dosages of twenty-milligram strength Prozac was prescribed to Rebecca Simms from an online pharmaceutical company out of Miami, Florida.”
The court reporter clicked away, entering Harry Albright’s description into the transcript. Big deal, I thought. Half the women in this country take something so they don’t go postal with assholes like you.
“Now, Mr. Simms, tell the court. How was your wife’s relationship with your children?”
“It was just terrible! She was always nagging them to do this and that! Those poor kids couldn’t ever just be kids, you know what I mean?”
“No, please explain.”
“She had them on these schedules that were so booked up that they couldn’t ever play with the neighborhood kids. First off, they had school, then they had soccer and piano, basketball and ballet, gymnastics and Mandarin…”
“Mandarin? Do you mean they were learning the Mandarin dialect of Chinese?”
“Yeah, she was always trying to stuff their heads with all kinds of foolishness. And nag, nag, nag. Make up your beds! Put your dishes in the dishwasher! Do your homework! Take a shower! Brush your teeth! Where are you going? Nag, nag, nag. They just couldn’t take it no more. We were all just miserable with all the haranguing and carrying on. Just miserable.”
“And so, tell us, Mr. Simms, how did you come to gain temporary custody of your children?”
“They begged me to let them stay with me and to get rid of their mother.”
“And how were their feelings documented?”
“They went to see their guidance counselor who helped them write letters to the family court seeking relief from her. I had already told them that I was going to divorce their mother so as they could have a happy home. Oh, God…” At this point Nat choked up and began to cry, shoulders shaking and the whole nine yards.
Albright handed him a tissue and said, “No further questions at this time. Your witness.”
Albright had written, directed and together with Nat delivered one of the most practiced, phony dramatic scenes of sentimental crud I had been forced to endure in many a moon. I stood and approached the witness stand with the stone face of a sphinx.
“Mr. Simms? Are you able to continue?”
“Yes.” Sniff!
“Would you like a moment to compose yourself?”
“No. I’m okay.”
“Okay, then. Mr. Simms? How would you describe the first ten years of your marriage? Were they happy ones?”
“Yes. Very happy. I mean, we fought and all, like most people do, but overall they were good years.” Nat blew his nose loudly and took another tissue from the box nearby.
“The first fifteen?”
“Um, that’s hard to remember exactly…”
“Please answer the question to the best of your recollection.”
“Pretty good, I guess.”
“You were in love with each other?”
“Yes. We were.”
“Good. So these drug and alcohol problems really just surfaced in the last two years?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Did you ever try to get help for your wife? I mean, get her into a substance abuse program? Seek some psychiatric medical help for the problems that led her to use Prozac in the first place?”
“Um, no,” Nat said, in a mumble.
“Could you speak up so that the reporter can correctly transcribe your reply, Mr. Simms?”
“I said, no, I did not.”
“I don’t understand, Mr. Simms. You say you were happily married for fifteen years, that you were in love with your wife, and when she seemed to be having some kind of trouble, for
the very first time in your marriage she’s troubled, and you took no action to help her. Is that correct?”
The courtroom was so quiet that when someone cleared their throat, it was very distracting. Nat looked at Albright hoping for a signal. I glanced at Albright who was reading his notes, unaware that Nat wanted coaching. Nat shifted in his chair and gave a calloused response.
“Look, Rebecca was living The Life of Riley. What kind of problems could she have that are real problems? It was all a bunch of bull.”
“I see. Well, maybe she had a problem with your adulterous behavior.”
“Objection!” Albright said.
“Sustained,” Judge Shelby said. “Counsel will avoid conjecture.”
“It’s not conjecture, your honor. I’d like to enter into evidence the following: over two hundred fifty receipts from various motels in the Highway 17 locale, twenty-five hundred dollars of SunCom cell phone bills for calls made between Nat Simm’s cell phone and Charlene Johnson’s cell phone and receipts from various adult novelty stores, including the purchases of edible panties and flavored massage oil.”
The clerk, a lovely lady who probably ironed altar linens for the bishop of Charleston, took a deep breath and accepted the first box.
Nat smirked, and unfortunately for him, at that moment the judge was fixated on his face. His smirk ratcheted her ire up about ten notches. Harry Albright stared at the ceiling in dismay.
“Mr. Simms?” the judge said. “Would you like to give us an explanation for these expenditures?”
“Uh, uh…well, you see, your honor, Charlene Johnson has been working for my family’s business for many years. And she gets these headaches. Real bad headaches. Just terrible for her.”
“Yes?” the judge said as though she were waiting for the first drop of ketchup to leave the newly opened bottle.
“Yes, well, we, um, that is, I would send her off to a nearby motel to rest because she lives all the way up the road in Orangeburg and…”
Judge Shelby rested the side of her face on the heel of her hand and stared at Nat.
“Do you realize that you are under oath, Mr. Simms?” she said.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“And do you know what it means to testify under oath, Mr. Simms?”
“Yes.”
“Just so there will be no confusion, Mr. Simms, it means you have to tell the truth or you will be found in contempt of court, fined and sent to jail. Now, would counsel like to repeat the question? What was the question anyway?”
“Uh, Judge, actually you were asking the questions. But I guess I could pick it up with another,” I said and turned back to face Nat. “Mr. Simms, are you now or were you ever engaged in an extramarital affair with Charlene Johnson?”
“Uh, uh, not really. I mean, we spent some time together. We were friends and I could talk to her about anything. When Rebecca started going all crazy she would listen to me and try to help me figure out what to do. I never meant for Charlene to think there was anything more to it than that. You know how women always want more than you want to give, right?”
Judge Shelby and I exchanged the incredulous kind of look that only two women can when confronted with a low-down lying dog of a chauvinist.
I took a breath, crossed my arms and looked at Nat Simms in the eye. “All I’m looking for here is a yes or no answer. We will get to the details later. So is it a yes or a no, Mr. Simms?”
“I would have to say it’s a no. Yes, it’s a no.”
“Excuse me,” Judge Shelby said, “was that a no?”
“That is correct, your honor,” I said.
Judge Shelby made a note for herself, probably noting Nat’s lie, and looked up for us to continue.
“Mr. Simms, how do you account for the purchase of the edible panties and the flavored massage oil?”
Judge Shelby closed her eyes for a brief moment and shook her head.
“Oh, that? Those were gag gifts for a buddy of mine. He was getting married and we gave him a bachelor party.”
The judge made another note for herself.
I said, “All right then. Your honor? I’d like to enter the following into evidence: these are charges and receipts for a number of plastic surgery procedures—breast augmentation, collagen implants for the chin and cheeks, abdominoplasty, which is a tummy tuck, gluteoplasty, a surgical lifting of the buttocks, rhinoplasty, which is a nose job, a series of twenty-eight sessions of microdermabrasion to remove sun damage from the face, neck and décolleté”—I paused for a breath and continued—“a series of ten sessions of Botox injections, otoplasty, which is the surgical procedure of pinning back of protruding ears and a bill for dental resurfacing of the teeth. All of these procedures were performed on Charlene Johnson and paid for by Nat Simms.”
“Great heavens!” the judge said in a gasp. “Is this true, Mr. Simms?”
“Look, Judge, I can explain…”
“Please do!”
Well, Nat went on with some new cock-and-bull story about how Charlene had never had good dental care. Her family lived out in the country and didn’t have access to a good dentist. And her ears had always bugged her, and her nose too. Once she got those things fixed she got it in her mind that she wanted to start appearing in the television ads for the business with him, since the old man said he didn’t want to do them anymore, that he was getting too damn old to have his face up there on the television set while decent people were trying to eat their supper. She thought better bosoms might give her some star quality.
Nat said he didn’t have the heart to tell her that she would probably never make a TV ad with him, but he helped her, he said, because he felt sorry for her and that was all there was to it. Yep, that was all there was to it.
Nat continued his prattle and the entire courtroom listened, jaws dropped and eyes wide. Just when the growing collective of minds gathered thought we had heard the headlines of tomorrow’s National Enquirer, the courtroom door swung open and there was Charlene Johnson. She was handcuffed and nearly hyperventilating in resentment and the language of her new improved body spoke volumes—she was as proud of herself as a Las Vegas showgirl and as angry a woman as I had ever seen. A rumble of commentary broke out and Judge Shelby slammed her gavel for order.
I couldn’t wait to get Charlene on the witness stand.
TWENTY
THE DETAILS
THERE was a little chaos, and then the courtroom settled down. Charlene was brought before the judge. As she made her way toward the bench, head tossed back in defiance, there was a pronounced pump to the swing in her backyard. Every eye was on her bright pink clinging jersey dress, which left little to the imagination. Her black patent leather pumps had three-inch heels and tied around the ankle. The surgeon had taken her gravity-defying breasts to awe-inspiring dimensions and had given new definition to the term booty. I imagined the rear landscaping was intended for balance as much as anything else. Lord knows, if she hadn’t been anchored into those shoes and toting ballast in the northeast quadrant to equal the southwest, friends and family would’ve made another career picking her up off the floor.
Good taste had taken a holiday.
Once again, as the snickering and whispering reached a new crescendo, Judge Shelby found it necessary to restore order with a whack of her gavel. Try as she did to maintain a straight face, the smile of judgmental self-righteousness crept into the corners of her mouth. Even Sandra Day O’Connor would’ve tossed the court a perceptible sign of amusement.
Nat was still on the witness stand and I told him he could step down for the moment.
“Are you Charlene Johnson?” Judge Shelby said.
“Yeah, and I don’t understand why you all had to drag me into this. I ain’t…”
“You were subpoenaed, Ms. Johnson, obviously as a hostile witness…”
“I ain’t gonna get in the middle of his shit…”
“You will refrain from the use of foul language in the courtroom…”
&nbs
p; “Well, that’s all this is, you know…”
“And you will not interrupt the judge.”
Charlene became silent and turned to face Nat, seething with anger.
Charlene, who had great difficulty with the whole concept of speaking only when spoken to said, “You wanna know what’s going on here? I’ll tell you plain and simple. This man is a bas—”
The judge held up her hand as a sign for Charlene to stop talking, then sighed with the war-weary face of a judge who has done battle with all manner of wronged women and who held particular disdain for those who lacked reasonable decorum.
“Counselor? Shall we swear in your witness?”
“By all means,” I said.
This wasn’t the order in which I intended to take the testimony of my witnesses, but several factors came into play. Charlene was looking like a flight risk. Before she caught the next plane to Hawaii, I wanted her on the record. Second, Charlene was obviously furious with Nat and ready to napalm his credibility. It was best to capture her point of view while the napalm was still fresh and frothy. And last, I didn’t want her found in contempt of court, hustled off to a holding cell, building a temper tantrum the size of the Sears Tower and then refusing to testify. That would’ve been a disaster. Besides, Judge Shelby was smart enough to put all the pieces together without me following my prearranged menu.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth…”
“Yew ken betcha yer bottom dollar on that!”
“Please answer I do.”
“I do.”
As I gathered my thoughts to begin interrogating Charlene, I thought to myself, Oh, my God in heaven, this is a first. I’ve got a certifiable nut bag on the stand and there’s no predicting and very little controlling what will happen! But I took comfort in the fact that Shelby was a cool head and if things started getting crazy, she’d call a halt to it. I approached the bench.
I went through the normal beginning questions for the benefit of the transcript and the folks in the peanut gallery and looked back to see Julian slip through the door and stand against the back wall. He was going to love this, I thought.