Pro Bono.

Gildner, Gary

I.

Mary Beth pulled her Mercedes into the parking lot of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral beside the finned yellow Cadillac. She could see Marvin's blue-jeaned knees sticking up in the front seat, his white cowboy hat covering his face. Nine a.m. She was right on time.

She and Marvin tried meeting in her office at Riley Hamish Woodward Dunne. Once. Almost from the moment he was introduced to Eilis Flynn, a junior associate who was there to take notes, he seemed to freeze. His head barely moved as he looked slowly at the three posters of Milton Avery pictures: "Mountain and Meadow," "Oregon Coast," "Poetry Reading"; at the Stieglitz photo--"The Street"--showing a time in New York City when horse-drawn carriages were everywhere, and here a woman on a snowy sidewalk is hurrying past a line of such carriages toward a horse standing and waiting as if only for her. Marvin glanced at the poetry books and novels and law books on their shelves, and seemed to assess her carpet in which there was nothing to see except the color beige. Finally he shook his head and put the cowboy hat he was holding in his lap back on his head.

"I ain't comfortable here, Mary Beth. I'm real sorry."

What they did was drive around in his Caddie--which was also Marvin's home--and she interviewed him. He said the car had been with him a long time--longer than he'd been with anything or anybody, even his grandmother and the church in Jefferson City she had taken him to as a boy to get him started. "Started on my education," he told Mary Beth. "When she passed, I was eleven years old, on my own. This here mode of travel--I call her Honey Bee--and all that's inside her is my worldly accumulation. Some of it's important, like my last will and testament, my Webster's dictionary, and my grandma's wedding ring; some's just here clutterin things up."

Mary Beth got out of her car, sliding off the cushion she sat on so she could see better. She knocked softly on the Caddie's passenger side window. Though they were having a warm, sweet-smelling spring, Marvin had all his windows rolled tight.

Slowly one finger raised his hat, just enough to see her. Then he sat up and pulled on his Tony Lamas, surprisingly agile for a big man. He stepped out grinning.

"Oh, my Lord, what a pretty day."

"Good morning, Marvin."

"And a good, good morning to you, Miss Mary Beth." He looked over at her Mercedes. "I see you drivin your daddy's car again."

"Marvin, the first time you said that, it was funny."

"Now you tell me."

"Did I wake you too early?"

"Can't tease me, Mary Beth. I was just layin there cogitating on life and useful words, and now I am closer to wisdom. You get your beauty sleep last night?"

"I was up at four o'clock, Marvin--"

"Goodness, that's early."

"--because a poet tells me you are large and contain miracles."

"Aw, Mary Beth." Marvin jingled the coins in his pocket. "Lemme buy you a cuppa that good Episcopalian java yonder."

The two Cathedral volunteers on duty--wearing matching black French berets--knew Mary Beth from church (and from working this same soup kitchen for the homeless), and now they knew Marvin, who was taking most of his meals there.

Seated at a table with their free coffees, Mary Beth and Marvin opened the spirals she picked up at a drug store soon after she was appointed to try Marvin's case pro bono. Which was a week or so before he bolted from her office. Later, he'd tried to explain.

"A building fulla fancy lawyers makes me feel like I ate somethin rich and it won't settle. Your office was real nice too. Those pretty pictures and all."

She'd looked at him then, and said, "Marvin, I'm going to believe everything you tell me until my S-detector goes off."

"I won't try to slip anything past if I can help it." His eyes had been down when he said this, but immediately they came up and met hers.

"I'm not working for Riley Hamish now, I'm working for you," was all she'd said, though she might have said--but never would--that pro bono lawyering was more satisfying to her than any she would ever do for the wealthy poobahs of Riley Hamish.

At the Cathedral, Mary Beth got down to business. "I think I did okay this morning. Served two subpoenas--Rachel Andrews and Olive Washington. They corroborated everything you told me."

"Good folks. Known em both forever."

"The subpoenas scared them a little."

"I toll em don't worry. Said you were a genius with paperwork, a erudite genius. Like that word erudite?"

"I do, thanks. But I couldn't rouse Mr. Timmons."

"Probly sleepin over with some tender sweetie. Leads a very heavy romance schedule, ole Sammy, even at his advanced age."

Mary Beth paused and looked at Marvin until he said, "Now what?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, ain't nothin."

"How am I going to say your name in court and not swoon?"

"Here we go again, damn. I was Marvin Gaye long before that rooster opened his mouth and I can prove it."

"'What's going on?'" Mary Beth sang.

Marvin slumped back in his chair as if exhausted by the subject of sharing a dead singer's name. He pulled his hat over his eyes. In a moment, though, Mary Beth--and the two ladies serving at the food line, plus a large woman in several layers of clothes selecting a doughnut--heard Marvin croon softly under his hat, "War is not the answer / Only love can conquer hate."

Marvin's lawsuit against Towers Trucking for racial discrimination would be heard in Federal Court on Mary Beth's birthday, Judge Ambrys Tucker Maas presiding. Judge Maas, a conservative of the first water, was near retirement and Mary Beth dreamt one night that he leaned down from the bench and kissed the top of her head, saying, "Lord knows I need to leave something decent behind."

Judge Maas was a classic growler and scowler, with great bushy eyebrows and a bumpy red nose, which may or may not have been the result of dedicated drinking; a dream-kiss gave her no confidence that he would be the least bit kind. A jury trial gave her far more confidence. She was good with juries and despite defendant's counsel's rejecting all but two of the eight African-Americans who had been called, she felt pretty okay about the final seating. She managed to save a high-school history teacher by giving the woman a sour look that she didn't see--but which Mary Beth's opponent did see, at exactly the right moment; and she also got a part-time county librarian seated. When the Towers Trucking side let those two join the party', she could have raised both arms in triumph.

That night she bought herself a bottle of champagne on the way home and drank almost half of it over a chicken breast and Emily Dickinson. "Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed." True enough, but by God she was planning to succeed; and contrary to her usual pre-trial insomnia, she fell asleep beautifully by ten o'clock, not waking until five when a cardinal started blowing his head off outside her window, trying to impress some female.

Studying her eyes in the mirror, brushing her teeth, she made a face--"That's for you, Judge Maas!"--and then she winked--"Happy Birthday, lawyer person."

She put on the most conservative tucked-in suit she owned, a sparrow-brown wool gabardine that she bought anticipating days like this one. A portion of light green blouse-ruffle appeared under her chin like a small reminder of our Puritan past--or a small salad. No jewelry except for very plain gold earrings the size of BBs, a wire-thin wedding band (juries preferred their women lawyers grounded), and her watch with the black leather strap. Her tan shoes carried more than a hint of sleek overdrive, but a girl can batten down only so far. The heels were a sober medium. On the Beaufort Scale she was traveling between zero and one--closer to zero--her smoke rising almost perfectly straight up. That slight waver, a tad snaky, was to remind people that wind speed can shift without warning. So be careful, boys.

Applying a lip blush the color of rust, she tried curling a snarl. Which made her laugh. She drove to the Federal Courthouse listening to Louis Armstrong--

   Just direct your feet
   To the sunny side of the street

She pushed the repeat button three times, driving with the window beside her down and the warm Kansas City morning air brushing her hair dry. She did not want gold dust at her feet--no, not even metaphorically would she care to be rich as Rockefeller--and Louis knew it! What she wanted was far, far simpler. Meantime she had a trial.

Mary' Beth did not fool around with the jury. One by one she looked its members in the eye as she laid out her statement. Mr. Gaye had driven for Towers Trucking for nine years without incident. He picked up and delivered the goods on time. Not one speeding violation, not a single infraction while on the job. Yes, he had some warnings--two, to be exact--related to parking. Who hasn't been warned about something? He was a man doing what Towers Trucking hired him to do, keeping his part of the bargain. One day he comes to work and finds a note under his windshield wiper. A nasty note. Calling him the kinds of names that make every decent American feel funny.

"You know what I mean by funny," she told the jury. "Shocked, sad, sorry, embarrassed, disgusted, angry, small, afraid. We are a long, long way from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, even a long way from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Doctor King's 'I Have a Dream' speech that applies--by the way--to everybody, not just people of color. Mr. Gaye finds more notes. He can't believe it. He shows them to his close friends Rachel Andrews and Olive Washington, both of whom you will meet in a little bit. Mr. Gaye approaches Mr. Rust Mills, the union representative. Shows him the notes. You would expect help from your union, wouldn't you? You would expect help from your employer, wouldn't you? Did Mr. Gaye receive help? No, he did not. In fact, after he complained to these proper offices, the notes and their vile, threatening, hateful language increased. Increased, ladies and gentlemen. And that, I am sorry to say, is why we are here today."

Marvin, wearing what he normally wore--jeans, boots, a flannel shirt--took the stand. He spoke evenly in a pleasing baritone. Mary Beth had advised him to not even think of cracking wise, and no new polysyllabic words he wanted to try out--or any old ones either. "Plain speech, Marvin, is the bedrock of real communication." He promised he would try to be bedrock plain and winked at her.

On the stand he responded to her questions pretty much as they had practiced, adding only one important detail that she hadn't mentioned in her opening statement: scattered on the driver's seat of his rig the next time he came to work following his complaint to the Towers manager were six spent rifle-bullet casings. Mary Beth introduced these casings, holding them up in a plastic bag for the jury to see.

In their prep talk, Mary Beth had also advised Marvin--while on the stand--not to look at anyone from Towers Trucking who might show up to watch the proceedings: to look only at her, the jury, or the judge if he happened to ask a question. But when Marvin started telling his story she saw that he couldn't help glancing at the half dozen beefy Towers toughs who had not only showed up and sat together in a row but wore, to be extra-visible, their varsity-letter-jacket-style windbreakers: bright blue satiny garments with Towers Trucking in yellow script across the front and their names in the same yellow script across the back. They sat like wrestlers before the match, their flushed facial expressions saying they were itching bad for the ref to get things going.

When Rachel Andrews and then Olive Washington were sworn in, they couldn't have been more dignified and outraged and cool all at once. In turn, they listened to Mary Beth read aloud from the notes Marvin said he had found under his windshield wipers, and then holding them, they acknowledged that these were indeed the notes that their old friend Marvin Gaye told them he had found on his windshield; then the witnesses sighed in ways all their own that required no more words from them, not one. Mary Beth could see that the jury understood the wickedness that the women on the stand--and everyone else in the room--had just been exposed to via this evidence and that neither Rachel Andrews nor Olive Washington cared to get down in it any further and thrash around like the fools who had written such garbage. The mother of two high-school boys active in student government and bound for college, Rachel Andrews had worked twenty-four years in the State's driver's license bureau. Olive Washington supervised a cleaning crew at Hallmark Cards and Sundays sang solo in her church choir; her only child, Georgia, was a senior at Cornell College in Iowa. When Mary Beth finished with these women, she whispered in Marvin's ear that today was her birthday and she wanted an ice cream cone.

Towers Trucking had four attorneys at the defense table, all men, and all of them dressed uncannily alike. Blue suits, reddish ties. Which made Mary Beth smile and want to say something clever about it to Marvin. Hoods and their uniforms. If only it wouldn't sound so damned self-righteous. Oue of these attorneys--Manfred Lintz, the lead guy--now whispered something to his colleagues and they all nodded as if they had just chewed on a piece of meat that had been grilled exactly the way they liked it. Yah-yah, Mary Beth thought. But along her collarbone, she was heating up.

She called to the stand Rust Mills, a beefy man wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit and red tie, his hair combed back in perfect iron-gray moguls.

"Did Mr. Gaye bring his complaint to you?"

"He did."

"Did he show you the notes that the court has entered as evidence?"

Rust Mills sighed as if this conversation were a total waste of his time.

"He did," Rust Mills finally said.

"And what was your reaction?"

"To what?"

"To those notes, Mr. Mills."

"Not much," he said.

"I'm sorry--would you mind clarifying 'not much'?"

"Nothing much?"

"Did Mr. Gaye also show you some spent bullet casings?" Again the bored sigh. "Yeah, he did."

"And what was your reaction to those bullet casings?"

"Not much. Excuse me--I mean, nothing much."

Mary Beth stepped over to the evidence table trying not to stomp, and held up the notes in one hand and the casings in the other. "Are you saying, Mr. Mills," she raised her voice, "that your reaction to these threatening notes and bullet casings left on and in a Towers Trucking vehicle scheduled to be driven by Mr. Gaye, a Towers employee and a member of the union you represent, was not much or nothing much?"

Rust Mills leaned forward aggressively. "I thought--and still do--that Marvin Gaye--the one that's still alive"--out slipped a smirk--"was a complete whiner and good riddance!"

"Your honor," Mary Beth said, "I ask that the court certify Mr. Mills as a hostile witness." She could see Lintz stand, no doubt ready to object to her leading questions.

"Denied," Judge Maas growled, saving Lintz the trouble of opening his mouth. "Continue, Mrs. Urquhart."

She knew right then--boom--that they had her. She'd held out for a chance--a dinky-ass chance--to compete, to get her story to the jury for it to decide, but that wasn't going to happen, not at this trial. Judge Mass' growl housed the sound of doom. Turning down her request to certify Mills eliminated a real examination. She couldn't push him now, bear down, make him sweat, bolstering her case-in-chief. All she could ask were who-what-when-where questions and he could pull back and slide by with I don't know until lunch or the end of Western Civilization, whichever came first.

She had nothing, really. She hadn't been able to depose a single Towers employee, so there was no point in calling any toughs to the stand in their bright jackets just to hear them ape Mills by professing ignorance. And Towers' management could lie through their smiles and get away with it. None of this was Marvin's fault--nor should it have been in a Republic that claimed fiercely to be civil--even though he did make a big mistake early on, trying to represent himself and taxing Judge Maas' not generous patience; the court's calling her into the case in the middle of it wasn't even a band-aid: the knife was firmly placed and the blood-letting all but let. She had tried to warn Marvin when they took their first drive in his car, but he was clearly so happy to have her on his side--and in addition getting a good foil for his wit and vice versa--that she couldn't press their puny, if that, chances. She did like occasional long shots, don't ask her why, but today was not eligible.

She rested her case.

Manfred Lintz then asked the judge--as she knew he would--for a directed verdict on the grounds that plaintiff had failed to make a prima facie case.

His eyebrows moving up and down like caterpillars with approach-avoidance problems, Judge Maas asked Mary Beth what she had to say. She cited Federal law--to at least get that on the record--but she could see the judge fast losing interest: it did not matter what she had to say.

During the break for lunch, Mary Beth and Marvin sat in Honey Bee and ate the trail mix and drank the carrot juice he'd brought in a cooler, and gazed at the untroubled blue sky out their windows. They knew they were only waiting for the drive to the cemetery.

Marvin suddenly broke the silence. "You know why Episcopalians don't get themselves involved in orgies, don't you?"

She looked over at him, and waited.

"Too many thank-you notes."

"That is so bad," she said.

"Just tryin to cheer you up."

When court resumed, Judge Maas gently twisted the knife. He said, "Mrs. Urquhart, I want to commend you--you've done a highly professional job here today." Should she jump up and down, clapping? Or curtsy? Or just salute? "But I find that as a matter of law your client cannot establish a prima facie case of race discrimination, and I am therefore dismissing this case." Gosh, that little Latin phrase does get a workout.

He told the marshal to bring the jury back in so he could explain his decision to them. While he was explaining, Mary Beth glanced at Marvin: she shook her head to let him know she was sorry; he leaned toward her and whispered, "A little blood don't mean I'm dead."

Then Judge Maas banged his gavel--just like one of those fake judges on TV, she thought.

II.

The following spring Marvin was notified that his suit against Towers Trucking was in line to be heard by an appeals court, and that summer a truck he was driving across South Dakota almost ended up in the Missouri River. Monkey business had been performed on the truck--he suspected Towers--and he called Mary Beth in her office.

"They seem detasseled about my case going up on appeal."

"If there's a connection," she said.

"If?"

"I know, I know. But the main thing is, Marvin, are you okay? You weren't hurt?"

"Naw. Too stubborn-boned to get hurt. But I was wondering: will I need legal representation in this new assault on my person?"

"It wasn't your truck?"

"You know I can't afford no truck. I was drivin for a small outfit."

"Well, their insurance company will be interested in the matter, we can be sure of that. I'd say, call your appellate attorney in St. Louis, tell him what you know, then stay cool, see what develops."

"Cops say the jiggerations on that vehicle a long way from professional. Hacksaw quality."

"And really, you weren't hurt?" she said.

"Tiny bump or two, nothing to manifest a departure from lookin good."

"I see you are still working the English language."

"Got to stay in shape, Mary Beth, you know that."

"Where are you?"

"Back in KC. Livin in Honey Bee."

"At the church?"

"They like me. Especially since seeing me on TV. I made the national news."

"Well, congratulations, I guess."

"Mary Beth, you got to mix more with the hoi polloi."

"I do?"

"And you got to get to church more. Ladies there shakin their heads."

" I'm a little church, no great cathedral.'"

"Hey, that's nice."

"E. E. Cummings said it."

"Friend a yours?"

"You might say so."

That night she got a call from Charley Finder, an attorney she'd known since law school but hadn't seen or talked to in a while. "Charley, how are you?"

"I'm okay."

"And Nancy?"

"Well, she left me, Mary Beth."

"Left you?"

"Walked out three weeks ago tonight. But I'm okay, pumping iron, painting the bedroom a bright blue--a quite loud blue, actually, with stars." He laughed. "I'm calling, Mary Beth, to see if you'll have dinner with me. No soft cries of self-pity, no moaning, promise. Just a fun dinner. Say yes, if you're free."

She liked Charley and said yes. They met the next night at an Italian restaurant. Before their veal parmigiana and angel-hair pasta with clams arrived and not halfway through their first glasses of a good chianti, he took her hand, kissed it, and confessed that he'd loved her since their first meeting--that torts class with Professor Trueslow--did she remember? When he had to move his big feet in the aisle so she could get to her seat? Then he started to cry. She said, "Charley, stop it." The waiter brought their food and left. Charley said, "Marry me, Mary Beth. Make me whole again."

The really sad part of their date was leaving that plate of pasta and clams. She was starving and really wanted it, the white sauce smelled divine. But Charley Finder couldn't stop sobbing and she couldn't listen to it any longer.

This was the third year in a row that Mary Beth had turned over writing her firm's annual Christmas poem to Eilis Flynn, the junior associate who worked for her. Eilis was pregnant, with twins, the due date nine days away. She was an ample young woman to begin with--six feet tall, big-boned, buxom, a volleyball star at Notre Dame before law school--and filled out, now, to what appeared the bursting point, nearly everyone at the party, it was fair to say, joined in holding a collaborative breath as she made her large way to the Kansas City Country Club's portable stage to read her poem.

It was also fair to say that very few actually followed the poem's clever story line, which was shaped around the Supreme Court acting as Santa and giving George W. Bush a present of the Presidency. Al Gore got a new telescope. The lawyers and secretaries laughed when their names came up, they laughed at the rhymes because Eilis, having studied Mary Beth's former efforts, filled them with as many syllables as possible--interlocutory order / sock it to 'em billing-wise, longer not shorter; but there was too much anxiety in the room to just relax and enjoy, too many thoughts of water breaking, babies wanting out, and who-knew-what-to-do? Eilis' husband Dunston, a linebacker for four years at Nebraska, now sweating bullets in law school at Kansas, was dressed as an elf; as his flushed, ladened, perspiring wife read her poem, he stood behind her and tossed handfuls of paper snowflakes into the air. To many in the audience, this seemed to make a highly tentative situation somehow more tentative.

After Eilis made it safely back to her table, Mary Beth quietly slipped away to the Ladies, and thence to her car. Before starting the Mercedes, she sat for a few moments and gazed at the stars, the half-lit moon, and wondered what her teenaged parents' first thoughts were when they knew she was coming, and what they immediately did then.

On St. Patrick's Day, after the parade, all of the single attorneys at Riley Hamish Woodward Dunne--and many of the non-single--joined the mob of revelers downtown to buy large paper cups of keg beer from the nuns. Not too many years ago even Woodward waded into the crowd, but not since his gallstone operation. The surgeon said the number of calculi in his sac rivaled the seeds in a pomegranate probably, and this image stopped Woodward from eating and drinking most things with flavor or pleasure attached. The sisters wearing old-fashioned habits, their sleeves rolled up, beer foam sliding over their knuckles like lace, were Mary Beth's favorites. Turning from one after getting her cup filled, she saw Marvin Gaye. He was leaning against a beer truck, drinking a Dr. Pepper.

"I can't believe this! Marvin!" she sang out.

"Why, gracious me, who do I behold rubbin shoulders with the hoi polloi? Is it true?"

"And you're drinking pop!"

"My delectation for beer is not keen, Mary Beth. Besides, on duty tonight. Drivin. Good to see you. Been a while."

"You working for the Pope now?"

"Naw, just Sister Sarah, who poured that cuppa brew you holdin. Old frienda mine."

"That right?"

"Did some marchin with Dr. King. Arm in arm. You too young to remember any a that."

"Haw."

"By the way, I hope you ain't drinkin and drivin your daddy's big car tonight."

"Straight to Gates' for some barbecue later. Interested?"

"He makes it too peppery. I favor Mr. Arthur Bryant's culinary savories."

"Okay, let's go there. In a cab."

"Can't. Gotta keep tappin those kegs, earn some credits."

"You're a good man, Marvin. See you when I see you."

"You're a good man too, sister. Be careful."

To line herself up officially as Marvin's pm bono counsel in the new trial--scheduled to start June 25--Mary Beth first had to clear things with Woodward, then send a written request to the court. Though he looked unhappy when she met with him, Woodward said, "Fine, that's fine."

"Are you sure, Henry?"

"I can't eat shellfish. Fiona and I were invited out last night--the Halls--and Adele served a lobster-something. I should have passed. Now I'm paying for my timidity. Never be timid, Mary Beth."

The court also said fine. The judge would be Brice (Ace) Reiser, another conservative, but a colorful one. He'd played baseball at Yale with George H. W. Bush, coached the team at Davidson for several years, then flew Panther jets in Korea in a Marine reserves call-up. Ted Williams and John Glenn were in his squadron. He started law school in his thirties, at UCLA, and while there occasionally worked as a film extra; he was famous among his fellow students for having had a date with Marilyn Monroe. ("I just called her up," he claimed.) Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Federal bench. He was now 77 and engaged to a former Miss Arkansas who was 38 years his junior. Mary Beth was delighted to have drawn him.

A week before Marvin's new trial Mary Beth invited her old friend Sam Green to lunch. Sam was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Kansas City. He and his wife Tillie were two years ahead of Mary Beth in law school and had fed her Spaghetti Delux--they called it--every Sunday night, plus during exams. Sam's strong tenor voice could and often did overpower his fellow choir members at Grace and Holy Trinity; he was a big man, physically, a former high school All-State fullback, and he once offered to kick the shit out of Todd Urquhart when Urquhart was Mary Beth's husband and his infidelities had become known.

Over their grilled salmon, Mary Beth told Sam about Marvin Gaye's discrimination suit: how Judge Maas had thrown it out and how the appellate court in St. Louis had sent it back. She would be representing Marvin again, before Judge Reiser. She told Sam about the spent shells and threatening notes, how Rust Mills had sneered on the stand, the gang of Towers drivers in the courtroom contributing their sneers.

"Check this, Sam. Last summer, mid-June, Marvin is driving a load of FEMA generators from here to Washington State. For an outfit called Cornhusker Delivery. In South Dakota his steering suddenly fails--on a big bridge over the Missouri River--"

"That bridge near Chamberlain?"

"The same. Marvin's rig crosses the centerline--he's going 75, the limit--and crashes through the guardrail. His tractor ends up hanging over the river's deepest channel ..."

"Whew."

"The tractor is totaled, bridge mussed, but nobody's killed. Marvin really lucks out, just some bruises. South Dakota investigators and the insurance guys find that a tie-rod to the steering arm had been weakened--almost certainly with a hacksaw."

"Whoa," Sam shook his head, smiling. "First," he took a sip of his cranberry juice, "a silly question: when did St. Louis reverse Judge Maas?"

"February."

"If your civil case is related, why would Towers be so dumb as to go courting--sorry--a criminal case? With large ripples?"

"Maybe you've already answered that."

"They think Maas' word will be final and can't help twisting the knife--for the pure dumb joy of it?"

"Not nice people can be so slow, Sam, it's disappointing, really."

"Trust all the subpoenas are lined up?"

"Yup."

Sam Green stretched. "Maybe I'll slip in the back and observe. Maybe invite Willie McGee from the FBI to join me since our cargo was FEMA goods. Generators for what, by the way?"

"Does it matter?"

"No big flood?"

"Just getting ready for one, I guess."

III.

Among the potential jurors for Marvin Gaye's new trial were an artist from Hallmark, a secretary at Russell Stover Candies, a retired high school baseball coach, a bartender at a well-known jazz lounge, a grandmother with big dimples who worked in obituaries at the Kansas City Star, and--this one made Mary Beth's heart go faster--a professor from the University of Missouri at Kansas City who specialized in poetry from the Romantic period. He wore a gray mustache and wire rim glasses and his voice was chocolaty smooth. She would never get him seated, nor the black bartender, but she had high hopes for Ms. Twila Mayberry the artist, Ms. Jennifer LaVasseur from Stover, the grandmother--Mrs. Groeth--and the retired coach. Coaches tended to be conservative, but this one, Hoot Cubbage, wore cowboy boots and a breast cancer lapel pin, and he gave Mary Beth a friendly smile that he did not, she noticed, give to Manfred Lintz.

In the end, Lintz and his crew (Towers had the same four attorneys as before) bounced the poetry professor and the bartender pronto; nor did they care for the grandmother from the Star, no great surprise. Mary Beth got the Hallmark artist, the Russell Stover secretary, Hoot Cubbage, and nine women with kids growing up. Eight of these women liked staying home, cooking and cleaning and watching the paper for sales; the one who didn't like staying home drove a taxi after dropping off her two pre-schoolers at her sister's house.

Mary Beth put Marvin on the stand first thing and they got his story out, as before, straight and simple. She introduced the rifle shells and the threatening notes. She also asked him to tell what happened when he was driving a load of FEMA generators across South Dakota on June 15, 2000. He told how his steering suddenly failed and he found himself heading for the Missouri River.

"Where did you spend the night of June 14, 2000?"

"In Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In that big truck oasis--Siouxland."

"Did you sleep in your truck?"

"No. In the motel there at Siouxland."

Rachel Andrews and Olive Washington followed Marvin to the stand and gave their testimony. Mary Beth called Rust Mills to verify that Marvin had made a formal complaint of discrimination to him in 1998 regarding those rifle shells and the racially hostile, threatening notes.

"And then you did what with the complaint?" she asked Mills.

It was at that moment, as if she'd choreographed it, that Willie McGee, the FBI agent whose office was in the same building, entered the courtroom and took a seat beside Sam Green. McGee was African-American, six-feet-four--he'd played basketball at Creighton--and Rust Mills saw him and worked to find a more comfortable position in the witness chair. He fingered the knot in his red tie. Lintz and his colleagues also took note of the agent's appearance. (They had already seen Sam Green come in.) Mary Beth let all this settle a moment, then raised her voice a notch.

"I said, Mr. Mills: after Mr. Gaye made his formal complaint to you, how did you respond exactly?"

"I reported it."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mills, can you tell us to whom you reported Mr. Gaye's complaint? And speak up, if you would, please, so we can all hear you."

Rust Mills labored to clear his throat, then said, "I reported Mr. Gaye's complaint to management."

"That would be Towers Trucking management?"

"Yes."

"The spent rifle shells, the threatening notes left in and on Mr. Gaye's truck--all this was in your report to Towers management?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. You've been very helpful."

Mary Beth called a South Dakota State Police investigator and an investigator for Cornhusker Delivery's insurance carrier. Both testified they had no doubt that a hacksaw had been used to weaken the steering mechanism of Marvin's truck. "An astonishingly crude sabotage," the insurance investigator said.

Then she called a Towers driver named Lance Lang and asked him where he was on June 14 and 15, 2000. He said, "On a run down to Texas with a load of batteries."

"Thank you," Mary Beth said. "That's exactly what the Towers log says you were doing."

Next she called a driver name Buster Flemke, a big-shouldered crew-cut man in his early thirties. He had been one of the satin jacket-wearing toughs at Marvin's first trial; now he wore a dark blue suit and a pinkish tie that seemed to be choking him.

"Is Buster your legal name, Mr. Flemke?"

"No. That would be Francis."

"How long have you worked at Towers Trucking?"

"Proud to say ten years in September."

"Do you remember your first day?"

"Sure do. September 1,1991. Just finished truck driving school. Hauled a load of cow feed out to a lot in west Kansas."

"Where were you last June 14? The Towers log, unfortunately, is not helpful on this."

"Right here in KC."

"All day?"

"All day?"

"Yes, from morning to night. It was a Thursday. Flag Day, actually."

"Shoot, I don't exactly remember."

"But you were here, you said."

"Yes, mam. I slept in my own bed that night."

"Could you have taken a trip that day, out of town, and returned late to sleep in your own bed? You'd remember if you took a drive, wouldn't you?"

Manfred Lintz objected with a weary sigh. "What is the relevance of this questioning, your honor?"

Judge Reiser looked down over his half-glasses at Mary Beth. "Mrs. Urquhart, what's your point?"

"Your honor, I plan to link up this line of questioning with evidence and testimony from other witnesses."

"Proceed."

"Could you say, Mr. Flemke, that you did not take a drive out of town on June 14?"

The witness looked in his lap. Then at the table of Towers attorneys, where Lintz at that moment was reading a note that the attorney beside him had just written on his legal pad.

"I can't remember," Buster Flemke finally said.

"Were you on a personal vacation possibly?" Mary Beth asked.

"I can't--no, I wasn't."

"So you can't account for what you did during Thursday June 14, 2000, except sleep in your own bed."

"No, mam. Not at the present time."

"Tell me this. Have you ever been to Sioux Falls, South Dakota?"

"Yes, mam, lots of times."

"Do you know of the truck oasis Siouxland?"

"Yes, mam. It's a good place to stop after loading up here in KC."

"Might you have been there on the night of June 14, 2000?"

"Well ... I just can't remember."

"How far is it from KC to Sioux Falls, would you say? In miles."

"Oh, four hundred, maybe four-fifty."

"According to Triple A, it's three hundred seventy-two. Could you drive that far in one day?"

"Sure."

"Could you drive twice that in one day?"

Lintz stood up. "Your honor--"

While Lintz searched for his phrasing, Judge Reiser said, "I'm going to let this line of questioning continue."

"Could you, Mr. Flemke?" Mary Beth asked.

"If I had to."

Lintz leaned back, took a deep breath, then stood and declined Mary Beth's offer of Buster Flemke. Lintz also declined Harold (Booty) Bender, a Towers mechanic in his late twenties. Mr. Bender, like Mr. Flemke, was not mentioned on any Towers worksheets for June 14, 2000, and he himself could not recall anything he did that day except sleep in his own bed in Kansas City. But he did know what a hacksaw was and what it could do to a tie-rod if rubbed back and forth on it just so deep. A redhead like Mary Beth, he blushed fully and bright when he had to agree with the insurance investigator's opinion that a hundred miles down the road would likely contain enough bumps and turns to snap it.

Next came Lester Driscoll, whose rounded shoulders and large head seemed to join without the benefit of a neck: he was another of those satin-jacketed Towers drivers from the audience of the first trial. Mary Beth got the same response from him that she got from Buster Flemke and Harold (Booty) Bender: he couldn't recall what he did on June 14, 2000, except sleep in his own bed. She trusted that the jurors were starting to tap their feet to the rhythm of this mantra.

Finally she called Trish Bloom, a secretary for a road contractor in Kansas City who had previously worked at Towers Trucking. Back when Mary Beth was preparing for the first trial, Marvin had mentioned Trish Bloom as one of the few people in the office who always had a nice word for him. "She was nice to everybody," he said. Prepping for the new trial, Mary Beth looked up this secretary.

Miss Trish Bloom was a native of Kansas City, in her late twenties, and she was wearing--Mary Beth had no doubt--a scent called Clinique Happy. Also a tad too much makeup. They met for breakfast at a popular Westport cafe.

"I'm curious," Mary Beth said, "if you'd ever heard any talk about Marvin at Towers that was negative, over the line."

"Well, you know how guys are sometimes. I mean, sure they talked a little rough, laughing at jokes they'd pulled or planned to pull, you know."

"Jokes?"

"Oh, once they left some bullets--the empty shells, I guess--under Marvin's seat cushion."

"Seat cushion?"

"For his back? A support thing?"

"These were other drivers?"

"And Chew Wrigley, in the dispatcher's office. He loved a good joke. So did my boss, Mr. Junior Towers."

"Ever hear Mr. Wrigley or Mr. Towers or any drivers refer to Marvin's race?"

Trish Bloom hesitated. "I don't work there any more. I sort of feel funny talking about them, even though--" She stopped herself.

"May I ask why you left Towers?"

"Better job."

"How so?"

"Oh, the people where I am now are actually more polite. You've noticed how big I am? My bust? Well, at Towers I had to hear more than I cared to, if you want the truth."

"Inappropriate language can hurt."

"Sure does." Trish Bloom's eyes narrowed. "They said Marvin was gonna squirm for acting so smart. Sweat and squirm. He really got under their skin--you know?--when he sued them. Even his union was mad. Least Rust Mills was."

On the stand now, Trish Bloom took a deep breath after telling about the jokes--the notes and bullet shells--and the threats she heard at Towers "to put Marvin Gaye in his place."

"Thank you, Miss Bloom."

Lintz stepped briskly to the podium. He asked Trish Bloom where she went to high school in Kansas City.

"Paseo."

"Were you popular?"

"I had many nice friends."

"White and black?"

Trish Bloom looked toward the ceiling. "Probably more African-American friends. As you know--"

He cut her off. "Yes, we know that Paseo has a predominately black student body."

Where, Mary Beth wondered, was Lintz going with this? He was digging himself a hole!

"Did you graduate from Paseo, Miss Bloom?"

"No. But I got my GED."

"Yes, you did. Congratulations. That was after the birth of your baby, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Her eyes were starting to tear up.

"Are you married, Miss Bloom? Some professional women, though married, continue to use Miss."

"No, I'm not."

"Have you ever been married?"

She began to cry. Lintz said, "Your honor, may we allow the witness a moment?"

Judge Reiser said, 'Yes, fine. But now would counsel please approach the bench?" Mary Beth and Lintz walked up. His voice lowered, Reiser said to Lintz, "Counselor, unless you can tell me where this line of questioning is headed, I'm going to stop it. In any event, it's getting late." Then he recessed until nine o'clock next morning.

That night, Lintz called Mary Beth about a possible settlement.

"You know, Manfred, I couldn't figure out, at first, where you were going with my witness today, beating her up like you did, committing suicide."

"Suicide?" He laughed.

"At the moment we're not interested in a settlement."

"Do you really think you have the jury? Or are you just listening to your own emotions?"

Now she laughed.

"What's funny?"

"You know what--the weepy woman lawyer card you're trying to play."

"We did win the first time."

"And then Towers tries to kill my client!"

"Is that why you got Sam Green and Willie McGee in the courtroom?"

"Jesus, Lintz, they work in that building. Do I control their movements?"

"Anyway, an attempt on your client's life hasn't been proved."

"Darwin's theory hasn't exactly been proven either. Look, Towers is in deep doo-doo and you know it. Beating up on Trish Bloom was cheap and dirty, and Towers couldn't care less--they want Marvin Gaye. They probably didn't even notice how fast the Star reporter was taking notes during your shameful performance. You're trying to end this trial, before you lose it, to eliminate big punitives against your client."

"Oh, come on, Mary Beth."

"You come on, Lintz. Towers is out of control they're so pissed at Marvin."

He called an hour later. He'd talked with his client, he said, and strongly recommended settling.

Mary Beth snorted. "Of course you would."

"So what does your man need? What will he take?"

"Are you actually trying to get me to bid against myself? I used to think you were smart, Manfred." "I'll have a figure for you in the morning."

"Please don't embarrass yourself further."

Mary Beth got in her car and drove to Grace and Holy Trinity's parking lot. Marvin's Caddie was in its usual spot.

"Smells like a pizza parlor," she said, sliding into the rider's side.

"Needed a snack--with anchovies. They high in Omega three's."

"Why don't you look for a nice house, Marvin?"

"On my salary?"

"Or get a cell phone?"

"An be like everybody else--always jumpin like Hollywood callin when it rings?"

"Well, it appears Towers may want to settle. You could have some decent money soon."

"Settle?"

"Lintz called me tonight. Figured he might, after that crummy thing he did to Trish Bloom today."

"Knew you were mad, the way you packed up and scooted."

"Went for a necessary jog. Sorry I didn't share my thoughts."

"So how come he treated her so mean?"

Mary Beth sighed. "Lintz has lost control of his client. All Towers can think of is punishing you, doing really stupid things like hacksawing your steering."

"And slashin Honey Bee's tires that time."

"Those--" her lips tightened, remembering.

"Watch out for swearin."

"Okay, okay. Anyway, he--Lintz--is afraid that if we get to the jury and he loses, you'll be awarded big damages. The jury could take Towers Trucking down and out. Lintz put on that show today to give us the idea he's vulnerable--and to give his client the same idea. I'm not sure Towers understood the commercial: that settling would be the sure, cheaper way to go. Of course, we might not get to the jury. Lintz knows we haven't forgotten Judge Maas. And Judge Reiser could be a problem--he did give Lintz a break today by cutting him off--though I don't think so. The question right now is: are you willing to settle if they make an offer?"

"Don't know."

"Said he'd call in the morning with a figure."

"Hmmm."

"Marvin, settling is not selling out."

"You know that old Episcopalian fable about the man askin the pretty lady if she'd cannoodle with him for a thousand dollars? She says, 'We-l-l, maybe I would.' He says, 'Would you do it for twenty dollars?"'

"I know, I know, she gets all huffy and says, 'What do you take me for?"'

"An he says, 'We already established that--now we just dickerin over price.'"

"Why is that an old Episcopalian fable?"

Marvin laughed. "You mean it ain't?"

Pulling out of the parking lot, she realized she hadn't eaten dinner and was hungry. She drove straight to Winstead's, the burger joint on 47th that her dad took her mom to on dates.

"Cheeseburger," she ordered at the counter. "With onions grilled in, tomato, pickle slices, and mustard. And a sack of fries"--in case she stayed up late--"and a chocolate malt. All to go."

She slid into a booth to wait. Almost nine-thirty and the place was more than half full. Wasn't it always? She wondered what they talked about, her parents, how they sounded? Were they afraid? Surely they were: eighteen, no money. In the next booth a young couple--high-schoolers--sat bent over their glasses of water with nervous flushed smiles. Were they doing it? Unable to keep their hands off each other when they parked in his car on a dark street? Did they just come from one of those precious few hot hurried passionate embraces? Was she happy for them? If she had a daughter, how would she advise her? The girl's blonde hair was awry. The boy sported a few bright pimples, the scraggly beginnings of a mustache. But it didn't matter how they looked to anyone else, not right then.

Her take-out arrived. She decided to eat it there but forced herself to eat slowly: she was not that eager to get to her office any sooner than she had to. She hoped Lintz's offer would be respectable.

"Mary Beth!"

She looked up from her plate. It was Charley Finder.

"Charley--nice to see you."

"I'll bet," he grinned. "May I?"

"I'm actually about to leave. Work awaits," she rolled her eyes.

He slid in opposite, blocking out the young lovers. "Till you go, then? Okay?"

"So how are you?"

"Full of remorse. Can you forgive me for--"

"Forgiven," she said quickly. "Look, let's just bury that night, okay?"

"You look beautiful."

"Charley, I've got a tough night ahead--if you don't mind."

"Can I help it if you look so great?"

"Charley, Charley." She took a breath. "At five o'clock I ran five miles, trying with every step to erase from my mind the faces of a certain attorney and his client. Then this attorney phoned me, interrupting my amateurish attempt at profane meditation. Then I sat with my client in a parking lot. I haven't showered. I'm eating my dinner at ten o'clock. I do not feel great. But thank you. Now, if you don't mind, I have neither the energy for nor the interest in flirting."

"It's me, isn't it?"

She had to laugh.

"That," he said, "makes you even prettier."

She chewed for a minute. Then sipped her malt.

"I do like you, Charley. But you're right--it is you."

"I'm not your type."

"You're not my type."

"May I ask what is?"

"Type is not the best word. But trust I'll respond if and when he comes along. In the meantime, I'm not that horny, if you get my drift."

Marvin Gaye sat sipping carrot juice in Honey Bee and gazing at a two-story red brick house that had a For Sale sign out front. He liked this house. He liked that long slope of yard, all those big old leafy trees; and inside the house he could picture high ceilings and solid oak floors that he would also like, rooms that allowed hefty persons such as himself to mosey through with ease. He also liked the big sun porch on the side. A man could host his friends out there in cool, natural comfort on the hottest, stickiest day. He himself could invite Olive and Rachel. Old Sammy too. He'd tell Sammy to bring along his latest cupcake if she was of legal age and he wasn't afraid of having her meet a truly handsome man.

The truth was, Marvin had been courting Olive Washington discretely for some time and now he could court a little bit louder. She was a woman of many fine attributes, including a voice that floated his heart all the way back to his youth in Jefferson City when he sat in church with his grandmother--sat and stood--and they clapped and sang and reached for the sky, full of love mellow, thunderous, and all ways in between. And Olive, bless her tasty lips, had kisses to accompany that voice, believe him. And the more he thought about those kisses and about sleeping in a real bed and stirring his breakfast oatmeal on a real stove and reading his Star on that grand porch, the more he was flexing up to sing. And then he did sing.