Winner Take All Page 3

  There had been a period in Marcus’ life, separated from the present by a mere knife’s blade of time, when sorrow had been both crippling and constant. As he drove back from a weekend on Figure Eight Island, his car had been struck by a truck and his two children killed. His wife had used their subsequent divorce to brand him with further public shame. When Marcus had finally begun emerging from his own dark pit, Deacon Wilbur had been there to shed light upon what Marcus had almost decided was a hopeless and intolerable climb.

  The older child started mewling again. Deacon turned to Yolanda and spoke softly. She snapped from her internal funk long enough to hand him the boy. Deacon held the child with a grandfather’s experience, bouncing him slightly on his hip, and paying the fretful sounds no mind whatsoever.

  Hamper Caisse emerged from the stairwell so deep in conversation with his client that he almost collided with Marcus before he saw him. “Marcus, why don’t you go find some other place to park your sorry carcass.”

  “I have some affidavits you may want to see.”

  “Don’t go waving your papers in my face. You want to see me about something, you come to my office.”

  “These affidavits relate to a case you’re trying this morning.” The man seeking to hide behind Hamper was a caramel doughboy and minus a neck. “Would you happen to be Mr. Duane Dean?”

  “Don’t say a word to this man.”

  Yolanda spotted them and emitted a terrified wail. The babies caught wind of their momma’s distress, and began caterwauling.

  “Mr. Dean, I am about to present evidence before Judge Sears that you have made a practice of extorting sexual favors in lieu of rent, then falsely impounding your tenants’ property.”

  “Back off, Marcus, while you still got use of your legs.”

  “I would imagine that Judge Sears will be issuing a warrant for your arrest.” Marcus offered Duane Dean the affidavits. “Your situation would be vastly improved by seeing to this matter immediately and permitting this woman to return to her apartment.”

  Hamper slapped the papers from Marcus’ grasp. “You’re way out of line here, counselor!”

  Deacon set down the child and swooped in to confront the landlord. “How can you do this to one of your own kind? You been going around preying on our children, taking them like you would a nice piece of meat.” The pastor was a scrawny bundle of rage and time-blackened iron. “Don’t you be shaking your head at me, I know what I’m seeing. I know!”

  “Who is this nutcase?” Hamper moved to block Deacon’s inexorable approach. “Get him away from my client or I’ll have him arrested!”

  Deacon shunted Hamper Caisse aside as though the attorney held less substance than a shadow. He pressed Duane Dean tightly against the scarred cinder block wall. “How old are you, sir? Forty-five? Fifty-five? You know how old this child is? What is your problem? You think you’re gonna come into my town, take advantage of my flock? I got some news for you, sir. I’ll tear your house down with my two bare hands!”

  “Threats!” Hamper was playing to the theater now, waving his arms enough to make his tie dance like a silk snake. “Y’all hear that? He’s threatening my client with bodily harm!”

  “I’ll expose you to the newspapers! I’ll talk to my friends in the police and the sheriff’s office. This might be Carolina, sir, but it’s a new day. Yessir, a new millennium. We got us some friends now, and we’ll turn every one of them against the likes of you. You hear what I’m saying? We’ll hunt you down where you live!”

  Duane Dean emitted a rodent’s squeak, clawed his way around Deacon, and fled down the staircase.

  “Duane, hold up now, we’re due in court!”

  Deacon turned on the lawyer. “I’ve got something to say to you, sir.”

  Hamper Caisse had the haggard features of a dedicated chain-smoker and the pale eyes of a luminous ghost. His voice held the rough hoarseness of one who lived for theatrics. Everything about him—vision, direction, dress, motion—was disjointed and awkward. He did not seem to connect with anything fully, not even himself, until he entered a courtroom. Before the bar, Hamper Caisse came into his own. He roared, he laughed, he juggled the jury’s emotions. Then he departed, untouched by all but the thrill of trying another case. He was said to have a wife and children, but he took no social engagements and was always seen alone. His paperwork was abysmal, his memory shoddy, his morals absent. He took everything that came his way, from traffic violations to rape. He would defend anyone. He reassured even the most pathological sadist by the utter absence of questions in his gaze.

  Hamper tried for indignation, but it flickered and died in the face of Deacon’s rage. “You just keep your distance!”

  “You might think you have the right to do whatever you want with my people.” Deacon’s voice would not have carried far, save for the fact that the third-floor lobby now held its breath. “The book learning and the power you think you got makes anything you feel like doing just fine, don’t it. Tell me I’m not talking the truth.”

  Marcus gathered up his affidavits and moved a half step away. Anyone who could silence a courtroom dramatist needed no help from him.

  “You might think you can control the cards, on account of who you are and who you know.” Deacon moved closer. Hamper had the choice of backing up or rubbing chests.

  He backed.

  Deacon kept on coming. “You might think you’re a powerful man, given the color of this no ’count skin you’re wearing like a cheap suit. But my God knows just exactly who you are. Oh yeah. He knows exactly what you’ve done.” Another step. “My God is a great God.” And another. “He’s an awesome God.”

  He pushed Hamper around the corner and into the center of the lobby. “He’s bigger than anything you know, or anything you have, or anything you’ve ever done. So I’m gonna pray to my God for your no-good, rotten soul.” Deacon leveled the only weapons he had at his disposal, his gaze and his voice and his trembling finger. “Your nasty, stinking, depraved, and wicked soul.”

  When the elevator doors pinged open, Hamper flung himself into the crush. The cries of those at the back were cut off by Deacon rising to a full-on pulpit roar. “But let me tell you this. If I ever catch you anywhere near my people again, I’ll have this entire world in the streets!”

  A deep black voice from somewhere behind them belled out, “Say it, brother!”

  “I’ll have them marching on your home! I’ll have them crying for your head!”

  A woman’s voice took up the background cadence. “I say amen!”

  “You think you know some folks? I’ll call the politicians who’re just begging for our votes. I’ll tell them just exactly what it is you and your filthy friend’s been up to. You think you can do this to my people? You’re wrong! It is not going to happen.” Deacon had to lean over to fit his epitaph between the closing doors. “I’ll expose you for the scum you are!”

  When the doors cranked shut, the silence lasted a profound moment. Then the entire lobby began cheering. It was the first time Marcus had ever heard applause in the Wake County courthouse.

  Deacon turned around, his features seared by his own flames. He spoke to the cowering young woman. “Come on, daughter. Let’s go watch Marcus clear up this mess. Then we gotta find your children someplace healthy to live.”

  They left the courthouse and went by the apartments, where Yolanda’s unit was now open and the landlord nowhere to be found. After they had gathered her belongings, Deacon asked her to introduce them to every other young woman living there. Marcus came in twice to take affidavits from women enduring the exact same treatment, then retreated back to his car. The stench of abject hopelessness was too strong for his paltry spirit to withstand for long. Deacon was made of stronger stuff, however, and did not reemerge until every one of the women had received his message. Whether they wanted it or not.

  Yolanda remained morosely silent the entire journey back to Rocky Mount, save for two sharp outbursts when her children grew so bo
isterous she could not ignore them. Deacon used Marcus’ phone to call ahead, then turned around to say, “I’m taking you by your aunt’s home. She’s agreed to take you and your children in for a time.”

  “She don’t like me none.”

  “She’s family, she’s Christian, and she knows what’s right. She’s disappointed in you, the same as I am. You know that, don’t you?”

  Yolanda might have nodded, or she might simply have jerked in time to her son’s bounces on the seat beside her.

  “Child, you’ve known me since you were a baby. I changed your diapers. I married both your momma’s sisters. Look at me, daughter. I even helped you learn to walk. Why on earth didn’t you come to me before now?”

  Yolanda found something beyond the car window of morose fascination, and said nothing. Marcus studied her in the rearview mirror, and wondered if having so much sorrow inside such a young form stripped away the ability to weep.

  “It breaks my heart to see people I love go out there and make bad choices,” Deacon went on. “I know you’ve been abused. I know you’ve been taken advantage of here. Turn around and look at me, girl, I’m talking to you.”

  She tilted her chin upward, but the defiance was such a paltry show she did not even convince herself.

  “This ain’t just about that man back there. You knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. Don’t you shake your head. The fact that you’ve got these two children sitting here says you know all there is to know about using your body.” He turned around long enough to say, “Pull up in front of that red brick house there.”

  Before Marcus cut the motor, a heavyset black woman he recognized from church pushed through her front door. They gave each other a solemn nod, but neither felt this was a time for neighborly waves.

  “I am angry with you, child. I’m upset. Same as your aunt here. We know you’ve been doing wrong. All this trouble we’ve been having today is on account of bad decisions you’ve made yourself.”

  The boy spotted the older woman standing on her front lawn and let out a squeal of delight. Yolanda leaned over to open his door, almost masking her shattered tremble.

  “Everybody makes bad decisions, daughter. That’s why Jesus walked upon this earth, to help us with these bad times, especially the times that are all our fault. But from this point forward, you gotta play it straight. You need to start thinking about what kind of legacy you’re gonna be leaving for those children. You not careful, you’ll be watching them do the same things with somebody else. You hear what I’m saying?”

  She whispered, “Yes, Deacon.”

  “Marcus and me, now, we’ve put ourselves on the line for you. So this is how it’s gonna be. If you don’t want to live by our rules, we’ll love you just the same, and we’ll pray for you with our last dying breath. But we’re also gonna get those babies taken away from you, and we won’t be having you around us no more. You’ll just be left to suffer the consequences. Those are your choices, daughter. Now go say hello to your aunt.”

  It wasn’t until the young mother was enfolded into her aunt’s arms that she began to weep. The great heaving sobs only made her look more fragile than before. The older woman gave Deacon a long look over her niece’s head, but did not say a word.

  As the young woman fought to regain control, Marcus helped Deacon unload her belongings from the trunk. Overhead the clouds were massing for a serious summer downpour. The air was thick with humidity and dread.

  When Marcus returned from the house, Yolanda was waiting for him by the car. She spoke so softly her lips scarcely moved. “That white man back there, the one Deacon lit into.”

  “You mean your former landlord’s attorney, Hamper Caisse?”

  “He was one of them always coming round. Messing with a lot of the girls. Scaring them bad with what he’d do if they talked ’bout what was going down.”

  “If you’d be willing to testify to that under oath, I could try to have him disbarred.”

  She hefted a bundle larger than she was and headed for the house. “I don’t want to be thinking ’bout that stuff no more.”

  CHAPTER

  ———

  3

  THE AIR SMELLED OF superheated asphalt and coming rain. Marcus was pursued the entire way home by the rumble of gunfire over the horizon. He pulled into his drive just as the first drops started falling, big pelting bullets that pursued him across the lawn. The Victorian home had borne a striking resemblance to its owner when Marcus Glenwood had returned to Rocky Mount soon after the accident. The place that now served as both his office and home had stood derelict and empty with treelimbs lancing the walls. Windows had cupped shards of old glass like segments of teeth in an unearthed skull. Marcus had done much of the rebuilding himself. Eighteen months of hard labor had proved a sweaty therapy against the ghosts that had chased him from Raleigh and the high-wire act of big-time law.

  Kirsten stood waiting for him on the wraparound veranda. Today his research aide and would-be fiancée was sheathed in gray silk, elegant in design and European in cut. Eyes the color of crushed lilacs watched his approach, giving nothing away. In the day’s dim light her white-blond hair shimmered with a glow of internal fires, the enigmatic beacon of a future he had mistakenly thought was theirs to claim. Of all the uncertainties in his life, the worst by far was not knowing if Kirsten would show up again. Or even call to say she was gone.

  He took the front steps in two bounds, slapped the rain off his briefcase, set it aside, and stepped behind her. Marcus wrapped both arms around this living mystery and lowered his head so that it rested upon her shoulder. Kirsten was a quiet woman by nature, a trait some counted as weakness in a society that prized noise and empty opinions. He could spend an evening in her company, count the number of words they spoke on both hands, and feel replete. If only he could find the proper words to make her stay.

  “You need to put on a clean shirt. You smell of the courthouse.”

  “How does the courthouse smell?”

  “Fear and ashes and burnt sulfur.” Her voice was scarcely louder than the water streaming off the veranda roof. “Hurry now. He should be here any minute.”

  “Do I want to know who?”

  “No, but I need to tell you.” She stepped out of his embrace. “The chairman of New Horizons.”

  A pair of crows mocked him from the nearest tulip poplar. “The new guy, what’s his name?”

  Netty, his secretary, called through the screen door, “Dale Steadman. The man called just after you left this morning. Personally.”

  “You should have phoned and told me.”

  “We know what kind of morning you’ve had. You didn’t need to be adding another worry like this one.”

  Thunder rumbled from the far south. Closer to hand a car pierced the slate veil and angled into the drive. Kirsten turned him toward the door. “Go, now. You’re wearing sweat stains I can see through your jacket.”

  Two years ago he had waged courtroom combat against New Horizons, the world’s largest producer of sports apparel. The press had called it a victory, and for a match-flare of an instant Marcus had stood illuminated upon the stage of public attention. But the young woman who had uncovered how a New Horizons factory used slave labor had come home in a casket. Her parents still had moments when their features would slacken and the loss of their only daughter would drill a hole through the center of their gazes. The case still wound its way through the appellate system, an endless maze created by frantic teams of New Horizons attorneys. Lawyers could spend lifetimes keeping their clients from ever shelling out a single dime, and be proud of their manufactured futility.

  As he reknotted his tie, Marcus recalled the little he knew of his visitor. Dale Steadman was a newcomer to the scene, appointed chairman after New Horizons became the whipping boy of both the press and the human rights campaigners. Marcus’ case had breached the company’s armor. Their factories became the center of protests right around the globe. As a result their stock had nosed
ived. Dale Steadman was the former owner of a high-end sports apparel company that had been acquired by New Horizons just prior to the case. He had been foisted upon the company by panic-stricken stockholders as the new chairman. His initial steps toward cleaning up the corporate act had been viciously opposed within the company.

  Marcus knew the house so intimately he could sense the change downstairs, as though the newcomers tramped across his own bones and not the conference room floor. He dreaded what was about to unfold. The air of his conference room would be as highly charged as a thunderstorm’s ground zero, when invisible particles lifted hair like tentacles seeking the oblivion of a direct hit. The chairman of New Horizons would sit flanked by his senior legal team. They would deliver whatever news they carried with the precision of laser-guided bombs, study his reaction, then depart to measure and prepare the next skirmish. Maximum damage with minimum exposure. Appellate court cases were the modern-day equivalent of the Hundred Years’ War.

  But when he entered the conference room, he was confronted by the astonishing sight of a single man.

  Dale Steadman sat so that he could stare out the open window, where the diminishing rain chimed and rustled. Kirsten sat beside him, angled so that she could observe both the guest and the day. Marcus’ tread sounded loud as drumbeats as he approached his new adversary. “Mr. Steadman?”

  “That’s right.” Dale Steadman rose and shook Marcus’ hand, revealing a fighter’s bulk beneath his tailored navy suit. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “As we have repeatedly informed your attorneys, I have turned over the New Horizons case to the firm of Drews and Howe. What you see here is my entire practice. We’re not equipped to manage an appellate battle.”

  His guest turned back to the open window, as though the reason for his visit was to be found in birdsong and rain-lashed wind. “I don’t recognize these trees you’re putting in here.”

  “Crepe myrtle.” Marcus slid into his seat. “They replace a giant elm your lackeys destroyed when they tried to burn down my house.”