A solitary crow perched on the balustrade and peered through the oak French doors into my courtroom. Annabel, the crow, spent her spring and summer in Antonia and usually stopped by around noon looking to join me for lunch. We’d known each other since I was a rookie district attorney and Annabel a shivering fledgling. Now she was the matriarch of her flock with children and grandchildren, some of whom she occasionally invited to join us on the balcony. Today she was alone and lunch was late. Annabel understood. Crows are a patient tribe and Annabel was amused. She is a people watcher.
I was not amused. It was a beautiful late fall day. Trees were turning, the air was still, and the temperature hovered just below 70 degrees. Winter’s bite loomed just beyond the next painted sunset. I looked forward to sunning in my chair on the balcony and sharing a brown bag lunch with Annabel. She would soon migrate and I would lose the simple pleasure of her company and the season. Today could be Annabel’s last day in Antonia. I winked surreptitiously, hoping she’d continue to wait. Annabel is very observant. Annabel nodded back and groomed herself in the sun.
Inside the courtroom, Ralph ‘Peener’ Predmore, attorney at law, was addressing a jury on behalf of Traquan Farley, accused of public lewdness. Again.
Since his pre-school days Peener had never been able to resist what polite folk euphemistically call ‘adjusting himself.’ It’s a twitch, nothing more, but Peener can’t walk half a block without checking to see if he’s still got everything he had when he left home in the morning. Hence, the nickname which even Peener’s seventy-year-old mother, Philomena Predmore, absently used to refer to her son when playing bridge with her friends at the country club. ‘That Peener!” Phili said, ‘Did you see what a fool he made of himself after the golf tournament last Saturday, Gladys?’
When he’s nervous, Peener’s twitch gets worse. Right now, the irony of Peener’s performance, granted the charge against Traquan, seemed to be creeping through the jury like a wave, one suppressed smile at a time. Most of them had known Peener and Traquan and me all their lives. Nobody had any secrets. I was looking solemn; a judge’s trick, but thinking about Annabel. She has her pride and a lady shouldn’t be kept waiting.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ whined Peener, ‘consider the weakness of the people’s, uh, evidence. It was well after midnight when Miss Carlisle, the people’s, ah …, witness, says she saw Traquan, uh Mr. Farley, wagging his dic.., uh, member, on the sorority house lawn. Recall now, Miss Carlisle admitted when I cross-examined her that the night was dark and, well … so is Traquan’s … uh, well, so is all of him. So, uh, how can she be so sure about what she says she saw or didn’t see? The nearest street lamp was at least fifty yards away.’
Annabel cawed raucously, bobbing her shiny head in agreement with Peener’s thoughts about the visibility of things black after dark. She and her family, of course, knew where they should be at night; roosting in their tree, not flying around Antonia frightening sorority girls.
Peener was in rare form, pulling at his flies and the seat of his trousers almost every time he took a breath. Never an orator, Peener’s argument was disjointed, choppy, and punctuated by pauses and guttural sounds, “uhs” and “ahs,” as Peener’s fuddled wit, like an old computer, clunked out and edited sentences for publication by his mouth.
In television drama, criminal defense lawyers are portrayed as diabolically unprincipled or, alternatively, saint-like in their devotion to justice, but almost always they are slick, intelligent, and possessed of certain elegance. Peener’s success came, however, because he was a doofus. Jurors knew Peener was too dumb to lie and pitied his luckless clients as Peener bobbed and fumbled his way around a courtroom. In minor cases such as Traquan’s, juror’s pity transmuted into reasonable doubt and did so often enough that Peener enjoyed disproportionate success in the defense of gamblers, public urinators, panhandlers, and common drunks, that is to say, the bread and butter of the criminal courts.
I thought about chastising Peener, reminding him not to play with himself while addressing the jury. I’d get a cheap laugh, but why bother? It would only make an issue for Traquan’s appeal in the unlikely event of his conviction. I also wondered what Miss Farley, a 19 year old sophomore English major at Antonia College, would have thought if she’d seen old Peener on the sorority house lawn twitching and pulling at himself as he ambled toward his Cadillac deVille after a wine and cheese fund raiser at the Dean’s pavilion. If their roles had been reversed and Traquan had been born wealthy and Peener on trial, Traquan would fit the stereotype criminal defense attorney more completely. Traquan is intelligent and had once been very elegant indeed. A starched collar and well-tailored suit would do wonders for Traquan. No tailor could make Peener elegant.
Peener was representing Traquan because his mother, Phili Predmore, told him to. Although she hobnobbed at the country club every Saturday, Phili’s lifelong best friend was Melva Farley, Traquan’s grandmother. Melva had been Phili’s ‘girl,’ cleaning Phili’s house and sharing her life, since both women had been young matrons. Over the years, although they maintained the fiction of employer and employee, the two old ladies had become inseparable friends, watching soap operas together every weekday, casting each other’s fortunes with Tarot cards, and watching professional sports on Sunday afternoons. Both were bloodthirsty New York Giants Football fans and placed bets with Traquan who ran a sports book out of his auto shop.
The Saturday morning after Traquan was arrested, Melva told Phili, ‘Miss Philomena, those college girl hussies been botherin’ my Thomas again. Do you think Mr. Ralph can get Thomas out of jail in time for our Giants ‘barrass those Browns tomorrow?” (Melva steadfastly ignored the name her daughter, Doris Farley, had given her ‘love child,’ Traquan. Melva’s only comment on Traquan’s given name was “They ain’t no Saint Traquan! Thomas was Jesus’ own twin brother and Thomas is that chile’s name!” As far as Melva was concerned, Traquan was Thomas and that settled the matter. When Doris later ran off with Traquan Ulysses Jones, a traveling bible salesman, Phili tended to agree with her old friend that there wasn’t any Saint Traquan.
Phili, of course, picked up the telephone, and said, ‘Ralph, Thomas Farley’s in jail again for some foolishness up at the college. You go down there and bail Thomas out. And Ralph, you do it before lunch and don’t you fool around flirting with that girl deputy sheriff who works at the jail weekends. She’s not half your age and isn’t our kind of people. Thank you, dear. And Peener,’ Phili slipped, ‘bring home some chips and dips for Mrs. Farley and me for tomorrow.’ So that was that. Traquan was bailed in time to make book on Sunday’s games.
To return to my day, of course Traquan had exposed himself. He did so every time he got drunk, usually in front of one dormitory or another. I’d even defended Traquan for the same offence several years earlier. In his youth and twenties, Traquan had enjoyed remarkable success as a College Town Casanova, meeting girls at the taverns and taco joints just outside the main gate of Antonia College. With soft good looks, a well-studied island accent, and natural cunning, Traquan was a born lady killer among middle class teenaged girls living away from home for the first time. Time and gravity, however, had not been kind to Traquan and at thirty-five, he looked older. His features had thickened and his skin had lost the youthful elasticity of his boyhood days. Traquan’s jaw had become heavy and his massive stomach now sagged below the belt of his grease-stained chinos.
Don’t misunderstand me, Traquan is a useful citizen and well regarded in Antonia. He is the best auto detailer in the county, makes good money, mostly supports his many known children, and is a deacon and lay preacher at the African Baptist Church. Traquan’s undoing is Jim Beam. Once or twice a year Traquan gets scandalously drunk and, apparently remembering his salad days, wanders towards College Town. Hence, the pending charges and my involuntary imprisonment in my own court room. I couldn’t break for lunch until Peener wrapped up his interminable final argument and Saint Vitus’ dance.
Peener, like Traquan, was a bachelor. Peener lived with Phili, Traquan usually ate his meals with Melva and slept in her home when fortune frowned on his romantic efforts. Phili, however, had tyrannized Peener into a low fat diet, daily exercise, and golf and tennis in season. Although Phili said she hoped Peener would find a proper wife, she vigorously discouraged Peener’s now infrequent and always frustrated social life. For his fortieth birthday, Phili had indulged Peener’s vanity with a face lift, capped teeth, and toupee. The cosmetic surgery and capped incisors had juvenated Peener’s middle aged countenance to such a degree that he now sported a perpetually startled look. Of course, everyone in town knew Peener’s brunette hair was a rug and totally unlike his remaining natural fringe of gray fuzz. George Shevalier, the foreman of Traquan’s jury, remarked during their deliberations that, since his makeover, Peener looked like a just goosed beaver. This was the consensus around Antonia. It gave folks something to talk about at the Busy Bee Café.
As Peener flailed into the second half hour of his summation for Traquan, his opponent, District Attorney Lew Palmer, pretended to doze, looking like a bull walrus on an ice floe. Lew wanted the jury to think he was so confident of his case and Peener’s argument so futile that he wasn’t listening to it. Unfortunately for Lew, he had in fact fallen asleep and was now snoring audibly. Peener, flustered, broke off his summation in mid-sentence, and, with his left hand momentarily frozen on his flies, flourished his right hand, and giving one last tug announced ‘And with that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.’ Lew, dreaming of Mrs. Lew’s iron household discipline, honked and mumbled ‘But, honey…,’ as his chin disappeared in the ample wattle beneath it. Several jurors sniggered.
I brought my gavel down hard enough to wake Lew with a snort and adjourned the trial for a lunch, until 2:30 p.m. The jury was entitled to a decently unhurried lunch. We’d finish up by 3:30 or 4:00 in any case. They’d reach their verdict by 4:30, and all be home for supper. Traquan too.
Anabel bobbed her head, spread and folded her iridescent black wings, and cawed twice. She knew we’d have some time together after all. Lord, I love that bird!
