Vanishing Acts Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I straighten. "Excuse me?"

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

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

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

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

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

  "Magdelena?"

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

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

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

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

  "Is Ruthann Masawistiwa there?" a voice asks.

  "Just a sec. Who's calling?"

  "The Virginia Piper Cancer Center."

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

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

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

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

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

  We all have our secrets, I suppose.

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

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

  *

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

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

  "My dignity?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Yes, sir," I say.

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

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

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

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

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

  The last thing I need is to have Sheriff Jack calling Judge Noble and having a little chat.