Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause Read Online Free PDF Page A

public have long been regarded as a breach of etiquette. In private, a different code governs. Five minutes later I am told by Judge Bruton’s clerk that the judge, approaching seventy, has gone home for the day. My bond hearing will be no sooner than tomorrow, and I walk down stairs to tell Andrew Chapman that he will have to spend the night in jail, for no other reason than one judge likes him too much and the other one has gone home to doze in front of the afternoon soaps.
    Downstairs I can detect relief by the spring in Chapman’s step as he is led toward me. Damn, I haven’t been on this case an hour, and I already feel guilty. Why? I think it’s because I already like Chapman, even though I’ve just met him. Some people (not many criminal defendants) I like instinctively and he is one of them. There is a dignity about the man that is appealing. I extend my hand formally, knowing at the moment I have nothing better to offer him. He crushes my fingers as if to reprimand me silently for allowing him to be degraded in this way. I explain his dilemma, and he listens intently. Fortunately, I didn’t promise him his re lease this afternoon. Still, guilt, like prickly heat, jabs my conscience while I explain that tomorrow morning he will appear before the judge for a bond hearing. This man should not be in jail even overnight. If he were white, given the nature of the alleged crime, he would most likely be released on his own recognizance. He may spend one night in jail, but I’ll be damned if he is going to spend another one.
    “It’s okay,” Chapman says, consoling me.
    “I know you did all you could.”
    I shrug, not so sure. Hell, I should have called Bruton, the old bastard, at home and told him to get back down here and put in a day’s work.
    “I’m sorry. Dr. Chapman.”
    He gives me a wan smile.”
    “My friends call me Andy.
    “Dr.
    Chapman’ seems a little formal in a place like this.”
    I look around the human zoo surrounding me and have to agree.
    “Andy,” I say, “my parents. God forgive them, named me “Gideon,” and my friends don’t call me “Giddy.”
    ” His smile broadens.
    “Gideon it is.”
    I leave, glad I could give him something to smile about.
     
    i stand out in front of the jail like some derelict who has just been released from the drunk tank. The afternoon sun feels about five feet from my face. What now? So far my debut in private practice has been less than impressive. I can’t even get my first and only client bonded out of jail. If I don’t get out of the heat soon, I’ll spend my first night in a hospital as a stroke victim. To give myself time to think, I wander back over in the direction of the Blair Building, wondering if they have had to pry Martha off the bathroom fixtures. It is beginning to sink in how desperate my situation is. If I can ever get Chapman released, the first thing I’ll need to work out with him is a retainer. As if I’ve got something important to do, I walk against the light at the corner of Vance and Darrow. Unless you have a job, there’s not much to do except window-shop—not that there’s anything to buy downtown since developers figured out they could make a fortune accommodating whites who wanted to escape from blacks by moving to the western part of the county. The central business district is a checkerboard of urban blight.
    The closest thing to a first-rate, high-quality retail store on Darrow is a black wig shop. Actually, there is a decent-looking men’s clothing store down the street, but I’ve never seen a white person in it. The assumption is that the stuff must be junk. And we say we’re no longer racists.
    I jaywalk across the street to Beaumont Drugs, which has something for everybody, even unemployed lawyers. I make the sporting-goods section my temporary office and pretend I am pondering the eternal question: Wilson or Penn tennis balls? Bored with jogging and sick of racquetball, I have taken up tennis this