False Convictions

39

CASEY FORCED her lips into a flat line. She should look cheerful, but she’d already recruited every muscle in her face not to frown. Trucks sprouting small satellite towers lined Genesee Street as far as the hill dipping toward the rough side of town. Their generators belched spent diesel into what would have been crisp morning air. Graham, she knew, wanted to give the networks plenty of time to cut their pieces, and give his PR people more time to sell it into the news cycle.

Ralph pulled over in front of the police cruisers, which sat angled watchfully out on the wide street. Between them, cops working crowd control leaned with their arms and cups of coffee resting on the roofs of their cars, sunglasses pushed up above their hairlines in the shadow of the courthouse. Casey circled the cluster of patrol cars and the sidewalk bulging with cameras, microphones, and smartly dressed reporters. While not an unfamiliar scene, the VIP tent Graham had somehow arranged to be set up in the narrow plot of grass beside the courthouse made her wonder if they hadn’t overdone it.

She was waved through the police checkpoint by a party planner who wore a turtleneck beneath his Armani suit. The linen-covered table, heavy with Danish, salmon, and caviar hors d’oeuvres and silver urns of coffee and tea, held no interest for her. Neither did the retinues surrounding Al Gore, Brad Pitt, or Jesse Jackson.

“There you are,” she said to Graham, who stood with a crystal tumbler of orange juice. He was in his Timberland boots, Levi’s, and flannel shirt with dark hair poking out of the open collar. “Who’s the party planner?”

“Abel?” Graham said, nodding toward the wispy man in the turtleneck. “He’s a director. Won two Clios last year.”

“Commercials?”

“Try the cheese Danish,” he said, surveying the small crowd. “Brad Pitt loves them. They’re from Neddi’s, a little place Abel found in Chicago. Fresh this morning.”

“How did you do this?”

Graham smiled without looking at her, obviously proud. “They believe in the cause.”

“That’s bullshit,” Casey said. “What did it cost? Is there a service you use to get a lineup like this?”

Graham shrugged. “It’s a big moment.”

“It is now.”

“It was always big,” he said. “Big to Dwayne. His mom. The Project. Nothing could be bigger.”

“Now it’s big to every housewife in Dayton,” Casey said. “I’m serious. If I’m going to be doing these on a regular basis, I want to know how it works.”

Graham reined in his smile and met her eyes. In a low voice he said, “There is a service. They work through the agents and keep schedules for all the A-list people. You have to fly them in and out and provide police escorts, and you have to take who happens to be close by. Brad Pitt was shooting a movie in New York. Gore was actually in Buffalo showing his movie.”

“And this would cost?”

Graham looked away, studying with appreciation the legs of a young woman in a dark suit who hovered near Jesse Jackson.

“About the same thing it cost me to hire you,” Graham said, grinning, his eyes dancing around the tent now.

“For all of them?”

“For Brad Pitt. Jesse and Al I got two for one.”

Casey nearly choked. In a hissing whisper she said, “You spent two million dollars to have these people here?”

“It’s like an ad in the Super Bowl,” he said, nodding. “Did you see the networks out there? E!? Fox News? These things cost money. Plus, all three of them are now on our board.”

“Swell.”

“You asked how it’s done. Look at Kollar. I bet you didn’t know he had those dimples.”

Judge Kollar stood in his robes, having a picture taken between Brad Pitt and Al Gore, his smile wide as an airplane hangar. Graham looked at his watch and a disturbance at the back corner of the tent marked the arrival of Dwayne Hubbard in a pin-striped suit escorted by two Auburn police officers, each of whom gave wide berth to the man Casey had last seen in shackles. Trailing Dwayne was a thin black woman with white hair wearing a bright blue dress and matching hat, Casey guessed the mother. Another woman stood beside her, tall, overweight, and a black face painted with red rouge and lipstick surrounding a gap-toothed mouth. Casey couldn’t imagine who she might be or what her role was.

Even in the suit, Hubbard’s thin neck and big glasses gave him the air of a character actor playing a bit part on a low-budget cable movie. Jesse Jackson kicked into gear with kisses, solemn hugs, and jive handshakes.

The judge got into the act with Brad Pitt, mugging for the lone photographer who took direction from Abel. Al Gore waited like the statesman until a more dignified moment could be born from the charade and he could pump Hubbard’s hand like a car dealer. It was then Casey heard Dwayne introduce the heavy woman as Naomi Potts, his soul mate and fiancée. Abel raised his voice and began herding the whole group the way only someone fluent in managing big egos and personalities really can.

Atop the courthouse steps, between the towering columns, Casey and the rest positioned themselves on patches of duct tape bearing their names written in black Magic Marker. Casey stood beside Dwayne Hubbard in front of the podium and its herd of microphones while Brad Pitt, Al Gore, and Jesse Jackson, who wouldn’t let go of the mom, flanked them along with Graham, who placed a patronizing hand on Casey’s shoulder as she spoke. When she turned to offer him a weak smile, Casey noticed the judge prowling around in the background, jockeying for some face time.

Casey removed the notes from her briefcase, only to have them deftly snatched up by Abel, who replaced them with a small, three-sentence script. Casey frowned at him, but Abel was too busy handing out scripts to the others to notice her ire.

Casey realized that the crowd had quieted. Graham gave her a hearty thumbs-up. Flashes popped and lenses spun into focus. She cleared her throat and began to read.

“In all my time as a lawyer who loves the law,” she said, looking up from her notes at the narrow-hipped director, “never have I seen such an injustice, an injustice born of malice, racism, and the most heinous form of corruption. In the case of Dwayne Hubbard-who the Freedom Project stands beside today in joyful freedom-the crushing weight of the system acted contrary to the American principles of liberty and freedom. In short, those who swore an oath to uphold the law worked selfishly and cruelly against it.”

Flashes continued to pop and camera motors whirred. Abel, halfway down the steps and off to the side to avoid the cameras, waved frantically for Casey to step aside and she did. Dwayne cleared his own throat, and Casey saw that the sheet of paper he held behind the podium trembled in his shaking hands.

“First, I want to thank my lawyer, Casey Jordan, and the Freedom Project for this historic moment,” Dwayne said, his voice quavering as he held a limp hand up in a gesture to his supporting cast. “And I especially thank Brad Pitt, and Jesse Jackson, and Vice President Gore, along with Robert Graham from the Freedom Project. I also want to say that… that… that while I can’t understand how Judge Patricia Rivers could send an innocent man to jail, even to protect her own son, that I do forgive her, anyway.”

A murmur erupted from the crowd of reporters and the intensity of the flashing and humming built to a crescendo that waned for Al Gore and Jesse Jackson but reached new heights for Brad Pitt and even stayed strong for the bashful billionaire who thanked everyone and asked for the continued support of the American people for this great cause.

Within five minutes, the celebrities had vanished, whisked away in long dark cars sandwiched between flashing lights and sirens. The press broke down their equipment, hot to get into whatever edit space their producers might have found in the larger cities nearby.

“Well,” Graham said, sidling up next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and giving her a squeeze. “How do you feel?”

Casey looked at him, his dancing hazel eyes, the razor stubble, the rakish dark hair, and said, “Like I need a shower.”