Reef Dance Read online

  My influence in the outcome of the proceedings passed unnoticed. Darla did not so much as glance my way when her hearing concluded. Instead, she thanked Judge Foley a dozen times, God-blessed him a few more, and squeezed through the exit, Eric and Stacy clutching her waist on both sides like angels propping a sinner.

  Foley surveyed the courtroom. The long black second hand on the industrial clock buzzed in a slow circle on the side wall. Two-eighteen.

  I sat at the long, crescent-shaped counsel table, hands folded, waiting. Shelly Chilcott, the Child Services court liaison who’d stuck me with the Randall case just before lunch, worked the phones from a desk buried in paper near the opposite end of counsel table. Behind me, the bailiff creaked in his swivel chair as he shot a rubber band at Shelly’s potted cactus.

  The entire rotation of 302 regulars was hanging around, lounging on three rows of spectator benches. A low dividing wall ran the width of the courtroom, broken in the center by partitions separating the gallery from the legal arena. Gerry Humbert, a rumpled, private panel attorney in a jacket that in another bygone era probably resembled tweed, sat in the first bench with a Daily Journal in his lap, play-acting at actually reading it. Gerry never reads anything. Hasn’t perused a legal opinion since law school, but argues the latest case law regardless. “What’s the citation for that one, Gerry?” I love to say whenever I catch him citing bullshit precedent. This rankles him to no end. Gerry’s always on hand if there’s a chance I might get my ears boxed by Foley. Sue Ellen Randall’s case must have struck him as a choice opportunity to see me pull a major belly flop.

  Ken Jorgensen, another attorney from the panel, sat a few feet away from Gerry, wiping the strands of gray across his sweating dome as he loosed a silver western-style belt buckle from beneath his beach-ball gut. He was still recovering from his lunch at the Burrito Shack, a local dive on the Health Department’s top-ten list where Fridays are always celebrated as Macho Chimichanga Day. Like Gerry, Ken has an ongoing love affair with the sound of his own voice, and resents my lack of reverence for the unholy union of excess verbiage and soft-headed sentiment that results when he argues a point by the seat of his pants. Ken hates everyone who works for the Legal Project. He once told me I’m the reason he drives an old Honda with two hundred thousand on the odometer.

  Patty Irving, another attorney from my firm, was working on a crossword puzzle as she checked her lip gloss in a compact mirror. Two or three other lawyers whose cases had wrapped up well before lunch sat behind Patty, their eyes on me.

  My insides fluttered. Last case of the day, the week, and really, the summer. The courtroom should’ve been near-empty on a Friday afternoon with the day’s calendar behind us. But everyone here seemed to want a piece of this case, and whether those pieces would be carved out of me or Sue Ellen Randall seemed insignificant.

  Patty got up and came over to me. “Hey, J.,” she whispered, leaning over the partition, “how much?”

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “You know, for the kid. How much did she try to sell—”

  “People, might I suggest you get a life?” Foley frowned at the lawyers in the spectator gallery. The seal of the State of California hovered on the wall behind him like a magnificent brass gong. He opened the file in front of him.

  “Just a minute, Judge.” Arthur Rivas, the court clerk, was on the phone, standing up at his desk just left of Foley’s slightly elevated perch (in an effort to create a “child friendly” atmosphere, none of the courtroom furniture was built to rise above belt-level). Arthur held the receiver to his breast and leaned over to whisper something. Foley nodded in agreement.

  “Sorry folks,” said Foley, “emergency call. Ten minute recess. Don’t anybody wander away,” he warned, “because I’m going to call this case the minute I get back.”

  A few more minutes might help me prepare. I bolted to the interview room where Sue Ellen was still holed up from our lunch-hour meeting.

  I’d tried hard to keep the tone unemotional when Sue Ellen and I had first gone over the details of what went wrong, to stick mainly to the file and the county’s allegations. But the social worker’s report was a scathing rap. To the department, my client was a crass, money-grubbing flesh-peddler. I could scarcely find a sentence in the report that wasn’t high-handed, a factual detail that didn’t rankle or offend. The young woman flinched as I recited her alleged sins.

  “They didn’t even interview you or your husband?” I’d asked her during my first read-through. They hadn’t, she said. So far, Sue Ellen was not exactly a font of information. Her responses had a curious lack of focus. Not the usual pack of lies desperate parents throw at me, but still, some big pieces were missing. She seemed to lack fire and had none of the righteous indignation I would’ve expected from a woman wrongly accused of selling her baby. “No, no, it wasn’t like that,” she kept saying. “They don’t understand.” And they wouldn’t at this rate.

  I closed the door behind me. Sue Ellen smiled weakly as I sat down, the sandwich I’d bought for her downstairs in the cafeteria still untouched and wrapped in cellophane. “Okay,” I said, “we’ve got a few more minutes before the hearing. Give it to me again.”

  “We have no home,” she began.

  A morbid economy in Kentucky, and nothing but a couple of high school diplomas between Ty and Sue Ellen Randall. Ty pulling down a shabby eight bucks an hour driving a public school bus, Sue Ellen making preserves and pies she’d sell to a handful of local restaurants in town, watching Oprah on a tiny black-and-white from the kitchen table. Marveling at how women with not much more than the right attitude could seemingly change their lives for the better. A long drive cross country in an old pickup. Wheat harvest in Kansas, a few dollars in their pockets. A fuel pump shot in East Texas. Waiting outside while Ty pawned his coin collection and the black-and-white in Yuma, Arizona, to pay for a master cylinder job. Living off twenty-nine-cent burgers from McDonald’s. Limping into sunny Southern California looking like the Beverly Hillbillies. High rents, no steady work for Ty, an unplanned pregnancy. The ugly realization that the right attitude alone would see no one but a damn fool through life’s troubles.

  I liked the way she looked right at me when she told me that last part.

  Sue Ellen and Ty had been evicted without notice the night before when their landlord saw their booking photos in a TV news report about the case on Channel Six. When Sue Ellen returned alone to the darkened Silverlake bungalow after three nights in the county jail and tried the front door, the locks had been changed and the porch was littered with clothes—a pink blouse on the front step, a wool sock on the mat, Ty’s Wildcats Football athletic shirt, his favorite, rumpled into a twisted ball beneath the creaky porch swing—as if a hurricane had blown through the place. The side windows were all locked shut, the hidden key swept up from under the mat. She poked around a bit and found some of their things in a dumpster behind the property. With the neighborhood dogs howling now and porch lights flipping on in unison, she scrambled to stuff a curling iron, a box of stationery, the toaster Ty’s Aunt Pauleen had given them as a wedding present, and some more clothes, smelling of rotting garbage, into a dirty trash-can liner.

  The pavement was strewn with splintered debris, and as she was leaving, she slipped and turned her ankle on a shard of beveled wood. Sue Ellen cried when she recognized the piece as a rail from the crib Ty picked up at a yard sale a few days ago, after they’d decided they wanted Nathan back. She held the piece of crib, staring at it as the tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth. Ty had found the crib just in time—the day before Nathan was supposed to come home. It had seemed a good omen, but omen or no omen, they’d been arrested when they went to the Danforth’s house to pick the baby up. She dropped the chunk of railing and ran to her car, a trash bag full of worthless possessions bouncing off her hip.

  “Never been hated like this,” she said. “It feels bad, real bad.”

  I have trouble tolerating bandwagon-jump
ing ignorance. “They don’t know shit . . . I mean, they don’t know anything about you,” I said.

  She swore to me again that they never took anything that wasn’t given to them by either adoptive couple. The first ones, the Pontrellis, said they’d agree to an “open adoption” in which Sue Ellen and Ty could still see the baby from time to time as hazily defined “relatives.” But as the weeks passed, the Pontrellis seemed to lose interest in the arrangement. Then Mr. P stopped by to fix the garbage disposal one night when Sue Ellen was home alone and put a sweaty hand down her top. That ended the first adoption arrangement.

  The second couple, the Danforths, seemed nicer at first, but once Nathan was born, they slowly stopped taking Sue Ellen’s calls and returned the clothes and gifts she’d bought for Nathan still in their wrapping paper. They, too, had agreed that the adoption would be “open,” had worked out some specifics about visits and photographs, got the baby, then made it clear they wanted nothing to do with the Randalls. When Sue Ellen stopped by unannounced to see Nathan for the first time since the hospital—a promised first visit that should have happened weeks earlier—they blocked her at the doorway and had their gardener run her off. She was so upset she flooded Ty’s old truck, cursing herself for being such a complete fool. When the truck started she found a phone booth, called the Danforths’ lawyer and told him she wouldn’t be signing the consent papers. The Danforths would have to have Nathan ready by tomorrow afternoon. Ty had a job interview at a shoe factory in Vernon so he needed the truck. After that, she’d come right over.

  The department’s emergency worker’s report had a markedly different take on the events of the past eight months: Ty and Sue Ellen Randall conned one couple, Joe and Margaret Pontrelli, and then a second, Corwin and Kitty Danforth, into giving the Randalls money—nine grand and sixteen grand, respectively—in return for their soon-to-be newborn. The Pontrellis were first in line for the baby and for a few months at least, all was well, but when they began objecting to Sue Ellen and Ty’s ever-increasing demands for money, the Randalls dumped them and left no forwarding address.

  Enter the Danforths and more cash and nice perks flowing the Randalls’ way. Then, on May the sixth, a healthy, six-pound-tenounce Nathan was born, and went home as scheduled from the hospital with his loving new parents, the Danforths.

  “Yeah, and the promise that Aunt Sue Ellen could come see him as soon as he got settled,” Sue Ellen said.

  That would have been the end of the story, but last week, having milked the Danforths dry, Sue Ellen had refused to give final consent to the adoption and demanded Nathan back. The Danforths, certain they’d been defrauded, called their adoption lawyer, who in turn called the police.

  “Tell me again, what did you do with the money?” I asked Sue Ellen.

  “What money? They were supporting us, not handing us stacks of bills. No one never gave us any cash. You kidding?”

  “Sorry, that wasn’t clear in the report.”

  “That report of yours is hogwash, Mr. Shepard, pure hogwash!”

  The door opened. It was Belinda McWhirter, a gung ho young charger who’d come to County Counsel at the beginning of summer. Before that, she’d been an associate at Burke and Lyman, a downtown insurance defense firm, where she’d earned a reputation for taking a particularly bloodless approach to settlement negotiations with overreaching policy holders. By my estimation her modus operandi hadn’t changed much from those days.

  “You wanted to talk to me, J.?” she said.

  “Be right there, Belinda.” I closed the door again. “I’ll be back,” I told Sue Ellen. “I’m going to talk to the county’s attorney about your case.”

  Belinda and I stood in the small anteroom between the courtroom and the outer lobby. “Who’s representing the baby?” I asked.

  “Lily Elmore.” Belinda didn’t bother to hide her pleasure with this revelation.

  Great. Lily Elmore, a chain-smoker from the private panel with a quick temper, a spotty memory—“Which case is this?” is a favorite starting point for her when her turn comes to argue—and zero trial skills. Whenever she’s the minor’s lawyer, she always blithely sides with the county “Just to be on the safe side.” Protecting a kid’s interests usually takes the least lawyering, a fact that weak attorneys like Lily bank on. I could expect no support from her in these proceedings.

  “You want to talk, then make it quick, J.,” Belinda said.

  Belinda was her usual priggish self. Flat cheekbones and a turned-up nose, a mildly pretty face, but a joyless countenance that always keeps you at a safe distance. Plain-wrap brown hair, short bangs in front. A tailored charcoal business suit, expensive, a remnant from her high-salaried days at Burke and Lyman.

  I looked at my notes. “Mother is staying with a friend right now, and Father’s in jail. She’s not ready to take the baby home today, so we won’t be arguing detention.” No need to duke it out with her.

  “Not ready! Are you serious, J.?” She shook her head. “You’re not a parent yourself, so I guess I can understand why you’d even think that that criminal has a chance of getting her hands on that child again.”

  Aah, Belinda. I wave a white flag, and she responds by judging both me and my new client in one shot.

  “Oh, I forgot, you’re raising a litter of Hitler Youth these days out on the farm in Thousand Oaks. Guess that makes you a more sensitive human being.”

  “You’re a jerk, Shepard!” she snapped, retreating into the courtroom.

  “Sieg heil, Belinda!” I called out as the door drifted shut behind her.

  I led Sue Ellen into the courtroom. All conversation stalled, then began again. “Looks like white trash,” I heard someone whisper as we reached counsel table.

  Sue Ellen raised her head gamely and met Judge Foley’s eyes head-on as I opened the partition and guided her into a seat. She was calm, refusing to dignify the onlookers with even the slightest glance. We sat very close together at counsel table.

  “And where is Father, Ms. McWhirter?” Foley said.

  “Well, Your Honor, Father has been arrested for felony fraud and grand theft,” Belinda answered, a small smile curling on her lips.

  Foley froze. “Ms. McWhirter, this is an arraignment and detention hearing. Arraignment of the father, Mr. Ty Alvin Randall, cannot proceed—I can’t arraign someone that isn’t here now, can I?”

  Belinda shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Uh, the worker should’ve filled out transfer papers to get him out of Central downtown, but—”

  “Well, then, the department is wasting this court’s time today. I’m putting Father’s arraignment over until next Thursday, September five, at eight-thirty A.M.,” the judge went on. He looked at Sue Ellen, who stood now at my right elbow. “Mr. Shepard, arraignment of Mother. How does she plead to the petition?”

  “Denied,” I said.

  “We can discuss detention now.”

  “Perhaps I might wait until Father is arraigned,” I said.

  Foley pondered my strategy. “I see. Next Thursday, Ms. McWhirter. The department will make Father available to us by next Thursday, I’m sure.”

  Belinda exchanged whispers with Shelly Chilcott, then faced Foley. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Thursday’s fine, then, Your Honor,” I said. “We’d rather argue detention Thursday instead of today.” A chorus of moans went up from the gallery. “My client needs to get a settled living arrangement first,” I added, trying to bolster Sue Ellen’s respectability. “I’m sure the court can appreciate that.”

  “Know any good freeway underpasses?” Ken Jorgensen muttered. A few low chuckles followed.

  “Very well.” Foley lowered his gaze on Sue Ellen. “Ms. Randall, you are ordered to return to Department three-oh-two next Thursday morning, September fifth. Calendar-call is at eight-thirty, so don’t be late. If your husband is out of jail by then, be sure to bring him with you to court. Any chance he’ll make bail?”

  Sue Ellen stiffened in
her chair.

  I nodded. “Go ahead.”

  She stood up. “Well, sir, I don’t have the money for bail, and his family’s back in Kentucky, and they don’t have much. Ty’s momma had a stroke in March of this year.”

  “What about your family?” Foley asked.

  “My daddy wired bail for me, but not for Ty.” She paused. “I don’t think he’ll be posting Ty’s bail for him. They don’t really get on so hot.”

  Foley leaned forward on his left elbow and ran his thick fingers over his bald pate, holding his hand like a visor above his graying eyebrows as he studied the court file. A ring on his finger flickered under the glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights as he turned the pages. The stone was a deep red garnet. His class ring from the University of Southern California, the proud symbol of Duane Foley’s passage, twenty-plus years ago, from the snow-dusted sticks of Fiedler, Minnesota, to the heart of the California Dream.

  “All right then,” the judge said, “Minor is to remain as placed with the foster parents, the Danforth family. The matter is continued until Thursday, September five. The department is to transfer Father to court on that day, and Mother has been ordered to return to court as well.”

  Foley closed the file. Belinda and Lily Elmore started packing up. The peanut gallery rumbled a bit and began clearing out.

  “Mr. Shepard,” Sue Ellen whispered, “I haven’t seen Nathan in going on four months.”

  Christ. I’d completely forgotten to ask about visitation. “Your Honor, one thing briefly,” I said. “Mother would like to have visitation with the minor before the next hearing.”

  “Yes, yes. The court orders monitored visitation for the mother,” Foley said.

  “But Mr. Shepard,” Sue Ellen whispered again, “how’s that gonna work? Kitty Danforth said on the news she’d do anything to keep me from ever seeing Nathan again. She isn’t gonna let me see him in her home.”

  Excellent point. “Your Honor, visitation might be a problem,” I said.