Homeland Elegies(89)

“I’ve told your father this is not about winning the case on the merits,” she said after we’d spent some time trading details of our respective biographies—she’d gone to school at Yale, worked as a tall-ship captain on Lake Erie for three years, then as a chef in New Orleans for a half decade before going to law school in Madison, where she’d ended up marrying and raising a family—“it’s about making sure we don’t lose it on the optics. To them, your dad’s an outsider, a city doctor, an immigrant—”

“Yeah, I was surprised how she kept mentioning that. Doctor from the city. Doctor from Milwaukee. I don’t even think she said his name.”

“She didn’t. That was by design. There’s a lot of animosity out here for folks from the cities. Milwaukee. Madison. Minneapolis. The anger is real. And it’s not even as bad in a place like this as it is in some of the outlying counties. When we try a case in Jackson or Trempealeau, we don’t take our own cars anymore. We rent. Compact, economy. I’ve had colleagues get tires on a Lexus or Audi slashed in a court parking lot.”

“In a court parking lot?”

“People are really angry.” Her phone lit up with a text. She looked down and noted the message with irritation, then swiped and turned the phone over. “Look, you drive around the back roads through most of this state—and trust me, I’ve done a fair bit of that, meeting with clients and spending so much time at these small-town hospitals—the poverty out there is real. Houses are falling apart. Roads. Towns. People aren’t taking care of their things, their yards. Not taking care of themselves. Nothing’s cared for anymore. And it’s not just that folks don’t have the money to do it. They haven’t had that for thirty years, but now they don’t even have the will to make a show of it. When you lose that? We’re talking about a different order of despair. And when you’ve spent six or eight hours out here just driving past the broken-down farms and homes, the empty towns, the dying Main Streets—and then you drive into Madison or Milwaukee? It’s like something out of science fiction. I mean, the wealth is screaming out at you. Even just the fact of there being people out and about, with somewhere to go. Storefronts that actually have businesses inside. People going to buy stuff. These folks get to the cities once or twice a year. They see that. They see the difference. They don’t like it.”

“Probably hard to blame them.”

“I’ve got my own thoughts about it all. I feel like sometimes people are using the situation as an excuse not to do anything about their own lives. But who am I to judge? The point is, that gap between the cities and the rest of the state is a big part of what we’re up against with your dad. Especially now that a lot of that anger’s being directed not just at city folk but also at immigrants.”

“I can imagine.”

“He’s brown. They can’t say his name. It’s just a matter of time before they find out he’s a Muslim…”

“How would they find that out?”

“Chip Slaughter is not going to lose a chance to make that an issue. Trust me. I tried a case against him not three years ago. Indian doctor. Pediatric oncologist. Wasn’t able to save the kid. Anyway, same as your dad. Tricky situation, but the science was behind him. On the merits, there was no real question. Went well in court. Then the day before closing arguments, San Bernardino.”

“The attack?”

She nodded. “This was not some high-profile case with sequestered jurors and whatnot. They come in that morning; they’ve been watching the news. You could see it in the way they were looking at him. And this defendant wasn’t Muslim. He’s a Hindu. Guy probably hates Muslims more than they do.”

“So what ended up happening?”

“Chip didn’t let them forget it. Hobbling around on that cane, mispronouncing the doctor’s name in his closing argument. Then apologizing. Then doing it again. Bringing up stuff that had nothing to do with the case. That the defendant had a foreign medical degree, how he’d worked in Dubai. It was a masterpiece of innuendo.”

“I meant to ask, what’s up with his leg?”

“Car accident when he was younger. High school or college, from what I gather. It was apparently pretty bad…Anyway, the innuendo worked. The case ended in a mistrial. Two jurors just couldn’t get over the trust hump. Two elderly ladies.”

“White, I’m assuming.”

“You know what? One of them was Hmong. When you’re dealing with something like terrorism, a juror’s race won’t tell you much. That stuff scares the shit out of everyone. Whatever their color.” She finally reached for her wine and sipped. “What happens in the news, we can’t control. But what is in our control is how your father handles himself in court. Today? Was not acceptable. Not a good look for him or our cause. If he’s not willing to help himself, there’s only so much the rest of us can do.”

“I’m talking to him.”

“I can’t tell you what to do. But if he was my father? I wouldn’t just talk. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. Not until we’re done with this thing.”





4.


After dinner, we walked back to the hotel together. I left her at the elevator to peek in at the bar. The stools along the countertop were empty. The only patrons inside were a young couple nestling on a love seat before the fireplace. Upstairs, as I passed his room on the way to my own, I stopped to listen at the door. I didn’t hear anything. I knocked lightly, but there was no answer. I checked my pocket for his key and remembered I’d left it on my dresser before going out to meet Hannah.