Keith, who was not about to miss the excitement, sat in a chair along the bar, behind his father. He passed up a note that read: number 8, Nunzio, not listening, acting weird. Mind’s already made up??
Lunch was a quick sandwich in the conference room of the law office. Egan Clement was concerned about juror number three, Mr. Dewey, an older gentleman prone to nodding off. At least half the jury, especially the Baptists and Pentecostals, were all in and eager to strike a blow for righteous living. The other half was more difficult to read.
In the afternoon, Jesse finished the State’s case with the remaining two undercover officers. Their testimony varied little from the first four, and by the time Burch finished haranguing them, the words “prostitute” and “prostitution” had been bandied about so much, there was little doubt the defendant’s nightclub wasn’t much more than a regular whorehouse.
At 3:00 p.m., the State rested. Joshua Burch wasted no time in calling his star witness. When Marlene took the stand and swore to tell the truth, she had never looked plainer. Real name of Marlene Hitchcock, age twenty-four, now living in Prattville, Alabama. Her cotton dress was loose-fitting, covered every inch of her chest, and fell well below her knees. Her shoes were plain sandals, something her grandmother might wear. Her face was untouched by makeup, with only a light layer of pink gloss on her lips. She had never worn glasses but Burch found her a pair, and peeking from behind the round frames she could have been a school librarian.
Sitting in the third row and watching now that they were finished, Chuck Armstrong and Dennis Greenleaf barely recognized her.
In a carefully rehearsed back-and-forth, Burch led her through testimony that revealed a tough life: forced to drop out of high school, first marriage to a real loser, low-wage jobs until she arrived in Biloxi four years earlier and got a job serving drinks at Carousel. She had never （1） offered herself for sex, （2） suggested sex to a customer, （3） observed other girls hustling for sex, （4） heard of any rooms upstairs where there might be sex, and so on. A complete, total, and smoothly delivered stonewalling of any talk of sex activities at Carousel. She admired “Miss Ginger” greatly and enjoyed working for her.
Her testimony was so blatantly false that it was oddly believable. No decent human being would take an oath, on a Bible no less, then proceed to launch themselves into such unrestrained lying.
Jesse began his cross pleasantly with a discussion of her payroll adventures. She admitted she worked only for cash tips and reported none of it. There were no deductions for pesky things like taxes, withholding for Social Security, or unemployment insurance. She suddenly began crying as she described how hard it was to make and save a few bucks to send home to her mother, who just happened to be raising Marlene’s child, a three-year-old little girl.
If Jesse wanted to score points portraying her as a tax cheat, he failed. The jurors, especially the men, seemed sympathetic. Even dressed down and plain-faced, she was a pretty woman, with a twinkle in her eye when she wasn’t crying. The men in the jury box were paying attention.
Jesse moved on to the sex talk, but got nowhere. She flatly denied any suggestion of being in that business. When he probed too hard, she startled everyone by snapping, “I am not a prostitute, Mr. Rudy!”
He wasn’t sure how to handle her. The issue was, after all, rather delicate. How does one question the sex life of another, in open court?
Burch smelled blood and moved in. He called five consecutive witnesses, the same five waitresses who had been accused by the undercover officers, and the same five who had vanished from the Coast during the nuisance trial. He put them on the stand. No tight clothing, no short skirts, no teased hair, no mascara, no bleach-blond dye jobs, no jewelry, no flashy hooker’s heels. Taken together, the six could have passed themselves off as a young women’s choir during Wednesday night prayer meeting.
They sang the praises of Miss Ginger and what a wonderful employer she was. She ran a tight ship, did not tolerate drunks and troublemakers, and protected her girls. Sure, some of the others, the strippers, were up there onstage doing their thing. They were the draw, the girls the boys came to see. But they were untouchable and that was part of the attraction.