" Disaffected, she feels the family needs a life-style-shaking "miracle" because it has "gone to pieces." He received regular requests to play "Misty" - he Erroll Garner jazz classic, from the same "groupie" - his # 1 fan - seductive listener/fan Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter).They are abruptly brought out of their insulated and carefree world by their father""s unpopular but courageous defense of a black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) falsely accused of raping a Southern white woman.Wilks: I""m the one that gets the pressure calls from upstairs.I""m the one that has to explain.You don""t keep an office like this very long stepping on a lot of corns.Bannion: Do you want me to go upstairs and explain?Wilks: Not you.You""re a corn-stepper by instinct."A corn-stepper by instinct," Bannion is not able to understand why he is ordered to lay off the case and "stop pestering the widow," since he now realizes that Lucy told the truth: "She talks to me just once - (he clicks his finger) - like that, she""s dead.To him it was a metaphor for he decay of contemporary culture.The same lack of individual integrity hat caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning he town of his dreams in.