Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 13

But I wanted her, and the touch of her cold hand was exciting. I licked her nipples, erect and salty.

A ketch was beating up on the windward side, heading toward Cow Point on Tidy Island. In a few minutes it would pa.s.s close enough for anyone with binoculars to see us. "Let's go below," I said, resting on my elbows, with my wife's strong ankles up around the back of my neck. She went to exercise-and-stretch cla.s.s three times a week.

"Let them look," Toba panted. "Maybe they'll throw money... ."

All the next day I kept thinking about what I had done. I had never lied to a client before. I could be disbarred. But images of blue fire were never far from my consciousness.

When I reached home at seven o'clock, sweaty and ready for a swim and a b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, Toba was waiting by the side of the pool.

"Alan talked to me," she said. "He thinks you don't respect him. You're disappointed in him."

"He's right," I said.

"He's depressed. His father's a high-powered lawyer. His mother, in his c.o.c.keyed view, is a successful real estate agent. His sister's a whiz kid off at an Ivy League college. And he's a failure. Drugs are the only solace in his life, he says. Marijuana is his best friend."

I raised my eyes to heaven.

"And worst of all, I think," Toba said, "he's suicidal."

"You think he's suicidal?" I felt my shoulders sag, my heart seize up with despair.

"You're hearing what you want to hear. He says he's suicidal. He says he climbs into his car, drives across the causeway, and he gets this urge to shut his eyes. He does shut them sometimes, for a few seconds. But then he turns chicken. He says to himself, 'Dad'll be furious, and it'll ruin Mom's life.' "

"Did you tell him that was the understatement of the year?"

"No. I just cried."

That's what I wanted to do. This was my son's life. I would have given anything for none of this to be true. I was supposed to do whatever fathers did to protect their young, so that the species didn't die out. If spotted hyenas and Bengal tigers and birdbrained robins could do it, why couldn't I?

"Ted, what are we going to do?"

But I had no answer. I was heartsick. Unless I could intervene, my son, like Darryl Morgan, was on the road to death.

Chapter 13.

I FLEW ON a little feeder flight to Jacksonville, rented a car at the airport, and drove straight out 1-10 and then down 121 through scrub woods and air heavy with pine resin. To Raiford again, and to death row.

Sneakers squeaked where black men played basketball on cracked concrete. Bodies glistened and iron clanged where others lifted weights. Angry voices drifted through sunlight.

At the main building of the prison, I was expected. My ID was checked, I pa.s.sed through the metal detector, and I was led into the cool office of the a.s.sistant superintendent. A placard on the desk read: RAYMOND G. WRIGHT.

There were two telephones on the desk: a red instrument to communicate with the outside world, a black one to communicate within the perimeter of the prison. Raymond G. Wright wore a white b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt and a striped tie. A creased brown suit jacket hung on a wooden clothes tree in the corner of the room. I remembered seeing Wright for a minute or two in the death chamber when they had electrocuted Sweeting. Fred Olsen had told me that the a.s.sistant superintendent engaged the circuit breakers before the switch was tripped by the executioner and the automatic cycle began. Everyone had a hand in the killing, literally.

"We don't get many prosecutors visiting here," Wright said.

"You may have misunderstood. I'm not a prosecutor now." From the breast pocket of my suit jacket I extracted a card from Royal, Kelly, Wellmet, Jaffe & Miller. I slid it across the desk.

I had come prepared to face the consequences of having struck my fist into Clive Crocker's face on the day of Sweeting's execution. Prepared to apologize, offer some compensation if necessary. But my name seemed to mean nothing to Raymond G. Wright. Or perhaps, I thought, FSP administrative a.s.sistants were struck so often that no one took much notice.

"The man I want to visit is Darryl Morgan."

"You're Wizard's attorney?"

"Who is Wizard?"

"That's what the guards call Mr. Morgan."

"No, I'm not his attorney yet. But I will be. I've just come from Tallaha.s.see, from CCR-they're handling his current appeal. The governor's already signed the death warrant. I believe Morgan's in what you call Phase One of Death Watch."

Wright said, "But you're not on Mr. Morgan's visiting list."

"I called and your secretary said there wouldn't be a problem. I prosecuted Morgan," I added.

The logic of this seemed to baffle the a.s.sistant superintendent. And that was understandable.

"If it will help," I said, "you can call Beldon Ruth, the state attorney up in Jacksonville. Or the public defender, Kenneth Buckram. Verify my credentials."

Wright cleared his throat and began moving some papers back and forth on the neat surface of his desk. From the expression in his eyes I finally realized that he found it difficult to deal with a situation for which no specific written guidelines existed. A telephone call wouldn't help.

Wright frowned. "How could you become his attorney if you prosecuted him? Wouldn't there be some sort of conflict of interest? You can't defend someone you once prosecuted."

"Are you an attorney-at-law?" I asked.

"No."

"Then I'd appreciate your not telling me what, as a lawyer, I can and can't do. I don't tell you how to run your prison, sir."

Wright said, "I wasn't telling you, sir, I was just asking." But he reached for the black telephone.

The attorneys' interview rooms were in the main building, a quarter of a mile away from Q wing. An underground tunnel connected the two. There were two folding metal chairs and a metal table. Through a gla.s.s wall a correctional officer could observe anyone in the interview room but couldn't hear.

In another room Darryl Morgan was strip-searched. His waist chain and handcuffs were removed. I stood up when he entered. I avoided his eyes, conscious only of a physically large, dark presence in prison denim.

Darryl Morgan was thirty-three years old now. If I hadn't known that, I would have guessed him to be forty. There was gray in the kinky black hair above the temples. The eyes were deep-set and dark, but they no longer smoldered with anger, as they had in the courtroom where I'd last seen him. They were wintry with resignation. They were old.

I realized that he didn't recognize me.

"You know who I am?"

"They tell me you're a lawyer."

"You don't know me?"

"You looks familiar."

"I was at your trial," I said. "I was the prosecutor."

Morgan slowly nodded his huge head up and down. He said nothing. I waited for a reaction, but there was none, or so it seemed.

"Ted Jaffe is my name. Do you remember me?"

Morgan nodded again. The eyes barely changed.

I fought against the instinct to lower my gaze. I could smell Morgan now, an alien bitter smell.

After a minute he said, "Why're you here?"

"To try to help you."

That was all I could think of after weeks of gnawing doubt that bordered on torture. Those five words.

"You help me best," Morgan said, "by getting the f.u.c.k out of here."

I had expected that and believed I could deal with it.

"I understand how you feel, Mr. Morgan."

"You do?"

Abruptly I felt drained. All that was left was my sense of foolishness. I was an intrusion here, my presence a terrible tampering with what remained of a condemned man's life. What I've got to remember, I thought, if I'm going to get through this and accomplish whatever is still worth accomplis.h.i.+ng, is that this man did in fact murder an innocent person. Whatever he is now, he was that then. Some outermost punishment was required, or there is no proper equation in events. But by law, not by error or judicial whim.

"Darryl," I begged, "please listen to me. I have some new information about your case. I know that your cellmate back in Duval County Jail, Jerry Lee Elroy, lied about overhearing you confess on the telephone. If this comes to light, it could win a new appeal for you-maybe even a new trial. I don't promise anything. I definitely don't promise that the verdict will be different. But there's always a chance that we can get the death penalty decision reversed. I met with the CCR group in Tallaha.s.see yesterday. They're willing to let me take over the case."

Morgan, through all this, kept shaking his head. Not in denial so much as amazement.

"You're crazy, man."

"I don't think so." I almost added: "Although quite a few others agree with you," but I clamped my teeth together in time.

"You put me here, man."

"Yes, I did. I was part of that process."

"Something's wrong," Morgan muttered.

"I need to ask you a lot of questions."

"Suck my d.i.c.k."

"You have nothing to lose."

"You always got something to lose," he said.

"Not at my hands."

"Some kind of flimflam here. I told you, I ain't interested."

"Darryl, I don't work for them anymore. I can't harm you. I can only help you."

"Who you work for?"

"I'm with a law firm in Sarasota."

"You still think I kill that man. Think William Smith stuck a knife in that lady."

He was right, but I couldn't tell him that. "What I think doesn't matter," I said carefully.

"Better you split from here," Morgan said. "I kill you, what I got to lose?"

"Didn't you just say you always have something to lose?"

"Maybe you right and I wrong. Forty-four days, they gone kill me. What do I care if they kill me for doing you too? Who deserve it more than you and that snitch and that motherf.u.c.ker cop? Maybe my life have a purpose then. Least then I done something for what they done to me. I strike a blow for brotherhood. You know what Malcolm X say?"

There was a light in his eyes now for the first time since I had entered the room.

"Take it easy," I said.

I had to dominate him. Every lawyer has to dominate his client. In this case, it was a little more necessary than usual. Morgan was a big, powerful man. I held my ground, and for the first time I locked eyes with him.

"I tell you how it is over on Q," Morgan said. "They take my cards and my magic stuff away from me when I get over there, and my cards and my magic was all I got. So I hook c.o.c.kroaches together, sort of like they was a team of mules. They drag a matchbox around on the floor. That pa.s.s the time. Then a little frog come up through the s.h.i.+t jack. I kept that little frog a couple of weeks and I give him my roaches to feed him. But froggy hungry, he ain't gonna last, so I flush him back down the s.h.i.+t jack. See what I'm saying?"

"I'm trying to," I said.

"c.o.c.kroach, froggy, Jew lawyer-what the difference in the end? They hurting me over there, waiting on Big Wooden Mama. The real mean thing what they done in here is keep me waiting. You feel like, when you first get in, it ain't real. Got locked up for something I don't do, and I say, 'Hey, this can't be right, couple months I be out of this.' I get here, a dude tells me, 'Man, one night you gonna find yourself crying, there be tears in your eyes, and you gonna wonder why.' I said, 's.h.i.+t, I don't cry for nothing.' And three, four years slide by, I cry. I did, man, I swear. Twelve years gone by. You talking about another appeal? What do I need it for? Every day go round, it come in my mind, 'When all this be over with?' Feeding me to Mama, they ending my hurt. I get rid of you, dude who put me here, maybe they do me that much faster."

I watched him rise from his chair and glide toward me. I didn't have the power to move an inch. I just waited for him.

Chapter 14.

THE ROOM SLOWLY resolved into focus; it had a sharp smell of Merthiolate and disinfectant.

"Rest here for a while," a voice said. I didn't argue.

My fingers trembled when I held my hands out in front of me. I had been taken from the visiting cubicle to the prison hospital-I was conscious by then and, with a bit of help, could navigate. The doctor, a pale young man who was trying without much success to grow a goatee, said that nothing had been broken or damaged. My larynx was bruised, that was all. There would be some discomfort for a day or two; I would be better off talking only when necessary.

I asked the doctor, "Do you know what happened back there?"