Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 14

"An inmate tried to strangle you."

"Jesus Christ," I gasped, "I know that. I mean, how did it end?"

"The guards came in and subdued him. There are always two guards outside. They got there just in time."

I lay on a hospital bed in a room with two white inmates; one had had his appendix removed, the other's leg was in a cast. They were swapping stories of other joints where they had done time. "Now, Terre Haute," the broken-legged one said, "that was a bad stop. I'm in the chow hall one day, there's one jelly doughnut left on the tray. n.i.g.g.e.r at the head of the chow line starts to take it, then the n.i.g.g.e.r in back of him grabs it. So the n.i.g.g.e.r in front whips out a shank and shoves it into the other n.i.g.g.e.r's guts. And he goes over to a table and eats the jelly doughnut while the other n.i.g.g.e.r just lays on the tile right at his feet. No s.h.i.+t, I saw that happen."

This is a dangerous place to be, I thought. On my first visit, I hit a man. On my second, someone tried to kill me. Violence might be infectious. Or perhaps, as the philosopher Hobbes had suggested a few centuries ago, it was the natural state of man outside the constricts of society.

Be kind, enjoy, try not to worry. Okay, Mom.

I signed the necessary release papers and left the prison. I didn't stop off at the administrative office to see Raymond Wright; he hadn't come to visit me.

In Jacksonville I checked into the Marina Hotel again, showered, then called Ruby at the office. "What's new, sweetness?"

"Jerry Lee Elroy's getting paranoid. Wants to know what he's supposed to do."

"If he calls again, remind him not to leave town. And be cool until I get in touch."

"I have difficulty hearing you, Ted. Do you have laryngitis?"

"Something like that. Who else called?"

"Charlie Waldorf. Says, 'Do we have a deal? Miami needs to know.' "

"If he calls again, tell him yes, be cool, I believe we do."

"Barry buzzes you twice a day, and also your other partners. In varying states of apoplexy."

"Same message. Be cool. I'll be back on Monday."

"Are you sure you're not in the Caribbean with a bimbo?"

"Goodbye, Ruby."

I called home. "How is Alan?"

Toba's voice, like the weather at the end of summer, had a chilly edge. "He's all right. Today he's at the beach with Sue Hoppy."

"Could this be romance?"

"The dope fiend and the anorexic. Made for each other."

"I'll try to be back by the weekend."

"Were you out carousing last night?"

"Yes, at the CCR law library in Tallaha.s.see. I have a sore throat. I love you."

She didn't say it back to me, as she usually did.

I put in a call to Brian Hoad at the public defender's office. He had gone but had left a message: a name, address, and telephone number.

On the second ring a woman answered. "Yes?"

"Carmen Tanagra?"

"Yes."

"Ms. Tanagra, excuse me, but this is Ted Jaffe. I was chief a.s.sistant state attorney here a long time ago."

"I don't want to go through this again."

"I'm not out to ha.s.sle you. I'm in private practice now. I'd like to talk to you about something."

"I'm not interested," she said, and hung up.

I called Muriel Suarez at her office. "You knew Tanagra. Can you help me with her?"

"It was too long ago. I can't get involved."

I clenched a fist in frustration that bordered on anger; she couldn't see that. But perhaps she could sense it.

"I'm not being unfriendly," Muriel said. "There's a reason. What are you doing tonight?"

"I plan to shove a fist through the cardboard wall of my hotel room and go to bed early."

"I'll cook you dinner."

"And you'll also tell me the reason you won't help me with Carmen Tanagra?"

"That's not on the menu. Do you eat meat?"

"Yes. And potatoes. And cheese, and b.u.t.ter, and chocolate mousse. The life expectancy of lawyers is not quite as good as that of NFL defensive tackles. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you go to trial."

"A lot of people don't eat meat nowadays. In the short run it'll make you aggressive, in the long run it'll kill you. Nevertheless," Muriel said, "tonight I have the urge. So to h.e.l.l with my arteries, I'm roasting a leg of lamb in fatty gravy. Eight o'clock. And since you're about to ask ... yes, a very good bottle of red wine."

The slim forms of the Bordeaux bottles were patterned by the candlelight in wavering black shadows upon the walls. Muriel wore a scooped-neck blue silk blouse and floppy white harem trousers. With her golden skin and moody dark eyes, she captured my attention not only as a lawyer.

I told her in detail the story of what had happened that morning at Raiford. I was glad to be alive, despite the traps that seemed to lie ahead. Maybe the wine had given me a fit of optimism.

Muriel brought coffee. "You liked the lamb? Really?"

"Loved it. I ate too much, but I'll sleep well."

"You're lucky you're not sleeping the big sleep tonight, hombre. I guess you see now that you'll have to turn this case over to someone else."

Coffee in hand, I moved over to the couch and replied, with the air of a perfectly sane man, "Just because the client tried to strangle me?"

"Do they have to draw blood to make you lose interest?"

My smile flickered briefly.

She said, "All right, then. How about on general principles?"

"Such as?"

"Since you can't defend a man you once prosecuted, it stands to reason that you can't file an appeal for him, either."

I shook my head firmly. "Why does everyone think I can't defend this guy? There's no law says I can't, just a guideline from the Florida Bar. You can do it if you get permission from the appropriate government agency. Which in this instance would be the Office of the State Attorney, Fourth Circuit."

"Would Beldon agree?"

"He's no killjoy."

"Don't be naive. If Beldon wants to, he'll find a reason. Inappropriate, tainted, unseemly, against the canons-there are plenty of words for it."

"But there are no laws or rules."

"Has it ever been done before?"

I had done my homework in the Tallaha.s.see law library. "Not in Florida," I conceded. "But yes, once, about nine years ago, in California. A capital murder case: State v. Owens. A new witness popped up who confirmed the defendant's alibi."

"There's no alibi. Darryl Morgan admitted he was there."

"He didn't have a fair trial," I said. "For all I know, he may have been not guilty."

"Then who is guilty? Who did it?"

I'd been thinking about that. "Could have been someone else who looked just like Darryl."

"Didn't Darryl work for the Zides?"

"Yes, but how much attention do you think Connie Zide really paid to the help?"

"You told me he was six foot six. You'd pay attention to that." "Yes, you would," I said, and then remembered something out of the long-ago past, some words that I hadn't thought of for a dozen years. The hairs rose on my forearms. I remembered Neil Zide's description of the men who had shot his father: Young, black, wearing sneakers, jeans, and. I seem to remember a dark T-s.h.i.+rt.

Was I remembering it wrong? If not, why hadn't I, as the prosecutor, understood its significance then? Why hadn't Gary Oliver? Muriel was still waiting.

"For the moment," I said, putting my vision in a place where I could recall it when I needed it, "there's no contrary evidence. I've got to hang the case for a retrial on fundamental error."

She shook her head so that the dark curls flew. "Listen, I respect Beldon. But you know as well as I do he thinks a balanced jury means six in the front row and six in the back. Prosecutorial misconduct is when the state loses a felony case. And fundamental error was what happened in the Garden of Eden."

"He's still a friend, Muriel."

"In which case, also, he might want to stop you before you get murdered by the client."

I left her house just after eleven o'clock. At the door she raised her head without shutting her eyes, and I kissed her lightly on the lips. It was a little more than a brotherly kiss, but it was far short of a kiss from a would-be lover. And that seemed, for the moment, absolutely right.

Duval County and the city of Jacksonville were by decree synonymous, making Jacksonville physically the largest city in the United States. It called itself "the insurance capital of the South," and its avowed ambition was to be the home of an NFL franchise, but until that day it had to make do with college football, minor league baseball, and greyhound racing.

I left the Marina Hotel at seven-fifteen the next morning. A lot of concrete had been poured here since I was a boy; gone were the old savannas, the wild marsh along the river. Now I drove from strip mall to strip mall, to intersection after intersection with a Publix, Winn-Dixie, Food Lion and Albertson's facing each other on opposite corners.

Muriel had told me that Neil Zide's latest project was to build a two-story art deco shopping mall, in conjunction with a water park, all of it to be located a few blocks from the ocean.

"A water park?" I asked. "Next to the ocean?"

"You think that's redundant? You against progress?"

I crossed the Main Street Bridge, and fifteen minutes later stood in front of Carmen Tanagra's front door. The small wooden house on Alabama Avenue was set back from the sidewalk. A plaque by the side of the door gave the following information: GLORIA WILLOUGHBY-CARMEN TANAGRA Crystal Balancing Nutritional Therapy Iridology Herbalism Kinesiology Colonic Irrigation I clucked my tongue a few times, preparing myself for various possibilities. Then I rang the bell. A tall, stern-looking woman of about forty opened it. She glared at me.

"I'm sorry to bother you this early, ma'am. Is Ms. Tanagra in?"

"Are you a patient?"

"Not yet. But who knows what may happen?" I handed her a business card.

Carmen Tanagra came to the door. I recognized her from her days as a detective; she looked older, but she also looked healthier. Plenty of high colonics, I imagined, not to mention crystal balancing. She also looked more butch. That was something I hadn't grasped until now. It threw an oblique light on other matters.

"Ms. Tanagra, I'm not here to talk about the Bongiorno case or your private life. May I come in?"

In the living room five minutes later, I drank chicory coffee and ate a croissant. From the swinging door to the kitchen, Gloria Willoughby still glared at me. I wasn't a patient. I was a man who had rung the doorbell at a quarter to eight in the morning. I decided I'd better move things along.

"You don't have any connections still with the sheriff's department?"

Carmen Tanagra shook her head firmly. "And I don't want any. They s.h.i.+tcan the good cops. Only the vanilla people make it to the top. Then they become officious p.r.i.c.ks."

Her feelings didn't lack for definition.

"You don't miss it at all?"

"What's to miss? Carrying a gun? I have a better life now, here with Gloria, believe me."

"I do believe it," I said. "Which one of you does what?"

"Huh?"

I felt my face begin to turn pink. "The colonic irrigation, the crystal balancing ... I saw your sign. Are you both iridologists? Do you both do everything?" But I was aware that I kept growing redder.

"We both do it all," Tanagra said icily. "But Gloria taught me just about everything. Look, Mr. Jaffe, what is it that you want?"

"Do you remember the Solomon Zide murder?"

Carmen Tanagra gazed at me waspishly for a few seconds. From her throat blared a harsh sound that might have been interpreted as a laugh. But I knew it wasn't.

"The black kid in the truck," she said. "The one who got killed in the parking lot of that Lil' Champ. The one supposed to have cut that woman's face. William Smith was his name."

"Didn't Floyd Nickerson shoot him when he was escaping?"