Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 23

"You were the prosecutor in this case, am I right about that, Mr. Jaffe?"

"Yes, Judge."

"I talked to Mr. Ruth about this. Now, I have an opinion about Mr. Ruth that I don't mind communicating to anybody. If Mr. Ruth says a squirrel can pull a freight train from here to Tallaha.s.see, you can hitch up that rodent and clear the tracks. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, Judge, and I agree. You can trust Mr. Ruth."

"And he says you're a good lawyer. But that can't influence my decision. You realize that?"

"Yes, I do, Judge."

"You want some coffee?"

"That would be welcome."

"Over there in the corner. Bring some for me too. My mug is the one with my political philosophy written on it. You'll find it. You like it strong?"

"Political philosophy?"

The judge smiled. "No, Mr. Jaffe. Coffee."

"Strong will do just fine, sir."

"I brew it so you can use it to stop leaks in your radiator. How's your radiator?"

I found the judge's mug. On its side was inscribed: THE GREAT ADVANTAGE OF A DEMOCRACY IS THAT ONLY ONE OF THESE PEOPLE CAN GET ELECTED.

While I was pouring the coffee, Judge Fleming said, "I'm going to say yes to your pet.i.tion. Grant you a ninety-day stay. Least I can do if they're getting ready to fry a man. You bring your witness in here, and Mr. Morgan, and anyone else you want, on June 24-that's a Monday, according to my calendar-nine o'clock in the morning. I'll be there too, if nothing breaks or comes untwisted. Suit you?"

"Yes, Judge," I said, my heart pounding with joy.

"I take it with cream and sugar."

"How much sugar?"

"Half of one of those blue packets that says Equal."

I brought the two mugs of coffee over to the desk. "Judge, forgive me for reminding you," I said carefully, "but they're due to pull the switch on Mr. Morgan in three days. You'll have to file an order at the state attorney's office, in writing, that you've granted a stay of execution. And probably the same thing in Tallaha.s.see at the attorney general's office."

"Mr. Jaffe, this is Monday, isn't it?" Judge Fleming asked.

"Yes, sir, it is."

"I did all that on Friday afternoon, my boy," the judge said, sounding a little annoyed.

Chapter 21.

TOBA AND I WAITED for the summer rains. The Gulf skies were swollen with heat, the air was gummy and breathless. Despite the sprinkler system, the crabgra.s.s lawn grew brown at the tips. In the evenings I smelled swamplike odors wafting up from the Everglades. Orchids flowered on the trunk of the jacaranda tree outside our bedroom window, but at midday the waters of Sarasota Bay looked warm enough to boil.

In the artificial coolness of my office, I gazed out the tinted window. Afternoon thunderheads ma.s.sed on the horizon and the sun hung overhead like a ball of smoldering sulfur. It was difficult to face what I knew, what I believed, what I suspected. One step at a time was what I kept telling myself-first the hearing before Fleming, for the important thing was to make sure that Darryl lived.

I picked up the telephone and buzzed through to the firm's senior partner.

"Harvey, I've gone over our proposed submission in the S and L case. Do you and Marian have a few minutes?"

In his office, I set forth my objections. The FDIC had amended their complaint against the defendant, a man named Novak. He was now due to reply. Harvey and Marian had drafted that reply.

"The government's allegations are inaccurate," I said. "Things sinister are being made out of nothing, and we should say so. The Reagan administration encouraged S and Ls to expand into commercial loans. Novak exercised due diligence-there was no private jet, no political graft. He became richer, but so did most of Reagan's business pals. How dare these federal sons of b.i.t.c.hes accuse him of chicanery?"

"Calm down, Ted," Harvey said.

With that remark, Harvey only annoyed me further. "Our client," I said, "is being slandered by employees of his government, and his taxes pay their salaries. We're kissing a.s.s when we should be kicking a.s.s."

If I want to stay in this law firm, I realized, I'd have to be more tactful. But it wouldn't come easily.

A crust of gray ice seemed to spread across Harvey's face. "I take it you intend to rewrite this denial."

"No, that's Marian's job. I'll argue the case in court if it comes to that, but if the job's done properly, it shouldn't. I have to fly to Miami day after tomorrow, pick up Jerry Lee Elroy, my witness in Morgan, then haul him up to Jacksonville. I may have to chain him to the bed in the hotel. But on Monday we have our day in court."

Thursday morning I began making telephone calls. I was informed that Darryl would be brought by bus to the Duval County Jail early Monday morning and then escorted to Judge Fleming's courtroom at 8:30 A.M. He would be held in the jury room, where I could meet with him.

I asked who was working this case for the state and the clerk gave me the name of an a.s.sistant state attorney I didn't know. The clerk also told me that an a.s.sistant attorney general would be in attendance, dispatched from Tallaha.s.see.

That was the way the game was played. One of the thrills of being a criminal defense attorney was that you stood alone on a hilltop, battling the full awesome power of the state. You were a heroic figure, a David against Goliath. But Goliath's power was daunting; it could easily trample you. Or your client.

On Sat.u.r.day evening I flew to Miami. Below, as the little plane gained alt.i.tude, were the blue dots of lighted pools and the yellow chains of headlights strung back and forth on arrow-straight highways. Forty minutes later, from the black void of the Everglades, Miami sprang like an immense treasure chest of neon jewels, pulsing to every horizon. I found this urban sprawl remarkably beautiful. A pity you couldn't circle forever, believing such beauty to be the evidence of intelligent human life.

I took a taxi to the address I had in Hialeah. Behind the reception desk of the Man O' War Motel hung old black-and-white photographs of famous thoroughbreds. A man looked up from a lounge chair near the cigarette machine: a man in his thirties, with a mustache and a Hawaiian flowered s.h.i.+rt under a seersucker jacket. He was drinking a c.o.ke and reading a paperback crime novel. He might as well have had COP branded on his forehead.

The room I was given was clean and odorless, yet it reeked of lost bets and accepted sorrows. A parade of human beings had trudged in and out for twenty years. It seemed to me that their ghosts were still there.

Elroy had given me his room number, so I dumped my single piece of luggage and walked upstairs, following the outdoor walkway with its green AstroTurf carpeting. I heard footsteps sc.r.a.ping behind me. I turned to face the man in the Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt. He had a leather wallet in his palm, and I caught a flash of a gold s.h.i.+eld.

I told him I was Elroy's lawyer from Sarasota and offered my business card and driver's license.

"Okay, Mr. Jaffe. Just checking."

When I knocked and called out his name, Elroy flung open the door to his room. He wore new decor: a silver cross on a chain around his neck, baggy mod trousers, a white golf s.h.i.+rt. In his hand he clutched the usual can of Bud. Above the blare of the TV, he cried, "Hey, Counselor, just lemme catch the end of this show." He was watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He flopped back down on the bed.

"I love that future s.h.i.+t," he said, when it was over. "How about we eat?"

"Do they let you come and go as you please?"

"They watch, they follow. They're getting paid, what do they care? There's this place down the block, not too bad."

Even in the night air I felt the pavement heating the soles of my shoes. Hialeah Park was nearby, and Lacy's, the restaurant Elroy had chosen, catered to retirees and horse players. It offered bargain dinners, and I ordered meat loaf that was promoted as "the way your mother's tasted." (My mother's meat loaf was usually dry, which is why she drowned it in turkey gravy.) I glanced around at the senior citizens in plaid s.h.i.+rts and bright-colored trousers, with their iron-gray hair and bulging spectacles. One couple at the next table had their arms intertwined in the last gasps of togetherness. He had a sporty gray goatee, she red shriveled lips. They studied the menu as if it were a treasure map. After they ordered food, they studied the racing form with the same devotion.

Elroy said, "The track, that's action, man. That's what I really love."

I looked at Elroy and didn't smile. A chain begins somewhere in the mountains of Colombia. It pa.s.ses through Alfonso Ramos and Marty Palomino and their ilk in Miami. Then through Elroy and maybe a few others under him; then to the addicts, the a.s.sorted hip city folk, the legions of kids. One of those chains had ended with my son dangling on the end of it. And somewhere in San Diego, I thought, there's a kid like Alan who'll soon buy his stash from this piece of human garbage sitting across the dinner table from me.

The waitress pa.s.sed by. "Hey, sweetie pie, we have a little more gravy here?" Elroy turned back to me, grinning. "We got an unforeseen problem, Counselor."

"How do you mean?"

"Guys downtown at the state attorney's office, they don't want me to leave Miami. Worried something could happen."

"Like what?"

"Palomino, Ramos, they're out on bail. Wouldn't they love to find me." Elroy drew a finger across his throat.

I put down my knife and fork. "I spoke to you in the middle of the week. You said no problem."

"There's this guy Baxter, see? I told him, 'Look, I want to see my sister in Jax. A day or two, family stuff, gimme a break.' Guy says, 'Hey, Jerry Lee, we'll give you a break, we'll keep your a.s.s alive.' So I go, 'I thought it was part of the deal.' He says no, there's no deal for you to testify in Jax."

I had never told Charlie Waldorf in Sarasota or Robert Diaz, the Miami state attorney, that I needed Elroy as a witness in Jacksonville. If there had been a timing problem, I would have spoken up, but Elroy wasn't due to testify in the Miami trial until August. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. And I definitely didn't want them to know how I'd lied to Elroy.

"See, they got these plainclothes guys watching me. You met one of them at the motel. Another one's here in Lacy's right now-I just spotted him." Elroy's eyes flicked to the left.

I looked, and saw the man sitting by himself about five tables away: about forty, prematurely gray with a crew cut, wearing a pale-blue silk sport jacket. He was eating meat loaf and drinking a 7-Up.

"It ain't gonna work, Counselor," Elroy said.

"It has to work," I said flatly. "That hearing is Monday morning. You don't show up, they'll execute this man."

"Hey, I'm sorry, I really am. But they said I don't have to. Maybe you misled me."

That was what I had feared. I had that same awful feeling in my chest that I'd had when those deputy sheriffs in Bradford County had said to me, "You have the right to remain silent..."

"If you had some p.u.s.s.y waiting up in Jacksonville," I said, "you wouldn't give a flying f.u.c.k what Baxter or Diaz or anyone told you. Jesus could rise from the dead and beg you, 'Stay,' and you'd still go to Jacksonville."

"Yeah, but that's different, ain't it?"

I gathered up all the cold hard anger that usually stayed trapped beneath the surface of my life as a lawyer, and I drummed my fingertips on the plastic surface of the table.

"Elroy, if you don't go up with me tomorrow, Marty Palomino gets your address and room number delivered by Federal Express to his home on Key Biscayne. I'll remind him, when he comes to visit you, to bring his machete. And his ruler."

Elroy laughed nervously.

"Keep laughing, pal." I glared at him.

"I'm your client," Elroy said.

"And I'll be sorry to lose you. I'm making so much money out of you I could retire."

I could put him under subpoena. I had thought of that before. But the Miami state attorney's office might interfere. And even if they didn't, there was no guarantee that Elroy would tell the truth on the witness stand. I would have no leverage.

The table vibrated as the heel of his foot thumped up and down. This cretin believed I'd do it.

"If I leave this town tomorrow without you," I said, "you're a dead man."

"Hey, hey, hey ..." Elroy's eyes darted left, right, then up.

"Your fate's in your own hands. Not many men can say that."

"Just take it easy, Counselor. Calm down."

Everyone was telling me that lately, I realized. Maybe there was something to it. And maybe not. And even if there was, who gave a s.h.i.+t.

Elroy sighed. "So I do it, what's in it for me?"

That was progress. A wh.o.r.e's a wh.o.r.e; now all we had to do was haggle price.

"I told you I'd pay all your expenses."

"Big deal." He thought about it for a few moments. "Jax, they race in the summer at the Kennel Club, right? McDuff Avenue, off I-10."

"Greyhounds?"

"The crazy doggies, yeah. You don't need me up there at night, do you?"

I had taken a thousand dollars in crumpled cash from Elroy as a down payment on his legal fee. "When we get up there," I said, "I'll give you back the thousand. That way there's no fee on the drug case. So if you're asked on the witness stand if you were paid to testify, you can say no."

Elroy grinned; he was a natural scammer. "How're we gonna get rid of these guys at the motel?"

I considered that problem for a few minutes while I asked the waitress for the check. When I focused on him again, Elroy was still grinning. But now craft had blended with triumph.

"Got any ideas?" I said.

"You don't want to be involved in this operation, right?"

"I am involved."

Elroy explained it to me. He would leave at noon for Hialeah Park. Two cops always tagged along and stayed by his side, but when he went up to the pari-mutuel windows or to take a leak, only one of them came along. The track was a crowded place. "Leave it to me," Elroy said. "Just tell me where you want to meet."

I suggested the main entrance to the track.

"You're not thinking, Counselor. They spot you out there, they put two and two together. The airport's only ten minutes away. Let me stay for five, six races. I can get out by three-thirty."

Back at the motel, I called and booked two seats on USAir.

"Flight 133 takes off at four-thirty. Meet me at the check-in counter at a quarter to four sharp."