Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 8

I met Connie Zide's eyes; she was nodding her head up and down in what I knew was relief. Toba nodded at me too, and smiled. I looked across the table at Darryl Morgan.

There was pure hatred in his gaze. I had tried to kill him, he seemed to be thinking. Tried and failed.

Judge Bill Eglin tapped the pen again. "I want to remind you," he declared-his voice penetrated and instantly stilled the light murmur that had swept through the courtroom-"that I have the right to uphold or override the jury's recommendation. This provision is a safeguard built into the law of our state, so that if a judge feels a jury has given too much weight to either aggravating or mitigating circ.u.mstances, that judge can rectify what he perceives as an error."

He leaned forward, a pockmarked man in his late forties, and turned toward the jurors. "I suspect y'all have cast your verdict on the basis of the defendant's youth, although I want you to realize that by the current laws of our nation he's considered old enough to vote. But in addition, I'm moved by Mr. Jaffe's final argument. Prosecutor for the state correctly points out that this defendant was responsible for the acts of his accomplice, now deceased. That accomplice, Smith, attacked and might have killed Mrs. Zide. Now I ask you, is the convicted man penitent? Does he apologize for the scarring of a beautiful woman? Does he show remorse for taking the life of a beloved husband and a benefactor of this community? Does he say those simple words we all want to hear: 'I'm sorry'? You heard his outbursts! He does not!"

The judge was grimly quiet for a few moments.

"I have to tell you, I find this a reprehensible crime. And I'm going to override the jury's recommendation of a life sentence. Darryl Morgan, I sentence you to death. I order that you be taken by the proper authorities to the Florida State Prison and there be kept in close confinement until the date your execution is set. That on such day you be put to death by electrical currents pa.s.sed through your body in such amounts and frequency until you are rendered dead. And may G.o.d have mercy on your soul."

I couldn't believe what I had heard. Connie Zide, her face gone white, looked at me. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.

Twelve years would pa.s.s before I would see her again.

I stared dully at Judge Bill Eglin, and then at the defendant, whose lips twisted in fury.

The judge tapped his pen. The two deputy sheriffs standing behind Darryl Morgan swiftly clicked handcuffs on his wrists. "All rise!" the bailiff cried.

The judge in his black robes swept from the courtroom.

Chapter 9.

MY COLLEGE FRIEND Kenny Buckram was a short, thickchested man with the curly hair and friendly appearance of a teddy bear. In 1990 his third and most recent ex-wife had a b.u.mper sticker made, which she glued to the rear of his Lincoln Town Car. It said: HONK IF YOU'VE BEEN MARRIED TO KENNY BUCKRAM.

Having taken a sabbatical now from marriage, Kenny told me that he had fewer affairs; instead, two or three times a year he flew to Rio or Bangkok, where he would hire a hotel suite for a long weekend and install a pair or even a trio of young hookers. "Simplifies my life," he explained, "and in the long run it saves me money. As well as vital bodily fluids."

Vital bodily fluids. Straight out of Dr. Strangelove, our favorite film back in the days when we thought we could save the world. Or even change it.

At forty-seven, Kenny Buckram was now the elected public defender for the Fourth Circuit of Florida. After Ruby had told me that Darryl Morgan was still alive and on death row, I asked her to put in a call to Kenny at his Jacksonville office.

"You can't stay in a hotel," Kenny said. "That's crazy, Ted. I haven't seen you in years! I've got a house out by the beach, with plenty of room. I'm between wives."

I flew to Jacksonville on Wednesday. At half past six that evening, carrying cold bottles of Pilsner Urquell, Kenny and I walked past the surf shop and Silver's Drugs and the Sun Dog, and onto Jacksonville Beach. Seagulls screeched in the cool evening air. I finally got around to telling Kenny what I had learned from Jerry Lee Elroy in Sarasota.

"But you were a prosecutor," Kenny said. "You're not telling me you didn't know there were people out there who'd sell their souls to get out of jail. Hey, put me behind bars, I might be one of them...

We pa.s.sed a sign: CITY OF ATLANTIC BEACH. Please no picnicking, no littering, no alcoholic beverages, no gla.s.s containers, no motorized vehicles, no surfboards without tether lines, no dogs unless leashed and having Atlantic Beach City tags. All animal droppings must be disposed of. Strictly enforced. Thank you.

"Lucky they still allow you to f.u.c.king breathe," Kenny muttered, taking a pull from the bottle of beer.

"Tell me what you know about Floyd Nickerson."

"I don't know anything. In Homicide they're wh.o.r.es, they'll sleep with anyone. You got some good ones, and some you have a hard time believing if they tell you, 'I had tuna on rye for lunch.' Nickerson's supposed to have got a confession out of Morgan? Okay, a.s.sume that's true. It's a big case for the detective who's on it. Years later they'll say, 'Floyd Nickerson? Oh, yeah! Dude who nailed down the Zide murder.' So he thinks: I'll hammer in an extra nail to make sure. No big deal to convince a sc.u.mbag like Elroy to lie. And it paid off, didn't it?"

"Why is it," I asked gloomily, "that I never smelled it?"

A blind young musician pa.s.sed by, strumming a guitar. He was followed by a tall, good-looking blond woman in a bikini, wheeling a bicycle. Kenny and I both turned for a moment to look.

"Because," Kenny said, "you had your head up your a.s.s in a plastic bag, trying to pretend you had a clean job. What I hear, Ted, a lot of things went on, you just said, 'No, that can't be, so I won't look.' And you marched merrily onward until it suited you to cop out for Sarasota."

"You heard that? Are you bulls.h.i.+tting me?"

"Listen, it's nothing new. Ambition is the fuel of the justice system, denial is the grease. Why should you be different?"

"You make it so personal," I said.

"So do you. You came up here looking for Nickerson's b.a.l.l.s. All he did was what half the guys in his shoes do all the time. And you should have known. Talk about snitches, listen to this. We investigated a complaint a few years ago-you remember Bongiorno, our local organized crime boss? This Homicide detective was accused of planting a story in order to get Bongiorno on a murder one conspiracy rap. Detective goes to a professional snitch and says, 'What we heard is, So-and-so provided the murder weapon, and they made the drop over there.' And the snitch goes, 'Yeah, that's exactly what this dude admitted to me!' "

"What happened to that detective?"

"Bongiorno had political connections in Tallaha.s.see and he put a lot of heat out. The snitch changed his mind. They needed a fall guy -come to think of it, it was a fall gal-so they suspended the detective from JSO, and eventually she got married and quit."

"Kenny, never mind that. I need to find out what happened. Who lied, and why. Do you know where Nickerson is?"

"Long gone, and the sheriff's office isn't that buddy-buddy with me these days. You'll have to go through Beldon. Are you still friends?"

"I send him a card for Christmas, he sends me one for Hanukkah. Sure we're friends. Why shouldn't we be?"

In the deepening twilight the tourists headed for their efficiency units. Somebody in the parking lot was yelling about sand in the new Hyundai and wet bathing suits on the upholstery. Kenny craned his neck in several directions, but the tall blonde in the bikini had vanished.

"With all this AIDS s.h.i.+t," he said, "I was thinking of giving up my trips to Rio and getting married again. That tall blonde would have been fine ... if she was rich. I love tall women. But I love rich women too. I know this terrific rich widow down in St. Augustine. But she's only five feet tall."

"So marry her," I said, "and she can stand on her money."

Kenny threw an arm around me affectionately. "My practical friend. And how's your marriage?"

"Fine."

"I'm your oldest pal, you're supposed to confide in me."

"Do I sound like I'm lying?"

"I'm an experienced cross-examiner. You don't sound like a credible witness."

"I have a lot on my mind. All right... it's something I just say, but actually it is fine. It's not all that exciting anymore, but it's something to depend on. Does that answer your question?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't make me envy you. So what is it you have on your mind?" "This business about Darryl Morgan. For Christ's sake, that's why I'm here."

"You're making too much of it. A snitch perjured himself. So what else is new?"

"But if Nickerson got Jerry Lee Elroy to lie, maybe Nickerson lied too. Did that ever occur to you? It does to me."

"But how are you gonna find out? Hunt him down and ask him? And even if he said, 'Yeah, I made it up, so f.u.c.king what?'-what would you do?"

I had no ready answer for that.

"I remember the case," Kenny said thoughtfully. "The Morgan kid admitted being there. The Zide widow and her son ID'd him. Even if Nickerson lied too-and it's a big if-it still comes out to be harmless error. Nasty, but still judicially harmless."

"If Nickerson was lying, then whether Morgan was guilty or not, the trial was not a fair trial."

"Gimme a break. What are we, back in law school?"

"You're the public defender!" I nearly shouted.

"And as the public defender, I have to be a realist. If I played 'Hearts and Flowers' on my violin all day long and worried whether every trial was fair, nothing would get done."

"Your office handled all the Morgan appeals, right?"

"Up to five years ago. Then the Florida legislature created a job called CCR-the Capital Collateral Representative. It's a political office in Tallaha.s.see, and they take these cases at the review stage. Because it was a f.u.c.king traffic jam, all those hundreds of guys convicted and sitting there on death row."

"You mean they weren't frying them fast enough," I said.

Kenny nodded vigorously. "Probably half the work of the Florida Supreme Court was devoted to death penalty cases. Biggest waste of human legal resources known."

"Can I see your files?"

He nodded again. "We always try for ineffective a.s.sistance of counsel. We never get it. We lose, and the defendant always looks depressed and says, 'Where do we go from here?' The PD lawyer says, 'You go to prison. I go back to my office.' "

After dinner I walked alone on the beach to listen to the Atlantic crash against the sh.o.r.e. Tiny s.h.i.+ning white animals washed up on the sand with each succeeding wave. Things Kenny had said nibbled at my mind . .. trying to pretend you bad a clean job.

Was I like that? If, for example, I denied for so long that Alan was a druggie-and that was right before my eyes-wasn't it possible that I denied other things?

I tried to focus on Darryl Morgan. A man I didn't even know, somewhere far away in another darkness. In Raiford, on death row.

Why do I need to get involved in this now? What am I trying to achieve? What do I smell?

I looked down the beach and realized that if I followed its wide path far enough to the south, I would reach Connie Zide's house. I knew she still lived there. I hadn't asked, but over the years bits and pieces of information slipped through the ether and came my way. The lonely widow-become a little reclusive and, they said, a little odd. Took a young lover now and then, gave him expensive gifts, fended off the older fortune hunters, declined to remarry. Solly's estate had been divided into five equal portions: one part each to the two distant daughters, one of whom lived in Connecticut and the other in Santa Barbara; one part to Connie, one to Neil; and one part divided among a clutch of southern universities, each of which received either an endowed chair in the humanities or a varied scholars.h.i.+p fund. Most people were surprised at the wisdom of Solly's generosity.

Neil had stayed in the development business, also surprising most people by his efficiency and political smarts. The inherited millions he had parlayed into many more.

I walked back toward the cheerful lights of Kenny's house. See what you can find out tomorrow, I decided. A day is what you promised yourself. Perhaps-even for a day-recapture that feeling you used to have of being involved, of wanting to do something decent. Do what can be done, but don't tilt at windmills. You have responsibilities elsewhere: to your family, your firm, to other clients. A day, then go home.

At home that night Toba was watching TV upstairs in the master bedroom. There were nightly reruns of M*A*S*H, her favorite program. She had bathed and put on a bathrobe and old pink furry slippers that she wouldn't part with even though the quilted outer part looked raggedy enough for the Salvation Army.

She'd had a hard day and was feeling just a tad sorry for herself. n.o.body was buying houses, and even if they were of a mind to do so, they made ridiculously low offers. Sellers were saying, "We'll wait until this bad period is over."

Toba had been concentrating on rentals. A tenant to whom she had rented a house on Longboat Key had called the office on the day he was scheduled to move in. "Ms. Jaffe, there are mouse droppings under the sink!" The family was moving into a motel until the mice had been exterminated. "And no poison, please! We have a toy poodle." Toba rushed to the hardware store on St. Armands Key and bought twenty Sure-Kill traps. She set the traps with Camembert cheese that she s.n.a.t.c.hed from our refrigerator.

The next morning my intrepid wife carted away the little gray bodies with their b.l.o.o.d.y mouths. "G.o.d forbid the tenants should have seen," she said to me. "They're from Manhattan. They don't accept anything that crawls, except c.o.c.kroaches."

It was a season of animal troubles. One midnight in December she'd been awakened by a call from a hysterical tenant in the woods of Siesta Key. The tenant was in bed, and a monstrous ten-inch-long, eight-legged hairy animal was perched on her chest. It was staring at her in an unfriendly manner.

"Mrs. Hart," Toba said cheerfully, "I think you've either been partying too much or you're having a nightmare."

Mrs. Hart called the police. When they arrived, they removed a rare, poisonous wolf spider.

At about the time that I boarded the flight to Jacksonville, Mrs. Hart, through her lawyer, informed Toba that she was suing her for negligence, malpractice, and slander.

While I was walking on the cool sands of Jacksonville Beach with Kenny Buckram, Toba cooked a meal of lamb chops and apple sauce and frozen french fries. Alan set the table with red linen napkins, took out his old Zippo and, with a flourish, lit a candle. Finis.h.i.+ng her vodka tonic, Toba opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

"Mom, the Becker kids are going sailing over the weekend down at Captiva Island. They've got an uncle who has a fifty-six-footer with standing headroom, sleeps seven or eight, must be fantastic. They invited me along. Can I go?"

"Of course you can. You're nineteen years old-you can do things like that without asking me."

"We'll probably check out the night life on Captiva, which I'm sure is nonexistent. But I don't like to be without any money, hang around like a d.a.m.n parasite. I hate to ask, but-"

"Don't worry," Toba said.

"You're great, Mom."

"Just don't get too sunburned. The sun on the water is very powerful."

After dinner she heard Alan on the phone in the den, leaving a message for someone to call him back. He dropped into an easy chair to watch a video on the TV, and that was when Toba said good night and went upstairs to bathe. She could hear the sound of gunfire and screeching tires; it seemed to her that he always watched different versions of the same movie. She took the bottle of cabernet with her. After she had settled among the warm bubbles and lemon- scented oil of the bath, she drank another gla.s.s of wine. Later, in the bedroom, wrapped in her terry-cloth robe, she lay on the bed, supported by the special backrest with arms, while she watched M*A*S*H. From time to time she heard the little ding as the phone was hung up elsewhere in the house.

I miss Cathy, Toba thought. It's hard when a daughter leaves home.

In Ithaca, Cathy would be awake, studying. The question was: wait until eleven, when the rates go down, or call now?

Toba poured the last bit of the wine into her gla.s.s. She picked up the phone.

Alan's voice filled her ear.

".. . man, good and f.u.c.ked! I'll get the money tomorrow for sure. It was hard tonight. She f.u.c.king drives me crazy...."

Toba's cheeks heated up steadily. She couldn't put down the phone.

A young male voice on the other end of the line said, "One fanf.u.c.kingtastic blast. f.u.c.king wasted is what we'll get."

"f.u.c.kin' A!"

Far across the room, in the mirror above her dressing table, Toba could see the moronic look on her own face. Her mouth had fallen open.

Alan said, "Got 'ludes, quarter grains... . Bobby's holding the caps. ..."

"Gotta hang up, dude."

Toba carefully replaced the receiver and slid out of bed, drawing the belt of her bathrobe tightly around her waist. Her knees felt like pudding. In the bathroom she washed her face in cold water in an effort to get the fire out of her skin. Barefoot, on shaky legs, she padded downstairs to the kitchen, to the wine rack on the wall next to the microwave. She removed another bottle of cabernet. With the bottle and the corkscrew, she climbed back upstairs to bed.