by Beth Flynn
I’d recognized him immediately. He told me he didn’t want to make trouble, just wanted to talk. And that’s all we did. I told him almost everything—everything except my knowledge of Grizz’s criminal endeavors.
“You don’t need to try and hide what the guy does, Gin. His gang is notorious. I just want to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m good, Matthew. I know Grizz threatened you that night. I’m sorry for that. But honestly, I’m happy with him. He’s good to me. I’m going to have his baby.”
This surprised him. “I just needed to check on you before I did anything. I’m not that kid anymore. I’m not afraid of him.”
“Well, you should be afraid of him. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean he can’t get to you. That’s not a threat, Matthew. I’m just stating a fact. I’m telling a friend, who I care about, to stay away. Please just leave us alone.”
“You’re certain of that, Gin? I’ll keep it to myself if you’re telling me the truth.”
“I’m certain, Matthew.”
I’d given a long explanation then, about how I didn’t approve of or participate in Grizz’s gang activity, but had found myself falling in love with him anyway. Matthew couldn’t equate the straight-A, mild-mannered girl with the grown woman who was married to the brutal leader of a motorcycle gang. But he also remembered my neglected home life, and how much I loved the attention his family lavished on me.
Our conversation went from me convincing him to leave us alone to two old friends catching up on each other’s lives. I had been sitting in his car talking to him when he got very quiet and stared out over his steering wheel. I guess he just couldn’t let it go.
“You know, your abduction influenced my decision to go to law school.” He looked at me now. “I didn’t like being threatened, feeling helpless. I knew the guy who took you was a criminal. I’m going to law school to bring down scumbags like him.”
I noticed that the knuckles on his left hand had whitened. He was clenching the steering wheel hard. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Please don’t call him that.” He started to interrupt but I held up my hand. “He has treated me better than anyone ever has. I love him, Matthew. I’m doing everything I can to get him away from this lifestyle. Please leave us alone. He promised me he would quit when the baby comes. I believe him.”
He sighed and looked back out over the steering wheel. The conversation turned lighthearted again. He told me how he loved law school. I joked that I was glad the end of my tutoring him didn’t interfere with him going off to college. It was a nice talk.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to Matthew since that day, but I read the newspapers and watched the news. He was young, but blazing a trail through the justice system by winning impossible cases. Don’t think the irony wasn’t lost on me that he told me years ago he was going to law school to put the bad guys away, and now he was the best in the business at setting them free.
I reflected on all of this as I waited in Detective Banner’s office, sipping watered-down coffee and waiting for Matthew to show up. When he finally did, Matthew brought a man with him I didn’t know.
“Gin, this is Cary Lewis. He’s not with my firm. I can’t represent Jason because of our history. But I’m putting you in the hands of someone who is better at this job than anyone I know. You trust me on this, I hope?”
I looked up at him from where I was sitting. “If you tell me you have no hard feelings toward him, if you can look me in the eye and tell me that, then yes.” I took a breath. “I trust you.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It’s not necessary to go into the details of the following years. Besides, I found the legal proceedings and jargon too much to retain. I’ll stick with the facts as I remember them.
I never saw Grizz again as a free man. He was denied bail and stayed incarcerated in the county jail for almost two years while Cary Lewis negotiated with the prosecutors. I stayed very close to Matthew during this time. Even though it was in an unofficial capacity, I needed him to explain everything that was happening.
Cary did his best with me, but between the pregnancy and the press, I needed Matthew and Sam. They were instrumental in getting my high school and college degrees transferred over to my real name. They protected me from the media. They were with me from the very beginning of this nightmare. They even arranged for me to live with Stephen and April.
Stephen, who was Sarah Jo’s high school boyfriend, had remained a close friend, and most importantly, he and April had no association with the gang at all. They welcomed me into their home until the media frenzy died down. My college girlfriends, Carter and Casey, took turns staying at my house to care for Damien. We’d lost Lucifer a year earlier to bone cancer. When I was finally able to move home, Carter moved in with me.
One thing Grizz insisted on from the beginning was leaving me out of everything. He told them he abducted me. He told them about the threats early on to prevent my escape, and how he tricked me into the marriage.
The story made headlines: “Missing Girl Found Married to Leader of Notorious Motorcycle Gang.” People started to come out of the woodwork.
“Yes, I thought I recognized her, but she seemed so happy, I was certain she hadn’t been abducted.”
“That bastard threatened my life if I didn’t get her guitar back.” This from the pawnshop owner where I hocked my guitar that first Christmas.
“You say he threatened your life?” Cary asked him on the stand. “You weren’t monetarily compensated to retrieve the guitar?”
“Well, yeah, but money or not, I still didn’t have a choice. My life was at stake.”
Even Diane Berger, the girl from the vet’s office, probably thought she was helping, but in reality, it didn’t make me look good. “I asked her right out if she was Ginny Lemon and she said no. She even had some weird accent. She was probably brainwashed.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Cary and Matthew told me. “Can’t prove she really saw you. Maybe it was a look-alike with an accent.”
Except that it wasn’t. The prosecution was able to pull the vet’s records and show Rick O’Connell did have a dog there during that time that was being treated for a snake bite.
Every time we thought something might go our way, someone else would come forward. And with Jan and Froggy’s statements, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle. Froggy, whose real name was Larry Most, stated under oath that he witnessed Grizz murder more than one person. Even with the details, there were never any bodies to substantiate his claims. They would have to get more witnesses. And they did.
One thing that surprised me early on was there was never a mention of Grunt or Fess. Jan and Froggy never once brought them up. I believe it was because Jan really did care for Grunt, and I think they both felt sorry for Fess. He was just a regular guy trying to make a living and raise three kids by himself. The authorities did eventually get to them through other witnesses, but by then, Grizz had cut a deal.
In the two years it took to prepare for trial, I’d also gotten married and had our daughter. We named her Miriam. We called her Mimi.
This may be hard to believe, but Grizz practically forced me to get remarried. I remember the day well. I was only about two months into my pregnancy and was visiting him in jail.
“Kit, you love me, don’t you?” he asked.
“You know I love you, Grizz. We’ll get through this. You’ll get out. We’ll get our lives back.”
“Kitten, I’m never getting out of here. You need to know and understand that now.”
“Stop it! Don’t talk like that.”
“You’re a smart girl. You need to face reality so we can make a plan. You said you love me. I need you to prove it.”
I looked at him with vision blurred by tears. “Tell me. Tell me how to prove it.”
“I want you to get married.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t even object. We were speaking on telephones through a glass partition. “I want you to promise me our child
will have a father when he or she is born. Promise me that, Kit.”
“Our baby will have a father, Grizz. You. I can give it your last name. Talbot.” Then something else occurred to me. “Married to who? Who would I marry? Besides, we’re already married.”
I knew deep down our marriage wasn’t legal. Maybe Rick O’Connell and Ann Marie Morgan were married, but Jason Talbot and Ginny Lemon weren’t. Yet in our hearts, we were.
“Kit, I can name five guys who care enough about you to marry you tomorrow. I know probably two of them are already in love with you. Hell, even Fess would marry you if we asked him.”
“You can’t be serious. And as much as I love Sarah Jo, I don’t want to be her stepmother. Who else could you possibly be talking about? Besides, I find it hard to believe you suspect not one, but two men of being in love with me and they’re still alive.” I picked up a tissue to blow my nose while resting the phone on my shoulder.
“You once told me I was a smart guy. Do you remember? The night you told me you were pregnant that first time. I told you how I dropped out of school, and you were surprised by how I survived. How I made something out of nothing. You remember that?”
“Yes, I remember. So what?”
“You were right, baby. I am smart. Smart enough to let those guys fall in love with you because I knew this day might come.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but after talking to Cary and his explanation of the seriousness of Grizz’s predicament, I gave in.
I was married within weeks of having that conversation with Grizz. A divorce wasn’t necessary since our marriage was never legal. Just as Grizz had asked of me, I was legally wed to another man when our daughter was born.
She was a big baby. No surprise there, given the size of her father. I was in labor for twenty-four hours before they finally performed an emergency C-section. As I was wheeled into surgery, I remember my new husband and friends telling me, “We’ll be here when you wake up.”
Grizz insisted she be given my husband’s last name and that she was never to know Grizz was her biological father. He made me swear I would never tell.
“I believe you when you tell me you love me, Kit. If you really do, you’ll never tell her.”
“If she tries to, someday she can look back and figure out the timing, Grizz. I don’t see how I could keep it from her.”
“Then lie. Tell her you cheated on me. I don’t care if you tell her that. I don’t want her to know I’m her father.”
Mimi would grow into a beautiful girl. She would never ask, and I was able to keep my promise to Grizz.
Cary told me Grizz wanted to plead guilty in order to protect everyone else. The problem was he would have received life in prison without parole. There was no way Grizz would agree to stay in prison for life.
So he would plead guilty in exchange for a death sentence.
“No!” I cried when they told me.
“Don’t worry,” Cary explained. “I don’t think the State of Florida is in the assisted-suicide business. They wouldn’t be able to agree to that. He’ll have to go to trial. Having him live the remainder of his life in prison would make them happy, but they chance him getting out on a technicality somewhere down the road. I have no doubt the prosecutors will push for the death penalty. It’s still too early to know if he’ll get it and you need to prepare yourself in case he does.”
“I don’t care if he wants the death penalty. I’m counting on you, Cary, to make sure he gets life in prison. And if he does get it, he can maybe get out on a technicality somewhere down the road?”
“Ginny, of course I’m going to do my best to protect him from the death penalty. But, you need to know that if he does get life, there’s no guarantee a technicality might come up.”
“But Matthew told me you were the best, Cary. I’m expecting you to get him out of this!”
“You don’t understand, Ginny. There is no getting out. And Jason knows it. He’s having me negotiate with the prosecution so certain people aren’t touched. Especially you. They’ll dig. They’ll find a way to bring you down to get to him. He’s trying to avoid that.”
“But we’ve got Sam!” I blurted out, tears swimming. “Sam will testify for us. He’ll talk about the Stockholm syndrome. How it was normal for me to stay with Grizz.”
“You’re the main reason, Ginny, but do I need to tell you how many people are involved in this? How many names have come across the prosecution’s desk? All of them: Grunt, Fess, Blue, Chowder, Chicky. Even Eddie, the tattoo guy. Even he’ll be left alone. Of course, he’ll have to go back to just doing ink and nothing extracurricular. But the list is endless.”
Then he answered an unspoken question. “He’s only giving up his informants who took bribes. Nobody he blackmailed.”
I was secretly relieved to hear Grizz’s inside network of law enforcement informants weren’t all bad. I was glad to know the law in South Florida wasn’t as corrupt as I’d originally thought.
____________
That’s pretty much how it went during the two years leading up to the trial. Two years of negotiations. Who would they go after? Who would they leave alone? Grizz insisted Chowder, whose real name was John Lawrence, be allowed to remain at the motel as long as he wanted. It didn’t matter. Chowder died of a heart attack before Grizz went to trial.
Our home was also off the table. I was able to keep the house and everything on the property at the time of Grizz’s arrest. It included everything in our home, our cars and his motorcycles. I also didn’t have to worry about money. There was enough to pay for the attorneys and live comfortably for a very long time.
Years ago, and without my knowledge, Grizz had Fess and Grunt open up investment accounts in my real name—so much for the gang’s code of not using real names. It wasn’t an issue, anyway. Early on, Grunt, Fess and their finances were left alone in exchange for Grizz’s cooperation on other matters. Grizz gave up two men who headed up his drug empire in exchange for their immunity. They were off the table and it was early in the negotiations, so their names never got released to the public. I was grateful. It would have affected their careers. And besides, there were bigger fish to fry.
The negotiations continued. Another man, I actually think it was the old man from the warehouse in Pompano Beach, was given up for Chicky’s immunity. And that’s how it went until the day of Grizz’s trial. Just like a chess game, Grizz meticulously calculated each move. He gave up the goods on some people in order to protect others. He even insisted some of the people he protected bear witness against him at trial.
He was doing his best to convince a jury that he should get the death penalty.
And he did.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grizz waited on death row in a prison in North Florida. It was about a five-hour ride by car. I tried to visit him. But after the first year he told me no more. I had to move on with my life. I had to raise our daughter. Be a good mother. Be a good wife.
“Do you love him?” he asked me one day. “It’s okay to tell me, Kit. It’s okay if you love him. He loves you and has taken care of you and Mimi. My time has passed.”
“Yes,” I answered, as I looked at my hands in my lap. “I love him.”
It was the last time I saw Grizz until the day of his execution.
The year after that conversation was the worst. I think I mourned Grizz the hardest then. There was so much emotion. There was so much guilt. Why had I saved that stupid wallet? Why hadn’t I gotten up on that stand and told the jury how good he was to me?
Because Grizz wouldn’t let me. The prosecution didn’t come near me because of the information Grizz gave them. It was like Christmas for them. One present after the other. Other than to ask me to corroborate things Grizz had told them, they kept their word. I was left alone.
I called him years later to tell him I’d had another baby. It might come as a surprise that a prisoner on death row could receive a phone call. But this was Grizz. Being on death
row never changed his status as leader of Satan’s Army. He still managed to possess a great amount of influence over his present circumstances.
He’d known I was pregnant. Even in prison, Grizz had found a way to keep tabs on my husband and me. But that day I told him something he didn’t know.
“We named him Jason.” The phone went silent for a long time. I wasn’t sure if he was still there.
“I love you, Ginny. I’ll always love you.”
It was the first and last time he called me by my real name. I started to answer that I still loved him, too, but he’d already hung up.
It was true. I still loved Grizz. I wasn’t in love with him like I had been, but I cared deeply for him. My husband understood. There was no jealousy or insecurity from him. Besides, if it weren’t for Grizz, I wouldn’t be married to the man I was completely and totally in love with today.
Chapter Forty
The day after Grizz’s execution, back home, my husband and I decided to use the day to do something special.
“Hey, you two. Long time no see,” Eddie said as he hugged us both.
We hadn’t been in to see Eddie since he’d added our son’s name to the tattoo on my husband’s left arm. He’d surprised me on our third wedding anniversary. The tattoo was a beautiful eagle holding up a heart between its wings. Inside the heart was my name: Ginny. I thanked him for not using Guinevere. He’d joked at the time that he didn’t think Eddie had enough ink. There was a ribbon that wrapped around the heart and dangled on one side of the tattoo. It said “Mimi.” When our son was born, he went back and had Eddie add another ribbon with the name “Jason.” It was a beautiful work of art and a testament to our happy family.
Eddie looked at my stomach and teased, “Time to add another ribbon?”