Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 02 - FINAL ARGUMENT - a Legal Thriller

by Clifford Irving

  I hated that word, pontificate. Probably because it was accurate.

  I tried to pay attention to what was going on in the hot schoolroom. A single mother was telling us about her twenty-year-old son who had come home, begging to be fed. “But I knew he’d steal whatever money he could find, make me real crazy. I say, ‘Go away until you clean!’ Two days later they call me from the hospital. They say, ‘Elston’s here, he’s undernourished, he’s sick, he say his mama kick him out.’ I say, ‘When he quit killing hisself with that rock cocaine, I come see him.’ “

  The group applauded her, while she wiped her eyes. But what would happen to Elston without his mother? Could I do what she did? Tough love, they called it. Coddle them, forgive them, and they assume the world will too.

  That night, on the drive home to Longboat Key, I said to Alan, “How are you doing, son?”

  “Fine, Dad. We sit in a big group, and everyone gets up and raps about the shitty things they did when they were on dope, and how they’ve been clean for ten days, or thirty days, and we all applaud. Then we hold hands and say the serenity prayer.”

  “Do you get up there and talk?”

  “Not anymore. I’m clean.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “I know what a terrible thing drugs are now. I could use the time for studying. I’m having a real tough time with physics.”

  We were home. Alan hit the button that opened the electronic security gate, and it whirred open.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “I’ll talk to your mother.”

  Stars glittered above Sarasota Bay. Standing in the driveway, I reached out to give Alan a hug, remembering that my own father had never done that to me. Leonard, who had died a few years earlier in St. Augustine from a heart attack, had been a handshaker, not a hugger or a kisser. Coming back from my licentious summer in Europe before law school, I’d greeted him with an embrace and a kiss on both cheeks. He had flushed, drawing back a bit to make sure our groins didn’t touch.

  Toba was upstairs, watching thirtysomething. With a snifter of Rémy Martin for company, I went out on the boat deck. Under gathering clouds the Gulf was a silvery gray, and from the other side of Longboat Key the waves splashed and receded gently.

  Years ago, I thought, life had been simpler. In Jacksonville I could grab a cold piece of chicken and a Mexican beer and feel happy. Now we searched for three-star restaurants, and I wouldn’t consider a Chardonnay for under twenty dollars. I used to drive my old Honda, Toba a tanklike Volvo wagon. We currently owned four cars: my Porsche, Toba’s Jaguar, Alan’s hand-painted, gas-guzzling ‘82 Pontiac, Cathy’s Toyota hatchback up in Ithaca. I was kicking in for four insurance premiums and supporting the economies of four nations.

  The oiled black arc of a porpoise appeared out on the water. Cathy had brought back a bumper sticker for me that said: MY DAUGHTER AND MY MONEY GO TO CORNELL, and I had laughed. But some days when I saw it on the rear of my car I felt more plundered than validated. She was already talking about graduate school. Not to become a lawyer, but to earn a degree that would allow her to get in line for a low-paying job in Washington where she would help give away part of my tax dollar to the poor in Ethiopia or Bangladesh. This fucking recession, I thought, came at the wrong time.

  But when is there a right time?

  I went back inside the house to the den, where I read for a while in a new le Carré novel. A clock was ticking softly in the kitchen. Gulls flew over the atrium, so close that I could hear the rushing choral beat of their wings. The pool filter stopped. A rich and gracious silence filled the night.

  There was a rhythm to any life, I thought, a routine that both sustained and deadened. Countless moments became strung together in the guise of a whole, punctuated with flashes of pleasure, ache, doubt, and desire. I want. I can’t. I wish. Those were the themes. I was forty-eight years old. It would be over all too quickly, and if I had the courage at the end, I would ask myself: What was it all about? What did you do that really mattered?

  And what would I answer?

  I thought of my seventy-two-year-old mother then, for I knew what she would answer. I visited her whenever I could in her Century Village condo in West Palm Beach, where she had moved after Dad’s death. Set free from marriage, she had become a world traveler. She visited Israel, cruised the South Seas, flew up to New York with a friend for a fortnight of theater, and toured all the national parks in the West before arriving in La Jolla to baby-sit her California grandchildren. My sister joined her once in Jerusalem for a few days of guided visits to West Bank settlements. Rhoda called me after she got back to La Jolla.

  “They were a group,” Rhoda said, “but I picked up on it right away—she was with this man named Sam Schatz. A retired Cadillac dealer from Cleveland.”

  “Did Mom admit it?”

  “Teddy, I’m not a cross-examiner like you. I’m a shrink. In my world, intuition has more validity than proof. I knew.”

  My mother was fatter now, but her eyes had more radiance than I was used to seeing. She had had a tuck. She dyed her hair a light rust brown, had given up girdles, and wore pistachio-colored slacks, flowered Mexican blouses, white Italian shoes. She said “shit” and “screw,” words I couldn’t recall her using at home in Jacksonville, and watched A&E and 60 Minutes.

  To all my musings and soul-searchings, she once said, “Teddy, most of what happens isn’t planned. Who knows what’s going to be? So do your best. Be kind, enjoy, try not to worry.”

  I tried.

  When I went up to bed at half past eleven, Toba didn’t even stir. I loved her; she was my companion. But she snored. If I woke her she would be annoyed, deny it, soon snore again. In the dark I searched for the wax earplugs that I kept in the bedside table. When they were in place, I heard nothing except a faint neutral sound, as of distant surf.

  The foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn …

  Once I had read Keats. Once I had dreamed of standing before the Supreme Court and arguing for a man’s life.

  My mother’s advice was good only up to a point. In the silent darkness I thought of Jerry Lee Elroy, and then of Darryl Morgan, the man I had sent to death row. And I didn’t even have to dream that recurrent horror. Now I saw it and heard it while I was still awake: the black head in the leather cap, the crash of the switch, the dimming of the lights—the burst of blue fire.

  Chapter 8

  YOU TWIST, TURN, cast off the sheets, know you should be able to escape. And must escape. But you remain in the nightmare’s sweaty grip.

  Twelve years before, the second part of the Morgan trial in Jacksonville had gone quickly. But in memory it would always have the quality of drawn-out nightmare.

  I had risen at first light that morning and gone running barefoot along the sand of Neptune Beach. Waves shattered against the dunes, and the last of the night wind chanted through the sawgrass. When I came puffing back, Toba appeared on the beach near the house, bearing a mug of fresh coffee. She shivered in the morning chill.

  Sweat ran down my neck from my forehead. “Thanks, my love,” I gasped, clutching the coffee.

  Our street was quiet as she walked home with me.

  “Sleep well, Ted?”

  “Do I ever?”

  I meant on the night before final argument in a murder case. Toba understood.

  “Ah, but rejoice,” she said. “This is the last one you’ll ever have to do.”

  “Yes!” And I hugged her.

  “Shall I come to court? I’ve got the time today. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, come.”

  I rose from the counsel table. It was my duty to seek the end of the convicted murderer’s life. But Connie had said she didn’t want him to die. And neither did I. How could I, in conscience, seek a man’s death if I didn’t hate him? And didn’t see him as a threat to the survival of others?

  “The State of Florida,” I said calmly, “will present no new witnesses. The state rests its plea for the death
penalty on the previous evidence.”

  With a perceptible scowl on his lips, Judge Bill Eglin looked down. He had been on the bench for three years; he was not new to this. But I had confused him.

  Gary Oliver strode toward the jury again, a hearty man, arms spread as if to embrace the world.

  He called Marguerite Little as his first witness. She fidgeted in the witness chair as if it might be the very chair her son was headed toward. With her wild iron-gray hair and Mother Hubbard dress, Morgan’s mother had the look of a woman let out of a mental institution for the day.

  “He always been a good boy.”

  That was the sum of her testimony, and I passed my right to crossexamine.

  A.J. Morgan, the stepfather, in a black suit whose jacket seemed two sizes too small for him, took the stand. “I always told him he was gonna go too far. He never listen to me. He don’t know what he about, that boy—”

  “Sir!” Oliver shot forward, cutting him off. “Tell us this: in your home, was your stepson violent?”

  “I don’t permit that.”

  “Outside your home, that you know of?”

  “That’s what he here for, right?”

  Oliver sank back toward the defense table, defeated by this friendly witness.

  The time came for final argument in part two.

  Rising, Gary Oliver faced the jury. “This is a young boy,” he begged. “He shot this man without meaning to. He didn’t go to that house to kill anyone, he went there to rob them.”

  From his seat at the defense table, Darryl Morgan rumbled, “I didn’t shoot no one!”

  The eyes of all the jurors swung toward him. Damn fool, I thought. You’ve accused these people of error in the most serious judgment any of them has ever made.

  The judge eschewed the use of a gavel. Calmly he tapped his ballpoint pen on the oak bench from where he dispensed justice.

  Oliver stared at his client, then turned back to the jury. “Robbery’s a crime, but not one you have to die for. The killing was bad, but ‘twasn’t meant to be. The one boy, his friend William Smith, is already shot dead by the police. One dead … don’t you think that’s enough? And you can’t really blame this boy for what his friend did to that lady’s face. Twenty years old! Be merciful! The Morgan boy will be forty-five years old when he comes up for parole, if you let him. Maybe they’ll give it to him, maybe not. But he’ll be a new man then. Give that new man a chance. Do the Christian thing! Give him the opportunity to repent!”

  After Oliver sat, wiping his forehead with his ever-present white handkerchief, Judge Eglin waved his hand at me. The state, saddled with the burden of proof, was granted the right of the last word. A kind of coda: conclusive major chords, knells seeking doom.

  Whatever I wished privately to happen, I had the obligation to set forth the opinion of the State of Florida. It had occurred to me that if I didn’t offer rebuttal, some zealot such as Judge Eglin could move for my disbarment.

  I stood and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant was surprised in the act of burglary by Solomon Zide, and indeed, thinking he was threatened, may have reacted quickly and irrationally. But our common sense tells us that he carried a loaded weapon he was prepared to use. We’ve also heard testimony that after Mr. Morgan shot Solomon Zide, Mr. Smith turned on Mrs. Zide, a defenseless woman. Smith slashed her twice, in the arm and the face. That does not strike me as merely an irrational act. It strikes me as brutal, and certainly deliberate. And I ask you: Did Mr. Morgan make any effort to stop Mr. Smith from doing what he did? Did he say, ‘That’s enough, William Smith! Let’s go!’? You’ve heard Mrs. Zide testify to the contrary. The judge in his charge will tell you that our law requires that all participants in a criminal act be responsible for the actions of the other participants. Otherwise, imagine: in a bank robbery, one man would say, ‘Oh, I didn’t take any money, I was just standing there with a gun.’ If William Smith were alive, he would be equally responsible with Mr. Morgan for the death of Solomon Zide. In the same way, Mr. Morgan is equally responsible for the attack on the person of Constance Zide. The brutality of this crime is an aggravating circumstance that may outweigh any mitigating circumstances such as the defendant’s youth. Therefore the state moves for the application of the death penalty.”

  I had a seafood lunch with Toba at The Jury Room, with Connie and Neil Zide at a table on the far side of the restaurant. We went back to the courtroom and at a few minutes past 4:00 P.M. the jury announced that they had reached a decision. Filing in, they took their seats on the padded wooden chairs. The foreman rose; he was a retired electrical engineer with yellowing hair. He read from a slip of paper in his hand.

  “The jury advises and recommends to the court that it impose a sentence of life imprisonment upon Darryl Morgan without possibility of parole for twenty-five years.”

  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 circumstances, 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 passed through your body in such amounts and frequency until you are rendered dead. And may God 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 pass 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 bumper 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 passed a sign: CITY OF ATLANTIC BEACH. Please no picnicking, no littering, no alcoholic beverages, no glass 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 fucking 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 whores, 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, assume 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 scumbag like Elroy to lie. And it paid off, didn’t it?”