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

by Clifford Irving

  I didn’t know what to say. But he did.

  “Florida, Indiana, and Alabama are the only three states that have the post-Furman override provision. There’s been one override in Indiana, about six in Alabama, and more than ninety in Florida. This is the killer state.”

  I told him about Jerry Lee Elroy’s 1979 deal in exchange for perjury.

  “And the cop, Nickerson, he set that up?”

  “If Elroy’s telling the truth.”

  Hoad seemed excited. “Will your client testify to what he told you?”

  “There’d have to be something in it for him. Elroy is not your basic altruist.”

  He looked at his watch. “Damn, I have to get back to court and help put the judge to sleep again.”

  Going up in the elevator, I said, “Why did you get so involved with this case?”

  “Have you ever been to Raiford, Mr. Jaffe?”

  “No.”

  “An execution is not something you quickly forget. You know, they’re having one day after tomorrow. A local boy.”

  “Who are they burning?”

  “Sweeting. Remember him? Killed a pair of coeds at Jacksonville University eight years ago. Chopped them up, buried them down by the river, dug one up again because he had these dreams that she might still be alive and blaming him. Well, he dies on Saturday. You should go and watch Eric Sweeting pay for his sins. Then you’ll understand why I get involved.”

  The elevator stopped at the second floor. The woman prosecutor was waiting for us. She said to Hoad, “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  They talked, then Hoad returned, the prosecutor preceding him, heels clicking, moving briskly on strong legs into the courtroom. She carried her head high and didn’t smile. She was a good-looking woman, I thought.

  “Making any progress?” I asked.

  “Suarez is backing off,” Hoad said. “Looks like she’ll cut a deal. Fifteen years for armed robbery and attempted murder, concurrent. That’s not bad. I’m gonna tell my guy to go for it.”

  “That’s Suarez? The woman you were talking to?” She was the assistant state attorney who had prosecuted Jerry Lee Elroy and let him go.

  “Right.”

  “I’ll hang out for a while,” I said. “Maybe we can all have lunch together.”

  By noon the armed robbery case in Courtroom Four was history. The prosecutor, Muriel Suarez, and the public defender, Brian Hoad, shook hands, and both went off to lunch with me. I remembered the ritual. You laughed and didn’t talk much about the case, but you gossiped a lot about other cases, other lawyers, judges. In the courtroom the lawyers had snarled and yelled at each other, because that was the protocol—the adversarial relationship was the basis of the system and the only way approximate justice was achieved. Justice was not the same as mathematics.

  That was why no one ever wanted a truly innocent client. That was nightmare. That was something you couldn’t joke about so easily.

  In Worman’s Deli near the federal courthouse, seated at a table in the back, Suarez munched on a pickle. She said to Hoad and me, “I heard a good one yesterday. These two lawyers—civil lawyers”— grinning, showing badly capped white teeth—”are walking along the beach, and they see this gorgeous woman in a thong. One lawyer says, ‘Boy, I’d love to fuck her.’ Second lawyer says, ‘Yeah? Out of what?’ “

  In this country, it seemed to me, lawyers had taken the place of Poles as the butt of jokes. The only difference was that we may have deserved it.

  We had corned beef sandwiches for lunch, and when we were finished Hoad stood and said, “Folks, I have to fly. I’ve got a woman over in the jail pled guilty to possession of crack cocaine. It turned out to be wax, but the state attorney won’t let her rescind her plea. I have to get over there.”

  “Speedily, I’d imagine,” I said. “I’ve got the check. I’ll call you about the Morgan file.”

  When he had gone, Muriel Suarez said, “The name Morgan rings a bell.”

  I brought her up to date.

  “I remember the case. Floyd Nickerson told me Elroy was a creep, but a reliable creep. Gap in his tooth, right? I remember him. And Carmen Tanagra.”

  The way she said that last name made me wait for something more. But there was nothing. Her eyes moved away, and she reached for her mug of Michelob.

  “Carmen Tanagra was the other detective on the Zide case. She have anything to do with Elroy?” I asked.

  “She was Nickerson’s partner. I knew her. But it was Nickerson who came to me and proposed the deal.”

  “Tanagra still around?”

  Muriel shook her head decisively. “Got more or less kicked out. She wasn’t a really smart cop. I mean, she was a good woman, but they corrupted her.”

  Something clicked in my memory. “Was she by any chance involved in the Bongiorno episode? The cop who got the snitch to lie? And they found out in time?”

  “Right. They nailed Carmen’s ass to the wall. She didn’t like it, so she quit.”

  “To do what?”

  “We’re not in touch,” Muriel said, and there was still an edge in her voice, something I didn’t understand.

  Then she smiled and looked at me with more cheerful eyes. They were dark and Latin; they actually flashed, as in the old songs. Her parents were Cuban, she told me, and had brought her here as a baby. Once again I became aware of how attractive a woman she was.

  “So, Mr. Jaffe, Mr. Civil Lawyer from Sarasota, what are you going to do about all this?”

  “Morgan’s still alive. Barely. They’re going to execute him in April.”

  “You think you could get him a new trial?”

  “I could try for a stay of execution. That’s what I told Beldon.”

  “And what did my lord and master say?”

  “You can’t guess?”

  “ ‘Morgan was guilty, he shot those people. Leave it be.’ “ She grinned. “You care if he lives or dies?”

  “Yes, I damn well do,” I said, with a vigor that surprised me. And so I repeated it. “I care. And I’m going to do something about it.”

  “You losing any sleep? That’s my standard. You hit the pillow and pass out, you’re okay.”

  “Do you always hit the pillow and pass out?”

  “Not lately,” Muriel said.

  “What’s happened lately?”

  “One of my first cases as a felony prosecutor was Eric Sweeting. The name mean anything to you?”

  “Brian mentioned it,” I said. “They’re burning him Saturday morning down at Raiford.”

  “Right. Unless the governor grants clemency.”

  “Why are you losing sleep? Sweeting was guilty.”

  “And the jury recommended death by a vote of nine to three.” Muriel drank some more beer. “But I’m going to be there when they pull the switch. Witness it, by God.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “Because when I did the case eight years ago, the morning before I asked the jury to bring in a verdict of death, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘Muriel, this is not a statistic you read in a book. This is a human being, with a mother and father and three sisters who love him, and you’re arguing in favor of his being killed. You’re not only trying to kill him, you’re condemning those other people to grieve for maybe the rest of their lives. If you haven’t got the guts to witness that execution and the moral fiber to face his family on the day it happens, you shouldn’t argue in favor of it.’ So I promised myself, if it ever happened, I’d go. Well, he’s exhausted his appeals quicker than most, and now it’s happening. The day after tomorrow. Only an hour away from where we sit. Unfortunately, I don’t have any excuse.”

  I said nothing. Could I do that? No. That was one of the reasons I had quit the business of putting people in barred cells.

  “If you recall,” Muriel Suarez went on, “it was a particularly heinous murder. So the first time I met Sweeting, I expected a monster. I gritted my teeth, walked into the jail with the public defender to mee
t this beast who chopped up his teenage victims. Eric was nineteen years old, weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds, about the size of a jockey. Red hair, freckles, braces on his teeth. A polite, dumb country boy—looked like a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and a pit bull.”

  “Retarded?”

  “The defense tried to prove that. But it wasn’t so.”

  “How do you account for his committing such a heinous murder?”

  “I don’t,” Muriel said. “That was the scary part. But he did it. That was the true part. That’s all I had to know and believe, and I did. Like you knew and believed Morgan did it. Why is not our province.”

  “It’s brave of you to go down there,” I said.

  “I know,” Muriel said.

  That evening, on the porch of his house in the black neighborhood where he’d always lived, Beldon Ruth brought out a pitcher of iced tea and settled down in a rocking chair to talk to me.

  “I want to tell you a story,” he said. “When I was younger, I prosecuted a seventeen-year-old black kid. This kid rang a doorbell over on Blodgett, put a gun in some woman’s face, and said, ‘Gimme your money or I’ll blow your head off.’ She gave him the housekeeping money—so the kid came back a few weeks later and did it to her again. I was a brand-new assistant state attorney, and to me this kid was dangerous. Day before sentencing, the public defender in the case—your pal Kenny Buckram, fresh out of law school—gets the woman, the complainant, to sign a statement saying, ‘I’ve just heard about how this boy’s father sexually abused him and beat him with a wooden plank, and his mother was a drunk, and they wouldn’t let him go to school even though he got good grades. I think what he did to me was terrible, but now I can sort of understand why he did it. And I’d like to see him get another chance.’ “

  Beldon poured the tea. Laurette, his wife, was inside the house, preparing dinner.

  “Buckram gave this letter to Judge Fleming. You remember him? White-haired, crotchety good ole boy, rolled his own from those little sacks of Country Gentleman? Still around, although he’s older’n dirt. And Fleming sat in his chambers from noon to three, we’re all waiting, it’s hot enough for a hen to lay a hard-boiled egg. Finally Fleming hobbles out and says to Kenny, ‘If you’re right about this boy and I put him in prison and he gets ruined in there, his blood is on my hands. If you’re wrong, I’m gonna bring him back in my court and pound his knuckles to the floor with a sledgehammer, and he’s gonna do every goddam day of the ten years I could have handed him.’

  “He gave the kid probation. Some people were shocked, including me. I said, ‘Judge, how can you do that? I mean, in conscience?’ Fleming sizzles and said, ‘Because, son, the people voted me into office, and I got the right to do it. Y’all don’t have the right to question me or my conscience.’ Stuck his finger right in my face like ‘Fuck you, Mr. Ruth.’

  “That was twenty years ago. The kid graduated from college. The judge, Kenny, and I got a wedding announcement. Fleming took him off probation after five years. The kid went into computers, moved his family up to Atlanta. If Fleming had sent him to prison he’d be out there now, perpetrating more robberies and doing more time and butt-fucking people. Or he’d be dead. Do you know that twenty-five percent of black men in this country have done time, are doing time now, or are on probation? In the case I’m talking about, the system wouldn’t allow for the fact that a potentially good kid had done a violent crime. Fleming grasped it, and he was right.”

  Beldon sat back on his porch and sucked iced tea through a child’s bent straw.

  “You know what the point of that story is, Ted?”

  “No, but I know if I sit here long enough on this porch, you’re sure as hell going to tell me.”

  Beldon smiled. “In twenty-five years, that’s the only time I’ve ever known anyone to be right when they gave someone a second chance. All the rest were disasters. That’s a pretty piss-poor record, wouldn’t you say? And that’s why I still believe we’re on the side of the angels. And you defense guys, you do your job, but you don’t really help people. The PD’s office has got the right idea. Churn ‘em out, cut a deal. Hired lawyers waste time trying to show clients they’re earning their fee.”

  “You’re a disgusting old cynic.”

  “I’m a disgusting old realist.”

  “Why did you ever become a lawyer?”

  “Fascination of aberrant behavior,” Beldon said, and let that hang in the air while he went inside to refill the pitcher.

  When he came back, I said, “Tell me about Muriel Suarez.”

  “Could be a division chief in a year or two, unless she goes for the bucks and becomes a partner in a fancy law firm. Like some others we know.”

  I hadn’t come back to Jacksonville to be lectured, not even by Beldon. But my compulsion was more than theoretical. A man languished out there on death row—he wasn’t an anonymous black thug, he was a human being I had once looked in the eye. In the last ten years I had helped many a businessman and entrepreneur become richer; in the process, I had become part of their club. That was one thing a lawyer did. The other thing he did, and what I had neglected to do for too long a time, was help people survive and live free with pride. A part of me, over the years, had been slowly and painfully eviscerated by my own greed, if I dared call it that. But that part wasn’t dead. I could revive it if I wanted to, if I had the courage, and the stubbornness.

  In time. I was here because I had new information that I was obliged to turn over to the state attorney, and I had done so. That was the first step.

  I said to Beldon, “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Not a goddam thing,” he replied, “other than to add it to my long list of incidents that tend to prove that the human race at best is capable of anything under the sun, and at worst is deceitful, hypocritical, opportunistic, and generally no fucking good.”

  It wasn’t exactly a complete vision. I ground my teeth, but didn’t comment. “Where’s Floyd Nickerson these days?”

  “I somehow thought you’d ask that.”

  “Does that mean you know?”

  “Didn’t until yesterday, when you phoned. Then I dug a little. He left JSO nine years ago and went over to Gainesville. Chief of security in a big real estate and country club development. Place called Orange Meadow.”

  I wrote that down. “Must be on Orange Lake. We used to go down from school on weekends to water-ski. What’s it all called? Orange Meadow Estates, something like that?”

  “I guess so. Don’t really remember.”

  “Is Nickerson still there?”

  “Can’t say. He ain’t a pen pal.”

  “Who’s the developer he works for? Do you know that?”

  After just the barest hesitation, Beldon said, “ZiDevco.”

  Chapter 11

  I MADE UP my mind in the late afternoon, a couple of hours before I was due to drive to the airport. I called Muriel Suarez at her office in the courthouse.

  “You want to see it?” she asked.

  “I want to be there. Then I’ll decide if I want to actually see it.”

  “You a death freak or something?”

  But she called the superintendent at Raiford and requested that I be put on the list. Then she rang back.

  “Done. They allow twelve witnesses other than the media goons. They’ve only got seven.”

  We arranged to meet at her place on Washington Street. I called home, and Alan answered on the first ring. “Bobby?”

  “No, it’s me. How’re you doing, kid?”

  “Fine, Dad.”

  “All well on the home front?”

  “It’s cool. I was just reading by the pool.”

  I liked hearing that. There was hope. “I’ve been thinking about our talk the other night. If you’re ready to leave that drug program now, it’s fine with me.”

  “I’m really ready to leave it.”

  “Then go for it. Where’s Mom?”

  “Taking a nap upstairs.�
�

  “I was supposed to come home this evening from Jacksonville, but I have to postpone. Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Alan said he’d write a note; he was leaving in another hour for a weekend of sailing at Captiva. I called Royal, Kelly and spoke to Ruby, who recited a list of death threats from my partners.

  “I didn’t hear any of that,” I said.

  That night Kenny Buckram had a date with his short rich widow in St. Augustine. “I probably won’t be back here until morning,” he said. “So you are the lord of the manor. You have plans?”

  “A late date. Four A.M.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’re you going to do until then?”

  “Hang out. Listen to some music. Get drunk, smoke some dope. Is that okay, Dad?”

  “Your car or mine?” Muriel asked.

  “Sounds like a proposition from high school days,” I said. At four o’clock in the morning we stood in the cool darkness in front of her house on Washington Street. “I’m driving a rental. Let’s give the wear and tear to Mr. Hertz.”

  Through silent streets we headed out of town on the Fuller Warren Bridge across the St. Johns on I-10. There was no traffic at that hour. Replacing it was a predawn sense of adventure.

  “Twenty miles,” Muriel said, “and then you bear south on 121 to Raiford.”

  “Can we stop for breakfast in Raiford?”

  “It’s a prison, there’s no town. You want to eat, cut off south on 301 to Starke. Often called the Paris of Bradford County.” She was silent a minute, working that over. “Probably because some good ole boys still piss on the sidewalks.”

  We drove through the darkness, past mobile homes and strings of darkened Baptist churches. Moonlight reflected off the mirrored silver skin of RVs and trailers that had come to rest along the road. Scrub palm grew thick in the sand hills, and night air brought the smell of wood smoke. This was not the Florida gold coast, where you tanned and partied, or the Keys, where you fished, or St. Pete with its shuffleboard courts, or Disney World, where you took the family to gawk and frolic. This was the Deep South. Black men, not too many years ago, had dangled from pine trees. People lived in clapboard houses with rusted washing machines and truck parts in the yards. After the sun rose, Florida crackers in faded overalls sprawled on wooden benches in front of general stores, drinking long-neck Buds and home brew.