The Taqueria was on the edge of the barrio but it was a notch or two above the dives that functioned as restaurants within the barrio itself. There was a dining room and a separate barroom for the “just drinkers.” The decor was haphazard, overdone, and decidedly un-Mexican: A stuffed gator hung from the ceiling, and Florida, Florida State and Miami pennants adorned the walls nestled between deer heads, stuffed jackrabbits and other assorted paraphernalia—including a rectangular sign that read, “Tips up, Aspen, Colorado.” A large poster of El Cordobes, the famous matador, hung on one wall but he was of course Spanish, not Mexican.
Jack and Pat found a place in the corner to the left of El Cordobes and seated themselves. Pat kept looking around, fascinated by the décor.
“I think I finally found the Redneck Riviera,” she said with a chuckle. They were both freshly showered and dressed in jeans and tee shirts.
Jack laughed. “Wait until you taste the food.”
“Is it that bad?”
“No, I’m just kidding. It’s really good.”
When the waiter came they both ordered chicken burritos and bottles of Dos Equis beer. The beer came right away and Pat took a healthy sip.
“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to run three miles and then start drinking beer, huh?” she said, smacking her lips.
“Sure it does,” he said, clinking her bottle. “The beer makes you feel good, the running makes you look good—and you look good.”
She raised her eyebrows and then smiled. “Why, thank you, Jack. And you look pretty good yourself, especially in that Speedo.” She was referring to the very skimpy bathing suit he’d worn to swim his laps in the pool at his house. “It doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”
Jack’s face reddened. Suddenly he was seeing his old pal Pat.
“I didn’t know you noticed.”
“Well, I did.” She looked directly into his baby blue eyes.
Jack returned her gaze, and the new Pat came to the fore again. “Me too,” he said.
The mood was momentarily interrupted by the waiter who brought the burritos.
They ate in silence, each contemplating what had just happened. Pat certainly hadn’t planned to make a remark loaded with sexual connotation. She hadn’t ever thought that way about Jack—at least, not until she’d opened her mouth. I just told him he looked good, she reassured herself. You can’t read too much into that. Jack was telling himself the same thing. Pat decided to change the subject.
“How are you adjusting to this new life? I mean, this is a far cry from Miami and the big firm.”
“Actually it hasn’t been an adjustment at all. I’ve spent my weekends here for years. The adjustment was always going back to Miami. The big firm was never me. I was successful but I was miserable. When I left it was like walking out of a role I’d been playing for twenty years. This is the real me. I guess I’m really a Florida redneck.”
“‘Cracker’ is the appropriate term,” Pat replied. “I’ve been reading up on old Florida. This is cracker country. But you’re not a cracker either, Jack. You’re just a kid from the neighborhood who made it big and you’ve never felt comfortable in that role.”
“You’re right. I’ve certainly wasted a lot of time.”
“Well, you’ve got the rest of your life to make up for it. Do you think your professional life had something to do with your marriages failing?” It was a question she hadn’t thought about asking. Once again, she heard the words as they left her mouth as if she was a bystander to her own thoughts.
“I’m sure that was part of it. I’ve thought about that a lot. The world of status has its own pressures. But I just don’t think I was husband material anyway. All my wives told me the same thing: ‘You’re not here for me. It’s like you’re always somewhere else. You don’t talk to me.’ All three of them said the same thing at one time or another. I never knew what they were talking about. I thought I was a good husband, a good provider. I talked. We talked every night. I guess I never talked about my feelings but that’s just not the way I am. I don’t like to argue. If I’m mad at you I’ll process it myself. I don’t need to tell you I’m mad at you and what you did wrong and how you hurt my feelings and blah, blah, blah. I don’t need to process the shit that happens at work. I’ll be over it tomorrow.
“I was accused of being insensitive, distant, sweeping things under the rug—you name it. I thought I was being an adult, getting on with life. But eventually, I decided I just wasn’t husband material.”
Pat nodded knowingly and smiled. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my girlfriends say the same things about their husbands and my guy friends say the same things about their wives. You’re not any different, Jack. This problem has existed since time began. Women want to talk about their feelings, men don’t. Women feel closer when they’re sharing emotions. I’m not sure exactly what men feel but they don’t like to do it. Men are more action-oriented. They assume their wives love them because of their actions, not their words, while their wives are simply waiting for them to say ‘I love you.’ I guess we want strong men who are sensitive, too, but if they’re too sensitive, we think they’re wimps. It certainly can get complicated.”
“Yeah, well my job was complicated enough. I needed simplicity at home. But I’ll say this—and I’m sure you’ve heard this before—none of them had a problem spending the fruits of my labor.”
“Sounds like you still have some issues there.”
“Probably so. That’s why I’m alone. What about you? What’s your story?”
“There is none, really. I had a few long-term relationships but they kind of just fizzled out. I don’t know why for sure. I think maybe I was a little too strong and independent for the men I was with. I made more money than they did too, which may have been a factor.”
Jack was watching her intently as she spoke. He noticed how smooth and soft her skin was. She had few wrinkles and almost none around those large green eyes—beautiful green eyes, he thought. “Well, it’s their loss,” he heard himself saying, feeling the necessity to take a swig of beer right after the words left his mouth.
“Why, thank you again, Jack. Two compliments in one night—my my,” she said, fanning herself with her hand.
“It’s true,” he mumbled, feeling as awkward as a teenager on his first date. What the hell is going on here? he wondered.
Pat just smiled. She knew what was going on. A small fire had been lit—unexpectedly. But this was a fire that needed to burn slowly, if at all. After all, there was a friendship at stake.
Twenty–six
It took another two days and nights but Jack finally got through almost every file. There were a few very thin ones in the last box that he didn’t get to but he was sure he had read all the important stuff. And on their evening runs he took Pat through what he had learned that day. It was good for both of them: Pat was learning about the case in depth, knowledge that she shared with Nancy the next morning at work; and Jack was organizing and summarizing his thoughts as he spoke.
“You were right that Rudy’s private attorney was a woman. Her name was Tracey James, apparently a real hotshot, based in Vero Beach.” They were on the stretch by the river. There were no boats around, just two pelicans swimming along together. A third dive-bombed into the water not far from them, scooped up a fish and flew away, ignored by the two swimmers. They must have already eaten, Jack thought, knowing how pelicans would fight over the tiniest of morsels. Or maybe they’re in love. . . .
Pat interrupted his daydream. “And she really did quit because they weren’t paying her enough?”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? This Tracey James woman you just told me about.”
“Oh yeah. I don’t know exactly. The files only say she dropped off the case before it went to trial, but if Mike told you that, I’d believe it. It’s not like I never heard of a lawyer only being in it for the money. Anyway, that’s how Rudy got stuck with the public defender. Sh
e did a good job, though, before she withdrew from the case. She took the investigating officer apart on the stand at a preliminary hearing. If that had happened at trial, I suspect Rudy would be walking the streets today.”
“Why didn’t it happen at trial?”
“Because the public defender was either a drunk or an idiot.”
“Isn’t that a basis for an appeal?”
“Yeah, but they already tried it and got nowhere. Anyway, at the preliminary hearing Ms. James raised a very interesting issue—whether Rudy, because of his intelligence deficit and his personality, could actually refuse to talk to the police. She also raised the issue of whether the police should have stopped interrogating him when his mother arrived at the police station.”
“I guess the judge didn’t buy it, huh?” It was getting a little deep and Pat was struggling to follow. Luckily, they were running five miles that night.
“Actually, he did. He didn’t grant the Motion to Suppress the evidence but he allowed them to bring up all the circumstances of the confession—how they kept Elena in the other room, how they had video and audio equipment available and never used it. And the confession itself wasn’t really a confession. This detective simply got Rudy to admit that if he was mad enough, he could kill somebody.”
“And you’re saying the public defender didn’t use any of that evidence?”
“None.”
The next night they did a seven-miler. Jack explained to her how the legal advocacy group handled the appeals. The first appeal was based on the denial of the Motion to Suppress. The Supreme Court of Florida denied that appeal, finding that Judge Wentwell’s solution—to allow the circumstances of the interrogation to be presented to the jury—was a proper legal ruling. The second appeal was based on the ineffectiveness of counsel, the public defender, who failed to put into evidence the circumstances of the interrogation.
“I think it was a pretty good appellate strategy,” Jack continued. “Let the court rule that the evidence could have and should have been presented, then follow it with a second appeal based on the fact that the public defender failed to present this crucial exculpatory evidence.”
“Well, how the hell did they lose the second appeal then?” The more she understood the details, the more outraged Pat became.
“You have to understand something: There’s more at stake here than meets the eye. First, appellate courts are reluctant to overturn trial courts—only about fifteen percent of cases are overturned on appeal. Second, the public defender is the trial lawyer in this case. He is a state employee just like the prosecutor. The court is going to be very reluctant to find the public defender ineffective in the performance of his duties. And third, the public likes the death penalty—they don’t like activist judges who interfere with a jury’s decision. The court is not immune to public opinion.”
Pat was livid at what Jack was telling her. They were running through the woods now in a totally secluded area. She started screaming. “This is about somebody’s life! Who cares about public opinion or politics or public defenders or any of that shit? This is about somebody’s life!”
The more excited Pat became, the calmer Jack got. “Do you remember that old psychology question? ‘If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around, does it make a sound?’”
Pat had no idea where he was going. She was emotional and upset and Jack was going off on some stupid tangent. “Yeah. So what?” she replied tersely.
“Well, in this context the answer to that question is no. We know that murder trials, especially those based on circumstantial evidence—eyewitness accounts with no physical evidence, or some physical evidence but little else, as in this case—are fundamentally flawed. As high as thirty or forty percent of the defendants are innocent. Yet people are still being sentenced to death because nobody is listening. Nobody cares. Don’t take this personally, Pat, but you didn’t care until it was Rudy. Neither did I. Nobody cares. They’re putting children to death, retarded people. The state of Texas has executed one hundred and forty people in the last eight years—and they don’t even have a public defender system, which means people are being represented by court-appointed lawyers, some of whom are drunk or sleeping during trial, or whatever. You’re seeing firsthand how a case can get fucked up, but it happens every day in courtrooms all over this country. And it will continue to happen until people start listening and hearing.”
When their run was over, Pat went straight to her room. The thought of eating after that conversation made her want to puke.
Twenty–seven
Jack tried several times to get Tracey James’s number from information so he could call her office and make an appointment to see her. Strangely, she was not listed.
Why would a lawyer not be listed in the phone book? It just didn’t make sense. Maybe she’d relocated. Vero Beach was just an hour’s drive east, so early on Monday morning he decided to drive over and make some inquiries. She can’t hide from me, he thought, half joking. And why would she?
His questions were answered soon after he arrived in town. Jack’s professional investigative procedure was to stop at every law office he saw and ask where Tracey James’s offices were located. The receptionists in the first three places had never heard of her, making him begin to wonder if she even existed. He hit pay dirt, however, on the fourth stop. Perseverance pays off, he told himself. He’d been at it for about half an hour.
“I think someone here used to work for her,” the receptionist at Blaine & Dewey told him. She gave him a look before she went to find her co-worker—a look that said there was something she knew and he didn’t but should have.
Maybe I’m reading too much into people’s expressions, he thought, forgetting that this was the first meaningful expression he’d seen that morning.
Five minutes later, a short, overweight woman who appeared to be in her mid-fifties stepped into the waiting room with a grim expression on her face.
“Are you the person who asked about Tracey James?”
“Yes. I understand you worked for her?”
“Right up to the end,” the woman replied, her head downcast. “She was a good boss. Paid well.” Everybody who pays well is a good boss, Jack thought.
“Right up to the end—what do you mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?” He hated the twenty questions game.
“Ms. James was killed in a traffic accident a year ago.”
Jack felt compelled to express some sympathy although he didn’t know Tracey James. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. The woman appeared ready to burst into tears at any moment.
Maybe Tracey James really was a good boss, Jack thought. “Do you know who has access to or custody of her files? I’m looking for a particular file on a case she worked on ten years ago—Rudy Kelly?”
The woman just shrugged. “It was probably destroyed. We destroyed all the old files after three years. When she died all her cases were assigned out. I remember that case, but I’m not sure why I remember it. I wasn’t with Ms. James ten years ago. You may want to check with her chief investigator, Dick Radek.”
“Do you know where I can locate him?”
“No, I’m sorry. Wait, I think he mentioned once that he lived in Stuart—by the water. Yeah, he was saying how he got in just before the property values went skyrocketing.”
It wasn’t much but it was a start. Jack thanked the woman and started to leave when he remembered something else—private investigators were usually ex-cops.
“Do you know if Mr. Radek was an ex-cop?”
“Yeah, I think he was,” she replied. “He mentioned one time he was retired from the Miami police department.”
Bingo, Jack said to himself. “Thank you very much,” he said as he headed out the door.
Dick Radek lived in a typical middle-class three-bedroom, two-bath, ranch-type house in Stuart. His just happened to be on the Intercoastal Waterway, where it stuck out like a sore thumb. His neighbor
s’ homes were all mansions, each one with its own yacht in the backyard.
“I bought at a good time,” Dick told Jack when he saw him noticing the contrast. “They’ve been trying to get me out of here for years. They buy these places and come in and knock down the old homes. I can’t tell you what I’ve been offered for this house.”
They were sitting on old green deck chairs on the screened-in back porch looking out on the water. Dick couldn’t have been more hospitable when Jack knocked on his door a half hour before, ushering him into the house and right through to the porch before the introductions were completed. As soon as Jack was comfortably seated, Dick handed him a beer without asking. He had opened one for himself as well. He’d been fully retired for a year, and although his large frame was still muscular and powerful, it was quite apparent he’d spent a lot of his spare time out here doing just this. His gut told that story.
“Why don’t you sell?” Jack asked.
“I like it here. Besides, I know it pisses all of them off that I’m still around. You know, the white trash in the neighborhood. I kinda like that too. So what can I do for you?”
“I’m representing Rudy Kelly.” Jack just threw the words out there and waited for a response. Dick didn’t say anything.
“Do you remember the case?” he asked after a couple of seconds.
“Sure do.” A draft of cold air had entered the room. The friendly guy who had invited him into his house was starting to clam up. Jack knew instinctively there was something Dick Radek did not want to talk about.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about it?”
“Depends on what you ask.”
“Look, it seems like I’ve hit a nerve here for some reason. I’m trying to save a young man’s life and I’m running out of time. I’m just doing an investigation, trying to find information that might help my client, nothing more. There’s no agenda here, okay?”
The Mayor of Lexington Avenue Page 20