by David Ellis
“Did I say anything in there that’s wrong?” Peshke asked me.
Other than the part about giving this case careful consideration?
“No,” I said.
“Great.” The governor looked at each of us. “Then let’s bring them in.”
75
HAVING PREDETERMINED THE OUTCOME OF THE CLEMENCY hearing, we were now going to actually hold that hearing. I watched four people enter the room and immediately felt sorry for them, knowing their pleas would be in vain. Hey, I’m as cynical as the next guy. I know politics are going to dictate a lot of the governor’s decisions. And I know that much of the time when I walk into a courtroom to argue some motion or legal issue, the judge has already made up his or her mind before hearing oral argument.
But this wasn’t some routine, humdrum issue. The governor was deciding whether to spare someone’s life, and other than hearing my thirty-second summary of the petition, the governor was denying this guy’s plea for mercy without knowing anything about it at all.
A lawyer in a decent suit and bad haircut began the presentation. He made the intelligent decision to start by kissing as much ass as he possibly could—his admiration for the governor, his appreciation of the governor’s willingness to keep an open mind and hear this out.
“We recognize we’re asking you to do something that requires political courage,” he said. “Antwain Otis is guilty of the crimes he’s convicted of. He didn’t mean to shoot those people, but he shot them nonetheless, and he’s admitted his guilt. We are not asking you to set him free, Mr. Governor. We aren’t seeking a pardon. But we are asking you to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He’ll never, ever leave prison.”
The lawyer glanced at his notepad, resting on the table. He shouldn’t need his notes this early on. His first minute should be the most powerful, and it should be eye-to-eye with the person he’s trying to convince.
“Prison. For many, it’s the end of the road. It’s the last stop in life. But not for Antwain Otis. For Antwain, it was the beginning. The beginning of a new life. The Lord came to him in prison. He opened up doors beyond the tall cement walls topped with barbed wire. He showed Antwain a life full of love and hope and meaning. You’ve talked, Governor, about your faith many times. I know you know what I mean.”
The governor perked up, nodding eagerly. I had no doubt he went to church every Sunday and waved to the cameras when he did so. But I had plenty of doubts about what it meant to him.
“But my point, Governor, is not that you should spare Antwain’s life because he’s rehabilitated. My point is that he’s rehabilitated so many others. He’s touched many, many people with his ministry. A good eighty percent of offenders become re-offenders. They don’t learn much in prison. If anything, they regress. They become more resentful of a society that has discarded them. They learn few valuable skills. And they leave prison with a major stain on their record, a felony conviction. These people have little chance when they get out, so they ultimately resort to their old ways. They re-offend and go back inside. It’s a revolving door of crime, prison, release; crime, prison, release.”
The lawyer paused and glanced at his notes again. I wished he wouldn’t do that. He should have been better prepared. You look at your notes and you lose some of the zing, some of the heartfelt sincerity, the connection to your audience.
“So what do we do? We build more prisons. We pass tougher laws. But do we rehabilitate? Well, maybe we try. We think we do, at least. We give money to the Department of Corrections for inmate programs. But we all know the kind of budget problems we have right now. What gets cut first? That’s not hard to figure. And that, Governor, is why someone like Antwain Otis is so important.
“Antwain is rehabilitating people. He’s offering inmates another path. Some of those inmates won’t ever leave the system, that’s true. They’re on death row or serving life sentences. Does that mean they don’t matter? Obviously not. We’re not that kind of society. But Governor, even more importantly, a lot of the people Antwain has reached will get another shot at integration into society. And this time, they’ll be prepared. We have affidavits from a number of former inmates who haven’t re-offended. They may not be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies but they’re working hard to make a life, and they’re making a life with Jesus Christ as their savior. They’re good, honest people. Let Antwain help more people, Governor. He’ll serve his life in prison for the crime he committed. But he’ll change the lives of so many more people if you let him live.”
I thought maybe all four of the people were going to speak, but apparently there was only one other, an African American dressed in black with a cleric’s collar. He was elderly and appeared frail as he stood up, but his voice was surprisingly commanding.
“Mr. Governor, I’ve spent my life counseling people and preaching the gospel. I’ve been involved in the correctional system for over thirty years. And I’ve made a difference, I hope. I hope I have. I hope so.” He opened his hands. “These young men who I see every day are haunted. They’re haunted by what they’ve done and by what’s been done to them. And what they see in me is someone who hasn’t walked in their shoes. What they see in Antwain? They see themselves. Yes, sir, they see themselves. What Antwain says to them is, ‘I’ve been there. Just like you. I’ve made the same mistakes. Maybe worse ones. And look how I’ve changed my life.’ Governor, there’s nothing more powerful to a young black man than to see someone else just like himself, with as little as he has, who has made something out of it. Something positive. Now, I’m not gonna talk to you about the Bible. I could. I could tell you that the death penalty is immoral, that it isn’t fair, that it’s against God’s will. I could cite twenty verses from the good book about helping those in prison. But I’ll just tell you one thing I always tell these inmates. I always say to them, ‘Don’t look backward. Look forward. You can’t change yesterday, but you can make today and tomorrow better.’ And that’s what I’m asking you to do, Governor. Look forward. I know Antwain—”
He paused, momentarily choked with emotion. The room was utterly silent. The tick of the clock on the wall was like a chime.
The man raised his snow-colored head upward. “Governor, I know this young man. I love him and I respect him as much as anyone I’ve ever met. And killing this young man? Killing him would just be another . . . another crime.”
Nobody spoke for a good minute. The lawyer put his hand on the cleric’s shoulder and whispered to him. Then he thanked us for our time. The governor rose and shook their hands again, as he had when they entered. “I have some hard thinking to do,” he told them.
I shook hands, too, but didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure what would come out if I did.
“I thought that was pretty good,” Governor Snow said to Peshke, once the door had closed behind the people. “Hey.” He turned to me. “What did the lawyer mean when he said he didn’t mean to shoot those people?”
I explained to him the wife and child caught in the cross fire between Otis and the pawnshop owner, and how the law conclusively presumes intent to kill anyone hit by an intentionally fired weapon.
“Oh, okay. These guys are talking and I’m sitting here thinking, ‘If the gun just accidentally went off or something, why would they give him the death penalty?’ Okay.” The governor pointed at Peshke. “I think what you have written is fine. What’s next?”
“Fundraiser up in Highland Woods,” said Peshke. “Jed Barker?”
“Right, right.” He clapped his hands together. “Hey, Jason, come by tonight, when we’re winding down.”
He didn’t wait for my answer. He was out the door, on to his fundraiser, not two minutes after the clemency hearing had ended.
76
AFTER THE CLEMENCY MEETING, I WENT BACK TO Suite 410. I was pretty stirred up about what had just happened, but it was the furthest thing from the minds of Lee Tucker and Christopher Moody. They wanted to know about my meeting with Judge George Ippolit
o. As eager as Tucker was to hear the news when I walked in, he made himself wait until he could locate Moody by phone. He spoke softly into the receiver and I got the hint: I wasn’t supposed to know where Moody was. When Tucker got him on the phone, he hit the speakerphone button so we could all talk together.
“Ippolito didn’t come out and say it,” I told them. “But he might as well have. We didn’t discuss a single substantive thing. We killed about ten minutes, and then Ippolito asked if he could see my written recommendation for him once it was finished. I mean, he clearly knows it’s a fix for him. But there wasn’t a direct admission.”
Lee Tucker worked the plug of tobacco in his cheek and played the whole thing over in his mind. He was booting up the conversation from FeeBee on his computer.
“Pretty obvious, you think, in context?” Chris Moody asked me over the speakerphone.
“It was clearly a sham interview. I mean, he didn’t even try to hide it.”
“And you’re back with them tonight?”
“Right. I’m meeting someone for dinner and then I’ll hook up with them.”
“And you’ll talk about Ippolito?”
“I’ll try.”
“Try to talk about the other stuff, too. Cimino’s stuff and the pro-choice groups paying up.”
“I never would have thought of that, Chris. Your direction has been invaluable.”
On one of the walls, Tucker had taped up makeshift diagrams of the various scandals and the players involved. One sheet of paper was entitled UNION JOBS, meaning our efforts to evade veterans’ preference laws to get that union guy’s cronies on the state payroll in exchange for one union’s endorsement. Madison Koehler and Brady MacAleer were listed. Rick Harmoning, the head of SLEU, was listed with a question mark next to him. Presumably, they didn’t have him on tape yet agreeing to the illegal deal. SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENT was another sheet of paper, involving Madison and Mac as well, with union boss Gary Gardner and Judge George Ippolito as question marks. HOUSE BILL I00 concerned the abortion bill and the governor’s mention of payout money from the pro-choice groups in exchange for a veto. It was the one place where the name Governor Carlton Snow appeared. It was the only thing they had directly on Snow, and nothing had even happened yet.
I could almost smell the palpable hunger in Christopher Moody’s gut. He wanted the governor. But he didn’t have him. Not yet.
But I could sense what was happening now. They wouldn’t tell me, but I had no doubt that the moment Christopher Moody heard that tape of the governor suggesting a shakedown of the pro-choice groups, he was drafting affidavits and preparing applications for Title III intercepts all over the place. It’s not easy to place a bug in someone’s office, or to tap their phones—to eavesdrop without anyone’s knowledge. If one party consents—like me wearing FeeBee—it can be done quickly. But any time the overhear is done without anyone’s knowledge, the process is rigorous. Chris Moody could very well be in Washington, D.C., right now, making his case at the various levels of the Department of Justice to allow him to tap the phones of the governor, Madison Koehler, Brady Mac, and others, and to bug the campaign headquarters and even their homes. Presumably, one day soon the U.S. attorney general himself—ironically, Carlton Snow’s predecessor, former governor Lang Trotter—would be listening to the tape that I procured of the governor.
Things were moving fast. Probably they wanted to make arrests before George Ippolito could be seated on the supreme court. Possibly, out of some sense of conscience that I might attribute to people over Moody’s head—but not to Moody himself—they wanted Governor Snow exposed before the primary, before the voters bestowed on him the nomination heading into the general election. Regardless, soon enough, they would have a lot more than me as weapons in their search. They would be listening in on all sorts of conversations to which I wasn’t privy.
The question was whether “soon” was soon enough. If they had the primary election and the Ippolito appointment as deadlines, they were pushing it. I didn’t know exactly how long this process took to secure the Title III warrants—through the various levels of the Justice Department and then to the chief federal district judge in our city. Five days? Twenty? They might not have enough time. I might be their only source of information.
“I’ll do my best to raise the topics,” I said. “Obviously I can’t force it.”
“I notice you’re steering your former client, Senator Almundo, away from those topics,” Moody said to me, static from the speakerphone punctuating his words.
Right. I knew that conversation wouldn’t be lost on Moody, when Hector asked what I’d been up to and I stiff-armed him.
“Emphasis on ‘former’ client,” he continued. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“It’s not just me,” I noted. “No one seems to talk to Hector about this stuff. Besides, Chris, if you reindicted Hector, you’d look spiteful.”
“Is that your problem or mine?”
“Hector’s a hanger-on. The governor likes having him around but he’s not the brains of the outfit. Hell, he wasn’t even the brains of his own office, back when he was senator. Your good friend Joey Espinoza was the one who really called the shots in the senator’s office. Remember?”
Lee Tucker made a face and slashed a finger across his throat. Abort. Bad idea.
He was probably right. And we were done, anyway. I didn’t need Chris Moody to tell me that I should try to get incriminating statements on tape.
“Good luck,” Tucker said to me, tossing me another F-Bird.
I tossed it back. “I have dinner first,” I reminded him. “You don’t get to listen to that.”
That really made Lee’s night. It meant he had to wait around for me until after dinner to hand off FeeBee.
I took the short elevator ride down, thinking about the dwindling number of days I had to solve three murders. I’d never considered failure an option. I always figured I would sit tight and strike when the moment came. Now I was beginning to wonder if time would run out.
I also realized I was looking forward to seeing Essie Ramirez for dinner tonight.
And then the elevator door opened, and who was exiting another elevator but one Shauna Tasker. She was doubly surprised, first because we hadn’t seen much of each other lately, and second because she obviously had come from our office, and I hadn’t. She first raised her eyebrows in mock surprise and then wrinkled her brow in confusion.
“Hey,” I said. Then, “Met with a new client.”
“Oh? Who?”
It then occurred to me that I’d have to name someone in this building—not necessarily on the fourth floor, from where I’d come, but somewhere. And I had almost no idea who else was in this building. I can bob and weave with the best of them, but I didn’t want to do it with Shauna.
I paused, made a face and waved off the question for a stall, hoping that she’d let it go. She can read me pretty well, but she blew it off. “We saw you on TV the other night,” she said. “Governor Snow was speaking at some rally?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Getting into politics now?” she asked.
“Oh, not really. Just thought it would be fun to see it. What are you up to tonight?”
Then I thought of what I was doing tonight, dinner with Essie Ramirez, and for some reason I didn’t want to share that with her.
“Having dinner with Roger,” she said. “Want to come?”
“I’ll pass. But I need to meet him soon.”
She seemed to find that statement odd, probably the lack of a sarcastic jab. We were becoming more formal, and it felt weird.
“Nice coat,” I said. She was wearing a white winter coat that I hadn’t seen before. I was losing track of this lady.
“Roger,” she said.
“Ah, okay,” I said, teasing. “And was there an occasion for such an extravagant gesture?”
“Oh. . . .” She seemed reluctant to answer. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me they’d gotten e
ngaged or something. And then it hit me.
“Oh, shit,” I said, smacking my palm against my head. “Oh, Shauna—”
“No worries.”
Her birthday. Two days ago. I’d forgotten Shauna’s birthday. Now I felt like a complete putz.
“You’ve been busy,” she said. “And gone. We had to sweep your office for cobwebs.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Jesus, Shauna, am I an asshole.” “I won’t argue. But I forgive you.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’ll make sure of that.” She winked at me and we walked through the doors, into the cool evening air. She stopped and appraised me. “You okay in there?” she asked.
“Just grand.”
She still had those probing eyes that could see through whatever roadblocks I threw up. But she wasn’t going to challenge me. She kissed my cheek and was off.
I suddenly felt hollow. I felt alone. I’d more or less completely lost touch with Shauna. It was excusable. Hell, it was necessary, I thought. I needed to keep her as far away from what I was doing as possible. And it was reparable, at least in theory—I’d make it up to her when this undercover gig was over. Problem was, this guy Roger was filling the void in the interim.
The other problem was, Shauna didn’t appear to be as bothered about it as I was. She seemed to be moving on, with Roger’s hand in hers.
ESSIE RAMIREZ WAS WAITING for me at the bar, nursing a glass of wine and studying the yuppie dinner crowd. I watched her for a moment before I made my approach. She looked the part of a young professional in the city—hair pulled back, blue suit, simple jewelry—but it occurred to me that Essie was out of her element. She’d been raising two kids and hadn’t worked outside of the home for probably a decade. This could have been intimidating for her, but I got the sense that it was more exciting than anything.
She told me about her new job as a paralegal at my old firm, Paul Riley’s shop. She told me about her kids. I thought she was rebounding, now with a reliable paycheck and some time passed since Ernesto’s death. Then again, we were keeping it on fairly safe topics. She didn’t talk about how much she missed her husband. I didn’t talk about what I’d been up to.