The Pardon js-1

by James Grippando

  He jumped out of bed and pulled on khaki slacks and loafers. The pounding continued.

  Cindy sat up. “What is it?”

  He slipped on a blue oxford shirt, decided against a tie, and then spoke in a voice that strained to be upbeat. “I think it’s time. . they probably handed down an indictment.” He went to the bureau, checked himself in the mirror, and quickly brushed his hair. He fumbled through his wallet and took out all the pictures and credit cards, leaving only his driver’s license, voter’s registration, and fifty dollars cash. He shoved the wallet into his back pocket, tucked in his shirt, and took a deep breath. In the mirror he saw Cindy looking at him, and he turned to meet her stare.

  “I love you, Jack,” she said quietly.

  He felt a rush of emotion, which he managed to control, then, smiling a sad smile, said, “I love you, too.”

  The knocking continued, louder this time.

  “It won’t be bad,” he assured her. “It’s not like they’re about to lock me up and throw away the key. They’ll book me at the station, and then I’ll go before the judge, who’ll probably release me on bail. I’ll be home this afternoon. No sweat.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  She nodded slowly. A tear rolled down her cheek as she watched him turn and disappear into the hallway. Another loud knock, and it was definitely time to go.

  “Coming,” Jack said as he walked briskly toward the front door. He grabbed the knob, then stopped to collect himself. He was as ready as he’d ever be. Ironically, he’d coolly and calmly counseled scores of clients on how to prepare for arrest, but now he realized that this was one of those events that no amount of preparation could completely smooth over.

  Jack swallowed his apprehension and opened the door.

  “Manny?” he said with surprise.

  “How you doing, Jack?” replied Manuel Cardenal, Florida’s preeminent criminal defense lawyer. Jack knew him from the courthouse. Everyone knew Manuel Cardenal from the courthouse. He’d started his career twenty years ago as a murder-rape-robbery public defender, making his name defending the guilty. He’d spent the last ten years at the helm of his own law firm, making a fortune defending the wealthy.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Jack.

  “I’m your attorney. Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  Manny stepped inside. He wore a blue double-breasted suit, black Italian shoes, and a colorful silk necktie with matching handkerchief showing from the left breast pocket. He stopped to check his reflection in the mirror beside the door and obviously liked what he saw. At forty-three, Manny’s life with women was at its peak; younger women still found him handsome, while older women were drawn to his youthfulness. He had a smile that bespoke confidence and experience, yet his eyes sparkled with the vibrancy of a teenage heartthrob. He wore his jet-black hair straight back, no part, as if he were looking into a windstorm. He turned and faced the man in the eye of a real storm.

  “I didn’t hire you,” said Jack. “Not that I wouldn’t want to. I just can’t afford you.”

  Manny took a seat on the couch. “Sorry for the short notice, but just this morning your father retained me on your behalf.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your father regrets that you have to suffer at his expense.”

  “At his expense?”

  Manny nodded. “You’re going to have one hell of a day, Jack. If you weren’t Harry Swyteck’s son, you wouldn’t be dragged out of your house in cuffs and carted away in a squad car with the lights flashing. You wouldn’t be locked up like a crack dealer pulled off the street and forced to wait in the pen for arraignment. You’d be allowed to surrender yourself and immediately be released on your own recognizance, or at worst for some token signature bond. It’s politics,” Manny explained, “and your father regrets that.”

  “Are you saying that the indictment was politically motivated?”

  “No. But everything after the indictment will be.”

  “Great. . so I’m going to be dragged through the system by my father’s political enemies.”

  “I’m afraid so, Jack. I called the state attorney to see if they’d just let you come in and surrender quietly. No go. They want a spectacle. They want publicity. Your case is already a political football. Your father recognizes that. And he knows that however your case goes, so goes his election.”

  “Is that the reason you’re here, Manny? To save my father’s election?”

  “All I know is what your father told me, Jack.”

  Jack narrowed his eyes and took a good look at Manny, as if he were searching his face for the truth. “I’m not stupid, Manny. And I know my father. At least I know him well enough to know that this can’t be entirely about politics. And I know you, too. I don’t believe a man like you would get involved in this case if my father didn’t genuinely want to help me. So what gives? Why did the two of you have to come up with this little charade to make it look like the governor is doing it not for me, but for his own political gain? Is he too proud or too afraid to tell the truth? Why the hell doesn’t he just be my father and tell me he wants to help?”

  Manny’s warm eyes seemed to convey more than he was saying. “Maybe that is what he’s telling you, Jack.”

  Jack fell silent. Manny’s answer had him thinking.

  A loud knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. “Open up!” came the order.

  Jack and Manny exchanged glances.

  “So, what do you say, Jack? Shall we dance?”

  Jack took a deep breath, and a thin smile crept onto his face. “Just don’t step on my toes, Cardenal.” Then he opened the door.

  “Police,” said Detective Lonzo Stafford, flashing his badge. Stafford wore his usual blue blazer and an unmistakable smirk. Detective Bradley was at his side. “You’re under arrest,” Stafford announced with relish, “for the murder of Eddy Goss.”

  Jack was stiff but composed as he surveyed the situation. Manny appeared to be right about being put through the wringer. It wasn’t the low-profile, cooperative approach he’d hoped for. They’d driven up in a patrol car rather than Stafford’s unmarked vehicle, and they’d left the lights flashing, a blue swirl of authority in his yard.

  A crowd of nosy neighbors and probing reporters gathered at the end of Jack’s driveway, just off his property. Jack could hear their collective “there he is” when he appeared in the doorway, followed by a barrage of clicking cameras with telephoto lenses.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Jack heard Stafford say, but he wasn’t really listening to the Miranda litany until Stafford said to his partner, “Cuff him, Jamahl.”

  “What?” Jack asked in disbelief.

  “Cuff him,” Stafford repeated with pleasure.

  “Look, Detective. I’m willing to cooperate-”

  “Good,” Stafford cut him off. “Then cuff his hands in front, instead of behind his back.”

  Jack knew better than to resist. He obediently stuck his hands out in front of him, and Bradley quickly clamped the steel cuffs around his wrists.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” said Stafford.

  Jack stepped onto the porch and turned to close the door. He reached with his right hand, the left one following as the chain pulled it along. He froze as he saw Cindy standing in his bathrobe at the end of the hallway, staring at him and his handcuffs with shock and utter fear.

  “Stay by the phone,” he cabled to her, no longer so sure that he’d be coming home that afternoon. She nodded quickly, and he closed the door.

  Stafford took Jack’s left arm and Bradley took his right as they led him down the winding wood-chip path to the squad car. Jack said nothing and looked straight ahead. He tried not to look worried or ashamed or, worst of all, guilty. He knew his neighbors were watching and the reporters had their video cameras running. He hoped to God that Cindy wasn’t looking out the window.

  Manny joined Jack in the backseat and the detectives sat in front. As Detec
tive Bradley steered slowly onto the street, faces and cameras pressed against the car windows, all eager for a peek at the lawyer who’d allegedly killed his client, as if Jack were in the midst of those famous fifteen minutes Andy Warhol had talked about.

  Jack was whisked downtown in a matter of minutes, and the crowds came into view a block from the station. Mobs of reporters filled all three tiers of granite steps in front of the Metro-Justice Building, like so many expectant fans in the grandstands.

  Jack’s gut wrenched. He looked at the crowds, then down at his cuffed hands. “Can’t we lose these?” he asked, holding up the cuffs. “This really is not necessary.”

  “Sorry, counselor,” Stafford said smugly. “No professional courtesy between defense lawyers and cops.”

  Jack tried to show no reaction, since he knew it would only please Stafford to elicit one. But he was angry and more than a little scared.

  “As soon as we’re at the curb,” said Stafford, “we’re outta here. We won’t run, but it won’t be a stroll either. Just stay close behind us. Got that, Swyteck?”

  Jack remained silent.

  “Just shut up and drive,” Manny responded.

  Bradley punched the accelerator, and in a moment they could see the station with its flock of reporters, photographers, and the just plain curious. The car squealed around the final corner, and Bradley slammed on the brakes. “Here we go!” he shouted.

  The detectives popped open the front doors and jumped out of the car, then they threw open Jack’s door and pulled him out. Reporters were all over them before Jack could get both feet on the sidewalk. Manny and Stafford each grabbed an elbow and pushed him into the crowd, but the mob pushed back, turning Jack into a pigskin in a lopsided rugby match.

  “Outta the way!” Stafford shouted, pushing reporters aside and forging ahead toward the crowded steps, taking the accused killer into custody as the flock assaulted them with flailing hands, wires, and microphones.

  “Mr. Swyteck!” someone yelled, “will you represent yourself?”

  More arms, more wires, more microphones. Keep moving, Jack thought, just keep moving.

  “Mr. Swyteck!” they shouted, their voices indistinguishable.

  Jack had never been so aware of putting one foot in front of the other, but forward progress had never been more important.

  “Will the Freedom Institute defend you, Mr. Swyteck?” The reporters’ questions kept coming, but Jack and his escorts inched steadily up the granite steps, past the video cameras that taped their every movement.

  “Gonna craft another insanity defense, Jack, baby?” a photographer taunted, trying to get Jack to look his way.

  Stafford kept them moving forward through the mass of wires, cameras, and bodies. They finally reached the station’s bottlenecked entrance, pried themselves away from the heaving crowd, and disappeared from view through the revolving door.

  Inside, the steady clatter of a busy station house replaced the mob’s raucous din. The station had a thirty-foot ceiling, like a huge bank lobby, but the glass dividers with venetian blinds that sectioned the space into individual offices were only nine feet high, so if seen from the ceiling, the station would have appeared to be a sprawling rat maze. Men and women in dark blue police uniforms whisked by, glancing at Detective Stafford’s latest and biggest catch.

  Jack and Manny knew the routine. This was where the lawyer left his client behind for fingerprinting and snapshots along the booking assembly line. In the front door as a private citizen, out the back door as an accused criminal. They’d meet again in the courtroom for arraignment, when Jack would enter his plea.

  “See you at the other end of the chute,” Manny told his client.

  “Let’s go,” Detective Stafford grumbled.

  Manny’s look soured. “And Stafford,” he said, catching him just as he started inside. The detective glared back at him.

  “If you think Jack Swyteck ripped into you on the stand,” Manny warned, “just wait ‘til Jack’s lawyer rips into your hide.”

  Stafford was stoic. He turned and hauled Jack away, satisfied that, for now at least, Jack Swyteck was his.

  Chapter 23

  That same morning, Governor Harold Swyteck stood tall on a raised dais in the courtyard outside the old legislative chambers, a gray two-story building with arches, columns, and striped-canvas window canopies that provided a nostalgic backdrop. The courtyard was his favorite place for press conferences because of its size-large enough to hold everyone who cared to attend, yet small enough to create a crowded, newsworthy feeling. Clusters of red, white, and blue helium balloons decorated surrounding trees and fences. Above it all, a slickly painted banner read FOUR MORE YEARS-a more inspiring message than either LAWYER TURNS KILLER, SON OF THE GUV WAS GOSS’S LOVER, or the other recent headlines that threatened to send the governor plunging in public-opinion polls.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Harry Swyteck said after he finished his answer to the final question. Cameras clicked and reporters jostled for position as he stepped away from the lectern, smiling and waving to one side and then the other, flashing his politician’s smile and pretending to know everyone.

  “One more question, Governor?” came a friendly voice from the crowd.

  He returned the smile, expecting a lob at this stage of the game. “All right.”

  “What about mine?” shouted the one reporter no politician could stomach. It was David Malone, a smooth, good-looking, and notoriously unethical tabloid-television reporter who thrived on scandal. He was the kind of sleazy journalist who, on a slow news night, could take a video camera and microphone into a local tavern and make six drunken loudmouths falling off their bar stools look like the raging nucleus of a community-wide riot on anything from race relations to the Eddy Goss trial. Today, however, Malone didn’t have to reach for controversy. All he needed was a few minutes, one-on-one, with Jack Swyteck’s father. “You afraid of my questions, Governor?”

  Harry cringed inside. Malone had been pushing toward the front of the crowd since the beginning of the press conference, and the governor had simply ignored him. But he couldn’t just walk away from someone who had publicly called him chicken. “A quick one,” he acquiesced. “What’s your question, Mr. Malone?”

  Malone’s eyes lit up, eager for the opportunity. “Four years ago,” he read from his tattered spiral notepad, “you campaigned on a ‘two-fisted approach’ to law and order. Specifically, you promised to ensure that the death penalty was carried out ‘with vigor,’ I think were your exact words.”

  “Do you have a question?”

  “My question, sir, is this: Do you intend to keep that promise in the next term?”

  “I’ve kept all my campaign promises. And will continue to honor them after I’m re-elected. Thank you.” As he closed he started to move away from the lectern.

  “More specifically,” Malone pressed, raising his voice. “If the jury convicts Jack Swyteck of murder in the first degree, are you going to sign his death warrant?”

  The governor halted in his tracks. His plastic smile faded, and his eyes flared with anger. But Malone waited for an answer. “The answer,” said the governor, “is definitely no.”

  “Why not?”

  The governor glared at his interrogator. “Because Jack is innocent. And I would never execute an innocent man.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know my son’s not a murderer.”

  “No,” said Malone. “I meant, how do you know that you haven’t already executed an innocent man?”

  The governor glared menacingly at the reporter, but his eye twitched nervously. A sign of weakness, Malone detected.

  “First of all,” said the governor, “most of them admitted they were guilty before-”

  “Not all of them.”

  “No, but-”

  “What about the ones who didn’t confess? What about the ones who went down swinging? What about the guys who swore their innocence to the end?”r />
  “What about Raul Fernandez?” someone shouted from the rear.

  The governor went cold. That was a name he hadn’t heard since his blackmailer had threatened him-since the death of Eddy Goss. He looked out to see who had asked the question, but the faces in the crowd were indistinguishable.

  “What about Fernandez?” Malone picked up the question. Heads bowed, as legions of reporters scribbled down the name.

  The governor shifted nervously. He was clueless as to who had shouted out Fernandez’s name, but he was suspicious of the way Malone’s line of questioning had prompted the outburst. “I’m sorry. I’m not going to get into individual cases today, no more than I’m going to discuss my son’s individual case. It’s just not appropriate. That’s all for today,” he said as he started toward the exit.

  “Governor!” others called out in unison, wishing for a follow-up. But he’d lost his concentration. There would be no more questions. “Thank you,” he said with a wave as he exited the stage through a side door, into a private room.

  The governor’s aide was there to greet him and to close the door on pursuing press. Harry wiped little beads of sweat from his brow, relieved to have the conference behind him.

  “Went well, I thought,” said Campbell as he handed his boss a cold drink. The governor chugged down the Coca-Cola but didn’t respond. “Except for that little exchange about your son,” Campbell added. “I’m telling you, that son of yours is killing you, Governor. We checked the polls again this morning. You’ve lost another point and-”

  Campbell droned on, but Harry had stopped listening. He glanced out the window, strangely amused by the irony. It seemed that Jack was always being accused of killing someone. His father. His client. And a long time ago, on a day Harold Swyteck would never forget-his own mother. It had been nearly a quarter century since Agnes, in a drunken state, had made the accusation, and then added to the boy’s confusion by suggesting that Harry reckoned his son accountable. Harry’s own role in that ugly interchange had been the worst, however, because he had yet to look Jack in the eye and deny it.