Guilt by Association

by Kelvin L. Reed

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Well, it’s about time,” the pot-bellied Morgan snorted as he stepped into Jayson’s office. The blond young man followed him and stood on his right side. He wore a pair of new blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the words “Church of the True Savior” printed on it. The dark-haired young man, dressed similarly except his T-shirt was blue, entered the room last and stood to Morgan’s left. Morgan pointed at his watch. “We were waiting out there for a half-hour. Is that how you treat all your clients?”

  Jayson checked the clock on his desk, which indicated that the time was five forty-five. “You waited for twenty-four minutes, to be exact—and you’re a former client,” he retorted with an edge to his voice. “Like I said, you didn’t have an appointment, but what can I do for you, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” Morgan asked.

  Jayson gestured toward the chair on the other side of his desk. “If you insist.”

  “Hey, watch your mouth,” the blond man snarled.

  “Yeah, we ain’t taking no smart talk from the likes of you,” the dark-haired man added.

  Jayson tilted his head to the side and bounced his attention off each of the young men as he spoke. “First of all, jackasses, the name’s Cook, Mr. Cook. Second, you three are in my office and will remain for as long I say it’s okay, and if you don’t like my hospitality—or lack thereof, you’re free to leave. ” He turned to the older man. “I’m not going to ask you again, Morgan. What do you want?”

  Morgan grinned like a used car salesman. He pulled up the chair Jayson had reluctantly offered and sat. His men stationed themselves at the opposite sides of Jayson’s door. “Like I said, I just want to have a little talk about a mutual acquaintance of ours.” He extended his index finger. “But first, I want you to know again how impressed I was with how you handled my case back when no one else would stand up for my rights.” His voice betrayed a slight southern twang.

  “Um-hmm,” Jayson said. “I didn’t do it for you or your church. I did it for Professor Greenberg.” He glanced at the two men standing in front of his door. Their presence made him nervous, but he tried to appear calm. He looked down at the bottom desk drawer near his right foot. The drawer contained a strong box he had unlocked before summoning his uninvited guest.

  “Hey, the man’s talking to you,” the blond man said.

  “He trying to be nice to you,” the other young man chimed in. “Why, I don’t know.”

  Jayson gestured in the direction of the two men by the door but spoke to the older one sitting in front of him. “Morgan, is this the best you can do at that church of yours? A couple of dumb goons like these? Even Brian Stone has more on the ball than these two put together.”

  The blond man took a step forward. “Why you uppity—”

  “Shut up!” Morgan snapped. He twisted around and pointed at the door. “Stay at your post.” He turned back to Jayson and smiled. “You may have a point. They don’t do all that reading like Brian, but they’re good boys.”

  “It’d be a miracle if they could do any reading,” Jayson said.

  Morgan ignored the taunt. “And that’s what I come here to talk to you about—Brian Stone, your client. The man you’ve sworn to defend to the best of your ability.”

  Jayson sighed. Morgan knew his weakness: He would do whatever was necessary within the limits of the law to aid his client, and putting up with Morgan definitely fell under necessary within the limits of the law. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”

  “Well…” Morgan crowed, grinning again, obviously enjoying his upper hand. “I want to make sure you understand neither I nor anybody at the Church of the True Savior knew about or had anything to do with the bombing of that church that killed that kid.” He shook his finger. “We told the police that, over and over again.”

  Jayson shrugged. “Yeah, well Brian was coming from a meeting at your…” He paused and winced. “…church when he was stopped by the police, and he was a regular attendee. With the views you espouse—”

  “Protected views, thanks to you,” Morgan interjected.

  “Don’t remind me,” Jayson said. “Views protected by the Constitution. Surely you can understand the police’s interest in whether there was some kind of conspiracy. I mean, a little girl was killed.”

  Morgan dropped his smile. “And I condemned such violence myself in the strongest terms.” He leaned forward. “I’ve got four kids myself. We don’t believe in violence. We just want to make sure there’s no race mixing going on and that the white man’s rights don’t get trampled on by—”

  “Save that crap for your meetings,” Jayson barked. “I know what you stand for and I couldn’t care less.” He slowly reached for the bottom desk drawer while keeping an eye on Morgan’s men. They scowled but didn’t move. He sat up straight again. “Tell me about Brian Stone.”

  Morgan opened his hands. “That’s the whole point. My church has been unfairly castigated for nothing. Nobody really liked Brian. He wasn’t well liked around the church; just tolerated.”

  Jayson reached for a legal pad and started taking notes. “Oh? And why wasn’t he well liked?”

  Morgan frowned. “He was an odd bird. Kinda socially inept. A weird kid with a weird sense of humor. Kept to himself, which is hard to do at a small church like ours. And when he did speak he was always questioning the Word of the Lord.” He lifted his voice and hands as he spoke the last four words.

  Jayson rolled his eyes. “You mean the word of Gregory Morgan.”

  Morgan chuckled. “Call it what you want, but in a movement like ours, a movement to take back this great country of ours from the Communists and the Jews, we can’t afford to have a Doubting Thomas—or a Doubting Brian—around.”

  “Um-hmm,” Jayson grunted. “Did Brian know how you felt?”

  “Yes and no,” Morgan replied and clasped his hands together. “I treated that little lamb like a son and tried to be patient with him; tried to get him to act like a man.” He sighed. “Hard to believe that boy’s from the South, like me.”

  “Yeah, hard to believe,” Jayson muttered. “What happened at your church before the bombing?”

  “What happened?”

  Jayson sighed. “People don’t just wake up one morning and decide to blow up a church. What happened at your church shortly before the bomb at Mount Calvary?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jayson sighed even longer. “Morgan, unless you level with me, in a few months there’s going to be a trial. A big one. The prosecution’s going to say ‘Church of the True Savior’ and ‘bomb’ and ‘Brian Stone’ in the same sentence over and over again.” He pointed at himself. “Me, I’m going to say ‘Church of the True Savior’ and ‘bomb’ and ‘undiscovered conspirators’ over and over again. You get the picture?”

  Morgan frowned. “But we had nothing to do with any of it.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Jayson insisted, raising his voice a bit. “Now what happened at your church before the bomb?”

  “Um, well,” Morgan mumbled, “I may have said something to the boy, like he might not be welcomed at the church anymore.” He peeked over his shoulder. “Um, nothing we say goes out of this room, will it?”

  “No,” Jayson replied. He paused for a few seconds, then ripped out the top sheet in his legal pad. He swung his chair around, fed the paper into a small shredder behind him and faced Morgan again. “A written witness statement can be subpoenaed if it exists. Go ahead.”

  “Um, well…” Morgan looked around. “You got anything cold to drink?”

  Jayson pointed at a miniature refrigerator sitting on a small table in the corner of his office. “I’ve got some soft drinks in there.”

  Morgan pointed at the refrigerator and snapped his fingers. The blond man raced to the corner, opened the refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of iced tea, which he presented to Morgan. The church leader squinted and pointed. The young man apologized. He twisted the cap off and tossed it onto Jayso
n’s desk. Jayson offered Morgan a paper cup but he declined. The young man joined the other one by the door. Morgan took a couple of deep gulps and nodded, clearly relieved. “That’s better,” he said. “Now where was I?”

  “You were about to tell Brian to take a hike,” Jayson reminded him.

  “Oh yeah,” Morgan said. “Well, we couldn’t have doubters and questioners and weak-willies around because our movement is so important.”

  “So you told Brian he’d have to leave the only place where he had planted himself.”

  “I just hinted it might happen to scare the boy,” Morgan said. He raised his arms. “What could I do? The boy just didn’t fit in.”

  “And?”

  “Then that bomb went off and the police came down on us like fire and brimstone from heaven,” Morgan replied.

  “You telling me!” The blond man blurted out.

  Morgan turned and gave the man an angry look, then resumed his conversation with Jayson. “We closed ranks and stuck together, so we put up with Brian for a little longer.”

  Jayson shook his head. Even among misfits, Stone was a misfit, he thought. “Was there anyone at your church who Brian got even a little close to—maybe a woman?” he asked. “He did seem to act differently around my female paralegal.”

  The blond man cackled. “Ha! That sissy? Everyone thought he was a fag.”

  “Yeah,” the other man joined in. “He wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she got naked and jumped in his lap.” The two men shook as they laughed.

  Jayson watched Morgan smirk while the two men laughed. He didn’t care much for Stone, but he liked the three men in his office even less. However, he knew he had to tolerate them in order to help his client. “None of this was in your interview with the police.”

  “They didn’t ask me,” Morgan said, “but I said it to that Arab camel jock princess when she talked to me a couple of days ago.” He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “What was her name? Ramona? Ramani? Something like that.”

  Jayson raised his eyebrows. “Look Morgan, I need your cooperation to help my client, but I’ve had enough of your racist crap here in my office. Now one more word of that nonsense and out you and your hyenas go. Do I make myself clear?”

  Morgan held up his hands. “Alright, alright. Take it easy.”

  So Rahmani was up to her old tricks, Jayson thought. Double back to an important witness after sending the discovery materials. She wasn’t called the Iranian wolf for nothing. He knew how she operated. She’d subpoena Morgan at the last minute, then put him on the witness stand to provide a crucial element previously missing in her whole case: a motive for the bombing. She’d argue Stone was about to be kicked out of the only place he had called home, so he blew up the Mount Calvary Baptist Church to prove his loyalty to the racist ideals espoused by Morgan and his clan—or Klan. Jayson pointed at Morgan. “But you never instructed anyone to commit an act of violence. Is that right?”

  Morgan shook his head sharply. “Absolutely not. We have the Lord’s truth on our side. We don’t believe in violence. We just believe God didn’t intend for people to go…” He wiggled his fingers. “…mixing all up.” He shook his finger at Jayson. “And look at all the trouble that boy has caused us. The police have been spying on us and following us even more than usual.”

  Jayson was puzzled by what he had just heard. He furled his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about, more than usual?”

  Morgan took another swig from his bottle and paused, apparently savoring the taste of the beverage—and the fact he knew something Jayson didn’t. “My, my. Didn’t Brian tell you? I guess he’s not so smart after all.”

  “I don’t have time for games,” Jayson said. “Didn’t Brian tell me what?”

  “That the police were always on our tails. Spying on us. Following us around.” Morgan paused and chortled. “You don’t think they just happened to stop Brian, do you? It just made sense they’d pick on the weakest of the flock.”

  “You mean he was being followed?”

  The blond man giggled. “I thought you said he was a smart one?” He pointed at Jayson. “This is what happens when they let you people into law school with affirmative action.”

  Jayson pointed back. “And you’re what happens when a brother screws his sister and gets her pregnant, limp dick.”

  The man’s smile disappeared. He stepped slowly toward Jayson while reaching into his back pocket. “I ain’t gonna let no nigger talk to me that way. I’ll—”

  Jayson reached into his bottom desk drawer, whipped out a large revolver and pointed it at the man, stopping his forward progress. “You’ll what, asshole?” He waved the gun. “Get your hands where I can see them!”

  Morgan slowly stood and backed up past the blond man, who had raised his hands. “N–now there’s no need to get excited, Jayson.”

  Jayson raised his right eyebrow and kept the gun trained on the blond man. “Who’s excited?” In spite of his bravado, he could feel drops of sweat roll down from his armpits.

  The dark-haired man held up his hands. “We–we didn’t mean nothing, honest, Cook, I mean, Mr. Cook. We was just foolin’ around.”

  The blond man blinked his eyes a few times. “He’s bluffin, ya’ll.” He took a step back, just the same.

  Morgan smiled, apparently attempting to regain control. “Yeah, if he shoots you he goes to jail.” He pointed at the dark-haired man behind him and at himself. “We’d testify against him in court.”

  Jayson tilted his head again. “Unless all three of you were lying on the floor dead when the police got here.” He needed to maintain a cool façade but worried Morgan and his goons would notice his upper body shaking with each fierce heartbeat.

  The dark-haired man whimpered. “N–now waitaminute, Mister,” he pleaded, pressing his back against the door. “I–I just come here because Mr. Morgan told me to. I ain’t got nothing against nobody.”

  Jayson blinked. “Well in that case you’d better leave.”

  Morgan nodded. “Yeah, um, I said all I came to say anyway.” He pulled the blond man toward him by the T-shirt and slapped him in the face. “You damn fool! Didn’t I tell you to keep your mouth shut?” He motioned for the other man to open the door. He did and all three slinked past the waiting area and disappeared into the hallway.

  Jayson, still standing behind his desk, listened for the sound of the elevator bell. When he finally heard it, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He waited a few seconds for his heart to stop pounding, then, still holding the gun, walked to the front door and locked it. He returned to his office and gently placed the gun on top of his desk. Would he have shot the man, he asked himself? Yes. Would he have turned the gun on anyone else afterwards? No.

  Jayson walked to the refrigerator, opened the door and grabbed a can of orange juice. He sat at his desk, drank the juice straight from the can and stared at the revolver. It was after six. He secured the weapon, then handwrote a long memo to Connie detailing everything that had just occurred, including the gun incident. An office memo would be considered a work product and couldn’t be subpoenaed.

  An hour later Jayson shredded his handwritten memo and reviewed the typed version he had printed. Feeling a sudden surge of energy, he bounded out of his chair and raced into his conference room clutching the document. “I helped you, Morgan, you bastard,” he declared as he took a seat and quickly flipped through a thick law book. “But now we’re even.” Morgan had provided potentially very valuable information, especially one piece of it in particular. If he had spoken the truth, and if Jayson could prove it—no small feat—he might just be able to get every charge against Stone dismissed.

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