Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 24

"You got it."

Waiting for Elroy the following afternoon in the jabbering chaos of Miami International Airport, I sweated. At ten minutes to four I began to pace. The son of a b.i.t.c.h might stay at the track for just one more race. I walked a few steps, put on my gla.s.ses, and checked the departure board again. Another flight left for Jacksonville at 6:00 P.M., another at eight-thirty-if Elroy showed up at all. I cursed and scowled. A woman standing nearby looked at me and took a step backward toward the protection of her husband.

At three minutes past four I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned, Elroy stood there in his baggy trousers and white golf s.h.i.+rt and Florida seagull cap. He was still grinning.

"Worried, huh?"

"Who, me?"

"Next race, I had this twelve-to-one shot I knew was gonna be in the money. No f.u.c.king way that horse can go off at twelve to one. You probably don't give a s.h.i.+t, but you want to know how I know? ... Hey, what's the matter?"

Behind Elroy, from the revolving door, emerged the gray-haired cop who had been sitting near us at Lacy's for dinner the night before. Or at least someone who resembled him. This one wore a brown cardigan and carried a small airline bag.

"Don't turn around," I said.

He merged into a group that included a Latin-looking team of laughing athletes wearing purple striped shorts, a pair of pale young priests, and a woman with two crying children. The gray-haired man vanished.

"So what is it?" Elroy asked.

"I thought I saw one of your shadows."

"No way." Elroy searched for a while, then shook his head emphatically. "One of those deputies followed me from the track, he ain't gonna stand around and jack off while we jump on board no airplane. He's gonna come right up to my face and go, 'What you up to, amigo?' "

"I'm not so sure."

"Believe it, they don't know d.i.c.k what happened. I'm at the five- dollar betting window, see? I don't even bet. I just walk back to where the cop is waiting. I go, 'Oh, s.h.i.+t, I forgot to tell you, man, I got a tip from a trainer. Twelve to one, number six horse.' The cop can't resist-he runs up to put his five bucks down. And I'm gone, man! Faster than a speeding bullet. How about that?"

"Let's go through security," I said, still sweating.

The plane was full. I walked twice through the aisle to the toilet aft to see if anyone looked at all familiar. Elroy was drinking his second double Dewar's on the rocks when we began the descent into Jacksonville International.

"Where we staying, Counselor? Ponte Vedra? Plantation Club? Nice suite for us at the Omni?"

I had planned to make those arrangements the evening before from the Man O' War Motel, then catch a Sunday morning flight, spend part of the day prepping my witness and the rest of it arranging the papers for the hearing and going over my summation. But the need to spirit Elroy out of Miami had changed all that.

From the Avis counter I called the Omni downtown. With its upper-middle-cla.s.s solidity, it seemed safer than the Marina or a suburban motel.

In the rental car, Elroy cleared his throat. "We were talking about what you might call a rebate? That thousand? You got it handy?"

"Not tonight."

"How about a down payment? I wish I'd been born rich instead of so good-looking, but that ain't the case. I'm down to my last chip."

"I can give you a hundred. What do you need it for?"

"Hey, I told you the doggies race in June. I ast if you need me at night. You said no. Right?"

"You want to go out to the Kennel Club tonight?"

"Man wins the jackpot. He figured it out."

"Elroy, you were just at the horses this afternoon. The same night, you want to go to another track to see the greyhounds?"

"That's a kick, man!" he exclaimed hotly. "Can't do that unless you go straight from Hialeah, fly Miami-Jax, get your a.s.s out to the Kennel Club by eight o'clock. So here's this golden opportunity! Something I can tell my grandchildren, I ever have any."

"Let's get up to the hotel room," I said, "and then we'll see." That's what I would have said to Alan and Cathy years ago. Dad was back again.

Elroy sulked. I took two rooms, hoping that he would settle down on his bed in front of his own TV. I called room service for a club sandwich and coffee. But it was useless. Within a minute, Elroy knocked on my door. "Counselor! You comfortable? Everything cool? I been thinking ... just give me whatever cash you got, keep a few bucks for yourself. You do your thing, I'll do mine. That okay?"

"Stay here," I said, hoping to sound sage. "It's safer."

"I told you, if that guy at the airport was a cop, we wouldn't be here now."

I thumbed through my wallet. I had two hundred fifty in cash.

"The last race is over by eleven. Few beers, I'll be back by midnight."

He could go anywhere. I'd have to wait up for him, biting my nails. This one night could be longer than a wet week. We wouldn't finish the hearing tomorrow, which meant I could work on the summation tomorrow evening.

"I'll go with you," I said.

"You really want to do that?"

"No, but I'm doing it anyway. And when the last race is over, we're coming back here. Want to eat first?"

"Get a hot dog out there," Elroy said. "Come on, let's move. We already missed the first race."

I had been to the dog track once, with my parents and sister when I was a boy. But on the drive out, I let Elroy explain everything. I let him pay the fifty cents admission for both of us and lead me to the seats in the gla.s.sed-in, air-conditioned mezzanine. I let him buy a tip sheet, choose the dogs to bet on, and place the bets.

"You got something on your mind, Counselor?"

"The hearing tomorrow."

"Yeah, but it's not a trial, is it? Nothing serious like that."

"It's serious, all right. That's why you're going to tell your story under oath. We're trying to save Darryl Morgan's life."

"Three minutes to post time ..."

Held by the track handlers, the dogs in their blankets paraded around the track in front of us. The palm trees swayed in the night breeze. There were twenty minutes between races. Elroy kept checking the odds as they changed on the monitor. His pale eyes were never still. Finally he jumped up from his seat.

"I'm putting twenty bucks across the board on the number two dog. This fleabag is always in the money. How much you in for, Counselor?"

I handed him a five-dollar bill and he marched off buoyantly toward the betting desk. A few minutes later the lights dimmed and the mechanical rabbit was released. The dogs flew wildly around the oval.

I stood to stretch and glimpsed through a gap in the crowd the hard, attentive face of a gray-haired, crew-cut man in a brown cardigan. He was twenty feet away and watching me. He was the man who had been in the restaurant the previous night, matching us bite for bite with the meat loaf, and at Miami Airport earlier that evening, crowded in among the soccer players.

He wasn't a cop, I realized.

But he had been following Elroy. Following from the motel to the track and from the track to the airport. Missing USAir 133 out of prudence or because he needed backup. Probably catching the next flight at six o'clock. Checking the rental car companies at Jacksonville International: "I believe my business a.s.sociates came through here?" As a matter of fact, sir, one of the gentlemen used our telephone ... I heard him mention the Omni, sir... .

Easy enough to wait outside the Omni, or in the parking garage where the car was.

But why is he watching me, not Elroy?

Because, a quiet voice whispered, someone else is with Elroy now.

I stood unmoving except for my heart jackhammering against my ribs. The gray-haired man blocked the aisle I would normally take to get to where Elroy had gone.

Other aisles also led to the betting desk and the payoff windows. I moved toward one of them. I felt as if I were underwater, breast- stroking against a stiff current.

By the time I reached the betting desk a crowd had gathered, and the police were already linking arms and holding people at bay. Jerry Lee Elroy sat upright on the carpet against one of the cas.h.i.+ers' cages. His eyes were sightless. Blood leaked from his side, staining his white golf s.h.i.+rt. A thin blade had been slid between the ribs and into the left ventricle of his heart. A thick black object choked his mouth. It took me a minute or two to figure out what it was. Someone wearing gloves had taken the time to reach around Elroy's dead body, wrench open his jaws, and thrust a sea urchin into his mouth, so that its spines bit deep into the offending tongue.

Talking about how to leave Miami un.o.bserved, Elroy had said to me, You don't want to be involved in this operation. And I had replied, I am involved. Involved but not committed. You have ham and eggs for breakfast, the chicken that supplies the eggs is involved; the pig that supplies the ham is committed. In this trip to Jacksonville, Elroy had been the pig.

Sirens screamed in the night. I had been careless, and Elroy had lost his life. And I had lost the witness who might save Darryl Morgan.

One of the JSO officers was staring at me.

"I'm that man's lawyer," I said quietly.

The cop shrugged. "Bad luck. What do you want to do?"

Make a miracle. Wake up and find out I'm dreaming.

I followed the patrol cars downtown to the Police Memorial Building, which housed the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Once I'd admitted my relations.h.i.+p with the deceased, the Homicide cops had no intention of letting me go. Most of the murders they dealt with were barroom shootings and Sat.u.r.day night mom-and-pop stabbings. The slaying of Jerry Lee Elroy-"a f.u.c.king sea urchin in the guy's mouth!"-was stimulating. You could see that they liked it.

One of the detectives put in a call to Robert Diaz's office in Miami. Then he turned back to me. "You said you took the deceased out of Miami with you?"

"We left together, yes."

"You encouraged him, Mr. Jaffe-is that what you're saying?"

"You're putting words into my mouth. I have to be in court at nine A.M. on a murder hearing. Can I go?"

They wanted me to stop first at the morgue and make a positive ID of my client's body.

Elroy lay on a metal gurney. The sea urchin had been removed from his jaws. His eyes were closed and he looked at peace. Well, why not? When you went that quickly you were literally gone before you knew it.

In the corridor leading from the courtroom to his chambers, Judge Fleming swayed a few feet to his left in order to write some notes, resting his paper on the surface of a file cabinet. The gang of lawyers, the court clerk, and the court reporter s.h.i.+fted with him, like tick parasites following a water buffalo. A few feet away, Darryl Morgan's bulk took up most of the s.p.a.ce on a heavy wooden bench; and he was manacled to the armrest. Superman might have picked up the bench and made his escape, but if Darryl had such visions, two gray- uniformed deputy sheriffs with holstered .45s sat on metal folding chairs by the water cooler at the end of the corridor. Outside the court's holding cell stood three other defense attorneys, all jostling for position to talk through the bars to their clients, who were awaiting the eventual attention of the judge.

Judge Fleming surveyed this scene. "Dance floor's getting crowded," he said to me and the representatives of the state. "Care to join me in chambers?"

Once in there, I slumped in a chair. I had managed about two hours of restless sleep.

The clock on the wall in chambers said 9:20. The other lawyers found chairs, and the young a.s.sistant attorney general from Tallaha.s.see hoisted himself up on one of the file cabinets. The slender, bespectacled a.s.sistant state attorney from Beldon's staff was named John Whatley, and next to him sat Muriel Suarez.

She smiled cordially at me. I went straight over to her and asked what she was doing there.

Whatley had just come out of FSU law school, she explained, so she was there to make sure he didn't make any mistakes.

"But you and I have discussed this case," I said. "I can't remember offhand what I've told you, but whatever it was, it was in confidence."

"Beldon seems to think that's irrelevant."

"He a.s.signed you?"

"What do you think, I volunteered?"

I understood. t.i.t for tat. I had been privy to the state's thinking twelve years ago. Muriel Suarez had been privy to my thinking just days ago. How could I complain? Beldon, you sly dog.

Judge Fleming unknotted his tie, turned to me, and said, "I think we can save a bunch of time by discussing this informally right here in chambers. Mr. Elroy, your witness, former cellmate of the condemned, is not present in this court. From what I gather, he doesn't have the pulse of a pitchfork. He's a lightning bug in the lemonade bowl. That's what you were trying to tell me outside?"

"Yes, he's shaken hands with eternity," I said. I heard my voice as from a distance, enunciating carefully.

"When exactly did this happen?" the judge asked.

"Last night, at about ten o'clock. Stabbed to death at the Jacksonville Kennel Club."

"As ye sow." The judge turned to Whatley and Muriel Suarez. "What sayeth the State of Florida besides 'amen'?"

Whatley said, "Your Honor, the entire thrust of the pet.i.tioner's position is the proposed testimony of Mr. Elroy as to alleged perjury concerning Mr. Morgan's confession in Duval County Jail in 1979. Nothing else in the appellant's pet.i.tion is new: this court and other courts have heard all the other arguments before. Much as the state regrets Mr. Elroy's pa.s.sing, our contention is that the deceased witness's affidavit is not sufficient to establish perjury. The state has no way of cross-examining an affidavit in order to test veracity and credibility."

"I understood him," Judge Fleming said, looking at me. "How about you?"

"There are precedents for accepting the sworn affidavit of a dead man," I said. "Considering when this thing happened, I haven't got case law ready yet. But if you give me time, Your Honor, I'll produce it."

That was pure bluff. I had no idea if any existed, although it seemed likely.

"There is far more precedent for rejecting an affidavit without a live and responsive body attached to it," Whatley said.

Judge Fleming nodded. "You're right, Mr. a.s.sistant State Attorney. And you're right too, Mr. Defense Counsel. But you"-he pointed a gnarled and trembling finger at Whatley-"are righter than you are, sir." And he pointed the same frail digit at me.

"Your Honor-" I began.

"No, no, no," the judge said. "I don't want to hear argument. I know the issues. There's a man on death row. Man wants to live, state wants to kill him. Man's lawyer wants to string things out just as long as he can and keep his client sucking air. Judge wants to get on with the business of his court. Can't make everybody happy. You got any other live witnesses, Mr. Jaffe?"

"Not today, Judge. But I hope to find some."

"You pulling my leg?"

"No, sir."

The judge thought for a while.

"I'm going to allow this affidavit, but I'm going to find that this recantation would not have affected the outcome of the trial. What I'm saying is, Mr. Jaffe, you lose. I'm going to deny your pet.i.tion for relief. I'm not going to hear argument over a witness who can't do more than pa.s.s gas and talk to us from the great beyond. Bad luck is what it is. But that's what a lot of things are."

"Judge-"