Part 1 (2/2)

He didn't think so.

”Did they ask your permission to search?”

h.e.l.l, no.

”How much cocaine?”

”A paper bag, with twenty-eight little plastic Baggies inside it. Each Baggie's got a gram, so that's twenty-eight grams.”

”You're lucky. One more gram and it would've been trafficking, and that's a first-degree felony. The bond would have been fifty thousand dollars, and they could have added up your priors and given you a habitual-offender cla.s.sification. The deep weeds, Elroy. As it is, it's still possession with intent to deliver.”

From my client's studied silence at the receipt of this information, I deduced that he was a veteran and knew all that I'd told him and plenty more. You couldn't call it luck that he was carrying one gram less than was required to merit the graver accusation of trafficking.

I was already regretting having taken the call. This was the kind of man I used to prosecute with some degree of pleasure.

”Elroy, I'll want to know where that car's been for the last seventy-two hours and exactly when it's been out of your sight and control. And I'll need to know if any reliable witnesses can confirm what you tell me. Reliable, like church deacons and schoolteachers. My fee is seven thousand five hundred dollars, and my firm's policy on collection is simple. You pay it in full up front. Then neither of us has to worry about it later.”

He looked unhappy. ”Mr. Jaffe, I haven't got that kind of money.”

I could smell his sweat and the sweat of a hundred other men who had sat in his chair. Elroy dug an asthma inhaler from the pocket of his jailhouse khakis and puffed on it twice. I was meant to feel sympathy, I realized. Criminals just never could figure out why lawyers didn't trust them.

Elroy's pale eyes narrowed. ”I can't do any more time. I told you, I got a pulse bladder. It's like a cyst, but it's choking the artery to my b.a.l.l.s, and it hurts most all the time. That's from getting kicked by cops, catching the clap and herpes and s.h.i.+t like that.”

I may have edged my body slightly away from him.

”You think a pulse bladder is infectious, Counselor? You think if I breathe on you, maybe you'll get herpes?”

”I can think of better ways of catching it than getting breathed on by you,” I admitted. And I kept my distance. You never knew what horrible discovery you were going to read about next week in the medical section of Time or Newsweek.

”So what about it, Mr. Jaffe? Am I gonna do time?”

Did he think I was Nostradamus? The system had so many holes that anyone could slip through it. A good lawyer made a major difference, and in a simple criminal case I received what was known as a ”former prosecutor discount” when it came to the sometimes tasteless sequence of plea bargaining with the state attorney's office.

”You might do a nickel,” I said. ”The way they're jammed up at the state prison you'll be back on the street in ten or twelve months. That's a bargain, my friend, for twenty-eight grams of white lady.”

”What if I take my best shot at digging up the fee and it don't work out?”

”Back to the yellow pages, Elroy.”

I stood and walked across the room to the barred window. No law or canon required that a lawyer like his clients; my obligation was to tell them the truth and do the best I could to minimize their exposure to legal grief.

From behind my back, Elroy asked slyly, ”Can't we work something out like before?”

I turned to him; now it was my turn to frown. Before what?

”Like up in Jacksonville,” he said.

I could see the b.u.t.ter on my lobster congealing and growing cold. ”I don't follow you.”

”I told you I had a couple of priors-three or four, come to think about it. Couple's under my real name, which happens to be Jerry Lee Elroy, not Elroy Lee. You know me now?”

”No, I don't.” But I was already uneasy. I did know him. I just couldn't place him in the proper context.

”Jacksonville.”

”All right,” I conceded, ”the name's familiar. Refresh my memory.”

”Ten years ago, in Duval County. You were on the other side of the law then, Counselor.”

”Not quite,” I said. I had been chief a.s.sistant state attorney in Jacksonville and Duval County, but a lawyer, no matter what side he was on, was always an officer of the court, bound by the canons of ethics and his conscience, such as they were. Mine had always been pretty well anch.o.r.ed in place. I'd never done anything I was ashamed of. As a lawyer anyway.

Then it struck me; I remembered the cute gap between Elroy's teeth. It was twelve years ago, not ten.

”The Morgan trial?”

”Right!” He looked immensely pleased.

”You were a witness, is that it?”

”For the state. For you. I snitched on this guy, Morgan.” He gave a shy, toothy smile. ”You got it now? You remember the deal? Okay?”

I still hadn't the slightest idea what he was getting at. ”Okay what}”

”Work something out like we did before.”

”Listen carefully,” I said. ”I don't read minds. What did we do before?”

Elroy sighed and rolled his ditch-water-green eyes in their sockets as if he were dealing with a backward child. ”I was just thinking ... I help out this here sheriff the same way I helped you out back then, and then these guys could drop the charges on the cocaine. Then my case don't take up so much of your time, and maybe you'll see your way clear to less cash.”

I walked back across the stuffy little room and sat down once more at the table. I tapped with my pen on my yellow legal pad.

”What the h.e.l.l are you talking about, Elroy? What did you do in Jacksonville back in 1979 that I'm supposed to remember? Run it by me nice and slow.”

Elroy concentrated for a minute. ”n.i.g.g.e.r killed a rich Jew, you remember that?”

Now I had other reasons for wis.h.i.+ng I were with my wife and my promised lobster. Under the table, where he couldn't see, I balled my fists. ”I remember very well,” I said coldly. ”A black man named Darryl Morgan shot a white man named Solomon Zide.”

”Out at the beach, right?”

”Yes,” I said, ”at the Zide estate. After a big party.”

”That's it. It just so happens I was in the same cell with the n.i.g.g.e.r that did it. Big n.i.g.g.e.r, too dumb to pour p.i.s.s out of a boot before he put it on. Cop took me up on the roof of the Duval County Jail. He asks if this n.i.g.g.e.r talks to me, and I say, 'That's not likely.' Cop wants to know, 'How about on the telephone? You ever hear him say, ”Yeah, I did it”?' I go, 'He could have.' 'Well, he did do it,' the cop says, ' 'cause he told me he did it, so he might just as well have told someone else, like on the telephone here in jail, right?' And I say, 'What's in it for me?' Cop tells me he can cut a deal for me on my case, get me time served and probation. h.e.l.l, if the n.i.g.g.e.r told the cop he did it, he's a dead n.i.g.g.e.r already, right? So I go, 'Okay, now I recollect on it, I heard him say he done it.' ”

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