Part 2 (2/2)
Nickerson said angrily, ”You and your dead pal been out to the beach tonight, right? Looking to score a few TV sets, or maybe better. Got caught in the act and lost your cool, and you shot a man. Big fella, don't pop my cork by telling me it ain't so! Let's just hear about it. And then I'll tell you how you got the right to remain silent, and all that other s.h.i.+t.”
Chapter 3.
TEN DAYS AFTER the murder of Solly Zide I accepted the job with the Sarasota law firm. Then it was called Royal, Kelly, Green & Wellmet-Green was the one leaving, and Jaffe was about to insinuate himself into the letterhead. I gave three months notice to the state attorney's office in Jacksonville and celebrated by buying a case of chateau-bottled Bordeaux.
But I was basically a sober fellow and still had work to do. One of the places to do it was the Lawyers Lounge on the fourth floor of the Duval County Courthouse. The voices drifting through its smoky blue air might have been those of men and women chattering in a singles bar, except that the subject was time served, deals offered, the hairpin curves of criminal law.
One morning I sat on the sofa there with a young a.s.sistant public defender, plea-bargaining a drug case. She said gravely, ”Mr. Jaffe, the last offer you made was a straight eighteen. Would you consider coming down to maybe twelve years, with a substantial fine?”
I swallowed more coffee; I knew this was going to be a long day. ”Eighteen is bottom line,” I said, ”and if your client had the brains of a p.i.s.sant, she'd take it. Better yet, she'd hightail it back to Colombia.”
”But I can't tell her to do that, can I?”
That was true. That would break the canons of ethics. But it would certainly simplify matters. Sometimes I wished that lawyers could do what any other practical person would do-like, in this case, tell the client to jump on the next plane and go home.
”Yes,” I said, ”she's got to be smart enough to figure that out for herself. What's her bond?”
”Fifteen thousand dollars.”
”She's a mother, right? She's got two children down there in Medellin?”
”You're telling me . ..”
”I wouldn't think of such a thing. You do whatever melts your b.u.t.ter. Just remember how poor the State of Florida is, and that we could use the bail money.”
Most prosecutors, if they hadn't chosen the law, might have opted for law enforcement or the church. I wasn't one of that majority.
The telephone by the coffee urn rang, and one of the hovering defense attorneys s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. ”Your lord and master,” he said, waving the receiver in my direction.
A moment later the gruff voice of Beldon Ruth said in my ear, ”Get your a.s.s upstairs, Ted, if you're not too busy and you're still working for me.”
I took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor and soon sat squeezed between two potted purple azaleas on the window ledge of the state attorney's office, the only s.p.a.ce available for any visitor to sit down. Beldon's legal files for current cases were spread on the floor in semicircles in front of his desk. They were also piled on the sofa and on three chairs.
”What a f.u.c.king mess,” I said. ”How are you going to survive when I'm gone?”
”I'll do just fine. It's you I'm worried about.” Beldon rocked back and forth in his creaky swivel chair. ”I know Sarasota-I took a vacation there once with Laurette. Lost my watch in the sand and didn't give a rat's a.s.s. Screwed a lot, drank a lot of Tennessee sour mash, walked into a lot of art galleries, watched a buncha beautiful sunsets. I was sure glad to get home and go to work again. But come to think of it, I guess that was the good life.”
”I'm betting that it still is,” I explained.
Beldon laughed, the deep rumble of a man twice his size.
”What's Toba going to do while you pace the wall-to-wall carpet of your office, wondering whether to trade your Honda for a Porsche or a Mercedes?”
How well he had come to know me. I wondered if he liked what he now saw.
”Real estate. She may be the one winds up driving the Porsche. You going to hang out here for the rest of your life, Beldon?”
He sighed theatrically. ”Bare work and poor pay sort of suits me.”
”I won't be doing just civil law,” I said, feeling a little defensive. ”There'll be criminal cases.”
”h.e.l.l, yes! You're gonna argue for leniency when rich folks' kids get drunk at the wheel or buy dope from a lady cop. You're gonna rack up thousands of hours of community-service sentences. But meanwhile you still work for the State of Florida. So listen up for a bit.”
He picked up the bulkiest of the brown accordion folders piled on his desk.
”The Zide case,” he said.
I had a.s.signed it to Dale Settels, an eager young prosecutor who had moved last year from Boston to Jacksonville.
”A slam-dunk for the state,” I told Beldon.
”It's for sure a slam-dunk for the newspapers and the TV,” he grumbled. ”Could go national, and sure as h.e.l.l it'll go southern. Two black perps, and one gets shot by a trigger-happy JSO Homicide a.s.shole while the kid's trying to escape.”
”Or so the a.s.shole says,” I pointed out.
”Got the ACLU poking their nose into that, and more power to 'em. So we're left with one live black defendant in a big murder trial, and wouldn't you know it, he's come up with a black lawyer.”
I hadn't heard about that. ”Who is it?”
”Guy named Gary Oliver.”
”I don't know him.”
”But you see where I'm heading? Constance Zide knows you, likes you, seems to trust you, and she's asked me if you'll prosecute.”
I made no comment. This was quicksand.
”An old dog for a hard road,” Beldon said. ”You're not old, and you're on your way out the door to greener pastures. But you're the man for the job. Will you do it, Ted?”
My affair with Connie Zide was defunct-Beldon didn't know about it; no one did-but it was still something for me to consider. Beyond that, however, was an even more worrisome factor. Seven years earlier, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court had declared the death penalty unconst.i.tutional. Florida's state legislature in Tallaha.s.see was the first to fas.h.i.+on new law to get around that edict. Now in 1979, first-degree murder carried with it the possibility of electrocution, a spectacle that seemed to grip Floridians almost as much as that of a man jerking at the end of the hangman's noose had once excited the English. Schoolchildren in our state built model electric chairs. The governor had already earned the nickname ”Barbecue Bob.”
This case, for many reasons, was not for me.
”Tell me about Gary Oliver,” I said.
”Used to be a good private investigator. Then he got uppity and went to law school, like some other d.i.c.kheads we know. But he's got a problem the others don't have. Down in St. Augustine last winter he was so s.h.i.+tfaced he was pulled over for drunk driving, and he hands the cop his fis.h.i.+ng license. Guy's favorite drink is the next one.”
”Why didn't Darryl Morgan go to the public defender?”
”He did, and Kenny a.s.signed a white woman lawyer. Morgan didn't trust her-he fired her. She didn't protest too much: I heard she didn't like him or the case. So his mother managed to come up with whatever it took to hire Gary Oliver. Actually, I heard that Oliver's doing it for just his expenses.”
Not that it mattered, Beldon explained. Forty-eight hours after his Miranda rights had been read to him, Darryl Morgan confessed the murder to Sergeant Floyd Nickerson of Homicide. A few nights later he repeated the confession in front of his cellmate at the Duval County Jail. And Connie Zide identified him positively as the man who had shot her husband during the attempted burglary. Neil Zide confirmed the ID at a police lineup.
”This Morgan kid's six foot six,” Beldon said. ”A f.u.c.king giant. Hard to mistake him for anyone else.”
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