Part 4 (1/2)
There was no way out of it; that was my job. And it was a way to get where I had to go.
”Tell me everything that happened.”
He had run a stoplight, he said, at Route 41 and Beach Avenue. He had an outstanding warrant for failure to pay traffic tickets, and when the traffic cops flashed him over he'd cut through a bank parking lot and tried to lose them on the back roads before you get to the interstate. But then he took the wrong turn down a dirt road and came up against a chain-link fence at the end of a cul-de-sac. They nailed him.
In the back seat of the car they spotted a triple-beam balance scale. Probable cause. They held him by the side of the road and radioed in for a drug dog. A c.o.c.ker spaniel jumped straight to the trunk of the Cutla.s.s and went nuts.
”They're going to want to know who you got the cocaine from,” I said. ”If you decide to be a stand-up guy and keep your mouth shut, you can forget about the five years I was talking about yesterday. You're looking at ten to fifteen.”
”You mean if I get convicted.”
”Pay attention, Elroy. If you go to trial and get convicted, the judge will cla.s.sify you as a habitual offender, stick it to you on three separate counts, and run the sentences back-to-back. That could add up to half your life. I'm talking about getting it down to ten to fifteen if you make a deal.”
”That's what you call a deal? Where are we, Red China?”
”It's the best you can get unless you snitch.”
Elroy wasn't the kind of man who had to think that over for more than a few seconds. ”What do I get if I snitch?”
”Five years, maybe. You might even walk away if you convince them your cooperation is sincere.”
”I can be plenty sincere. But I have to tell you, Counselor, these other people they might want to know about, these are heavyweight dudes. These people are from Miami. You snitch on these people, they inch you. You know what that is?”
”Yes.”
Elroy glanced around at my plush office, with its rows of cla.s.sical CDs and bound National Geographies. ”You sure you know what that is?”
I leaned back in the jade-green leather chair and said calmly, ”They cut off your fingers. And then your hands, and then your feet. And then your c.o.c.k. Inch by inch. With a machete. Right?”
Elroy nodded solemnly. ”It ain't just a bedtime story, amigo.”
”You ever hear of the witness protection program?”
”I saw a movie about it on TV. This guy's ex-wife's boyfriend snitched and got into it, so she and him took the guy's kids to another state. Got a new name. Poor guy didn't see his kids for years, and he hadn't done nothing at all.”
”Well, Elroy, you haven't got kids and an ex-wife, have you?”
He laughed bitterly. ”I do, but I don't know where the f.u.c.k they are.”
”Then think about it. I'll talk to whoever's handling this in the state attorney's office. I'll see what they've got on you that you haven't told me about. Meanwhile, don't leave town.”
Ruby was printing out the day's letters on the LaserJet, stacking the revisions of legal briefs and collating whatever parts of the copies the big Xerox hadn't collated: getting ready to hit the singles bars on the Quay. I came out of my office at ten past five.
”Just a few things, Ruby, if you don't mind. And if you haven't got a hot date ...”
Ruby was a divorced woman in her late thirties who answered ads placed in the local magazines. But she still blushed.
”What is it, Ted?”
”Book me on a late-afternoon flight to Jacksonville the day after tomorrow. Then get in touch with the sheriff's office up there. See if there's a Homicide detective named Floyd Nickerson still on the roster. Find out his s.h.i.+ft and his days off. If they give you a hard time, call Kenny Buckram at the PD's office-he'll help. Then call the state attorney's office, Fourth District. There was an aggravated battery case nolle-prossed back in '79. The accused was our client, Jerry Lee Elroy. I need to know the woman ASA who prosecuted and dropped the case. See if she's still around.”
Ruby looked up from her shorthand pad. ”Will you need a hotel room?”
”Yes, in town, not the beach. And I'm not finished. Call FSP in Raiford. There was a man named Darryl Morgan committed to death row in April 1979.” I took a deep breath. ”I need to know what happened to him.”
”What do you mean?” Ruby asked.
”Was he executed or not. And who handled his appeals.” Even if Morgan was dead, I was obligated to set the record straight.
”Did you say '79 or '89?”
”Seventy-nine, Ruby.”
”That's twelve years ago. Why wouldn't they have executed him?”
”Just find out,” I said, and turned away.
At six o'clock I was still reviewing the file when Ruby bounced in, clutching her steno pad and a sheet of yellow legal paper.
”I booked you on two flights on Wednesday-USAir 456 at three forty-five and Delta 1088 at five. Confirm with your credit card number two hours ahead of time. You do that, you can just show up and run on board. You're in the Marina Hotel, eighty-nine dollars with a king-size bed. That's a corporate rate. Did you want a rental car the other end?”
”Yes, if I go.”
”I reserved National. A compact. You get mileage on your One Pa.s.s frequent flier program.” Pleased, she looked back at the steno pad.
”The prosecutor in the Elroy case was named Muriel M. Suarez. She's still there. Floyd J. Nickerson left the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in 1980. They didn't choose to tell me where he is now, or maybe they really don't know. I put in a call to Mr. Buckram at the public defender's office, but he was in Tallaha.s.see for the day. I left a message with his secretary for him to call you at home tonight up to eleven P.M. Was that okay?”
”Fine,” I said. My heartbeat was accelerating. The worst for the last. She was torturing me because I'd made her stay in the office so late.
She read from her notes. ”Darryl Arthur Morgan entered FSP 24 April 1979. Appeal to the Florida Supreme Court in June 1981- that was denied. Court of Appeals, Second District, filed on the basis of previous incompetent counsel-also denied. That's 1983. Public defender handling it all. Appeal to the Eleventh Circuit in Tampa, denied in 1985. Atlanta, Federal Court of Appeals, application denied. We're up to 1988. Application for cert with the U.S. Supreme Court-naturally, denied. The governor signed the death warrant on October 2, 1990. Scheduled for execution, a.s.suming no relief in the trial court, on April 11 of this year, 1991. One more appeal for postconviction relief to the trial court in Jacksonville. Original trial judge no longer on the bench, case will go to another judge. Decision pending.”
I said quietly, ”You're telling me that Morgan is still alive.”
Ruby said, ”He better be, because if they find out a dead man's making all these appeals, they're going to be seriously p.i.s.sed off.”
Chapter 5.
BEFORE WORLD WAR II, my father had been an insurance salesman in the Bronx. He spent the war as a clerk at a naval base in Virginia, and in 1945 his insurance company asked him to start a branch office in Jacksonville.
Sylvia Jaffe, my mother, said, ”Miami would be acceptable, Leonard. But Jacksonville? Who ever heard of it? Where in Florida is this place?”
”An industrialized city, in the north of the state,” he reported. ”On the beach. A short drive anyway.”
”Did you know,” he said to us on the train ride down, ”that once upon a time there were Indians in Florida, just like in the Tom Mix movies?”
Neither my younger sister, Rhoda, nor I had known that.