Part 29 (1/2)

”Judge”-she was angry and didn't hide it-”he will retry the case if you allow him to cross our princ.i.p.al witnesses!”

The judge smiled mischievously. ”Well, Ms. Suarez, I'll ask you again: what do you want? Not what you don't want, but what you do want.”

Muriel rose to the occasion. ”I want justice, Your Honor, leavened with common sense.”

”Good for you,” Judge Fleming said. ”So do I, most of the time. But most of all, I want to be enlightened. You follow me?”

”Not quite,” Muriel said.

”Ma'am, I want to know why this Nickerson fella was so het up by Mr. Jaffe's accusations. And since the princ.i.p.al witnesses are alive and kicking, why shouldn't we hear them? Think of it this way.” He jerked a thumb in my direction. ”By the time it's over we'll have this fella off our backs. That would make life a lot easier for the state attorney's office and this court, wouldn't it?”

”Your Honor-”

”Just a little hearing,” Judge Fleming said, ”for the purposes of judicial enlightenment and-what did you call it, ma'am?-justice leavened with common sense? I like that. But not until January, because I've got a full calendar right up until New Year's Day, and on Monday, January 13, I turn over this courtroom to Mr. Ruth. So make it Monday, January 6. I'll grant another stay. Come January, I'll give you three days, tops. I need Thursday and Friday before the weekend to pack up and get out. That gives you both plenty of time between now and then to think things over and refresh anyone's memory needs refres.h.i.+ng. Or maybe even cut a deal. Is that all right, Ms. Suarez? Does early January suit you? And by the way, do you like fruit?”

She took a deep, shaky breath. ”Yes, Your Honor, I do.”

”I always have fruit in my courtroom. Which is your favorite fruit?”

”A freshly picked Was.h.i.+ngton State Delicious apple,” she said, once again rising to the occasion.

The judge turned to me. ”And you, sir?”

”Honeydew melon,” I said.

”No.” He frowned. ”I meant does early January suit you?”

”Yes, Judge.” I was ready to let out a war whoop, but I controlled myself. ”Suits me just fine.”

Chapter 25.

CERTAIN CASUAL REMARKS echo with far more weight than the speaker intended. Some years ago the veteran Steelers, a cla.s.s act in pro football, met the upstart Rams in the Super Bowl. This was the first Super Bowl appearance for the Rams. The Steelers trampled them, and I remember the TV commentator explaining: ”The Rams came here to play, but the Steelers came here to win. The outcome was never in doubt.”

The keenness of that observation stayed with me, waiting just below the surface of memory until I needed it. I had felt triumphant, even vindicated, when Judge Fleming granted a hearing in Florida v. Morgan. It would have been acceptably human to prepare for the hearing, go to court, and do the best I could, for better or for worse, win or lose. That would be playing the game.

But unlike the Rams, I wasn't showing up in court merely for the glory of playing. Like the Steelers, I was going there in order to win. I had to win. I had to do considerably more than the best I could. And I had to make some sacrifices.

How large they would be, how they would reshape my formerly ordered life, I could only speculate; and then I had to say to h.e.l.l with it and lower my head to plunge forward through the thickets of deceit and the swamp of denial that my life had become over the past dozen years. Somewhere in Camus, one of the characters mourns, ”I see too deep and too much.” Those words had always touched me, even if they struck me as hyperbolic. But now I lived them, for I knew that Darryl Morgan was innocent of the crime for which he had been accused, convicted, and condemned to die. And I believed I knew who had murdered Solomon Zide. What I didn't know was how to prove it and how to escape with my marriage and my career intact.

In October, finally, I heard from the Florida Bar a.s.sociation in the state capital. I never found out who lodged the complaint, but I suspect it was done at the behest of the chief judge of the Supreme Court, he whom I had accused of making ”a serious mistake.” I had been a wisea.s.s; there was a price to pay. There's almost always a price for quixotic derring-do, and it's almost always not worth paying. This instance may have been the exception.

The Professional Ethics Committee of the Bar wanted to know how I could justify representing a man whom I had formerly prosecuted. They also asked me to respond to a complaint by the state attorney's office in the Seventeenth District-Robert Diaz in Miami -that I'd ”knowingly and willingly” misrepresented to my former client Jerry Lee Elroy the terms of a plea-bargaining agreement between Elroy and the state attorney.

What was I meant to do? Since humankind emerged from the cave, we've lived by an evolving rule of law that allows us to face the sunset without dread. But there were times when the rule of law didn't keep its promise. There were even times when chaos was better than law if law proved barbaric.

Who defined ”better”? The representatives of the law did, of course. At best, this was a tautology. At worst, it was a vicious circle.

I wrote a letter to the Ethics Committee. I said that I was representing Darryl Morgan because it was in the interest of justice for me to do so. He had asked me to represent him. And I intended to keep on representing him as long as he wanted me.

As regards Jerry Lee Elroy, I wrote, I didn't know what in h.e.l.l they were talking about. They were mistaken.

Then Beldon Ruth called me from Jacksonville.

”How are you, lad?” He was already a.s.suming a lofty judicial air, and I sensed that it boded me no good.

”I'm well, Beldon. And you?”

”Couldn't be better. And the family?”

”Great. And yours?”

That nonsense over, he got down to business. Our deal last summer, he said, hadn't been open-ended. It had applied to my motion based on Jerry Lee Elroy's affidavit. I had lost. It was a new ball game now. The state attorney's office for the Fourth District was still the ”appropriate government agency” that supposedly had to grant permission for me to represent Darryl in court, Beldon was still the state attorney, and he'd thought it over and decided that it was tainted, unseemly, against the canons-”and,” he said, ”from what I hear, you've got your tail in a crack with the Bar a.s.sociation. Time to back off, Ted my boy.”

”Horace Fleming granted my motion,” I said.

”For a hearing. That doesn't mean you can be the lawyer to conduct that hearing.”

”Beldon, if nothing unravels, come January I'll be there. I'll have backup counsel, so you go ahead and file your protests and do whatever you feel you have to do. I think it's s.h.i.+tty of you, but I suppose you've got your reasons.”

”You know them,” he said.

”And they're not good enough.”

He thought that over. ”If you go out and break both your legs, don't come running to me.”

A week later the Ethics Committee sent me a letter by Federal Express overnight mail. This time they didn't mention the accusation of my having lied to Jerry Lee Elroy; they had no proof, and the whole concept of plea-bargaining was best kept out of the public eye: it looked so tacky. But as regards the Florida Code of Professional Responsibility and its Rule 4-1.11, concerning successive government and private employment, the Bar a.s.sociation felt I was guilty of ”the appearance of impropriety.” In other words, it didn't matter that Darryl Morgan wanted me as his lawyer. It didn't look right.

I wrote back politely and said that was unfortunate, but nevertheless I was going forward with the case.

Harvey Royal asked me into his office. As a matter of form and courtesy, the Bar a.s.sociation had sent copies of all this correspondence to Royal, Kelly, Wellmet, Jaffe &C Miller in Sarasota. The Bar a.s.sociation, in other words, was snitching on me. They were in a fight they wanted to win.

Harvey sighed. ”Ted, this is bad business. This is a little more serious than a broken nose. You could be censured. Even disbarred.”

”But I won't be.” I tried to put a great deal of confidence into my voice and body language.

”Why are you so certain?”

”Because I'll win the case in Jacksonville. If they disbar me, they'll look bad. And we know that what they care about most is how they look.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk and said, ”What about this other matter? That you lied to your client, this man Elroy. That's a terrible accusation. I'm positive it has no basis in reality.”

I still don't know why I did what I did. I suppose because I was tired of being everyone's target. ”Elroy is dead, Harvey. With a sea urchin shoved in his mouth. He can't talk.”

Lines of age appeared to grow downward from Harvey's narrow nose. He coughed a few times. ”What are you saying?”

”That it's my word against a dead man's.”