Death Penalty Read online

I flipped through my desk calendar. I had a few things to do but nothing that couldn’t be put off. Mickey sounded as if he was coming apart. I could afford to lose a day, if for no reason other than charitable concern for a brother lawyer.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ll drive up there and pick you up.”

  Mickey, I knew, couldn’t exist the day without drinking. It would be inconvenient, but safer, if I did the driving.

  “I’ll pick you up in front of your office building. What time?”

  “Ten o’clock okay? It’s about an hour’s drive from here. We can see the guy and then have lunch. Sort of make a day of it. Like old times.”

  “Ten o’clock,” I said and hung up.

  I had a bad feeling about the case, although I didn’t really know why.

  I marked the date and time on the calendar.

  I spent the rest of the day preparing for some motions I had the next day in circuit court. The matters weren’t earthshaking. I wanted a client’s temporary alimony reduced. My client was getting desperate, and poor. He didn’t mind a bit of desperation, but without relief he soon would be sleeping in his car. The judge had been divorced twice and I thought we had a fair chance, on empathy if nothing else.

  The second motion was to reduce another client’s bond. He was a nice quiet little man unless you said something to him in a bar. He didn’t need much, maybe just a request to pass an ashtray. Little or not, he regularly inflicted great damage to flesh and property. He was going to trial on his third assault charge, having smashed one nose and broken three bar stools before being subdued. Without booze he was a mild family man who worked as an accounting clerk. Add alcohol and he was transformed into a hundred-and-thirty-pound hurricane. Bail had been set at $100,000 by the judge who had let him out on probation the last time. He would lose his job if he didn’t get out. His wife and children would suffer.

  But, despite that, I was just going through the motions. The judge’s patience had run out, and my man had as much chance of getting out of jail as I did of winning the lottery.

  My preparation for both cases was merely to recheck the pleadings and review what I was going to say.

  That done, I would dine at my usual greasy spoon restaurant and then drive into Detroit, an hour away, for the weekly meeting of my club. The club was what we called the folks who regularly came to the Thursday night AA meeting in the basement of St. Jude’s Church.

  It was not so different from any other club. We have kind of a ritual, the reading, usually of the Twelve Steps. We know and like one another, more or less. And we have a common interest—staying sober. The only thing missing is dues.

  Mrs. Fenton made her usual quiet departure precisely at five o’clock and I was left alone.

  The phone rang almost as soon as she had closed the door behind her. I could hear her walking down the outside steps. She was not rushing back, so I picked it up on the fourth ring.

  “Charley Sloan,” I said.

  “Please hold for Victor Trembly,” an officious woman demanded.

  I waited as she patched me into recorded music. I was about to hang up when he finally came on the line.

  “Charley, how are you!” The greeting was as enthusiastic as it was insincere.

  “Never better, Victor. What can I do for you?”

  “I was told by the police that you have some connection with Rebecca Harris.”

  “The same connection you have with Howard Wordley. I’m Ms. Harris’s lawyer.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “Why do most people hire lawyers, Victor? To sue the living shit out of someone, right? Maybe that’s the purpose, maybe not. What business is it of yours?”

  Even his chuckle was arrogant. “Charley, the bitch is a hustler, a cheap lying hustler. You never used to represent hookers. How come?”

  “I represent this one, whatever she is. You called me, remember, what’s on your mind?”

  “I want the woman to drop the charges against my client.”

  “Who wouldn’t? Sexual criminal conduct or rape, it’s still something that doesn’t look too good on the old résuméd. Wordley damn near killed her, you know that? Nothing’s going to get dropped, Victor.”

  “Are you thinking about a civil action?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “She’s lying and we can prove it, but rather than drag my client through that, we might come to an agreement.”

  “Victor, are you into obstruction of justice now? Everybody says that, but I never believed it. Shame, Victor, shame.”

  He laughed, but it had a nasty sound. “Look, Charley, we are two lawyers discussing ways to solve a legal problem. We aren’t buying her off. Nothing like that. This is strictly a legal matter, that’s all it is.”

  “As far as I know, Victor, she isn’t interested in money.”

  He snorted. “Hey, she’s a woman, right? That’s all they’re interested in, when you cut away all the bullshit.”

  “Happily married, are you, Victor?”

  “Ecstatic,” he snapped. “Look, I’m not trying to do anything illegal here. Discuss this with her. If she plans to sue, we may settle just to get rid of this thing.”

  “And the criminal charge?”

  “There’d be no point in it, would there, not if she’s settled everything for money. Talk to her, Charley. If she’s reasonable we might be able to do something.”

  “Define reasonable.”

  He snickered. It was an ugly sound. “Call me after you talk to her, Charley. Maybe we can work on a definition.”

  He hung up and all I had was the dial tone. No more music. I felt like I needed a bath.

  If she asked for money now it would be extortion, and Trembly knew that. It would be a perfect defense to both a criminal and civil action. I was insulted that he thought I was stupid enough to dance right into his obvious little net.

  I needed a drink.

  It was nice to have the AA meeting to go to.

  There, everybody needed a drink.

  4

  On Monday, as promised, I picked Mickey Monk up in front of his office building. He eased his bulk into the front seat and looked around. “Jesus, Charley, this is nice but it isn’t exactly your old Rolls, is it?” I pulled out into the slow-moving traffic and headed for the expressway. “Like everything else, my not-so-old Rolls got sucked up. Booze and my exwives were the vacuum cleaners.”

  He grunted. “I got lucky with my first wife. She was humping the doctor she finally married. She wanted the divorce worse than I did. She didn’t ask for a cent. This one, the second Mrs. Monk, has the soul of a pirate. But that’s what keeps me married. If I gave her the chance for divorce she’d take everything but my balls and get a mortgage on them. Hey, you do know where we’re going, right?”

  “Just past Ann Arbor. You’re the one who gave me the directions.”

  “It’s about an hour, depending on how fast you drive.” He sighed. “This is a treat for me. I can sit back and watch the scenery.”

  I could sniff the alcohol on his breath. Things were bottoming out for Mickey. People who needed a drink in the morning, to start the heart, or whatever excuse they used, were in serious trouble.

  I could speak from experience.

  For the first part of the ride, Mickey couldn’t shut up and kept rambling on, obviously nervous. I nodded or grunted as my sole contributions to the conversation.

  About the time we drove past the entrance to the sprawling Metropolitan Airport, he was winding down. Finally, he shut up completely.

  I glanced over to see if he might be napping, but he wasn’t. He was staring out at the passing flat farmland and gently chewing his bottom lip. If Mickey didn’t get a grip on himself he would have no lip by the time the case was finally decided.

  We left the interstate and I found myself speeding along a deserted farm road just past the college town of Ann Arbor.

  “There it is, that little place up there on the left,” Mickey said, pointin
g.

  You couldn’t call it a farm, it wasn’t big enough, just a small frame house and a few ramshackle sheds. A trailer was parked behind the house. I noticed that an electric line ran from the house to the trailer.

  I pulled into a rutted driveway and parked behind a rusting pickup truck.

  “His wife’s parents live in the house,” Mickey said. “He lives in the trailer.”

  “He’s got a wife and kids? The trailer doesn’t look big enough for all of them.”

  “They live in the house, with her parents.”

  “Sounds crowded.”

  “It is.”

  A small dog came running toward the car. He stopped a few feet away and barked. He didn’t really want to go to the trouble of barking but knew it was expected of him. You could tell it was for show, his heart really wasn’t in it.

  He stopped the noise as we climbed out of the car. He came slowly toward us, pretending suspicion, although his tail was wagging enthusiastically.

  Mickey made some soothing sounds, and the little dog instantly submitted to being petted.

  The dog was our only reception committee.

  I followed Mickey as he walked around the side of the house, headed toward the trailer.

  “Did you call and tell them we were coming?” I asked.

  “They know.”

  The trailer was set back about forty feet from the rear of the house. A rough walkway between them had been constructed of wooden pallets, and a homemade wooden ramp had been built up to the trailer’s door. The trailer was an old metal model with rounded corners to make it less wind resistant. It looked like something left over from a low-budget science fiction movie, a dented space capsule or an alien pod. I wondered if we would all be able to fit inside.

  As we started up the wooden incline of the ramp, the trailer door opened.

  A woman stepped out. She was thin and wrapped in a cheap housedress. Her skinny legs sprouted from oversize gym shoes, the kind of ankle-high, thick-soled sneakers basketball players sell on television. She wasn’t ugly nor was she pretty, just plain. Her hair was cut short, almost mannish. She wore glasses. The thick lenses tended to enlarge her eyes.

  And those eyes had a hard, almost hostile look.

  “Hello, Mildred,” Mickey said as he approached. “This is Charley Sloan.”

  She looked me up and down. It was the kind of look a woman might give a fish that doesn’t look too fresh.

  She didn’t extend her hand, merely nodded and stepped back through the trailer door. “Come in,” she said. Her tone indicated our intrusion would be tolerated, but only that.

  I hadn’t expected the odor. The trailer reeked with the unpleasant aroma of an outhouse.

  “It needs cleaning,” she said, “but I just haven’t had the time.”

  The trailer wobbled a bit as we stepped in. The interior was dark, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust.

  I almost wished they hadn’t.

  He was propped up in a kind of high-backed wheelchair. His hands were secured to the arms of the wheelchair by bandages, as were his matchstick legs, which stuck out on a kind of extended ledge from the chair. His head was held in place by a band affixed to the chair’s high back.

  The flickering light from a small television placed on a shelf in front of him danced eerily across his thin features. I noticed that the picture was fuzzy. The volume was set so low it was barely audible.

  “How are you doing, Will?” Mickey asked without realizing just how inappropriate the greeting was in the circumstances. “This is Mr. Sloan. He’s going to argue your case in the appeals court.”

  “Howdy,” he said and tried to smile, but the attempt failed.

  I had seen the photographs and the videotape of him that Mickey had used at the trial, but even with that advance warning I wasn’t prepared.

  He looked like a skeleton, his cheekbones almost jutting through his taut skin. He was thirty-five but he looked ninety. His hair was unkempt, and whoever had shaved him had missed a few spots.

  “Jesus, Will,” his wife said in a nasty whining voice, “did you poop your pants again?” She made an exaggerated sniffing gesture.

  “I don’t know, Milly,” he said quietly, his thin voice echoing through a sea of misery. “I can’t feel anything, you know that.”

  “Are you going to be long?” she asked Mickey.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll wait to change him then.” She turned and left the trailer.

  “I’m sorry,” Will McHugh said. “I have no control over anything. She changes me a couple of times a day. I wear diapers.” He tried to smile and make a joke of it, but once again he failed.

  “Don’t worry about it, Will,” Mickey said, clearing some clutter off a small padded bench. He sat down and I sat next to him. McHugh’s eyes followed us. The bench was a snug fit. The whole trailer was a snug fit. It seemed uncomfortably warm. Then I noticed the gleam of an electric heater directly behind the wheelchair.

  “Mr. Monk says you’re a specialist in these kinds of appeals,” Will McHugh said to me. It sounded as if he was unaccustomed to speaking aloud.

  “I do that kind of work,” I replied.

  “Will we win?”

  “We have a very good chance,” I said. As I spoke the words I saw alarm in Mickey Monk’s eyes.

  “Only a chance? My God.” McHugh’s eyes seemed suddenly to fill with tears.

  “Much more than that,” I added quickly, as much for my morale as his. “Let me ask a few questions about the accident. I’ve read your testimony at the trial, but I’d like to go over a few things.” I didn’t really need to, but it seemed the thing to do.

  “All right,” he said softly.

  “Before the accident, did you ever have trouble with your vehicle?”

  It was like talking to two disembodied eyes. He couldn’t nod or gesture. Only his eyes and voice could communicate.

  “I didn’t have it long, just a month or so. There was no trouble, no warning. It was working perfectly.”

  “Were you the only one who drove it?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. My wife can drive, but it was too big for her. She was afraid of it.” He paused. “I should have been too.”

  “You had never heard or been told that they were having sudden acceleration problems with that model?”

  “Hell, no. Nobody said anything.”

  “The sudden acceleration never happened before to you?”

  “Never. I was coming from a bar, as you probably know. I had a few beers. I wasn’t drunk. They say I was, but I wasn’t. The blood work at the hospital showed that.”

  “It did. Go on.”

  His eyes seemed to lose their focus as he remembered. “I wasn’t going fast, really. Maybe thirty-five, maybe forty. Suddenly it started going much faster without me doing a thing. It was as if someone had jammed the accelerator down to the floor. It was like something in a bad dream, you know? I had no control. I hit the brake, but it didn’t do anything except scare me that I might tip the damn thing over. I didn’t think to shut the engine off.” He stopped, then spoke in a calmer voice. “After that, nothing. I woke up in the hospital.” A tear formed, then trickled down the side of his gaunt face. “Like this.”

  I wanted to get out of the hot, smelly trailer.

  “Okay,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you a bit before the case came up. Sort of get a feeling for it, you know? I’ll do my very best for you.”

  His eyes returned to the television set. “It’s really not for me, the money,” he said quietly. “It’s more for the wife. This is no life for her. With the money they can put me in a nice place. Not a nursing home, not the kind with old people. I wouldn’t want to go there. But a nice place, with people like myself. They could take care of me.”

  “Your wife doesn’t mind, Will,” Mickey said. “She loves you.”

  “This is God’s punishment on me,” he said, as if talking to the television. “I was on my way to co
mmit sin that day. It’s a terrible punishment, but I suppose it’s fair as far as I’m concerned. My wife, she didn’t do anything. It’s not fair to her. With a little money she and the kids could get a place of their own, a nice place.”

  He paused again, this time longer. “She has to do everything now, feed me, wash me, change me. It’s no life for her, and I know she hates me for what I’ve done. I don’t blame her.”

  “Don’t worry, Will,” Mickey said. “We’ll do the worrying for you.”

  “They have a visiting nurse who stops by and does the things Milly can’t do. But the rest . . .”

  Mickey stood up and patted Will McHugh’s leg, forgetting that he could not feel the gesture. “Everything is going to be just fine,” he said.

  “He’s right,” I added, feeling like a fraud. It was a choice between cruel truth and mercy. I chose mercy.

  “We’ll win,” I said. “I promise you.”

  I wasn’t sure he even heard me. His attention was completely directed at the fuzzy picture on the screen. It was as if he had escaped into the flickering picture; it was the only escape open to him anymore.

  Outside, the air seemed like cool perfume. I gulped it in.

  Mildred McHugh had been watching. She came quickly out of the house.

  “Are you all done?” she asked Mickey.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’ll go change him. He can’t feel anything, but it makes me feel better. Anything else you want?”

  Mickey shook his head. “No.”

  “When is the appeal hearing again?”

  “In a couple of weeks.”

  “Do we have to be there?”

  “No,” Mickey answered. “Just the lawyers.”

  She nodded. “Just as well. It’s hell trying to arrange things to move him.”

  She looked at me through those thick lenses. “If you lose I believe I will kill myself.” She said it without any humor, emotion, or even threat. It was said as a quiet fact. She marched off toward the trailer.

  I followed Mickey back to the car and climbed in.

  “Let’s go,” Mickey said. “I can use a drink.”

  “So can I. That’s why we won’t be stopping for one.” I backed out of the driveway. “Mickey, why the hell did you insist on bringing me here? It was a wasted trip.”