Sycamore Row

36

From their looks and accents it was obvious to Lonny they were a bunch of Russians, and after watching them drink straight vodka for an hour, he was certain. Crude, crass, loud, and looking for trouble. They would pick a night when only one bouncer was on duty. The owner of the bar had threatened to post a sign barring all Russians, but of course he could not. Lonny figured they were crewing a cargo ship, probably one hauling grain from Canada.

He called the other bouncer at home but got no answer. The owner wasn’t there and, at the moment, Lonny was in charge. More vodka was ordered. Lonny thought about cutting it with water, but these guys would know it immediately. When one slapped a waitress on her shapely rear end, events spiraled out of control, and quickly. The lone bouncer, a man who had never shied away from violence, barked at the offending Russian, who barked back in another language while rising angrily. He threw a wild punch, which missed, and then took one that didn’t. From across the room, a gang of patriotic bikers hurled beer bottles at the Russians, all of whom were springing into action. Lonny said, “Oh shit!” and thought about leaving through the kitchen, but he’d seen it all before, many times. His bar had a tough reputation, which was one reason it paid so well, and in cash.

When another waitress was knocked down, he ducked around the bar to help her. The melee raged on just a few feet away, and as he reached to grab her a blunt object of some variety struck him in the back of his head. He fell comatose, blood pouring from his wound and draining into his long gray ponytail. At sixty-six, Lonny was simply too old to even watch such a brawl.

For two days he lay unconscious in a Juneau hospital. The owner of the bar reluctantly came forward and admitted he had no paperwork on the man. Just a name-Lonny Clark. A detective was hanging around, and when it became apparent he might never wake up, a plan was hatched. The owner told them which flophouse Lonny called home, and the cops broke in. Along with almost nothing in the way of assets, they found thirty kilos of cocaine wrapped neatly in foil and seemingly untouched. Under the mattress, they also found a small plastic binder with a zipper. Inside was about $2,000 in cash; an Alaska driver’s license that turned out to be fake, name of Harry Mendoza; a passport, also fake, for Albert Johnson; another fake passport for Charles Noland; a stolen Wisconsin driver’s license for Wilson Steglitz, expired; and a yellowed naval discharge summary for one Ancil F. Hubbard, dated May 1955. The binder consisted of Lonny’s worldly assets, discounting of course the cocaine, which had a street value of roughly $1.5 million.

It took the police several days to verify records and such, and by then Lonny was awake and feeling better. The police decided not to approach him about the coke until he was ready to be discharged. They kept an officer in street clothes outside his room. Since the only legitimate names in his arsenal appeared to be Ancil F. Hubbard and Wilson Steglitz, they entered them into the national crime computer system to see what, if anything, might turn up. The detective began chatting with Lonny, stopping by and bringing him milk shakes, but there was no mention of the drugs. After a few visits, the detective said they could find no records of a man named Lonny Clark. Birth place and date, Social Security number, state of residence? Anything, Lonny?

Lonny, who’d spent a lifetime running and ducking, grew suspicious and less talkative. The detective asked, “You ever know a man by the name of Harry Mendoza?”

“Maybe,” Lonny replied.

Oh really? From where and when? How? Under what circumstances? Nothing.

What about Albert Johnson, or Charles Noland? Lonny said maybe he’d met those men long ago but wasn’t sure. His memory was foggy, coming and going. He had, after all, a cracked skull and a bruised brain, and, well, he couldn’t remember much before the fight. Why all the questions?

By then Lonny knew they had been in his room, but he wasn’t sure if they had found the cocaine. There was an excellent chance the man who owned it went to the flophouse not long after the fight and removed it himself. Lonny was not a dealer; he was just doing a friend a favor, one for which he was to be paid nicely. So, the question was whether the cops had found the cocaine. If so, Lonny was in some serious trouble. The less he said the better. As he had learned decades earlier, when the cops start asking serious questions, deny, deny, deny.

Jake was at his desk when Portia rang through and said, “It’s Albert Murray.” Jake grabbed the phone and said hello.

Murray ran a firm out of D.C. and specialized in locating missing persons, both nationally and internationally. So far, the estate of Seth Hubbard had paid the firm $42,000 to find a long-lost brother and had almost nothing to show for it. Its results had been thoroughly unimpressive, though its billing procedures rivaled those of any big-city law firm.

Murray, always skeptical, began with “We have a soft hit on Ancil Hubbard, but don’t get excited.” He relayed the facts as he knew them-an assumed name of Lonny, a bar brawl in Juneau, a cracked skull, lots of cocaine, and fake papers.

“He’s sixty-six years old and dealing drugs?” Jake asked.

“There’s no mandatory retirement age for drug dealers.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway,” Murray continued, “this guy is pretty crafty and won’t admit to anything.”

“How bad is he hurt?”

“He’s been in the hospital for a week. He’ll go from there to the jail, so his doctors are in no hurry. A cracked skull is a cracked skull.”

“If you say so.”

“The locals there are curious about the discharge paperwork from the Navy. It appears to be authentic and it doesn’t really fit. A fake driver’s license and a fake passport might take you places, but a discharge that’s thirty years old? Why would a con man like this need it? Of course it could be stolen.”

“So we’re back to the same old question,” Jake said. “How do we verify him if we find him?”

“You got it.”

There were no helpful photos of Ancil Hubbard. In a box in Seth’s closet they had found several dozen family photos, mainly of Ramona, Herschel, and Seth’s first wife. There were none from Seth’s childhood; not a single photo of his parents or younger brother. Some school records tracked Ancil through the ninth grade, and his grainy, smiling face appeared in a group photo taken at the Palmyra junior high school in 1934. That photo had been enlarged, along with several of Seth as an adult. Since Ancil had not been seen in Ford County in fifty years, there was not a single person who could offer an opinion as to whether he favored his older brother as a child, or looked completely different.

“Do you have someone in Juneau?” Jake asked.

“No, not yet. I’ve talked to the police twice. I can have a man there within twenty-four hours.”

“What’s he gonna do when he gets there? If Lonny Clark is not talking to the locals, why would he talk to a complete stranger?”

“I doubt if he would.”

“Let me think about it.”

Jake hung up and thought about nothing else for an hour. It was the first lead in months, and such a weak one at that. The trial started in four days, and there was no way he could race off to Alaska and somehow verify the identity of a man who did not want to be identified; indeed, one who’d apparently spent the past thirty years changing identities.

He walked downstairs and found Lucien in the conference room studying index cards with the jurors’ names in bold letters. They were arranged neatly on the long table, alphabetized, all ninety-seven of them. They were rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most attractive. Many of them had not yet been rated because nothing was known of the jurors.

Jake replayed the conversation with Albert Murray. Lucien’s first response was, “We’re not telling Judge Atlee, not yet anyway. I know what you’re thinking-if Ancil’s alive and we might know where he is, then let’s scream for a continuance and buy some more time. That’s a bad idea, Jake.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“There’s a good chance the old boy might be locked up for the rest of his life. He couldn’t show up for a trial if he wanted to.”

“No, Lucien, I’m more concerned with verification. There’s no way to do it unless we go talk to him. Keep in mind he has a chunk of money on the line here. He might be more cooperative than we think.”

Lucien took a deep breath and began pacing around the table. Portia was too inexperienced, and she was also a young black female, not the type to pry secrets out of an old white man who was running from something, or everything. That left him, the only available member of the firm. He walked to the door and said, “I’ll go. Get me all the information you can.”

“Are you sure, Lucien?”

There was no response as he closed the front door behind himself. Jake’s only thought was, I hope he can stay sober.

Ozzie stopped by late Thursday afternoon for a quick visit. Harry Rex and Portia were in the war room poring over juror names and addresses. Jake was upstairs at his desk, on the phone, wasting time trying to track down a few more of Wade Lanier’s forty-five witnesses. So far the task had been frustrating.

“Wanna beer?” Harry Rex asked the sheriff. A fresh Bud Light sat nearby.

“I’m on duty and I don’t drink,” Ozzie replied. “I hope you’re not driving. I’d hate to see you busted for a DUI.”

“I’d just hire Jake to postpone it forever. You got some names?”

Ozzie handed him a sheet of paper and said, “A few. That Oscar Peltz guy we were talkin’ about yesterday, from down near Lake Village, well, he goes to the same church with the Roston family.” Portia picked up the card with “OSCAR PELTZ” written in a black marker across the top.

“I’d stay away from him,” Ozzie said.

Harry Rex looked at his notes and said, “We had him as a five anyway, not too attractive.”

“Mr. Raymond Griffis, lives down from Parker’s Country Store, south of here. What do you have on him?”

Portia picked up another card and said, “White male, age forty-one, works for a fencing contractor.” Harry Rex added, “Divorced, remarried, father died in a car wreck about five years ago.”

Ozzie said, “Stay away from him. I got a source says his brother was involved with the Klan three years ago during the Hailey trial. Don’t think the brother ever joined up, but he was a bit too close. They might be presentable on the surface, but could be a rough bunch.”

“I had him as a four,” Harry Rex said. “I thought you were going after all the black folks.”

“That’s a waste of time. All black folks get automatic tens in this trial.”

“How many are on the list, Portia?”

“Twenty-one, out of ninety-seven.”

“We’ll take ’em.”

“Where’s Lucien?” Ozzie asked.

“Jake ran him off. Any luck with Pernell Phillips? You thought Moss Junior might know him.”

“He’s Moss Junior’s wife’s third cousin, but they try to avoid family gatherings. Backwater Baptists. He wouldn’t get too many points from me.”

“Portia?”

“Let’s give him a three,” she said, with the authority of a veteran jury consultant.

“That’s the problem with this damn pool,” Harry Rex said. “Far too many threes and fours, not enough eights and nines. We’re gonna get clobbered.”

“Where’s Jake?” Ozzie asked.

“Upstairs, fighting the phone.”

Lucien drove to Memphis, flew to Chicago, and from there flew all night to Seattle. He drank on the flight but went to sleep before being excessive. He killed six hours in the Seattle airport, then caught a two-hour flight to Juneau on Alaska Air. He checked into a hotel downtown, called Jake, slept three hours, showered, even shaved, and dressed himself in an old black suit that hadn’t been worn in a decade. With the white shirt and paisley tie, he could pass himself off as a lawyer, which was exactly what he planned to do. With a battered briefcase in hand, he walked to the hospital. Twenty-two hours after leaving Clanton, he said hello to the detective and got the latest scoop over coffee.

The update revealed little. An infection was causing his brain to swell and Lonny was not in the mood to talk. His doctors wanted things quiet and the detective had not spoken to him that day. He showed Lucien the fake paperwork they found in the flophouse, along with the naval discharge. Lucien showed the detective two enlarged photos of Seth Hubbard. Maybe there was a vague resemblance, maybe not. It was a long shot. The detective called the owner of the bar and insisted he come to the hospital. Since he knew Lonny well, he could look at the photos. He did, and saw nothing.

After the owner left, and with little else to do, Lucien explained to the detective the purpose of his visit. They had been looking for Ancil for six months, but it had been a cold trail. His brother, the one in the photos, had left him some money in a will. Not a fortune, but certainly enough to scramble Lucien from Mississippi to Alaska overnight.

The detective had little interest in a lawsuit so far away. He was more concerned with the cocaine. No, he did not believe Lonny Clark was a drug dealer. They were about to crack a syndicate out of Vancouver, and they had a couple of informants. The buzz was that Lonny was simply hiding the stuff for a fee. Sure, he would serve some time, but time measured in months and not years. And no, he would not be allowed to travel back to Mississippi for any reason, if in fact his name was really Ancil Hubbard.

After the detective left, Lucien roamed around the hospital to familiarize himself with the maze of corridors and annexes and split-levels. He found Lonny’s room on the third floor and saw a man standing nearby, flipping through a magazine, trying to stay awake. He assumed he was an officer.

After dark, he returned to his hotel, called Jake for the update, and went to the bar.

It was either his fifth or sixth night in this damp, dark room with windows that never opened and somehow blocked out all light during the day. The nurses came and went, sometimes tapping softly on the door as they pushed it open, and other times appearing at his bedside without making a sound to warn him. He had tubes in both arms and monitors above his head. He’d been told he wouldn’t die, but after five or six days and nights with virtually no food but plenty of meds and too many doctors and nurses, he wouldn’t mind a prolonged blackout. His head pounded in pain and his lower back was cramping from the inactivity, and at times he wanted to rip off all the tubes and wires and bolt from the room. A digital clock gave the time as 11:10.

Could he leave? Was he free to walk out of the hospital? Or were the goons waiting just outside his door to take him away? No one would tell him. He had asked several of the friendlier nurses if someone was waiting, but all responses had been vague. Many things were vague. At times the television screen was clear, and then it would blur. There was a constant ringing in his ears that made him mumble. The doctors denied this. The nurses just gave him another pill. There were shadows at all hours of the night, observers sneaking into his room. Maybe they were students looking at real patients; maybe they were just shadows that did not really exist. They changed his meds frequently to see how he would react. Try this one for the pain. This one for the blurred vision. This one for the shadows. This one is a blood thinner. This is an antibiotic. Dozens and dozens of pills, and at all hours of the day and night.

He dozed off again, and when he awoke it was 11:17. The room was pitch-black, the only light a red haze cast off from a monitor above his head, one he could not see.

The door opened silently, but no light entered from the dark hallway. But it wasn’t a nurse. A man, a stranger, walked straight to the side of the bed: gray hair, long hair, a black shirt, an old man he’d never seen before. His eyes were squinted and fierce, and as he leaned down even closer the smell of whiskey almost slapped Lonny in the face.

He said, “Ancil, what happened to Sylvester Rinds?”

Lonny’s heart froze as he stared in horror at the stranger, who gently placed a hand on his shoulder. The whiskey smell grew stronger. He repeated, “Ancil, what happened to Sylvester Rinds?”

Lonny tried to speak but words failed him. He blinked his eyes to refocus, but he was seeing clearly enough. The words were clear too, and the accent was unmistakable. The stranger was from the Deep South.

“What?” Lonny managed to whisper, almost in a gasp.

“What happened to Sylvester Rinds?” the stranger repeated, his laser-like eyes glowing down at Lonny.

There was a button on the bedstead that summoned a nurse. Lonny quickly punched it. The stranger withdrew, became a shadow again, then vanished from the room.

A nurse eventually arrived. She was one of his least favorites and didn’t like to be bothered. Lonny wanted to talk, to tell her about the stranger, but this gal was not a listener. She asked what he wanted, and he said he couldn’t go to sleep. She promised to check back later, the same promise as always.

He lay in the dark, frightened. Was he frightened because he’d been called by his real name? Because his past had caught up with him? Or was he frightened because he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen and heard the stranger? Was he finally losing his mind? Was the brain damage becoming permanent?

He faded away, drifting in and out of blackness, sleeping for only a moment or two before thinking of Sylvester.