The Last Innocent Man

7

It took David a long time to calm down after Gault left. Was it all a joke? Gault had a sadistic streak in him. He had enjoyed seeing David wriggle on his hook. But when he was discussing the murder, he seemed so sincere, he seemed to be reliving an experience, not creating one. David didn’t know what to think, and the worst thing was that the attorney-client privilege prevented him from discussing with anyone what Gault had said.

The intercom buzzed and David was grateful for the diversion. It was Monica calling from the district attorney’s office.

“Can you come over, Dave?” she asked.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I want to talk to you about Tony Seals.”

“What about him?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “And bring your shopping cart. We’re giving the store away today.”

An arrow corridor led back to the depersonalized cubbyholes that passed for offices at the district attorney’s office. Monica had seniority and rated a corner cubbyhole somewhat larger than the rest. Her sole attempt at humanizing her work space was a framed Chagall lithograph that added a splash of color to the white and black of her diplomas.

Monica was working on a file when David entered, and she waved him toward a chair. There were two in front of her desk, and he took a stack of files off one and placed them on the floor, then glanced at the newspaper that was draped over the top file on the other chair. Monica looked up.

“I need Seals’s testimony and I’ll give him immunity to get it,” she said without ceremony.

David said nothing for a second. He was watching Monica’s face. When he was certain she was serious, he asked, “Why do you need his testimony?”

“Because he is the only one other than Zachariah Small who can testify that Sticks pulled the trigger up on the mountain. Without him Sticks will get off.

“We had an informant who heard the three of them talking after they shot Jessie. Sticks and Zack were bragging about shooting her, and it was pretty clear that it was Sticks who shot from the car.”

“Why don’t you use your informant?”

“He’s gone. He split shortly after we interviewed him. He’s a transient who was staying at the Gomes house when the boys were arrested. I guess he got scared when he realized that we wanted him to testify. I’ve got the police looking for him, but even if we found him, I’m not sure how much good he’d be to us. He has a police record and he’s a drunk.”

David was churning inside. He leaned forward slightly.

“We get complete immunity?”

“Yes.”

David stood up. “I’ll talk to my client.”

The guard led Tony Seals into the interview room at the county jail. The room was long and narrow, and a row of rickety wooden folding chairs was scattered along its length. There was one Formica-topped table at the far end. David sat in front of it, watching his client walk toward him.

“Buzz me when you’re through,” the guard said, pointing to a small black button set in a silver metal box under some steam pipes near the barred door. Then he slammed the door shut and David heard the key turn in the lock.

On visiting day this room was usually jammed full of anxious wives and girlfriends, talking in quiet tones to men they might not be making love to for a long time. But this was early on a weekday, and David and his client were alone.

T.S. smelled worse than the last time they had met. There was a body odor that prisoners at the county jail had that was unique and vile. It was the type of smell you could believe would never be scrubbed away.

David searched his client’s eyes as the gangly teenager shuffled toward him with a loose, puppetlike gait that made him look as if he had straw where bones should be. The eyes were vacant and as lifeless as his perpetual half smile.

“Hi, Mr. Nash,” T.S. said. He had a soft voice that rarely fluctuated with any emotion.

“Sit down, T.S.”

T.S. did as he was told. He always did. David wondered if he had ever initiated an action in his life. Monica was right. It had to have been Sticks and Zachariah. He was dealing with a boy who lacked free will. Another person’s creature who got from point A to point B by suggestion only.

“How’ve you been?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“I want to ask you a few questions, T.S., and I want truthful answers. This is important, so you have to be straight with me.”

“Sure, Mr. Nash.”

“Who shot Jessie when you were down at the hole? The first shot.”

“That was Zack.”

“You didn’t shoot her?”

David detected a flicker of fear.

“Honest, Mr. Nash. I didn’t never shoot her.”

“And up on the mountain? Who shot at her there?”

The boy’s right hand raised slowly and began to pick at a whitehead on his cheek. The tip of Seals’s tongue licked his lower lip, then darted back into his mouth.

“Well?”

“Uh…well, there was Zack. He done it first, right after we left her. Then we drove off some and Sticks said we should make sure. So we turned around and Sticks asked Zack if he could take a shot and Zack give him the gun.”

David watched T.S. closely. Remembering anything seemed to exhaust him. He wondered what it would be like to go through life with a brain that worked so slowly.

“T.S., did you ever shoot the gun?”

The hand dropped from the pimple and T.S. looked afraid.

“No, honest. They don’t say I done it, do they?”

“I want to know.”

“No, no. Zack said he’d let me try, but I was too bummed out. I said no and Sticks just took another shot.”

“What do you mean, bummed out?”

“I was tired,” T.S. said, sagging back in his chair, as if he had forgotten that he had been frightened only seconds before. He went back to worrying the pimple.

“T.S., just between us, if you hadn’t been tired, would you have shot her?”

T.S. considered the question and David wondered why he had asked it. What difference did it make? He had won. T.S. would be a free man after he testified at the trials of his former friends, and David would have earned his fee. Why did he need to know the truth about this idiot boy who would soon be at large again?

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. The pimple burst and white pus squeezed through his fingers. David felt cold and alone. The empty room was suddenly too close, and he wanted to get out.

“The district attorney has offered us a deal, T.S. She feels that she needs your testimony to convict Sticks and Zack. If you are willing to testify against them, she will grant you complete immunity. Do you know what that means?”

T.S. shook his head. His fingers were at work on another pimple.

“It means you go free. That they drop the charges against you for shooting Jessie.”

The fingers still worked, the stare was still vacant.

“I can go home?” he finally asked.

“After you’ve testified.”

“I have to testify in court?”

David nodded.

“Gee, I don’t know,” he said. Seals was trying to piece it together. David leaned back and let him think. He was floating and he needed some air. Dizzy. If he had some water.

“I guess it would be okay,” T.S. said finally. There was no excitement, no elation. David wondered if Seals even cared. For T.S. the world was a torment where everything was too complicated. He was a man made for prison where the rules and regulations set him free from the arduous task of having to make decisions.

“You’ll have to get on the witness stand in court and say exactly what happened, and you’ll have to take a liedetector test first, so the district attorney can be sure you’re being truthful. Will you do that?”

“If you say so,” the boy said. He had stopped picking his face apart and thought for a second. “I can really go home?”

“Yes, T.S.”

T.S. smiled, but only for a brief moment. Then he looked at David.

“You know, the guys in here said I was lucky to have you as my lawyer. They said you’d beat the rap for me.”

David stood to go. It was very warm in the narrow room and he needed air badly. He looked down at the idiot boy at the table and saw him back on the streets, the way he’d be in six months or a year. Back on drugs. Doing…what? Would he pull the trigger next time? Would there be a next time? David knew there would be, because he could see with his own eyes what Tony Seals was. His hands began to itch as if they were very dirty.

“I thought you’d gone home,” Gregory Banks said.

David was sitting in his office in the dark. His jacket was folded over the back of a chair on the other side of his desk, and his tie was undone. He had turned his desk chair so that it faced the river, where a tugboat flowed with the current like a firefly tracing the path of a piece of carelessly thrown black ribbon.

“Just thinking,” David said. He sounded down.

“Want to talk, or should I leave?”

David swiveled around and faced his friend.

“Do you ever wonder what the hell we’re doing, Greg?”

Banks sat down.

“This does sound serious,” he said, half joking.

“I just made a deal with the DA. Tony Seals is going to get complete immunity.”

“That’s great!” Gregory said, puzzled by David’s mood. He was close to the Sealses, and he knew what this would mean to them.

“Is it? What do I do six months from now when Tony kills someone and his parents want to hire me because I did such a good job today?”

“The DA made the offer, Dave. You were just representing your client.”

“Jah, mein Herr, I vas chust following orders,” David said bitterly.

“Why don’t you tell me what brought all this on.”

“I don’t know, Greg,” David said. Gregory waited patiently for him to continue. “I guess I’ve just been taking a good look at the way I earn my living, and I’m not sure I like what I see. There are people out there hurting other people. The cops arrest them, the prosecutors prosecute them, and I shovel the garbage right back into the street. You know, that’s an apt metaphor. Maybe they should start calling us sanitary engineers.”

“I think you’re getting a little melodramatic, don’t you? What about that kid you helped out? The college kid who got busted with the marijuana. He was guilty of a felony, right? Should he have been convicted? If you hadn’t beaten that case, he wouldn’t be in medical school. And you beat that case using the same legal arguments you used to get that heroin dealer off last year. You can’t have two systems of justice.”

“Maybe not, Greg. Your arguments, as always, are very logical. That’s what makes you such a good lawyer. But I just made a deal today that is going to permit a very sick young man, who made a young girl dig her own grave and left her to die, to walk out of jail scot-free.

“You know, when I got into this business, I saw myself as a knight in shining armor defending the innocent, the unjustly accused. How many innocent people have I represented, Greg? After a while you realize there aren’t any innocent men, only a lot of guilty ones who can pay pretty good for a smart lawyer. So at first you rationalize what you’re doing, but eventually you’re just in it for the money.”

“Look, Dave, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been through it, too. Anyone who practices criminal law and has a conscience has to deal with the conflict between that idealized crap they teach you in law school and the way the real world is, but the picture you’re painting isn’t accurate either.

“You are a good lawyer and you do good, honest work. There are innocent people who get arrested. There are people, like that college kid, who are guilty but shouldn’t be convicted. In order to help them, you have to help people like Tony Seals. It’s the system that’s important. It’s the only thing that keeps this country from being Nazi Germany. You think about that.”

“I do, Greg. Look, I know what you believe and I respect you for it. My problem is, I don’t know what I believe in anymore. I know what I used to believe in, and I’m beginning to think I sold that out when the money started getting too good.”

Gregory started to say something, then changed his mind. He remembered the agonies he had gone through over this same question. He never had to find an answer, because he’d stopped taking criminal cases, except those that interested him, when he’d started doing more and more work for the union. Greg had made his fortune by winning big verdicts in personal-injury cases and dealing tough at negotiating sessions for union contracts. Getting out of criminal law was no problem for him.

David was different. He had no interest in any other area of the law. He had tried to branch out, but he had always come back to his criminal practice. And why not? He made a good living at it and he loved what he did. Only now he was beginning to question his worth because of his work.

“You want to go get a drink?” Gregory asked. It was quiet in the evening offices. A few associates staying late to work on problems assigned by the partners made an occasional disturbance in the dark rhythms. David stood up and put on his suit jacket.

“I think I’ll just go home.”

“I could tell Helen to set another place for dinner.”

“No, I’d rather be by myself.”

“Okay. Just promise me you won’t let this drag you down.”

“I’ll try,” David said, making an effort to smile.

After David left, Gregory walked back to his office. He looked at his watch. It was late. He was working too damn late recently. He’d have to cut that out. He sighed. He’d been telling himself that since he started practice, what was it, over twenty years ago. That was a long time, twenty years.

He sat at his desk and started to proofread the brief he had been writing. Poor David. There were advantages to being in your fifties. Growing up was hell and you never really stopped. You thought you did when you got out of your teens. Then you found out that the crises were just starting.

David was a good boy, though. A sound thinker. What he needed was a case he could believe in. There had been too many hard cases lately. He needed to feel his worth again. A good case would come along. It was the law of averages.