Sycamore Row

Wade Lanier asked, “In what order will they be seated for selection, Your Honor?”



“Entirely at random.”



The lawyers were silent as they rapidly read through the names. Jake had a distinct advantage because it was home turf. Every time he looked at a jury list, though, he was astonished at how few names he recognized. A former client here, a church member there. A high school buddy from Karaway. His mother’s first cousin. A quick review yielded maybe twenty hits out of ninety-seven. Harry Rex would know even more. Ozzie would know all the black ones and many of the whites. Lucien would boast about how many he knew, but in reality he’d been sitting on the front porch for too long.



Wade Lanier and Lester Chilcott, from Jackson, recognized no one, but they would have plenty of help. They were chumming up with the Sullivan firm, at nine lawyers still the biggest in the county, and there would be a lot of advice.



At 12:30, Judge Atlee was tired and dismissed everyone. Jake hurried out of the courtroom, wondering if the old man was physically up to a grueling trial. He was also worried about which rules would control the trial. It was obvious the official rules, the new ones on the books, would not be strictly adhered to.



Regardless of the rules, Jake, and every other lawyer in the state, knew the Supreme Court of Mississippi was famous for deferring to the wisdom of local Chancellors. They were there, in the heat of the battle. They saw the faces, heard the testimony, felt the tension. Who are we, the Supreme Court had asked itself over the decades, to sit here far removed and dispassionately substitute our judgment for Chancellor So-and-So?



As always, the trial would be governed by Reuben’s Rules.



Whatever they happened to be at any particular moment.



Wade Lanier and Lester Chilcott walked straight to the offices of the Sullivan firm and made their way to a conference room on the second floor. A platter of sandwiches was waiting, as was a feisty little man with a crisp Upper Midwest accent. He was Myron Pankey, a former lawyer who’d found a niche in the relatively new field of jury consultation, an area of expertise now nudging itself into many major trials. For a handsome fee, Pankey and his staff would work all sorts of miracles and deliver the perfect jury, or at least the best available. A phone survey had already been done. Two hundred registered voters in counties adjoining Ford County had been interviewed. Fifty percent said a person should be able to leave his or her estate to anyone, even at the expense of his or her own family. But 90 percent would be suspicious of a handwritten will that left everything to the last caregiver. The data had piled up and was still being analyzed at Pankey’s home office in Cleveland. Race was not a factor in any part of the survey.



Based on the preliminary numbers, Wade Lanier was optimistic. He ate a sandwich while standing and talking and sipping a Diet Coke through a straw. Copies of the jury lists were made and scattered across the conference table. Each of the nine members of the Sullivan firm was given a copy and asked to review the names as soon as possible, though all were swamped as usual and just couldn’t see how they could add five more minutes of work to their overloaded schedules.



A greatly enlarged road map of Ford County was mounted along one wall. A former Clanton cop named Sonny Nance was already sticking numbered pins onto streets and roads where the jurors lived. Nance was from Clanton, married to a woman from Karaway, and said he knew everyone. He’d been hired by Myron Pankey to showcase this knowledge. At 1:30, four more new employees arrived and received their instructions. Lanier was blunt but precise. He wanted color photos of each home, each neighborhood, each vehicle if possible. If there were stickers on the bumpers, take photos. But do not, under any circumstances, take the risk of getting caught. Pose as survey takers, bill collectors, insurance runners delivering checks, door-to-door proselytizers, whatever might be believable, but talk to the neighbors and learn what you can without being suspicious. Do not, under any circumstances, have direct contact with any potential juror. Find out where these people work, worship, and send their kids to school. We have the basics—name, age, sex, race, address, voting precinct—and nothing else. So there are a lot of blanks to be filled in.



Lanier said, “You cannot get caught. If your activity arouses suspicion, then immediately disappear. If you are confronted, give them a bogus name and report back here. Even if you think you might be spotted, leave, disappear, and eventually call in. Questions?”



None of the four were from Ford County, so the chances of being recognized were zero. Two were former cops, two were part-time investigators; they knew how to work the streets. “How much time do we have?” one asked.



“The trial starts two weeks from today. Check in every other day and give us the info you’ve collected. Friday of next week is the deadline.”



“Let’s go,” one said.



“And don’t get caught.”



Jake’s expert trial consultant was also his secretary/paralegal. Since Judge Atlee was now administering the estate as if all funds came directly from his own tight pocket, a real consultant was out of the question. Portia would be in charge of gathering the data, or rather, keeping up with all of it. At 4:30 Monday afternoon, she, Jake, Lucien, and Harry Rex gathered in a workroom on the second floor, next to her old office. Present also was Nick Norton, a lawyer from across the square who had represented Marvis Lang two years earlier.



They went through all ninety-seven names.



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.”