“Eat,” the man said.
The chains rattled as Percy reached for the sandwich. He was starving, which gave him some indication of how long he’d been unconscious. He chewed off a big bite and swallowed. Some kind of lunch meat on white bread, and it was swimming in Hellmann’s—an obvious play on the stereotype that black people hate mayonnaise. “Rapper repellent” was what Percy had once heard a totally hilarious food service attendant call it at the student union on campus. Percy was used to that kind of day-in and day-out bullshit. “Expect it,” his high school guidance counselor had told him when he’d turned down Howard and Fisk for a predominantly white university.
A gob of warm mayonnaise dripped onto his pants. Assholes. Percy scarfed down the sandwich anyway.
“Happy now?” the man asked.
Percy didn’t answer.
“You should be,” the man said. “Wouldn’t be feeding you if we was going to kill you, now would I?”
The thought had occurred to Percy, but attributing logic to anyone motivated by hate was a leap.
The man opened a bottle of water and handed it to Percy. “But don’t get too giddy. You live only if the Theta brothers walk on all charges.”
Percy drank his water. He understood the legal system well enough to know that it might be months before the Theta brothers walked—or were convicted.
The guy took away Percy’s water bottle, retrieved a metal bucket from the tool bench, and laid it on the floor near Percy. “You know what that’s for,” he said. “I’m only gonna dump it once a day. You knock it over, you lay in it.”
Percy was in need of a bathroom, but the thought of spending the next twenty-four hours alongside a bucket of his own waste took away some of the urgency.
His captor tore a fresh strip of duct tape from the roll and covered Percy’s mouth. “Don’t cause any trouble, and who knows, black boy? You might not end up like Jamal.”
Percy cast his gaze downward. He recognized those steel-toed boots—the ones that had kicked his face so hard that he’d felt whiplash.
“Might not,” the man added, and then he walked away.
The hinges squeaked as the door swung open. He switched off the light, and the door closed with a thud.
Percy was alone in the darkness.
CHAPTER 47
Jack went from the courthouse to his motel room after the hearing. He was dialing Andie, just to check in and say hello, when his cell rang with an incoming call. He didn’t recognize the number, but if Mark was calling collect from jail, Jack didn’t want to miss it. He answered.
“Jack, this is Blair Robinson.”
Baine’s father. Jack recognized the strong and confident voice, even though they’d spoken only once before—by telephone, right before Mark’s expulsion hearing at the university, when he’d recommended that Mr. Robinson hire a lawyer for his son.
“How soon can you meet with me?” asked Robinson. The question was loaded with the usual presumptiveness of a successful CEO, most of whom thought that the world would jump at the chance to meet them.
“Mr. Robinson, I’ve already talked this out with Leonard Oden. As I told Judge Teague, there will be no joint defense arrangement between your son and my client.”
“I heard. But you’re mistaken if you think there’s no benefit to joining forces. What budget has the Towson family given you on this case?”
“That’s between my client and me.”
“But there is a budget, right? My point is this. Leonard Oden has no budget. I will pay whatever it costs to prove that my son is innocent.”
“Well, I hope your money is well spent.”
“So far, so good. Your client is in jail. My son’s not. Your client has been indicted. My son has yet to be formally charged with anything.”
If there had been any chance of Jack warming up to him, it had just evaporated. “Pardon the free advice, but you’d be foolish to assume that Baine won’t be charged.”
“We’ll know soon enough. Leonard told me that the state attorney has twenty-one days from the arrest warrant to charge Baine by written information or to get a grand jury indictment.”
“That’s correct,” said Jack. “I expect that Oliver Boalt will use that time to put incredible pressure on your son to double down on his testimony against Mark. If Baine agrees, Boalt will accept a plea of something less than murder in the first degree. If he doesn’t, Boalt will go back to the grand jury and ask for the death penalty. The fact that your son hasn’t been formally charged yet is purely a negotiation tactic.”
“You may be right,” said Robinson, and then his voice turned very serious. “But a lot can happen in three weeks.”
It came across as anything but a casual remark. “What are you getting at, Mr. Robinson?”
“Look, Jack. I’ve always liked Mark Towson. A good kid. His parents seem like nice folks.”
“He is a good kid. And the good ones don’t lynch other students.”
“That’s for sure,” said Robinson. “I know Baine didn’t do it. I’d like to believe that Mark had nothing to do with it, either.”
“He didn’t. But to prove it, I will have to show that your son lied to the grand jury. So I don’t see the point of this conversation.”
“The point is . . .” Robinson waited a moment, then finished his answer. “Maybe Baine was confused when he said Mark was bragging about what he did to Jamal.”
“Confused?”
“Or scared, and pressured to point the finger at Mark Towson by an overzealous prosecutor who’s running for reelection.”
Jack walked to the window. He could see the courthouse. The jail, too. “Are you telling me that your son is willing to recant his testimony?”
“Let’s leave that aside for the moment. What I’m telling you is this: I can prove that the people who kidnapped Percy Donovan from the Kappa house last night are the same people who lynched Jamal Cousin.”
“How?”
Robinson laughed arrogantly. “Maybe you didn’t hear what I said earlier, Jack. Leonard Oden has no budget.”
It wasn’t clear if he meant hiring the best private investigators, which was fine, or buying witnesses, which wasn’t. The fact that Jack was left wondering told him how to respond.
“I’m not interested.”
Another chuckle. “Just like your old man. Harry didn’t want to accept my campaign contributions—at first. Eventually he came around. So I’ll take your ‘no’ as a ‘maybe.’ Think it over. Talk to Mark and his parents if you want. You call me back with the right answer. Soon, I hope.”
He hung up without waiting for Jack to say good-bye.
CHAPTER 48
Reporters hounded Oliver Boalt all the way from the courthouse to the office of the state attorney, stretching a three-minute walk across the street into a half-hour trek. The questions ran the gamut, from Mark’s jailhouse “confession” and the evidence against Baine Robinson to a possible link between the disappearance of Percy Donovan and the lynching of Jamal Cousin. The prosecutor’s answers boiled down to the same message: “We will prosecute everyone involved to the fullest extent of the law.”
The state attorney arrived in time for a scheduled meeting with Leroy Highsmith, who was waiting in his office. The men greeted each other cordially. Boalt’s secretary brought coffee and closed the door on her way out, leaving them alone in the sitting area by the window. A coffee table, not the power statement of Boalt’s antique desk, was between them. Small talk was short. His campaign was in the homestretch, and Boalt got straight to business.
“I’ve been thinking about timing,” said Boalt, “and the endorsement should probably come no later than Monday.”
Highsmith crossed one leg over the other, balancing his cup and saucer on one knee. “I’m not going to endorse you, Oliver.”
The state attorney smiled, thinking that Highsmith was joking. The expression on Highsmith’s face, however, was stone-cold serious.
“What’s the problem now?�
� asked Boalt.
“First of all, you don’t need my endorsement. You’re an incumbent without a serious challenger.”
“Black turnout is going to be double what it normally is. Maybe triple, now that Percy Donovan has gone missing.”
“There’s no reason to fear the black vote. You’ve indicted Mark Towson. You’re working just as hard to build the case against Baine Robinson. You’ve done the right thing. Black folk can see it with their own eyes. They don’t need me telling them.”
That was high praise from a man like Highsmith. Boalt only wished that he’d said it in front of a television camera. “It can’t hurt for them to hear it from you.”
“Jamal’s family prefers that I be apolitical. But let’s see how it goes. If you run into some tough sledding, I may reconsider.”
“I will hold you to that. I may need it.”
“I seriously doubt it.”
Boalt considered his response. He could have elaborated in a vague way—said that all politicians have skeletons in the closet, and that one never knew what land mine might explode on the political landscape. But such generalities wouldn’t likely change Highsmith’s mind.
And getting into specifics was definitely not an option.
“Okay,” said Boalt. “Let’s stay in touch on this.”
“There is one more thing,” said Highsmith. “I’ve been told that the FBI is getting involved in both the Donovan and Cousin investigations.”
The prosecutor wasn’t sure who his sources were, but they sure were reliable. “I can’t speak to you about that, Leroy.”
“That’s fine. I just want to make sure you understand my concern. Years ago, when I was at Berkeley, it was the height of the Oakland Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.”
“You were a Black Panther?”
“The party welcomed all brothers and sisters. Which ties in with the point I’m trying to make. The FBI exploited that inclusiveness.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ll give you a perfect example. About a year after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the party, Huey was convicted of manslaughter. It was later reversed on appeal, I might add, but before that, I was at a ‘Free Huey’ rally at Bobby Hutton Memorial Park in Oakland. We were called into order and formation, and I was lined up next to this really big brother—six foot eight, three hundred fifty pounds, easy. I didn’t remember seeing him at any other rallies, but like I say, we were inclusive, so I figured all was cool. Except that right from the beginning, this dude seemed off. Acting strange. Real aggressive, too. He was out to hurt somebody before the rally even started. Then I noticed what he was wearing under his black leather jacket. It was a hospital gown.”
“I’m not sure I see what you’re getting at, Leroy.”
Highsmith leaned forward, placing his coffee cup and saucer on the table. “He was from a psychiatric ward. And he wasn’t the only one. The FBI rounded up psych patients, took them off their meds to make sure they were violent, dressed them in black leather jackets and berets, and turned them loose at our rallies.”
Boalt blinked in disbelief. “Come on. That’s not true.”
“Look it up,” said Highsmith. “The reports are public now. CIA Project CHAOS, FBI COINTELPRO. It was the kind of shit they did to discredit the movement, and the Oakland police stood by and let them do it.”
Boalt still didn’t accept it, but he didn’t want to insult the one black civil rights activist who might endorse his candidacy. “Fine. But even if what you’re saying is true, it’s ancient history. That’s not what the FBI involvement is about here.”
Highsmith leveled his stare. “That’s what they tell you, Oliver. The FBI will do it again, if the locals let them.”
There was a knock at the door. It opened, and the state attorney’s assistant poked her head into the office. “Excuse me, Oliver. There’s a woman here to see you.”
“I’m in a meeting,” he said, sounding more annoyed than he’d intended.
His assistant recoiled slightly. “I know, and I’m so sorry to interrupt. But she’s been waiting, and she’s very old. She said you’d know it’s really, really important.”
“Who is it?”
“Her name is Cynthia,” the assistant said. “Cynthia Porter.”
Highsmith studied the state attorney’s reaction, curious to know who the important old lady was. Boalt didn’t explain, but he feared that perhaps his body language did make an allusion, however oblique, to those unspeakable land mines on the political landscape that could upend even a popular incumbent.
Cynthia Porter was definitely one of them.
“I believe we were just about finished,” Boalt said, rising. “Leroy, I’ll be letting you know if I need that endorsement.”
CHAPTER 49
It was time to counterpunch.
Jack liked to land his most devastating blows in a courtroom, but sometimes the opportunity arose outside the ring, so to speak, well after the bell. Jack reminded himself of that as he entered the Suwannee County Jail. He wasn’t there to see his client. He’d put in a request to meet with Mark’s cellmate. Jack was finishing his lunch when a collect call came from the jail.
“You’re on my list,” said Bulldog, meaning that he’d added Jack’s name to his authorized list of visitors.
It wasn’t technically an attorney-client meeting, but the corrections officer took Jack to the same visitation room where he’d met with Mark. It was there, seated at the same table, that Mark had told Jack about his first night in jail.
Jack was no stranger to involuntary confessions. His first win at the Freedom Institute was for a fifteen-year-old boy with an IQ of 70 who’d “confessed” to killing his sister after police lied and told him that his mother had seen him do it and that she never wanted to see him again unless he wrote her a letter of apology. The interrogator provided the pen and paper and helped him craft it. Other cases were less obvious: Was it coercive to appeal to the conscience of a lifelong Catholic by asking him to lead police to a missing body because his victim deserved “a good Christian burial”? The circumstances of Mark’s “confession,” however, were unlike any Jack had encountered before. Perhaps the closest analogy was a gun to the head. But it was no “gun” that Bulldog had shoved in Mark’s face when he’d pushed Mark into the lower bunk in the dark jail cell, pulled the blanket down like a curtain that hung from the top mattress frame, and sat on Mark’s chest. What made it especially difficult was that, like many victims, Mark didn’t want anyone to know the details. He simply didn’t want to talk about the circumstances that led to the words “Yeah, I did it”—not in private with his attorney, and definitely not in a packed public courtroom.
The door opened. Bulldog entered the room and took a seat opposite Jack at the table. Bulldog wasn’t charged with a capital crime, so he wasn’t shackled, which made it seem even more absurd that Mark had been for his meeting with Jack. Purple tattoos crept up both sides of Bulldog’s neck to his earlobes. He was slouching in his chair, as if trying to convey only cool indifference.
“You wanted to talk?”
“I do,” said Jack.
“I’m listening, my friend.”
Jack had met guys like Bulldog before—total losers with a lengthy criminal record who’d somehow managed to avoid getting caught for their worst offenses and sent away for good. It was a pretty safe bet that half the men on death row had committed less heinous crimes than the ones Bulldog had gotten away with.
“Let me be clear from the get-go, Bulldog. I’m not here to bargain with you. I’m not going to waste my time trying to reason with you. And I am definitely not your ‘friend.’”
“Fine by me.”
Jack didn’t break eye contact. “Mark Towson did not confess to the murder of Jamal Cousin.”
“Maybe not to you. But he did to me.”
“Did he also confess to kidnapping Percy Donovan? That would be pretty interesting, seeing how he was locked up at the time.”
The smug expression remained on Bulldog’s face. “No. Just told me that he lynched Jamal Cousin, and, hey, I got no problem with that.”
“Did he also confess to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.?”
“No.”
“How about Malcolm X? Did he confess to shooting him?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you he was the guy who pumped three bullets into the back of Huey P. Long’s head?”
Bulldog sighed, as if this were getting tiresome. “No.”
“Because Mark would have admitted to all those things, if you’d told him it was either that or be your prison bitch.”
Bulldog leaned forward, resting his massive forearms on the table and casting his most intimidating gaze at Jack. “Do I look like some kind of fag to you, Swyteck?”
“No,” said Jack, glancing at the tattoo on Bulldog’s right forearm—a shamrock inscribed with the number 666. “You look like AB to me.”
AB—Aryan Brotherhood—was the oldest and best-organized white supremacist organization operating in the American prison system. Born of the intense racial wars of the 1960s and 1970s, AB’s racist ideology had taken a back seat to profit, and the modern AB was known to work with Latino gangs and others on everything from drug trafficking to male prostitution inside prison walls.
“Never heard of AB,” Bulldog said, smirking.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Jack. “You spent nine years in Florida State Prison at Raiford, right?”
“Nine years, five months, and twenty-three days.”
“That’s a long time to be without a woman.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So when you go into the courtroom and lie about Mark’s confession—when you deny that you threatened Mark Towson with sexual violence—here’s what will happen. I’ll call to the witness stand every inmate you raped at Raiford. The judge will hear it. The prosecutor will hear it. Everyone in the courtroom will hear it. The whole fucking world will hear it. And then they can decide for themselves what you are.”
The cockiness started to drain from Bulldog’s expression. “I didn’t fuck nobody at Raiford.”
A Death in Live Oak Page 19
