Death Penalty

by William J. Coughlin

  SPRING HAD COME TO BELLE ISLE. Cars were moving slowly over the bridge, the only connection between the city and its two-mile-long island park. The procession was bumper to bumper, a line of vehicles, some with families, some with hot-eyed kids, all moving toward the island, that sylvan escape from the grim realities of the City of Detroit.

  A police car had positioned itself at the foot of the bridge, a silent reminder that some of those grim realities came over the bridge with the traffic.

  Belle Isle had once been the jewel in the crown of Detroit. The island, a half mile wide, sat in the Detroit River like a green boat. On one side was Detroit, on the other Canada. The city had bought it as a park and hired Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who had designed New York’s Central Park, to do the same with the island.

  He had done an outstanding job, creating a place with pools, streams, forests, ball parks, all a quarter mile away by a free bridge.

  But the park had become like a woman who sits in the shadows at the end of a dim bar. At first she looks spectacular, like she did once, but as you approach, you see the flaws. She hasn’t aged well, and she hasn’t kept herself up the way she used to. She’s still pretty, with help, but no longer truly beautiful. The island was like that. Benches needed painting, the roadways needed new pavement, the grass needed cutting. The old riding stable was closed and boarded up. The poverty on the city side had stolen quietly over the bridge and squatted down in what had once been splendor. Even the small herd of tame deer, begging for handouts at the roadside, looked moth-eaten.

  But poverty had been stopped at the small bridge to the Fountain Yacht Club. Money still lived there in a guarded enclave, and everything was just as wonderful and glistening as it had been in the roaring twenties, when the place had been built on a landfill just off the main island.

  There are three yacht clubs on Belle Isle. The oldest, nearest the big bridge, is city owned now, and it is crumbling just like the island. The one in the middle, the Detroit Yacht Club, is well kept, but even there the future seems uncertain, a bit like an elegant British cricket club in Kenya just before Her Majesty abandoned the place. The music at the yacht club is still pleasant and the gin is cold, but rumblings are heard and the servants are no longer quite so civil.

  The Fountain Yacht Club, however, still holds forth as a bastion of the old values: money, privilege, and greed. No longer does the Fountain, as Detroiters call it, bar Jews and Negroes. If they have money, lots of it, and believe in privilege and greed, they are welcomed as equals.

  I once belonged to the Fountain, in other times, when I had money, lots of it, and saw no fault in privilege or greed, more or less. I had been thrown out, sans ceremony, when I could no longer pay my bar bill or the dues. In those days, there were very few places that I wasn’t eventually thrown out of.

  As I drove over the cute little bridge toward the cute little guard post, I hoped they wouldn’t remember.

  Berlin was no longer divided, but the Fountain had its own Iron Curtain, complete with border guards, men who wore guns and looked as if they would welcome the chance to use them.

  I rolled down my window as the guard came out of the small post building and glared at me as if I owed him money.

  “I’m a guest of Miss Caitlin Palmer,” I said, trying to sound as friendly as I could.

  For a minute I wondered if he had heard me, then he spoke.

  “Name?”

  “Charles Sloan,” I said, hoping they had no current list of former deadbeats.

  He studied the papers he had on a clipboard. He did it very slowly and carefully, as if a mistake might be fatal. Finally he spotted my name.

  He looked up and forced a practiced smile, formal, without warmth. “Very good, Mr. Sloan,” he said. “Just follow the drive along to the parking area marked visitors. Miss Palmer asks that you join her on the boat Sirocco II. It’s the last one out on Main Dock. Everything’s marked. You can’t miss it.”

  I nodded my appreciation, rolled up the window, and drove along the well-remembered hedge-lined path.

  The main building of the yacht club looked like the country palace of an English Tudor lord, all yellow stucco and dark wood. Inside, that Tudor effect had been maintained, even in the club’s main dining room. The main building housed an enormous bar, an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, club rooms devoted to various interests—mostly nautical—a library, and a great room, complete with a fireplace that could easily roast several cows, and had enough room to seat five hundred wellpadded people.

  Mostly, members used only the bar.

  It was not yet eight o’clock, but it was Saturday night and the parking lots were almost full. Valets parked the members’ cars. Aliens, like myself, found our own way.

  I located a space in the visitors’ lot between a big Mercedes and a small Toyota. They might offer membership to the Mercedes owner some day, but the Toyota driver didn’t have a chance.

  I took the path that led to the outside pools and the docks.

  Unlike the island, the place was maintained as well as a naval vessel anticipating an inspection. I remembered some very good times at the club, and I knew I had had some very good times there that I didn’t remember.

  I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone who knew me then.

  There were four large docks that jutted out into the man-made harbor. Not all the boats were yet in their berths. It was early and I knew that some of them were probably being sailed up from their winter homes in Florida or the Caribbean. The biggest yachts were moored at Main Dock.

  The docks were spotless, each adorned with antique lampposts that would rival Venice.

  It was nice. I could hear the slap of lines and the sound that boats make and smell the fragrance of the river itself. Gulls wheeled above.

  Across, on the Detroit side, were other marinas, so the shore appeared pleasant. Only a Detroiter would know that just beyond that seascape an area existed that would rival anything offered in the worst Third World slum, and fully as dangerous. But if you were at the Fountain, you didn’t think about things like that.

  Somewhere, back at the main building, a small combo was playing Cole Porter.

  Suddenly I missed drinking so I hurried along the dock, past several dock boys, college kids hired as much for looks as ability, and toward the big boat at the end.

  The Sirocco was moored with the stern in. It was enormous, or seemed so, the kind of racy yacht you see in movies or with Robin Leach standing on the deck gushing on about the wealth of some sultan or arms dealer.

  Several people, in their best casual wear and sipping drinks, were standing on the aft deck, an area as large as some houses.

  “Charley!”

  Cat Palmer came rushing down the gangplank. She was dressed in a stark white sailor outfit, only no sailor ever looked like that. It was bright and tight, and while chaste, it really wasn’t. She had let her hair down, literally, and the total effect was erotic.

  She could see that in my eyes. “Like me?” she asked softly.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Come on, I’ll introduce you around.” She looked down at my shoes.

  I knew what she was thinking. I lifted a foot to show the sole. “Docksiders,” I said. “I used to belong here. I know how touchy boat people can be about marks.”

  She laughed. “Especially my father. Come on. Let me show you off a bit.”

  It was a typical law school collection, professors who were minor gods to their students and who had taken on divine airs. It made no difference whether they were male or female, the sureness about the universe and their place in it was almost palpable. The wives and husbands were just a little easier to take.

  Some of the professors knew about me, their eyes letting me know they knew the bad as well as the good.

  One of them said he had tried a case against me years ago. I didn’t remember him or the case, but I made a mental note to avoid him if I could, since he looked like he wanted an informal rematch.

>   I took a proffered orange juice from a young waiter and Cat offered to show me the boat.

  Calling it a boat was like calling New York a village. The damn thing had staterooms below that were as big as the Ritz. Above, it was fitted with more electronic gadgets than the Concorde. Everything was top of the line and looked it.

  I made the appropriate oohs and ahhs.

  Cat led me to the prow and we sat down with our feet dangling over.

  It was a warm evening, warm enough to be pleasant. She sipped wine while I nursed the orange juice.

  We sat silently for a while, looking around at the other boats, enjoying the quiet, listening to some more strains of Cole Porter.

  “Nice,” I said.

  She nodded. “I was practically raised here at the club. It’s like home in a way. Of course, it’s the center of my father’s life.”

  She pointed up at a short mast near the radar. “See that?”

  “The flag?”

  “It shows that Daddy is a former commodore of the club. I think he’s prouder of that than being on the bench. He’s also chairman of the trustees now. For all practical purposes, he runs the club.”

  She sipped her wine. “Oh, there’s a club director who does the actual day-to-day stuff, the hiring and firing, but he reports to my father.” She giggled. “Daddy says this is his country and he’s king.”

  “It sounds like he is.”

  “Whatever, he loves it. Whenever he visits another club, here or in Florida, it’s like visiting royalty come to call. He pretends he’s above it all, but he isn’t. He eats it up.”

  “Does he ever take this vessel out?”

  “Not often anymore, just special occasions like the start of the Mackinac race, that sort of thing. He can do it himself, with a crew, of course, but he uses a captain now. He has a man on call when he needs him.”

  “Slightly expensive, from the looks of things.”

  “You bet, but he’s made careful investments and this is how he likes to spend the money. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  “Guess not. It’s his money.”

  We sat again in silence.

  “I like you, Charley,” she said quietly.

  “I like you too. I liked you when you were a little lad.”

  “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  She smiled and gazed off at a row of moored sailboats. “Times have changed, Charley. A grown woman no longer has to bat her eyelashes hoping that a man’ll ask her out.”

  “So?”

  “So, will we see each other again?”

  I took a sip from my glass, but the orange juice was gone. “Boy, girl, you mean?”

  “I prefer man, woman, but yes.”

  She was looking directly at me now.

  “Cat, I’ve got an important case coming up before your father, as you know. Next week, as a matter of fact. After that, I don’t know how long the panel might take to come down with a decision. I don’t think it would look kosher if I were romancing the judge’s daughter, at least under those circumstances, would it?”

  “I’m surprised. After all this time, you really don’t know my father very well. Something like that wouldn’t affect his decision one way or the other.”

  “I wonder. For openers, there’s a considerable difference in our ages.”

  “He likes you, Charley. But, as I say, even that wouldn’t affect him.”

  “Maybe not, Cat. But it wouldn’t look good to some others perhaps.”

  “Are you saying we can’t go out until your damn case is over and done?”

  “Exactly.”

  She glanced away and said nothing for a moment.

  “Afterward?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  She studied the sailboats again. “I usually get what I go after, Charley. It seems only fair to warn you.”

  We rejoined the others on the fantail. As I thought, my old opponent wanted to reargue the old case he said we had tried. He was hitting the wine pretty hard and his wife looked alarmed. I managed to wiggle away, and after a time I told Cat I was leaving.

  She walked me to my car.

  She kissed me good-bye with surprising passion, then stepped back.

  “The minute the decision comes off press,” she said quietly, “I’m coming after you.”

  She wasn’t smiling.

  I drove off the island thinking that maybe ending up with a rich man’s daughter wouldn’t be the worst fate in the world.

  I just wondered how the rich man might feel about that.

  7

  Mickey Monk had begun to call on a daily basis as the date for argument approached. There was no point to the calls, he had no last-minute instructions, nor did he urge me to even greater efforts. Mostly it was like a form of prayer, and drunken prayers at that. Mickey’s rate of drinking was accelerating alarmingly. Sometimes I could hardly understand him. Usually those were the calls that came late at night.

  I tried to reassure him, but I didn’t think I was doing a very good job.

  To his credit, I think Mickey’s primary concern was really Will McHugh and what was going to happen to him if the appeal was lost. Mickey’s own desperate plight was in second place, although it looked like a close second.

  If the case was lost, McHugh would exist in a kind of nightmare, a helpless creature encapsulated in an aging trailer, incapable even of the option to kill himself.

  Mickey Monk would be thrown into bankruptcy; his office would close, and with no inclination to stop drinking, he would most likely lose his license and look forward, if he lasted that long, to a life on the streets.

  But nothing would happen to me.

  Oddly, I didn’t find that thought as consoling as it might have been.

  So I put in a little more effort than usual. For the few days before the court date, I adjourned everything so I could concentrate on my research to ensure that no matter what the judges might ask I would be able to answer and, I hoped, persuade them.

  I felt ready and I should have been confident. But whether it was my mental picture of McHugh, or Mickey’s drunken calls, I was becoming increasingly anxious.

  A nervous lawyer is not a good thing to be, not for the lawyer, and especially not for the client.

  The afternoon before the hearing I called the court. Sometimes there are, for any number of reasons, last-minute adjournments. Judges get sick, or something else unexpected happens. The courts, especially appellate courts, are tough about granting adjournments, but sometimes it does happen upon showing extreme emergency.

  It wasn’t happening with the McHugh appeal. Everything was on schedule.

  I should have been pleased and eager. But I wasn’t.

  I again wished I hadn’t taken the case, my reluctance still rooted in a kind of nameless dread.

  I doubted I could get an adjournment by pleading nameless dread as an extreme emergency, so I accepted my fate and restudied my notes.

  THE COURT OF APPEALS had scheduled three cases for argument. The McHugh case was number two. The court started, at least this panel did, at nine o’clock. Each side in each case, where oral argument is requested, is entitled to thirty minutes each. So, if everything went according to plan, the first case would take an hour. In theory, then, I could arrive there at a leisurely ten o’clock. But in the law, nothing ever goes entirely according to plan.

  The first case might even be settled and withdrawn, right there, without warning, the so-called courthouse-steps settlement. If that happened, the judges wouldn’t want to sit around with nothing to do for an hour, so they expected—more, they ordered—all attorneys on the calendar call to be there at nine o’clock, no matter how many cases might be scheduled before theirs, just in case.

  That arrangement might be inconvenient for the lawyers, but not for the judges, and since the judges set the rules, it was their convenience that mattered.

  I got up earlier than usual, showered, had coffee and toast for
breakfast, although I had no appetite. My briefcase contained everything I needed, carefully catalogued and classified. But what I needed most was in my head. And that seemed weirdly unclassified, although I knew, from experience, it would come flowing out when it was needed. It always had. Still, there was the niggling fear that this might be that dreaded first time.

  I put such thoughts behind me and drove to Detroit. Some people I suppose go to battle with bands and martial music. I listened to a tape of the Beach Boys.

  By the time I encountered the rush-hour traffic into downtown Detroit, I was almost relaxed.

  Parking is no great problem in Detroit, but choosing a parking lot is. I paid a premium rate to park in a garage where the probability was high that my car might still be there when I got out. No guarantee, just a fond hope.

  The Michigan Court of Appeals hears cases in various cities. In Detroit, usually, the cases are heard in the First Federal Building, a modern high-rise set at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Woodward, a location that once was the very center, the heart of Detroit, where all the major streets intersected, about a quarter mile up from the river, the hub of all the major department stores and fine shops.

  The river is still there, but the department stores—those still standing—are boarded up, and the fine shops are only a distant memory. The streets still intersect, but the main traffic is out on the interstates now and the shopping has moved to the suburban malls.

  What once was the throbbing core of the city now looks forlorn and desolate, as if an enemy army had marched through and sacked the place.

  For anyone who remembers how it used to be, there is a sadness, like seeing your favorite uncle, once so robust, now frail and dying.

  But entering the First Federal Building is, in contrast to the main street outside, like stepping into Oz. It’s clean; bank cops patrol the sparkling lobby. People smile, laugh, move with a sense of purpose. The problems outside are just that, the problems outside.

  I took the elevator up to the ninth floor, got off, registered as being present for battle, then went into the court’s main hearing room.