A Killing Night

by Jonathon King

  At the berm I pulled the canoe up into a clump of marsh fern and climbed eight feet to the top. My night vision had returned to me after too long a dose of electric light in the city. In the moonlight I could even pick up the tiny white nodes of snail pods clinging to the razor-sharp strands of sawgrass like short strings of pearls. To the east I could see the false dawn of the city lights, but to the west only the shimmer of moving grass when the wind picked up and blew a pattern over the Glades. That’s the direction I was facing when the chattering of my cell phone sounded in such a foreign way out here that it nearly made me duck. My reaction puzzled me and I let the phone ring again and then realized how on edge I had been waiting for someone else to pull the trigger on this case. On the third ring I punched the talk button.

  “Yeah.”

  “Max.”

  “Billy. You’re keeping late hours.”

  “Your Mr. O’Shea has just awakened me. He has been arrested at his apartment in Fort Lauderdale,” Billy said. “As you predicted, Detective Richards has put together a probable cause statement charging him with the aggravated assault of Robert Hix.

  “Mr. O’Shea informs that the primary evidence is a DNA match of a blood sample found on the boots that were obtained during the search of his residence.”

  Billy sounded professional, but not pleased.

  “No surprise there,” I said.

  “He will be in magistrate’s court at nine in the morning.”

  “You’re still willing to do this?”

  “I made you a promise, Max.”

  “I’ll see you there, Billy,” I said.

  “Two other matters, Max.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I am presently at the hospital in West Palm.”

  “What?”

  “Rodrigo was beaten early this evening near the Cuban grill where he said you two have met on occasion.”

  “Jesus, Billy. Is he OK?”

  “Cuts and abrasions. But nothing too serious,” Billy said. He was using the clean, efficient diction he always fell into when pressed. Don’t waste time on emotion or early supposition.

  “It appears that the Hix brother you warned him about made a visit. Rodrigo tried to avoid him, but was cornered. The others backed away when Rodrigo was singled out.”

  “What was the message this time?” I said, trying to swallow back an anger that was souring the back of my throat. I could see David Hix’s flat face in front of me. The sneer and the cocky way he’d wielded the bat.

  “All he could make out was ‘Go home’ and an indication that he tell the others the same,” Billy said. “He seemed to be blaming Rodrigo for costing him money.”

  “If Hix is working for cruise worker contractors and his handlers don’t see progress, he doesn’t get paid,” I said.

  Billy was silent on the other end of the phone for a moment.

  “He may be in for a payday then, Max. Rodrigo is telling me no one will speak to us now. He’s contacted his wife. He wants to leave and return to the Philippines.”

  This brother act was getting old, I thought.

  “You said you had two other matters, Billy.”

  “When O’Shea called he also downloaded a photo of some man that appears to be sitting in a bar somewhere. He said you had asked him to take it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Any felon that you recognize? Maybe of the drug distribution species?”

  “No. I’ll bring a copy with me in the morning,” he said, and I could hear the question in his voice.

  “It’s just a hunch, Billy,” I said. “I’ll see you outside the courthouse at eight thirty.”

  I put the cell phone in my pocket and stood staring out over the Glades, the wind still moving the sawgrass, rippling through it like giant snakes below were bending the stalks in long curved patterns. I worked my way back down the berm, digging my heels into the soft dirt to fight against the angle. I was knee deep in the water when I got the canoe floated and then climbed over the gunwale and pushed out onto the river. I would have time to stop at the shack for a change of clothes and then get to the landing to clean up. I might get a nap in my truck if I got to the county jail in Fort Lauderdale early enough. It would be a long night but not as long as O’Shea’s. He’d be in with a bunch of drunks and punks and scofflaws and perhaps even a few innocents who got swept up by a justice system that would take its time separating the merely tarnished from true bad boys.

  The troubling stones I’d been grinding had, in the span of a phone call, taken on sharp new edges. I stroked the canoe downriver feeling their jagged rub, and the moon followed with me.

  At eight in the morning I was outside of the jail, sitting on a concrete bench, watching men moving on a construction site across the New River in the morning sun. They were working the kind of miracle that people like me unfamiliar with the building trades always find unfathomable.

  Their project was already some thirty stories high. You could watch the damn thing go up day by day as an observer, from poured foundation to concrete columns to prefabricated steel floor stacks and still find yourself stunned at the end of a month to see what men could raise. As I sat sipping a large Styrofoam cup of coffee I’d watched the distant small figure of a tower crane operator climb hand-over-hand like an insect up a ladder enclosed in a tall column of crisscrossed steel. When he got to the glass box at the top, he disappeared inside. I was too far away to hear him start the electric motors that powered the crane, but I saw it begin to move, swinging its balanced, perpendicular arm to the west and silently dropping its hook three hundred feet to pluck yet another load of materials needed at the top. A project manager in Philly had once told me that a good tower crane operator controlled nearly everything that went on at such a site. He had a bird’s-eye view of all that was below him and as the building went up he was the one bringing the world up to join him. At thirty bucks an hour he was the master each and every day. Not a bad feeling, I thought, for a working man to hold.

  At eight thirty I saw Billy walking up the wide stairway of the jail. He was dressed in a dark business suit. Conservative, not showy. Professional, not overly so.

  “M-Max. You l-look tired,” he said, shaking my hand.

  “Sleep deprivation therapy,” I said. “Does wonders for the soul.”

  “Yes. Those b-bags under your eyes certainly do m-make you look wiser, and older.”

  “Thanks.”

  He opened his leather briefcase and took out a photograph and handed it to me. Even though the lighting was dim and the shot too close, the detail was sufficient. The man was handsome. A strong cleft chin. Cheekbones high but perhaps that was from the shadows. The bridge of his nose was as straight as a rule. Never been broken, I thought. He wasn’t a close-in fighter. The eyes were dark and even though they were focused off in another direction, one had the feeling that they were very aware of the photographer if not the actual lens of the phone camera. In the background I could make out the front of the jukebox at Kim’s and the reflection of mirrors.

  “F-From our client,” Billy said. “You can explain later w-why you are farming out surveillance. R-Right now, we are due in c- court.”

  Inside, the lobby of the county jail was done in all government design. The floor was that easy-to-clean polished stone. The walls an institutional bone white. Floor-to-ceiling windows, double pane, made up the wall to the east and, since the entrance was actually two floors above ground level, there was a view of the river and the condo building going up on the other side. The preconstruction prices across the way were starting at $375,000 to $1.2 million for the top floors. The future residents would have a wonderful unobstructed view of the seven-story jailhouse. Real estate in Florida, I thought. Some gang of government officials had approved the building of a house for criminals on waterfront property. Location, location, location.

  On the other side of the lobby were three lines queuing up to Plexiglas-covered windows as if they were selling tickets. There were women in work clothes, two
toting small children. A man wearing navy, grease-stained pants and a light blue shirt with his name over the pocket was arguing with a young woman whose tear-stained face held a look of worry, heartbreak and befuddlement all at once. Both of them were comparing the content of their wallets, searching, I figured, for some way to make bail for a family member inside.

  Down a wide corridor a security checkpoint was set up and beyond it a single wood-veneered door. It was topped with the sign MAGISTRATES COURT. We passed through the metal detectors with all the requisite emptying of pockets, removal of pagers and cell phones. Billy went through with smiles and nods. I had to stop for a wand check of belt buckle, sunglasses and the metal buttons on my canvas shirt.

  “Clothes m-make the man, Max,” Billy said.

  “And the terrorist?” I answered.

  He grinned but then went all business when we entered the courtroom.

  There was nothing ornate about the place. The judge was already sitting up behind the large raised desk, his reading glasses down on his nose, his hands shuffling paper to a woman clerk standing beside him. There were less than a dozen people in the gallery, which was made up of rows of plastic chairs instead of the usual wooden pews. There was a freestanding half-wall that separated those chairs from another row. Two tables, left and right, that acted as a buffer between those empty seats and the judge.

  I sat behind the wall while Billy went around to the table on the left and introduced himself to a harried, middle-aged man in a suit who seemed mildly surprised as he shook Billy’s hand. He then sorted quickly through a sheaf of papers and handed Billy two pages. He almost looked relieved. Billy sat at the defense table to read and I watched the judge take a moment to look up over his glasses to access the new presence in his court. At the table on the right, an equally busy and equally suited younger man was going through his own stack of files. He would be some low-on-the- seniority-scale attorney for the prosecutor’s office. He too stole a look at Billy.

  At exactly nine, a barrel-chested officer who had been standing near the bench, apparently flirting with the judge’s clerk, became serious and opened an adjoining door. Twenty men filed in, handcuffed in twos, a left wrist to a right wrist.

  They were instructed to sit in the row of chairs in front of the short wall. They came in with the sound of shuffling feet and the soft clinking of loose stainless steel. Some were still wearing the street clothes they had on when they were arrested. Others were dressed in orange jumpsuits. They all had tired eyes and unshaven faces. A few looked tentatively around the room, into the gallery to find a family member or a friend. There were twenty of them and eight of us.

  O’Shea was the twelfth man in, attached to a huge black man in a jumpsuit. His face was a stoic mask. He would not have said a word all night. He would have stared at a spot on the wall with the smell of gang sweat and alcohol puke and the single open toilet for ten men in the holding cell without comment or expression. His reaction to any attempt at conversation or query would have been that same hard stare that held his face now. I could not measure the anger or frustration behind his eyes as he came in and looked around the room, finally finding me and raising his stubbled chin in acknowledgment.

  There was no formal call to order. When the men were seated the judge simply nodded his head and the clerk began to call out names. Each man would stand with his handcuffed partner, who was forced to rise with him. After the first few calls the named arrestee learned to raise his unshackled hand when the judge repeated, “Which of you is Mr. Whomever.”

  The charges against the man were then read. He was asked if he was represented by counsel or wanted the judge to appoint the public defender to act on his behalf. Again, it took only a few examples before the next man repeated: “Public defender, sir.”

  The P.D. would then walk over to his newest client with paperwork and have a quick and far from private discussion, and then return to his table.

  “Status, Mr. Marsh?” the judge would repeat.

  Marsh would then request bail, in the standard amount that he no doubt had memorized: $10,000 for a DUI or battery charge to $1,000 for loitering. The judge would ask the prosecutor for an opinion, which was a standard: “The state has no objection, your honor,” and the rhythm moved on.

  They were halfway through the alphabet when I picked up on movement near the entrance to the room and turned to see Detective Richards enter. She too was in a dark suit. Her hair was pulled back. She was with a man who had the look of a supervisor. I looked away for a few moments and by the time I did a double take, she had spotted me, and probably Billy, too. Her eyes met mine and they were as cold as O’Shea’s and I wondered why the hell I’d even gotten myself involved in this duel. Richards and her companion sat somewhere behind me and I did not turn around again. Billy continued his reading, though he could have memorized the few pages by now. If it was his protection against nervousness, it was a good one.

  The clerk called out “Oglethorpe, Richard,” and the black man next to O’Shea stood, bringing his partner the ex-cop up with him.

  “Mr. Oglethorpe?” the judge said.

  “Yes, sir.” The man raised his free hand. He was as tall as O’Shea but outweighed him by a good sixty pounds and I could tell by the way the orange fabric stretched across his back that most of it was muscle. His skin was the dark brown color of a water tupelo trunk and from the back it appeared that the man was not in possession of a neck.

  “Mr. Oglethorpe,” said the judge, shuffling the papers and rereading for the first time this morning. “Mr. Oglethorpe you have been arrested on charges of two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a minor child under the age of twelve, battery of a law enforcement officer and attempted escape.”

  Although they had endured the earlier exchanges without reaction, the rest of the arrested men all leaned forward or back to catch a look at Oglethorpe like rubberneckers at a car wreck along the road. O’Shea maintained his stoic composure, though I could see the muscle rippling in his jaw at the effort.

  The judge had removed his reading glasses and looked out, no doubt, at the two men.

  “Do you understand these charges against you, Mr. Oglethorpe?”

  “Yes, sir,” the big man said. “Public defender please, sir.”

  The judge looked over at the left table.

  “Have at it, Mr. Marsh.”

  The lawyer spoke briefly with Oglethorpe while O’Shea stood alongside, looking back to me. He picked up on someone behind me and for the first time he let a look of hatred slip momentarily into his eyes. I did not turn. I knew the target of that look.

  The public defender returned to his table and made a monotone and professionally required request of bail for Oglethorpe. The prosecutor stood, shrugged his shoulders and the judge ordered the suspect remanded to jail without bond until a future court date without discussion.

  O’Shea and his cuffmate sat for sixty seconds until the clerk called: “O’Shea, Colin.”

  “The charge, Mr. O’Shea, is aggravated assault,” the judge said, looking down at the paperwork.

  I watched Billy as he stood and buttoned his suit coat. Professional. Back straight. Chin up. Only I would notice the twitch in his Adam’s apple, the flaw that I knew he was fighting, the voice that both he and I knew would fail him.

  “William Manchester r-representing M-Mr. O’Shea,” Billy said.

  The judge again looked up over his glasses at Billy, taking him in.

  “Yes, well. Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Manchester. Welcome to magistrate’s court,” the judge said. “No need to be nervous, son.

  Billy did not move his eyes from the judge’s face. The twitch in his neck went quiet.

  “With all due r-respect, Your Honor,” he said, “I am not nervous.”

  They both paused; something was being said between their eyes. Then Billy continued.

  “Your Honor, we are requesting that M-Mr. O’Shea be released on his own reco
gnizance at th-this time.

  “Mr. O’Shea is employed, Your Honor, as a s-security officer for the Navarro Group, sir. A steady job he has held for nearly three years. He is n-not a flight risk.”

  Billy was fighting the stutter, commendably, I thought. But my ear was as a friend.

  “Mr. Cornheiser?” the judge said, looking to the prosecutor.

  “Your Honor, uh, the suspect’s victim, Mr. Robert Hix, sir, was brutally beaten. He is still hospitalized with several broken ribs and as yet undetermined internal injuries. He has identified Mr. O’Shea in a photo array as his attacker. The victim’s blood, Your Honor, was found on the suspect’s boots, which were confiscated at the defendant’s apartment during the execution of a search warrant signed by Judge Lewis, sir.”

  Both lawyers were playing the game, dropping names in an attempt to influence. Navarro was a respected former sheriff who ran a large security firm. Judge Lewis was probably a golfing partner of the sitting judge.

  “The state asks that the suspect be held in remand, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, stealing a glance toward the back of the room.

  “Evidence of a capital crime involving Mr. O’Shea is continuing to be collected by detectives, Your Honor, and the state is convinced that he may be an extreme danger to the public.”

  Billy jumped on the prosecutor’s move.

  “Your honor, I see n-no reference to another, m-more serious charge in this arrest document. Mr. O’Shea in fact has n-never been arrested. In Florida nor in any other j-jurisdiction,” he said. “In addition, the st-state knows that the mere possibility of an additional charge has n-no bearing on this proceeding and has no legal justification in even being raised.”

  The judge nodded, as if saying “I knew that,” and looked over to the prosecutor, who was stalling by shuffling through paper.

  “Furthermore, sir,” Billy continued, “I have in court this m- morning a witness to the assault charge now in question, a licensed private investigator, Your Honor, whose presence at the time of the alleged c-crime is documented by police reports and who has signed an affidavit stating that both he and Mr. O’Shea were the ones attacked by the alleged victim and his brother and thus forced to defend themselves.”