Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “I stand on my Fifth amendment rights and refuse to answer the question.”

  “Did you meet him when he got to Miami?”

  “I stand on my Fifth amendment rights and refuse to answer the question.”

  “Mr. Cox,” I said, “I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions. If you are going to assert your Fifth Amendment rights after every one, why don’t you just say ‘Fifth Amendment’ and save us all some time.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you put your pistol to the back of Golden Joe’s head and shoot him?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Did you then dump his body into a canal in the Everglades?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Did you plan for the alligators to eat the body?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Were you in Longboat Key the night of April 15, of this year?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Did you meet Logan Hamilton in Dewey’s Five Points Bar and tell him that you were a member of his Army flight training class?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Did you also go with Logan to Frisco’s Bar on Bridge Street?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Do you work for Hale Rundel or Rundel Enterprises?”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  “Think about that Mr. Cox. I can easily prove you were employed by Rundel, and I can think of no reason why that fact, in and of itself, would incriminate you.”

  “Fifth Amendment.”

  I surely wasn’t going to get anything else out of Cox, and I thought I had made my point to the jury, that this was a bad guy. “No further questions,” I said.

  Elizabeth stood. “Under the circumstances, I have no questions.”

  The court deputy escorted Cox to the back of the room and had him sit next to Carl Merritt. The deputy stood at the back of the room, next to the door to the hall.

  “I’ll recall Chief Bill Lester, of the Longboat Key Police Department,” I said.

  I put a few questions to the chief, establishing that Cox had introduced himself to the Chief as head of security for Rundel Enterprises, and told him his company had been employed to provide security for the Governor Wentworth’s visit to the key. On cross, Elizabeth made the point that in fact Cox had headed the private security detail for the governor’s weekend getaway.

  I then called Molly O’Sullivan who testified about the man who had come into her restaurant one night and asked about Logan, telling her he was his old Army buddy. “Do you see that man in the courtroom?” I asked.

  “Yes, he’s sitting in the back of the room,” she said, pointing right at Cox.

  I asked no further questions, and neither did Elizabeth.

  I next called Dewey Clanton, who told the jury about the night that Vivian died, when Logan sat in her bar drinking until 11:00 o’clock, with a man who had identified himself to Dewey as an old Army buddy of Logan’s. “Do you see this man in the courtroom, today?” I asked.

  She pointed to Cox, saying, “That’s him, right there.”

  Elizabeth passed on questions, and the next person up was Slim Jim Martin from Frisco’s Bar on Bridge Street. He identified Cox as the man drinking with Logan until closing time on the evening Vivian was killed. I took him through how he knew the exact time Logan and Cox left, and put his bank receipt into evidence. Elizabeth had no questions.

  I had timed things so that my last witness of the day would be Logan. I knew his story was compelling and exculpatory. I wanted to finish the day on a high note, and leave my last witness, a surprise blockbuster, for Friday morning.

  I called Logan to the stand. He was dressed in a light gray suit, a blue button down oxford cloth shirt and dark blue silk tie. He looked like the executive he was. We had gone over his testimony the evening before in the jail’s interview room. He was well aware of my approach, and knew that he was not to volunteer any information outside our script. I also made it very clear to Logan that he was to tell nothing but the truth. Otherwise, he would get tripped up on cross examination by a very experienced prosecutor.

  “State your name,” I said.

  “Logan Hamilton.”

  The jury had perked up. This was some of the testimony they had been waiting for all week. They were trying to take the measure of Logan, and I knew that the next few minutes would very well determine my friend’s fate.

  “Did you kill Vivian Pickens?” I like to get right to the meat of the subject.

  “Absolutely not,” Logan said, looking right at the jury.

  “Do you know how her body came to be in your condo?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with Vivian.”

  Logan gave us the whole thing. They were friends who would occasionally share a bed. Vivian, and a lot of people on the island had keys to Logan’s condo, and besides, he seldom ever locked it when he was in town. He had no idea how Vivian’s body ended up on his balcony. He had come in that night very late, at around 2:00 a.m. He was drunk and did not pay any attention to his balcony. He awoke as the sun was coming up and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. He looked out toward the Gulf and saw the body on the balcony. He thought Vivian was asleep and went to wake her. She was dead, and Logan called 911.

  He told us about the sex on the boat the night of her death, and about getting drunk with a man who said he had been in flight school with him at Ft. Rucker.

  “Did you remember him?” I asked.

  “No, but there were a lot of guys going through flight school at that time, and I could have known him and not remembered him. I didn’t want to look like a jerk to somebody who remembered me, so I didn’t tell him I didn’t remember him.”

  “What was his name?”

  “He told me it was Bill Smith.”

  “Did you later try to find out about Bill Smith?”

  “Yes, I called some of my old army buddies, and none of them remembered him.”

  “Have you seen this so called Army buddy since?”

  “Yes. I saw him today in this courtroom. Sam Cox.”

  “Are you sure Sam Cox was the man pretending to be your Army buddy?”

  “Positive.”

  “Nothing further, your Honor,” I said, regaining my seat.

  Elizabeth was obviously taken aback. She was expecting me to elicit a lot more testimony from Logan, and normally a defense lawyer would do that. I had set a little trap, and would wait to see if Elizabeth would step into it.

  “If you didn’t kill Vivian Pickens, why did you run and hide after you found out that the grand jury had indicted you for her murder?” the prosecutor asked, rising from her seat.

  “I didn’t,” Logan said.

  “You didn’t?” Elizabeth was incredulous. “Am I right that you turned yourself in to the county sheriff just this past Sunday?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay, if you didn’t flee the jurisdiction, where in the world have you been for the past six weeks?”

  I could hear the jaws of the trap closing. It was sweet music.

  “In the hospital in Boston, and then in a rehabilitation facility there.”

  “Hospital? For what?”

  “I had a heart transplant.”

  “Heart transplant,” Elizabeth sputtered. “Judge, can we be heard outside the presence of the jury?”

  “Take the jury out,” said Judge O’Reilly.

  I could see the look of disappointment cross the faces of several of the jurors. This was just getting good, and like children, they were being sent to their room so the adults could talk.

  “Judge,” said Elizabeth, after the room was cleared of jurors, “This is a complete surprise. I would like to either continue this trial until I have had time to look into it, or to bar any further testimony about this alleged heart condition.”

  “Your Honor,” I said, in all innocence, “She asked the question.”

  “That you did, Ms. Ferguson.”


  “He set me up, Judge,” said Elizabeth, pointing at me.

  “That he did,” said the judge, “But you know the old saw about not asking a question to which you don’t know the answer.”

  “I don’t know why it is a surprise, Judge,” I said. “I provided Ms. Ferguson with the entire medical records on Monday morning.”

  “There must be a thousand pages there, your Honor,” said Elizabeth. “I got those just as I was leaving for the courthouse. The first few pages had to do with his childhood measles. Are you telling me that there is record of a heart transplant in there?” She was looking at me.

  “Yes, its all there, and I was going to offer the entire record into evidence at the appropriate time.”

  “Unless Mr. Royal has a witness to authenticate the records, I will object,” said Elizabeth.

  It would be necessary for me to put a representative of the Boston hospital on the stand to testify that the records were in fact true and correct copies of the original hospital records. Since Logan had only given me the records and told me his story on Saturday evening, I could not get any one from the hospital to come and testify. I was winging it, but I had planned on not being able to get the records into evidence, so Logan’s testimony was very important.

  “Do you have a witness to authenticate the records, Mr. Royal?” asked the judge.

  “No sir.”

  “I’m going to allow the testimony. Bring in the jury,” said the judge.

  The jury filed back in, wondering, I’m sure, what they had missed. Elizabeth took up where she left off. “Tell me about this heart transplant,” she said.

  “I have suffered from congestive heart failure for more than a year. I’ve been treated for it both here and in Boston. I was put on a transplant list some months ago in Boston, and Friday, the day I was indicted, I got a call to come to Boston. There was a man there who was clinically dead, and his family had agreed to allow the hospital to harvest his organs. There was a tissue match, and if I could get to Boston that day, they could do the transplant.”

  “So you went to Boston. Did you tell anybody here where you were going?”

  “No. I had planned to call on Saturday when I was sure the surgery was going forward.”

  “When was the surgery performed?”

  “Saturday morning .”

  “So you were in the hospital when you found out about the indictment. Who told you about it?” asked Elizabeth.

  “I honestly don’t know. I was going to call Dallas Mahoney on Longboat to tell him about the surgery. I called to check my messages first.”

  “And there was a message about the indictment?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t recognize the voice of the person who left the message.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I called Mr. Royal and retained him to represent me.”

  “Did you tell him where you were?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid he would be constrained by ethics to tell you or the police where I was, and I couldn’t take the chance that I’d be arrested. There was a heart that would work for me, and they were going to take me to surgery in a matter of hours. I couldn’t risk that being stopped.”

  “Did you ever tell Mr. Royal or anybody else where you were?”

  “No. After I got out of the hospital, I was in a rehabilitation facility for several weeks. I didn’t want to be taken out of there before the anti-rejection drugs had taken hold, and I knew that I was going to live.”

  Elizabeth sat down, her case blown wide open. The DNA had been explained, and Logan’s absence was not a flight to avoid prosecution, but a legitimate and reasonable effort to save his own life. I could have probably rested right there, but trial lawyers are a nervous bunch. Sometimes we overdo the evidence, putting in everything we know, even when we don’t need to. I felt that I still needed to give the jury a reason to point the finger of guilt in a direction other than toward Logan.

  “Who will be your next witness, Mr. Royal?” the judge asked.

  “I’ll be calling Governor George Wentworth,” I said. “We have him scheduled for first thing in the morning.”

  There was a murmur of surprise in the courtroom, but the judge took it in stride. On Sunday afternoon, Dick Bellinger had raced to the airport in time to get to the governor before he flew out in his campaign plane. Dick had shown one of the deputies on security duty the subpoena and was escorted to a room where the governor and his family were relaxing. He shook the governor’s hand and handed him the subpoena.

  “What’s this all about?” the governor had asked.

  “Don’t really know, sir,” Dick said, “But you’ve got to be in court next week in Manatee County.”

  “Where the hell is Manatee County?” asked the governor.

  “You’re standing in it,” said Dick.

  “”I don’t understand,” said the governor.

  “The airport is partly in both Sarasota and Manatee Counties...” Dick started to say.

  “I don’t give a shit about the geography of the airport. What I want to know is what this subpoena is about.”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir. I’m just the process server,” replied Dick.

  “We’ll see about this,” said the governor. “No two bit judge in Mana what the fuck county is going to keep me here.” He stormed off toward the plane.

  Dick turned to the deputy, grinning. “Did you hear that?”

  “I sure did,” said the deputy.

  “Do you want to know who the two bit judge is that’s presiding at this trial?”

  “Who?”

  “T. Johnson O’Reilly,” said Dick.

  “Oh shit,” the deputy said, laughing, “and that guy is a mere governor. Old T. Johnson is going to have his ass.”

  And sure enough, that is what happened. By the end of the first day of trial, a lawyer for Governor Wentworth had filed a motion to quash the subpoena. Judge O’Reilly had set a hearing for noon on Tuesday, and Elizabeth and I were in the judge’s chambers, along with Dick Bellinger and a lawyer from one of Tampa’s megafirms, representing the governor.

  “What goes on in this hearing is going to be sealed,” said the judge, “and I’m imposing a gag order on all of you. I don’t want to embarrass the governor if this is some kind of publicity stunt on Mr. Royal’s part.”

  “It is not, Judge,” I said. “I have every reason to believe the governor can shed some light on my client’s innocence, and I need him on the witness stand.”

  The judge turned to the governor’s lawyer, and said, “What say you, Counselor?”

  “The governor is a very busy man, and it would be an imposition to have him return to Florida for a trial about which he knows nothing. Moreover, I don’t believe he was properly served, and the subpoena is therefore no good.”

  “What about that, Mr. Royal?” asked the judge.

  “Your Honor, I have the process server, Mr. Bellinger, here. He can testify as to what he did,” I said.

  Turning to Dick, the judge said, “Raise your right hand.” Dick did, and was sworn in by the judge. “Tell me about the service of the subpoena,” the judge said.

  Dick took him through the process, testified that he was a duly licensed process server in the state of Florida, and that he had personally handed the subpoena to the Governor.

  “What was the governor’s response?” the judge asked.

  Uh oh, I thought, here’s where the subpoena gets upheld. “The governor said he was not going to let some two bit Florida judge keep him in this state,” said Dick. “His words, not mine, your Honor.”

  Judge O’Reilly seemed unfazed by the comment. He turned to me, and said, “Mr. Royal, I swear by all that’s holy, if this is some kind of stunt, if the governor really doesn’t have anything to add to this trial, I will hold you in contempt and put your ass, strike that last word Madam Court Reporter, rear end in jail. Do I make myself clear?”

>   “Crystal clear, your honor.” I said.

  Turning to the governor’s lawyer, the judge said, “Work out a time with Mr. Royal for your client to appear, Counselor. We’ll take him out of order, if necessary. And don’t forget the gag order.”

  We had chewed up the afternoon, and Judge O’Reilly recessed for the day. Elizabeth flounced out of the courtroom. She was seething. She had renewed her objection to each of my witnesses and the judge had overruled each one. I didn’t know if she had completely figured out where I was going with my witnesses, but I doubted it, because I hadn’t known until the weekend before.

  After the jury and judge had left the courtroom, Carl Merritt formally arrested Cox and read him his rights. They would head back to Miami that evening, and Cox would be charged with the murder of Golden Joe Johnson. He wouldn’t be making bail in Sarasota County.

  As I left the courtroom, I was mobbed by the local press. They were all yelling at me, asking why I was calling the governor. I waved my hands in a downward motion, telling them to quiet down. “I can’t answer your questions. Not now. Come to court tomorrow, and you’ll find out. That’s all I can say for now.”

  I walked off. They followed, like a pack of rabid dogs, yelling questions. I guess there hadn’t been any decent car wrecks that day.

  Chapter 29

  FRIDAY

  My body protested as I dragged it out of bed that morning. I was exhausted. The mental effort of a trial is so intense that the trial lawyer’s mind tries to shut down, and knowing it can’t, sends signals to the body to shut down instead. I have read that the second highest rate of suicides in the country is among trial lawyers. I can believe that, and the thought of suicide crossed my mind, briefly, as I rose to face another day in the pit.

  Anne slept next to me, curled into a fetal ball, her dark hair mussed. Every few minutes, a delicate snore would slip from her. It was kind of cute, I thought, but if I told her about it she would be so embarrassed she might decide not to sleep with me any more. That did not seem like something I wanted to contemplate.

  When I got out of the shower, she was awake, and padded naked to the bathroom. I felt a bit of stirring in places that didn’t need to be awakened on the morning of the final day of a trial.