Sycamore Row jb-2

by John Grisham

  Marvis sat up straight, tried to raise both hands, and said, “Okay, I’m officially confused. Slow down and talk to me.”

  Jake was still talking when someone knocked on the door. A guard stuck his head in and said, “Time’s up.”

  “Just finishing,” Jake said as he politely shoved the door closed. He leaned even closer to Marvis and said, “I want you to call Nick Norton, collect, he’ll take the call, and he’ll verify what I’m saying. Right now every lawyer in Ford County will tell you the same thing-Lettie is making a terrible mistake.”

  “And I’m supposed to fix things?”

  “You can help. Talk to her. We, she and I, have a tough fight to begin with. She’s making it much worse.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “You do that, Marvis. And call me anytime, collect.”

  The guard was back.

  17

  The usual white-collar crowd gathered at the Tea Shoppe for breakfast and coffee, never tea, not at such an early hour. At one round table there was a lawyer, a banker, a merchant, and an insurance agent, and at another there was a select group of older, retired gentlemen. Retired, but not dull, slow, or quiet. It was called the Geezer Table. The conversation was picking up steam as it rolled through the feeble efforts of the Ole Miss football team-last Saturday’s loss to Tulane at homecoming was unforgivable-and the even feebler efforts down at Mississippi State. It was gaining momentum as the geezers finished trashing Dukakis, who’d just been thrashed by Bush, when the banker said, loudly, “Say, I heard that woman has rented the old Sappington place and is moving to town, with her horde, of course. They say she’s got kinfolks moving in by the carload and needs a bigger place.”

  “The Sappington place?”

  “You know, up north of town, off Martin Road, just down from the auction yard. Old farmhouse you can barely see from the road. They’ve been trying to sell it ever since Yank Sappington died, what, ten years ago?”

  “At least. Seems like it’s been rented a few times.”

  “But they’ve never rented to blacks before, have they?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “I thought it was in pretty good shape.”

  “It is. They painted it last year.”

  This was considered for a moment and was the cause of great consternation. Even though the Sappington place was on the edge of town, it was in an area still considered white.

  “Why would they rent to blacks?” asked one of the geezers.

  “Money. None of the Sappingtons live here anymore, so why should they care? If they can’t sell it, might as well rent it. The money’s green regardless of who sends it over.” As soon as the banker said this, he waited for it to be challenged. His bank was notorious for avoiding black customers.

  A realtor walked in, took his seat at the white-collar table, and was immediately hit with “We were just talking about that woman renting the Sappington place. Any truth to it?”

  “Damned right,” he replied smugly. He took pride in hearing the hot gossip first, or at least appearing to. “They moved in yesterday, from what I hear. Seven hundred dollars a month.”

  “How many carloads?”

  “Don’t know. Wasn’t there and don’t plan on dropping by. I just hope it don’t affect the property values in the neighborhood.”

  “What neighborhood?” asked one of the geezers. “Down the road is the auction barn that’s smelled like cow dung since I was a kid. Across the road is Luther Selby’s scrap yard. What kinda neighborhood you talking about?”

  “You know, the housing market,” the realtor fought back. “If we get these folks moving into the wrong areas, then property values will go down all over town. It could be bad for all of us.”

  “He’s right about that,” the banker chimed in.

  The merchant said, “She ain’t working, right? And her husband is a deadbeat. So how does she afford $700 a month in rent?”

  “She can’t get Hubbard’s money this soon, can she?”

  “No way,” the lawyer said. “The money is locked up in the estate until the lawsuits are gone. It’ll take years. She can’t get a penny.”

  “Then where’s the money coming from?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said the lawyer. “Maybe she’s charging everybody some rent.”

  “The house has got five bedrooms.”

  “And I’ll bet they’re all full.”

  “And I’ll bet nobody’s paying her any rent.”

  “They say he got picked up for drunk driving, couple of weeks back.”

  “He did indeed,” the lawyer said. “Saw it on the docket, Simeon Lang. Caught him on a Saturday morning. He put in a first appearance and Jake represented him. Got it postponed for a while. I figure Ozzie’s involved some way.”

  “Who’s paying Jake?”

  The lawyer smiled and said, “Oh, we’ll never know for sure, but you can bet your ass it’ll come out of the estate, by hook or crook.”

  “If there’s anything left in the estate.”

  “Which looks doubtful.”

  “Very doubtful.”

  The merchant said, “So back to my question. How does she afford the rent?”

  “Come on, Howard. They get checks. They know how to play the system. Food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, welfare, housing, unemployment-they make more sitting on their asses than most folks do working forty hours. You get five or six of ’em in one house and all drawing checks-ain’t gotta worry about the rent.”

  “True, but the Sappington place ain’t exactly subsidized housing.”

  The lawyer said, “Her Memphis lawyer is probably front-loading the expenses. Hell, he probably paid her to get the case. Think about it. If he forks over fifty or a hundred grand, cash, up front, to get the case, then rakes off half of the estate when the ship comes in, then it’s a good deal. Plus, he probably charges interest.”

  “He can’t do that ethically, can he?”

  “You mean a lawyer would cheat?”

  “Or chase a case?”

  The lawyer calmly said, “Ethics are determined by what they catch you doing. If you don’t get caught, then you haven’t violated any ethics. And I doubt if Sistrunk spends too much time reading the latest ethical guidelines from the American Bar Association.”

  “He’s too busy reading his own press clippings. When’s he coming back to town?”

  The lawyer replied, “Judge Atlee has a hearing scheduled for next week.”

  “What’re they gonna do?”

  “Bunch of motions and such, probably another circus.”

  “He’s a fool if he shows up again in a black Rolls-Royce.”

  “I bet he does.”

  The insurance agent said, “I got a cousin in Memphis, works in the court system. He says Sistrunk owes money all over town. He makes a lot, spends even more, always running from banks and creditors. He bought an airplane two years ago and it damned near broke him. The bank repossessed it, then sued him. He’s claiming it’s a racist conspiracy. He threw a big birthday party for his wife, number three, rented a big tent, brought in a circus, rides for all the little kids, then a fancy dinner with fresh lobster and crab and wines flown in. When the party was over, all his checks bounced. He was threatening to file for bankruptcy when he settled some barge case for ten million and paid everybody off. He’s up and down.”

  This had their attention and they mulled it over. The waitress refilled their cups with scalding coffee.

  The realtor looked at the lawyer and said, “You didn’t really vote for Michael Dukakis, did you?” It was an act of outright provocation.

  “I did and I’d do it again,” the lawyer said, and this was met with some guffaws and some fake laughter. The lawyer was one of two Democrats present. Bush carried Ford County by 65 percent.

  The other Democrat, one of the geezers, redirected things by asking, “When do they file Hubbard’s inventory? We need to know what’s in the estate, right? I mean, look at us here, gossipi
ng and bickering over his estate and his last will and so on. Don’t we have the right, as citizens and taxpayers and beneficiaries under the Freedom of Information Act, to know exactly what’s in the estate? I certainly think so.”

  “It’s none of your business,” said the merchant.

  “Maybe so, but I really want to know. And you don’t?”

  “I couldn’t care less,” replied the merchant, who was then ridiculed.

  When the heckling died down, the lawyer said, “The administrator is required to file an inventory whenever the judge tells him to do so. There is no statutory deadline. Just guessing, in an estate of this size, the administrator will be given plenty of time to find everything and have it appraised.”

  “What size are you talking about?”

  “The same size everybody else is talking about. We won’t know for sure until the administrator files his inventory.”

  “I thought he was called the executor.”

  “Not if the executor quits, as he did here. The court then appoints an administrator to handle everything. The new guy is a lawyer from Smithfield named Quince Lundy, an old friend of Judge Atlee’s. I think he’s semiretired.”

  “And he gets paid out of the estate?”

  “Where else would the money come from?”

  “Okay, so who all gets paid out of the estate?”

  The lawyer thought for a moment, then said, “The estate lawyer, which is Jake for the time being, though I don’t know if he’ll last. Rumor is he’s already fed up with the Memphis lawyers and thinking of quitting. The administrator gets paid from the estate. Accountants, appraisers, tax advisers, folks like that.”

  “Who pays Sistrunk?”

  “I’m assuming he has a contract with that woman. If she wins, he’ll take a percentage.”

  “What the hell is Rufus Buckley doing slinking around the case?”

  “He’s the local counsel for Sistrunk.”

  “Hitler and Mussolini. They trying to offend every single person in Ford County?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “And it will be a jury trial, right?”

  The lawyer answered, “Oh yes. Seems like everyone wants a jury trial, including Judge Atlee.”

  “Why Judge Atlee?”

  “It’s simple. Takes the monkey off his back. He doesn’t have to make the decision. You’re gonna have big winners and big losers, and with a jury verdict no one can blame the judge.”

  “I’ll lay ten-to-one odds right now the jury finds against that woman.”

  The lawyer said, “Let’s wait, okay? Let’s give it a few months so Judge Atlee will have time to put everyone in their box, get things organized and planned and set for a trial. Then right before it starts we’ll set up a pool and lay odds. I enjoy taking your money. What, four Super Bowls in a row now?”

  “How they gonna find twelve people who know nothing about this case? Everybody I know’s got an opinion, and you can be damned certain every African within a hundred miles is angling for a cut. I heard Sistrunk wants to move the trial to Memphis.”

  The lawyer said, “It can’t be moved out of state, knucklehead. But he has requested a change of venue.”

  “Didn’t Jake try and move the Hailey case? To a friendlier county, one with more black voters?”

  “He did, but Judge Noose declined. Hailey was a far bigger case than this one, though.”

  “Maybe. It didn’t have twenty million bucks on the line.”

  The Democratic geezer asked the lawyer, “You think Jake can win this case for that woman?”

  Everyone stopped talking for a second and looked at the lawyer. He’d been asked the same question at least four times in the past three weeks while sitting at the same table. “Depends,” he said gravely. “If Sistrunk is in the courtroom, there’s no way they win. If it’s just Jake, then I’d give him a fifty-fifty chance.” And this from a lawyer who never went to court.

  “I hear he’s got a secret weapon these days.”

  “What kind?”

  “They say Lucien Wilbanks has returned to the bar. And not for drinking. He’s supposedly hanging around Jake’s office.”

  The lawyer said, “He’s back. I’ve seen him in the courthouse digging through old land records and wills. Hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “That’s sad to hear.”

  “Did he appear to be sober?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Surely Jake won’t let him near the jury.”

  “I doubt if Judge Atlee will allow him in the courtroom.”

  “He can’t practice law, can he?”

  “No, he was permanently disbarred, which means, in his case, he has to wait eight years before he can apply for reinstatement.”

  “It’s permanent, but for eight years?”

  “Yep.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “That’s the law.”

  “The law, the law.”

  “Who said, ‘The first thing we should do is kill all the lawyers’?”

  “I think it was Shakespeare.”

  “I thought it was Faulkner.”

  To which the lawyer replied, “When we start quoting Shakespeare, it’s time for me to leave.”

  The phone call came from Floyd Green at Parchman. By a vote of 3 to 2, the Parole Board had decided to release Dennis Yawkey. There was no explanation. Floyd made some vague references to the mysterious workings of the Parole Board. Jake knew the State had a long, sordid tradition of cash for pardons, but he refused to believe the Yawkey family could have been sophisticated enough to pull off a bribe.

  Ten minutes later, Ozzie called with the same news. He conveyed his disbelief and frustration. He told Jake that he, Ozzie, would personally drive to Parchman the following day to retrieve Dennis, and that he would have two hours alone with the boy in the car. He would make every threat possible, and forbid the kid to enter the city limits of Clanton.

  Jake thanked him and called Carla.

  18

  Rufus Buckley parked his weathered Cadillac on the other side of the square, as far from Jake’s office as possible. For a moment he sat in his car and remembered how much he loathed the town of Clanton, its courthouse, its voters, and especially his history there. There was a time, not too many years earlier, when the voters adored him and he considered them part of his base, the foundation from which he would launch a statewide race for governor, and from there, well, who knew? He’d been their district attorney, a young hard-charging prosecutor with a gun on each hip, a noose in hand, and no fear of the bad guys. Find ’em, haul ’em in, then watch Rufus string ’em up. He campaigned hard on his 90 percent conviction rate, and his people loved him. Three times they had voted for him in overwhelming numbers, but the last time around, last year with the bitter Hailey verdict still fresh on their minds, the good people of Ford County turned him out. He also lost badly in Tyler, Milburn, and Van Buren Counties, pretty much the entire Twenty-Second District, though his home folks in Polk County limped to the polls and gave him a pathetic sixty-vote margin.

  His career as a public servant was over-though, at the age of forty-four, he could at times almost convince himself there was a future, that he was still needed. By whom and for what he wasn’t certain. His wife was threatening to leave if he ever again declared himself a candidate for anything. After ten months of puttering around a small quiet office and watching the paltry traffic on Main Street, Rufus was bored, defeated, depressed, and going out of his mind. The phone call from Booker Sistrunk had been a miracle, and Rufus leapt at the chance to plunge into some controversy. The fact that Jake was the enemy only made the case richer.

  He opened the door, got out, and hoped no one would recognize him. How the mighty had fallen.

  The Ford County Courthouse opened at 8:00 a.m., and five minutes later Rufus walked through the front door, as he had done so many times before in another life. Back then he was respected, even feared. Now he was ignored, except for the slightly delayed glance from a j
anitor who almost said, “Say, don’t I know you?” He hustled upstairs and was pleased to find the main courtroom unlocked and unguarded. The hearing was set for 9:00 a.m. and Rufus was the first one there. This was by design because he and Mr. Sistrunk had a plan.

  It was only his third visit back since the Hailey trial, and the horror of losing hit low in the bowels. He stopped just inside the large double doors and took in the vastness of the empty, awful courtroom. His knees were spongy and for a second he felt faint. He closed his eyes and heard the voice of the court clerk, Jean Gillespie, read the verdict: “As to each count of the indictment, we the jury find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.” What a miscarriage! But you can’t gun down two boys in cold blood and then say you did it because they deserved it. No, you have to find a legal reason for doing so, and insanity was all Jake Brigance had to offer.

  Evidently, it was enough. Carl Lee Hailey was as sane as any man when he killed those boys.

  Moving forward, Rufus remembered the pandemonium in the courtroom as the Hailey family and all their friends went crazy. Talk about insanity! Seconds later, the mob surrounding the courthouse exploded when a kid yelled to them, “Not guilty! Not guilty!”

  At the bar, Rufus managed to collect himself and his thoughts. He had work to do and little time to prepare for it. Like every courtroom, between the bar, or railing, and the judge’s bench there were two large tables. They were identical but radically different. The table on the right was the home of the prosecutor in a criminal case-his old turf-or the plaintiff in a civil case. This table was close to the jury box so that during a trial he, Rufus, always felt nearer to his people. Ten feet away, the other table was the home of the defense, both in criminal and civil cases. In the opinions of most lawyers who spent their careers in courtrooms, seating was important. It conveyed power, or lack thereof. It allowed certain lawyers or litigants to be seen more, or less, by the jurors, who were always watching. On occasion it could set the stage for a David and Goliath struggle as a solitary lawyer and his crippled client faced a throng of corporate suits, or a beaten-down defendant faced the power of the State. Seating was important to comely female lawyers with short skirts and a jury box filled with men, and it was equally important to drugstore cowboys with pointed-toe boots.