“Mr. Conchin, if Jack Willistone did want to make a change to his life insurance policy, would you have expected him to contact you?”
The perma-smile returned. “Yes, I would. In fact, when Jack decided to change the beneficiaries from Barbara and Danny to Kat after he remarried, that’s exactly what he did.” He stuck his fork in a fried green tomato and pointed the silverware at Tom. “I most certainly would have expected either Jack or, since he was in prison, his lawyer to call me if he wanted to make a change.” Max slipped the fork into his mouth and chewed with vigor.
“And that didn’t happen,” Bo said, a statement, not a question.
“No, it did not,” Max said, taking a sip of coffee.
Tom gazed at the ancient insurance agent, thinking that the man was in remarkably good health for the age he appeared. “I’m curious, Mr. Conchin. How old are you?”
“Eighty-three and eleven months. I’ll be eighty-four next month.”
“Well . . . you certainly look a lot younger,” Tom lied.
“Thank you,” Max said, nodding at Tom and then Bo.
“Your receptionist said that you come here every Tuesday,” Bo said. “That true?”
“Yes, it is. I spend Monday morning at the Waysider and the afternoon at Piccadilly. Tuesday is the City Cafe for the duration. Wednesday is the Cracker Barrel in Cottondale. Thursday I’m back at the Waysider, but I skip the afternoon and play golf at Hidden Meadows. Friday I’m back here. Saturdays I spend fishing on Lake Tuscaloosa, and Sunday is for the Lord.”
“Are you ever at your office?” Tom asked.
“Not if I can help it,” Max said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Gentlemen, I’ve sold life insurance policies for a half century, and I have never closed a deal, not a single one, in my office.” He waved his hands and looked around the crowded restaurant. “This is my place of business.”
“The City Cafe?” Bo asked.
“No, sir,” Max responded, his arms still outstretched. “The world.”
Bo gave a sidelong glance to Tom, who got the message and stood up. “Mr. Conchin, thanks so much for your time.”
Max also rose to his feet and shook hands with both men. He smiled even wider than before. “I’ve got a few more minutes. Are you sure I can’t discuss your options with you? It’s never too late to protect your most valuable asset.” He pointed his right index finger at Tom and his left at Bo. “You,” he said, and Tom wondered how many times that same spiel had worked on a potential customer.
“Thank you, Mr. Conchin,” Tom said. “But we are very bus—”
“At least tell me a little more about yourselves,” Max interrupted. Then his smile was gone and his eyebrows creased. He placed both hands on Tom’s shoulders. “I’d like to know you . . . so I can love you.”
Before Tom could respond, he felt a rough hand on his back and hot breath in his ear. “Time to go,” Bo whispered, nudging Tom sideways and away from the table while looking at Conchin over his shoulder. “Maybe some other time.” But as he started to walk away, Bo wheeled on the insurance agent and asked one last question.
“Mr. Conchin, can you think of anyone who Jack might have spoken to about changing the beneficiary of his life insurance policy?”
Max had returned to his seat and took a few seconds to consider the question. “Well . . . no. I mean no one other than the obvious.”
“The obvious?” Bo asked, and Tom stepped closer so that he could hear better.
“His lawyer, of course,” Max said. “What’s that young fella’s name? He’s a client of mine too. Greg . . .”
“. . . Zorn,” Tom said, turning from Conchin to Bo. “Greg Zorn.”
39
Tom and Bo rode back to the office in silence. Neither had to say out loud what the other was thinking. Greg Zorn was a dead end. Tom had left him at least fifteen voice messages since taking over the defense of Wilma Newton, and all of his calls had gone unreturned. Tom had met the attorney last year at the St. Clair Correctional Facility when he and Powell had interviewed Jack Willistone in connection with Andy Walton’s murder. Tom had thought this familiarity might lead Zorn to be cooperative.
I thought wrong, Tom knew. Though it didn’t make him feel any better, Tom also was aware that Zorn hadn’t been all that forthcoming with the prosecution. The witness statement attributed to Zorn in the file ended with Wade noting that, outside of admitting that he had offered his waterfront home for Jack to stay in while he was handling a trial in Birmingham, Zorn refused to discuss anything further about his conversations with the victim pursuant to the attorney-client privilege. There were no follow-up attempts by Wade documented in the file, which wasn’t all that surprising.
What does he add to their case?
“Nothing.” Tom whispered the answer to himself.
“What?” Bo asked.
“Nothing,” Tom repeated. “When are you going back to Jasper?”
“Unless I hear something back today, I’ll head there first thing in the morning.”
“Then what?”
“If the trip produces any leads, I’ll follow them. If not, I’ll probably head home for a couple days. I suspect that Lee Roy is getting tired of sharing your guest room with me, and as much I love that dog, his snoring is starting to wear a little thin.”
Tom laughed. “Home to Pulaski or home to Huntsville?”
Bo sucked in a breath and slowly exhaled. “That’s a good question.”
“Have you told Jazz about all this?”
Bo nodded. “She was actually relieved to hear that I was doing something besides working on that Walton land. Told me to give you her regards.”
“Be sure to give her mine. She’s a good woman, Bo, and . . . you know that she loves you.”
“I do,” he said, gazing down at the floorboard. “And she knows that I love her. I wish—” The ringtone of Bo’s cell phone interrupted whatever he was about to say, and he pulled the device out of his pocket. He gazed at the screen. “No caller ID,” he said. Then he pressed the phone to his ear.
“Yeah.” Bo listened for several seconds and hung up without saying anything further. “That was Rel. I think he was using a pay phone.”
“What did he say?”
“He wants to talk,” Bo said.
“When?”
“Now.”
40
Twenty-five minutes later, after retrieving his vehicle at the office and telling Tom he’d regroup with him soon, Bo pulled his Sequoia to a stop in front of a white cinder-block shack on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Northport. Though the street sounded like it might be a large thoroughfare, it was actually a nondescript road in the middle of nowhere and, even though Bo had been to the place hundreds of time in his life, he still had a hard time finding it.
Bo smiled at the structure like it might be an old friend. Tuscaloosa was known for its barbecue, and for Bocephus Haynes’s money, the best pork in town was made by the man inside this shack.
George and Betty Archibald opened their tiny barbecue joint in 1962, and though Bo couldn’t be sure, he doubted the place had changed much in the past five decades. Now run by George Jr., Archibald’s was a Tuscaloosa institution. A person wanting his fix could go through the drive-through and take the food back home or to the office. Or if you really wanted to get the full ambience, you could order inside and sit at one of the picnic tables in the yard. As Bo climbed out of his vehicle, he breathed in the aromas of burning hickory wood and slow-cooked barbecue. He walked toward the building and saw that Rel Jennings had already ordered and taken his place at one of the tables.
“You start without me again?” Bo yelled.
Rel held out sauce-stained palms. “I’m sorry, brother, but I couldn’t resist.”
Bo waved at him and walked inside. Five minutes later, he was seated across from his friend at the wooden table, which had been spray-painted a crimson red. He brought a forkful of pulled pork to his mouth and savored the taste.
; “Still as good as ever, isn’t it?” Rel asked.
Bo nodded and moved his eyes from the picnic tables toward the shack. Adjacent was the old barbecue pit, and Bo saw an older man with gray-specked stubble putting more hickory wood on the fire. “If it’s possible, it may be better,” Bo said. Then his eyes narrowed and he gazed at Rel. “What phone did you call from?”
“Pay phone at a gas station on McFarland.”
“Why all the secrecy?”
Rel took a sip of sweet tea. “Alvie’s convinced that we’re being followed.”
“Really?”
“Really. He says Bully has this Filipino woman that does his dirty work for him. He says he’s seen her five or six times since your visit last month.”
“Coincidence?” Bo asked.
“No chance,” Rel said. “Alvie says this woman is too good to be letting him see her. He says she wants to be seen so that he knows he’s being watched.”
“What does he know? If he’s being watched, then he must know something that Bully doesn’t want to get out.”
Rel gazed down into his paper plate full of ribs and white bread. “You need to understand something about my little brother, Bo. Alvie’s not like me, you understand?”
“What are you talking about, Rel?”
“He’s a family man. Got him a nice wife who doesn’t bitch at him too much. Got him a boy to carry his name on and another one coming.” Rel fingered a piece of bread but didn’t eat it. “He’s got a lot more to lose than me.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Bo said.
“No, I’m not. I am what I am and I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’ve put my kids through college here at the university and I’ve worked hard all my life. Old Rel has done OK, but Alvie . . . he’s got a chance to have it all. Good job, loving wife, kids. He can come as close to the American dream as a black man can in this county.” Rel looked up from the plate at Bo. “He can be like you, brother.”
Bo felt a pang in his heart, knowing that Rel was wrong but not having the energy to correct him. “Why are you telling me all this, Rel?”
“So you’ll know what’s at stake.”
“I know you got ten thousand dollars on the line.”
“I don’t care about that anymore. You can keep your money. When Alvie told me about that woman following him, I blamed it on your coming last month. I told him to just keep his mouth shut and forget about you, but Alvie set me straight. He said if it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. That he saw something he shouldn’t have seen and would have been viewed as a threat regardless.” Rel put a rib in his mouth.
While his friend chewed the pork, Bo watched him. He tried to be patient but could feel his heart beating hard in his chest. Finally, as Rel washed the bite down with a sip of tea, Bo asked, “What did Alvie see that made him such a threat?”
Rel swept his eyes around the outside of the shack.
“We’re alone,” Bo said. “There’s no one here but us and ain’t no one watching. What did he see?”
“Alvie was Bully’s driver for that trip,” Rel finally said, and Bo could hear the stress in his friend’s choppy delivery. “He drove Bully to the prison in St. Clair. They picked up Jack, and he drove them to Tuscaloosa. On the way, they made one stop at the Cracker Barrel in Bessemer, and then they dropped Jack off at his house around one o’clock in the afternoon.”
When Rel stopped, Bo gritted his teeth in frustration. “This is all information that I already know, and none of it should give Bully anything to worry about. Detective Richey’s summary of his interview with Bully mentions all of this.”
Rel looked up from the plate. “Did Detective Richey mention the stop Bully made on the way back to Jasper?”
Bo felt his stomach flitter. “No. Wade’s report indicates that Bully said that there were no stops on the way home.”
“Wrong,” Rel said. “There was a stop. Right after they dropped Jack off, Alvie says that Bully asked him to drive downtown to the old First National Bank Building.”
“That’s the big historic building, right?”
“Yeah, ten stories I think. Bully said he needed to run an errand and Alvie waited in the car. Well, Bully was gone a long time—longer than an hour—and Alvie got worried. He tried to call him on his cell phone and Bully didn’t answer. Finally, Alvie got out of the car and went inside. He didn’t want anything to happen to Bully on his watch, you know?”
Bo didn’t say anything. He knew Rel was close to the punch line.
“Once he was inside the bank, he tried to call again, but there was still no answer. He went to the directory sign in the lobby and tried to guess where Bully had gone. After scanning the names, only one looked vaguely familiar, and it was on the fourth floor. Alvie took the elevator up to four and, as he was stepping out of the doors, Bully was getting on. He had a manila envelope in his hand and his head was down. Bully damn near walked right over Alvie as he came in, but once he saw who it was, his face turned red and he asked Alvie what the hell he was doing. Alvie started to say something but stopped when he saw the man in the hallway watching them. The fella had dark greasy-looking hair and wore glasses, and his eyes were wide, as if he had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.” Rel hesitated, before adding, “Alvie had seen him before.”
“When?” Bo asked, but he could feel the pieces to the puzzle beginning to come into place.
“At the prison. Bully visited Jack several times earlier this year, and on a couple occasions that fella was there. One time, Bully and the guy talked for a few minutes in the visitor’s parking lot, with Alvie waiting in the car.”
“Who?” Bo asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Zorn,” Rel said, and Bo had an eerie sense of déjà vu. “Gregory Zorn.”
41
Bo called Tom on his way to the First National Bank Building. “I’ll meet you in the lobby,” Tom said after getting the full debriefing.
Ten minutes later, Tom and Bo rode up the elevator together. “There’s no way he’s going to talk with us,” Tom said.
“Probably not,” Bo said. “But since he won’t return our calls and emails, we don’t have any other options.”
When the elevator reached the fourth floor, the doors opened and Tom and Bo stepped onto the landing. They came to a standstill when they saw the movers carrying a large leather sofa out of the glass doors leading into the law office of Gregory Zorn, PC.
“Damnit,” Bo whispered under his breath as the two men carrying the furniture walked past them.
“What’s going on here?” Bo asked.
“What does it look like?” one of the men grunted. “Moving day.”
Tom and Bo watched as the movers walked swiftly down the hall, where the door to the stairwell had been propped open. A few seconds later, the workers disappeared down the stairs.
“Let’s take a look,” Bo said, and without waiting for Tom to respond, he walked through the doors of the office. Tom hesitated, but only for a moment, as he followed Bo inside.
The office was mostly deserted, walls bare except for a few nails where pictures had once hung. Tom saw only a few stray pieces of furniture.
When the moving crew returned a few minutes later, Tom noticed that one of them was wearing a cap that said, “Two Men and a Truck.”
“Where is Mr. Zorn?” Bo asked the man with the cap.
“Not here.” He began to walk down a hallway, and Bo and Tom followed him.
“Where is he?” Bo persisted.
“I have no idea, sir,” the man said. “All I know is that we’re supposed to load up this office and move it today.”
“Where are you moving it to?” Bo asked.
The man smirked. “Now you know I can’t tell you that.” Then he barked at his partner: “Looks like we got three tables left, Steve, and then we can hit the road.”
Bo glanced at Tom. “Try the phone number.”
Tom couldn’t remember the digits offhand, so he goo
gled “Gregory Zorn” on his phone and, thirty seconds later, clicked on the telephone number. After six rings, the answering machine picked up, offering the same message that Tom had been getting for the past month. There was no mention of a move.
“Sir,” Tom called after the man with the cap, “when were you guys called to do this job?”
“Yesterday,” he answered, his impatience palpable. “Look, I don’t know what you guys are doing here. I’m assuming you have legal business with Mr. Zorn and weren’t aware that he was leaving town.”
“That’s right,” Bo said.
“Well, I can’t help you. All I can tell you is that, in the words of Jerry Reed, we got a long way to go and a short time to get there and you two speed bumps are slowing us down.”
“Mr.—”
“If you don’t leave now, I’m calling the police.”
Tom held out both hands. “OK, we’re going. I just have one question. We do have legal business with Mr. Zorn and it is urgent that we speak with him. We had no idea he was moving offices and he hasn’t answered his calls. Can you give us any clue as to his new location?”
“Hey, Chuck, quit yapping and help me with this last table,” the other man yelled from down the hall. “They stop serving food at the Flora-Bama at nine, and I don’t want to drink my dinner.”
Chuck took off his cap and gazed at the carpeted floor. Then he gave Tom a sidelong glance. “That’s the only hint you’re going to get.”
42
“Bad news, señor.” Manny spoke into the cell phone as she watched the two lawyers from a bench across from the bank. “It appears that your driver has loose lips.”
“How can you be sure?” Bully barked back.
“I just saw the investigator, Mr. Haynes, meeting with the driver’s brother at a barbecue shack in Northport.”
“Archibald’s?”
“Sí. Mr. Haynes drove directly to the bank after talking with Mr. Jennings for about twenty minutes. Mr. McMurtrie met him there and they went up to the fourth floor.”
The Last Trial Page 23
