Nick knew what Melvin-Philly was talking about. A lot of guys in his neighborhood had nicknames that had stuck for life.
Once Philly got to feeling good and started talking, he was a treasure trove of information, as Nick knew he would be.
“Two nights before the murder, she comes home with this beautiful woman—tall, dark hair, a knockout.”
Nick interrupted. “You’re talking about Angie coming home with a woman?”
“Yeah, Angie. I didn’t think anything of it, you know. I figured they were just friends or something. Anyway, when I came on the next night, I was telling the day guy about how good-looking this broad was when the two of them come walking out dressed to the nines. They weren’t holding hands or anything like that but—what am I trying to say—they looked like they were together, if you know what I mean. Then the day guy tells me he didn’t see them all day. I don’t want to say anything bad about anybody, you know what I mean—I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“Great, Philly. It’s exactly what we want—your observations.”
That was when Philly laid the big bombshell on Nick and Tony.
“Speaking of seeing things—there’s two gay guys on the first floor here who saw the guy who did it. They say he ran right by their window, stopped, and practically posed for them. They were pretty surprised that nobody came by to talk to them.”
Nick looked at Tony, who shrugged his shoulders, letting Nick know he didn’t have a clue.
“See what I mean, Philly?” Nick said. “We didn’t even know about those guys. This is the kind of stuff that’s gonna get you in the newspapers.”
“Well, I better get my uniform clean and get a haircut. My wife won’t believe this.”
Nick was trying to get a picture in his mind of the woman who was married to Melvin “Philly” Gertz. Probably an old battle-axe who leads him around by the nose, he thought as he looked at that nose again. She’s certainly got a lot to work with.
“Those two guys,” he asked, “would they happen to be in right now?”
“They sure are, and they’ll want to talk to you. I know you guys are macho cops and everything, but Paul and David, they’re really great.”
“I’ll take your word for that, Philly. Why don’t you give them a buzz and see if we can talk to them right now.”
“I sure will.” Philly picked up the telephone receiver on the wall. Before he started dialing the number, Nick slipped in another request.
“Do you think you could come down to the station when you get off and maybe look at a few pictures? See if you can identify this woman from some photographs we have at the station?” That lie always rolled off the tongue so easily: “Maybe look at a few pictures”—actually, it’s several books full of pictures, and you may be there for a few hours!
“Sure thing,” Philly replied. “Whatever you guys want.”
Paul and David were both in their mid-thirties, clean-cut and very fit. Paul worked at home and had converted one of the two bedrooms into an office. Tony questioned Paul in his office while Nick and David chatted in the living room.
“We were sitting in the living room watching TV—I can’t remember what show it was. I think it was NYPD Blue,” Paul told Tony. “We heard this noise. It sounded like a blasting cap or a firecracker. You know, you don’t normally think, hey that’s a gunshot, because frankly I never heard a gunshot before except on TV. We both went to the window. We didn’t rush or anything—just kind of curious. The sound had been pretty close.”
“Did you see anything?” Tony asked.
“Yeah. We look out and to the left we see this car with the driver’s door open, and there’s a man lying on the ground. And there’s this other man leaning over him—he could have been checking him out to see if he was okay. I’m not saying he’s the person who shot the man—I couldn’t say that. I didn’t even know he was shot at the time. I found that out later. Anyway, the man who was leaning gets up and he walks toward us and then he sees us at the front window. He’s looking at us and we’re looking at him—and then he takes off. I wrote a description down right away. So did David. And we didn’t compare our descriptions. Nobody came to talk to us, so we figured you must have caught the guy.”
Paul handed Tony the description he’d written. Tony took a couple of minutes to read it, then looked up at Paul. “How far away from you was this man when you saw him?”
“Well, when we first saw him he was maybe twenty, thirty feet, but when he came closer, he was six or eight feet from us.”
“What about the lighting? Was it light enough for you to get a good look at him?”
“Oh yeah, I’ll show you before you leave. We have security lights on the side of the building. It’s like daylight out there.”
“Could you see if he had a gun on him?”
“I didn’t see a gun.”
“Did you see him take anything off the deceased, like a wallet or something?”
“No.”
At about the same time, in the living room, David was at the window showing Nick exactly where the man was standing when they spotted each other.
The two men agreed to come to the station the next day to give a sworn statement and “look at a few pictures.”
After the interviews, Tony had wanted to quiz Angie about her mysterious girlfriend right away. “If we go to her apartment right now we may catch her before she goes to bed,” he told Nick.
Nick suspected that Tony simply wanted to catch Angie in her negligee again.
“Let’s go tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll call first, so she’s not surprised and defensive. We’ll tell her we’re trying to tie up some loose ends.”
Nick saw the disappointment on Tony’s face, but his partner didn’t argue with his decision.
“Did you tell Philly not to say anything?” Tony asked when they were in the car and driving back to the station.
“Oh yeah. When I got through with him, he was only going to talk to movie producers after he and I solve the case together.”
Tony chuckled. “I gotta admit, Nick, you certainly have a good line of bullshit.”
Nick ignored the compliment. “What did you think of David and Paul?” he asked.
“Well, they’re very credible. Their descriptions are consistent and so detailed. I can’t believe we have people scouring the neighborhood for witnesses, and they miss the two guys who had front-row seats to the action.”
“It happens. At least we found them and now we have something to go on.”
Tony glanced again at the two descriptions. Both David and Paul had written that the man leaning over Carl Robertson had been about five-seven or five-eight, with somewhat unruly or greasy hair. He was thin and dressed totally in black. Paul wrote that the man appeared to be Latin, perhaps Puerto Rican or Cuban, based solely on his skin color. David noted that he wore no jewelry and that his eyes appeared to be brown and glassy.
“How about Angie’s girlfriend?” Tony asked. “Any possible connection to the murder?”
“I don’t know,” Nick replied. “It may be a red herring but we gotta check it out.”
“If Angie is a switch hitter and this woman looks as good as Philly says, I think we should set up a surveillance.”
Nick looked at him and smiled. “I’ll let you handle that.”
9
Johnny made the team that first year, but there were times he wished he hadn’t. Practices were two nights a week and on Saturdays until the season started. Then the games were on Saturday mornings. Johnny had just turned sixteen and was by far the youngest person on the team. He barely saw any playing time.
There were eighteen teams in the Greater Metropolitan League, and they were equally divided into Eastern and Western divisions. The season was eight games long, and the winner of each division made it to the championship game. The Lexingtons were the only team from Manhattan. Four or five were from Brooklyn, and the rest were from the Bronx.
The Lexingtons didn’t have a home
field; every game was an away game for them. They also didn’t have a sponsor to pay for uniforms and transportation and things like that. So they wore white shirts and white pants that each player had to supply for himself, along with his own equipment. And they had to find their own way to the football fields in the Bronx and Brooklyn. For Johnny that meant lugging his equipment on the subway. It was okay, though. He usually went with Mikey and his brothers.
You had to be at least sixteen and not older than nineteen to play, and everyone had to submit a copy of his birth certificate at the beginning of the season to prove it. The age requirements were the biggest joke in the league. You could change the date on the copy of your birth certificate pretty easily if you wanted, but it was even easier than that to beat the system. All you had to do was borrow a younger guy’s birth certificate; nobody ever bothered to check whether it was really yours.
As a result, ringers were rampant. That first year, Johnny saw guys showing up to play games with their wives—and kids! The referees never batted an eye.
Late in a game if the score was lopsided, Johnny would be sent in to play—usually at a position that required no skill, like defensive tackle. Johnny, who was six feet tall and maybe 170 pounds soaking wet, would often line up against a 250-pound, thirty-something man.
“When that ball is snapped I’m gonna kick your fucking ass, kid,” was not an uncommon line for Johnny to hear. It was a far cry from high school football, where he should have been playing. But Johnny, like everybody else on his team, was a street kid. He knew bullshit and bluster had to be ignored. He also knew that Frankie O’Connor, who played middle linebacker, expected him to do the job when he was in there, no matter what the score or who he was up against. Even though he was scared, he was not going to be intimidated in front of Frankie. He might not be stronger than the guy on the other side of the scrimmage line, but he was usually faster and he was definitely tough enough. Late in the season, after he had made some tackles for losses and recovered a couple of fumbles, the coach started to play him more—probably at the suggestion of Frankie.
I’ll be starting next year, he told himself. I’ve just got to show them I’m an athlete and I’m tough.
10
Jack called Dr. Erica Gardner early the next morning after Pat left for work. In his previous life as an insurance company defense attorney, Jack had represented many physicians in medical malpractice cases and had used the services of some of the most prominent physicians in the United States to testify as expert witnesses on behalf of his clients. Erica Gardner was one of those experts. She was from St. Louis and had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School, one of the relatively few African American women to do so. She was board-certified as a specialist in internal medicine and had a very successful and busy practice in Miami. Jack hoped he could get Pat in for an appointment within the next month.
He gave his name to the receptionist and was on hold waiting for the scheduling secretary when he heard Erica’s voice on the other end of the line. “Is that really you, Jack Tobin? I heard a rumor that you had moved to Tibet and become a monk.”
“Not quite, Erica, but close. I’m living in a small town called Bass Creek.”
“I’ve heard of Bass Creek. It’s a lovely town over by Lake Okeechobee.”
“That’s the one.”
The small talk was now out of the way. “What can I do for you, Jack?” Erica asked.
“It’s my wife, Erica.” Jack explained that Pat had had stomach pains for some nine months and her local physician kept telling her it was related to her gallbladder operation and would get better.
“Did he do a CT scan, do you know?”
“No, he hasn’t. That’s one of the reasons I’m calling you.”
“How about a pelvic ultrasound?”
“Nope. No tests of that nature.”
“Let’s get her in here right away.”
That afternoon Jack called on Ted Griffin in Miami. His office was in a run-down two-story masonry building in a seedy part of town. The inside didn’t look much better.
Ted Griffin was as tall as Jack and much heavier, with big hands and big feet. His attire was as sloppy as his office. He reached out affably to shake hands and then put his arm around Jack’s shoulders.
“You probably don’t remember me, Jack,” he said in a deep Southern drawl. “I had a few personal injury cases about twenty years ago when you were on the other side. You pasted my behind so bad that I convinced myself to stay with criminal law.”
Jack honestly couldn’t remember ever meeting the guy. He was certain they’d never tried a case against each other. He never forgot lawyers he litigated against. “I’m sure that’s an exaggeration, Ted. I’ll bet we settled.”
“We sure did, Jack—for a pittance.”
Jack detected a little resentment in the tone, yet when he looked at Ted, the man was smiling from ear to ear. He was certainly not like the typical criminal lawyers Jack had known over the years.
“What can I do for you, Jack?” Ted asked as he cleared papers off one of two client chairs in front of his desk and motioned for Jack to sit. Ted sat in the other chair next to Jack. He would have been invisible behind the desk, which was stacked almost two feet high with files.
“Well, Ted, I want to ask you some questions about an old client of yours, a man named James Vernon.”
“I remember James, all right,” Ted said quickly. “He was one of my regulars until he got himself killed a few years back. He was a slippery, slimy son-of-a-bitch. The kind of guy you could never be comfortable around. He was cold and edgy and dangerous. What do you want to know about him? Whatever it is, I’m sure he did it.”
“I’m investigating the murder of Clarence Waterman.”
Ted leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment before answering. “Did I represent James on that one?”
“No, he was never charged. Somebody else was, a man named Henry Wilson. Clarence Waterman was a drug dealer and a hairdresser as well, and somebody slit his throat.”
“The hairdresser. Oh yeah, I remember the hairdresser,” Ted said, almost as if he was recalling a fond vision from the past.
“You do?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I’m surprised.”
“About what?”
“I’m surprised you answered so quickly,” said Jack. “I mean, the murder happened seventeen years ago. Yet as soon as I mentioned he was a hairdresser, you recalled it. Why?”
“Because James told me he slit the hairdresser’s throat. It’s not every day your client tells you something like that.”
Jack almost fell off his seat. At best, he’d expected Ted to confirm the story James Vernon had told Wofford Benton. Instead, he confirmed that Vernon had told him exactly what the snitch, Willie Smith, had testified to at trial.
“James Vernon told you he killed Clarence Waterman?”
“Yeah.” Ted said it nonchalantly, like he was talking about the score of a baseball game or what he’d had for dinner the night before.
Jack wanted to grab the man by the throat and ask him if he understood that another man was on death row for this murder. But he restrained himself. He was going to need Ted Griffin’s help in the not-too-distant future.
“What exactly did Vernon tell you?”
“He said he went to Waterman’s house to buy drugs. He said Waterman started to come on to him in a homosexual way and he took out his knife and cut his throat.”
“Was anybody else with him?”
“Two other guys, I believe. I’m a little fuzzy on that part.”
“Do you know if either one of those two other men was Henry Wilson?”
“Who is Henry Wilson?”
“My client. The man who is on death row for this murder.”
“Oh yeah, I see. That’s why you’re here. You told me that already, didn’t you? That’s the part I’m not sure about. I don’t know if your client was one of the two men with Jam
es or not.”
“Why didn’t you go to the authorities with this confession?”
“Counselor, you know I couldn’t do that. That’s privileged information.”
Jack didn’t want to argue the legalities of the attorney-client privilege with the man. He did feel compelled to inquire a little further.
“How long ago did James Vernon die?”
“About five years ago. It was some kind of a drug deal gone bad.”
“Well, if he died five years ago, the privilege died with him. Why didn’t you tell somebody then?”
“Because, first of all, I didn’t know that James was telling me the truth—I mean, he told Anthony Webster somebody else killed Waterman. Second, I didn’t know if your client was one of the other two men. I don’t know much about Henry Wilson’s case. I don’t know why they convicted him.”
“Who is Anthony Webster?”
“He was the investigator for the state. He’s retired now.”
“The prosecutor’s investigator? You mean the prosecutor was aware that James Vernon said he was at the murder scene?”
“I believe so. At least, that’s what James told me.”
“Where’s Anthony Webster now?”
“I think he moved to Lake City. I’m not sure he’s still alive.”
“Would you be willing to put what you told me today in an affidavit?”
“Go ahead and prepare it. If it’s accurate, I’ll sign it.”
Ted Griffin was an affable enough guy, but it was obvious to Jack that he wasn’t going out of his way for anybody.
On the drive back to Bass Creek later that afternoon Jack started adding all this new information to the other evidence he had uncovered. James Vernon had told both Henry’s lawyer, Wofford Benton, and the prosecutor’s investigator, Anthony Webster, that he, Vernon, was at the scene of the murder and Henry wasn’t there; he told his own lawyer, Ted Griffin, and the jailhouse snitch, Willie Smith, that he committed the murder. Unbelievably, only Willie Smith’s testimony was brought out at Henry’s trial and his two subsequent appeals. Could these recent revelations pass the “newly discovered evidence” standard? And if so, would they be enough to get Henry a new trial?
The Law of Second Chances Page 6
