Three Classic Thrillers (124 page)

At the present time, he was about twelve inches over. And he had a thin file of recent Supreme Court cases under his mattress. And he had two inches next door where Hank Henshaw watched it on the bookshelf. And he had about three inches next door in J. B. Gullitt’s stack of papers. Sam reviewed all documents and letters for Henshaw and Gullitt. Henshaw had a fine lawyer, one purchased with family money. Gullitt had a fool from a big-shot firm in D.C. who’d never seen a courtroom.

The three-book rule was another baffling limitation on what inmates could keep in their cells. This rule simply said that a death row inmate could possess no more than three books. Sam owned fifteen, six in his cell, and nine scattered among his clients on the Row. He had no time for fiction. His collection was solely law books about the death penalty and the Eighth Amendment.

He had finished a dinner of boiled pork, pinto beans, and corn bread, and he was reading a case from the Ninth Circuit in California about an inmate who faced his death so calmly his lawyers decided he must be crazy. So they filed a series of motions claiming their client was indeed too crazy to execute. The Ninth Circuit was filled with California liberals opposed to the death penalty, and they jumped at this novel argument. The execution was stayed. Sam liked this case. He had wished many times that he had the Ninth Circuit looking down upon him instead of the Fifth.

Gullitt next door said, “Gotta kite, Sam,” and Sam walked to his bars. Flying a kite was the only method of correspondence for inmates several cells away. Gullitt handed him the note. It was from Preacher Boy, a pathetic white kid seven doors down. He had become a country preacher at the age of fourteen, a regular hellfire-and-brimstoner, but that career was cut short and
perhaps delayed forever when he was convicted of the rape and murder of a deacon’s wife. He was twenty-four now, a resident of the Row for three years, and had recently made a glorious return to the gospel. The note said:

How wonderful, thought Sam, they’re already praying that I go quickly, no pain or nothing. He sat on the edge of his bed and wrote a brief message on a scrap of paper.

He handed it to J.B., and waited with his arms through the bars as the kite made its way along the tier. It was almost eight o’clock, still hot and muggy but mercifully growing dark outside. The night would lower the temperature to the high seventies, and with the fans buzzing away the cells became tolerable.

Sam had received several kites during the day. All had expressed sympathy and hope. All offered whatever help was available. The music had been quieter and the yelling that erupted occasionally when someone’s rights were being tampered with had not occurred. For the second day, the Row had been a more peaceful place. The televisions rattled along all day and
into the night, but the volume was lower. Tier A was noticeably calmer.

“Got myself a new lawyer,” Sam said quietly as he leaned on his elbows with his hands hanging into the hallway. He wore nothing but his boxer shorts. He could see Gullitt’s hands and wrists, but he could never see his face when they talked in their cells. Each day as Sam was led outside for his hour of exercise, he walked slowly along the tier and stared into the eyes of his comrades. And they stared at him. He had their faces memorized, and he knew their voices. But it was cruel to live next door to a man for years and have long conversations about life and death while looking only at his hands.

“That’s good, Sam. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yeah. Pretty sharp kid, I think.”

“Who is it?” Gullitt’s hands were clasped together. They didn’t move.

“My grandson.” Sam said this just loud enough for Gullitt to hear. He could be trusted with secrets.

Gullitt’s fingers moved slightly as he pondered this. “Your grandson?”

“Yep. From Chicago. Big firm. Thinks we might have a chance.”

“You never told me you had a grandson.”

“I hadn’t seen him in twenty years. Showed up yesterday and told me he was a lawyer and wanted to take my case.”

“Where’s he been for the past ten years?”

“Growing up, I guess. He’s just a kid. Twenty-six, I think.”

“You’re gonna let a twenty-six-year-old kid take your case?”

This irritated Sam a bit. “I don’t exactly have a lot of choices at this moment in my life.”

“Hell, Sam, you know more law than he does.”

“I know, but it’ll be nice to have a real lawyer out there typing up motions and appeals on real computers and filing them in the proper courts, you know. It’ll be nice to have somebody who can run to court and argue with judges, somebody who can fight with the state on equal footing.”

This seemed to satisfy Gullitt because he didn’t speak for several minutes. His hands were still, but then he began rubbing his fingertips together and this of course meant something was bothering him. Sam waited.

“I’ve been thinking about something, Sam. All day long this has been eatin’ at me.”

“What is it?”

“Well, for three years now you’ve been right there and I’ve been right here, you know, and you’re my best friend in the world. You’re the only person I can trust, you know, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do if they walk you down the hall and into the chamber. I mean, I’ve always had you right there to look over my legal stuff, stuff that I’ll never understand, and you’ve always given me good advice and told me what to do. I can’t trust my lawyer in D.C. He never calls me or writes me, and I don’t know what the hell’s going on with my case. I mean, I don’t know if I’m a year away or five years away, and it’s enough to drive me crazy. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be a nut case by now. And what if you don’t make it?” By now his hands were jumping and thrusting with all sorts of intensity. His words stopped and his hands died down.

Sam lit a cigarette and offered one to Gullitt, the only person on death row with whom he’d share. Hank Henshaw, to his left, did not smoke. They puffed for a moment, each blowing clouds of smoke at the row of windows along the top of the hallway.

Sam finally said, “I’m not going anywhere, J.B. My lawyer says we’ve got a good chance.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I think so. He’s a smart kid.”

“That must be weird, man, having a grandson as your lawyer. I can’t imagine.” Gullitt was thirty-one, childless, married, and often complained about his wife’s jody, or free world boyfriend. She was a cruel woman who never visited and had once written a short letter with the good news that she was pregnant. Gullitt pouted for two days before admitting to Sam that he had beaten her for years and chased lots of women himself. She wrote again a month later and said she was sorry. A friend loaned her the money for an abortion, she explained, and she didn’t want a divorce after all. Gullitt couldn’t have been happier.

“It’s somewhat strange, I guess,” Sam said. “He looks nothing like me, but he favors his mother.”

“So the dude just came right out and told you he was your long-lost grandson?”

“No. Not at first. We talked for a while and his voice sounded familiar. Sounded like his father’s.”

“His father is your son, right?”

“Yeah. He’s dead.”

“Your son is dead?”

“Yeah.”

The green book finally arrived from Preacher Boy with another note about a magnificent dream he had just two nights ago. He had recently acquired the rare spiritual gift of dream interpretation, and couldn’t wait to share it with Sam. The dream was still revealing itself to him, and once he had it all pieced together he would decode it and untangle it and illustrate it for Sam. It was good news, he already knew that much.

At least he’s stopped singing, Sam said to himself as he finished the note and sat on his bed. Preacher Boy
had also been a gospel singer of sorts and a songwriter on top of that, and periodically found himself seized with the spirit to the point of serenading the tier at full volume and at all hours of the day and night. He was an untrained tenor with little pitch but incredible volume, and the complaints came fast and furious when he belted his new tunes into the hallway. Packer himself usually intervened to stop the racket. Sam had even threatened to step in legally and speed up the kid’s execution if the caterwauling didn’t stop, a sadistic move that he later apologized for. The poor kid was just crazy, and if Sam lived long enough he planned to use an insanity strategy that he’d read about from the California case.

He reclined on his bed and began to read. The fan ruffled the pages and circulated the sticky air, but within minutes the sheets under him were wet. He slept in dampness until the early hours before dawn when the Row was almost cool and the sheets were almost dry.

T
he Auburn House had never been a house or a home, but for decades had been a quaint little church of yellow brick and stained glass. It sat surrounded by an ugly chain-link fence on a shaded lot a few blocks from downtown Memphis. Graffiti littered the yellow brick and the stained glass windows had been replaced with plywood. The congregation had fled east years ago, away from the inner city, to the safety of the suburbs. They took their pews and songbooks, and even their steeple. A security guard paced along the fence ready to open the gate. Next door was a crumbling apartment building, and a block behind was a deteriorating federal housing project from which the patients of Auburn House came.

They were all young mothers, teenagers without exception whose mothers had also been teenagers and whose fathers were generally unknown. The average age was fifteen. The youngest had been eleven. They drifted in from the project with a baby on a hip and sometimes another one trailing behind. They came in packs of three and four and made their visits a social event. They came alone and scared. They gathered in the old sanctuary which was now a waiting room where paperwork was required. They waited with their infants while their toddlers played under the seats. They chatted with their friends, other girls from the project who’d walked to Auburn House because cars were scarce and they were too young to drive.

Adam parked in a small lot to the side and asked the
security guard for directions. He examined Adam closely then pointed to the front door where two young girls were holding babies and smoking. He entered between them, nodding and trying to be polite, but they only stared. Inside he found a half dozen of the same mothers sitting in plastic chairs with children swarming at their feet. A young lady behind a desk pointed at a door and told him to take the hallway on the left.

The door to Lee’s tiny office was open and she was talking seriously to a patient. She smiled at Adam. “I’ll be five minutes,” she said, holding something that appeared to be a diaper. The patient did not have a child with her, but one was due very shortly.

Adam eased along the hallway and found the men’s room. Lee was waiting for him in the hall when he came out. They pecked each other on the cheeks. “What do you think of our little operation?” she asked.

“What exactly do you do here?” They walked through the narrow corridor with worn carpet and peeling walls.

“Auburn House is a nonprofit organization staffed with volunteers. We work with young mothers.”

“It must be depressing.”

“Depends on how you look at it. Welcome to my office.” Lee waved at her door and they stepped inside. The walls were covered with colorful charts, one showing a series of babies and the foods they eat; another listed in large simple words the most common ailments of newborns; another cartoonish illustration hailed the benefits of condoms. Adam took a seat and assessed the walls.

“All of our kids come from the projects, so you can imagine the postnatal instruction they receive at home. None of them are married. They live with their mothers or aunts or grandmothers. Auburn House was
founded by some nuns twenty years ago to teach these kids how to raise healthy babies.”

Adam nodded at the condom poster. “And to prevent babies?”

“Yes. We’re not family planners, don’t want to be, but it doesn’t hurt to mention birth control.”

“Maybe you should do more than mention it.”

“Maybe. Sixty percent of the babies born in this county last year were out of wedlock, and the numbers go up each year. And each year there are more cases of battered and abandoned children. It’ll break your heart. Some of these little fellas don’t have a chance.”

“Who funds it?”

“It’s all private. We spend half our time trying to raise money. We operate on a very lean budget.”

“How many counselors like you?”

“A dozen or so. Some work a few afternoons a week, a few Saturdays. I’m lucky. I can afford to work here full-time.”

“How many hours a week?”

“I don’t know. Who keeps up with them? I get here around ten and leave after dark.”

“And you do this for free?”

“Yeah. You guys call it pro bono, I think.”

“It’s different with lawyers. We do volunteer work to justify ourselves and the money we make, our little contribution to society. We still make plenty of money, you understand. This is a little different.”

“It’s rewarding.”

“How’d you find this place?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago. I was a member of a social club, a hot-tea-drinkers club, and we’d meet once a month for a lovely lunch and discuss ways to raise a few pennies for the less fortunate. One day a nun spoke to us about Auburn House, and we adopted it as our beneficiary. One thing led to another.”

“And you’re not paid a dime?”

“Phelps has plenty of money, Adam. In fact, I donate a lot of it to Auburn House. We have an annual fundraiser now at the Peabody, black tie and champagne, and I make Phelps lean on his banker buddies to show up with their wives and fork over the money. Raised over two hundred thousand last year.”