Private: #1 Suspect (13 page)

I WAS SHUFFLED between cops to the Twin Towers infirmary, where a nurse swabbed my cuts and scrapes with alcohol. She put a bandage on my chin.

I was thinking about Colleen, that if she had been pregnant, it was impossible for the baby to have been mine.

Except for our good-bye tryst a week ago, I hadn’t seen Colleen in more than six months. I mean, I would have been able to tell if she’d been six months along, right?

Still, as Tandy said, the murder of a fetus was a special circumstance when tacked on to murder. Yes, I would be denied bail. In fact, I could spend the next year in this sewer before I went to trial.

I refocused my eyes as a few feet away Tandy explained to the doctor that I had tripped and, since I was cuffed, hadn’t been able to break my fall.

“And what about the bruise on the back of his head?” the doctor asked. The doctor was a late-middle-aged white man. If he’d graduated anywhere in the top 99.9 percent of his class, he wouldn’t have been here.

“Jack is one of those masters-of-the-universe types,” Tandy joked. “Doesn’t like being detained. When I was putting him into the back of our car,” Tandy twisted his body to show exactly how I had rammed my head into the doorframe, “he bumped his head.”

The doctor asked me, “Is that how it happened?”

Saying no would have been a mistake. A few years back, an inmate had complained to an ACLU monitor that no one in his pod had been allowed a shower in three or four weeks. He was beaten. His leg was broken. The ACLU got involved, but for all I knew, that inmate was still here awaiting trial.

“It happened as the detective said. I was clumsy.”

“Duly noted,” said the doctor.

“May I have an aspirin?”

Tandy nodded. “Give him an aspirin, Doc. Our farewell gift.”

Caine said, “Shut up, Tandy.”

I wanted to seriously hurt Tandy. I hoped I would live long enough to do it. Tandy and Ziegler waved bye-bye and slithered down the hallway.

Caine said to me, “Hang in, Jack. I’m working on one thing. Getting you out. I’ve never let you down before and I won’t now.”

A nurse took my vitals, then gave me a mental-status test, checking to see if I was crazy. Or had plans to hang myself. Or commit murder.

From there, I was taken into a large open room, stripped, and given a military-style physical. I grabbed my butt cheeks and coughed on command, let the guard do a cavity check.

I was declared good to go and escorted back to intake with a young sheriff-in-training who struck up a conversation with me. He said he was hoping to get out of here by five today. He was picking up his folks at the airport.

He took my watch, phone, wallet, belt, and shoelaces. My fingers were pressed onto an electronic ten-printer. I stood in front of a height chart holding a number to my chest. I turned to my left, turned to my right, as requested by the bored man with the camera.

I did what I was told, but I was swamped with a lot of feelings beginning with the letter
D:
depressed, demoralized, degraded.

All around me, people puked, screamed, threatened, spat, and seemed to be begging to be knocked around.

I wanted to shout,
I’m not one of these guys. I’m innocent
.

It would have been like shouting down a hole that went clear to the center of the earth.

And my morning was just beginning.

I WAS WALKED through the building to the men’s jail, where I was strip-searched again and issued a “roll-up,” a pair of orange pants and matching shirt, and plastic shoes. Then I was given a prisoner’s tour of the facilities on the way to my cell.

The jail was made up of hundreds of two-tiered pods, each with dozens of holding cells, each pod meant to hold thirty men, but as I was walked past, I could see each pod was double booked and held more like fifty living, crying, coughing, desperate men.

My cell was the size of a walk-in closet, six by eight feet, with two narrow metal slabs and a stinking, clogged toilet.

I was the fourth man in that cell.

I sat on one of the slabs.

The overhead lights glared. There was no window, no way to tell the time, but it seemed to me that at least ten hours had gone by since Fescoe’s phone call to me at Private.

A rank-smelling man, somewhere between twenty and forty years old, sat on the bench next to me.

He said his name was Irwin, and he wanted to talk. He told me he’d been in holding for five days. He’d been caught with cocaine and a teenage girl in his car two blocks from a school. Still, Irwin, I thought, had less to worry about than I did.

He had a festering wound on his arm, another on his neck. He told me about the mystery-meat sandwich for lunch and the dinner burrito, the kind you get at gas stations.

I had missed both.

He asked if I had a good lawyer. I said I did, then I leaned back against the wall. I didn’t want to attract any kind of attention. I was drowning in a riptide of despair that didn’t make total sense to me.

I’d been through marine boot camp and then a war. I’d killed people. Friends had died. My parents had died. I’d been wounded in action. In fact, I’d died and been brought back to life. All of that.

And yet the one thing I couldn’t remember feeling before was an utter lack of hope.

Nothing I said mattered.

I had no access to anyone. No moves to make.

I was at the mercy of people who wanted me put away. Even Fescoe had let me down: confess or else.

Irwin moved to the other slab, and another unwashed desperado took his place next to me. He seemed like a decent guy. Had a couple of kids, a wife, had gotten into a bar fight. Said he hadn’t been able to make bail. He had a bad cough. Sounded like TB or maybe lung cancer.

I feigned sleep. I made a mental list of people who hated me. It was a long list of guys I’d busted, thwarted, fired, or exposed.

Tommy’s face kept coming to me, and then I was awakened out of a murky dream. The lights were all on. One of my cell mates was grunting on the can. But what had awakened me was the voice booming over the public-address system, naming which people would be bused to what court.

Irwin said, “This is what they do at four a.m. Like it? Court isn’t until nine.”

My name wasn’t mentioned.

They hadn’t called my name.

I closed my eyes, and sometime later a guard hit a buzzer and the door to my cell slid open. The guard said, “Jack Morgan? You need to get dressed for court.”

CAINE HAD ENOUGH clout to get me bumped to the front of the line, and I was transported from the jail to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on West Temple. I was brought into the holding cell outside the courtroom, chained to three other guys, one of whom was about eighteen years old and pale with fright.

There was air-conditioning.

It was a miracle. I thanked God.

I sat for hours as my fellow prisoners left and came back. And then I was separated from my cellies.

Caine came to meet me, put both arms around me, and held me in a hard hug. He whispered, “Remember who you are. Look alive.”

I smelled bad, like the unwashed men in my cell. I was wearing yesterday’s clothes and had numerous cuts and bruises and a day-old beard.

I said to my lawyer, “Okay. I think I can fake that.”

I followed Caine into the courtroom. It was paneled, civilized, but it still reminded me of old prints of Ellis Island, where refugees were processed after three weeks in the hold of a ship, not knowing what would become of them.

The judge was the Honorable Skinner Coffin. I’d never met him, but I knew who he was. He was in his fifties, reputed to be touchy and opinionated. Justine had once said that he excelled at “creative interpretation of the law.”

I didn’t know if that was good for me or bad.

While Judge Coffin was in conversation with his bailiff, I scanned the gallery. There was a low rumble of people whispering, shifting in their seats. Babies cried. I heard my name. I turned to see Robbie Pace, the new mayor, coming toward me.

I remember thinking how clean he looked in his blue suit, his face shining from a recent shave. He leaned close and said into my ear, “I wrote to the judge. Put in a good word. I think you’re going to be okay.”

“Thanks, Robbie.”

“No problem.”

Doors opened at the front of the courtroom, and Fescoe entered, came up the aisle. He stopped to speak to Mayor Pace, looking at me over Pace’s shoulder while they chatted. Robbie’s head bobbed in agreement, then Fescoe nodded at me and went to the back of the gallery.

The doors opened again, and Justine came through them, a stunning picture of grace, fresh as a new rose, her smile weighted with sadness. She came up to me. Stopped short of hugging me. Contact was expressly forbidden.

“We’re all with you, Jack. Everyone at Private. We’re reaching out to street contacts, sifting through everything we’ve found, and we will keep at it until we’ve got something useful. Are you all right?”

“It’s good to see you.”

“I wish I could say the same. I know how bad it is in there.”

I thought,
You can’t really know—and you should thank God for that.

I said, “So you don’t have anything?”

“Not yet. Tommy has an alibi.”

“So I heard.”

“His wife. He was home with her that evening.”

I sighed.

“We’re still digging,” said Justine.

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I know.”

Why had I slept with Colleen?

Why hadn’t I resisted that impulse?

Justine wished me luck, and then the bailiff called out a number. Caine said, “That’s us. Let’s go.”

THE ASSISTANT DISTRICT attorney was Eddie Savino, still in his twenties, dark, handsome, and on his way up—at least he gave that impression.

Savino said, “Your Honor, Mr. Morgan murdered Colleen Molloy, one of his girlfriends. He shot her three times in the chest. We recovered his DNA from inside the victim, to put it delicately.”

The ADA smirked, shot a glance at the gallery, didn’t get a reaction, and went on.

“And the special circumstance in the charge is that Ms. Molloy was six weeks pregnant.”

“Go on,” said the judge. “And can the flourishes, Eddie. There’s no jury. Just me.”

“Yes, Judge,” said the ADA. He smiled charmingly. “The murder weapon was a .45-caliber handgun registered to Mr. Morgan, concealed in some bushes about fifteen feet from his front door. The bullets from that gun are a positive match to the bullets extracted from the victim’s body.”

Judge Coffin looked at me squarely for the first time, as Savino kept talking and ticking off items on his fingers.

“Jack Morgan is rich, he’s armed, and he’s dangerous. He’s also a pilot. He not only flies planes, Your Honor, he owns one. If that doesn’t define ‘flight risk,’ I don’t know what does.

“The people request that Mr. Morgan be remanded over to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility while he awaits trial.”

Everything Savino had said about me was true—except for shooting Colleen and being a flight risk. My mood was changing. I had gone through terror and self-pity and was now working on getting very mad.

Judge Coffin said, “Mr. Caine. Talk to me.”

Caine said, “Nice speech on the part of Mr. Savino, Your Honor, but my client is not a flight risk. He wants to defend himself against these heinous false accusations because he’s not guilty of anything. The cops rushed to judgment, and Mr. Morgan is bearing the brunt of their laziness.”

Coffin said, “Just the facts, please, Mr. Caine. I’ve got another hundred people waiting to be heard today.”

“Sorry, Your Honor. Facts are, Mr. Morgan is a war hero. He’s a pilot like the bald eagle is a bird. He was a captain in the Marine Corps. He flew transport helicopters in Afghanistan and was awarded the Silver Star. Mr. Morgan is a personal friend of the chief of police and the mayor, both of whom vouch for him.

“And there’s more, Your Honor. Mr. Morgan employs over three hundred people. Whatever a pillar of the community is, Jack Morgan fits the definition.”

“Bottom line it for me, please, Mr. Caine.”

“Bottom line, Your Honor, Mr. Morgan came home from a business trip and found his former girlfriend dead in his bed. It was a setup. He called the police.

“If my client had actually committed a murder, he is more than capable of getting rid of any evidence of the crime. He lives alone. He had thirteen or fourteen hours before he was expected at the office the next morning. In that time, he could have gotten rid of the body, sanitized the scene, established an alibi. Hell, he could have invited twelve people out to dinner at Spago and still had time to get rid of the evidence and then get on a plane to Guadalajara.

“So what are the cops saying? He killed the girl, left her in his bed, buried the gun in a pile of mulch fifteen feet from his door? That’s nuts, Your Honor. If he was going to fly to Mexico, why didn’t he do it?

“Because Jack Morgan didn’t kill Colleen Molloy. He called the police and he cooperated with them fully. Those are the actions of an innocent man.”

CAINE HAD DONE a powerful—correction, a
phenomenal
—job. My gratitude to him was so overwhelming, I almost broke down. But Judge Coffin was deadpan. He appeared to be unmoved by Caine’s speech.

Coffin said, “Mr. Morgan, you’re charged with felony murder with special circumstances. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, Your Honor.”

The judge said, “Uh-huh.” Then he leaned over his laptop and poked at the keys.

Judge Coffin was a two-finger typist, and while he hunted and pecked, noise rose from the gallery like a typhoon boiling up the coastline. A fight broke out in the aisles and sheriffs put it down. The judge banged his gavel four times and glared.

There was silence and then Judge Coffin looked down at me.

“Mr. Morgan, do you intend to flee?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Okay. Well, I’d say we have an unusual situation, Mr. Morgan being an upright citizen who called the police to report the crime. Still, we’ve got special circumstances.”

The judge scratched his chin. He had our attention.

“I’ve found a precedent in
Meyer versus Spinogotti
.”

Savino looked puzzled. “Wasn’t that an abduction case, Your Honor?”

“Bingo, Mr. Savino. Pregnant victim. Mr. Caine, I want Mr. Morgan’s plane disabled and secured so that it cannot be moved. Mr. Morgan, you will surrender your pilot’s license and your license to carry a weapon; also your passport.

“When those conditions are met, find a bail bondsman who will put up twenty million dollars and off you go.”

The gavel came down.

The bailiff called the next case. Caine said to me, “Don’t worry, Jack. I’m on it. You’ll be home tomorrow.”

Was Caine right? Or was he just giving me false hope?

A deputy was at my side. He jerked my arm, and I walked with him out the back door of the courtroom. I turned just as the door closed. I was hoping to see Justine, but I saw Fescoe.

He was in a huddle with Tandy and Ziegler and Eddie Savino. I could tell by the looks shot in my direction that they were discussing me.

It was a fair guess that the prosecution was disappointed that I might make bail.

I was loaded into the holding cell behind the courtroom, where I was chained again to three other men. I sweated in silence for six hours, then returned by bus to the men’s jail, where I was shooed into my cell.

We had a new cell mate.

Another talker.

The new guy’s name was Vincent, and he looked like he’d been sleeping over a grate. He got rolling fast and told me about what he called “an almost criminal imbalance in the real estate market” that wouldn’t straighten out until 2015 at the earliest. He talked about the boomers, the pressure they’d put on all things related to the economy and the current entitlement programs. We wouldn’t see a bull market until we were wearing orthopedic shoes, he said.

He still had a sense of humor. It was admirable.

“You’re in finance?” I asked politely.

“I drive.”

“Drive?”

“A cab. I didn’t pay a couple of tickets. They pulled me in here for that. You believe it?”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“When we get out of here, if you need a cab, just remember 1-800 Call Vin.”

I said, “Sure. I can remember that.”

I thought about Justine, the way she’d looked at me in the courtroom. I’d felt the pain and her deep disappointment. I thought about lying with her under cool sheets in a big bed.

Early the next morning, the first sound I heard was the loudspeaker, feedback screeching, the blasting voice echoing across the pods.

This time my name was called.