Just Beyond the Curve (17 page)

“I didn’t have any money to pay for it!” Billy
replied, once again starting for the kitchen.

“You could’ve told someone you were hungry, Billy,”
John stated, as if inferring that if Billy was hungry it was his
own fault.

“It’d be better if I had my own money. Then I
wouldn’t have to beg!”

“That’s not begging!” John said. “It’s letting
someone who cares know that you’re hungry.”

“Maybe he’s right, John,” Judy said, walking with
them toward the kitchen. “Maybe he needs some money of his
own.”

“Now we’re talkin’, Sis!” Billy said excitedly. “How
much we talkin’ here? Keep in mind, I’m a growin’ boy! It takes a
lot to keep me full! Plus, I have responsibilities now; a horse and
a dog, a baby nephew...”

“Enough Billy,” John said with a smile. “We got the
message. How about, fifty a week, to start?”

Judy smiled and kissed John on the lips. Billy
squirmed his way in against them and hugged them tightly. “You’re
the best brother-in-law ever, John!”

“Make you a deal,” John said, looking down at Big
Billy, “You show me you have some sense and can handle your money
and I’ll raise it to a hundred a week. Deal?”

“A hunnerd a week!” Billy yelled excitedly.

“If you prove you can be
responsible
.”

“I’ll make you proud, John!” Billy said
seriously.

“You already do, Billy!” John responded.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Just about the time John turned to sing into the
microphone, the heavy steel door of the ‘tank’ where Danny was
being housed swung open with a loud crash and several deputies came
in. They were dressed in riot gear and acting none too
friendly.

“Alright!” their fearless leader screamed at the top
of his lungs through the gas mask he wore, “Everybody get in your
cell and slam the door! I want to hear each and every door
slam
, too!”

“Could you repeat that, Officer Opie,” Danny said
grinning smartly. “We couldn’t quite hear you. Or understand you,
you were breaking up some!” he added, cupping his hands behind his
ears.

“Floyd you stay out!” the leader said, looking
directly at Danny. “We got a bone to pick with you!”

“I tremble,” Danny replied with a smirk. He figured
the worse they could do was kill him. He didn’t care; the state was
going to do that anyway, in all likelihood.

When the nine cell doors slammed the inner door of
the tank was opened and the crew of riot gear clad officers came in
and surrounded Danny. One handcuffed him while two others placed
shackles on his ankles. He was then led from the tank. The inner
door was closed and locked by the leader, the inner cells were
electronically unlocked, the outer door was slammed shut and locked
and finally silence once again settled inside the death row bound
cell house.

“Floyd is a dead man!” one of the older men stated
seriously. He had been convicted of kidnapping, raping, murdering
and dismembering, then devouring, three homeless people. He was
pending a sentencing hearing to determine if a mental evaluation
was in order before he could be given the death penalty and sent to
hell by lethal injection. To say the least, the odds were not in
his favor.

“Yeah, Floyd is a dead man,” Cool Freddie agreed. He
had tested the rope he had braided together earlier and it was good
and strong. It would hold the crazy white boy who would kill a good
and innocent man like John Travis for no reason other than pure
envy. Well, Cool Freddie, outta Big D didn’t have his trained
killer, Jason Judd, here with him to take care of the light work
for him, so he would do it himself! He was a big boy and he knew
that with a life sentence already, and the murder of a drug dealer,
who just happened to be an undercover cop, was not going to carry a
mere
life
sentence in the normal sense of the word. It was
going to carry a
life
sentence! Cool Freddie’s. He would get
the death penalty. He knew that. He knew that because he was
awaiting trial on a
dead man’s tank
! There could be no other
explanation. He smiled and sat back to wait. He knew the cops
wouldn’t kill Danny Floyd regardless of their threats. There were
too many cameras and rats throughout the county jail to even
consider getting away with something like that.

When Danny was taken from the tank he was led down
the steel hallway to a heavy steel door. It was unlocked and he was
shoved inside. The cell was very small; maybe four feet by three
feet. There was a stool welded to a table with a steel mesh screen
down the center. On the other side of the screen was an identical
room. He sat on the stool to wait whatever was about to happen.

A key was shoved into the lock on the door on the
other side of the screen and it was pulled open. It didn’t seem to
be as heavy as the one on Danny’s side. That was the ‘free-world’
side of the jail, he figured, therefore the security wouldn’t need
to be as heavy.

A tall slim man in his early thirties, wearing a
Brooks Brothers chalk stripe tailored light gray suit stepped into
the phone booth sized side of the room and laid his briefcase on
the table in front of him. He looked at Danny and smiled. Then
reached into his coat pocked, produced a pack of Marlboro
cigarettes and lay them on the table along with a Bic lighter.

“Help yourself,” the man said.

Danny turned to the side and showed the man the cuffs
behind his back. “I’ll be right back,” the man said, then stood and
stepped out of the cell.

A few minutes later he stepped back inside and
resumed his seat. Almost before he was comfortable the door behind
Danny was unlocked and opened.

“Stand up Floyd,” an aggressive voice said behind
him, then grabbed his cuffed wrists and lifted him roughly.

“Officer Stanton do you want to be charged with
police brutality?” the man across the screen asked calmly. “If not,
then treat my client with a little more kindness. It will do your
heart good.”

Danny didn’t see the glare Stanton shot at the man in
the suit. But, he did see the man in the suit smile and he heard
the man say, “Oh? Try me, mister!”

The cuffs were removed without a word. The door was
closed and locked.

Danny reached for a cigarette and the lighter. When
he had a lung full of the pungent blue smoke that he craved he
looked across at the suit and said, “Thanks. Who are you?”

“My name is Jeremiah Lake,” he replied. “I am the
very best death penalty attorney in the fifth circuit. I have
chosen to take your case free of charge. I hope to get you life
instead of death. The cop is going to be the hard part...”

“I don’t want life,” Danny stated. “I deserve to be
dead for what I done. I have nothing. I deserve nothing. I pray
nightly that John Travis dies, so I will win!”

“John Travis has asked the court to drop the charges
against you stemming from your assault on him,” Lake said
calmly.

“Why would he do that?” Danny interrupted.

“He’s a far better man than you. Plus, he wants the
music files back.”

“The music files,” Danny mused. “Let’s see, what’d I
do with them? I was really messed up that night; alcohol, pills,
sadness, all rolled into one. What if I don’t give them back,”
Danny asked, beginning to grin, as if he had just remembered where
they were.

“You’ll get the death penalty,” Lake said. “The files
will do you no good. I recommend that you give them back. A show of
good faith, so to speak.”

“If I give ‘em back?”

“You’ll go to the state mental hospital for ninety
days observation. Then, based on the results, you’ll be brought
before the court and the judge will determine whether you are
eligible for the death penalty or not.”

“Eligible?” Danny said with a laugh. “Hell, everyone
is eligible, ain’t they?”

“No,” Lake replied. “Can’t execute the insane or the
mentally handicapped.”

“John Travis took everything from me, why should I
give anything back to him?”

“He took nothing from you, from what I’ve been able
to gather,” Lake said. “You had nothing he wanted. You are nothing.
You never would have amounted to anything. Hell, you ever heard of
an idiot savant?”

“Vaguely,” Danny replied.

“An idiot savant excels, for the most part in music
and math. Nothing else,” Lake said seriously. “John Travis excelled
in music. He only needed to see it done and hear it played and he
knows how to do it in his mind. He only has to train his hands to
do it in time. He is like Mozart was. So, you and your books and
tapes were nothing to him. He could have watched a concert on TV
and would have known how to play all the music he heard...”

“Then, why didn’t he know, then?” Danny asked,
believing this man was lying through his perfect white teeth at
him.

“He never owned a radio or a TV as a child. Never
knew who his father was until after his mother had passed away and
he inherited everything. Only then did he know he was the son of
John Travis, the legend. So, are you beginning to see the picture,
Danny?”

“I put the files in my safety deposit box at First
National Bank,” Danny said reluctantly, staring at the table. “I
thought he was trying to dick with my head about the music. Thought
he was a master!”

“He truly didn’t know a thing,” Lake said. “Listen
Danny, I don’t want you to get the death penalty. It would serve no
purpose. Travis is out of the hospital. Your parents are your
grief. The cop, Short. Well, he is the sticking point in all this.
He’s the one we have to deal with.”

“And his brother,” Danny confessed with a shrug of
his shoulders.

“His brother?” Lake asked with a confused
expression.

“Yeah,” Danny replied. “He came and took me out of
the tank this morning. He was going to beat me and rape me. I
killed him with his set of keys. He’s down the hall in a small
storage room. He’s dead.”

“
That
is
not
what we
need
at
this point!” Lake said through gritted teeth. Lake leaned back and
glared through the screen at his client. “Is there any other bodies
we don’t know about, Danny?”

“No, that’s the last one,” he replied.

“You need anything, Danny?” Lake asked angrily.

“I’m in jail,” Danny replied. “I need
everything!”

“John Travis had me put five hundred dollars on your
account when I arrived.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s a good man, Danny. A decent human
being. And he doesn’t want to see your life ended because of some
stupid mistakes.”

Danny looked at the table and tears began to slide
down his face and drip to the table. “Oh God, what have I done?
Please forgive me!” he buried his face in his palms and his
shoulders shook with emotion.

“Listen, I’ll be back in a day or so, Danny. Maybe
I’ll have some good news for you.”

Danny could only nod his head. He sensed the man
leave the small visiting cell. A short while later the door behind
him opened and the cuffs were replaced on his wrists and he was led
back to the death tank.

He sat in silence on the table and stared at the TV
He had been sitting for less than an hour when the door opened and
he was called back out. Again he was cuffed and shackled, then led
to the elevators. Thirty minutes later he was standing in front of
a judge.

The courtroom was not packed, but there were a few
people present. He saw John Travis almost instantly. Beside him
stood Judy with the baby in her arms and it appeared another in her
belly. He’d known she was a little whore! He was distracted from
his rising anger by the abrupt entrance of the judge.

“All rise!” the Bailiff yelled. “The Honorable James
Dewey presiding!”

When the judge was seated and comfortable, he looked
out across the courtroom and said, “Be seated!” When the rustle
fell to silence again Dewey continued, “I’ve been presiding over
this bench for twenty-two years! And in all that time I don’t
believe, no, I know, I’ve never seen a case like this.” He glared
around the vast room. “I’m not even sure who’s prosecuting and
who’s defending...Would someone please care to enlighten me?”

“Your Honor, if it please the court,” a tall,
reed-thin man with big black rimmed glasses and black hair, wearing
a Sears Roebuck suit, straight off the rack, said as he came to his
feet. “I would like to try and explain the State’s position in this
case.

“Please do, Mister Prosecutor,” Dewey said with a
grim smile.

“Your Honor, this is basically a plea for mercy from
the victim...” the Prosecutor began in a slow solemn tone.

The courtroom fell silent, sitting spellbound as the
entire story unrolled off the man’s eloquent tongue. He explained
the entire story, from the death of John Travis, Sr. all the way up
to and including the killing of Ralph Short earlier that morning.
By the time he was finished with his summation the Honorable Judge
Dewey was red faced and trembling.

“In summation, Your Honor, the State believes given a
second chance, under the care and guidance of a trained
professional, Mr. Floyd would not pose a future threat to society.
Thank you, Your Honor.” The Prosecutor resumed his seat and sat
staring at the table in front of him. He knew he looked like a
total idiot, without the savant, in the eyes of the Court.

Judge Dewey looked down at the file in front of him
and shook his head. After a moment he looked up and addressed the
room. “It has long been my belief that there is a time and a place
for mercy, as well as punishment. This is one such case. For here
we have a young man who deliberately attempted to take the life of
another young man, did take the lives of his parents, and a police
officer and his brother! His motive was envy, pride, greed, lust,
sloth, and malice; five, maybe six, of the deadly sins!

“On the other hand, we have the victim, who is asking
this Court to overlook this multitude of sin. This Court does not
have that authority. Therefore, since the defendant has chosen a
trial before the Court, rather than a trial by jury, as is his
right, this Court will find the victim guilty as charged in the
indictments.