Sycamore Row (24 page)

Late in the afternoon, Simeon was removed from the drunk tank and led by a deputy to the small windowless room used by the lawyers to huddle with their clients. He was given an ice pack for his face and a cup of fresh coffee. “What now?” he asked.

“You got a visitor,” the deputy said.

Five minutes later Ozzie walked in and sat down. He was wearing blue jeans and a sports coat, with a badge on his belt and holster on his hip. He said, “Don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“I voted for you twice,” Simeon said.

“Thank you, but they all say that after you win.” Ozzie had checked the records and knew damned well Simeon Lang was not registered to vote.

“I swear I did.”

“Got a call from Tank; said stay away, okay? No more trouble out of you.”

“They cleaned my pockets.”

“It’s a tough place. You know the rules because there are no rules. Just stay away.”

“I want my money back.”

“You can forget that money. You wanna go home or you wanna stay here tonight?”

“I’d rather go home.”

“Let’s go.”

Simeon rode in the front seat of Ozzie’s car, no handcuffs. A deputy followed in Simeon’s pickup. Nothing was said for the first ten minutes as they listened to the squawking on the sheriff’s radio. Ozzie finally turned it down and said, “None of my business, Simeon, but those Memphis lawyers got no business down here. Your wife’s already lookin’ bad, at least in the eyes of the rest of the county. This all comes down to a trial by jury, and ya’ll are pissin’ everybody off.”

Simeon’s first thought was to tell him to butt out, but his brain was numb and his jaw was aching. He didn’t want to argue. Instead, he thought how cool it was, riding shotgun in the big car and being escorted home.

“You hear me?” Ozzie asked. In other words, say something.

“What would you do?” Simeon asked.

“Get rid of those lawyers. Jake Brigance will win the case for you.”

“He’s a kid.”

“Go ask Carl Lee Hailey.”

Simeon couldn’t think quick enough for a response, not that there was one. For blacks in Ford County, the Hailey verdict meant everything.

Ozzie pressed on. “You ask what I would do. I’d clean up my act and stay out of trouble. What you mean drinkin’ and whorin’ and losin’ money at cards on a Saturday mornin’, or any other day for that matter? Your wife’s gettin’ all this attention. White folk already suspicious, and you’re lookin’ at a jury trial down the road. Last thing you need is your name in the paper for drunk drivin’ or fightin’ or whatever. What’re you thinkin’?”

Drinking, whoring, and gambling, but Simeon fumed without speaking. He was forty-six years old and unaccustomed to being reprimanded by a man who was not his boss.

“Clean your act up, okay?” Ozzie said.

“What about the drunk drivin’ charge?”

“I’ll put it off six months, see how you behave. One more screwup and I’ll have you in court. Tank’ll call the minute you walk through his door. Understand?”

“I got it.”

“There’s somethin’ else. That truck you been drivin’, from Memphis to Houston and El Paso, who owns it?”

“Company in Memphis.”

“This company got a name?”

“My boss got a name, I don’t know who his boss is.”

“I doubt that. What’s in the truck?”

Simeon went quiet and gazed through the side window. After a heavy pause he said, “It’s a storage company. We haul a lot of stuff.”

“Any of it stolen?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why is the FBI askin’ questions?”

“I ain’t seen no FBI.”

“Not yet, but they called me two days ago. They had your name. Look, Simeon, you get your ass busted by the Feds, and you and Lettie can forget about a jury trial in this county. Can’t you see this, man? Front-page news. Hell, everybody in town is talkin’ ’bout Lettie and Mr. Hubbard’s will anyway. You screw up, and you get no sympathy from any jury. I’m not even sure the black folk’ll stick with you. You gotta think, man.”

The Feds, Simeon almost said, but he held his tongue and continued looking through the window. They rode in silence until they were close to his home. To spare him the indignity, Ozzie allowed him to get in his truck and drive. “Be in court at 9:00, Wednesday morning,” he said. “I’ll get Jake to handle the paperwork. We’ll bump it down the road for a while.”

Simeon thanked him and drove away, slowly.

He counted eight cars parked in his driveway and around his front yard. Smoke lifted from the grill. Kids were everywhere. A regular party as they closed ranks around their dear Lettie.

He parked on the road and began walking toward the house. This might get ugly.

16

Since the arrival of Mr. Hubbard’s last will and testament two weeks earlier, the morning mail had become far more interesting. Each day brought a new wrinkle as more lawyers piled on and scrambled for position. Wade Lanier filed a petition to contest the will on behalf of Ramona and Ian Dafoe, and it proved inspirational. Within days, similar petitions were filed by lawyers representing Herschel Hubbard, his children, and the Dafoe children. Since petitions were allowed to be liberally amended, the early drafts followed the same basic strategy. They claimed that the handwritten will was invalid because (1) Seth Hubbard lacked testamentary capacity and (2) he was unduly influenced by Lettie Lang. Nothing was offered to substantiate these allegations, but that was not unusual in the suing business. Mississippi held to the practice of “notice pleading,” or, in other words, just lay out the basics and try to prove the specifics later.

Behind the scenes, Ian Dafoe’s efforts to convince Herschel to join ranks with the Wade Lanier firm proved unproductive and even caused a rift. Herschel had not been impressed with Lanier and thought he would be ineffective with a jury, though he had little to base this on. In need of a Mississippi lawyer, Herschel approached Stillman Rush with the idea of representing his interests. As the attorneys for the 1987 will, the Rush firm was facing a declining role in the contest. It would have little to do but watch, and it looked doubtful Judge Atlee would tolerate its presence, even from the sideline, with the meter ticking, of course. Herschel made the shrewd decision to hire the highly regarded Rush firm, on a contingency basis, and said good-bye to his Memphis attorney.

While the contestants of the will jockeyed for position, the proponents fought among themselves. Rufus Buckley made an official entry into the case as local counsel for Lettie Lang. Jake filed a trivial objection on the grounds that Buckley did not have the necessary experience. The bombs landed when Booker Sistrunk, as promised, filed a motion to remove Jake and replace him with the firm of Sistrunk & Bost, with Buckley as the Mississippi attorney. The following day, Sistrunk and Buckley filed another motion asking Judge Atlee to remove himself on the vague, bizarre grounds that he held some sort of bias against the handwritten will. Then they filed a motion requesting a change of venue to another, “fairer” county. In other words, a blacker one.

Jake spoke at length to a litigator in Memphis, a stranger connected by a mutual acquaintance. This lawyer had tangled with Sistrunk for years, was no fan, but had come to grudgingly admire the results. Sistrunk’s strategy was to blow up a case, reduce it to a race war, attack every white person involved, including the presiding judge if necessary, and haggle over jury selection long enough to get enough blacks on the panel. He was brash, loud, smart, fearless and could be very intimidating in court and out. When necessary, he could turn on the charm in front of a jury. There were always casualties in a Sistrunk trial, and he showed no concern for who got hurt. Litigating against him was so unpleasant that potential defendants had been known to settle quickly.

Such tactics might work in the racially charged atmosphere of the Memphis federal court system, but never in Ford County, not in front of Judge Reuben V. Atlee anyway. Jake had read and reread the motions filed by Sistrunk, and the more he read the more he became convinced that the big lawyer was causing irreparable damage to Lettie Lang. He showed copies to Lucien and Harry Rex, and both agreed. It was a boneheaded strategy, guaranteed to backfire and fail.

Two weeks into the case, and Jake was ready to walk away if Sistrunk stayed in the game. He filed a motion to exclude the motions filed by Sistrunk and Buckley, on the grounds that they had no standing in court. He was the attorney for the will proponents, not them. He planned to lean on Judge Atlee to put them in their place; otherwise, he would happily go home.

Russell Amburgh was discharged and disappeared from the matter. He was replaced by the Honorable Quince Lundy, a semiretired lawyer from Smithfield, and an old friend of Judge Atlee’s. Lundy had chosen the peaceful career of a tax adviser, thus avoiding the horrors
of litigation. And as the substitute executor or administrator, as he was officially known, he would be expected to perform his tasks with little regard for the will contest. His job was to gather Mr. Hubbard’s assets, appraise them, protect them, and report to the court. He hauled the records from the Berring Lumber Company to Jake’s office in Clanton and stored them in a room downstairs next to the small library. He began making the one-hour commute and arrived promptly each morning at ten. Luckily, he and Roxy hit it off and there was no drama.

Drama, though, was brewing in a different part of the office. Lucien seemed to be acquiring the habit of stopping by each day, nosing around in the Hubbard matter, digging through the library, barging into Jake’s office, offering opinions and advice, and pestering Roxy, who couldn’t stand him. Lucien and Quince had mutual friends, and before long they were drinking pots of coffee and telling stories about colorful old judges who’d been dead for decades. Jake stayed upstairs with his door closed while little work was being done downstairs.

Lucien was also being seen in and around the courthouse, for the first time in many years. The humiliation of his disbarment had faded. He still felt like a pariah, but he was such a legend, for all the wrong reasons, that people wanted to say hello. Where you been? What’re you up to these days? He was often seen in the land records, digging through dusty old deed books late in the afternoon, like a detective searching for clues.

Late in October, Jake and Carla awoke at 5:00 on a Tuesday morning. They quickly showered, dressed, said good-bye to Jake’s mother, who was babysitting and sleeping on the sofa, and took off in the Saab. At Oxford, they zipped through a fast-food drive-in and got coffee and biscuits. An hour west of Oxford, the hills flattened into the Delta. They raced along highways that cut through fields white with late cotton. Giant, insect-like cotton pickers crept through the fields, devouring four rows at a time while trailers waited to collect their harvest. An old sign announced, “Parchman 5 Miles Ahead,” and before long the fencing of the prison came into view.

Jake had been there before. During his last semester as a law student, a professor of criminal procedure organized his annual field trip to the state’s infamous penitentiary. Jake and his classmates spent a few hours listening to administrators and gawking at death row inmates in
the distance. The highlight had been a group interview with Jerry Ray Mason, a condemned killer whose case they’d studied and who was scheduled to make a final walk to the gas chamber in less than three months. Mason had stubbornly maintained his innocence, though there was no proof of this. He had arrogantly predicted the State would fail in its efforts, but he’d been proven wrong. On two occasions since law school, Jake made the drive to visit clients. At the moment, he had four at Parchman and three locked away in the federal system.

He and Carla parked near an administration building and went inside. They followed signs and found a hallway filled with people who looked as though they’d rather be elsewhere. Jake signed in and was given a document titled “Parole Hearings—Docket.” His man was number three on the list. Dennis Yawkey—10:00 a.m. Hoping to avoid the Yawkey family, Jake and Carla climbed the stairs to the second floor and eventually found the office of Floyd Green, a law school classmate now working for the state prison system. Jake had called ahead and was asking a favor. Floyd was trying to help. Jake produced a letter from Nick Norton, the Clanton lawyer who represented Marvis Lang, currently residing in Camp No. 29, maximum security. Floyd took the letter and said he would try to arrange a meeting.

The hearings began at 9:00 a.m. in a large, bare room with folding tables arranged in a square, and behind them dozens of folding chairs in haphazard rows. Along the front table, the chairman of the Parole Board and its four other members sat together. Five white men, all appointed by the Governor.

Jake and Carla entered with a stream of spectators and looked for seats. To his left, Jake caught a glimpse of Jim Yawkey, father of the inmate, but they did not make eye contact. He took Carla by the arm and they moved to the right, found seats, and waited. First on the docket was a man who’d served thirty-six years for a murder committed during a bank robbery. He was brought in and his handcuffs were removed. He quickly scanned the audience looking for family members. White, age about sixty, long neat hair, a nice-looking guy, and, as always, Jake marveled at how anyone could survive for so long in a brutal place like Parchman. His parole investigator went through a report that made him sound like a model prisoner. There were some questions from the Parole Board. The next speaker was the daughter of the bank teller who’d been murdered, and she began by saying this was the third time she had appeared before the Parole Board. The
third time she’d been forced to relive the nightmare. Choking back her emotions, she poignantly described what it was like being a ten-year-old girl and learning that her mother had been blown away by a sawedoff shotgun at her place of employment. From there, it only got worse.