Cold Winter Rain (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Monday January 30

Last night’s rain had stopped after midnight.  Dawn arrived gradually over Red Mountain, a smooth gray dome covering the Birmingham sky.  Before Sally awoke, I sat on the cushion for fifteen minutes, then showered and made a breakfast of eggs, whole wheat toast, and coffee. 

As I finished cooking, Sally walked out of the bedroom in a white satin robe.  “I woke up and smelled coffee,” she said.  “I'm hungry.  Did you make enough for both of us?”

“Two of us here, aren't there?”  I set out plates and napkins and served the food while Sally poured coffee, and we ate together in silence like an old married couple.

Chewing her last bite of toast, Sally gestured toward my zabuton and bolster, which I had stowed in a corner beside the windows with the view of the mountain.  “Were you doing yoga?” she asked.

“Not exactly.”  I explained that I tried to meditate a few minutes every day.

“
So, are you a Buddhist?” she asked.

Tempted as I was to say “Not exactly” again, I had come to recognize such an answer for the dodge it is, particularly in the deep South, where it seems at least at first glance that the only categories of religious views recognized by most are Baptist, Episcopalian, Holy Roller and atheist. Only the broad-minded recognized Catholics and Jews.  That’s a vast oversimplification of a North American region where religious practices – did I mention snake handlers? -- are as varied and complicated as they are anywhere but India. 

Nevertheless, I sometimes dodged the question, but this did not need to be one of those times.  “Yes,” I answered.  “I suppose I am.”

“
You’re an interesting man, Slate.”

“
I don’t know about that.”  I forked up my last bite of egg, picked up the plates and turned to the sink, my back to Sally.  “I sort of walked through the back gate of meditation and discovered, inside, the garden of Buddhism.

“
I didn’t grow up going to church every Sunday like so many Southerners.  My parents weren’t atheists, and I’m not sure they’d ever met a Buddhist, but my grandparents forced them to spend so much time in redneck churches that they had a bellyful of Southern-fried religion by the time they were grown.  So they didn’t take me to church much.

“
After my wife and son died, I started seeing a psychiatrist here in Birmingham, at UAB.  Dr. Beverly Adams.  I don’t have many family members and few close friends, and I needed to talk to someone.

“
Anyway.  Of course Dr. Adams is also a medical doctor, and she would always take my blood pressure before we started to talk.  After a couple of sessions, she suggested I try meditation because my pressure was above normal.  I read a couple of books and started on my own, just sitting in the floor in the morning for a few minutes.  More reading led me to a few books about Buddhism.  The title of the first one might describe me: 
The Accidental Buddhist
.  Then I discovered that right here in Birmingham a real Tibetan monk trained by the Dalai Lama himself had started a Tibetan Buddhist center.  I visited a few times, bought those cushions, and started mediating thirty minutes morning and evening.”

“
So, did your blood pressure come down?”

“
About twenty points.  I started working out more too, but I think the pressure drop was mostly attributable to meditation.

“
So that’s pretty much the whole story.  I’m still not sure Buddhism is exactly a religion.  No creator deity.  The Dalai Lama himself admits that Buddhism may be more properly characterized as a philosophy.”

I placed the last of the dishes in the dishwasher.  “Anyway, it works for me so far.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Sally said.  “And now I want to amend interesting to fascinating.”  She stood.  “We’ll talk more later.  But now I have to get ready for work.”

Sally gave me her spare key, and I gave her a lingering kiss goodbye.  She finally pushed me away and scooted for the shower.  I left the apartment, locked the door with my new key, and headed downtown for my conference with Bill Woolf.

Since the interview with Godchaux, I knew that, no matter how or why the memory stick had come into the possession of the starting goalkeeper on the Alabama Southern women’s soccer team, the electronic files arguably constituted the work product of Kramer and of his law firm.  Even though I wanted to trade the information in those files for the use of the FBI’s computer experts and their work product and for whatever the FBI might know about Mr. Godchaux of New Orleans, no way would I share information that might waive the work product privilege in a lawsuit.  The work product privilege shielded information from discovery when that information derived from or tended to reveal the thoughts and mental impressions of counsel.  A court would order such information revealed only when the party seeking it could show that no other means of obtaining the information existed.

I arrived at Woolf White at seven-thirty on the dot.  A deposition was already underway in the large conference room off the lobby, and the lobby receptionist/legal assistant/switchboard operator, busy as an air traffic controller, chattered into her headset.  Bill Woolf walked out of the deposition, legal pad in hand.  “What can I do for you, Slate?”

I asked him if we could step into his office.  “Back here,” he said, indicating the law library occupying the space adjacent to the foyer.  The law library, like those of most large firms, served these days as a place for lawyers to concentrate, or, in truth, as a visual reminder for clients of all the impressive knowledge their fees bought.  The books themselves were as anachronistic as illuminated manuscripts.

We stood among the volumes while I explained the issue.  “Got it,” Woolf said.  “Find out if we have a joint prosecution agreement with the government in the
qui tam
case.  If not, have the U.S. attorney send over the government's standard agreement.  We could assert the joint prosecution privilege without it, but let’s have it in hand.  That’s all I need.  Then give them the disk, or thumb drive, or whatever it is.”

“
Will do,” I said.

“
Thanks, Slate.  If you need anything else, let me know.  I have to get back to this deposition.  Billable hours are calling me.”

The day was still too fresh to expect to find an assistant U.S. attorney or an FBI agent at his or her desk, but I had another visit to make this morning. 

The Birmingham city jail on Sixth Avenue South, a dozen blocks from Elmwood Cemetery, kept early hours for visitors.  The jail personnel did not make appointments, and I had not been invited.  Maybe Chief Grubbs’ office would have called down to the jail if I had asked, so the guards would have Royal ready for my visit.  And maybe not.  I liked it better this way.  The chances that Royal would agree to see me were pretty good, I thought.  I also thought it might be a good idea for a guard to remain in the vicinity.  Royal might want a little revenge.

The front door of the jail opened to a large, bleak waiting area:  chipped, dirty beige paint, cheap plastic chairs along the walls, drink and snack machines in one corner.  Families and friends were camped out waiting on other relatives, hoping for a five-minute visit with a prisoner:   wives and girlfriends and children; grandmothers and grandkids; uncles, aunts, cousins; homies, brothers, sisters; two-year-olds playing in a corner with blocks; babies on laps.

Behind a window of thick glass set into a metal wall in one corner, a uniformed guard, a woman, African-American, heavy-set and unsmiling, sat at the sign-in desk for visitors.  After I ran the gauntlet in the waiting room, she handed me a clipboard with a ratty photocopied sign-in sheet attached.  I filled in Royal’s name and the time of my visit.  For the purpose of my visit and relationship to the inmate, I wrote the single word:  “lawyer.”  Not exactly right.  Not exactly wrong.  A lawyer’s response.

“Since you’re a lawyer, Mr. Slate, we’ll bring him up to the library,” the guard said.  “And you can come on back.”

The metal door at the end of the corridor created by the cage for the sign-in guard made a metallic click as I neared it, and a buzzer sounded.  I pulled open the door and stepped into another corridor about fifteen feet long and four feet wide, sheathed in metal walls, with a heavy metal door at each end, the first of which I had just been buzzed through. 

“Walk on,” a voice instructed me. 

As I approached the second door, the same buzzer sounded, the door clicked, and I walked out into a short concrete block hallway painted a lighter shade of beige.  Running perpendicular to this hallway was an immense hall of concrete block and linoleum tile, with harsh fluorescent lighting and no windows.

A door twenty feet away opened and another uniformed guard, who looked big and strong enough to play offensive guard for the Saints, strode toward me, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tile floor.  “Mr. Slate?”  he said.  “You here to see prisoner Royal?” 

I nodded. 

“Follow me,” he said.

I turned to my left and followed the guard down the hall about fifty feet to a door bearing a black and white “Library” sign.  “Right in here,” the guard said.  “Prisoner Royal is being escorted down.  Should be just a few minutes.”

The jail’s “library” consisted of a couple of flimsy folding tables, half a dozen cheap plastic chairs like the ones in the lobby, and maybe a hundred books on one shelving unit.  Most of the books were out-of-date law books that appeared to have been donated by law firms:  a partial set of the Alabama Code, a few volumes of the Alabama Digest, random volumes of the United States Code; three or four Bibles of the sort found in cheap hotel rooms.; a battered Merriam-Webster dictionary. 

I sat at one of the tables to wait.

A few minutes turned out to be fifteen.  I could not get a data or phone signal -- too much metal and concrete in the building, and maybe too many antennas on the roof.

Finally, the door opened and I stood while the guard led in Royal, shackled at the wrists and ankles.  The chains made a not-so-unpleasant rattle.

“I’ll be right outside,” the guard said.  He went out and closed the door.

Royal looked at me from under his unibrow and gestured a little with his shackled hands.  “So?” he said.  “You wanted to see me.  Want to hit me some more?  Or you got somethin' to say?”

“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said.  “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“
Hey.  Anything to get away from the bloods a few minutes.”

“
Whatever.  Look, I just wanted to ask you a few questions.  Let's sit down for a  minute.  Okay?”

He shrugged.  “Sure.”

We sat across from each other at the table.  I noticed a two-inch-square white bandage on the back of his right hand.  “How's the hand?”  I said.

“
Not too bad.  Still a little sore.”

“
Look, Billy,” I said.  “I don’t know you.  Didn’t know you before you showed up at my hotel room door.  ‘Room Service,’ right?”

Royal shrugged again.  “It’s worked before.”

“I’m sure it has.  And, just so I know, you never heard of me before, either.  Right?”

“
Nope.”

“
So, how’d you get the job?”

“
Guy I know, called me, said to show up at the hotel and meet a guy.”

“
Who called you?”

“
Like I said, a guy.”

“
A guy sometimes calls you for this kind of work?”

“
You got it.”

“
Name?”

Royal shook his head.  “I’ll be out of this place in a couple days, soon as my bail hearing, which I hear is tomorrow.  But if I told you a name, I might not ever leave.”

“So, this guy told you to meet a guy at the hotel.”

“
You’ve been listenin’.”

“
I do that.  Where in the hotel?”

“
Bar.”  Royal shook his head.  “Nobody in there but the one guy.”

“
How were you supposed to get paid?”

“
Cash.  Half then, half when I was done.”

“
Done with what?”

“
Breakin’ ribs, bustin' a head.  Tellin’ you to get out of the ‘ham.”

“
Anything else you were supposed to tell me?”

“
I was supposed to say, ‘the oil business is none of your business.’”

“
That’s all?  Just, ‘the oil business is none of your business’?”