Nailed (9 page)

In a nutshell, Jimmy copped a temporary insanity plea and placed the blame elsewhere.

The team trainer and physician vehemently denied Jimmy’s allegations, and since no other player or any of the coaches would corroborate the charges, the district attorney declined to prosecute the two team officials. Lab reports on blood samples taken from Jimmy just after the incident did, however, show levels of drugs that should have killed him, much less impair his judgment.

For that reason, the judge reduced the charge against Jimmy to manslaughter, and when a guilty verdict was returned, after the jury deliberated for all of eight minutes, sentenced him to twelve years in the state prison at Huntsville.

He served every last day of his sentence, as the parole board consistently rejected any plea for early release. When he got out, Jimmy was 46 years old, had a hundred and seventeen dollars in his pockets, and no hope of ever again finding a job having anything remotely to do with pro football. As far as the big-time sports establishment was concerned, Jimmy Leverette had been given a life sentence.

Adding to his misfortune, just as he got out, the Braddock family released to the media a highlight video of their late son’s life, to remind everyone of just what a fine young man had been killed, who was responsible for his death and that the killer was now free.

Ironically, it was in response to that video that Jimmy Leverette reinvented himself. When a Dallas TV crew caught up with him at a local flophouse and asked if he now had any remorse for what he’d done, he let loose with a rant: His father had abandoned him. His mother had beaten him. He’d been dirt poor. All the schools he’d attended wanted him only for his athletic ability. The Gunslingers had shot him full of steroids. All his life he’d been somebody’s nigger. And that’s what those Braddock people wanted him to stay. Well, he might be stone broke, he might be the most hated man in America, but he was nobody’s nigger now.

And he never would be again.

To Jimmy’s amazement, just days after his tirade aired, unsolicited letters found their way to him. Some of it was hate mail, but a far greater part praised him for what he’d said. And enclosed in many of the letters was money. Most came with only a few dollars, but one envelope from a lady in Alabama contained a hundred dollar bill. She wrote that his voice rang with the Lord’s righteous thunder.

That was the moment of Jimmy’s epiphany, and he never looked back. He legally changed his last name to Thunder. He found a bleeding-heart ghostwriter to tell his life story:
Nobody’s Nigger.
He printed a hundred copies of the book with the money that continued to trickle in. He took those first copies to black churches around Dallas to sell from the trunk of a twenty year old Cadillac. He used the proceeds to print more copies and started selling them all over the South. Then a Boston publisher picked up the book — nobody in New York would touch it — and it became a best-seller.

From there, Jimmy acquired a mail-order divinity degree and backstopped it with his childhood readings of the Bible. He parlayed that with his college education in television arts and sciences and the money from his book to become a televangelist. His message was simple and compelling: Have faith in God, live a good, clean life, and no black person in America would ever have to be anybody’s nigger again.

The Reverend Jimmy Thunder never asked directly for money. At the end of each show, a simple message came on the screen that the preceding program was furnished by a publicly supported ministry. It would continue to be presented as funds permitted.

The soft sell worked. Dollars rolled in by the millions.

After hearing from a woman in his audience one day that he spoke as if he stood on a high mountaintop with Jesus and could see the whole world, Jimmy decided to find some nice place at the right altitude so he could back up that perception with a degree of reality.

Let the flock see how he had risen to the heights. Tell them they could climb the mountain, too. Jimmy moved to a fenced-in lakeshore estate in Goldstrike, California, and built his new TV studio on the property.

Now, four years after his release from prison, at age fifty, he stood in front of Ron Ketchum and told the chief he’d come for the body of his son.

“I didn’t know you had a son,” Ron told Reverend Thunder. “I don’t recall reading about him in your book.”

Ron kept his tone civil, but like most cops he wasn’t well disposed to ex-cons, especially one who’d killed somebody and then didn’t have the decency to die behind bars. Jimmy Thunder was familiar with the chief’s attitude, though he hadn’t encountered it anytime recently. Still, he kept from lashing out. Didn’t say a word.

“Maybe you mentioned him in a later edition,” Ron surmised.

“I’m here for my son’s body,” Thunder said, holding his temper. “Are you going to let me give him a Christian burial or not?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I haven’t received word that his autopsy is complete … and Reverend Cardwell’s widow has first claim on his body. She and Mrs. Mahalia Cardwell are on their way to town as we speak.”

Now, the Reverend Thunder’s eyes flashed with an anger that would have done credit to a wrathful God. He leaned toward Ron and said portentously, “I know who you are.”

“We know each other, Reverend,” Ron replied evenly.

Jimmy Thunder glared at the chief a moment longer, then he got to his feet and left the chief’s office with a seeming sense of purpose in his step.

“Ten to one the man finds all those reporters swarming around here,” Oliver Gosden offered.

“No bet.”

“A hundred to one he pours poison in their ears about our racist chief of police.”

“Maybe I should write a book,” Ron responded.
“Nobody’s Cracker.”

Annie Stratton saw Jimmy Thunder striding toward the stage, looking like his namesake storm front. Of greater importance, the swelling media mob saw and recognized him, too. The reporters had grown restless with her explanations of why the police couldn’t tell them anything yet, not even the victim’s identity. She’d had to tongue-lash several of them back into their seats when they’d gotten snotty with her, and the mood in the room was foul. Now, though, the newsies grew excited. They could feel a story was about to fall in their laps like manna from heaven.

They moved to the edges of their seats and gathered their legs under them, ready to leap to their feet and bellow the first question that popped into their heads. It was feeding time at the zoo.

Annie fleetingly considered the possibility of cutting the power to the microphone on the lectern. But that would do no good. Reverend Thunder came by his adopted name honestly. He could project his voice to the back row of the auditorium without breaking a sweat or dropping a consonant.

For an instant, she even considered throwing the fire alarm to clear the room. But that would give her only a short respite, and would make things look worse in the end. So, whatever Jimmy Thunder had to say, and she knew she wouldn’t like it, she’d have to yield the stage to him and simply let him say it.

Annie smiled to literally put the best face on things, stepped back and gestured to Jimmy Thunder to take her place. If she
really
didn’t like what the sonofabitch had to say, she could always tackle him from behind.

Jimmy got right to it. “I believe y’all know me, and I think many of you know I live in this town. Undoubtedly, you’re all here because you heard that yesterday a black man was found crucified to a tree.”

The Reverend Thunder enunciated his next statement with exquisite precision. “That man was my
son.”

The auditorium was hushed. Not even Annie Stratton had expected this.

Jimmy Thunder continued before his audience could collect their wits or catch their breath. “His name was Isaac Cardwell. He was my only child.”

Now, the media regained their footing, figuratively and literally. They shouted a babble of questions at Jimmy Thunder. He couldn’t have understood them even if he wanted to, but he was interested only in making his statement, not answering questions. His voice boomed out, overwhelming theirs.

“This heinous crime happened in Mayor Clay Steadman’s town. It happened in the town where the chief of police is Ronald Ketchum. He’s the man responsible for catching my son’s killer. But when I asked him just now to release my son’s body to me, he refused.”

Jimmy Thunder’s anger was so intense his voice quivered.

“He would
not
give me my son!”

The reverend hung his head and not even the crassest reporter in the room would intrude on the man’s grief. After a long moment, Jimmy Thunder looked up and addressed the crowd.

“Do all of you remember who Ron Ketchum is?” he asked.

With the possible exception of the newly arrived foreign press, they all did.

But Jimmy Thunder told them anyway.

“That’s right. He was Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum of the LAPD. The man who’s supposed to catch my son’s killer was once on trial himself for killing a black man.”

Chapter 11

The media knew a big story when they heard one. Every paper, TV network and news website in the country would have as the lead for their next news cycle the fact that the man nailed to the tree in Goldstrike, California turned out to be the son of the Reverend Jimmy Thunder, and that the man responsible for catching Isaac Cardwell’s killer had a reputation among African Americans that was questionable at best.

Then, as was their wont, the ladies and gentlemen of the press would dredge up the story of Ron Ketchum for the edification of their audiences. Just in case anyone had missed it the umpteen times it had been told four years earlier.

In his twenty years with the LAPD, both as a patrol officer and a homicide detective, Ron Ketchum had never had to fire his weapon in the line of duty. But two times, when he was off duty, he’d had to shoot criminals. In each case, the man he’d shot was black.

The first time, Ron had been shooting baskets by himself at night in a park in Beverly Hills. He’d been busy concentrating on trying to sink one hundred free throws in a row when a carjacked Porsche came careening off of La Cienega Boulevard and into the park. He had to leap out of the way just to avoid getting splattered. An LAPD patrol unit, lights blazing and siren screaming, barreled into the park not five seconds behind the stolen car.

Ron ran to his car to get his weapon out of the trunk

By the time he had his Beretta in hand, the carjacker had stopped the Porsche and was crouched behind it opening up on the patrol unit with an Uzi. Ron saw the officer behind the wheel killed outright. The dead man’s partner managed to dive out through the passenger side door, but he was shot in the leg as the carjacker kept firing.

Ron ran toward the shooter. The carjacker exhausted his clip just as Ron put his gun on him and announced himself as a police officer. The carjacker responded by reaching for a handgun sticking out of his pants. Ron shot him in the chest five times.

He ran to the shooter, pulled the gun out of his pants, flung it aside and made sure the man wouldn’t be able to resume firing. As far as Ron could tell from his cursory examination, the guy was dead. Good, he thought to himself. One fewer asshole on the streets.

He then went to the aid of the wounded officer. His name tag said Gosden. Ron used the T-shirt off his back as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from the wounded cop’s femoral artery. Then ignoring the blood and brain matter splashed about the interior of the patrol car, he called in a Code 30 on the unit’s radio: Officer needs help, emergency.

He hurried back to Gosden. It seemed like blood was still leaking from the wounded man’s leg. He pulled on his T-shirt as hard as he could, making the tourniquet as tight as possible. Gosden moaned, but Ron could see there was already a large pool of blood under the man’s leg. And, worse, his eyes were starting to glaze over.

Ron knew somehow that if he let this man go into shock, there’d be no bringing him back. He cradled Gosden’s head in his lap and started talking to him, demanding his attention, that he stay with him.

“My name’s Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum,” he told the wounded officer. “Help is on the way, and the perp is down.”

The words seemed to penetrate the fog of Gosden’s terrible pain. He blinked several times, trying to bring Ron into focus. Finally, he groaned, “Bauer?”

Gosden was asking about his partner, Ron knew.

“He’s gone. But you’re not. You hang on just a minute and the ambulance will be here.” But Ron saw Gosden’s eyes begin to swim again. So he yelled, “Hang on, goddamnit! You gonna let that sonofabitch kill both of you?”

Ron could hear the approaching sirens. He was desperate not to let this man die before medical help could arrive.

“Listen to me, Officer Gosden. You have a family? Tell me about your family.”

Ron Ketchum knew he’d never be able to explain it clearly to anyone, but he felt with those words he’d extended his hand across a great void to a man who was just about to turn his back on life — and Gosden reached out and took the hand he offered.

“Wi-ife,” the wounded officer whispered. “Ba…baby boy. Danny.”

“Don’t leave your wife, man,” Ron urged. “Don’t you let your son grow up without you.”

“Lauren . . . s-so beautiful.” Gosden swallowed hard. “Da-anny . . . sleep just like … angel.”

Then Officer Gosden’s eyes closed, and Ron thought he’d lost him. But he saw the wounded man’s chest rise and fall as he continued to breathe. And he noticed there was a peaceful smile on his face.

Help arrived in time.

The carjacker, Dantrell Weems, was resuscitated and he lived, too. That stunned Ron, because he was sure he’d killed Weems. The news of the carjacker’s survival left Ron uncertain how he felt. Should he be relieved that he didn’t have a man’s life on his conscience? Or should he feel annoyed that he’d have to go through all the hassle of testifying against a cop-killer at his trial?

For the most part, he felt more annoyed than relieved.

But Ron’s aggravation was only beginning. It was about to take a quantum leap forward in the form of Marcus Martin. Martin, an African American, had been Ron’s nemesis since he was a teenager. As high school athletes at rival schools, Martin had once put Ron in the hospital by undercutting him during a basketball game. Ron had repaid Martin by spiking him viciously when baseball season rolled around.

Now, Marcus Martin was a big time lawyer and a man who loved the limelight. While Dantrell Weems was still unconscious in the prison ward at County Hospital, Martin gave a news conference in which he appeared with Weems’ mother and his common-law wife. Martin announced plans to sue the city and Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum on behalf of Dantrell Weems, at the behest of his family.

The charge would be abuse of authority. Martin claimed that Ron should have arrested Weems instead of shooting him. He said that even a cursory reading of the police report on the incident revealed that by his own words Lieutenant Ketchum admitted that the automatic weapon in Weems possession had run out of ammunition, and that the only other weapon, a handgun, that Lieutenant Ketchum
claimed
Weems possessed had been found twenty feet from his client’s body. Martin insinuated that the handgun found at the scene had been dropped by the lieutenant after the fact as an excuse for shooting Weems. He suggested that the judgment against the city would run into the millions.

He also urged the district attorney to look into filing charges against Lieutenant Ketchum, and hinted darkly that the man was a known racist.

Marcus Martin’s plans were undercut by responses from two quarters.

The family of Officer Oliver Gosden held a bedside press conference in the hospital room where the wounded cop lay recovering.

Speaking for her family, Lauren Gosden said, “Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum saved my husband’s life. He kept me from becoming a widow, and my son from never knowing his father. We will be grateful to him for as long as we live. As to the charges that Lieutenant Ketchum is a racist, well, as he held my husband’s head in his lap and kept him talking about Danny and me until the paramedics arrived, I really think he must have noticed that Oliver is black. And he probably guessed my son and I are, too.”

But what really wrecked Marcus Martin’s case was what Dantrell Weems said when he regained consciousness.

“I been to the other side,” Weems told his mother. “I know what’s waiting. I got to get right or there ain’t no hope for me at all.”

Neither Weems nor his mother would pursue the case Marcus Martin wanted to file. The common-law wife still wanted to go after the money. Dantrell was going to prison, damnit. What good would he be to her in there? But Martin knew that without at least the mother, he couldn’t even get away with pleading that Dantrell had been brain damaged by the shooting, and was incompetent to plea for himself in either a criminal trial or a civil action.

But Dantrell Weems did plea for himself: He pled guilty to the murder of Officer Conrad Bauer. He pled for forgiveness from the slain cop’s family. And when he was sentenced to die he pled to God to have mercy upon his soul.

The second incident occurred shortly before Ron had put in his twenty years with the department and was considering retirement. He was at a gas station near his Westchester home filling the tank of his personal car. He heard a toot from a car horn and looked up. He saw Jeff Woodridge, the son of his next door neighbors, drive past. The boy waved from behind the wheel of his new car, a used but immaculate BMW 325i.

Ron had known the Woodridge boy since he was six years old, and since that time, Jeff had been telling Ron and his wife, Leilani, and any other neighbor who’d listen, how he was saving to buy his first car. Now, at age eighteen, the day had finally arrived for Jeff. Ron smiled. But not for long.

He noticed another car with two black guys in it who seemed to be following Jeff. The city had been experiencing a large number of follow-home robberies in the past month, and Ron didn’t like the feeling he got off these two guys. He got in his car and tailed them — which he had to do anyway since he was going home and they were following Jeff to the house next door.

Ron’s heart raced when he saw the two guys following Jeff pull stocking caps over their heads. He used the radio in his car to call for assistance and laid his gun on the seat next to him.

The bad guys’ car sped up just as Jeff pulled into his driveway. Ron hit the gas, too.

Jeff had just stepped clear of his prized new set of wheels when the bad guys slammed into his rear bumper. The boy looked around at the sound of the crash. He couldn’t believe what had just happened to his new car. Redfaced with anger, he started to stomp toward the driver of the offending vehicle. Then he saw something that made him turn and run for his house. He was trying to open the front door when his father pulled it open from inside.

At that point, the bad guys got out of their car. Each of them had a gun in his hand. The weapons were immediately pointed at the Woodridges. The driver yelled, “Leave that door open, motherfuckers! Y’all got company.”

Before either bad guy could take a step, though, they heard a screech of tires and then another voice of command: “Drop your weapons! Police!”

When the driver turned toward Ron with his gun still in his hand, Ron shot him. Just once. The other bad guy started to run. Ron called for him to halt, and fired a warning shot into the ground. As Ron raised his weapon, not intending to let this sonofabitch get away, but dreading what the consequences of shooting him in the back would be, the guy skidded to a stop. He dropped his weapon, and put his hands in the air. He tensed his shoulders, too, as if bracing himself for the shot he expected to be fired.

That was when Ron realized how much he’d like to oblige the little shit.

But he didn’t. Instead, he came up from behind and swept the guy’s feet out from under him. He quickly cuffed him, and told him to stay flat on his face or he would be shot. Then he ran back to the first asshole to make sure he wasn’t getting ready to run. Or to shoot him from behind.

He wasn’t.

The Woodridges had kicked the guy’s gun away from his body, and stood between it and the robber. George Woodridge, Jeff’s father, looked at Ron and said with an approving nod, “I think you killed this one.”

Ron had.

There’d be no reviving sixteen year old Qadry Carter.

Neither would there be any stopping Marcus Martin this time. Sharrod Carter, the late Qadry’s accomplice and surviving twin brother, claimed Ron had never given him or his brother any warning before he’d gunned down Qadry. And when he’d chased Sharrod, he’d yelled, “Get down, nigger, or I’ll kill you, too!” Then he’d shot at Sharrod.

Jeff and George Woodridge refuted these accusations. The LAPD found the bullet from the warning shot Ron had fired into his neighbor’s lawn, and the department recovered ninety-seven items of property missing from other follow-home robberies in the crawlspace of the garage behind the Carter boys parents’ house.

Teddy and Mavis Carter claimed to have no knowledge of the stolen goods found on their property, and didn’t condone what their sons had done. But they believed Sharrod’s story and said that white racist cop had no business killing Qadry, who‘d been only a sixteen year old boy, after all. The Carters were happy to have Mr. Marcus Martin protect their interests.

The DA, however, found those interests to be less compelling. He accepted the Woodridge’s testimony to be credible; he knew that the Carter boys had a history of juvenile offenses dating back to when they were nine years old; and he liked the idea of prosecuting Sharrod for multiple home invasions a lot better than trying to nail a police lieutenant for protecting his neighbors.

The county of Los Angeles declined to institute any criminal proceedings against Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum. And because the DA was savvy enough to notify the police department in advance of making his decision public, there was no immediate outbreak of civil disorder.

Marcus Martin railed publicly against the system, saying there was no hope for justice for the black man in America. Within hours of his outburst, the Korean owner of a car stereo shop on Vermont Avenue exchanged gunfire with an irate African American customer who claimed the man had sold him a defective iPod dock. Both combatants died at the scene. Only a swift and massive deployment of police, who were already on alert, kept the town from exploding.