Reversible Errors (60 page)

"I don't know, John. I don't know what to call it."

As he listened to her, he bit again and again at his thumbnail, to the point that Muriel feared she would see blood. She could barely prevent herself from trying to stop him. Yet she had no place telling him how to face all of this. He was, as ever, loyal. The conclusiveness of the fingerprint and blood evidence was plain to him, and he was more willing than she expected to accept her judgment that Gandolph had 110 role in the killings. Whether she deserved it or not, John, like so many others, had faith in her as a lawyer. The only consolation he wanted was what she had anticipated.

"Would you have gone for death on this guy? On Erdai? If he told and all, but he got the miracle cure and didn't die?"

"We'd have tried, John."

"You wouldn't have gotten it?"

"Probably not."

"Because he's white?"

Even now, her steady impulse was to say no. Jurors judged the gravity of these crimes by the value of the lives lost. In that calculus, like so many others, race and social status became indistinguishable. They would have cared mightily that Erno's victims were hardworking family people. But the counterweight was their assessment of the killer, and there color in itself mattered little.

"In the end, juries only give death to people they think are dangerous and completely worthless. It would make a difference that Erno did one good thing," she said to John. "He wouldn't let an innocent man die in his place. Maybe two. He cared about his nephew." Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood. It might also have proved significant that Muriel understood his passion.

"What sense is that?" asked John. "Honestly. Does any of this make sense? Everybody's just as dead. My father and Luisa and Judson. That guy Erno was a shit from what you're telling me. A murderer. A liar. A liar under oath. A thief. He was scum. Twice as bad as anybody ever thought Gandolph was. And he'd have lived?"

There was no arguing with that. Erno was as bent as they came.

"That's how it is in death cases, John. Its so extreme-the crime, the stakes, everybody's feelings. You try to make rules and somehow none of them stick, or even make sense."

She had brought a transcript of Collins's interview. John turned a few pages, then handed it back.

"It's done," he said and with those words sighed enormously. "At least we'll have that. It's done."

At the door, she apologized to him again for her own role in making this so prolonged, so torturous, but he would hear none of it.

"Never for a second," he said with the same fierceness with which he'd decried the senselessness of the law, "is anybody going to tell me that you weren't doing your best. You and Larry. Tommy. All of you. Never."

He hugged her with the same energy he had when she came in, then went to find a bandage for his thumb.

Outside, she stopped to look back at the restaurant where ten years ago three persons had met a hideous death. Muriel would never see this simple, low building, its compound-brown bricks and large windows, without being scoured by some of the terror that Luisa and Paul and Gus had each experienced in their last moments. Standing here, she revisited once more the unbearable instant when each of them realized that this life that we all love beyond anything else was about to conclude at the whim of another human being, an ending where the sustaining forces of both reason and humanity proved worthless.

Inside, John had repeated something he often said -that to this day he still saw the blood on the floor. Yet John had not closed Paradise. The restaurant was Gus's monument, home to his spirit. A bright place on a dark night. A warm place on a cold day. Food for the hungry. Company for the lonely. Life abounding in a site where humans strived, like Gus, to be each other's friends.

She would return.

Chapter
42

august 30, 2001

Releas
e t
he clothing in which Rommy Gandolph had been tried and in which he'd been committed to the prison system had been mislaid long ago. Perhaps they didn't bother saving the apparel of the Yellow Men. Just outside the town of Rudyard, Arthur and Pamela drove into the lot of a Kmart and bought three pairs of wash pants and a few shirts for Rommy. Then they continued their happy journey south.

By the time they reached Rudyard, there was already a significant encampment of news vans in the parking lot. The Reverend Dr. Blythe was conducting a press conference. As always, he was accompanied by a cast of thousands. Arthur never understood where all the people around Blythe came from-some were staffers at his church, a few provided security, but the affiliations of the rest were an absolute mystery. The cohort of at least thirty included a half brother of Rommy's whom Arthur had never known to exist until last week, when the papers began to speculate about a civil suit. Blythe's entir
e l
egion was ebullient, relishing both the occasion and the fact that by dint of numbers and press attention they had taken over a portion of the prison grounds.

Apparently Blythe had carried a portable stage-a tall pallet and a podium -in the trunk of the stretch limousine in which he had traveled and which was parked at a distance, out of sight of the cameras. Blythe had been good enough to call to congratulate Arthur after Muriel filed her motion to dismiss Rommy's case, but he'd heard nothing from the Reverend or his staff since. Naturally, though, Arthur was not surprised to see Blythe here. With his glimmering bald head and large white mustache, Blythe looked entirely avuncular until he started speaking. Approaching, Arthur heard him bemoaning the injustice of a system in which drug-addict judges sentenced innocent black men to die. He had a point, Arthur figured, but it was funny how it looked from up close.

As some of the reporters surged toward Arthur, the Reverend invited him up to the podium. Blythe shook Arthur's hand robustly and patted his back and told him again he had done well. It was from Blythe, in their final conversation, thflt Arthur had heard that the state had taken a statement from Erno's nephew, and that Muriel was simply covering herself by blaming Gillian. Jackson Aires, who insisted on keeping the secret for his client's sake, had stowed Collins back in Atlanta and refused to confirm what Arthur suspected Jackson had privately shared with Blythe. Aires confined himself to a single detail. Tour man didn't do it. Wasn't there. Rest of it doesn't matter anyway. Helluva job, Raven. Never thought you had much prospect as a defense lawyer, but I seem to have been wrong. Helluva job.'

The truth about Collins might yet emerge in the civil case, especially if the state was obstinate about settling. On the drive back to the city today, Arthur hoped to talk to Rommy about filing the lawsuit. Yesterday, Arthur had informed Ray Horgan that he expected to handle Rommy's civil case and leave the firm.

In the guardhouse, Arthur and Pamela handed over a pair of pants and a shirt to the lieutenant on duty, who wouldn't accept the clothing.

"The ones out there, Reverend Blight, they brought a suit. Five hundred bucks if its a dollar, too." The lieutenant, who was white, glanced circumspectly in each direction, thinking better only now that he'd heard himself.

In a moment, Blythe arrived. Accompanying him was an impressive-looking man, tall and handsome, splendidly dressed, an African American whom Arthur recognized from somewhere. Not from town, Arthur knew that much. Another hero was all Arthur could recall, perhaps an athlete.

The lieutenant lifted his phone, and in a few minutes the Warden, Henry Marker, appeared. Also black, he warmed noticeably to Blythe and invited the entire party to accompany him. Inside the first gate, they turned in a direction Arthur and Pamela had not gone before and entered the separate orange-brick administration building. There were the same locks and guards, but here the purpose was to keep inmates out, not in.

On the second floor, Marker showed them into his office, large but spare. Before the Wardens desk, in a suit and tie, Romeo Gandolph sat slumped and fidgeting. He jumped up when the group entered, predictably puzzled about what he was supposed to do next. His hair had been shaped by someone and when he spread his hands in welcome, Arthur noticed that Rommy at last was free of manacles. Despite himself, Arthur, who had cried a great deal in the last week, began weeping again, and found Pamela in the same state. In the meantime, Blythe fell upon Rommy with a huge embrace.

The Warden had several papers for Rommy to sign. Arthur and Pamela reviewed them while Blythe took Rommy to the other side of the room. Arthur heard them praying, then some high-spirited conversation. After Rommy scrawled his name on the documents, they were all ready to go. Marker walked them to the front gate. The buzzer sounded, and the Warden, like a butler, stood aside to open the door. As he did so, Blythe wiggled past Arthur and Pamela and was beside Rommy as the daylight fell upon him.

The camera people as always were lawless, shouting and jostling. Blythe held Rommy's elbow and steered him to the podium in the parking lot. He invited Arthur and Pamela up, giving them places in the second row behind Rommy and himself. Pamela had prepared
a b
rief statement for Rommy, which he held in his hand, but Blythe took it from him and handed over a different sheet. Rommy started to read, then looked around helplessly. The half brother, now at his side, pronounced a few of the words. It occurred to Arthur for the first time to wonder how many rehearsals had been required before Rommy read the videotaped confession prepared for him a decade ago. For a moment, as he stood there, not knowing what to expect, the utter monstrousness of what had happened to Rommy Gandolph stormed over Arthur-that and the supreme satisfaction of knowing that Pamela and he had commanded the power of the law for Rommy's benefit, that the law had made right what it first had made wrong. No matter how fuddled he became at the end of his days, Arthur, at this instant, believed he would remember he'd done this.

Gandolph by now had given up on the statement. The stampede of reporters and technicians through the gravel parking lot had raised a haze of bitter dust and Rommy was blinking furiously and rubbing his eyes.

"I can't say much 'cept thanks to everybody here," said Rommy.

Reporters kept shouting the same questions-what did it feel like to be out, what were his plans. Rommy said he'd like a good steak. Blythe announced plans for a celebration at his church. The conference broke up.

As Gandolph jumped down from the riser, Arthur pushed forward to reach him. On the phone, they had agreed that Rommy would drive back up to Kindle County with them. Arthur had been scouting out job prospects for Rommy. And there was also the lawsuit to discuss. But Rommy held back when Arthur pointed him toward the rear lot.

"I was kinda goin with them-all," said Rommy. If he was aware that he was disappointing Arthur, he gave no sign. But his face was wrinkled by curiosity. "What ride you got?"

Arthur smiled a bit and gave the brand and the model. Rommy seemed to search the parking lot, but his eyes lit on the stretch.

"Naw, I'm gone ride with them," he said. His expression remained mobile and uncertain. Blythe's security people were holding several reporters at bay. "I want to thank you-all for what you done, I truly do."

He offered his hand then. It was, Arthur realized, the first time he had ever touched Rommy Gandolph. His hand was oddly calloused and narrow enough to be a child's. Gandolph pawed around in front of Pamela, who leaned over to hug him.

"Tolc you you should've hitched up with me," he said. "I'm gone get me a wife pretty as you, only black. I'm gone be rich now, too. Get me some stock." At that point the handsome man who had accompanied Blythe inside came to reclaim Rommy. In his company, Rommy Gandolph turned away and never looked back at either of his lawyers.

They were in Arthur's sedan on the way out of Rudyard when Pamela told Arthur who the man was-Miller Douglas, a noted civil rights lawyer from New York. No doubt now who was going to handle Rommy's civil case. Rommy would sign the retainer agreement in the limo-if he hadn't done it in the Warden's Office already. Arthur pulled his car to the graveled shoulder of the road to come to terms with the news.

"This is terrible," he said. Pamela, still young enough to be remote from the business side of law, shrugged, unsurprised.

"Don't you think he's got the right lawyer?" she asked. "Our firm doesn't even do civil rights cases."

Arthur, who had never much bothered with that consideration, continued to suffer the ironies. Rommy was free. Arthur was not. Hor- gan would probably laugh when he took Arthur back, but there would be costs for years to come. At least Ray had asked him to reconsider. 'Generally speaking, Arthur,' he'd said, 'you may find that there's a bit of a drought before your next innocent client. A decade or two.' Arthur took a second to ponder how he might package this for Ray, then gave up. As a disappointment, Rommy's choice of a new lawyer still took second place. Despite the maelstrom surrounding Rommy's release, the ceaseless phone calls from reporters, the exultation in the law firm, where Arthur now found he had many supporters, there was one misery, one low point where his spirit inevitably rolled to rest, as it did again now.

Gillian. My Gillian, my Gillian, he thought, and yet again began to cry. Muriel had done a masterful job of vilifying her. Two days into it, the Tribune had actually gotten hold of Gillian's FBI mug shot
,
taken when she was arrested in 1993, running it 011 the front page along with a report of several thousand words on Gillian's drug taking, gleaned from sources as diverse as drug agents, defense lawyers, and addicts on the street. The story of the Junkie Judge had even reached many of the national news outlets, especially the ones that usually traded in celebrity gossip. Only a few stories mentioned that Gillian was sober either when she had been sentenced or now.