The Boys from Biloxi: A Legal Thriller (43 page)

McClure made quick work of the witness by pointing out that he was still on the Malco payroll, as he had been for the past eighteen years. He dropped out of school after the ninth grade. Along with the highbrow jobs mentioned by Mr. Burch, LaMarque admitted to working as a cook, janitor, bartender, delivery boy, and driver. He also admitted to dealing blackjack back in the old days.

LaMarque was slow off the mark and nervously cut his eyes at the jurors, as if he himself should’ve been on trial for some crime. The real reason he had been chosen to defend Hugh was that he was one of the few Malco employees with no criminal record.

If Hugh’s life depended on men like LaMarque, then the defendant was as good as dead.

The second star witness was even worse. Hoping to impress the male jurors, or even startle them, Burch called Tiffany Barnes to the stand. Onstage with her clothes off she went by Sugar, but when properly dressed and being a good girl she was Tiffany. Whether
or not she was properly dressed could be debated. Her tight skirt stopped several inches above her knees, revealing long shapely legs that were impossible not to notice, if only for a second. Tight low-cut sweater, ample cleavage, lovely face with a sparkling smile. Half of her testimony was revealed just in the presentation.

The lying started immediately. Her story was that she and Hugh had been dating for three years, engaged for two, living together for one, and planned to get married the following month. Assuming, of course, he would be able to get married. She knew his innermost thoughts—his dreams, worries, fears, prejudices, everything. Her fiancé would never harm another human being; it simply wasn’t in his genetic makeup. He was a caring, loving man who went out of his way to help others. She had never heard him mention the name Jesse Rudy.

It was a splendid performance, and the jurors, at least the men, enjoyed it, if only for a moment.

Chuck McClure destroyed her in less than five minutes. He asked, “Miss Barnes, when did you and Hugh apply for a marriage license?”

Big smile, perfect teeth. “Well, we haven’t done that yet, you know? Kinda hard when he’s in jail.”

“Of course. Hugh has two sisters. Do you know their names?”

The smile vanished as her shoulders and breasts sagged a bit. She glanced at the jury box, the panicked look of a deer in headlights. “Yes, one is Kathy. I haven’t met the other.”

“No, sorry. Hugh has only one sister and her name is Holley. Does he have any brothers?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about them. The family is not close.”

“Well, surely he talks about his mother. She lives in Biloxi. What’s her name?”

“I just call her Mrs. Malco. That’s the way I was raised.”

“Of course. But what is her first name?”

“I’ve never asked.”

“Where does she live in Biloxi?”

“In the western part.”

“What street?”

“Goodness, I don’t know. I can’t remember street names.”

“Nor first names. You’ve dated for three years, been engaged for two, shacked up for one, and you don’t know where his mother lives in the same town.”

“As I said, she’s in the western section of Biloxi.”

“Sorry, Miss Tiffany, but Carmen, her first name, Carmen Malco moved to Ocean Springs two years ago.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know where you live?”

“Of course I do. With Hugh.”

“And what is your address?”

Perhaps tears might save her. She glared at McClure, summoned up a wave, and began wiping her cheeks. After a long painful silence, McClure said, “Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

Late Thursday afternoon, the jury deliberated for all of forty-seven minutes and found Hugh Malco guilty of capital murder. On Friday morning, the sentencing phase began when Chuck McClure called Agnes Rudy to the stand. With firm resolve and only a few quiet tears, she did a fine job of getting through the script she and Keith had memorized. She talked about her husband, their life together, their children, his work, and, most important, the unimaginable emptiness his death left behind.

She missed her husband dearly, even painfully, still, and had not really accepted his death. Perhaps when those responsible for his murder were put away for good, then she could begin to move on.

A second mother followed the first. Carmen Malco had avoided
the trial so far and had no desire to make an appearance. But Joshua Burch had convinced her that she was the only person who might be able to save her son’s life.

She was not. In spite of her emotional plea to the jurors, they deliberated again for less than an hour and returned with a verdict of death.

January of 1979 began slow but ended with some excitement. On the seventeenth, Ainsley Rudy gave birth to child number two, another girl, and the proud parents went to the book of baby names and selected one with no family connections whatsoever. Little Colette Rudy weighed in at five pounds, one ounce, and came almost a month early, but she was healthy and had the lungs to prove it. When Agnes finally got her hands on the child the parents were not sure they would get her back.

On January 20, the attorney general’s office notified Keith that Hugh Malco’s lawyers had completed the filing of his direct appeal to the state supreme court. It was the first step in an appellate process that would take years.

Joshua Burch considered himself a pure courtroom lawyer and had no interest in appellate work. He and Hugh parted ways after the trial, by mutual consent. As much as Burch loved the spotlight, he was fed up with the Malcos and wanted to pursue bigger fees in civil litigation. He referred Hugh to a death penalty firm out of Atlanta and washed his hands of his client. Burch and his staff knew there was little to argue on appeal. The case had tried “cleanly,” as they say in the trade, and Judge Roach had been spot-on with his rulings.

By state law, death penalty cases were handled by the Criminal Appeals Division of the attorney general’s office in Jackson. A week after the guilty verdict in Hattiesburg, Keith happily boxed up his Malco files and sent them to the AG. As long as he was the DA,
he would remain in the loop and be kept abreast of all developments. He would not, however, be required to (1) plow through the 5,000-page trial transcript looking for issues, or (2) write thick briefs in response to whatever Hugh’s appellate lawyers cooked up, or (3) participate in oral arguments before the state supreme court two years down the road.

For the moment, Malco was off his desk and out of his office, and he could concentrate on more pressing matters. On January 31, he filed papers with the circuit court clerk and announced he would seek election for his first full, four-year term. He was thirty years old, the youngest DA in the state, and arguably the best known. The tragedy of his father’s sensational death and the spectacle of Hugh’s trial had kept the family name in the headlines.

After the trial, he’d been generous with his time and sat through many interviews. He was coy about his plans, but it wasn’t long before he was being asked about his political ambitions.

He was not expecting opposition in his race for DA, and as the weeks passed there was no hint of any. His grand jury met in March and returned a pile of indictments, the usual assortment of drug possessions, car thefts, home burglaries, domestic dust-ups, aggravated assaults, and petty embezzlements. Two rape cases looked legit and serious.

Not for the first time, Keith asked himself how long he would be content prosecuting small-time criminals and sending them to prison where they served three years before getting out, only to break the law again. He had seen the packed courtrooms and felt the near-suffocating pressure of big league litigation, and he missed it. But he plodded on, doing the job he was elected to do and enjoying the life of a young father.

He kept an eye on the Strip and folks were behaving, for the most part. The state police sent in spies from time to time to appraise the activities. There was no visible gambling. There were plenty of naked girls dancing on stages and such, but it was impossible to know what happened upstairs. Informants assured Keith
and the police that the prostitutes had left the Coast and the gamblers had fled to Vegas.

On a cold, windy day in late March, Lance Malco was handcuffed by a guard and led to a ragged and dented prison van that was at least twenty years old and unfit for highways. A trustee drove it while two guards watched Lance in the back. They bumped along dirt and gravel roads through the vast fields of Parchman, passing other camps encircled in chain-link and razor wire and crawling with inmates in prison garb going about their useless activities. Killing time. Counting days.

For Lance, his days were now on the downhill side. His sentence was half over and he was scheming to return to the Coast. He and Fats had a plan to get him transferred to a medium-security facility in south Mississippi, and from there Fats was certain he could swap a prisoner or two and move his old pal back to the Harrison County jail. They had to keep their plan quiet. If Keith Rudy got wind of it he would raise hell, call the governor, and torpedo everything.

Lance had never been to Unit 29, known simply as “the Row.” It was three miles from his unit, but it could’ve been a thousand. Parchman didn’t give tours to other inmates. The request to visit his son had languished for thirteen months in the warden’s office before it was approved.

Death row, though, was the source of much gossip and legend, and it seemed as if every inmate at Parchman knew someone on “the Row.” The fact that Lance now had a son there gave him an elevated status, one he cared nothing for. Every prisoner cursed the DA who put him away, and killing one made Hugh a legend at Parchman, but Lance was not impressed. Almost three years after the murder, he still found it hard to believe that Hugh could have done something so stupid.

As dust boiled from the bald tires, they passed Unit 18, a World War II–style barracks unit used to house German POWs back then. According to a source, and Lance was still trying to verify it, Nevin Noll was assigned to the unit, but under an alias. During his first four months at Parchman, he had been in protective custody, according to the same source. Then he had been eased out into the general population with a new name.

Lance was on his trail, bribing guards, trustees, and snitches with cash.

Lance, Hugh, and Nevin, together again, sort of. They were scattered over a wretched and forlorn plantation with 5,000 other lost souls, trying to survive another miserable day.

The Row was a flat, squat building of red brick and tarred roof far away from the nearest camp. The trustee parked the van and they got out. The guards led Lance in through the front door, got him properly signed in, removed the cuffs, and walked him to an empty visitation room divided in two by a long section of thick wire mesh.

Hugh was waiting on the other side, seated nonchalantly in a cheap metal chair, with a big smile and a friendly “What’s up, Pops?”

Lance couldn’t help but smile. He fell into a chair, looked through the wire, and said, “Aren’t we a fine pair?”

“I’m sure Mom’s proud of us.”

“Any contact with her?”

“A letter a week. She sounds good. Frankly, after you left home she really perked up and became another woman. I’ve never seen her so happy.”

“Didn’t bother me either. I wish she would go ahead and file for divorce.”

“Let’s talk about something else. I’m assuming someone is listening to us right now, is that correct?”

Lance looked around the dingy and semi-lit room. “Legally,
they’re not supposed to listen, but always assume they are. Don’t trust anybody here—your cellie, your friends, the other inmates, the guards, the trustees, and especially the people who run this place. Every person can knife you in the back.”

“So no chatting about our problems, then? Past, present, or future?”

“What problems?” Both managed a smile.

Hugh said, “Cellie? Who says a I have a cellie? My little room is eight feet by ten, with one bunk, a metal commode, no shower. Certainly no room for another person, though I think they tried that once. I’m in solitary twenty-three hours a day and never see anybody but the guards, a bunch of animals. I can talk to the guy to my right but can’t see him. The guy on my left checked out years ago and speaks to no one.”

“Who’s the guy on your right?”

“White dude named Jimmy Lee Gray. Raped and killed his girlfriend’s three-year-old daughter. Says he killed others. Real prince of a guy.”

“So he admits his crimes. I thought most of the guys here claimed to be innocent.”

“No one’s innocent here, Lance. And these guys love to brag about their murders, at least to each other.”

“And you feel safe?”

“Sure. Death row is the safest place in prison. There’s no contact with other inmates. I get one hour a day in the yard, a little sunshine to work on my tan, but I’m all alone.”

Both lit cigarettes and blew clouds at the ceiling. Lance was filled with pity for his son, a thirty-year-old boy who should be enjoying life on the Coast, chasing the girls he’d always chased, running the clubs that practically ran themselves, counting the days until his father came home and life returned to normal. Instead he was locked in a cubbyhole in a terrible prison and would probably die in a gas chamber just around the corner. Pity, though, was
something Lance had learned to put away. They, father and son, had made their choices. They fancied themselves tough gangsters and had flouted the law for decades. They believed the old adage: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

And for Lance Malco, at least, the crime wasn’t finished.