The Law of Second Chances (12 page)

“You gotta practice differently than the rest of the team,” Floyd told him. “You gotta practice running backwards and sideways without looking where you’re going.”

The three of them would go off by themselves and practice running backward on their toes and sideways with cross steps at full speed. They didn’t have the luxury of a defensive backfield coach so they coached themselves—at least, Rico and Floyd coached Johnny. He didn’t know
where they’d learned their skills, but Rico and Floyd knew how to play. Floyd was Johnny’s height but thin and wiry. He could twist and turn his body in fluid motions like a ballet dancer. Rico was short, quick, and tough
.

Rico was the tactician, and he worked Johnny every day on the fundamentals of playing defensive back. Floyd taught him how to make plays without getting hurt
.

“If you want to last in this league, don’t meet everybody head on like that maniac,” Floyd said one day, pointing at Rico. “Catch them at an angle. If you hit a man from the side he goes down a lot easier and it’s a lot easier on you. Just don’t forget to wrap your arms
—
that’s the key. You gotta play tough but you gotta be smart about it too.”

Rico constantly pushed Johnny to be more aggressive
.

“You got a nickname?” Rico asked him the Thursday before the first game
.

“Kinda.”

“What is it?”

“They sometimes call me the Mayor of Lexington Avenue.”

“You? Why do they do that?”

“It’s a long story.”

Rico didn’t have time for a story. He was too busy teaching. “I call myself the Rico Kid. You know why?”

“Why?” Johnny asked
.

“Because I have my turf, and nobody’s coming into the Rico Kid’s territory without getting hurt. You understand?”

Johnny nodded hesitantly. Rico filled in the blanks. “When we line up in the game on Saturday, you’ll be on the right side
—
you’ll always be on the right side. I’ll be on the left and Floyd will be in the middle. When you’re out there on that right side, you look at that field in front of you right up to the line of scrimmage and you say to yourself, ‘This is the Mayor’s turf. I own this place. Nobody’s catching a ball in here. Nobody’s coming in here without getting hurt.’ You got that?”

Johnny nodded. “I got it. But you’re not going to call me the Mayor from now on, are you? It’s a little embarrassing.”

“I hear you, man. I’ll tell you what. Off the field I’ll call you Johnny, but on the field you’re the Mayor. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.”

The first game was at McCombs Dam Park across from Yankee Stadium. Their opponents were the Bronx Bears, whose uniforms matched those of the Chicago Bears—black shirts and white pants. They were big, and Johnny could tell they weren’t sticklers for the rules. They were all grown men in their late twenties and thirties
.

The Lexingtons won the toss and elected to receive. Johnny was on the kick return team. Gregory Brown and Floyd stood back by the end zone ready to catch the ball, and Johnny and Rico were ten yards in front of them with Mikey and his brother Eddie; ten yards ahead of them were the linemen. It was a formation they had practiced for the first time on Thursday, for about five minutes. Johnny’s assignment was to find somebody to block after either Gregory or Floyd caught the ball. He was standing out there in his clean white jersey, nervous as hell, butterflies in his stomach, waiting for the referee to start the game. He tried to think about nothing else but finding a man to block
.

The referee blew the whistle, the Bears kicker started toward the ball, and his teammates in unison began running downfield. Then the ball was in the air. At first Johnny kept his eyes on the wave of players coming down the field. He was supposed to pick up the ball’s line of flight so he could set up his block, so he briefly glanced up. But something was wrong: the ball wasn’t going over his head to the two guys back by the end zone. The kick was short, way short, and it was coming right at him. And so was everybody on the other team
.

There was no time to think. He concentrated first on catching the ball, something Floyd had drilled into his head: “Catch it first, then look to see where you’re gonna run. If you don’t catch it, running is not going to be your problem.” Keeping his eyes glued to the ball, Johnny extended his
hands and pulled it into his gut. Only then did he shift his gaze to the field in front of him
.

The sideline looked open so he headed straight up the field. Johnny saw Doug Kline and Frankie O’Connor ahead of him, watched as they threw their blocks and then cut the opposite way into the hole they had cleared. Johnny got through, but there was nobody to block the next wave of tacklers. He tried to outrun them and did for another ten yards before he was brought down hard. In the pile, somebody punched him in the stomach. Somebody else welcomed him to opening day in the city league: “Pull that shit again, kid, and we’ll break your leg.” Johnny smiled to himself. Last year he would have been scared shitless. This year he was amused. The butterflies were gone
.

He had gained thirty yards on the play. Everybody slapped him on the pads when he reached the sideline. “Way to go, Johnny.” “Good run, man!” It was a nice feeling. Rico and Floyd were the most excited. “The Mayor owns this turf!” Rico shouted
.

On the next play, Gregory Brown sprinted around the left end for a touchdown. The game turned out to be a defensive struggle after that. The Lexingtons held the Bears scoreless and won six to nothing
.

They celebrated that night at the Carlow East, one of the neighborhood bars. Johnny was the only one on the team who wasn’t eighteen. In fact, he had just turned seventeen that month
.

“We can’t go drinking without the Mayor,” Frankie said when Johnny pointed out that he wasn’t legal. “Hell, he set up the winning touchdown.” Johnny felt like a million bucks
.

The Carlow had a long bar to the right as you walked in the door. Halfway down the bar on the left was the men’s room. They walked in as a group and headed for the far end of the bar. As they passed the men’s room, Johnny slipped in. He stayed there while Mary McKenna, the bar owner, checked everybody’s identification. Ten minutes later, Jimmy Walsh, the white kid from north of Ninety-sixth Street, came
in and handed Johnny his driver’s license. The hope was that Mary wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t proofed Johnny, but if she did, he’d have Jimmy’s license; they looked enough alike for it to work
.

The plan worked. Mary never did card Johnny, probably because she was too distracted by the makeup of the group and the reaction it was receiving from the other patrons. Even though the whole team didn’t show up, there were still three blacks and a Puerto Rican in an Irish bar. The regular patrons didn’t take kindly to that, and there were some grumblings down the bar soon after the boys arrived. Johnny watched as Frankie O’Connor took over. He walked up and down the bar telling everybody about how the Lexingtons, the neighborhood team, had just won their first game and how they were going to make the neighborhood proud by winning the city championship
.

Pretty soon the whole bar was laughing and toasting the Lexingtons. The Carlow East had gone color-blind
.

16

Hope was not something that flourished in the dim gray atmosphere of Florida’s death row. Hope could be as painful as execution itself. But that was exactly what Jack brought to Henry Wilson as they sat across from each other in the same room where they first met with the two guards in the corners behind Henry. Hope came in the form of a rough draft of a motion for a new trial and copies of the affidavits of Wofford Benton, Ted Griffin, and Anthony Webster. Henry pored over the documents, leaving Jack to sit, wait, and wonder if Henry was going to grab that last ray of hope that he was offering. Finally Henry spoke.

“This is very good work, Counselor. In no time, you have uncovered evidence that nobody else could find—in seventeen years. But there are problems, aren’t there?”

“Yes,” Jack replied. He felt that Henry was baiting him a little.

“Let’s talk about the problems,” Henry began. “You’re not going to win on ineffective assistance of counsel. Nor are you going to win on newly discovered evidence.”

Jack wasn’t totally shocked. He knew death-row inmates had a lot of time on their hands, and many of them read court cases. It was the analysis—the direct, incisive pinpointing of the problems—that was surprising. “You’re right,” he replied. “We’re not going to win on ineffective assistance of counsel because—”

Henry interrupted him. “Because the case law is against
you. This kind of mistake by defense counsel isn’t going to do it.”

“That’s right. And it’s probably not newly discovered evidence because—”

“—because my attorney could have found all of this evidence seventeen years ago if he had done his job correctly.”

Jack reluctantly had to agree. “You’re right again. So what we have left is . . .” Jack paused to see if Henry Wilson could answer the most important question.

“A
Brady
violation,” Henry said without hesitation. Jack looked at him in disbelief. In 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States had decided the case of
Brady v. Maryland
, which held that the state had a duty to disclose evidence favorable to the accused, and if the failure to disclose such evidence deprived the accused of a fair trial, then the accused was entitled to a new trial. It had taken Jack days of research to find the
Brady
decision and to realize it was Henry’s only realistic hope.

“What?” Henry finally asked Jack. “You’re speechless? What do you think I’ve been doing here for the last seventeen years, twiddling my thumbs? I knew the prosecutor held back stuff. I just needed somebody to find that evidence. I’ve read
Brady
so many times the ink on the pages is worn. I knew as the years rolled by that a
Brady
violation was going to be my only shot.”

“It’s still a long shot,” Jack warned. “A judge has to determine that you were deprived of a fair trial, and that’s a subjective evaluation.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to get the right judge,” he replied, and Jack knew that Henry had grabbed onto that tiny strand of hope with both hands.

On Wednesday afternoon, Jack and Pat were in Dr. Erica Gardner’s empty waiting room.

“Jack, why don’t you just leave me here and go do something? Check in at the hotel. Visit your friends. Anything,” Pat said.

“We can’t check in at the hotel until four o’clock and
there is nobody I want to see in this town. Besides, I want to be here with you.”

“I know, honey, but they’re just going to examine me today and take tests. They won’t talk about the results until tomorrow. You can be with me tomorrow.”

Reinforcements for Pat came in the form of Dr. Gardner, who appeared in the waiting room a few minutes later. She greeted Jack first, kissing him on the cheek. “It’s good to see you again, Jack.” She waited while he introduced Pat, then turned her attention back to him. “Jack, your wife and I need to get acquainted. It’s going to take some time to chat, do an examination, and have these diagnostic tests performed. Why don’t you go do what you men do with your free time and check back here in about three hours?”

Pat was standing behind Dr. Gardner looking at Jack with a big smile on her face. “All right, I can see I’m outnumbered,” he muttered and retreated toward the front door. “I’ll go check us in at the hotel and be back at five.”

They were staying at the Windmar Hotel in South Beach. Anxious and unable to settle down, Jack spent the next couple of hours walking the beach and sightseeing. He made a reservation for them that evening at a restaurant on the main drag, specifically telling the maitre d’ that he wanted a table on the patio overlooking the street.

Pat was waiting when he arrived back at Dr. Gardner’s office at five.

“How was it?” he asked.

“Great. Dr. Gardner is very nice and very professional. She had somebody from her staff drive me to the hospital for the CT scan and the ultrasound, and I didn’t have to wait at all. Everything was all arranged beforehand. She’s going to read the reports tonight.”

“Good,” Jack replied. “I got us all set up at the hotel and I made us dinner reservations.”

“Oh, where are we going?”

“Right on Ocean Avenue. We can watch the show while we eat.”

The show was the other people who walked up and down
Ocean Avenue to see and be seen and the exotic cars that took their turn driving up and down the same runway.

“This
is
quite a scene,” Pat marveled after they’d settled in at their table.

“It never changes,” Jack told her. “Some of the buildings around here get redone and the styles change a bit, but the people are as wacky as ever.”

They went dancing after dinner at the Windmar nightclub. The music was a little loud, but after a few drinks they didn’t notice.

“I think this is the first time you’ve ever taken me dancing,” Pat shouted to him over the music. “You’re pretty good.”

The liquor had removed Jack’s usual inhibitions on the dance floor. He was flailing his arms and gyrating and laughing and having a grand old time. “It’s not the first time,” he shouted back. “I danced with you at one of Father O’Pray’s dances when you were fourteen.”

“I remember,” she laughed. “You stepped on my foot.” Later, in their room, they opened the sliding glass doors and made love to the continuous roar of the ocean smashing up against the shore. Their lovemaking was slow and sweet, and Pat didn’t have any pain this time. When it was over they lay there silently, listening to the waves and thinking about the news they would receive the next day.

At 10:00 a.m., they were back in Erica Gardner’s waiting room holding hands. Finally the receptionist ushered them into the doctor’s office.

Erica motioned them to sit. “I’m afraid I have bad news,” she said, leaning forward on her desk.