Aftershock (29 page)

Swift hit a button on his desk. A button that hadn’t been there before.

“Yes, Mr. Swift?” the pig’s honeyed tones came out of the speaker.

“Can you please tell me if the conference room is available, Jeannine? Oh, and can you call Channel Sixteen back and tell them that I may have a statement later this week, but an exclusive is out of the question?”

“Yes, sir!” she said, answering his last question first—the most important one, in her eyes. “And the conference room
is
available. I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed.”

“Thank you,” he said, tapping a button to switch off the gush.

The conference room was just a bigger version of Swift’s office. But it did have eight chairs and a long table. And a sign on the door that you could change from “Vacant” to “Occupied,” lending it that special touch of class you find on commercial airplanes.

“Okay, Franklin, here’s what we’re going to do. Mr. Swift is going to ask you some questions. I want you to remember that he’s fighting to keep MaryLou out of prison—”

“Isn’t she in prison already?”

“No,” Swift said, treading carefully. “That’s jail, not prison. It’s where they hold people before they go to trial.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody who can’t pay the bail the judge sets.”

“How much would that cost?” Franklin asked, disarmingly. I revised both my estimates, in opposite directions. Franklin was damn sure not “retarded.” I was no longer sure he was even “slow.” And I could tell he was more than capable of doing something “wrong” if he believed it would be the right thing to do.

If the Legion had ever gotten hold of this one, he’d be as dangerous as rocket-powered rat poison … especially if you happened to be a rat
.

“There’s no amount of bail set in this case, Franklin. Even a million dollars wouldn’t get her out, not before the trial.”

“That’s not right.”

“No,” I said, looking straight at Swift, “it isn’t.” A few weeks
ago, the lawyer would have shrugged his slumped shoulders and said something like “That’s the system.” Today, what came back was “You’re both right. But we only get one chance to ask the court to lower a defendant’s bail, and we don’t
have
to ask until we’ve put together every single thing that might help.”

Franklin looked down at his clenched fists, as if to say,
What’s wrong with these?
, but he didn’t say anything.

Swift caught the gesture. “That’s why you’re so important, Franklin. Now we can tell a judge that we have a witness who will swear that Danielle wouldn’t lie
for
her sister, but she certainly would lie
against
her.”

“You know what she said—?!”

I shook my head, and Franklin’s jaw snapped closed. “When we’re in court, we can only answer questions the lawyer asks. I know we’re not in court now. But we will be soon. So this is like a test run.”

“Like practice?”

“Exactly like practice. You have to be ready to play, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, Franklin,” Swift started. Then he stopped himself and asked, “Or would you prefer to be addressed as Mr. Wayne?” The lawyer was picking up respect by dishing it out. A man capable of learning is one thing; a man
willing
to learn, that’s gold.

“Franklin’s good enough for Mr. Dell; it’s good enough for me.”

“All right, then. After they swear you in—you’ve seen it on TV; ‘Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’—you sit down, just like you’re doing now, and I ask you some preliminary questions. I’ll just get your name, your address, and ask you how long you’ve known MaryLou, okay?”

“Sure. I met MaryLou—”

“We don’t want to waste time practicing on questions like that, Franklin. We save the practicing for the trickier ones.”

“Like what?”

“Like ‘Were you present on the night of June 10, 2013, when
Danielle McCoy said that her sister, MaryLou McCoy, murdered Cameron Taft in cold blood because she was jealous of her?’ ”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s a little stiff, Franklin. Just relax. This is a promise: nothing you do here can hurt MaryLou. Fair enough?”

“Yes, sir,” Franklin answered again, still polite, but more like he was comfortable in his surroundings.

“Okay, same question. Do you remember it?”

“Yes. And that
is
what Danielle said.”

“How do you know?”

“I … I don’t get it,” the giant said, despair suddenly spreading all over his face.

“I don’t get it, either,” I said, looking hard at Swift. “Franklin knows because he heard Danielle say it. Danielle just didn’t know anyone was listening.”

“That’s right!” Franklin burst out.

“My apologies,” Swift said. “My fault, not yours. I put that question poorly. So let’s move on, is that okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Franklin said. I reached across and tapped fists with him. Not a mistake I’d make again—nobody would call my knuckles soft, but they weren’t designed to hit cement.

“Did you hear Danielle say that Tiger Ko Khai was a special group at school?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, I want you to understand something. The District Attorney’s Office, they don’t want the truth to come out. So they’re going to keep jumping up and screaming
‘Objection!’
every chance they get. That won’t be because
you
said anything wrong; it’ll be because
I
asked the question wrong.

“So, depending on what the judge says, I may not be allowed to ask you yes-or-no questions. You may have to tell the jury what you heard all on your own. Okay? So, if I were to ask you, ‘What did you hear Danielle say?’ what would your answer be? Remember, you can only repeat what you heard, you’re not allowed to give
your own opinion. For example, you know Danielle lied about a lot of things, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But
you
can’t call her a liar. The
evidence
will call her a liar. So, if Danielle said she was twenty-five years old, her
birth certificate
would prove she was a liar. Okay?”

Franklin nodded, as if satisfying himself that he had it all straight. Then he said, “I heard Danielle say MaryLou killed Cameron because she was jealous. Jealous of Danielle, I mean. Danielle said Cameron was her secret boyfriend, but MaryLou knew about it, and MaryLou wanted him for herself. Danielle said that Cameron was the boss of this special club, Tiger something. She said this was real special. I heard Danielle say that MaryLou was gay. I heard her say that I was a retard-something. I heard her say that MaryLou told her she was going to break up Danielle and Cameron one way or another.”

“That’s just about
perfect
, Franklin. Just a couple of more questions. Did you actually hear Danielle say these things, or did somebody play a tape recording for you?”

“I was right in the next room. I could hear every word.”

“All you have to answer, if they ask that question, is that you actually heard her, Franklin. We don’t want to give them any more than they ask for, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, nodding slowly, as if to embed the thought.

“Great. Now, do you have an interest in—Withdrawn.” Before Franklin could ask what the hell that meant, Swift rolled right on: “Do you like MaryLou?”

“I love her. She’s my best friend.”

“So, if you thought MaryLou was going to spend the rest of her life in prison unless you told lies, would you tell lies to protect her?”

“Yes, sir, I would. In a minute.”

“Now you
are
perfect,” Swift said, admiration for the trueness of the young man’s love transforming his own face into
more of a … I don’t know, exactly. But I knew it was what we’d need.

I dropped Franklin off at his house, where he could change clothes for his next appointment.

D
olly adored Spyros. They’d gone partners on all kinds of town battles, but the one that brought them the closest was the fight to keep the Animal Shelter open. When I called and told Dolly what I needed, it only took her a couple of minutes to get back to me.

“Spyros says, ‘Sure. I wish I had ten more like him.’ ”

What Franklin had to change clothes for was the first day of his new job. My earlier conversation with Spyros about that couldn’t have gone better.

“What!” he answered his cell.

“Spyros, you don’t know me. My wife is Dolly Jackson and—”

“Now, there’s a girl they named right.”

“Yes, sir. But I was calling on behalf of Franklin Wayne. He worked for you—”

“Yeah, he worked for me. And he’s going to keep working for me. That young man has a beautiful way with trees. Strong as a bull, but he’s got a feather-touch when it’s needed. Whatever he’ll ever need for this work, he’s already got it in him. Once he learns some things, that is.”

“So Franklin could start working for you—”

“What do you mean, ‘could’? I’m crazy about your wife, buddy, but that doesn’t give you license to insult anyone who works for me.”

“Insult? When did I do that?”

“Well … I guess you didn’t. But if one more person tells me Franklin’s ‘retarded,’ it’s five across the eyes, you hear me? You want
to talk to genuine retards, just go down to City Hall. They’ve got a whole crew of them there, from the Mayor on down.”

“Uh, okay. So I’ll bring Franklin over later—”

“What are you, some kind of taxi? That young man has his own truck. Which leads me to a good question: if he’s so ‘retarded,’ how did the state issue him a driver’s license? And don’t tell me any DMV stories. Here’s the answer: maybe Franklin’s no rocket scientist, but he ain’t no dummy, either.

“My business, it’s a craft. You have to have the hands and the soul for it. Franklin’s going to take over for me when I finally retire … but don’t say a word to him about that! I want to be sure he’s got some of the nastier parts down before I make that move.”

“What could be nasty about horticulture?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“Getting paid,” Spyros said, grimly.

“I
almost blew that one, didn’t I?”

“You skated on the edge,” I told Swift, “but you pulled back real smooth—no harm was done.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want Franklin’s feelings hurt. I’ll bet, if it wasn’t for his size, he’d have been taunted at school. Kids can be merciless, sometimes.”

You know all about that, don’t you?
That blue screen cleared in a finger-snap, and I could see “Sadly ‘Not Too’ Swift” being poked in the chest by a football player in a varsity jacket.

I got it then. I got all of it. From the first time I spoke to him right up to the man sitting across a desk from me now. A different man. He’d been ready to make the jump for a long time, just waiting for the tiniest push.

“Yeah” is all I said.

“You’re probably thinking, how can we use what Franklin heard
Danielle say at the trial? It’s hearsay on top of hearsay. But I’ve been looking into this. And there’s an exception to the hearsay rule that we can use like it’s never been used before!

“In fact, we
hope
the DA objects. Hearsay is nothing more than an out-of-court statement—which this was—not under oath—which this wasn’t—offered for its truth. There’s no rule against offering a statement for its
un
truth.”

“And Danielle was lying, so …”

“That’s it. And that’s
all
of it. There is no way they can stop Franklin’s testimony coming in. And you know what? He’ll be the best kind of witness. That young man just exudes credibility. I don’t think he’d tell a lie to save his life. So when he said he’d lie in a heartbeat if it would save
MaryLou’s
life, that was a knockout punch.”

“He convinced me. And I’m not that easy to convince.”

“I … I think I know that by now, Dell.”

He quavered a bit on the last word, so I said, “You’re the man for this job, Brad. The right man.”

He shoved his nerves back under his skin, replied, “I think maybe, just maybe, this would be the first time any jury around here ever actually
listened
to a justification defense.”

“By the time we’re ready to roll, I promise you’ll be holding a lot more cards, too. And getting Franklin a pass to see MaryLou—”

“Like I said, already handled,” he told me, with a half-smile. A confident one.

“P
remièrement, tu dois toujours tenir parole
.” The old man had said that to me when I was still an alley rat. He was teaching me to be a man, one step at a time, switching between French and English so seamlessly that I sometimes got left behind.
“Si les gens savent que tu tiens toujours parole, ils auront toujours peur de toi.”

“If people knew my word was always good, then they would fear me?
Me?
”

“Of course. No matter what they do, if you walk away with your life, they will fear you for the rest of theirs. Do you know the name ‘Adolf Eichmann’? No, why would you? But he lives in fear of every Jew he did not exterminate. All Jews, everywhere, they made a sacred promise.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will,” he promised.

And only a few days passed before that promise came true.

So I picked Franklin up at four that afternoon. “Mr. Spyros said I had to be home by four today,” he said, sounding a little puzzled. “I usually work until it gets dark, or even later, but Mr. Spyros said today was different.”

“It is, son. Didn’t I promise I could get you a visit with MaryLou?”

Like everything else the old man had taught me, it worked. I just had never seen it work magic before. Tears sprang into the kid’s eyes.

“Thank you” is all he said.

“F
ranklin!” MaryLou greeted him with a rib-crushing two-handed grab. She was a big, strong girl, but she still looked like a ballerina hugging a bear.

The guard started toward us. Franklin slowly turned his massive head. Something must have required the guard’s attention elsewhere.

“We’re going to get you out of … this place,” Franklin said, the moment we sat down.

“Franklin …”

“I mean, all legal and everything,” he said, stumbling over the words in his excitement.