The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (50 page)

Winston takes out his pipe and lights it. Eliot glances at the clock. He needs to leave for court in four minutes.

“I kept Miss Wells apprised of the details, and later, when it was all over, I cautiously relayed to her the difficulties I had had with my partner. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘Freddy can be a jackass. But I thought the two of you would make a good combination.' She
knew
there was value in our amalgamated talents, and that we could rise above our petty differences. In the end I came to respect Freddy McDonnell, have regretted we never had occasion to work together since.” He puffs. “Do you understand?”

“Yes sir, I understand.”

“Good.” He indicates for Eliot to rise to his feet, then pats him on the back. “I hear things have been going acceptably in court this week. Think you'll rest soon?”

Eliot isn't sure what “acceptably” means so sticks to the question. “At this rate probably Thursday or Friday.”

“Well then. You and Beau will have all next week to start strategizing. I know you'll take good care of each other down in ole Dixie.”

Eliot rushes back to his office to grab his briefcase. Standing in wait for the decrepit elevator, he remembers Didi's smile as she told him she wished she'd written her will before getting on “The Lift of Terror.” He glimpses Will coming out of the conference room with coffee and stopping by Andi's desk. “Got one for ya. A priest, a rabbi, and a cracker judge are all sent to meet St. Peter.” Will's voice then lowers to an animated whisper. The cage finally arrives and Eliot steps in, closing the gate, and just before the corridor outside Winston Douglas and Associates disappears from his view, he hears Andi's raucous laughter, and Will joining in.

 

14

“As this is the last chance I have to speak with you before you're excused to deliberate, first and foremost I want to express my sincere gratitude to each and every one of you for your time and attention over the last nine days.

“On the surface your task appears to be simple. Given the evidence, you are asked to decide if you believe Mr. Daughtery is or is not guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged, which are resisting arrest, possession of a concealed weapon, and racketeering. If you decide that he is guilty of one or two or all three of these, you are bound to have reached that conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt.

“And if you find Mr. Daughtery not guilty of any or all charges. What makes this determination so complicated is that you would in essence be implying your uncertainty regarding the honesty of the police. There is no concrete proof that any crime took place. All the evidence is circumstantial based upon the testimony of the officers: their word against Mr. Daughtery's.

“With respect to the charge of resisting arrest. That Mr. Daughtery suffered critical injuries on the day of his apprehension by Officers Crawley, Pfeiffer, Sheradon, and Wooley is not in question. The policemen claim that Mr. Daughtery's resistance to his arrest was to such a threatening degree that they were obliged to restrain him with extraordinary force. There
is,
as we all know, disagreement over whether that force continued after Mr. Daughtery was handcuffed and in custody at the stationhouse, but I'll get to that in a moment. For now we have Mr. Daughtery, whom
each
of the four officers has described in his testimony as, quote, ‘big and menacing,' unquote. He has not seemed so big in this courtroom but, in fairness, a man in a wheelchair
does
appear small. He is able to stand for intervals of a few seconds, at which point his height can be determined to be five feet eleven, though I did have to curve the tape measure since his body seems to be in a fixed stooping position
and before Mr. Ingram puts forth the objection that he has just stood to raise
I will remind you that Mr. Daughtery's physical condition should not affect your judgment regarding his guilt or innocence, that if the four officers inadvertently caused injury, permanent or otherwise in the necessary course of their duties, then the damage to Mr. Daughtery's person would be considered an unfortunate but inescapable consequence of the policemen's engagement.

“Where I become confused is in the officers' claim that all four of them, and they are certainly not small men themselves, but
all
of them were required to exercise
such
force to restrain Mr. Daughtery, that the defendant physically overwhelmed them. By contrast, Mr. Daughtery has stated that his
only
resistance to the police were his verbal assertions that he wanted a lawyer, that he has rights, and words alone do
not
warrant physical restraint, let alone the fact that Mr. Daughtery was completely within his rights to utter those words. Of the nine civilian eyewitnesses to the arrest who have testified before you, not one saw Mr. Daughtery assault any of the policemen in any way, but, as you'll recall, the officers have stated that all of those witnesses are either lying or, as Officer Pfeiffer put it, ‘blind.'

“With regard to the officers' assertion that the defendant was not harmed in custody, that he was not beaten after he was handcuffed and defenseless, that all his injuries were sustained at the time of his apprehension. Mr. Daughtery was arrested at 4:35 p.m. on Monday, September 12th. The medical report established the time of his admission to Emergency as 11:32 that night. If Mr. Daughtery's injuries all occurred at the time of arrest, I find it strange that Mr. Daughtery was not taken to the hospital until seven hours after his arrest, given that his injuries were hardly minor. Let me read for you again the physician's report, a head-to-toe examination.

Head trauma with fracture of the left temporal bone. Medial blowout infraorbital fracture (left), with moderate displacement and disrupted soft tissues of the eye. Hemorrhage within the orbit. Three upper left teeth dislocated. Displaced fracture of the left mid clavicle. Left ribs # 6, 7, and 8 fractured in mid axillary line. Fracture right distal radius, fractures of the right hand (navicular, metacarpals #2–5). Spleen is ruptured and surrounded by large hematoma. Pelvic fracture, bladder laceration, ecchymoses of penis and scrotum, with scrotal edema. Extensive lower extremity hematomas.

“But even outnumbered four to one as Mr. Daughtery was, he would still pose a legitimate threat were he armed, and here we may move on to the second charge: possession of a concealed weapon. The officers allege, after confiscating the defendant's merchandise, that later, back at the station, they discovered Mr. Daughtery had cut through the pages of several books, turning each tome into a storage area. Most of these makeshift chests were used to hold policy betting slips, and one was obviously cut in the vague shape of the thirty-eight caliber pistol the police claim Mr. Daughtery illegally possessed. So, in putting all this supposedly found evidence together, the weapon and the betting papers, the officers came to the conclusion that Mr. Daughtery's sidewalk bookshop was actually a front for a numbers racket. There is no dispute as to the existence of the weapon and the betting slips in Mr. Daughtery's books. The question is when and how did they get there.

“The gun and its clever concealment, as well as the numbers slips, paint Mr. Daughtery as a shrewd and dangerous criminal. But since the weapon was not discovered until later at the precinct, Mr. Daughtery's weapon so inaccessible he could not get to it when he needed it most, he suddenly does not appear so shrewd nor so dangerous. But perhaps the defendant was smart enough to know that even if he were to get off a shot, there would be three officers left standing to fire back. This would explain his failure to reach for the gun. It would also conveniently deflect suspicion away from the very real possibility that the officers planted the gun and racketeering evidence into Mr. Daughtery's confiscated possessions while the defendant was in police custody. At any rate, whether the weapon was Mr. Daughtery's or whether it was put there by police, at the time of arrest Mr. Daughtery was unarmed and therefore would not appear to be such an ominous menace to the four officers attempting to subdue him.

“The third and final charge: racketeering. In specific, Mr. Daughtery's alleged involvement in the policy racket, and not as a mere runner. No, we are asked to conclude that the defendant's book table was in reality a policy
bank—
headquarters for the neighborhood numbers game, and Mr. Daughtery the boss. Never mind that Mr. Daughtery has no history of violent crime, that the
only
violation on his record is a misdemeanor four years ago regarding his lack of a permit to sell his books, for which he paid the fine and now holds a proper license. Never mind the numerous character witnesses who spoke highly of Mr. Daughtery as an honest street merchant, let us examine this portrait of Mr. Daughtery as the local crime czar. Officer Crawley in particular has portrayed the defendant as a self-serving wolf concerned for himself only. He didn't mention the defendant's mother, with whom Mr. Daughtery lives and provides for. After she testified quite emotionally on behalf of her only child who, as she stated, since his young teens has always worked hard to support the two of them, never asking anyone for a handout, suddenly Mrs. Daughtery
did
exist in the eyes of the prosecution, but as a woman indulging in the criminally ascertained wealth of her gangster son. I would like to point out that while Mrs. Daughtery has always come to court dressed respectfully in her Sunday best, her humble attire is hardly the fruit of some extravagant shopping spree.

“Mr. Daughtery claims that he had been harassed on several occasions by the police. That during the last such incident before the events of September 12th, the defendant had asserted to Officers Crawley and Sheradon ‘I know my rights!' He has told us that he was afraid, and that he was praying this reminder that he was legally owed basic human dignities would stop the intimidation. Sadly, it appears Mr. Daughtery was naïve. It was only when the two officers returned the next day with the reinforcements of Officers Pfeiffer and Wooley that Mr. Daughtery realized he may have made a fatal error, that to have mentioned his rights may
not
have endeared him to the officers and
yet.
Yet, he knew he was an innocent man in America, and as the wall of brutal authoritative power descended upon him with fists and batons and pistols at the ready, he proclaimed it again. ‘I know my rights! I know my rights!' This is what you heard when Mr. Daughtery testified yesterday. His speech was slow, and strained, and slurred, but those were his words.

“The defendant's instinctive fear of the officers. I imagine it makes little sense to most of you, who probably think of the police as the protectors of citizens. I would like to tell you that Negroes on the whole do
not
think of law enforcement that way. We generally consider the police an entity to dread and to avoid, and we have ample reason. I don't mean to say
all
policemen harass Negroes on no other basis than that they
are
Negro, but unfortunately there have been enough such incidents to have warranted our general feeling of mistrust and foreboding. You may recall during the
voir dire
when the question was posed, ‘Have you ever had any tussles with the police?' that every single colored man save one raised his hand, and that sole Negro male for whatever reasons was excused by Mr. Ingram. From that illustration we can come to one of two conclusions: either ninety percent of the Negro race
is
criminal, or ninety percent of the Negro race is
presumed
criminal. Thus I stand before you, ten white men, a white woman, and a Negro woman, and though I don't by and large consider you a jury of Mr. Daughtery's peers, I trust that you will all judge him fairly.

“My final point. In their testimony, Officers Crawley and Sheradon characterized Mr. Daughtery as a mobster who neither knows nor cares about his ‘front' merchandise. This depiction would contradict those witnesses who spoke of Mr. Daughtery's loquacious discourses regarding his books. It would also contradict something you were all a witness to yesterday. You will recall as I was questioning Mr. Daughtery, my client suddenly became agitated. Despite the trauma he has undergone, I didn't imagine at this late date he would be rendered into such an emotional state that the court would have to take an early lunch to allow my client to pull himself together. Here was my error. When I had informed Mr. Daughtery long ago about the evidence the police claimed to have found, that it had been stuffed into several of his books, I failed to mention
which
books. Mr. Daughtery sold titles mostly of Negro interest, with a few popular paperbacks thrown in. In this courtroom, I picked up the damaged volumes as I questioned him. James Michener's 1,056-page
Hawaii
harbored the gun.
The Lord of the Flies
contained some of the policy forms. As I held the defaced copy of W. E. B. Du Bois's
The Souls of Black Folk,
I noticed a flicker of distress in Mr. Daughtery but, foolishly, I ignored it and continued with my examination. By the time I got to the mutilated copy of
Invisible Man,
Mr. Daughtery was howling. I was bewildered as to how I had aggrieved my client. He was well aware his books had been damaged, why this eruption of emotion
now?
When he could finally articulate, barely, you'll remember he asked in his broken speech, ‘Why'd they do that? Why'd they do that?' And just before the recess he completed the thought: ‘Why'd they do that to Ellison?'

“Because Mr. Daughtery is a man who cares deeply about literature. After court was adjourned yesterday, I went to a bookstore and purchased a copy of
Invisible Man
, the one you see on my table. I'd just like to share a little from the beginning.

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.

I'll stop there, as I just wanted to give you a taste of the book that so affected Mr. Daughtery, an extraordinary novel that requires a contemplative and committed reader. Someone with more investment in his merchandise than merely as a façade for illegal operations. That line again,

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

When the police officers began harassing Mr. Daughtery, did they see a well-read man who conceived of his own honest business to provide for himself and his mother? Or did they just see another Negro from the ghetto, someone of such low stature as not even deserving the rights of other Americans. And might it have infuriated them that such a person had the audacity to inform them that he
did
deserve those rights?

“Mr. Daughtery. I bought
Invisible Man
for you. Please accept my gift.

“I cannot help but to think of how, until September 12th of this year, against all odds, Mr. Daughtery was able to scratch out a living by his simple, entrepreneurial endeavor. One that provided for his family as well as for the social and artistic enrichment of the community. It never made him a wealthy man, but his humble contribution to the literacy of his people rendered him vital to our collective humanity. And what more could any of us ask of life?”