The Law of Second Chances (10 page)

It was not uncommon to see Billy, wild-eyed, walking down the street in the middle of the day carrying a TV he’d stolen or a window fan he’d probably taken right out of somebody’s window. Billy used to go to the local pizza shop
on Lexington Avenue, pull wads of jewelry out of his pockets that he’d stolen from who knows where, and try to sell it to Rocco, the owner. Rocco would take a piece of jewelry and ask Billy how much, Billy would start at some outrageous price, and Rocco would have him down to pennies in minutes. Johnny and Mikey were often there to witness the negotiation. It was fun to watch, but it was sad too. Billy stole from the neighborhood, and Rocco and others stole from Billy
.

One of those “others” was Sonny. Billy often included Fellino’s on his rounds to sell his goods, and Sonny had bought a TV from him once, among other things. Johnny’s story had struck just the right note of believability with Sonny
.

“That was some quick thinking,” Frankie told Johnny after he’d described what happened. “Mikey, you were right. Johnny is the Mayor of Lexington Avenue. A mayor’s gotta think on his feet. Only a mayor could come up with a tale like that.”

Johnny and Mikey had recently secured jobs as ushers at St. Francis, the local Catholic Church. Father Burke, the pastor, had dubbed Mikey the Mayor of Lexington Avenue because, as he told Mikey’s mother, Mikey knew more people than he did, even though he had the pulpit. Mikey, in turn, had passed the moniker on to Johnny, telling him that a mayor was smart and knew how to run things and that the description fit Johnny more than himself. The nickname hadn’t caught on in the neighborhood yet. Johnny’s story to Sonny gave it fresh legs
.

Something else happened that third week of practice that changed the course of the season. Some boys from north of the unofficial Ninety-sixth Street boundary line came to join the team. There were eight of them: one white guy, one Puerto Rican, and six blacks
.

Johnny never knew for sure how they ever found out there was a team called the Lexingtons that practiced in Central Park, but he had his suspicions. Frankie O’Connor lived in that neighborhood, and Frankie made a point of
walking up and shaking hands with each one of these new guys. It was a message to everybody else. The coach had to be in on it, too, because the new guys were on the team from the moment they arrived
.

Johnny would soon find out why
.

13

Anthony Webster, the prosecutor’s investigator in Henry Wilson’s case, did not live in Lake City—as Ted Griffin had surmised—but in Live Oak, a small community in north central Florida that was in the same general vicinity as Lake City. Jack figured that was probably the story of Ted Griffin’s life: he got things
almost
right.

It didn’t take Jack long to get the correct information. Like most investigators, Anthony Webster had been a retired cop before going to the state’s attorney’s office and starting to work on his second pension. Jack called his good friend Joaquin Sanchez, a retired homicide detective with the Miami Police Department, and told him his predicament. Twenty minutes later Joaquin called back with the address and number.

“You know the rules, Jack,” Joaquin said. “You don’t know where you got the information from, and you and Pat are going to have to take Maria and me out to dinner soon.”

“Gotcha, Joaquin. We need to get together anyway—it’s been too long. I’ll call you next week.”

Joaquin and his wife, Maria, had worked closely with Jack and Pat and another retired Miami homicide detective, Dick Radek, on Rudy Kelly’s case. They had all lived in the same house for a time and become close friends.

“Where did you get this number?” was the first question Anthony Webster asked after Jack introduced himself on the telephone.

“It’s not important,” Jack answered. It was the wrong thing to say.

“Hell it’s not! I don’t like people knowing where I am and snooping around in my business.”

“I know somebody you know, Mr. Webster.” It was a lie but a plausible one. “I had to convince that person that I would only use this number once. I also had to convince that person there was an important enough reason for me to have the number.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a moment Jack wasn’t sure if Webster was still there.

“So what is it that’s so important?” Webster finally asked.

“A man’s life.”

“Oh shit, you’re not one of those DNA activists, are you? ‘Everybody in jail is innocent! Everybody was wrongfully convicted!’”

Jack could tell this was going to be a challenging interview.

“No, nothing like that. DNA isn’t involved. It’s about a death-row case though, a man named Henry Wilson. He was convicted seventeen years ago based solely on the testimony of a convicted felon, David Hawke. Do you remember that case at all?”

“Not at all,” Webster replied.

Jack refused to be deterred by Webster’s faulty memory. “The deceased was a guy named Clarence Waterman, a drug dealer who also worked as a hairdresser. David Hawke said he drove Henry Wilson and Hawke’s cousin to Waterman’s place and waited while they killed him and then drove them away.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Neither David Hawke nor his cousin were ever charged with the crime, even though by Hawke’s own testimony they were both guilty.”

That last remark finally hit pay dirt. “That kind of shit happened all the time. Who was the prosecutor?”

Jack thought back to the records he had reviewed but couldn’t come up with the name. “I’m not sure. It was Man-something.”

“Mancuso?”

“That’s it.”

“It figures,” Webster replied. “Mancuso was famous for shit like that. I’ll never testify to that though, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Hang on a second, Mr. Webster. An attorney named Ted Griffin represented a guy named James Vernon—”

“Ted Griffin,” Webster interrupted Jack again. “Now, there’s a piece of shit.” Jack had him interested again—at least momentarily.

“Yeah, I’m with you on that one,” Jack replied, feeding right into the negativity. “Anyway, Vernon was a possible suspect in this murder. At least, that’s what the defense thought, and Griffin says that Vernon told him he’d talked to you. Do you remember that?”

“Do you have any idea how many thousands of people I’ve talked to? No way can I remember one particular interview.”

Jack was at his wit’s end. Of course Webster couldn’t remember. The murder happened seventeen years ago. He kept talking though.

“Would you have taken any notes? Where would they be?”

Jack was never to know why Anthony Webster gave him anything. Maybe the man had it in for the prosecutor, Mancuso. Maybe he simply didn’t like the system that allowed a man to be convicted on a felon’s word. But something Jack said flipped a switch in the former investigator.

“I always suspected that somebody was going to get caught with their tit in the wringer one day for using convicted felons as prosecution witnesses in cases like this. Don’t get me wrong—most of the prosecutors were hard-working, honest guys. Every barrel always has a few rotten apples, you know what I mean?”

Jack took his cue. “I sure do.”

“I don’t know if any notes exist, Mr. Tobin. I always made notes of my interviews, so if I interviewed this guy, there is
a record of it. Prosecutors, especially guys like Mancuso, never produced those notes to the defense. They claimed they were work-product or some other bullshit terminology lawyers use when they don’t want to produce something. Anyway, those notes would probably be considered a public record by now. If you make a written request for the investigator’s notes in the prosecutor’s file for Henry Wilson, they should produce them, if they exist. You can call too. Ask for Margo Drake—she’s the records custodian. She can help you. Just tell her it’s a public record—those are the magic words. You didn’t get this information from me though. Understood?”

“Understood,” Jack replied, crossing his fingers.

Webster hung up the phone before Jack had an opportunity to thank him.

Jack got Margo Drake’s number and called her right away. He told her who he was and what he was looking for. He didn’t have the faith Anthony Webster did that the magic words
public record
were going to do the trick, so he added a few extra.

“Anthony Webster was the investigator on that case and he instructed me to give you a call and to tell you his notes were now a public record.”

“Oh, I’m glad you told me that,” Margo Drake told Jack. “Because we don’t usually give out anything in the prosecutor’s separate file. That file contains all the prosecutor’s notes and everything. However, since this case is so old—and you just want Mr. Webster’s notes and not the prosecutor’s and Mr. Webster instructed you to call to tell me it is a public record—we’ll have to comply. It will take me a few days because those files are in storage.”

Jack thanked her and told her a few days would be fine. He then sent her a letter confirming their telephone conversation.

The notes arrived five days later. Anthony Webster had indeed interviewed James Vernon, and Vernon had told him essentially the same story he told Wofford Benton—that he was just a witness to the murder.

Jack’s dilemma still remained the same. James Vernon had told two different stories to four different people. He had no credibility, and therefore, in Jack’s mind, the question of Henry Wilson’s innocence was still very much in doubt. On the other hand, Anthony Webster’s notes changed the legal ballgame entirely. If Wofford Benton had been able to call the prosecutor’s investigator to the stand instead of a prison snitch to talk about what James Vernon told him after the state had put on its case and rested and after Vernon had taken the Fifth, Henry Wilson might not have been convicted. Jack’s burden was now clear: he would have to convince a judge that Anthony Webster’s testimony was newly discovered evidence.

He sent a copy of the notes to Webster, along with an affidavit confirming under oath that the notes were indeed his and that the interview took place during the prosecution’s investigation of the case, a month before Henry Wilson’s trial.

When he received the signed affidavit back in the mail, Jack called Wofford Benton. The judge was in the middle of a hearing. To Jack’s surprise, he recessed his hearing temporarily to take the call.

“What’s up, Jack?”

“Well, Judge, I just want to update you on the case. You asked me to do that.”

“Yes, I did. Thank you.”

“I just received an affidavit from Anthony Webster. He was an investigator at the state’s attorney’s office.”

“Yeah, I vaguely remember him. He was wound a little tight as I recall.”

“That’s the guy. Anyway, I found notes of an interview between Webster and James Vernon in which Vernon told Webster the same thing that he told you. Did you know that Vernon had spoken to the prosecutor’s man a month before the trial?”

“Of course not. How did you find out?”

“Ted Griffin told me when I talked to him.”

“Dammit!” the judge swore. In the silence that followed,
Jack could hear Wofford breathing heavily on the other end of the line. He was processing the information, and it didn’t take him long to arrive at the same conclusion Jack had reached.

“Let me ask you this, Jack. Do you think Henry would have been convicted if I had been able to put the state’s chief investigator on the stand to testify on his behalf rather than that jailhouse snitch, Willie Smith?”

“I don’t think so, Judge.”

“Neither do I. I’ll go ahead and prepare my own affidavit, and you use it however you need to. Even though I don’t think you will be successful with the ‘incompetence of counsel’ defense, I understand that you have to raise the issue.”

Wofford Benton no longer appeared to be a disinterested observer. He had joined the appellate team.

Jack’s next call was to the Florida State Prison at Starke to set up an interview with Henry for that Friday. He now had some news for him.

That evening Pat and Jack took their treasured run along the river. “This is so boring,” Pat said as they jogged along together. “Every night the same thing—starry skies, peaceful waters, weeping willows, pelicans, owls. . . . I miss the action of the big city—the robberies, the murders, the rapes. You know what I mean, Jack?”

“I’m with you, honey.” She was always content, and she made him feel the same way no matter how his day had gone.

“So tell me about all this new evidence that you’ve uncovered.”

“Well, I talked to Ted Griffin, the lawyer, and Anthony Webster, the prosecutor’s investigator, and I got the notes of his interview with James Vernon. The bottom line is that James Vernon told the prosecutor’s investigator that he was at the scene of the murder and Henry Wilson wasn’t there, and Wofford Benton never knew about that conversation.”

“Would it have made a difference if he did?”

“Absolutely. When Vernon took the Fifth at trial and refused to testify, Benton called a prison snitch to the stand. If
he had known about Anthony Webster and called him instead, Henry Wilson might have walked.”

“So Henry is innocent.”

“Not necessarily. The original source of all this new information was James Vernon and he may have been lying like a rug.”

Just then Pat saw something rise in the river. “Look!” she pointed.

“What is it?” Jack asked as they stopped to look.

“It’s a manatee!” she said gleefully. “I was just telling the kids about them the other day. Oh, I wish I had a camera.” They stood and watched as the big hulking thing lazily drifted down the river with not a care in the world. They only resumed their run when it was out of sight.

“Have you tried to locate James Vernon and what’s that other guy’s name—the witness against Henry?”

“David Hawke?”

“Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of. Have you tried to find them and talk to them?”

“I did. They’re both dead. Vernon was killed five years ago in a drug deal gone bad and Hawke was also murdered—I don’t know when.”

“Is that good or bad for Henry?”