James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

L.J.’s wife, Allegra, bustled into the dining room.

“Japheth Morgan insists on seeing you two right now,” she said.

Indeed, Morgan did mean right now . He had followed Allegra and was standing directly behind her. In his hand was a fresh broadsheet, the ink still shiny. At the top of the page I saw in enormous type the word EXTRA!!!

“I thought you two gentlemen would want to be the first to read this,” Morgan said.

L.J. shook his head. “What the hell have you done now, Japheth?”

Morgan began to read aloud. “The Mississippi Office of Criminal Courts has announced the venue and date for the proceedings currently known far and wide as the White Raiders Trial. Following a ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court, the prosecutor’s petition for change of venue has been denied, and the trial will be held in Eudora, Mississippi, scene of the alleged offenses.”

“Well, hell, that’s no big surprise,” L.J. said. “We all knew nobody else wanted to grab hold of this hot horseshoe.”

“I agree,” I said. “It’s disappointing, but it does provide the prosecution with its first proper grounds for appeal.”

“Appeal to whom?” said L.J. “The Supreme Court has ruled.”

“There’s another Supreme Court, in Washington,” I said with a wink.

Japheth looked relieved. “Do y’all want to hear this or not?”

“Please,” L.J. said, straightening his face into a serious expression. “Please read on.”

“Jury selection will begin on September the seventeenth at nine o’clock a.m.,” he read.

“Goddamn, what is that, next Monday? That’s six days from today,” L.J. said. “Ben, you’re gonna have to scramble.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Japheth said.

He read slowly, emphatically:

“Further, the Supreme Court has exercised its judicial discretion to appoint a judge to oversee this important and much-noted trial. The judge appointed is…”

Japheth glanced over to make sure we were listening. We absolutely were.

Then he read on:

“The judge appointed is a lifetime citizen of Eudora, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett.”

SON OF A BITCH!

It was not illegal for the Mississippi Supreme Court to appoint my father to preside over a trial in which I was assisting the prosecution.

Not illegal, but wildly unusual, and absolutely deliberate.

I could have fought it, but I already knew that I wouldn’t. It gave us a second, decent ground for the eventual, inevitable appeal.

Most people in town, Japheth reported, were positively delighted with the news. Everyone knew that Judge Corbett was “fair” and “honest” and “sensible.” Judge Corbett “understands the true meaning of justice.”

“That is exactly what I am afraid of,” I said.

Having spent the first part of my life listening to my father pontificate, I knew one thing for certain: he might cloak himself in eloquence, reason, and formality, but underneath it all he believed that although Negroes might be absolutely free, thanks to the detested Mr. Lincoln, nowhere was it written that Negroes deserved to be absolutely equal.

Judge Corbett and men of his class had gradually enshrined that inequality in law, and the highest court in the land had upheld its finding that “separate but equal” was good enough for everybody.

Now the trial was less than a week away, and one huge question was still outstanding: who would the state of Mississippi send to prosecute the case?

“My sources in the capital have heard nothing about it,” Japheth told L.J. and me. “It’s a big, holy secret.”

A WHILE LATER, the three of us were sitting on the west veranda of L.J.’s house, watching the sunset and sipping bourbon over cracked ice.

“Well, you gentlemen are always acting so all-fired high and mighty,” Japheth said, “but you’ve yet to give me a single piece of information that I can use. Why don’t you start by sharing the names of the prosecution witnesses?”

“Watch out, L.J., he’s using one of his journalist’s tricks to get you to spill it,” I said.

“Me?” L.J. scoffed. “What do I know? I don’t know anything. I’ve been cut off by the entire town. I’m almost as much persona non grata as Mr. Nigger-Lover Corbett. Everybody from here to Jackson knows whose side I’m on. And you know any friend of Ben Corbett’s doesn’t have another friend between here and Jackson.”

I clapped his shoulder. “I appreciate what you’ve done, L.J.”

It was right then that we heard a deep tenor voice, with a hint of something actorly in the round tones, accompanying a firm bootstep down the upstairs hall.

“If you need a friend from Jackson, maybe I can fill the bill.”

We looked up to see a man whose appearance was as polished and natty as his voice. He wore a seersucker suit of the finest quality and a straw boater with a jaunty red band. He could not have been much more than thirty, and he carried a wicker portmanteau and a large leather satchel jammed with papers.

He introduced himself as Jonah Curtis and explained that he had been appointed by the state of Mississippi to prosecute the White Raiders.

“I had my assistant reserve a room at Miss Maybelle’s establishment,” he said. “But Maybelle took one look at me and it turned out she had misplaced my reservation. She suggested I bring myself to this address.”

“Welcome to the house of pariahs, Mr. Curtis,” said L.J. “You are welcome to stay here in my home for as long as this trial takes.”

“I do appreciate that, sir. And please, call me Jonah.”

Jonah Curtis was almost as tall as I. He was what anyone would call a handsome man.

And Jonah Curtis was one other thing besides.

Jonah Curtis was a black man.

ONE IMPORTANT PIECE of the puzzle was still missing.

Who would be defending the White Raiders?

The next morning that puzzle piece appeared. L.J. came rushing into the house yelling, “Those goddamn leaky slop buckets have gone and got themselves the best goddamn criminal defense attorney in the South!”

Jonah looked up from his book. “Maxwell Hayes Lewis?”

“How did you know that?” L.J. asked.

“You said the best.” Jonah turned to me. “Ben, if you needed a lawyer to defend a gang of no-good lowlifes who viciously attacked a colored man’s house, who would you get?”

“Maxwell Hayes Lewis,” I said.

“And why would you want him?”

“Because he got the governor of Arkansas acquitted after he shot his bastard son – his half Negro son – in full view of at least twenty-five people.”

“So, our little pack of rats managed to get themselves ‘Loophole Lewis,’” Jonah said.

Loophole Lewis. That’s how he was known wherever lawyers got together and gossiped about others of their species. Lewis’s philosophy was simple: “If you can’t find a loophole for your client, go out and invent one.”

Jonah carefully closed his well-thumbed copy of the Revised Civil Code of the State of Mississippi . “You know, I have always wanted to meet Counselor Lewis,” he said.

Jonah must have made a special connection with the good Lord, because we were still sipping coffee ten minutes later when L.J.’s butler announced that a Mr. Maxwell Lewis was there to see us.

“I thought it would be the mannerly thing to do, to come by and introduce myself to you distinguished gentlemen of the prosecution,” Lewis said, coming in.

He was plainspoken and plain-looking. My mother would have said he was “plain as an old corn stick.” Then she would have added, “But that’s just on the outside, so you’d better watch yourself.”