James Grippando - The Pardon

Jack’s expression went white. He said nothing, but Manny read the message on his face.

“How long has your father worn Wiggins wing tips, Jack?”

“As long as I can remember,” he said with disbelief. “But, you can’t possibly think my father-”

“I don’t know what to think. There was just something about the urgency in your father’s voice-his curious tone-that concerns me. I don’t know if there’s something he’s not telling me or what. But I do know this: I don’t want my client talking to him. I can’t take the risk that he’ll confess something to you, and then you won’t be able to take the witness stand, for fear you might incriminate your own father. Or, even worse, I don’t want you being evasive on the stand because you’re trying to protect your father. So until I get to the bottom of this, I want you to stay as far away from him as possible. Can I have your word on that?”

Jack felt sick inside. But he knew Manny was right. A tough judgment call like this one was precisely the reason that lawyers should never represent themselves. He needed someone like Manny to put the personal issues aside and counsel him wisely. “All right,” he said with resignation. “I haven’t spoken to my father in two years. I can wait a little longer. You have my word.”

Jack woke the next morning with the memory of his conversation with Manny still vivid. He ran all sorts of hypotheses through his head but was unable to explain why his father would be involved with Goss. It just didn’t make sense. He needed to find some answers, and he knew they wouldn’t come to him if he sat around the house.

So, after showering and downing a quick cup of coffee, he threw on a jacket and tie and headed for the police station. He arrived at the document section around ten o’clock and asked the clerk to pull the investigative file on State v. Swyteck. He wanted to see for himself what this business of an “extraneous footprint” was all about.

Only the police, the prosecutor, the defendant, or the defendant’s attorney can pull the file in a pending murder case, but Jack had done it so many times as a lawyer with the Freedom Institute that he didn’t even have to show his Florida bar card to the clerk behind the counter. He just signed his name in the registry and filled in his bar number. Out of curiosity, he checked to see who else had been reviewing his file. Detective Stafford and his assistant, of course. . Manny had been there twice, as recently as yesterday. . and someone else had been there: Richard Dressler, an attorney.

He had never heard of any attorney named Richard Dressler, so he checked with the file clerk to see who he was.

“You putting me on, Mr. Swyteck?” said the young black woman behind the counter. She had large, almond eyes and straightened black hair with an orangey-red streak on one side. Other than Jack, she was the only person in the busy station who wasn’t a cop, and she was the only person he’d ever seen with ten different glittering works of art on two-inch fingernails of curling acrylic. “Richard Dressler’s a lawyer,” she told Jack, looking at him as if he were senile. “Said he was your lawyer.”

Jack was stunned, but he put on his best poker face. “You know,” he shook his head with a smile, “my head counsel has so many other young lawyers helping him on this case, sometimes I can’t keep track of them. Dressler. .” Jack baited her, as if he were trying to place the man. “Tall guy-right?”

She just rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what he looked like,” she said, fussing with a little ornamental rhinestone that had loosened from her thumbnail. “I got five hundred people a day coming through here.”

Jack nodded slowly. He definitely wanted to know more about this Richard Dressler, but the last thing he wanted to do was make an issue out of it in the middle of the police station-deep in the heart of enemy territory. He had an idea. “I changed my mind,” he said as he slid the file back over the counter to her. “Thanks anyway. I’ll check it out later.”

“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug.

He left the police station quickly and headed for a pay phone at the corner. He dialed the Florida bar’s Attorney Information Service and asked for some basic information on Richard Dressier.

“Mr. Dressler’s office is at five-oh-one Kennedy Boulevard, Tampa, Florida,” the woman in the records department cheerfully reported.

A hell of a long way from Miami. “And what kind of law does he practice? Does he do criminal defense?”

The woman checked the computer screen before her. “Mr. Dressler is a board-certified real estate attorney. Would you like a listing of criminal defense lawyers in that area, sir?”

“No, thank you. That’s all I need.” He slowly replaced the receiver and leaned against the phone, totally confused. Why would a real estate attorney from Tampa come three hundred miles to look at a police file in Miami? And why would he pose as Jack’s criminal defense lawyer? Jack could think of no reason-at least no good reason. He shook his head, then walked back to his car. He started thinking about the extraneous footprint that had drawn him to the police file in the first place. He wondered if Dressler had also been curious about Wiggins wing tips.

Harry Swyteck may not have liked the way his campaign manager had phrased it, but if Jack wasn’t actually “killing” him, the publicity certainly wasn’t doing his campaign any good. It was only August, and the November election was still arguably far enough away to dismiss the plunging public-opinion polls as not the pulse of the people but merely the palpitations of the times. The governor, however, was not one to sit around and wait for things to change. A road trip was in order-one of those whirlwind, statewide tours that would allow him to press the flesh and pick a few wallets in face-to-face meetings with Rotarians, Shriners, and virtually any other group that wanted a breakfast or luncheon speaker.

He finished the first of what would be many fifteen hour days on the speaking circuit at 9:30 p.m. and retired to his motel room. The Thunderhead Motel was one of those roadside lodges familiar to any traveler who’d been forced to spend the night in some small town where the nicest restaurant was the Denny’s across from a bowling alley. It was typical of those long and narrow two-story motels where the rooms on one side faced the parking lot and the rooms on the other faced the algae-stained swimming pool. The rooms facing the parking lot, however, didn’t directly abut the rooms facing the pool. An interior service corridor ran through the middle of the building, for use by housekeepers and other hotel employees. That didn’t seem very important, unless you also knew that the walls in the corridor were a paper-thin sheet of plaster-board, and that employees sometimes poked holes in them to satisfy their perverse curiosity.

Harry, in his second-floor room, was completely unaware of this as he peeled off his clothes and stepped into the tub for a nice hot shower. The incredibly tacky brown, orange, and yellow floral-print wallpaper made it impossible to detect any holes in the wall that separated the bathroom from the service corridor. In fact, there was a small hole right next to the towel rack, which offered a full view of the governor’s left profile. Eight inches below that was a larger hole that accommodated the barrel of a.38-caliber revolver pointed directly at the governor’s ear.

“Don’t move,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the bathroom wall.

The governor was both startled and confused by the sound of a strange voice over running water. He froze when he saw the barrel of the gun.