Final Argument: A Legal Thriller Part 5

"I know," I said. "But if we let him get away with it, he'll be at another mall in a few days. Hit on some other woman. The cops found a switchblade knife in his pocket. You don't know what he might have done to you if I hadn't been here."

She thought that over and then asked, "Who do I make the statement to?"

"The a.s.sistant state attorney who gets the case."

"Won't that be you?"

"It'll be someone who works for me. I'm chief a.s.sistant state attorney." I shrugged, meaning: that's a big deal in my world, not yours.

"Would you be able to handle this personally?"

"Why?"

"Do I have to tell you?"

She looked at me calmly. She could have said: Because I feel comfortable with you. Or even: Because you were here. But she had said, Do I have to tell you? What was she telling me? I felt guilty already, and nothing had happened.

"I'm a witness," I said. "I'll have to bow out at a certain time. But until such time comes, yes, of course I'll handle it."

It will be difficult to justify that, I thought. And absurd. And I'll kill anyone who tries to stop me.

"Are you married?" she asked.

My heart pounded; her bluntness frightened and captured me. "Happily married. With two kids."

"And one more dumb question. Are you Jewish?"

"Yes."

"I knew it. Something in your voice. Old World warmth. My goodness, you're blus.h.i.+ng. A bashful Jewish prosecutor. There aren't many, are there?"

She didn't have a southern accent, and I asked where she was from. Scranton, Pennsylvania, she told me. I asked more questions; it seemed safer than answering them. She had done a little modeling after high school, she said, then gone out to L.A to become an actress. But there were too many actresses, and some of them-this was a shock to her-could really act. In five years a few bit parts were all she managed to land. Then she got married and was brought by her husband to Jacksonville.

"What name did you use on the screen?"

"Constance Clark. My real name."

"So you're not Jewish." '

"I converted."

"Why?"

"Out of respect for my husband."

I liked that answer. It gave her a weight and depth that she hadn't had. It also implied that she was involved in her husband's life, cared for him, could fend off anything alien and potentially damaging. I had never met Solomon Zide, although you could not live in Jacksonville without knowing Zide Industries. Not just the conglomerate, that statewide octopus, but Solly's local projects. ZiDevco, the real estate development subsidiary, was changing the bulkhead line of Duval County, buying up mud flats and bay bottom and then, with the approval of the county commissioners, converting them to golf courses, yacht harbors, and home sites, from the low 80s to the 200s, as the ZiDevco billboards proclaimed. Progress, Florida style-full speed ahead, and d.a.m.n the ecologists.

"May I call you Edward?"

"Ted will do it."

"I know you're a prosecutor and a happily married man, which on both counts I find interesting, but what else?"

"What do you want to know?"

An intense, clear light seemed to pour through her eyes. Much later, looking at some wallpaper samples in a department store, I identified their color as Copenhagen Blue. The color illuminated my dreams for a long time.

She said calmly, "If I said 'everything,' would you feel I was rus.h.i.+ng things?"

I felt a sensation in my spine and fingertips: that spiraling high again. But I couldn't help wondering: why me? She's rich, beautiful, intelligent, and she's courageous to boot. And what am I?

I believed then that I was a man of value, but other than in the courtroom, I had never seen myself as a star. A good lover, good thinker, good father: all that. But not great, and I did not aspire to greatness. That was too narrow and rocky a path. I aspired to harmony, to ease of conscience, to well-being for myself and those under my wing.

Now I saw myself capable of losing all that. A great chasm, what I would soon think of as the Grand Canyon of my life-that wide, that colorful, that glorious-had appeared directly in my path. And I was stumbling toward it.

I didn't answer Connie Zide's question, just moved my hand toward hers; she clasped it, squeezing it as hard as I reckoned she could. Her fingers were thin and cool. Her eyes were knowing.

Nothing more happened that evening. I backed off. I said good night to her and reminded her to call me at the office. "You have to file that complaint." I gave her my business card.

The next afternoon, at the courthouse, she wore a beige suit, a dark-blue silk blouse, matching high heels, pearls, and a sapphire ring. In the daytime, I soon realized, she always wore gray or neutral- colored suits, but the austerity only heightened her sensuality. Was there something so primitive about her that it had to be cloaked in straight lines and muted colors? I wondered about that. And I still do.

I gave her a little tour of the prosecutorial warrens, introducing her to some of the peons. Then I took her statement and had it filed. My office, on the fifth floor, faced the river, a parking lot, a construction crane, and the Prudential Building. I had always been satisfied with it until Connie Zide visited-then it seemed shabby. There was an organizational chart on the wall next to my diplomas and the Great Seal of the State of Florida; on the desk was a mug that said BOSS, some leather-framed photos of Toba and my kids on the beach, and a bra.s.s pendulum clock. There was nothing original about the decor; I felt she must view me as utterly prosaic.

When Connie had called, she'd said, "After we go through the business end of it, can we roll double or nothing? I mean"-chortling a little-"will you buy me another drink?"

"If you come here at four-thirty, Mrs. Zide, I'm sure I can manage that." I was in conference then with two a.s.sistant state attorneys.

We went to the Marriott. At a table under a palm tree on the terrace, we had that conversation where she told me it had been "all adrenaline." We chatted for an hour, and then I smiled in what I hoped was a gracious manner and said, "I'm afraid I have to go." I realized that I had made a mistake. She was as lovely and dazzling as before, but she seemed nervous, as if she didn't quite know how to extricate herself from what I may have perceived as a commitment. I felt like a fool.

Out in the hotel parking lot she led me to her pearl-gray Mercedes convertible. When she brushed up against me, I grew a little giddy. I stared at her face in the shadowy light, wanting to say goodbye with at least a trace of style.

She sprang the locks of the car with a cras.h.i.+ng sound like the great bra.s.s gong being struck in an old J. Arthur Rank movie. With firm and lunatic intent, I strode around to the pa.s.senger's door, slid inside, and got all mixed up by the aroma of foreign leather and perfume. (Opium, she told me later; I didn't doubt it.) "Connie ..."

"Ted . .."

"Look, I know this is crazy ..."

"No, it's not crazy at all."

She reached out for me, and I kissed her. About ten seconds into the kiss, Connie Zide began to moan. I had never known a woman -or, when I was younger, a girl-who moaned that way when she was merely kissed. I crushed her against me, bit at her lip, seized her arms. There was a recklessness in all this that was beyond thrilling: her b.r.e.a.s.t.s seemed to swell, her face grew hot, and my own body throbbed with a sense of power that I hadn't felt in years. Connie groaned urgently, then quivered ... then suddenly relaxed.

We disengaged, breathing unevenly. "Jesus," she said.

"What is it?"

"You don't know what happened?"

I had thought so, but dismissed it as male fantasy.

"If you think I do this often, or even now and then," Connie said, "you're wrong. This is major madness."

"I've never done it."

"I didn't think so."

"And I don't know what to do now."

"I do," she said.

I told Toba I had to go to Savannah to take depositions and meet with government informers in an interstate drug case. I would drive up on Sunday and spend the night, get an early start at the Effingham County Courthouse on Monday morning. It might take a couple of days.

Toba said, "I love Savannah. I could ask your mom to baby-sit." "Probably have to fly up to Chattanooga too, and that wouldn't be fun at all. Let's do it another time."

That was the worst part. I felt morally shriveled for a day or two and considered backing out.

But didn't.

I will get this out of my system. I will feel sufficient shame never to do it again.

Some of Connie's decorator friends had a cottage on c.u.mberland Island, across the Georgia state line south of St. Simons Island and Brunswick. On Sunday afternoon I put my car in an underground garage close to the courthouse. Connie picked me up and we drove along the coast in the gray Mercedes. I was behind the wheel; she had handed me the keys in a calfskin wallet.

"What did you tell your husband?"

"That I needed a few days of R and R on my own."

"That was enough to say?"

"We've been married for twenty-two years."

She seemed to think that was sufficient answer. And I didn't press. There were certain things I didn't need to know.

I felt like a b.u.mpkin, a cracker. I was thirty-six then. I asked myself, Did I really think that for the rest of my life I'd be with only Toba? Have no other women?

I had simply never thought about it.

When the ferry from the hamlet of St. Marys reached c.u.mberland Island, the sun was resting on the sawgra.s.s marshes like a drop of blood on a leaf. A fitful rain had died away. The night insects gathered in a humming cloud. At the cottage, Connie drew me inside and shut the screen door quickly. It was a log cabin with a stone fireplace and colorful Mir prints in niches. She moved me toward the piney bedroom, where a many-colored patchwork quilt covered a king-size bed. She lit scented candles on the bedside tables.

She didn't seem the type for log cabins and patchwork quilts. This was no earth mother. I held her for a moment at arms' length, studying the expressions that flickered in her eyes, not letting her come closer.

"I don't think I'm cut out for infidelity," I said.

"How do you know? You haven't ever been unfaithful." She laughed good-humoredly; she wasn't angry at all. "What you can't handle is the prospect of infidelity. You get over that hump, honey, it'll be a different ball game."

"Honey" was what a wh.o.r.e would call you. But it aroused me. She slipped out of her clothes, and the smell of her, as well as the sight of her nipples jutting from her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, turned me into a rutting primitive. I took her from behind. I rammed at her that first time with no foreplay and without finesse. The finesse could come later.

Connie kept screaming with pleasure.

We were on an island, the house had its own little inlet. Only the night birds and the marsh mosquitoes heard.

The affair lasted seven months, until two months before Solly was murdered. Connie went with me once to Tallaha.s.see, took me again to c.u.mberland Island, often to local motels in the late afternoon, and once to her house, when Solly flew to New York. Weekends were difficult, but I did manage a few. A friend down in St. Augustine loaned Connie a guesthouse. Once Connie came to the courthouse in the early evening; I locked the door to my office and f.u.c.ked her on my metal desk. Indictments, sworn witness statements, and JSO crime reports were flung about like candy wrappers in a high wind.

My s.e.x life with Toba had not been better since we were kids at FSU. I was a bull, resurgent. I can do it all. I'm not in love with Connie, I concluded. That would be the end of everything. But like the beautiful lady in the poem, la belle dame sans merci had me in thrall.

With time, certain things about la belle dame became clear to me.

I was not the first. I was one of a continuum. Perhaps this time was better for her than the others-how could I know?-but still I was sure it was part of a pattern. She was too skilled at her arrangements. The ease with which she borrowed the weekend cottages was the giveaway.

She was on the board of two Jewish charities, and she asked me to join. I would have to do very little; it was the prestige of my name they needed. This amused me. I agreed, with reservations and caveats; it was usually: "Connie, I can come for an hour, no more. I've got a child rape case on the docket, and at three o'clock I'm giving a lecture in my trial advocacy course."

At one of these charity luncheons I met Solly Zide. In his mid fifties, he was a medium-size man with hard little brown eyes. He wasn't particularly friendly to me or anyone else, but he displayed brief sparks of wit. Connie said of him, "He gets his major thrill from making money. He sees himself as a descendant of Mellon and Flagler. He's not quite in that league, but if you tell him that, he freaks out." She had married him, she said, not so much for money as for the security that attended it, and to put an end to her whoring, which is what it had come down to in the last year she was alone in Los Angeles. That was not a word she used, but I picked up hints.

"Solly had two daughters by a former marriage. Nasty, spoiled brats. When he met me, he wanted a son and heir. I gave him one. After that, I considered that I'd done my duty." They had a minimal s.e.x life now; what her husband did outside their bedroom was his business, a.s.suming that he was reasonably discreet about it. "He likes to watch two women making love to each other. Little staged seductions, stuff like that. It's about the only thing turns him on anymore. I was never interested in joining in. He tried to get Neil into that scene too, I hear from my spies. Without success."

Neil was twenty-two when I met Connie. He had graduated Duke and was living at home, working on the big ZiDevco landfill project with his father. I asked how they got along.

"Like the proverbial cat and dog. Neil's a spiritual person. He can paint, he can write, he's got a natural talent in music. He could become a world-cla.s.s photographer if he wanted. He's the light of my life," she said.

What she didn't say, but what I heard elsewhere, was that Neil was gay or at least bis.e.xual. Her silence on the subject indicated to me that she accepted it, since she was too sophisticated a woman to be ignorant of such a fact. She wanted grandchildren; but gays married, made certain arrangements, had children. How Neil's father felt about all that was another matter, and not one that Connie ever brought up. I didn't care. I really wanted nothing to do with Connie's life outside of what we did together in bed, and on government- issue desks, and on carpeted floors by various fireplaces, and by the sides of swimming pools and on the decks of borrowed boats, and once on the furry blue toilet seat of a locked bathroom at a luncheon given in honor of the famous Rabbi s.h.i.+mkin, up from Miami Beach to raise funds for Israel. I was in thrall, palely loitering. But for me, although not for the knight in the poem, birds sang. I was not wholly happy and yet I felt wholly alive. My guilt did not rise to the level of my desire and the resultant pleasure. I expected some thunderbolt to strike me from heaven, or the vengeful Mother Earth to open up and swallow me, or some terrible revelation that would put my marriage and career in peril. None of that happened, then

Chapter 6.

DURING LUNCH BREAK on the first day of Darryl Morgan's trial in April 1979, I strolled along the south bank of the St. Johns River with Connie Zide. I still remember how the gray surface of the water barely moved in the April heat. To the east of Jacksonville, over the Atlantic, lightning flared.

"Ted, darling, I need to ask you a favor."

I let the endearment pa.s.s without comment. The hangover of love, if indeed that's what it had been.

Until that past December and the night of the murder, Connie had been a beautiful woman. Now a scar puckered her left cheek, and dark pouches sagged under bloodshot eyes. She had gained weight. But I felt close to her; I had allegiance to memory.

"Ask, Connie... ."

In the middle of the day, I had my s.h.i.+rt sleeves rolled up, my suit jacket flung carelessly over one shoulder. She placed her fingertips on my bare arm. Little beads of sweat started where our skins touched. She still had a power.

"I know there are no guarantees in life, Ted, much less in a murder trial. But I need to know what will happen."

Her husband, however little she had cared for him, had been murdered before her eyes. I thought I knew she was thinking: what if by some bizarre mischance Darryl Morgan walked out of the courtroom a free man? The justice system was not perfect, lawyers and judges less so. In former circ.u.mstances, when I was anything but on guard, I had told her enough horror stories to have planted that idea in her mind.

We stopped by the river, which was cloaked by a violet haze. Looking into her ruined face, I said, "The jury will find Morgan guilty."

"That's not what I meant. Ted, do you ever feel pity for a murderer?"

I hesitated, and she caught her breath.