Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil Part 15

On cross-examination, John Wright Jones brought out the fact that once, in the middle of a backgammon game, Jim Williams had accused Greg Kerr of cheating and had then hit him over the head with the backgammon board. So Kerr's testimony might have been motivated by spite. But Kerr insisted it was not. He said that upon reading a copy of the Evening Press Evening Press earlier in the week, during the trial, he learned that Danny Hansford had been described in court as having a violent temper. Having read that, Greg Kerr decided it was his duty to come forward. earlier in the week, during the trial, he learned that Danny Hansford had been described in court as having a violent temper. Having read that, Greg Kerr decided it was his duty to come forward.

"Mr. Williams had a.s.sured me numerous times that he was innocent," said Kerr, "and he bragged to everyone that he would just appeal and appeal again. So I felt that, you know, Mr. Hansford is dead, and after I read how everybody was cutting him down, I decided to come up here. I called Mr. Lawton, I would say, around ten-thirty that night."

"Why didn't you come forward sooner?" Jones asked.

"I'd thought about doing it many times, but I was scared, because I was still involved with the h.o.m.os.e.xual scene, and I just felt I shouldn't."

"And when did you say you extracted yourself from 'the h.o.m.os.e.xual scene,' as you put it?"

"Well, I've been trying for three or four years. I did have one h.o.m.os.e.xual experience, the last one was three weeks ago, which I barely remember, but up until that point it had been a month and a half. I am doing good, and I will never go back to that type of life again, 'Cause it's wrong, it's in the Bible that it's wrong, and I urge all h.o.m.os.e.xuals to please get out of it while they can, because they're going to end up just an old fuddy-duddy, and n.o.body's going to want them. I'm lucky. I'm just a young man, and I'm out of it."

"You're out of it about three weeks at this stage."

"I'm out of it."

"No further questions," said Jones.

Greg Kerr stepped down and left the courtroom.

Bobby Lee Cook stood up at the defense table. "Call in Mrs. Dowling, please," he said.

Alice Dowling, the late amba.s.sador's widow, walked into the courtroom with a pleasant smile and not the slightest idea what had been going on while she and the others had been waiting in the corridor. She said she had known Jim Williams ever since he had been a consultant on the restoration of her house on Oglethorpe Avenue.

"Have you had occasion to visit with Mr. Williams at his home at parties and festivities and social occasions?" Cook asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Dowling politely. "For many years we have attended his Christmas parties."

"On any of those or other occasions, have you noticed anything that would indicate the use or approval of drugs by Mr. Williams?"

"Never," said Mrs. Dowling.

Spencer Lawton then cross-examined Mrs. Dowling.

"Mrs. Dowling, have you heard anything of a relations.h.i.+p that Jim Williams may have had with a young man named Danny Hansford?"

"No, sir," Mrs. Dowling said. "I know absolutely nothing about Mr. Williams's private life."

"Thank you," said Lawton. "That's all I have."

One by one, the highly respected friends of Jim Williams entered the courtroom and took the stand to vouch for his good character. One by one, they all said they had been at his lovely Christmas parties, never saw drugs either being used or approved of by him, and knew nothing of Danny Hansford.

The parade of witnesses over, the judge called a recess for the weekend, admonis.h.i.+ng the jurors not to talk about the case to anyone and not to look at newspaper and television coverage of it. On Monday, the trial would resume for closing arguments and the judge's instructions to the jury.

On Sunday-perhaps intentionally, perhaps not-the Savannah Morning News Savannah Morning News published a story about the grim living conditions in the Chatham County Jail. A federal judge had toured the facility and p.r.o.nounced it "filthy." He was amazed and appalled, he said, by the lack of sanitation. Inmates were "crowded, ill-fed, dirty and lacked medical attention." The building was only three years old, a modern concrete structure with a fringe of neatly landscaped lawn. At night it was spotlit and looked as clean and tranquil as a branch bank in Palm Springs. But the inside was a different story. Chaos reigned, to hear the federal judge tell it. "There is no supervision," he said. "Food is terribly handled." published a story about the grim living conditions in the Chatham County Jail. A federal judge had toured the facility and p.r.o.nounced it "filthy." He was amazed and appalled, he said, by the lack of sanitation. Inmates were "crowded, ill-fed, dirty and lacked medical attention." The building was only three years old, a modern concrete structure with a fringe of neatly landscaped lawn. At night it was spotlit and looked as clean and tranquil as a branch bank in Palm Springs. But the inside was a different story. Chaos reigned, to hear the federal judge tell it. "There is no supervision," he said. "Food is terribly handled."

On Monday morning, the mood in the courtroom was tense. The revelations about the jail seemed to raise the stakes in this trial. Spencer Lawton rose to make his closing argument. "There's a lot more wrong with Jim Williams than hypoglycemia," he said. "Jim Williams is a man of fifty years of age. He is a man of immense wealth, of obvious sophistication. He lives in an elegant home, travels abroad twice a year. He has many powerful and attractive and influential friends. There's some thing else about Williams too. He has a houseful of German Lugers, c.o.c.ked and loaded all the time. He has a n.a.z.i hood ornament on the desk in his study. He has a n.a.z.i officer's ring with the skull and crossbones on it.

"Danny Hansford was an immature, undereducated, unsophisticated, confused, temperamental young man, preoccupied with feelings of betrayal and rejection, even at the hands of his mother, says Jim Williams. I suggest to you that Danny Hansford was a young man who was a great deal more tragic than evil. Can you not imagine how easily impressed a young man like that would be, living in a house, being friends with a man of Jim Williams's stature?

"Danny Hansford was never someone that Jim Williams really cared for. He was a p.a.w.n, nothing more or less than a p.a.w.n in a sick little game of manipulation and exploitation. Danny maybe thought of himself as a bit of a hustler. Well, he was in way over his head. He was playing for keeps with a pro, and he turned out to be the ultimate loser. I don't think he was a hustler. I think he was being hustled. I think he was what amounts to a prisoner in a comfortable concentration camp, where the torture was not physical but emotional and psychological.

"There is abundant reason to wonder why in the world Jim Williams would keep somebody around that he knew to be an unskilled, undependable, highly emotional, depressed psychotic, to protect and serve him in his hour of greatest need, when he collapsed in fainting spells and became comatose. And there is every reason to wonder why Jim Williams would voluntarily take to Europe somebody who, he says, was felonious, violent, and psychopathic."

Lawton was eloquent and venomous. He spoke softly, as he had throughout the six-day trial, but his righteous anger rang throughout the courtroom like a shout.

"What happened was an act of murder," said Lawton. "The self-defense was a coverup. It did not occur. Thomas Hobbes is often quoted as having said that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and surely it must have seemed so to Danny Hansford during the last fifteen or twenty seconds of his life, while his life was oozing out onto Jim Williams's Persian rug."

It was during his closing argument, in the final moments of the trial, that Lawton introduced a new and diabolical element into the state's theory of what had really happened. Lawton suggested that the earlier episode of violence at Mercer House-Danny's rampage on the evening of April 3, when he had stormed through the house and fired a gun into the bedroom floor-was all a hoax. Williams had staged it, Lawton suggested, as a prelude for murdering Hansford a month later. "Could it be a setup?" he asked. "Could Jim Williams have known that about now he would be testifying in court that he had been forced to kill Danny Hansford in self-defense? Did Williams want to create some evidence of Danny's violent nature, get something into the police records, set it up while Danny was asleep upstairs?"

Lawton was proposing that the shooting of Danny Hansford was neither self-defense nor a crime of pa.s.sion but a carefully planned murder. He was suggesting that on April 3, while Danny Hansford lay sleeping upstairs, Williams was downstairs stomping a marble-topped table, slamming a cut-gla.s.s pitcher into the floor, smas.h.i.+ng eighteenth-century porcelain objects, and firing a German Luger into Monterey Square-all with the intention of calling the police afterward and blaming it on Hansford. Why didn't the shot into the bedroom floor wake Danny up? Because, according to Lawton's theory, n.o.body fired a bullet into the bedroom floor that night; the bullet hole in the bedroom floor was an old old bullet hole. Lawton had persuasive evidence of that. Corporal Michael Anderson, the police officer who had come to the house that night, had testified about that earlier incident. "We pulled up the carpet, and we did see a bullet hole in the floor, but we couldn't find no bullet. I couldn't determine if that was a fresh bullet hole or an old one." Now, in his closing comments, Lawton told the jury, "Obviously, Corporal Anderson didn't believe that bullet hole was created by Danny Hansford." Bobby Lee Cook, with only his closing statement left to him, could not call witnesses or recross-examine Corporal Anderson in reb.u.t.tal to Lawton's startling allegation. bullet hole. Lawton had persuasive evidence of that. Corporal Michael Anderson, the police officer who had come to the house that night, had testified about that earlier incident. "We pulled up the carpet, and we did see a bullet hole in the floor, but we couldn't find no bullet. I couldn't determine if that was a fresh bullet hole or an old one." Now, in his closing comments, Lawton told the jury, "Obviously, Corporal Anderson didn't believe that bullet hole was created by Danny Hansford." Bobby Lee Cook, with only his closing statement left to him, could not call witnesses or recross-examine Corporal Anderson in reb.u.t.tal to Lawton's startling allegation.

When Lawton was finished, the judge called a recess for the day. In the morning, the benches were once again filled to overflowing. Judge Oliver read a long list of instructions and then excused the jury to consider its verdict.

Three hours later, word spread through the courthouse that the jury was returning to the courtroom. The bailiff called the court to order, and the jury filed in.

"Mr. Foreman, have you arrived at a verdict?" asked Judge Oliver.

"Yes, sir, we have," said the foreman.

"Would you give it to the clerk that he may publish it?" The foreman handed a piece of paper to the clerk, who stood up and read from the paper: "'We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder.'"

A gasp of surprise sounded throughout the courtroom.

"The sentence is life imprisonment," said Oliver.

Two bailiffs approached Williams and escorted him to a small door at the end of the jury box. Before going through the door, Williams paused briefly and looked back, his expression blank, his dark eyes as impenetrable as ever.

The spectators flowed out of the courtroom into the corridor and formed a crowd around Bobby Lee Cook, who stood in the glare of television lights, expressing his disappointment and saying he would file notice of an appeal within a few days. While he spoke, a solitary figure walked around the fringe of the crowd and stepped into an elevator, unnoticed by the reporters. It was Emily Bannister, Danny Hansford's mother. She turned as the elevator door started to close. It was not really a smile that crossed her face so much as a look of quiet satisfaction.

Chapter 17.

A HOLE IN THE FLOOR.

Jim Williams had begun the day in the s.p.a.cious grandeur of Mercer House and ended it in the cold confines of the Chatham County Jail. His glittering social life was over. Never again would the cream of Savannah society pray to be invited to his extravagant parties. He would spend the rest of his life in the company of burglars, muggers, rapists, and other murderers-the very people, as Lee Adler pointed out, who represented the "criminal element" Williams had publicly disdained.

The enormity and suddenness of Williams's downfall shocked Savannah. It was a tribute to Williams that the public found it difficult to believe he had really been brought so low. Barely twelve hours after he had been escorted from the courtroom, rumor had it that he was rearranging life behind bars to accord with his personal tastes.

"He's having his meals sent in," said Prentiss Crowe. "I hear that's already been arranged. His lunches will be catered by Mrs. Wilkes's boarding house, and he'll be getting supper from Johnny Harris one night and Elizabeth's the next. He's even written a list of the pieces of furniture that he wants moved into his cell-a firm mattress, I'm told, and a Regency writing table."

Prison officials denied that Williams was receiving any special favors. They insisted he would be treated like any other inmate at the Chatham County Jail. And, as everyone knew, that was bad news for Williams. Even more ominous, however, was the possible fate that awaited him at the Reidsville State Penitentiary, where he was likely to be transferred to serve out his term. Reidsville was a hard-core prison seventy miles west of Savannah. At the very moment Judge Oliver was p.r.o.nouncing Williams's sentence, the inmates at Reidsville were rioting and setting the prison on fire. On his first morning in the Savannah jail, Williams was greeted by a newspaper account of the riot. He could hardly have missed it. The story appeared on page one, along with coverage of his own conviction. The following day, Reidsville was back on the front page. Three black inmates had killed a white inmate by stabbing him thirty times. After the stabbing, prison officials had conducted a shakedown inspection of the jail and confiscated a small a.r.s.enal of weapons, including a homemade bomb. Under the circ.u.mstances, the real question was not who would cater Jim Williams's meals in the Chatham County Jail, but whether his lawyers could manage to keep him out of the Reidsville penitentiary.

Speculation about Williams and his fate came to an abrupt halt after two days when Judge Oliver released him on a $200,000 bond pending appeal. A swarm of reporters and TV cameras buzzed around Williams as he walked from the door of the jail to his blue Eldorado. "Will it be business as usual, Mr. Williams?" a reporter called out.

"Business as usual. d.a.m.n right!" he said. Minutes later he was back in Mercer House.

On the surface at least, Williams's life did return to something approaching normal. He went back to selling antiques, and with the court's permission he traveled to New York to attend a black-tie party for the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's exhibition of Queen Elizabeth's collection of Faberge. His manner was calm; his conversation had lost none of its sharp edge. But now he was a convicted murderer and, despite the wit and the light humor, there was an aura of quiet desperation. His black eyes seemed darker than ever now. He still received invitations to dine, but the invitations became fewer. Old friends called, but less often.

In private, he expressed bitterness. What galled him most was not his conviction or the harm done to his reputation or even the cost of his defense; it was the indignity of having been charged with any crime at all. From the outset, he had a.s.sumed that his word as a gentleman would be accepted and that the whole affair would be settled quietly, the way Savannah had settled past incidents involving prominent suspects-the mysterious bludgeoning of a socialite at the beach not long ago, for example, or the tumble down a flight of stairs that killed a rich man who was about to divorce his wife, or the case of the spinster who embalmed her lover's bullet-riddled body before calling the police.

"At least I did call the police," Williams told me shortly after being released from jail. "You should have seen them that night. When word went out over the police radio about what had happened and where it had happened, they started arriving in droves. They wandered through the house like little children on a tour of Versailles. They looked at everything and whispered among themselves. They stayed for four hours. four hours. Now that's unheard of. If a black man kills another black man in Savannah on a Friday night, two policemen might drop by for thirty minutes, and that would be the end of it. But the police were having a ball in my house. When the police photographer was finished taking pictures, she went into the kitchen and made tea and coffee and served it to the others with cookies. I thought, Well, this is a d.a.m.ned nuisance, but I guess it's the price I have to pay. I'll just let them have their fun, and then it will all be over. They were exquisitely polite. It was 'Mr. Williams this' and 'Mr. Williams that' and 'Can we help you, sir?' One particularly obsequious cop came up to me and told me that he had doused the carpet with club soda so Danny's blood wouldn't cause a permanent stain. I thanked him for being so thoughtful. Later, down at the police station, we went through what I thought was a routine signing of papers. The police were so congenial I had no idea I'd been charged with murder until I read it in the newspaper the next day." Now that's unheard of. If a black man kills another black man in Savannah on a Friday night, two policemen might drop by for thirty minutes, and that would be the end of it. But the police were having a ball in my house. When the police photographer was finished taking pictures, she went into the kitchen and made tea and coffee and served it to the others with cookies. I thought, Well, this is a d.a.m.ned nuisance, but I guess it's the price I have to pay. I'll just let them have their fun, and then it will all be over. They were exquisitely polite. It was 'Mr. Williams this' and 'Mr. Williams that' and 'Can we help you, sir?' One particularly obsequious cop came up to me and told me that he had doused the carpet with club soda so Danny's blood wouldn't cause a permanent stain. I thanked him for being so thoughtful. Later, down at the police station, we went through what I thought was a routine signing of papers. The police were so congenial I had no idea I'd been charged with murder until I read it in the newspaper the next day."

Williams's deepest resentment was not directed at the police, however. It was directed at Savannah's society and the power structure that it dominated.

"Men from Savannah's good families are born into a pecking order they can never get out of," he said, "unless they leave town forever. They've got to go to a proper secondary school-Savannah Country Day or Woodberry Forest-then to a good enough college, and then come back home and join the team. They've got to work for a certain company or a certain man and move up gradually. They've got to marry a girl with the right background. They've got to produce a proper little family. They've got to be a member of Christ Church or Saint John's. They've got to join the Oglethorpe Club, the yacht club, and the golf club. Finally, when they're in their late fifties or early sixties, they've arrived, they've made it. But by then they're burned out, unhappy, and unfulfilled. They cheat on their wives, hate their work, and lead dismal lives as respectable failures. Their wives, most of them, are little more than long-term prost.i.tutes, the main difference being that when you factor in the houses, the cars, the clothes, and the clubs, Savannah's respectable wives get a lot more money per piece of a.s.s than a wh.o.r.e does. When people like that see somebody like me, who's never joined their silly pecking order and who's taken great risks and succeeded, they loathe loathe that person. I have felt it many times. They don't have any say-so over me, and they don't like that at all." that person. I have felt it many times. They don't have any say-so over me, and they don't like that at all."

Despite his bitterness, Williams was confident that his appeal would be successful. If it was not, he had an idea or two how he might seek revenge on Savannah. He would use Mercer House as the instrument. "I might turn the house over to a charitable society," he mused, "to be used as a drug-rehabilitation center. It's big enough to handle several hundred addicts a day, wouldn't you say? The addicts could use Monterey Square as an outdoor waiting room. It would drive the neighbors wild, especially the socially conscious Adlers. But they could hardly object to such a public-spirited gesture."

And what if Danny Hansford's mother won her $10 million lawsuit against him? Would the house not fall into her hands? "Danny's mother will never live in Mercer House," Williams declared, "because I will destroy it first. It won't be easy, because the house is very solid; the interior walls are made of brick. What I would do is this: I would cut a large hole in the ceiling of each of the four corner rooms on the main floor, all the way through to the second floor. Then I would put acetone in each of the cutout holes and blow the place to bits. I've been a.s.sured I could demolish the entire house that way. In Georgia, arson is a crime only if it's done for the insurance. Mercer House is not insured. Danny's mother might get a nice piece of property, but there won't be a house on it."

At the same time Jim Williams was calculating where to drill the holes in the floor of Mercer House, the Georgia Supreme Court was focusing its attention on a hole that was already there-the bullet hole in the bedroom floor upstairs. This was the hole allegedly made by Danny Hansford during his rampage through the house a month before he was killed. It was the hole about which the arresting officer, Corporal Anderson, had testified, "I couldn't determine if that was a fresh bullet hole or an old one." Seizing on that remark, Spencer Lawton had suggested that the bullet hole was an old one and that Williams had faked the incident to lay the groundwork for killing Hansford in "self-defense" a month later.

Some weeks after the guilty verdict was handed down, Bobby Lee Cook received an envelope from an anonymous source in the district attorney's office. Inside was a copy of the police report written by Corporal Anderson on the night of the earlier incident. The report contained the statement: "We did find a fresh bullet hole in the floor." "We did find a fresh bullet hole in the floor." It contradicted his sworn testimony at the trial. It contradicted his sworn testimony at the trial.

The defense had obtained an edited copy of Anderson's written report by court order before the trial, but Lawton had whited out that particular line. When Bobby Lee Cook saw the complete text, he immediately realized that Lawton's excision amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. He made it the central argument in his appeal before the Georgia Supreme Court. The court responded angrily. It cited the "patent inconsistency" of Corporal Anderson's two statements about the bullet hole and denounced Lawton's attempt to cover it up. "We cannot and will not approve corruption of the truth-seeking function of the trial process," the unanimous ruling read. "Judgment reversed. "Judgment reversed. A new trial must be ordered." A new trial must be ordered."

Chapter 18.

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL.

For all the commotion over the reversal of Jim Williams's conviction, the Georgia Supreme Court's ruling appeared to be little more than a temporary reprieve. The hole in the floor had been an unimportant detail in the trial; the main points of evidence in Spencer Lawton's case against Williams still remained intact. It seemed obvious that Williams would have to mount a stronger defense in his second trial, or the outcome would likely be another conviction.

Williams was exultant nonetheless. He boasted that the reversal had vindicated him completely. He gloated that the wording of the ruling proved that Spencer Lawton and the police were liars. Williams dropped hints that, indeed, his defense would be stronger the second time around. "Things will be going my way from here on," he would say with a wink and a sly look. "Certain 'forces' are at work." He deliberately left his listeners wondering whether he meant to say simply that public sympathy had s.h.i.+fted in his favor or, more darkly, that the fix was in.

One evening, Williams invited me to drop in at Mercer House. I found him sitting at his desk in his study having a vodka and tonic. He regaled me with stories about two of his latest pet subjects-the "corrupt" Spencer Lawton and the "biased and stupid" Judge Oliver. Then he came around to the subject of the mysterious forces working on his behalf.

"You know, I never had any doubt that the Supreme Court would throw out my conviction," he said. "I knew all along they would do it. I was absolutely sure of it. Do you know why? Because I refused to allow myself even to think think they would reject my appeal. If I had thought about it, if I had dwelt on it, if I had become depressed and imagined the worst, then the worst would have happened." I could feel Williams watching me closely, weighing my reaction. they would reject my appeal. If I had thought about it, if I had dwelt on it, if I had become depressed and imagined the worst, then the worst would have happened." I could feel Williams watching me closely, weighing my reaction.

"Concentration," he went on. "That's what it was. Just like the little experiment I told you about at Duke University, with the dice. I improved the odds in my case the same way the men at Duke did with the dice, the same way I do when I play my little game of Psycho Dice-through mental kinetics.

"You may think all this is nonsense," he went on. "Most people do, and all I can say to them is: Fine, don't believe it, I'm not out to prove anything-but you're overlooking a valuable power available to anyone." Williams smiled enigmatically, but I could tell he was not joking.

"Of course, I have had help," he said. "I'm not the only person who has been concentrating on my behalf. I've had the a.s.sistance of someone very expert in these things. And I can tell you that when my second trial comes up, the judge, the D.A., and whoever gets to sit on that jury will be at the receiving end of some very powerful vibrations."

Williams took a handful of dimes out of his pocket and put nine of them in a neat stack on the desk blotter.

"I use the word 'vibrations' for want of a better word," he said. "These vibrations, these thought waves-whatever you want to call them-will be generated by me and by a woman named Minerva. She's an old and very dear friend. She lives in Beaufort, South Carolina-about forty-five minutes from here. I am going to pay her a visit tonight."

Williams opened a drawer and took out a bottle of water. "This is rainwater," he said. "Minerva told me to bring it with me tonight. She also told me to bring the dimes. These things will be coming into play later on tonight." Williams looked up at me. "If you're game, you're welcome to come along. It will take two or three hours at most. Interested?"

"Sure, why not?" I said. As soon as I had said it, I thought of a dozen reasons why not, but it was too late. Half an hour later, we went out through the back of Mercer House to the carriage house, where a green Jaguar sports car was parked on an oriental carpet. Williams set his vodka and tonic on the control panel and eased the car out into Wayne Street. In moments we were gliding through the quiet streets of Savannah, up and over the Talmadge Bridge and into the darkness of the South Carolina low country.

The light from the dashboard cast a pale glow on Williams's face. "If I told you that Minerva was a witch doctor or a voodoo priestess, I'd be close," he said. "She's that and more. She was the common-law wife of Dr. Buzzard, the last great voodoo pract.i.tioner in Beaufort County. Whether you know it or not, you are in the heart of voodoo country. This whole coastal area has been loaded with it since the slaves brought voodoo with them from Africa.

"Dr. Buzzard died a few years ago, and Minerva carries on his practice. For years, Dr. Buzzard was king of the low-country root doctors. He was a commanding presence-tall, erect, and rail thin. He had a goatee, and he wore purple-tinted gla.s.ses. No one who saw those eyes staring through those purple lenses ever forgot them. He was especially effective 'defending' clients in criminal cases. He'd sit in the courtroom and glare at hostile witnesses as he chewed the root. Sometimes they'd change their stories when they got on the stand and saw Dr. Buzzard staring at them. Either that or they'd just turn tail and run. Dr. Buzzard would focus his energies on the jury and the judge too. I know a judge in Savannah who says he can tell when rootworkers are involved in a case, because his bench will be dressed down. He'll find roots and herbs and bones arranged around it.

"Dr. Buzzard made a good living. People would pay him to put curses on their enemies, or to remove a curse that their enemies had put on them. In some cases, he was paid by both parties. The money piled up. Dr. Buzzard built two big churches on Saint Helena Island and always drove around in big flashy cars. He was quite a ladies' man, too, and in his last years Minerva became his mistress." Williams took a sip from his drink, then set it back in its holder on the control panel.

"When Dr. Buzzard died, Minerva put on his purple gla.s.ses and set herself up as a root doctor. She uses some of his techniques and some of her own too. She gets her special status-and some of her spiritual powers-by having direct access to Dr. Buzzard in perpetuity. She goes to his grave and calls on his spirit constantly."

Williams said he did not, himself, believe in voodoo. "I don't put much stock in the hocus-pocus part of it, the herbs and roots and powdered bones and frogs' tongues and all that. They're only props. But I do have respect for the spiritual force behind it. Minerva told me to bring nine s.h.i.+ny dimes tonight and some 'fresh water that ain't run through no pipe.' The dimes were easy, but her instructions about the water meant I either had to get it from a stream or find some rainwater. There happened to be rainwater in a basin in my courtyard. That's what's in the bottle."

"Would she know the difference if you had just filled it with tap water?" I asked.

"Not from the look or the taste," he said. "But she'd know in an instant just by looking at my face."

The town of Beaufort was dark and still. Williams drove along the main street, pa.s.sing the great old houses that faced across the harbor toward the Sea Islands-eighteenth-century mansions of brick, tabby, and wood. Halfway between Savannah and Charleston, Beaufort had once been a major s.h.i.+pping center, but it was now an almost forgotten, perfectly preserved, gemlike little village. We cruised along the narrow streets, pa.s.sing rows of handsome white houses gleaming in the darkness. The tidy, well-manicured section of town gave way shortly to unpaved streets and tiny run-down cottages. We pulled up in front of a wooden shanty with a swept-sand front yard. The house was unpainted except for the door and windows, which were a light blue. "Haint blue," said Williams. "It keeps the evil spirits out." The house was dark. Williams knocked lightly and then pushed the door open. The flickering light from a TV set was the only illumination in the cluttered front room. Pungent cooking smells, of pork and greens, filled the air. A man lay asleep on a daybed. He stirred as we entered. A young black woman came into the room through a curtained doorway carrying a plate of food. She nodded toward the back of the house without saying a word, and we walked on through.

Minerva was sitting in a small room under a bare light bulb. She was like a sack of flour. Her cotton dress was stretched tight over her round body. Her skin was a pale brown, and her face was as round as a tranquil moon. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun except for two little pigtails, one hanging over each ear. She wore a pair of purple-tinted, wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. The table in front of her was piled high with bottles, vials, twigs, boxes, and odd bits of cloth. The floor was littered with shopping bags, some bulging, some empty. When she saw Williams, she broke into a broad, gap-toothed smile and motioned for us to sit down on two folding chairs.

"I been waitin' on you, baby," she said in a half-whispered voice.

"Well, how've you been, Minerva?" Williams asked.

Minerva's face clouded over. "I been dealin' with a lot a graveyard dirt."

"Not again!" said Williams.

Minerva nodded. "Mm-hmmm. There's a lot a grudgefulness and deceitfulness." Minerva spoke in a faraway voice. It came from so deep within her that the words sounded as if they had been uttered eons ago on a distant planet and were just now reaching the earth through her. "My son's ex-wife. She had three children with him. She drive by and throw graveyard dirt on my porch. I gets it by the bucketful. That's how come I be blocked a lot. Business gets po'. Then my boy gets in trouble with the police. I can't sleep. And I been raisin' h.e.l.l with my old man that's dead."

"Dr. Buzzard?"

"Yeah, him," said Minerva. "I need to git me some money, and I been playin' the numbers, so I can git some. I always go to him and I pay him a dime for him to give me a number. But he won't give me one for s.h.i.+t. I cuss he a.s.s out. I don't know why he don't want me to git no money."

Minerva put aside a small wax doll she'd been working on. "Well, it looks like we're back in business again, you and me, don't it?"

"Yes," said Williams. "Now we've got a second trial to work on."

"Yes, I know that." Minerva leaned forward and brought her face close to Williams. "He's workin' hard against you, baby!" "He's workin' hard against you, baby!"