The grand jurors finished hearing the state’s attorney and his witnesses by a quarter past ten, and retired to deliberate their decision. When Harper joined me in the corridor outside, I asked, “How’d it go?”
“They gonna try’n fry me,” he said.
“Well, we’ll see. We don’t know how they’ll vote yet, do we?”
“Whut’s all this gonna coss me?” he asked.
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“I ain’t a rich man. I don’t wanna be in hock to you for the ress of my life.”
“I promise you won’t be.”
“How ’bout this other lawyer you said you’re gonna try’n find to hep you? Whut’ll he charge me?”
“First I have to find him.”
“You tell him I ain’t no rich man.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him.”
At a quarter past eleven, the jurors returned a true bill signed by the jury foreman and requesting the state’s attorney to prepare an indictment for first-degree murder. George Harper was taken back to the county jail, and I went to see James Willoughby, a criminal lawyer who had worked for the State’s Attorney’s Office before entering practice with the firm of Peterson, Pauling, and Merritt — familiarly known in Calusa as Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Willoughby was a man in his early forties, fox faced and blue-eyed, reportedly as shrewd and as clever as a murder of crows, the one attorney who — if speculation in Calusa’s legal shops proved valid — would one day replace Benny Weiss as the town’s dean of criminal lawyers. Unlike Benny, Willoughby brought to each of his defenses an intimate knowledge of the way the state’s attorney — his erstwhile employer — prepared his cases, and he coupled this inside information with an unremitting desire to humiliate his former boss (“that son of a bitch,” as Willoughby cheerfully called him) whenever the opportunity presented itself. It was the state’s attorney himself, Willoughby claimed, who had hindered his career in public service because of the fear that Willoughby would one day unseat him in a public election. Willoughby went after the State’s Attorney’s Office the way a terrier goes after a rat. Nothing pleased him more than to overthrow a case carefully prepared by whichever prosecutor “that son of a bitch” assigned to his latest murder, arson, armed robbery, burglary, or merely spitting-on-the-sidewalk case. Willoughby was just the man I needed.
“But I don’t want you fucking it up,” he said at once.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ll join you in the defense if you promise me your role will be a limited one. I don’t want to lose a case to that son of a bitch because some real-estate lawyer—”
“I’m not a real-estate lawyer.”
“Your firm handles a great many real-estate transactions.”
“Our firm also handles—”
“Does it handle homicide cases?”
“No, but—”
“The defense rests,” Willoughby said, and spread his hands, and grinned at me — somewhat ghoulishly, I thought. “My point, Matthew, is that whereas I have a great deal of respect for your expertise in sundry other areas of the law, I cannot have you bumbling about underfoot where a man’s life is at stake.”
“That’s why I came to you in the first place,” I said. “I don’t need to be lectured—”
“Forgive me, no lecture was intended.”
“I’m well aware of my limitations.”
“Fine, then. Just remember that we’re in my ball park.”
“I realize that,” I said. “In fact, if you’ll take the case, and if my client agrees to it, I’ll step out entirely.”
“No, no,” Willoughby said.
“Why not?”
“Well, from what you tell me, your man is a virtual pauper who—”
“No, I didn’t say that. He’s gainfully employed, he has his own junk business.”
“Can he afford the services of the best criminal attorney in Calusa?”
“Benny Weiss is the best criminal attorney in Calusa.”
“That’s an unkind cut, Matthew. If Benny’s such a hotshot, go to Benny.”
“He turned me down.”
“Why, may I ask?”
“He thinks Harper’s guilty.”
“So what? You’ll pardon me, Matthew, but that’s amateur night in Dixie. Who cares whether your man is guilty or not? Either you’re a gladiator or you aren’t. Either you’re willing to go into that arena and risk your reputation — even for a cause you don’t believe in — or else you get fat and lazy and that son of a bitch gets to send more and more people to jail or to the chair. I don’t care if a thousand witnesses saw your man carve up his wife with a butcher knife—”
“She was incinerated.”
“Who cares what she was? Stabbed, shot, strangled, hanged, who cares? The fun is in convincing a jury that your man couldn’t possibly have done it in a million years. That’s the fun of it, Matthew.”
I could hardly equate the attempt to save Harper’s life with unbridled joy, but I said nothing. I needed Willoughby, and he knew it.
“But to answer your question,” he said, “the reason—”
“I forget what the question was,” I said.
“The question was, in effect, ‘Why do I need you?’ I need you because my normal fee would be well beyond what your pauper client can afford.”
“If you get so much ‘fun’ out of it,” I said, “maybe he ought to charge you.”
“That, too, is unkind, Matthew. You may be willing to turn your shop into a charitable organization—”
“You should talk to my partner sometime.”
“Does he share my view? The point is, the grand jury’s brought in a true bill. Once Harper is served with the indictment, we’ll have two, three weeks to enter a plea. Our plea, of course, will be ‘not guilty,’ and we’ll request a trial by jury. Considering the jammed docket, that may not take place till the beginning of the year sometime. The point, Matthew, is that I could not normally expend the time and energy essential to an aggressive defense unless the fee were commensurate with my efforts. Since the case is nominally yours, I can only assume you’d be willing to do all the preparation necessary for—”
“Well, wait a minute—”
“Under my supervision, of course. I’ll tell you what we need, you’ll go after it Are we agreed on that?”
“Well...”
“We would have to agree on that, Matthew. Otherwise, count me out. I’m not suggesting that you have to do the legwork yourself. You can hire investigators to track down your witnesses, you can have some lackey in your office take depositions — unless, of course, you choose to do all that yourself, in which case you can consider it on-the-job training.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’ll base my modest fee on however many hours I put in before trial, and however much time I actually spend in court.”
“How much time do you think that’ll be?”
“In court? On a routine homicide? A week, ten days.”
“What’s your hourly charge, Jim?”
“The same as yours, I’m sure.”
“I don’t think Harper can afford that.”
“Then find another champion,” Willoughby said.