“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Manny.
Jack moved quickly across the courtroom to the clerk, continuing along the assembly line. Thankfully, the politicians hadn’t gotten the judge to deny bail. Now all Jack had to do to get back on the street was pledge his every worldly possession to Jose Restrepo-Merono, the five-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound Puerto Rican president of “F. Lee Bail-Me, Inc.”-the only bail bondsman ever known to have a sense of humor.
Jack returned to the holding cell for another hour or so while Manny’s assistant handled the mechanical aspects of posting bail. Late that afternoon he was released, thankful he could spend the night in his own bed. He didn’t have a car, since Stafford had driven him to the station. Manny’s assistant was supposed to swing by and take Jack home, so he wouldn’t have to wait for a taxi while fighting off reporters eager for their shot at eliciting a little quote that might make theirs the breaking story. As it turned out, though, Manny himself showed up at the curb behind the wheel of his Jaguar. The look on his face told Jack he wasn’t just playing chauffeur.
“Get in,” Manny said solemnly when Jack opened the door.
Jack slid into the passenger seat, and Manny pulled into the late-afternoon traffic.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” said Jack.
“Your father called me,” Manny replied, as if that were enough to explain his appearance. He looked away from the road, just long enough to read Jack’s face. “He told me about Raul Fernandez. I heard all about your request for a stay that night, and his response.”
Jack smoldered, but said nothing. Instead, he made a conscious effort to look out the window.
“Okay,” he said finally, “so now you know the Swyteck family secret. We not only defend the guilty. We execute the innocent.”
Manny steered around the corner, then pulled into a parking space beneath a shady tree. He wanted to look right at his client as he spoke. “I don’t know everything, Jack. I only know what your father knows about that night. And he’s missing a key piece of information. So we both want to know if there’s more to this case than whether Jack Swyteck killed Eddy Goss. He and I both want a straight answer from you: Did Raul Fernandez die for Eddy Goss?”
“What?” Jack asked, thoroughly confused.
“The night before Fernandez was executed, was Eddy Goss the guy who came to you and confessed to the murder? Was Raul Fernandez innocent, and Eddy Goss guilty?”
“Where did you dream up-” Jack paused, calmed himself down. “Look, Manny, if my father wants to talk, I’ll talk to him. Fernandez is between him and me. This has nothing to do with your defending me for the murder of Eddy Goss.”
“Wrong, Jack. This could have everything to do with the murder of Eddy Goss. Because it bears directly on your motive to kill-or to ‘execute’-Eddy Goss. You can’t risk letting Wilson McCue flesh out this theory before I do. So answer me, Jack. And I want the truth.”
Jack looked Manny right in the eye. “The truth, Manny, is that I didn’t kill Eddy Goss. And as far as who it was who came to me the night Fernandez was executed, the honest answer is that I don’t know. The guy never gave me his name. He never even showed me his face. But I do know this much: It was not Eddy Goss. The eyes are different, the build is different, the voice is different. It’s just a different person.”
Manny took a deep breath and looked away, then gave a quick nod of appreciation. “Thanks, I know this isn’t an easy subject for you. And I’m glad you leveled with me.”
“Maybe it’s time I leveled with my father, too. I think he and I need to talk.”
“I’m advising you not to do that, Jack.”
“It’s kind of a personal decision, don’t you think?”
“From a legal standpoint, I am strongly advising you not to speak to your father. I don’t want you talking to anyone who might jeopardize your ability to take the witness stand in your own defense. And talking to your father is very risky.”
“What are you implying?”
Manny measured his words carefully. “Right after I spoke to your father,” he began, “I had an uneasy feeling. It was just a feeling, but when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you follow your gut. So I went and took another look at the police file.”
“And?”
“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. But I noticed that the police report showed an extraneous footprint, right outside Goss’s apartment. It wasn’t from you, and it wasn’t from Eddy Goss. It was from someone else. Now, that’s a definite plus for us, because it can help us prove that someone else was at the scene of the crime. But what has me concerned is that the footprint is very clear.” He sighed. “It’s from a Wiggins wing tip.”
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.”
Chapter 25
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.”