He made his way to the state prison, parked his car, and identified himself at the front gate, his way having been smoothed by a call from a state legislator of his father’s acquaintance. Fifteen minutes later he was shown into a sparsely furnished room, and five minutes after that, a guard brought a man into the room and left the two of them alone.
“Hey,” the man said. “I’m Larry Moody.”
“Terry Cogan,” the lawyer replied, offering his hand. Cogan had done his homework on Larry Eugene Moody, who had bulked up in the prison gym. The young man was thirty-five, and his blond hair was thinning and creeping up his scalp; otherwise, he looked much the same as in the pictures at his trial.
“Did Charlene send you?” Moody asked.
“Charlene Joiner? No. I’m an attorney, and I represent some people who are interested in your case, people who are opposed to the death penalty.”
They sat down. “I’ll tell you anything I can that’ll help,” Moody said. “I’m scheduled for October 30, and I’m getting worried.”
“I can understand that,” Cogan said.
“If I can just get a new trial, I know I’ll be acquitted. That nigger girl who testified against me at my trial is dead, you know; she got killed in a car wreck last New Year’s Eve.”
Cogan had not the slightest doubt that Moody was guilty of the rape and murder of which he had been convicted. He knew that the girl Moody was referring to was a last-minute witness who’d testified that Moody had raped her when they were in high school. “I think you could be right,” he said. “I’ve read the trial transcript, and I think that, without her testimony, you’d have been acquitted.”
“Damn right I would have.”
“It’s a shame your lawyer wasn’t smart enough to keep her off the stand.”
“Will Lee? He’s running for president now, did you hear?”
“I heard. I’m sorry you weren’t better represented.”
“Well, he did good, really,” Moody said, looking at the ground. “I didn’t tell him nothing about the nigger girl, so he sort of got blindsided at the last minute, when one of my old high-school teachers was on the stand and mentioned her. The prosecutor was all over that right away, and there wasn’t really nothing Mr. Lee could have done.”
“So you don’t blame Will Lee for your conviction?” Cogan asked, making some notes on a legal pad. “I’d have thought you’d have been pretty pissed off at him.”
“For what? He did the best he could, and that was damned good.”
“Well, how about that business between Lee and Charlene?”
Moody laughed. “Listen, Charlene likes to fuck better than anybody I ever knew. I’d been in jail for a long time, so she was getting pretty horny, and when Charlene’s horny, she can have just about any guy she wants. You ever seen her in the movies?”
“Many times.”
“So you know how sexy she is.”
“I sure do.”
“Well, let me tell you something: Charlene on the silver screen ain’t nothing compared to Charlene up close. Jesus, I get horny just thinking about it. When we were living together, I’d come home from work, and we’d do it, and we’d do it again at bedtime, and then again first thing in the morning, you know? We used to go to the drive-in movies, and we’d fuck in the back of my van, just for a change. So I know what Mr. Lee was up against when she showed up at his place that afternoon.”
“Do you know what happened that day?”
“Oh, Charlene told me all about it after the trial. She liked talking about it.”
“What, exactly, did she tell you?”
“She said she went out to the Lee farm, over by Delano, and she went back to this little house behind the big house, where Mr. Lee lived. It was on a little lake. Anyway, when she got there she saw him diving in the lake, and he was nekkid, so she got nekkid, too, and jumped in with him. So they fucked in the water, and then again inside the house, and then she did this little thing she used to do.”
“What was that? What did she used to do?”
“She ate some ice cream, and then she gave him a blow job.”
Cogan blinked at the thought.
“Let me tell you, Charlene knew her way around a cock. I mean, there’s some guys here in prison who are pretty good at it for five bucks or some cigarettes, but Charlene was the absolute queen of the blow job, and I ought to know. If she gave me one, she gave me a hundred. And that thing with the ice cream, well...“
“I can only imagine,” Cogan said, trying not to think about it. “Tell me, Larry, do you remember whether this little scene between Charlene and Will Lee took place before or after she testified at your trial?”
“Oh, it was afterward, I think. Charlene and I had a little spat when she wouldn’t fuck me in jail, and she wasn’t talking to me at the time. And she had already testified by then.”
“I see. Well, look, Larry, here’s the thing.”
“What?”
“Just about the only grounds you’d have for appeal would be that your lawyer was incompetent.”
“Oh, I don’t think he was incompetent; Charlene said he was real good at it.”
“Larry, I’m talking about his being incompetent in the way he represented you at your trial.”
“You mean, if I said he did a bad job, I might get a new trial?”
“Possibly,” Cogan said, not looking at Moody. “Now, think back, Larry: Isn’t it just possible that you did tell him about this witness, this black girl who said you raped her in high school?” Cogan didn’t wait for Moody to respond, but plowed ahead. “And that maybe he could have done something to exclude her testimony, and because he didn’t, you got convicted? I mean, if I had been representing you, I think I would have anticipated that and gotten her evidence excluded as irrelevant, or called other witnesses to refute her testimony.” He watched Larry Moody closely for his response, and he thought he saw a little light go on in the eyes.
“Well,” Moody said, his eyes narrowing, “now that you mention it, I think I might have told him I’d been falsely accused of raping that nigger girl. Nothing ever came of it, you know. There wasn’t nothing to back up her story, just her word against mine. Even my old teacher said on the stand that she never believed I raped the girl.”
“Well, it would help if you could remember exactly when you told him that and what the circumstances were,” Cogan said. “Your story has got to be credible, you know; you’ve got to be believable. Think back and see if you can remember exactly when you told Will Lee about this black girl’s accusation.”
Moody massaged his forehead for a moment. “I got it!” he said. “It was the first time I met with him, in the Greenville jail. I’d just been arrested the day before, and the judge appointed Mr. Lee to defend me. He came to see me, and he asked me all sorts of questions about my background and where I was when that girl got murdered, and all that, and then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him, anything he should know. And that was when I told him.”
“What, exactly, did you tell him that day?”
“I told him I’d been falsely accused in high school by this nigger girl — of course, I didn’t say ‘nigger,’ because Mr. Lee was a real liberal, you know.”
“So, he did know before the trial about this incident, and he didn’t take any steps to protect you from the testimony of this potential witness?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I remember, now; I told him about all this that first time I met him.”
Cogan was writing as fast as he could, now. “Tell me, Larry, how often are you and Charlene in touch these days?”
“We write letters now and then, although I’m not much of a letter writer. She always writes me back, though, and once in a while I call her out in California, when I can catch’er at home. She’s been trying to get me a good lawyer for an appeal, and Mr. Lee wouldn’t do it.”