Eddie Et Alia

EDDIE et alia

All Rights Reserved © 2003 by James L. Clark

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

In honor of those who doggedly work the streets and courts in physically and legally protecting the public, and those who practice their faith through exemplary living, thus inspiring everyone toward striving for decency and dignity for self and others.

CHAPTER 1

L ook, Eddie, I don’t mean to be abrupt or rude or anything like that, but frankly we just don’t need an ambulance-chaser type around here at Condee, Overman and Nast, especially somebody mostly specializing in plea bargains for petty thieves and drug-pushers. Caleb Handley, up to his ears in research for a brief that had to be in Circuit Court the next day, meant to be insulting—besides which I don’t like you worth a damn anyway, and it goes way back—and the last thing he needed was for Eddie Amos to be bending his ear over the phone about a job. Look, I’m all tied up right now anyway, but I can tell you as a partner here that you’re not the type of lawyer we’re interested in…okay? Corporate stuff is our bag, as you well know.

Come on, Caleb, that’s a cheap shot…you know me better than that. Sure, I’ve done a lot of the stuff nobody else wants to fool with, especially in the big outfits like yours, and I don’t make a fortune at it, either. But, I’ve got the street smarts that even a big firm like yours can sometimes use. Don’t forget about the Tonlin case. That was worth more than peanuts. I took it on contingency and the other side had to pay my fees, which were considerable, not to mention my cut of the actual award. George Edwin Amos was referring to a case he had won two years before for a trainer accused of sponging a racehorse (stuffing a small sponge in one or both of the horse’s nostrils to diminish breathing and slow the horse) that was favored to win but lost in a stakes race at Keeneland Racetrack just on the outskirts of Lexington. Amos had successfully sued the horse’s owners for defaming and damaging his client by accusing him of the crime (ruining his reputation, curtailing his ability to make a living, etc.) and had actually helped find the real sponger. It’s just that I’m burned out with the stuff I’ve been doin’ and I’d like to get into something different. I’m a quick study…you know that and, besides, you may remember that I was top of the class in the corporate end of it when we were at UK Law.

That was fifteen years ago, Eddie. What was it, eighty-four, eighty-five? You know enough about corporate practice to understand where you’d have to start now and how hard you’d have to work. Do you want to put in twelve-hour days six days a week? Of course, if you can drag some well-heeled clients into the business…

I just want to try something different, Caleb. Amos hesitated. He certainly had no clients to drag into the business—fat cats whom he could bill at $250 or more per hour. Well, okay, I do need to make some money, too. My partner and I’ve done all right, but he and his old lady have split up and he’s leaving the country…headed out west or somewhere the last I heard. The child-support payments were going to eat him alive. At least, that’s what he said. He left me holding the bag and facing some serious problems finanacially and I had to let a secretary and paralegals—the whole staff—go, so that’s the way it is. I did a good bit of pro bono stuff, too, and you know how that goes…or, do you?

Actually, no, Eddie. The one thing we don’t do here is pro bono stuff. We never work for free. The only way we ever take a chance is by agreeing to take something on contingency—personal injury cases, things like that…either side. But we make damned sure we can win before we take on a contingency case for a small business or an individual. The big boys pay us by the hour. They don’t worry about the cost. A lot of these guys are faking those injuries, and sharp, street-smart guys like you claim to be know what I mean. Small businesses are at the mercy of the big guys, so we take their lawsuits on contingency if we’re sure we can win. The doctors’ malpractice cases are never a problem because their insurance covers our backs, and the patients’ cases are ironclad for the same reason, since we take them on contingency only if we know we can get the doctors’ insurance companies on their knees, out of court, of course. But, look, I gotta go.

Okay, okay, Caleb. Just promise me you’ll think about it. I’ve done my homework and I know you can give the word on whether or not the Big Con (term using the firm’s acronym commonly used by local lawyers to refer to Condee, Overman and Nast) would take me on. You’re the go-to guy there. That’s the word all around the bluegrass…‘ya gotta problem, check with Caleb Handley over at the big Con.’ Though Amos didn’t mention it, in the back of his mind was the fact that it didn’t hurt that Handley had married Tanya Condee, the granddaughter of crusty old Nathan Condee, one of the firm’s founders, and that most of his pull was generated by that fact. His father-in-law, Harry Condee, was managing partner. Nathan was still making waves at eighty-four.

I’ll think about it, Eddie, but don’t bank on it. Call me in a couple days. The former fellow law students said their goodbyes and hung up." Yeah, I’ll think about it, thought Handley, for about thirty seconds max. Eddie might as well be called ‘Fast Eddie.’ Besides my other reason, he’s just a bit too sharp, and pro bono bleeding hearts make me sick anyway.

Why do I have this feeling that old Caleb would let his grandma slowly twist in the wind if it suited his purpose, Amos muttered to himself, settling back on the sofa in his three-room apartment on South Ashland Ave. He’s bound to know I know they’re looking for some help over there at the Big Con. Every mouthpiece in town knows that. We all know they’re a pit of vipers, too, half of ’em at the other half’s throat most of the time. But they’re good and they’re covered up right now. This drunk-drivin’ case’ll take some hard work and long hours, and, as usual, they’ve had some lawyers quit because of the constant hassle over everything else.

Amos was referring to a case in which a distillery in nearby Nelson County had been sued for damages by the family of a local truck-driver who a year earlier had been killed in a wreck precipitated by a drunk driver whom many witnesses, shortly before the accident, had seen imbibing in a Lexington bar a considerable amount of the distillery’s pride, a bourbon whiskey called Foster’s Mark, named for the legendary songwriter Stephen Collins Foster, who was said to have written the state song, My Old Kentucky Home, in the Nelson County seat of Bardstown in 1852. Some Foster’s Mark empty bottles had also been discovered in the drunk’s car. A few years before, nobody would have touched such a case, especially in Kentucky, the bourbon capital of the world, but the recent success of smokers’ families in other states in successfully suing tobacco companies by charging them with the liability for lung cancer that caused loss of health/ wages/companionship/life, etc., for the victims and/or their families had emboldened a sharp, albeit young, local lawyer to take on the case, on contingency, of course. The trucker’s family of five barely lived above the poverty level.

Rather than face a trial involving a murder charge scheduled during this August of 1999, the drunk, who had been out on bond during the year since the tragedy, had pled early to a charge of second degree manslaughter (to get started getting it over with) and been sentenced to ten years in May. The charge was his third for DUI, and he admitted in sworn testimony that he had been drinking Foster’s Mark and only Foster’s Mark before the accident. Shortly after the sentencing, the young lawyer, Kenneth Lane, had sought out the trucker’s family rather than the other way around, and offered to see them through the lawsuit process on a contingency-fee basis. Lane came from wealthy parents able to furnish the wherewithal for him to set up his practice, complete with office space in a small Upper Street office-building near the courthouses, a generous amount of funds, a secretary and paralegal, thus making it possible for him to get into private practice debt-free in the summer of 1998, after he had spent a couple of years or so in the Lexington prosecutor’s office after gaining his law degree. In addition, at age twenty-five he had come into a trust of a million-and-a-half dollars established by his deceased grandparents, most of which he had invested wisely in the booming economy.

Ambitious and brash, the 28-year-old lawyer was determined to win the case as much for the fame/publicity as for whatever hard cash he might extract from the distillery and/or the Big Con. He wanted the trucker’s family to get well, of course, he had assured his fellow attorneys at a few of those business lunches, but all of his colleagues laughed to each other that the poor family was not his chief concern. His lawyer friends had laughed him to scorn for even imagining that a Kentucky jury would find for his plaintiff, but he just grinned and told them it would be a hell of a ride either way. He had spent long hours and hired another paralegal in working on the case and finally filed the suit in Circuit Court against Foster’s Mark (also the name of the distillery) two weeks before, on July 19, with unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. The distillery president, James Lee, had hired the Big Con to defend his business, and had been assured that the ordeal would be short and sweet.

The young lawyer had grown up in Kentucky’s largest county, Pike County, which gave the appearance of a sort of rhino horn protruding into both Virginia and West Virginia on the state’s eastern border deep in the Appalachian Mountain range that extended from New England to Alabama. Single and handsome at 6’1" and 185 pounds, Lane had had a privileged upbringing, families on both his father’s and mother’s side having made millions in coal mining, the area’s most important industry. Indeed, more millionaires per capita lived in Pike County than in any other county in the state. Easing of workmen’s compensation laws in 1996 had added immeasurably to their wealth, since underground coal mining, especially, was a dangerous business involving an inordinate amount of injuries and death, not to mention the many occurrences of the dreaded black lung incurred by miners after years of inhaling coal dust deep in the pits. The easing of the WC laws had brought poverty to many of the miners, who depended in part upon benefits for which the state required the operators to pay in insurance premiums; but the windfall for the owners had meant virtually countless millions. The governor, elected in 1995 and running for a second term this year, had been a coal operator from Pike County and still had properties there.

Lane had decided against the Ivy League schools his parents had hoped he would consider, opting for the University of Kentucky in Lexington as much as for any other reason the fact that his girlfriend at the time had enrolled there. The relationship with the girlfriend hadn’t lasted, but he loved Lexington and got both his undergrad and law degrees there, finishing in 1996. Sandy-haired with deep blue eyes, he had been an outstanding high school basketball player, but arrived at UK during one of its frequent dustups with the National Collegiate Athletic Association over extensive rules violations, and decided against walking on as a freshman, with the hope of making the team. He drove a new convertible every year and had considerable trouble fighting off the girls. Though not a heavy drinker, he had imbibed plenty of Foster’s Mark, his favorite, during his years in Lexington, but had no personal reason not to sue, not that it would have mattered.

Eddie Amos, 42, was the eldest child of a coal miner, was also an east-Kentuckian and had been raised in the small Knott County mining town of Hindman, not far from Pikeville, the county seat of Pike County. His father, George Elwin Amos, was critically injured in a mine cave-in one month before Eddie’s graduation from high school in 1975. The doctors said he would never work again, but he made it back into the mines eighteen months later; however, he had been forced to retire seven years before at age 57 because of black lung. With dark brown hair graying at the temples, Eddie had piercing deep-brown eyes and stood an even five-foot-nine. He had been an all-state basketball player in high school, but had received no college scholarship offers because of his size. His mother, Annie, 63, gray-haired and tiny at 5’1 but ramrod straight, had made it plain that she wanted him out of the mountains nowhere near a mine, and that he had the grades to go anywhere. Deeply religious, she also made it plain that she expected him to faithfully attend church and keep the faith," no matter where he landed.

The day after his father’s near-fatal accident, she placed Army ROTC applications on his desk (actually a card table in his upstairs room in the modest story-and-a-half weather-boarded house). He had argued with her, declaring that he had to stay home and care for her as well as his father and his brother and sister because the sick benefits would not be enough. She would have none of it, told him she already had a job lined up in a local store, and that he would receive a monthly stipend from the army, besides his tuition and books. The notion that he would cross her merely crossed his mind, nothing more. He had worshiped both his parents, but made good grades mostly because his mother had let him know that’s what she expected. Neither she nor George Elwin had finished high school, and nobody in their families had made it to college. They still lived in the house in Hindman.

Eddie Amos drove the family’s 1970 Ford to Lexington a few days after graduation, took the appropriate tests and was enrolled for the fall term at the university as a Reserve Officer cadet, agreeing to the acceptance of a commission as a second lieutenant and three years active duty in the army upon graduation. He returned home for the summer, took a job as a laborer at one of the strip mines (his mother nixed any thought of a better-paying underground job) and gave nearly all his wages to his mother to keep things going. George Elwin was in and out of the hospital most of the summer.

When Eddie returned to Lexington at the end of August, he and the other cadets were reviled by many students and perhaps the majority of the of the faculty members in the anti-war tenor of the times immediately following the Vietnam War, upon occasion even taking on some of his tormentors physically. The UK ROTC facility had been burned some years before by students allegedly protesting the war. Fortunately, he was assigned a room in a dorm occupied by a number of Viet vets taking advantage of the GI Bill. The ex-GIs took no little pleasure in mopping up occasionally on especially the upper-class tormentors, who had sat out the conflict using the draft exemption awarded those attending college. Those earning Masters Degrees had dodged the draft for five or six years. Eddie joined in on many of the melees, and soon there were no longer any tormentors.

When the basketball coach discovered the all-state guard was on campus, he tried to talk Eddie into walking on, with the promise of a basketball scholarship the next year if he made good. Eddie said no thanks, and explained that he had made up his mind to find work—any kind of work that he could fit into his schedule—so that he could use his government stipend for necessities and send home the money he could earn. That’s what he did, washing dishes in restaurants, working in service stations and tobacco warehouses, waiting tables (something he hated passionately), and working in fast-food outlets. Since much of George Elwin’s medical treatment was not covered by insurance, the money Eddie sent home during the first two years of college made it possible for the family to get by. After that, his contributions helped the family get back on its feet, especially since there were extended layoffs at the mines, much of the nation’s coal production moving to western states where easily stripped seams of the ore ran from seven to fourteen feet thick, compared to the two to four feet in Kentucky. Eddie’s schedule allowed for little social life. It also didn’t (or he thought it didn’t) allow for church-going, either, so he drifted away from that habit of a lifetime. When he wasn’t working, he was studying, determined to make top grades in his double-major, history and political science, that would make his mother proud. Never fully rested, he stayed at the grind.

It was during one of his stints at a service station on Euclid Avenue near the campus during a cold day in February of his senior year that he met Tanya Condee, pretty and trim at five-feet-five, with dark brown eyes and hair, and a dimple in her right cheek. A sophomore at UK, she had parked her bright red, ’78, stick-shift Chevrolet Camaro convertible in the slot at the edge of the station’s entrance ramp, and when she attempted to start it after shopping at a nearby store, the only noise she could hear when she turned the key in the ignition was a muffled click. She tried a number of times and also pumped the accelerator, but all she heard were just the clicks. Eddie had stopped a short while before on his way to work to admire the sporty car, and stopped working on a flat tire when he noticed the pretty girl enter the car and try to start its engine. At about the same time he started toward the Camaro to see if he could help, Tanya, now furious, got out, slammed the door hard enough to rock the car and started walking toward the station. She walked up to him, pointed at the car and said, I have to be home in fifteen minutes and that damned thing won’t start. What do you think’s wrong with it?

Eddie Amos smiled, walked over and popped the hood. You been on any kind of trip today? he asked. And, if you have, did you notice any smell, like rotten eggs, maybe?

Well, I made a quick trip over to Louisville and back. That’s where I’d been when I parked the thing here. I did notice some kind of smell on the way back, and my eyes were watering a little, too, when I parked.

Lady, looks like you’ve got a cooked battery. See the little waterhole lids popped up there, Eddie said, pointing to the battery. Your eyes watered because of the fumes from the battery acid…sulfuric acid. And the little lids popped up because of the steam from the boiling water in the battery.

Okay, I got a cooked battery, whatever that is. Can you charge it or pop another one in there right away, so I can get outta here?

Not that simple, lady, answered Eddie, thinking this is one pretty lady. The reason the battery’s shot is that the voltage regulator in the alternator’s probably conked out and allowed too much juice to the battery, which caused it to blow up. I believe the voltage regulator’s inside it, so you’ll have to have a new alternator, too, but this car’s still under warranty, so all you have to do is take it…

What do you mean, ‘take it?’ Look, I need this car tonight. Got a big party on. Can you fix it or not? I’ll let my dad argue with the dealer over the warranty, she responded sharply, but thinking I’ve seen this guy somewhere…what dark eyes!

Most anybody with walkin’ around sense can put on an alternator and hook up a battery, lady, but it’ll take some time to get these off and it’ll take some time to get another alternator and get it on, although I’m sure the dealer or the parts stores have them. You’re not gonna be home in any fifteen minutes, though, maybe you better call…

I’ll decide if I need to call anybody or not, Tanya snapped, but I do need this car, and I am freezing, so if you have walkin’ around sense enough to fix it, how about it?

Eddie’s smile vanished. I don’t need this spoiled brat giving me a hard time—it’s already been a long day, he thought. I’ll get a couple guys to help me and we’ll push it into one of the bays over there and fix it up, he snapped back, then, felt a little ashamed and laughed. We wouldn’t want the lady to miss a party, now would we? Silence. Tanya’s body language indicated she was not amused. If you’re cold, there’s a chair or two in the station, and it’s warm in there. Eddie pointed toward the office and he and another attendant and the boss pushed the car into a service bay, where a gas furnace hanging from the ceiling raised the temperature by twenty degrees.

When the bay door was lowered, Tanya said, I’ll just watch if it’s okay. Maybe I can do this job myself the next time the thing quits on me—you know, acquire enough walkin’ around sense. She grinned. Look, I didn’t mean to snap at you back there. I was just cold and mad. Okay, I find this guy attractive, she thought, that’s the real reason.

Suit yourself, lady, but be careful. I sure don’t mind if she stays. You touch anything in here and no dry-cleaning will do any good. This is grease-monkey territory. Eddie laughed.

I’ll be careful, and my name is not lady. It’s Tanya.

I’m Eddie. As he worked on the car, Eddie and Tanya discovered they were both students, and had the kind of almost intimate conversation about their lives and interests that people have when they meet on planes or at ballgames or other events but never expect to see each other again. They realized that their backgrounds and circumstances were so different that they had absolutely nothing in common—the son of an ailing coal-miner and the daughter of a successful and wealthy lawyer. When he was finished and the car started easily an hour later, Eddie said, You can see the boss in the office there and get the bad news, though your lawyer dad will most certainly sweat it all out of the dealer…and I hope the party is a barrel of fun. He laughed. And if you have any more trouble, just bring it here…I’ve enjoyed our little grease-hour together.

That almost sounds like you’re asking me for a date, Tanya responded, laughing. He’s not just good looking, he’s fun, too. I believe I’d take him up on it…if he asked. She had told Eddie she remembered where she’d seen him, marching at the head of the ROTC unit at a ballgame. He was the cadet commander.

Afraid I don’t travel in your circles, responded Eddie, I fix the things but I don’t even own a car, but it’s been fun. Anyhow, I know she’s not the spoiled brat I thought she was…and I would like to ask her for a date…if I ever had the time and the money…but we’re oceans apart…not a chance.

Shortly after noon on this Monday, August 2, The Very Reverend Emory T. Wynn, dean and rector of St. Mark’s Cathedral (Episcopal) on Upper Street in downtown Lexington, was in his study rehashing in his mind the activities of the day before and planning for an evening meeting with the vestry when his secretary rang his phone and told him a young man wanted to see him. He instructed her to send in the visitor and invited the boy to take a chair just opposite his desk and tell him what was on his mind. The boy looked down at the floor, stammered a few times, and Wynn decided he would have to get the information through questions and answers. He started by asking the boy’s name.

Tyrone Brown, the African American boy answered. When asked by Wynn where he lived, Brown said he lived with his grandmother over on West Sixth Street, a low-income area populated mostly by blacks. Through further questioning, Wynn learned that the youngster’s mother was in and out at his grandmother’s and that his father had gone to Florida, at least as far as he knew. He hadn’t seen him for a number of years. When the boy stammered and continued to stare at the floor, Wynn didn’t dwell on what Tyrone’s mother did for a living, but was familiar with the pattern he saw developing, and was virtually certain the boy’s parents had never been married and that the mother was semi-homeless and most likely a druggie/prostitute. Wynn looked up and mouthed a silent thank you when Tyrone said he was the only person living with his grandmother, except, of course, during the times when his mother put in an appearance. The boy was sixteen and a year behind in school grade-wise, though Wynn suspected he was actually much farther behind in academic terms.

There was a period of silence and Wynn hoped the boy would open up. He didn’t, so the preacher asked, Have you been into drugs or do you have any friends who have been in trouble because of drugs? Drugs had been a problem for many years in the area where the boy lived, though not as bad as it was in the government-operated housing projects nearby, where shootings were not uncommon and where the drug trade was heavy, especially in crack cocaine, which was cheap but inevitably and disastrously addictive. Tyrone shook his head from side to side. Are you in trouble in school, Tyrone, or anything like that?

The boy looked up and nodded another no, but seemed to prefer answering questions rather than making statements. Wynn continued. Are you in trouble with the police? Again, no.Have youbeen fighting…are you scared of anyone? Again, Tyrone nodded no. Wynn didn’t quite know how to get at the next possibility and, so, just asked, Have you gotten a girl pregnant? Tyrone emphatically nodded a no. Wynn hated that he had had to ask that question but the illegitimacy rate among blacks was seventy percent nationally, and was high and climbing in the white community as well. The problem was acute in Lexington. Especially since the boy seemed totally without spirit and refused to look him in the eye, Wynn began to suspect what the trouble was and asked, Have you been…mistreated, Tyrone…you know, physically…mistreated?

The boy steadily stared at the floor, but managed to say, It’s Mr. George…he… Tyrone stopped and just sat. From his work with community agencies, Wynn knew that Marcus George was director of a city-funded program called Youth Initiative. It was designed to help underprivileged African-American boys improve their situations by furnishing them opportunities to work, as well as providing tutoring/mentoring/group-therapy activities carried out by George and his aides. It also conducted a condom-distribution program that had been a bone of contention among the city fathers/mothers. The newspaper had hailed it as practically the best thing since sliced bread, even though the illegitimacy and sexually-transmitted-disease rates had steadily risen. Wynn was conversant with the endeavor because he pastored a downtown church that conducted a number of activities designed to help the disadvantaged, most of whom were located in the inner city. He had met George and had talked with him on a number of occasions. Fifty-year-old Marcus George, an African American, had lobbied successfully for Youth Initiative as a city-financed agency twenty years before and had been its only director. It had been hailed in the local newspaper as an important part of the answer to a pernicious race problem the paper said was peculiar to only Lexington. Actually, Lexington had no worse race problem than any other similarly configured city, but the paper, part of a large ultra-liberal nationwide chain, managed to find some excuse for calling attention to this problem on practically a daily basis.

Wynn had heard rumors about YI, but had largely discounted them, since George’s reputation was beyond reproach, at least according to all the city representatives with whom he had talked. The dean decided to take a direct approach. Has Mr. George taken you to his house, Tyrone, and had you perform sexual acts on him. You know, has he unzipped his pants and…well, you know what? The boy nodded yes. Has he ever done that with you in his car or in the building where YI is located? Another yes. Has he had you take off all your clothes and then done things—different things—to you? The boy nodded. Old Marcus is pretty sure none of these kids would talk, but virtually certain nobody would believe them if they did, thought Wynn. He’s apparently so debauched that he probably thinks they enjoy this stuff. Besides, he’s known as a paragon of virtue in this community, helping the poor kids find their way. Nobody’d believe a kid like this, even if he went to the mayor, especially the mayor, since it’s a city program.

Has he given you money, Tyrone? The boy nodded in the affirmative. And was that money for work he said you had earned in other ways? Tyrone nodded yes. Do you know if Mr. George has done these things to other boys? Tyrone nodded yes. Has he? Tyrone nodded yes. Have you mentioned this to anyone else, anyone else at all? The boy nodded no. Have you mentioned coming here to anyone? The boy nodded no. Then, why did you come here today, Tyrone? How did you decide to stop here instead of maybe your own church…if you go to church?

I been goin’ to the summer school, or alternate school or some-thin’ like that from eight-thirty to twelve to see if I could get my grades up—Grandma made me go and I’ll be done with it Wednesday—and I ask one of my teachers, Mr. Gest, where would be…who would be somebody to talk to…if I ever had a problem. I didn’t tell ’im I had a problem. I just told ’im I’d like to know where to go if I ever needed to. He said to come here. I don’t go to church ’cept maybe once in a while, but my grandma…well, she goes every Sunday and every Wednesday and lotsa other times. I couldn’t never tell the preacher there this stuff. Mr. Gest said you’d tell me what to do if I ever needed help. He said he’d help me, too, but y’see, I couldn’t never tell him this stuff, either. Isee him every day, at least every day I’m at school. Jerry Gest was an active church member and one of Wynn’s closest friends. Tyrone seemed relieved to finally get the information out in the open, or maybe just to talk to someone he thought he could trust. You won’t tell anybody I was here, will ya? I’m not sure what might happen if it got out I’d done this. Mr. George can be kinda mean-like, y’see, and some o’ his men…they can scare you, especially this one big brother that drives a big car and has rings on all his fingers. Everbody call him Dude, or just Big Dude, nothin’ else. I saw ’im knock one o’ my buddies down once, and kick ’im, and scream at ’im…somethin’ like ‘you was supposed to be there and you didn’t show and that man was mad and he’d already paid me.’ I don’t know what he was talkin’ about, and my buddy—Timmy—wouldn’t tell me, but he was bad scared. Big Dude is big. I b’lieve he was a basketball player some time or other, maybe at the university. He always talkin’ about it. Mr. George told us to not never tell nobody what we saw unless we wanted Big Dude to come after us. I never told nobody ’cept you just now and you’d better not tell nobody.

Agitatedly, Wynn waited a moment, then said, When was the last time Mr. George…uh…when was the last time he had you do anything, you know, like I mentioned a while ago?

Yesterday. It was yesterday afternoon. He called me…said he was gonna pick me up and we’d ride around a little while, then maybe get somethin’ ta eat. He said it was part o’ my trainin’, like he always say.

Wasn’t that a little unusual? asked Wynn. I didn’t think YI did its work on Sundays. I thought it had all its activities during the week. Do you want to tell me about what you did yesterday…and where?

No, I don’t wanna talk about it. The boy was silent for a long moment. We finally went to his house.

Anybody else ride with you? Was anybody else at his house?

Nobody else ’cept Big Dude. He was at the house. Tyrone looked steadily at the floor.

Why do you suppose he was there? Did he say anything? Did he see anything? No answer. Wynn waited. Still no answer. Tyrone, you have to help me help you and maybe some other guys by telling me if Big Dude saw anything or said anything.

Tyrone didn’t look up, but said, He said somethin’ like, ‘It won’t be long till he’s ready there, Marcus,’ somethin’ like that. I was puttin’ on my clothes in th’other room, but I think he said somethin’ like that.

Wynn noticed that the boy was near tears, and they sat for a while in silence. Wynn got up and looked in his filing cabinet, where he was sure he had a copy of the authorization and requirements mandated by the city for Youth Initiative. Tyrone continued to look down, but was becoming more composed. I have a copy of the YI thing here Tyrone, and I’m looking to see what we might try, said Wynn. Did they ever tell you at YI that you would be dropped if you were ever expelled from school? Tyrone nodded yes. A short suspension—you know, something like making you stay home for three days for fighting or something—would not mean you had to drop out…right? Tyrone nodded yes. But being expelled would mean you had to be dropped…right? Tyrone nodded yes. But, even if you were expelled and dropped from YI and the school people changed their minds and let you back in, you still couldn’t get back in YI for a year. Is that right?

Tyrone looked up and said, I don’t know. I don’t believe I ever heard nobody say nothin’ ’bout that. He thought for a moment. But, a few o’ the brothers did get expelled—the talk was that it was just to scare up their folks to make ’em straighten ’em out—and then got back in school…but they didn’t get back in YI, so maybe that’s the way it is.

They didn’t get back in because the principle had to report them to Marcus George when he expelled them, and then the school personnel director—some folks call him the truant officer—had to make sure they didn’t get back in YI, said Wynn. That’s because the city set it up like that. I have the rules here. The city made it that way to help the schools by giving the YI boys a reason not to make trouble at school, and maybe even try to pass and graduate. Wynn read the requirement to Tyrone. The thing to do now, Tyrone, is just to go on home and don’t tell your grandma or anybody else you’ve been here. Just do like you always do. Get up and go to school in the morning. I’ll be in touch with you. The boy looked relieved, got up, and started to leave. Wynn stuck out his hand and they shook hands. Tyrone left without saying another word. Wynn made a mental note to talk to Jerry Gest at the meeting of the vestry that evening.

At age 47, with pastoral stints in both the Latin Quarter of New Orleans and the bowery section of New York City behind him, Emory Wynn thought he had seen about every vile thing there was to see in people, but sat for a moment and gnashed his teeth after the boy left. Still trim and muscular at 5’10", he had joined the Marines right out of high school and done a rough year in Vietnam, where he had earned a silver star and purple heart. He took advantage of the

GI Bill to get through his college work, took a year off to make sure of what he wanted to do, and then finished seminary in the early 80s.

After Eddie Amos had done his army tour during the Cold War years of 1979–82, serving in Germany and South Korea, he was discharged with the rank of captain. Upon his return, he had made his way through law school, doing much of the same kind of work he had done while in college. The difference that made it a bit easier was in the fact that he had saved some money and he didn’t have to help the family, since his father was working steadily at that time. During the three months or so after he met Tanya and before he left for active duty in 1979, he and she saw each other frequently on mostly an informal basis, such as at times when they would agree to meet in a restaurant or in the library.

Eddie hadn’t been able to get Tanya off his mind since the day he fixed her car and a few days later instigated their relationship by simply calling her at home and asking if he could see her. A few times, he managed to borrow a car from a buddy and ask her out for dates, but most of the time they just planned to do things together when they could meet somewhere. She would drive to a restaurant or movie and they would spend time talking and enjoying each other. She knew he had little in the way of finances and did not expect expensive dinners or gifts or entertainment. They also enjoyed the intimate moments, though they confined those to passionate kisses and embraces, and enjoyed simple things like hand-holding during their walks. Tanya invited Eddie to her home two or three times so her parents could meet him. By the time he left, they were serious and promised each other they would write. Both dated while they were apart, but wrote regularly for a year, during which Eddie had one furlough, but it came during the December holiday break when Tanya was vacationing with her family in Florida, so they got to see each other only a few times when she returned home. They even looked at engagement rings and discussed a summer wedding. From that December, they wrote practically daily until the next summer.

After that, Tanya’s letters became less frequent, their volume tapering off gradually. She finally wrote what GIs call a Dear John letter when Eddie was in Germany. What he didn’t know was that her mother had badgered her constantly about the relationship. Tanya met Caleb Handley mostly through arrangements made by her mother, a close friend of Caleb’s mother, and, in quiet frustration, at least initially, made him her steady, though she actually was fond of him. The relationship blossomed. They both graduated from UK in 1981 and were married while Caleb was in law school and Tanya was working on a masters in elementary education in early 1982, a few months before Eddie returned to Lexington and enrolled in law school.

Eddie had known Tanya’s mother didn’t approve of him, both by the way she treated him when he was at her house, and by Tanya’s own admission. Her father, Harry, went along with his wife, though he sort of liked Eddie and was impressed by his doggedness in supporting his family and getting his education. Tanya’s mother was a socialite and had ambitions for her daughter that did not include the possibility that she would be serious about a coal-miner’s son who she noticed had some grease under one fingernail when he was at her house. It never occurred to her that Eddie was a 3.8 student and spoke impeccable, though mountain-accented, English.

Eddie joined the commonwealth attorney’s office in Lexington after earning his law degree in 1985. Like many idealistic young lawyers, he wanted to prosecute criminals more than anything else and he rose to the number one assistant’s spot by 1991 and was put in charge of the most serious cases. In 1995, like many other public service workers, he admitted to himself that he was financially stuck after ten years of very hard work, and that the only way he could get ahead was to go into private practice. That’s when he joined with a law-school colleague in the partnership that had just gone under. He also admitted to himself that he would have done this much sooner if he had married, though he realized great satisfaction in putting criminals behind bars. Only rarely had he seen both Tanya and Caleb, who were childless, and certainly not on any social basis.

At 40, Caleb used reading glasses, was both balding and chubby, sported a well-groomed moustache, was wealthy in his own right, and had become a power in the Democrat Party. His work in corporate law did not often bring him into contact with prosecutors, so he saw Eddie mostly only as they passed in the hallways of the courthouses before Eddie left the prosecutor’s office. He knew about the relationship his wife and Eddie had had, but the two men frequently discussed points of law and even vied in the courtroom on cases, though not often, after Eddie’s entry into private practice. By Caleb’s body language and stilted tone, Eddie knew the other man thoroughly disliked him, probably resented the fact that he and Tanya had been close. Caleb was impressed with Eddie’s skills as a lawyer, but never mentioned this to anyone. Tanya at 40 had kept her good looks, had always been rich, and had an administrative job in the school system. Eddie had heard the rumors that she and Caleb had a very strained marriage, in part at least because of his heavy drinking. He was a perfect gentleman when sober, but could be extremely abusive, verbally but not physically, when drinking. Sailors would say he just couldn’t hold his liquor. Though not a prude, Eddie believed firmly in the motto adopted in 1898 by the U.S. Army military academy at West Point: Duty, Honor, Country. Though he had loved Tanya (and sometimes wondered if he still did) and she had affirmed her love for him in her letters, he never made any effort to see her after he returned and found that she was married. To have done so would have been dishonorable. As a practical matter, approaching her would have been dumb, but without his principles, shaped by the motto and his religious mother, he probably would have tried. He had never found anyone else…or seriously tried.

In the four years Eddie and his partner were together, Eddie won the Tonlin case as well as most of the other cases he tried, though most were settled out of court, everything from messy divorce cases, which he hated, to lawsuits over wills, accident injuries and property matters. He hated the work. The cases he hated the most were the ones involving criminal behavior. He did as every other law-yer—simply operated on the basis of what the clients told him. He could spot the liars—he’d had plenty of experience—but he still had to defend them against local prosecutors who were often inept and uninterested. This went against his grain. He had a weakness that militated against making money. He took pro bono cases for people who needed help but couldn’t pay for it. This included everything from child custody matters to false criminal charges. He was successful more often than not, but there was no money in these often time-consuming cases. The partner took few of them, and was far more financially successful than Eddie, but he complained constantly that pro bono work subtracted from the overall profits. The partner’s divorce precipitated the breakup of the business, but he had already decided that he would have to get rid of Eddie.

This would not have been so bad, since Eddie had managed to sock away $200,000 in cash and investments during his days as a prosecutor and another $60,000 in the private practice and was into a mutual fund that was increasing exponentially, but the partner and the secretary-bookkeeper, who were having an affair that precipitated the divorce, had set up a system that essentially allowed them to embezzle practically all the firm’s liquid assets, though they were actually stealing from themselves, but from Eddie, as well. They had also mishandled a number of trusts, stealing as much as they could before the breakup. The upshot was that Eddie was left holding the bag and had to make good nearly all they stole.

After taking care of the employees who lost their jobs, and otherwise doing what was necessary to liquidate the remnants of the law firm when his partner dropped out, leaving a huge backlog of untended cases of which Eddie was unaware, he had only a few thousand dollars left. Indeed, some of his former partner’s clients had threatened to sue Amos for malpractice, though nothing had happened since the breakup two months before. The cases were farmed out to other lawyers, and the clients, if they had sued, would have found slim pickings, in any case.

His apartment was in the Chevy Chase area, an older neighborhood just southeast of the business section and the university, and Eddie often dropped in at a small restaurant on High Street called simply Mona’s Place. Its proprietor was 38-year-old Mona Mundy, an attractive widow who had moved from Bardstown ten years before with her husband and son, Jared, now sixteen, when the couple started the restaurant. The husband, Larry Mundy, had been killed in a freak accident in 1995, when his car was broad-sided at the corner of High and South Ashland by a car driven by a drunk university student. The student got three years on a reckless homicide charge, reduced in a plea bargain from a much more serious charge, and was out in less than two. The business catered to mostly residents of the neighborhood and students who deserted their cafeteria cards occasionally for a burger and some fries.

For a time after her husband’s death, Mona debated whether or not to close the business and find a job in Lexington or return to Bardstown, as her mother, also a widow, wanted her to do. She finally decided to continue the business, serving only breakfast and lunch, and had made a go of it, though it provided little more than a comfortable subsistence for her and Jared. They lived in an apartment over the restaurant. Eddie had known the family practically ever since the business was opened. As he walked the four blocks from his apartment to the restaurant for lunch about one o’clock—man, is it ever hot—he thought about Mona. She’s finally about out of her shell, I believe, but a long way from any kind of relationship, serious or otherwise. Mona had become bitter after her husband’s death—not unkind or insensitive to other people—just bitter.

She had never removed her wedding ring, and had firmly repulsed the efforts of a number of men, who knew her circumstances, to date her. Eddie was attracted to her, but was astute enough just to be friendly. In the process, they had become accustomed to bantering back and forth when he came in. She had no formal education beyond high school, but was witty, a sharp businesswoman, very good at what she did and had begun laughing again with the customers.

Part of Mona’s bitterness derived from the fact that the 22-yearold university senior who killed her husband had received little more than a slap on the wrist. Eddie was still in