Page 94 of The 1 Lawyer

He dangled that, trying to goad me into speaking. I knew better.

When I didn’t respond, McGuire slammed his fist on the table, knocking over my coffee. The movement took me by surprise; I almost jumped out of my chair.

As the puddle of cold coffee spread across the table, he stood and shouted, “Goddamn it, you candy-ass lawyer! Since when have you got nothing to say? You think you’re being smart?”

Sweeney picked up the Miranda waiver to keep it dry. In a humorless voice, he said, “McGuire, sit down.”

They kept me in the interrogation room for a long time, going off on tangents and then returning to the same questions.

I was rattled, but I hadn’t lost my mind. Not yet. I knew to hang tough. I kept my mouth shut.

CHAPTER 74

WHEN THEY escorted me out of the interrogation room, I expected to be transported to the county jail in Gulfport. It was a big jailhouse; Rue was currently one of around eight hundred inmates there.

But they took me deep inside the Biloxi jail to the medium-security detention area. In my defense experience, I’d seen it used as a temporary holding place for people who’d been arrested and were waiting to be brought before a judge. I’d interviewed clients there, so I knew that in this part of the jail system, prisoners were kept in single cells.

Funny thing was, though, I had a cellmate.

He lay stretched out on the only cot, grinning at me. He said, “Looks like they’re double-booked at the city jail.”

I stood in the center of the tiny cell, which was furnished with the cot and a toilet bowl and nothing else. Having represented criminal inmates for fifteen years, I wasn’t surprised by the primitive accommodations; I just didn’t know where I was supposed to sit my ass down.

My cellmate sat up in bed, scooted around, and dropped his bare feet onto the floor. He patted the end of the mattress he had just vacated. “Join me?”

That wasn’t happening. I checked out the toilet—metal; no seat or lid—and swiftly glanced away. I backed up, slid down the wall of painted concrete blocks, and squatted on my haunches. The cell floor made for a dirty seat, but it was a better option than the toilet.

I wondered how long I would remain in the city lockup. Maybe, I reasoned, they were taking me before a judge. With luck, I’d have a chance to bond out. I didn’t have much cash in the bank or any liquid assets, but I had some equity in the house. It might be enough, depending. And in the worst-case scenario, I could appeal to my father.

And then I recalled that Rue’s bond amount had been set at seven hundred fifty thousand dollars. Could I afford a bail bondsman’s percentage fee on a figure like that? Maybe I was being overly optimistic.

My cellmate said in a cordial tone, “I’m Lou. You might as well get comfortable. You’re not going anywhere for a while.”

I wondered how he knew that, but I wasn’t disposed to ask him. Suddenly, I realized that I was weary, bone-tired. It felt like the adrenaline that had fueled me until now suddenly ran dry. I slid all the way down to the floor and rested my head against the wall.

God, I wanted a drink. The thirst for alcohol came out of nowhere and hit me hard. I was in no danger of falling off the wagon, though, not on these premises. I tried to ignore the craving. I said, “I’m Stafford Lee.”

Lou regarded me with undisguised curiosity. “What are you in here for? Some kind of white-collar crime? You look like a better class of felon than the rest of us.”

Did I? I felt lower than a snake’s belly.

I turned my attention to Lou. We were dressed identically, living proof that scrubs were not one-size-fits-all. Lou was probably half a foot shorter than me, so the length of his pants wasn’t a problem, but he was about seventy pounds heavier, and his soft gut hung over the elastic waistband.

Lou laughed and said, “I bet you were caught for some kind of scam—maybe a Ponzi thing. You look like you could sweet-talk old ladies into signing over their life savings.”

He clearly thought that he was paying me a high compliment. I just shook my head.

Suddenly, his face lit up. “Holy shit! You’re that lawyer, aren’t you?”

I groaned. It had been too much to hope for, that the orange scrubs and clogs would provide anonymity.

Lou was excited by his realization. “Don’t tell me your last name, I’ll think of it. You won a big trial a while back. Penney! You’re Stafford Lee Penney.”

Reluctantly, I nodded. I could hardly deny it. My presence in the jailhouse would be common knowledge in Harrison County soon, if it wasn’t already.

“I’m in here on a parole violation,” he volunteered. “I pissed hot on my drug test. Hey, you’d know if there was some way to beat a bad urine test, wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t ask the nature of the charge he’d done time on prior to parole. His hands, the palms and fingers, were cracked, marked with dark lines, like a car mechanic’s. If I’d had to guess, I’d have figured him for property crimes. Maybe a fence, dealing in resale of stolen goods, like scrap metal or copper or even catalytic converters—the metals they contained made them big items on the black market. He looked like a guy who ran a chop shop, dismantling stolen cars and selling the parts. Maybe he was a small player in a broader enterprise of organized crime.

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