Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 02 - FINAL ARGUMENT - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

off. If they give you a hard time, call Kenny Buckram at the PD’s office—he’ll help. Then call the state attorney’s office, Fourth District. There was an aggravated battery case nolle-prossed back in ‘79. The accused was our client, Jerry Lee Elroy. I need to know the woman ASA who prosecuted and dropped the case. See if she’s still around.”
    Ruby looked up from her shorthand pad. “Will you need a hotel room?”
    “Yes, in town, not the beach. And I’m not finished. Call FSP in Raiford. There was a man named Darryl Morgan committed to death row in April 1979.” I took a deep breath. “I need to know what happened to him.”
    “What do you mean?” Ruby asked.
    “Was he executed or not. And who handled his appeals.” Even if Morgan was dead, I was obligated to set the record straight.
    “Did you say ‘79 or ‘89?”
    “ Seventy-nine , Ruby.”
    “That’s twelve years ago. Why wouldn’t they have executed him?”
    “Just find out,” I said, and turned away.
    At six o’clock I was still reviewing the file when Ruby bounced in, clutching her steno pad and a sheet of yellow legal paper.
    “I booked you on two flights on Wednesday—USAir 456 at three forty-five and Delta 1088 at five. Confirm with your credit card number two hours ahead of time. You do that, you can just show up and run on board. You’re in the Marina Hotel, eighty-nine dollars with a king-size bed. That’s a corporate rate. Did you want a rental car the other end?”
    “Yes, if I go.”
    “I reserved National. A compact. You get mileage on your One Pass frequent flier program.” Pleased, she looked back at the steno pad.
    “The prosecutor in the Elroy case was named Muriel M. Suarez. She’s still there. Floyd J. Nickerson left the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in 1980. They didn’t choose to tell me where he is now, or maybe they really don’t know. I put in a call to Mr. Buckram at the public defender’s office, but he was in Tallahassee for the day. I left a message with his secretary for him to call you at home tonight up to eleven P.M. Was that okay?”
    “Fine,” I said. My heartbeat was accelerating. The worst for the last. She was torturing me because I’d made her stay in the office so late.
    She read from her notes. “Darryl Arthur Morgan entered FSP 24 April 1979. Appeal to the Florida Supreme Court in June 1981— that was denied. Court of Appeals, Second District, filed on the basis of previous incompetent counsel—also denied. That’s 1983. Public defender handling it all. Appeal to the Eleventh Circuit in Tampa, denied in 1985. Atlanta, Federal Court of Appeals, application denied. We’re up to 1988. Application for cert with the U.S. Supreme Court—naturally, denied. The governor signed the death warrant on October 2, 1990. Scheduled for execution, assuming no relief in the trial court, on April 11 of this year, 1991. One more appeal for postconviction relief to the trial court in Jacksonville. Original trial judge no longer on the bench, case will go to another judge. Decision pending.”
    I said quietly, “You’re telling me that Morgan is still alive.”
    Ruby said, “He better be, because if they find out a dead man’s making all these appeals, they’re going to be seriously pissed off.”

Chapter 5

    BEFORE WORLD WAR II, my father had been an insurance salesman in the Bronx. He spent the war as a clerk at a naval base in Virginia, and in 1945 his insurance company asked him to start a branch office in Jacksonville.
    Sylvia Jaffe, my mother, said, “Miami would be acceptable, Leonard. But Jacksonville? Who ever heard of it? Where in Florida is this place?”
    “An industrialized city, in the north of the state,” he reported. “On the beach. A short drive anyway.”
    “Did you know,” he said to us on the train ride down, “that once upon a time there were Indians in Florida, just like in the Tom Mix movies?”
    Neither my younger sister, Rhoda, nor I had known that.
    “And that