Chapter 5-1
1000 Words
5
Come nine a.m. on Monday, Roger was presumably standing before a judge in Hendersenville. I was once again standing behind a spartan table in a tiny cinder block room at WFC, smiling at the guard who led Jerome in for our visit. The uniformed man didn’t smile back.
“Wasting your time there. Dude’s face would break if he smiled,” Jerome said. “I’m surprised to see you back so soon.”
“Couldn’t stay away,” I said. “Must be your charming personality. Tell me about Trevor Rose.”
“Little bastard,” he said. “I never did like him.”
“You say you don’t like him, and he’s practically a kid compared to you and Kevin. So how’d he end up running with you that day?”
Jerome actually took the time to consider the question. Not that it helped. “Damned if I know. I’ll be honest. I was kinda f****d up. More so than usual. I do know he wasn’t tight with Kevin, either. Trevor used to live in the neighborhood, and he was always hanging around, wanting to be part of whatever was going on. Hadn’t seen him in a long while, but maybe he was just there when we was getting ready to leave.”
“And you just let him tag along? What, you were feeling nostalgic?” I asked, skeptical.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Doesn’t sound like me.”
Jerome closed his eyes. He set his clasped hands on the table between us, and if I hadn’t known better I would have thought he was praying.
“Motherfucker had the gun!” he burst out, opening his eyes. It was a profane revelation, but a revelation nonetheless.
“Trevor did?”
“Hell, yeah. I was getting ready to go pick up Kevin, and Trevor stopped me. First, he wanted to have a little party. Told him I done had all the weed I needed. He laughed, said he had something else. Something special. Trying to impress me. So we popped a few pills.”
“What kind of pills?” I asked.
“Hell, it could have been aspirin for all I know. We hung out for a little while, and then I said I was leaving. Trevor said he wanted to go along. I asked why I should let him, and he said ‘cause he’d drive. I probably woulda run over my own mother driving, the state I was in, but I said we weren’t going to no goddamned country club. We didn’t need a chauffeur. Then he says, what if I bring a piece?”
“You didn’t have a gun?” I asked.
Jerome shook his head. “I coulda got one. Anytime I wanted. But I never did. I did some stupid s**t, but never with a gun. It’s the one promise I always kept to my mom.”
“Until you shot Mr. Perry,” I said.
Jerome glared at me. My crude reminder hadn’t scored any points with him, but he was writing a new story in his head and I wanted to nip that in the bud. At least until he finished telling this one.
“Whatever,” he said. “Kevin and I, we were just gonna snatch s**t and run. You can get a pretty good haul with two of you working together, especially if one of you’s willing to rough up the clerk a little.”
“But Trevor offered a gun and you said okay?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I said fine, and then I even let him drive the car.”
“Did you tell him where to go?” I asked.
Jerome’s brow wrinkled and he made a face like a Shar-Pei tasting something nasty. “I guess so.”
“Jerome, don’t say yes just to give me an answer. If you don’t know, or you don’t remember, that’s fine. Tell me what your gut says, not what your head thinks must be true.”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember, but my gut says I didn’t tell him, even though that doesn’t make sense.”
“Okay. So you were going to pick up Kevin. Had you already decided what store you were going to hit?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, how did you usually do it?”
Jerome leaned forward, pissed. “There was no usually about it. We didn’t usually steal s**t. You think just ‘cause I’m a black man—”
“No, I think ‘cause I’ve seen your priors, and ‘cause you don’t strike me as being stupid enough to always get caught, so I know you’ve got to have a few more under your belt. So, I’m asking again, what did you usually do?”
Jerome turned his head toward the door, as if about to call for the guard. Instead, he smiled. “A’right. So Kevin and I, it was an impulse thing for us when we were between jobs. Most of the time, we’d just get in the car and drive around. If something struck our fancy, we’d pull over and hit it. Snatch and run, like I said. Keep it small enough and leave the cash drawer, sometimes they don’t even bother to report it. Not worth the trouble.”
“So why’d you decide to go big this time?”
“I don’t know, man! That’s what I keep telling you—I can’t f*****g remember!”
A moment later, Officer Smiley’s face appeared in the window. I was afraid Jerome’s yelling had brought him by, but he held up five fingers. I smiled and nodded, and he walked slowly away, eyes locked on us until he was gone.
“Guy makes me nervous,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell your previous attorney about the gun coming from Trevor?”
“He never asked.”
I rolled my eyes and tried not to grind my teeth.
“What?” Jerome asked indignantly. “It’s the truth. He never asked questions the way you did, and I sure as hell don’t think about that day on my own. I do everything I can to forget it.”
“Yeah, well, if that keeps your mouth shut, that’s great. But when it comes to talking with me, try to save your forgetting until after the trial. I’ll be back to see you again soon.”
“Who else you gonna see?”
“I gotta pick up some records—”
“What the hell you need paper for? You’re just like all the rest of them. You’re not really working my case—you’re just billing hours.”
Yeah, and I’d be billing the special pain-in-the-ass rate for dealing with him. “Jerome, you win and lose cases with paper, with the details that can’t be changed, not the he said-she said bullshit testimony that any juror with a bit of sense isn’t going to believe. But don’t worry—I got plenty of people to talk to, too.” I waved a couple of pages of names and addresses. “I also need to find out if there’s any leverage we can use on Trevor Rose. You have any connections with his family?”
Jerome laughed. “s**t, I didn’t even know his last name until we were arrested. Sprouted from a tree for all I know.”
Lord save me from helpful clients.
- Writer
