“Oh, yeah!” he said, pointing at me. “I remember you! That murder, the preacher, right? That was something. Big news.”
“Yeah,” I said, “big news.”
“I ain’t heard of you since. Where you been?”
“Sabbatical,” I said.
“What?”
“Tommy,” Mooney said, “how about a couple of club sandwiches and a couple of Cokes? Is that okay with you, Joe?”
“Sure.”
He kept fiddling with a saltshaker with his right hand. After Hodges left, Mooney regarded me with a puzzled look.
“I always wondered why you were on the other side,” he said as soon as Hodges left the room. “I thought you would have made a great prosecutor.”
“The reason isn’t exactly noble. It came down to money. When I graduated from law school, I wanted to work for the DA’s office. I even went for an interview. But the starting salary was less than twenty-five grand, and I already had a wife and two kids to support. I figured I could make double that practicing on my own, so I told myself I’d learn the law from the other side and then try to get on with the DA after I made some money.”
“And before you knew it your lifestyle grew into your income.”
“Exactly.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“A combination of things, I guess. It always bothered me that I knew my clients were lying to me, or at least most of them. And I was constantly at war with somebody-cops, prosecutors, judges, witnesses, guards at the jails, you name it. I got tired of it. But the bottom line, I think, was that I felt like I was doing something wrong.”
“Wrong? How so?”
“Some of the people I helped walk out the door were guilty. They knew it, and so did I.”
Mooney shifted in his chair a little and looked down at the saltshaker. “You defended Billy Dockery once, didn’t you?” he said.
“He was the beginning of the end of my career as a criminal defense lawyer,” I said.
“Alexander Dunn told me you were at his trial.”
“I was curious.”
“How’d Alexander do? It was his first big felony trial.”
“The odds were against him.”
There wasn’t any point in telling him that Alexander was terrible and that he constantly referred to Cora Wilson as “the victim in this case” instead of by name. Even when he did mention her name, he referred to her twice as “Ms. Williams” instead of “Ms. Wilson.”
“So what are you really looking for, Joe?”
“It’s pretty simple. I want to do something that keeps me interested, and I want to do something that doesn’t make me feel like puking every time I look in the mirror.”
Mooney sat back and smiled. “You looking to make amends?”
“Maybe. Something like that.”
“You have to understand that Baker didn’t leave me with much,” he said, speaking of his predecessor. “He was so paranoid that he ran off every competent lawyer in the office. All that’s left are a bunch of kids learning on the fly.”
“Do you have anything open?” I said. I knew the budget in the DA’s office was tight. State legislators tend to look at the criminal justice system as a bastard stepchild, a necessary evil, when it comes to funding.
“Not right now,” Mooney said, “but I’ll make room for you if you can wait a couple of weeks. I was planning to fire Jack Moseley as soon as I could find someone to replace him.”
“Jesus, Lee, I don’t want to cost anybody their job.”
“Moseley’s a drunk. Shows up late for work half the time, doesn’t cover his cases, pinches the secretaries on the ass. Last month he disappeared for three days. We found him holed up at the Foxx Motel with a gallon of vodka and an empty sack of cocaine.”
“I don’t remember reading about that in the paper,” I said.
Mooney winked. “Sometimes what the people don’t know won’t hurt them. I would’ve fired him months ago if I’d had another warm body. The job’s yours if you want it.”
“Exactly what would I be doing?”
“I’ve been thinking about that ever since you called. The best use for you would be to work the violent felonies, the worst ones. Murders, aggravated rapes, armed robberies. Dangerous offenders only.”
I let out a low whistle. “Some job description.”
“You really want to do something that makes you feel good? Here’s your chance. You can make sure dangerous people wind up in jail, where they belong. I’ll keep your caseload as light as I can so you can do it right.”
“I guess it’ll include death penalty cases,” I said. I’d spent a great deal of my legal career trying to ensure that the state didn’t kill people. If I took this job, I knew I’d soon be making some difficult choices.
“We haven’t had a death penalty case since Deacon left the office,” Mooney said. “What’s the point? The state’s only executed one person in forty years, and there’s nobody in Nashville raising hell about it. I guess the legislature wants to have the death penalty in Tennessee but not have to worry about enforcing it.”
“It’ll change soon,” I said. “We have a tendency to be bloodthirsty.”
“Look at it this way: You’ll be doing the same thing you did so well for all those years, practicing criminal law. The difference will be that you’ll be working with the good guys, and you’ll have the manpower and resources of the great state of Tennessee behind you. The pay is good, there’s no overhead, and you get four weeks of vacation, state health and retirement benefits, the whole ball of wax.”
I sat back and thought for a moment. The money didn’t matter that much. Both of my kids had earned scholarships that paid a significant amount of their college expenses. Our house was paid for and we had a fair amount stashed away. I’d already called both of the kids and discussed the possibility of going to work for the district attorney. Both were in favor, as was Caroline. All that was left was for me to take the plunge and see what happened.
“You make it sound like easy money,” I said.
Mooney nodded his head. “There you go. Easy money. Piece of cake. Come by and see me Monday and we’ll get the paperwork rolling. You start in sixteen days.”
Bjorn Beck glanced at the side-view mirror and watched briefly as the road stretched out behind him into the distant mountains. He looked forward, and then back again. He thought about the constant balance between what lay ahead and what lay behind. How poignant, he thought, this moment of pondering the future and the past. For Bjorn, ahead was his new life in the way of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Behind was the ignorance and intemperance of youth.
Bjorn’s life was now filled with church activities. He was required to attend five meetings each week: the public talk on Sunday, the Watchtower study, the theocratic ministry school, the service meeting, and the book study. During these meetings, the doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was being ingrained into his open mind. Already he’d learned that he was no longer required to salute the flag of any nation. He wasn’t required to serve in the military or vote. His only allegiance was to Jehovah, the king of kings. He would no longer celebrate Christmas or New Year’s or the Fourth of July or Halloween. The only cause for special celebration would be the anniversary of Christ’s death during Passover. Bjorn found the break from traditional Christianity-and American life-liberating.
Bjorn, his wife, Anna, and their two children, six-year-old Else and seven-month-old Elias, had spent the day at a church-sponsored convention at a place called Freedom Hall in Knoxville, Tennessee. Bjorn had been a convert for only eight months. He’d listened closely to the speakers, eager to absorb the words and ideas that would make him a better pioneer, a better servant of the church, and a better person.
