The Further Tales of Tempest Landry Read Free Page B

police to arrest him.”
    “Why didn’t she call the cops, then?” Tempest said. “Why she turn around and kill him?”
    “It was a cold night,” I said, remembering the tear-strained words. “They were on the stern deck of the ferry looking out over the water. It was dark and they were the only ones standing outside. Ezzard was succumbing to the drug and was drunk. He kissed Fredda and told her that he loved her and made gestures as if he wanted to have sex with her right there. She became enraged and pushed him away. Because of the inebriation he stumbled backward, fell against the rail, and went over the side into the water.
    “The moment he fell she screamed for help. People came and she told them that you—he—fell overboard. But it was already too late. No one had seen it happen. He was gone.”
    “But if she told them I was dead, then why the cops come after me?”
    “They thought she was lying, that she was trying to make them think that you had died. She has a boyfriend now, you know.”
    “She does?”
    “He doesn’t know that she comes to visit you. But she’s afraid he might find out.”
    “Why she come then?”
    “She didn’t say but I believe that it is a combination of guilt and gratefulness.”
    “Grateful for what?”
    “She believes that you could have told the police about her, that you could have blamed her for harboring you, for helping you avoid arrest. She feels terrible that she almost murdered you and humbled that you forgave her. She wants to succor you but loves this new man and fears that if he finds out that he will leave her.”
    The crease that showed only rarely on Tempest’s brow became mortally apparent. He heard her sins and worried over them, where, over the impossible span of eternity, I had only passed judgment.
    When he looked into my eyes he was no longer Ezzard Walcott nor was he a prisoner. I was not an angel or a man or an agent of damnation. He nodded at me, one being to another, and I returned the gesture because it was expected.
    “Time’s up, Walcott,” a guard said.
    Tempest glanced over his shoulder and then back at me.
    “I understand,” I said. “I’ll do what I can.”
    “Did she give you anything?”
    “Yes.”
    Tempest laughed again.
    “I spend so much time arguin’ with you over sin that I lose track and don’t even worry about my own predicament.”
    I smiled and nodded.
    The guard put a hand on Tempest’s shoulder.
    He cradled the phone and got to his feet.
    As they led him away I felt that crease in my own forehead. It was sympathy for someone living under the strain of blind justice. Heaven was lucky that day that I, for all intents and purposes a fallen angel, was not in the position to pass judgment on Infinity.

The Court Allows
    It took seven months to get a hearing set for Tempest Landry (aka Ezzard Walcott). I had discovered from my talks with Fredda Lane that Dominique Hart, Ezzard’s side girlfriend, had been with him on the night that Ezzard was supposed to have beaten and killed F. Anthony Chambers, a part-time security guard at World Emporium in the Bronx.
    Dominique and Ezzard had gone to a motel in New Jersey to spend the night together while Ezzard’s regular girlfriend was looking after her mother who had complications stemming from her asthma.
    Dominique had not been called by the public defender because he felt that the court would see her testimony as an attempt to use Ezzard’s friend to provide an unbelievable alibi.
    I hired a lawyer and together we found the motel records proving that Ezzard was where he said at the time of the crime. I thought that all we had to do was present the papers to the court and Tempest would be freed but this was not the case.
    “The system of American justice is byzantine, Mr. Angel,” the lawyer, Myron Ball, told me. “It’s more about bureaucracy than justice. Once the alleged crime has been transformed into a sentence, it is the ruling that must be disproved, not the facts