Amos grew up dirt poor in rural Georgia and had known hunger as a child. His close friends were all black, and as a small kid he was angered by their mistreatment. As a teenager, he began to understand racism and its insidious effects on black people. Though he didn’t understand the word “liberal,” he grew up to become quite a radical. A high school biology teacher recognized his aptitude and steered him to college. Otherwise, he would have spent his life working the peanut fields with his friends.
Amos was a legend in the confined world of death penalty defense. For thirty years he had waged war on behalf of cold-blooded killers who were guilty of crimes that often defied description. To survive, he had learned to take the crimes, put them in a box, and ignore them. The issue wasn’t guilt. The issue was giving the state, with its flaws, prejudices, and power to screw things up, the right to kill.
And he was tired. The work had finally beaten him down. He had saved many lives, lost his share along the way, and in doing so built a nonprofit that attracted enough money to sustain itself and enough talent to keep up the fight. His fight was fading fast, though, and his wife and doctor were badgering him to slow down.
His office was legendary too. It was a bad imitation of 1930s Art Deco that had been expanded and whittled down over the decades. A car dealer built it and once sold new and used Pontiacs along “Auto Row” on Summer Avenue, six miles from the river. With time, though, the dealerships moved on, fled farther east like most of Memphis, and left behind boarded showrooms, many of which were bulldozed. Amos saved the Pontiac place at an auction that attracted no one but him. His mortgage was guaranteed by some sympathetic lawyers in Washington. He cared nothing for style, appearances, and public perception, and he had little money for renovations. He needed a large space with utilities, nothing else. He wasn’t trying to attract clients because he had more than he could handle. The death penalty wars were raging and the prosecutors were on a roll.
Amos spent a few bucks on paint, drywall, and plumbing, and moved his growing staff into the old Pontiac place. Almost immediately the lawyers and paralegals at CDI adopted a defensive attitude toward their sparse and eclectic workplace. Who else practiced law in a converted bay where they once changed oil and installed mufflers?
There was no reception area because there were no visiting clients. They were all on death row or some other unit in prisons from Virginia to Arizona. A receptionist was not needed because guests were not expected. Mitch rattled the bell on the front door, stepped into an open area that was once a showroom, and waited for human contact. He was amused by the decor, which was primarily posters advertising shiny new Pontiacs from decades earlier, calendars dating to the 1950s, and a few framed headlines of cases in which the CDI had managed to save a life. There were no carpets, no rugs. The floors were quite original — shiny concrete with permanent stains of paint and oil.
“Good morning,” said a young lady as she hustled by with a stack of papers.
“Good morning,” Mitch replied. “I’m supposed to see Amos Patrick at nine o’clock.”
She had merely greeted him and had not offered to help. She managed a tense smile as if she had better things to do, and said, “Okay, I’ll tell him, but it might be a while. We’re in the middle of a bad morning.” She was gone. No invitation to have a seat, certainly no offer of coffee.
And what, exactly, might constitute a bad morning in a law firm where every case dealt with death? In spite of the tall front windows with plenty of sunlight, the place had a tense, almost dreary feel to it, as if most days began badly with the lawyers up early and fighting deadlines across the country. There were three plastic chairs in a corner with a coffee table covered in old magazines. The waiting room, of sorts. Mitch sat down, pulled out his phone, and began checking emails. At 9:30, he stretched his legs, watched the traffic on Summer Avenue, called the office because it was expected, and fought off irritation. In his world of clock-driven precision, being half an hour late for an appointment was rare and expected to occur only with a suitable explanation. But he reminded himself that this was a pro bono matter and he was donating his time.
At 9:50, a kid in jeans stepped around a corner and said, “Mr. McDeere, this way.”
“Thanks.”
Mitch followed him out of the showroom and past a large counter where, according to a faded sign, they once sold auto parts. They went through a wide swinging door and into a hallway. The kid stopped at a closed door and said, “Amos is waiting.”
