A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases (35 page)

Pictures of his son, the baseball team he played on and their national team that they had last summer."

"What did Gabby tell you Christmas Eve about the trophy case?"

"He said, Some people live and strive for what I have here' and he pointed to his trophy case to have a lot of trophies to really make something out of themselves, but I have a whole trophy case full and I have what I wanted in that department and in my other department I would like Jerilee." What he wanted was Jerilee, that was his biggest goal."

"How old were you at the time?"

"I was twenty-one."

"How old was he?"

"Approximately forty-four."

"Did you shoot Morris Blankenbaker?"

"No, I did not."

"Did you at any time intend for him to die?"

"No, not at any time in my mind did I intend for Morris Blankenbaker to die."

"Did you know that your brother was going to kill him?"

"Not at no time did I know that my brother, Anthony Pleasant, was going to shoot Morris Blankenbaker."

"Did you shoot Talmadge Glynn Moore?"

"No, at no time did I shoot Mr. Moore."

"Did you want Mr. Moore to be dead?"

"No, I did not."

Angelo Pleasant and his attorneys had taken a calculated risk when he decided to testify. Now, the danger was at hand. Jeff Sullivan rose to cross-examine Turfy. There were so many lies and half truths to cut out of the defendant's direct testimony and hold up for the jury to see.

Within the first few minutes of Sullivan's cross examination, the first lie popped up. Turfy admitted that he had lied to police about the time he had left Gabby Moore's house on Christmas Eve. "Actually," Sullivan moved in, "the first three or four or five contacts that you had with the police you admitted whatever you thought they already knew. Is that right?"

"Yes."

Regarding the February 27 taped confessions, the prosecutor asked, "Anybody beat you or force you to make those statements?"

"Didn't nobody beat me."

"Did they force you to make the statements?"

"No force."

Grudgingly, Turfy answered questions about Gabby Moore's plans for murder. "He talked to you about those plans, didn't he?"

"He talked at me."

"But you listened, didn't you?"

"I was there in his house."

"He had a plan to kill Morris Blankenbaker when he came home from work, didn't he?... How many other plans did he have?"

"Two other plans.

Every Tuesday, Morris went to the "Y" with his so nand to have him shot in front of his son, Rick, but if Rick wasn't with him to just shoot him going to the "Y" and to take out his wallet and make it look like a robbery. And another one that I remember was that Jerilee and Morris went to work about five minutes apart in the morning. After Jerilee went, [I was] to park off of Naches and to walk up to the house. .. and knock on the door."

"And actually shoot him at the front door?"

"Or step into his house. .."

The final plan had been the one that transpired. Only Turfy denied that he had been the shooter. He was certainly familiar with all the details.

"He suggested to me that whoever did it that he would like him shot once by the heart and once if he fell, then to walk up to him and put one in the back of his head."

"And you shot him in the head?"

"No."

"He was shot in the head?"

"Yes."

"I mean he was shot just like that plan, wasn't he?"

"He wasn't shot in the heart," Turfy blurted, "so I feel that's not exactly like what he was talking to me about."

"I see," Sullivan said sarcastically. "Just three times in the head. Is that right?" Sullivan's cross-examination was adroit, at the first sign of an opening, he pounced. The defendant was so busy straining at gnats that he forgot to show "appropriate" emotion where he should have. The gallery could see that, and surely the jurors could. And the lies and semi-lies. There were so many.

Turfy admitted he could have easily reached Morris's house from the Chinook Hotel in five minutes. He knew there had been three shots in Morris's murder, but he could not remember how he knew. He gave three or four scenarios, weakening his impact with each new reason. He couldn't remember what he had said in his taped confession. In retelling, he confused the order of his own statements. Jeff Sullivan was like a boxer looking for an opening. When he found one, he jabbed. He caught every hesitation, every contradiction. Turfy Pleasant was on the ropes, confused and wobbling.

"You are trying to tell me that he [Gabby] didn't have it planned very well?"

"I felt he did time right here this very day on charges."

"Oh, I see. I see. Your conception of the plan is that it is very good if you don't get caught?"

"No. I did not do it."

"He told you where he wanted the man shot. .. and he told you where you could park your car.... And he told you the layout of the back of that house? Right?"

"Yes."

"But he didn't tell you where the house was. Is that right?"

"Well. .. he mentioned where it was."

"Why did you testify here today. .. that you didn't know where he lived? That it wasn't until Anthony told you that you found out where Morris lived?"

"I did not exactly know which house he lived in."

Suddenly, it was five o'clock. Sullivan would have happily continued all night, but Judge Lay would not. The rhythm was broken, but the prosecutor would pick it up in the morning. And so he did. If Angelo Pleasant had been engaged in a wrestling match, he could have detected where his opponent was going to move next. But he was not a debater and he seemed to have no inkling of when Jeff Sullivan was about to catch him up in yet another inconsistency in his testimony. Time and again, Sullivan winnowed out a lie. Adam Moore finally stood up and complained that he didn't want Sullivan reading from Turfy's earlier statements and then pointing out that his client was lying. Judge Lay asked Sullivan to rephrase his questions.

It didn't matter. With each slip, Sullivan repeated what Turfy had said and repeated it incredulously, or derisively, or with amusement and sometimes with a question mark. The carefully reconstructed events of Turfy's testimony began to buckle. It could be only a matter of time before the whole construction imploded and fell back on Turfy. From time to time, Sullivan had Turfy read his earlier confession silently to himself. Sweat beaded on the defendant's forehead. There was no way to mesh what he had once said with what he was now claiming. "Angelo," Sullivan said, "are you saying that this statement was not true?"

"Yes, I'm saying that."

"Even though you were telling your lawyers and telling me that this was the truth?"

"Some of it."

"Some of it. Some of what you told us after you were arrested then was not true, is that what you are saying?"

"Well, I was still on my own, Mr. Sullivan, wasn't nobody looking out for me but myself."

"So you chose to tell us something that wasn't true?"

"Well, I don't know what my thinking was at the time."

Sullivan had elicited testimony that seemed to suggest that Turfy had felt nothing about Morris Blankenbaker's death but fear that he would be caught. But Gabby was another matter entirely. His coach had been so much a part of the defendant's life for so long. Sullivan needed to focus on a heedlessness, a failure to grieve, on Turfy's part as Gabby lay dying. "Angelo," he began, "at that time Glynn Moore was lying on the kitchen floor, you didn't know whether he was dead or alive. You indicated to us he was one of your best friends, and you were no more concerned than just to go to a party. Is that right?"

"Yes, I was concerned."

"But you went to a party?"

"Later on, yes."

"Angelo, as you saw Mr. Moore lying there after Kenny shot him,'

why didn't you try and help him?"

"Mr. Sullivan, I was scared and I didn't want to be caught in the house, I had the gun in my hand."

"But you didn't shoot him, did you?"

"No, I didn't, but I had the gun in my hand."

"You didn't call an ambulance for him?"

"No."

"... Now, Mr. Moore's plan was that he would be wounded with that same gun, but he was supposed to get to a doctor soon, wasn't he? So that he wouldn't get injured seriously?"

"He was going to call one of his lady friends or he felt that he was strong enough to take the shot and go across the street and talk to the lady who owned the house"

"That was Jerilee's sister?"

"Yes. .. I was telling him, You can't do it.""

"He's laying there on the floor not moving. Didn't you say that you heard him groan or something?"

"When I was leaving."

"When you were leaving?"

"I heard a noise."

"Did you look back to see what was happening?"

"No, I was trying to get out of there."

Stubbornly, despite being confronted with his oftrepeated statement that Gabby Moore had "his neck on the chopping block," Turfy denied that he had thought about the danger of Gabby exposing him as a killer. "I did not shoot Mr. Glynn Moore," he insisted. "You intended to kill him, didn't you, Angelo?"

"I did not kill Glynn Moore. And it hurts me just to sit up here and to listen to you, Mr. Sullivan with all due respect to you and keep accusing me and accusing me and I didn't do it. I really loved that man.

But at the time when I did leave, when Kenny did shoot him, I was scared and confused and I just thought of leaving and not being caught on the premises." When Jeff Sullivan turned away at last from Turfy Pleasant, he had effectively revealed the truth. Turfy had shot Morris and he had shot Gabby. But had he shot Gabby, intending to kill him? Or had he merely been following Gabby's orders? It was still impossible to tell.

But he had left. That much was clear. Perhaps Turfy could not look that fact straight in the face. Perhaps he could not allow himself to recall stepping over Gabby's body, hearing his last gasps for life, and walking away. In the end, Turfy had deserted "The Man," his mentor, his hero, his friend, his role model. In a sense, Gabby had deserted Turfy too.

Together, they had made wrestling championships their only goals. But Gabby had no longer cared about the glory of winning. On recross, Adam Moore asked Turfy again about Gabby's complete defection from all they had believed in. "Well, he was talking about the trophy case," Turfy answered.

"Some young men also some young ladies the said] who are pretty good in sports and have pretty good ability to achieve, all they had to do was try hard. He said he was forty-four years old and that he felt he was over the hill. That trophies didn't mean nothing anymore his biggest goal and trophy in life was Jerilee. .. and that I was pretty young and I didn't know what he meant, but when I was older, and time went on, I would realize what he meant." Turfy Pleasant had been on the witness stand for three days. He had clung to his position that his brother and best friend were the true killers, but their testimony and the rebuttal testimony of more than a dozen witnesses would place both Kenny Marino and Anthony Pleasant well away from both crime scenes. Jeff Sullivan knew that, and he was not concerned. When Turfy had stepped down from the stand, the trial began to wind down rapidly. On Saturday, August 28, Adam Moore and Chris Tait and Jeff Sullivan made their final arguments.

Two weeks before, they had promised the jury that they would give them certain facts. And they had all stayed close to their opening statements. Prosecutor Jeff Sullivan's voice boomed through the small courtroom and bounced off the walls as he reconstructed the entire trial, the evidence that had, he said, pointed to only one man. Sullivan focused on Turfy's taped confessions. "He learned from Glynn Moore that when you get a problem," Sullivan said, "you eliminate the problem." The prosecutor called Morris Blankenbaker's murder a "contract killing."

"Gabby Moore was killed to shut him up."

Despite Turfy Pleasant's open and affable appearance, Jeff Sullivan said he was cold. "A man who could shoot two people and then go to a party.

.. that's callousness. That's why he could come into this courtroom and say what he did. This man would have us believe that he missed [hitting Gabby high up in the shoulder] from twelve inches away. He shot him. ..

and then where did he go? He picked up his girlfriend and went to a Christmas party." Adam Moore for the defense said he had "utter contempt" for Gabby Moore for drawing Anthony and Angelo Pleasant and Kenny Marino "into the sewer." Moore's face and words were full of rage as he characterized Gabby as "vile and despicable." Everyone in the courtroom jumped as Turfy's chief lawyer bellowed, "GOD! The worst tragedy of this is that he isn't sitting here today. I blame him for the whole mess."

Adam Moore literally vibrated with anger. "I have for two weeks seen the prosecutor stand before you and tell you to convict this man on two counts of first-degree murder.... l could puke," Moore said as he slammed his fist on the table in front of him. The gallery jumped again.

Adam Moore, an attorney with a courtroom demeanor that long predated the antics of a Johnny Cochran, grew suddenly calm. He walked to Turfy Pleasant and placed his hands on his client's shoulders. "I apologize for the emotion, but it's real," he said with his voice cracking. "It's the way I feel."

As he asked for an acquittal on both counts, Moore pleaded, "Let it be done with. Let Gabby Moore's end be his just reward." It was over for the gallery, for the regulars who had shown up for the trial every day.

Many of them would probably not have enough forewarning of the verdict to get to the courtroom in downtown Seattle in time to hear it read.

Fourth Avenue, just outside the King County Courthouse, was quiet.

It was a Saturday, and Saturday trial sessions were a rarity. Few cars headed north up the oneway street. There were no pedestrians. The courthouse was closed except for the trial just ended. It was still hot but the sun was blocked by the courthouse, and its warmth came up only from the sidewalks where it had baked all day while the lawyers inside talked on and on of death and blood and guilt. It didn't seem possible that two weeks had gone by. All trials are engrossing, but this one had been more compelling than most, and the gallery straggled out, reluctant to have it over. All the players had been unknown entities when the trial started.