Sycamore Row - John Grisham

“We’ll take ’em.”
“Where’s Lucien?” Ozzie asked.
“Jake ran him off. Any luck with Pernell Phillips? You thought Moss Junior might
know him.”
“He’s Moss Junior’s wife’s third cousin, but they try to avoid family gatherings.
Backwater Baptists. He wouldn’t get too many points from me.”
“Portia?”
“Let’s give him a three,” she said, with the authority of a veteran jury consultant.
“That’s the problem with this damn pool,” Harry Rex said. “Far too many threes and
fours, not enough eights and nines. We’re gonna get clobbered.”
“Where’s Jake?” Ozzie asked.
“Upstairs, fighting the phone.”
Lucien drove to Memphis, flew to Chicago, and from there flew all night to Seattle. He
drank on the flight but went to sleep before being excessive. He killed six hours in the
Seattle airport, then caught a two-hour flight to Juneau on Alaska Air. He checked into a
hotel downtown, called Jake, slept three hours, showered, even shaved, and dressed
himself in an old black suit that hadn’t been worn in a decade. With the white shirt and
paisley tie, he could pass himself off as a lawyer, which was exactly what he planned to
do. With a battered briefcase in hand, he walked to the hospital. Twenty-two hours after
leaving Clanton, he said hello to the detective and got the latest scoop over coffee.
The update revealed little. An infection was causing his brain to swell and Lonny was
not in the mood to talk. His doctors wanted things quiet and the detective had not
spoken to him that day. He showed Lucien the fake paperwork they found in the
flophouse, along with the naval discharge. Lucien showed the detective two enlarged
photos of Seth Hubbard. Maybe there was a vague resemblance, maybe not. It was a
long shot. The detective called the owner of the bar and insisted he come to the hospital.
Since he knew Lonny well, he could look at the photos. He did, and saw nothing.
After the owner left, and with little else to do, Lucien explained to the detective the
purpose of his visit. They had been looking for Ancil for six months, but it had been a
cold trail. His brother, the one in the photos, had left him some money in a will. Not a
fortune, but certainly enough to scramble Lucien from Mississippi to Alaska overnight.
The detective had little interest in a lawsuit so far away. He was more concerned with
the cocaine. No, he did not believe Lonny Clark was a drug dealer. They were about to
crack a syndicate out of Vancouver, and they had a couple of informants. The buzz was
that Lonny was simply hiding the stuff for a fee. Sure, he would serve some time, but
time measured in months and not years. And no, he would not be allowed to travel back
to Mississippi for any reason, if in fact his name was really Ancil Hubbard.
After the detective left, Lucien roamed around the hospital to familiarize himself with
the maze of corridors and annexes and split-levels. He found Lonny’s room on the third
floor and saw a man standing nearby, flipping through a magazine, trying to stay