Sycamore Row - John Grisham

46
After butting heads with the Memphis bureaucracy, Ozzie was about to quit when he
remembered something he should have thought of sooner. He phoned Booker Sistrunk,
whose office was four blocks from the city jail. After a rough beginning, the two had
kept in touch, and over the months had visited on two occasions when Ozzie was in
Memphis. Booker had not been back to Clanton and wasn’t keen to return. Both realized
that two black men, living sixty minutes apart and with some measure of power in a
white world, should find common ground. They should be friends. Of particular interest
to Booker was the fact that he still had $55,000 on loan to the Langs, and he wanted to
protect his money.
The Memphis police loathed Booker Sistrunk, but they were also afraid of him. Fifteen
minutes after he arrived in his black Rolls, paperwork was hopping from one desk to
another with Lucien Wilbanks a high priority. He walked out thirty minutes after Booker
walked in. “We need to go to the airport,” Lucien said.
Ozzie thanked Booker and promised to catch up later.
As the story unfolded, Lucien had left his briefcase on the airplane. He thought it was
under the seat, but it could have been in the overhead compartment. Regardless, the
flight attendants were idiots for not finding it. They were much too concerned with
dragging him off the airplane. Ozzie and Prather listened and fumed as they raced to the
airport. Lucien looked and smelled like a skid row bum they’d picked up for vagrancy.
American’s lost and found had no record of a briefcase being turned in on the flight
from Atlanta. Reluctantly, the lone clerk began the task of trying to find it. Lucien found
an airport lounge and ordered a pint of ale. Ozzie and Prather had a bad buffet lunch on
a busy concourse, not far from the lounge. They were trying to keep an eye on their
passenger. They called Jake’s office but there was no answer. It was almost 3:00 p.m.,
and he was obviously tied up in court.
The briefcase was located in Minneapolis. Because Ozzie and Prather were law
enforcement officers, American was by then treating the briefcase as if it were valuable
evidence and crucial to an important investigation, when in reality it was a battered old
leather bag with a few notepads, some magazines, some cheap soap and matches taken
from the Glacier Inn in Juneau, and one videocassette tape. After a lot of uncertainty
and haggling, a plan was put into place to route it back to Memphis as soon as possible.
If all went well, it would arrive around midnight.
Ozzie thanked the clerk and went to find Lucien. As they were leaving the airport,
Lucien came to life and said, “Say, my car is here. I’ll just meet you guys in Clanton.”