Tag: short-stories

HE HAD CADILLACS IN HIS EYES

May 30th, 2025

A good private investigator can make an average lawyer look like a superstar in a courtroom. Many former police officers become PIs but, for my money, the best PIs come from the other side of the street. Joe Rogers was, without a doubt, one of the best PI’s I ever worked with.

Joe grew up in a rough North Charleston neighborhood. A born hustler, he was the guy everybody came to for whatever they needed which, of course, meant he was in and out of trouble like the tide. It was a miracle he ever made it to high school but, when he did, he quickly became BMOC running a discount gas station selling siphoned gas out of the school bus parking lot. Joe’s mother told the judge that was the last straw and she was washing her hands of him, so it was off to the John De La Howe school for boys. Hustling there got him assigned to KP duty and, in retaliation, Joe fed raw rice to the chickens. He was forced to make a hasty getaway when the chickens started exploding. They found the tractor but not Joe who ade it all the way to Florida where he was taken under the wing of someone who’s hustles involved somewthing more than selling penny ante gas.

When Joe got older, Joe was drawn to the smuggling trade, not so much in the smuggling end of the business, but more onshore logistics setting up safe houses and moving truckloads of pot from coastal off load sites to cities up and down the East Coast. To launder his earnings, Joe bought, sold used luxury automobiles and led a quiet life on the money he stashed away while the Feds were closing in on his former associates still in the trade.

Before long his savings ran out and Joe was forced to find other employment. He started earning commissions referring his old smuggling associates to bail bondsman. When those same bondsmen got stuck holding hefty bonds on defendant’s who failed to appear, Joe discovered he could earn even heftier commissions tracking them down and bringing them in. A bail bondman on the hook for a $100,000.00 bond would gladly pay Joe $25,000.00 if he could bring them in. And boy could Joe bring them in. He’d track them down, find out where their favorite bar was, and sit down next to them all friendly like and tell them to relax, he was the nice guy. He’d tell them he’d let them get their affairs in order and turn themselves in thereby avoiding the broken bones, gunshot wounds, and handcuffs that would come with the muscle bound, bald guys who would track them down after Joe. If a bail jumper needed representatio, he’d refer them to me. Before long he talked me into letting him do investigative work for me and impressed me with him results.

Joe’s colorful background and resoursefulness gave him a unique understanding of human nature and the ability to convince people, including me who normally wouldn’t hie a criminal to work foir him, into doing things they probably otherwise wouldn’t do. That’s what made him such a great private investigator.

A client of mine and his friend of his were leaving a downtown dance club late one weekend night when they happened upon two girls fighting. My client’s friend was intervening to break up the fight when one of Charleston’s finest came up from behind him and billy clubbed him on the back of the head. The fight ended and the police officer ordered everybody to leave. My client walked his friend back to their car but, by the time they got there, his friend was feeling dizzy and starting to pass out. My client ran back to ask the policeman to call an ambulance, but the police officer got angry and threatened to arrest him.

My client was left to drive his friend to the ER where, when asked what happened, told the admitting nurse his friend had been struck on the back of his head by a policeman. Unknown to my client, the ER reported the assault to the police and, when the dispatch call went out, the police officer with the billy club responded to the ER where he used it again on my client in the waiting room. To hear the police officer tell it, my client was drunk and disorderly, resisted arrest, and assaulted him. In addition to getting a good beating, my client was charged with assaulting a police officer, a felony carrying up to ten years.

Police officers falsly accusing people they beat up during an arrest of assaulting them is a common ploy to cover up their own wrongdoing. It usually works and the prosecutor assumed my client, like most everyone else in such cases, would accept a plea to the lesser included offense of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor carrying only one year with a recommendation of probation. But my client was adamant he wasn’t pleading to something he didn’t do. When my client refused to plea, the judge felt compelled to remind him and me of the ten years she could impose if he were convicted.

As compelling as your client’s story may be, if you’re going to call a police officer a lying thug in open court, you need solid proof. My client’s friend was in with the doctors and didn’t see what happened. My client never had a chance to get the names of any witnesses in the ER that night before he was dragged off to jail. The security camera didn’t cover the area near the payphone where the assault occurred. And, and the security guard on duty in the ER that night developed sudden onset amnesia not wanting to buck the cops. Joe really proved his resourcefulness and worth finding a witness for me.

Joe had the gift of being able to fit in anywhere, move about without hardly being noticed. He camped out in the ER for several days and learned the name of the nighttime janitor working on the night of the assault. It took him a day or two more to become friends with the janitor and speak with him. Joe learned the janitor not only witnessed the unprovoked beating the police officer put on my client but was shocked by its ferocity. Finding a witness is only half a PI’s job, the other half is getting them to agree to testify. Joe convinced the janitor of the righteousness of his testimony and gave him the courage to come forward.

The prosecutor never bothered to find any witnesses and was planning on relying exclusively on the officer who felt invincible lying through his teeth about what happened. Police aren’t allowed to wear their uniforms in court, but this one wore his shinny badge on a chain draped around his neck. He testified with all the ease and polish of an professional liar or paid expert. With a practiced look of “just doing my job” he testified matter-of-factly, “I was dispatched to investigate a routine disturbance at the hospital. When I arrived on the scene I found the defendant acting in a loud and boisterous manner disturbing the patient’s in the Emergency Room. I approached him and asked him politely, sir, I need you to calm down so I can ask you some questions to which the suspect responded with a string of profanities in the presence of women and children . When I tried to peacefully escort him out of the ER to continue my investigation, he struck me with a closed fist in my chest and I was forced to subdue and arrest him in accordance with standard police procedure.” Smugly thinking he had nailed my client’s coffin shut, the prosecutor turned the officer over to me for cross examination.

You could see the prosecutor’s concern when I thanked the officer and said I had no questions. When I served on the Board of the Trial Lawyers Association, I had the opportunity to hear famous trial lawyer, Gerry Spence, who was in South Carolina volunteering his time to appeal the death penalty sentence imposed on a minor. He addressed the board at our retreat and told us the biggest mistake he saw lawyers make is giving adverse witnesses the opportunity to keep repeating their story on cross examination. As an example, he used an intersection automobile accident. After a witness has already testified on direct he had the green light, he said too many lawyers will cross examine like this: So, you say the light was green when you entered the intersection? Yes, sir, the light was green, plain as day, had been green for a good while. I had to wait for other cars ahead of me to go before me. So, there were other cars ahead of you, did they block your view of the light? No, sir. I had a clear view and could see the light was definitely green the whole time. So, if you had to wait, how do you know the light hadn’t changed to red before you entered the intersection? Because there were only two cars ahead of me and the light stayed green as I entered. Gerry Spence said it was our jobs as lawyers to tell our client’s story as many times as we can during a trial, not to give the other side a chance to keep telling their story. I took his advice to heart early in my career and had no desire to waste time giving this officer the opportunity to repeat his lies about what happened on cross examination. Thesurprised prosecutor rested his case, and I called the janitor Joe had found.

He said he was the nighttime janitor and had worked at the hospital for going on twenty-three years. There was no disturbance in the ER that night before the police officer arrived. He testified with his whole being. When he testified about seeing the police officer walk right up an assault my client, his eyes got big as if he was seeing it live in front of the jurors. His voice broke as he described the viciousness of the assault. No, he did not see my client strike the police officer, he never had a chance before the policeman started beating him. There was an unmistakable ring of truth in his testimony and, by the time he finished, there wasn’t a person in the courtroom, including the judge, that didn’t know the officer was a lying thug. I didn’t have to give an earth shattering closing argument telling the jury what they already knew but did say, ” That may be his badge hung around his neck, but it doesn’t shield him from the truth of what he did.” The jury returned a not guilty verdict no time at all. All thanks to Joe.

Health issues overtook Joe, but, even when he could no longer be a PI, we remained good friends. When my wife returned home early from an out-of-town trip to discover our house overrun with partying teenagers, she knew to call Joe instead of the police. In exchange for nobody getting arrested, Joe had them all cleaning the house with lighting speed. When they finished, Joe called Mary to say she could come home. Thereafter, Joe babysat our house and our poodle whenever we went out of town. All my children knew to call Joe if they were in a jam and couldn’t reach me.

Joe took to driving taxies to make a living and developed a string of what he called “specials,” regular customers he would take care of. Working single mothers who needed their kids dropped off or picked up at school every day, elderly people who needed to be taken to the store to buy groceries or medicines and back home again, and hookers who needed transportation and protection when meeting Johns at night. And, just like with me, Joe made friends with everyone who relied on him.

One night when my boys and I were sitting down for supper, Joe had some time to kill before taking a hooker to her next stop, so he brought her by our house. She couldn’t believe I would welcome Joe and her into my home and soon realized Joe was like a member of my family. While my teenage boy’s eyes about popped out of their heads and jaws dropped to the table, the drop-dead gorgeous hooker couldn’t help telling us how much Joe meant to her. So much so, she declared Joe shouldn’t even be driving his taxi at night anymore cause, “he has Cadillacs in his eyes.” And so, he did, he saw the best in everybody, and it made him one of the best private investigators I ever had the pleasure to work with.
Practicing Being Indignant

May 25th, 2025

Senator T. Allen Legare

I first met Bobby Howe on the second day of the South Carolina bar exam in 1975. The tension in the air was palpable during the mid-day break when Bobby, a complete stranger, ran up to me and said, “If only I knew the difference between a garageman’s lien and a modis operandi, I’d have this bar exam licked.” I busted up laughing and we became instant friends. Little did I know then Bobby would later become the only client I ever had to be featured in The National Enquirer magazine. When Bobby once introduced me to Judge Ralph King Anderson as his lawyer, the Judge replied in an ominous voice, “that must be a gargantuan task.” And it certainly was but thankfully, I didn’t have to do iot alone. Bobby’s father, Gedney M. Howe, Sr., asked his dear friend and fellow lawyer, Senator T. Allen Legare, to watch out for Bobby after he was gone and I couldn’t have asked for a better co-counsel.

T. Allen Legare was always a fighter. He won the Southern Conference Boxing Championship in 1939. During World War II he parachuted behind enemy lines to blow up bridges and train tracks with the French resistance. I once asked how he could fool Germans with his heavy Charleston accent and he seriously replied, “There wasn’t any talking to Germans, we killed any of them unlucky enough to cross our path.” He graduated from USC Law School in 1941 and was a fixture on Broad Street for 69 years. He was Charleston’s State Senator and was instrumental in creating the South Carolina Port Authority making Charleston one of the main east coast ports. Even on the hottest days, young Broad Street lawyers knew better than to be caught by Senator Legare not wearing a tie and jacket on the street. He was the epitome of a Broad Street lawyer perfectly melding politics and the law.

One day, walking to the courthouse I ran into him with one hand on top of a parking meter and the other flailing furiously in the air. I asked, “Senator, are you okay?” He smiled and said he was on his way to a court hearing and was practicing being indignant. Semi-retired when I first worked with him, he would still come into his law office every day to read South Carolina’s major newspapers and answer correspondence. He fittingly lived below Broad in a beautifully renovated home on Legare Street and threw a yearly Frogmore Stew party for lawyers and judges on his Wadmalaw Island plantation. I never dreamed I’d get to work with him, but I did in two high profile cases both involving Bobby Howe.

The first case, my only case that made it into the National Enquirer, occurred when Bobby was caught digging up the backyard of an arrested Hilton Head Island drug smuggler looking for a 120-quart fishing cooler full of cash. Bobby had asked the prosecuting U.S Attorney if his client could receive a downward departure under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for turning in a huge sum of money (presumably the contents of the cooler less Bobby’s fee) and had been told he could before Bobby set foot on the client’s property. The problem was the property had been seized by the Federal government as the fruit of the client’s lucrative smuggling business. When Bobby’s face appeared on the evening news and in the newspapers, Senator Legare reached out to me to offer his help.

I told Senator Legare I had Bobby checked into an out of state rehabilitation facility and he offered to persuade his friend, United States District Court Judge Sol Blatt, who also boxed for USC in the Southern Conference, to continue the case until Bobby could finish treatment. But nothing was ever easy about representing Bobby, and he stumbled over the first step of the facility’s twelve-step rehabilitation program. Instead of admitting his helplessness to overcome his addiction, Bobby told his counselor he was just hiding out until the heat died down back home in Charleston. Apparently this was deemed disruptive and the director of the facility was threatening to toss Bobby out of the program. I dreaded having to tell Senator Legare and, when I did, I thought the phone lines would melt between our offices. I was instructed in no uncertain terms I was to keep Bobby in the treatment facility. It was a test I needed to pass to earn Senator Legare’s respect and, believe me, it took everything I had to convince the director to at least give Bobby a mental health examination before discharging him. Thankfully, Bobby scored so far off the charts for a bi-polar disorder, he was transferred from the Addictive Disease to the Mental Health unit.

I thought the problem keeping Bobby in the facility had been solved but they were just the beginning. The first morning in his new unit, Bobby cracked to his new group, “Yesterday I was across the hall in addictive diseases, today I’m over here with you guys in mental health. I feel like I’m getting better already.” Apparently, getting laughs in group therapy is also considered disruptive. So is getting caught having sex with another inmate in the storage closet, getting caught unaccompanied in restricted areas, and also finagling a prized eggshell mattress cover from an orderly. They don’t teach classes in law school on how to keep crazy clients in rehab so you just have wing it. Fortunately, Bobby made friends with his psychiatrist and together his psychiatrist and I kept Bobby in the program. Loaded up with enough psychotropic medications to choke a horse, Bobby was finally discharged to face the music before Judge Blatt.

Judge Blatt was one of the finest jurists it was ever my privilege to appear before, but he was strict, especially in drug cases. Fortunately, he was also fond of Bobby who practiced law by a different set of rules. One of which was, if you can get the judge to laugh, he can’t send your client to jail. Most of what judges do everyday is anything but fun and a good laugh is always a welcome distraction. Bobby sure knew how to make Judge Blatt laugh but I doubted it was going to enough to save him from Judge Blatt’s wrath. Fortunately, as fond of Bobby as the judge was, he truly loved and respected Senator Legare. You could see the anguish on Judge Blatt’s face when Bobby appeared before him represented by Senator Legare.

The practice of law and politics was always personal to Senator Legare. A man’s word and loyalty to his friends meant everything to him. Before Senator Legare started speaking at Bobby’s guilty plea, I was felt certain Judge Blatt had made up his mind he needed to make an example out of Bobby. Senator Legare began, not with what Bobby had done, but at the bedside of Bobby’s father, Gedney M. Howe, Sr., also a renown Broad Street lawyer and also a dear friend of Judge Blatt. Senator Legare choked up with emotion describing how Big G on his deathbed grabbed his hand and made him swear he would look out for Bobby after he was gone. His vow to their mutual friend cut straight through to the judge’s heart while at the same time put the judge in an impossible position. Not one to ever do that to a friend, Senator Legare, seamlessly switched and began giving Judge Blatt a graceful way out. Senator Legare pointed out Bobby never found the cooler and never took anything, never lied about or tried to conceal what he’d done, and, misguided as it may have been, thought he was helping his client get a downward departure. More rthan that, Bobby had accepted responsibility and sought needed help by voluntarily entering a treatment program where he was diagnosed as being bi-polar and given needed medication. Judge Blatt couldn’t help but see the flashing yellow arrow to the exit ramp Senator Legare plowed for him and readily headed in that direction. So, he’s been discharged from the hospital? Yes, sir, he has but he remains under active medical treatment and supervision. And I can make it a condition of any sentence I might impose that he’ll continue such treatment and monitoring to make sure he continues to get help? Yes, sir, absolutely and your Honor knows I will continue to honor his father’s dying wish. Judge Blatt’s sentence of two years’ probation, with continued treatment and medication, but no referral for disciplinary action, was more than either Senator Legare or I could have hoped for.

A great result but it turned out keeping Bobby on probation wasn’t any easier than keeping him in the rehabilitation facility and it wasn’t long before Bobby got himself embroiled in another newsworthy spectacle. A young female law clerk working for Bobby’s brother alleged Bobby and a Circuit Court Judge Bobby’s brother wanted removed from the bench offered her cocaine in the bathroom at a party hosted by the Deputy Solicitor. Bobby flatly denied the allegation quipping, “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.” The Senate Judiciary Committee decided it needed to hold a hearings and issued a subpoena for Bobby’s appearance. While I advised Bobby needed to bide his time in an unknown location, I reached out to Senator Legare for his help a second time.

I delicately explained to Senator Legare Bobby there was no truth to this young lady’s allegation, but I was reluctant to open Bobby up to questioning under oath by the committee. Senator Legare asked how I proposed we allow Bobby to testify but limit the questions he could be asked? I explained Bobby would answer any question about the alleged incident without limitation, but asking him questions about other, unrelated matters would invade Bobby’s right to privacy, jeopardize his probation, and possibly affect his ability to continue to practice law. The argument was about as nuanced as a legal argument can be but Senator Legare, even in his mid-eighties, had a sharp legal mind. He loved our lengthly conversation about the right of privacy not being included in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights but being recognized by Justice William O. Douglas as being necessarily implied by the penumbra of the rights expressly guaranteed.

With Bobby in the back seat, I picked up Senator Legare and we set off driving to Columbia to meet with Senator Smith, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. As good a lawyer as I might fancy myself to be, I fully acknowledge I never would have gotten a meeting with Senator Smith if it wasn’t for Senator Legare. We were greeted by Senator Smith like long lost friends which I sure the senators were. They exchanged handshakes and pleasantries before Senator Smith sat behind his desk and asked what he could for Senator Legare. Senator Legare got right to the point and got the same response from Senator Smith that I got from him when I suggested Bobby’s sworn testimonby could be restricted. Senator Smith asked skeptically, “Now Allen just how am I supposed to do that?” Senator Legare launched into such an impassioned argument for the right of privacy you’d have thought he’d discovered the right all by himself. Still Senator Smith was non-committal and said he’d have to speak with the other committee members. Senator Legare got up abruptly and turned to leave but stopped, turned back to the senator and barked, “If your brother was still alive, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.” I have no idea what Senator Legare was referring to, but I could see it made a deep impression on the senator.

Still not knowing whether to risk allowing Bobby to testify, we decided to wait and see how things developed in the hearing. Senator Smith was the last to enter the chamber and take his seat. He began the hearing with an admonition to the other committee members he was not going to allow the hearing to become a circus and was going to limit all questioning strictly to the matters at hand to preserve the witnesses’ rights of privacy. Senator Legare nodded all would be okay and Bobby was sworn in as a witness. Bobby absolutely, unequivocally, and in no uncertain terms denied the allegation. In true Bobby fashion in no time he had the committee members laughing about the absurdity of thinking a sitting circuit court judge would be snorting cocaine with some unknown girl in the Deputy Solicitor’s bathroom.

Too many lawyers get to thinking too much of themselves. That only they can win a case. When I think back over my career, I think of all the great lawyers it has been my privilege to work and try cases with. Lawyers who helped me win way more cases then I ever would have won on my own. T. Allen Legare was one of the finest lawyers I have ever known and worked with. The epitome of a true southern gentleman. He honored a commitment he made to Bobby’s father and helped me win two high profile cases I couldn’t have won without him. All he ever asked in return was my respect, loyalty, and friendship all of which were gladly given.

Tag: short-stories

HE HAD CADILLACS IN HIS EYES

Practicing Being Indignant