Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (21 page)

“He was there at the shooting. Did he pull the trigger, or did Bautista do it?” He contemplated for what looked like the hundredth time. “I don’t know. Is Santiago morally culpable for what happened that night? Guilty in the eyes of the law? Yes. But the judicial process seems to have been improper, and he didn’t get a fair trial.”“So you’re going to fight for him.”

“I’m trying to save his life.”

“Do you think you’ll win?”

“It’s unlikely.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“Do I mind that I have to write one brief after another, argue with the partners at my firm about payment for investigators, and fly to Florida whenever Santiago wins a new hearing — and that Florida will probably still pull the switch one of these years and electrocute this guy? Yes, I mind a lot.”

“But you won’t quit?”

“I’m not a quitter.”

“Even though you haven’t got much of a chance?”

“I have to do my best, Billy.”

I knew what my dad did for a living, but the process was always a little foreign to me. This case, fighting for a poor Haitian’s life, certainly wasn’t one that paid for vacations to Aspen or even put croissants on our table. But now I understood that whenever he had a chance, even if he wasn’t positive that he was right, my dad did his best. I saw him in a clearer light.

No one had told him yet about Carter’s laying siege to our house.

“Dad, I have to talk to you.”

He didn’t let me begin, though; he got in first licks.

“I cannot tell you,” he said, “how upset I was, and am, by what you told me in Aspen – about Carter Bedford putting a loaded gun to your face. I’ve been thinking of filing a criminal complaint. The problem is, it won’t stick. There’s no proof. There were no witnesses.”

“And he’ll deny it.”

“The man is a maniac. He destroyed our living room. He pointed a pistol at you. He cast racial slurs. We have to eject this man from our lives.”

“Dad —”

“Your relationship with him is based purely on your friendship with his daughter. Isn’t that a fact?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What’s the nature of that friendship?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about sex?”

That was so far out. Again, that was just like Carter, only with good manners.

“No sex, Dad. She’s my best friend.”

“You’re telling me that on the last three nights, in this house, with Inez far enough away so as not to be an inhibiting factor, you and Amy slept in separate beds?”

“Absolutely.”

He grunted his disbelief. “No visiting?”

“None.”

“No touchy-feely?”

“No, Dad.”

He digested that. I could see that it troubled him. I think he would have preferred it the other way. It would have been simpler. And maybe he thought there was something wrong with me that I hadn’t crawled into a bed with her.

“Can you explain something else to me, Billy?”

“I’ll try, Dad.”

“If Carter Bedford threatened and insulted you that way, what on earth moved him to give his daughter permission to sleep over here for the last three nights?”

The truth had evaded him. That can happen, even to someone as smart as my dad.

I told the story: how Amy had come scratching on the glass door of Oak Lane, and how Carter had followed. All that healthy ruddy color from the mountain air of the ski slopes faded away and my dad grew pale.

When I finished, he put his head in his hands for half a minute. Then someone knocked on the door.

He looked up and in a hoarse voice said, “Come in.”

The door slid open and there was my mom, wearing a big terrycloth morning bathrobe and some furry slippers. Her face was scrubbed.

“Hi, guys. Is this private?”

“No, you’d better hear it,” my dad said. “Come in and shut the door behind you.”

I looked at the VCR, which told me that it was 7:33 a.m..

My dad said, “Billy, I’m going to fill your mother in with a shorter version, if you don’t mind. When I’m done, if I got any of it wrong, make any comment you like.”

He told the story accurately, but it didn’t sound the same in his words.

My mom’s jaw dropped; her eyes did a jig in their sockets.

“Her mother stabbed her? Her father threatened Billy with a loaded pistol? And he tried to break into our home last night?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” My dad reached out to touch her cheek, to calm her. “Are we going to the police?”

“I don’t think so. The girl was here as a runaway, without her parents’ permission. And Inez lied to the father about Amy’s presence here.”

“Oh. Oh, dear.”

“So it could get sticky.”

“Nothing even remotely like this,” my dad intoned, “will ever happen again. Billy is going to end his relationship with all of the Bedfords.”

That was the first I’d heard of it.

“Now,” he added, “be quiet for awhile. I need to think.”

“Dad —”

“I said
be quiet
.”

“Maybe,” my mom said, “we should have a little break. I’ll make a fruit smoothie. We have those delicious Granny Smiths we bought on the way from Islip. Would you like that, Jack? Billy? I’ll wake Simon.”

“No,” my dad said, “no smoothie. Not yet. Diana, please ask Inez to come in here.”

My mom thought it over a few seconds, then left the room.

My dad said, “Billy, this situation has gotten out of control. Against the will of her parents, Amy Bedford has been sheltered under this roof for seventy-two hours. The Bedfords might show up any minute here with the police, who will unquestionably allow the Bedfords to take Amy home. Your mother and I will be in an untenable position.”

“What’s ‘untenable’ mean?” I asked.

“Not able to be defended against attack. Meaning, there are a half dozen charges that a sharp Bonacker lawyer could bring before a local judge. The headline in the
East Hampton Star
will be: NEW YORKERS ALLEGED TO HAVE SEPARATED LOCAL GIRL FROM PARENTS. I’d settle out of court, and mighty quickly. That may be the reason Carter hasn’t been pounding on the door since that first night. He may have figured out that he has the high ground.”

I did what I always did. I battled. It had always worked; I always made some headway. I could wear them out — “Why?”— “Why not?”—trying to get a foot in the door: Amy’s foot, literally, in our door.

But my dad said, “That’s enough, Billy. I know what you’re doing. You’re not going to change my mind.”

“Dad, I just want —”

“No more ‘justs.’ No more ‘I wants.’ The answer is no. That’s final.”

Inez knocked on the den door. My dad told her to come in.

“Inez, when Billy called me in Aspen the other night, I spoke to you. You didn’t say anything about Carter Bedford pounding on the front door and threatening to break a window, did you?”

“No, Mr. Jack. I should have but I didn’t.”

“He was outside the house at the time of the call, wasn’t he?”

“He went away, Mr. Jack, while Billy was on the phone to you.”

I remembered my telling her that she’d done the right thing. It didn’t seem that way right now, and she looked terrified in the face of my father’s questioning.

“I didn’t want you to worry, sir,” Inez said, lowering her head.

I’d never heard her call my dad “sir” before that.

“You breached my trust,” he said.

“You want me to leave?”

“No, Inez. We value you and we care for you as a person. I want you to give me your word that it will never happen again.”

“You got it,” Inez said, and she crossed herself to make it a proper oath on Jesus.

“If anything like this ever happens again, I
will
have to ask you to leave. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Mr. Jack, I understand.”

“Dad” — I couldn’t keep quiet anymore — “you’re blaming Inez for something I did. She wanted to call you and ask you what to do, and then things got confused. I bullied her.”

My dad ignored me and said, “Inez, please dress warmly and bring your Honda round to the front door. I’ll bring Amy to the car. I would like you to drive her to her home and drop her there.”

“I don’t know where she lives, Mr. Jack.”

“I’m sure she’ll be able to tell you.”

“Dad —”

“Keep out of this, Billy. Stay here. Do not leave this room. That’s an order. “

Penalty of death
, Carter would have said.

I heard Inez’s Honda slide to a stop, its engine purring smoothly. Then I heard my dad’s light footsteps and Amy’s even lighter footsteps coming down the stairs, not quickly, not slowly, and moving in the same measured tread to the front door. Whatever had to be said had been said upstairs, and their trip across the carpet through the entrada to the front door was silent. The front door opened, then closed. Footsteps crunched across ice and snow, then the door of the Honda opened and shut.

I could have gone to the window and watched. I could have called out goodbye. But I didn’t want to see or be part of any of it. I wanted to howl with anger, but I didn’t do that, either. I just sat there in the den with my head in my hands, feeling helpless. My dad was doing his best for what he thought was right. But it didn’t feel right. It felt like there had to be another way.

Half an hour later I stood in the cold morning air of the driveway, looking off in the direction that Inez and Amy had gone. And then the Honda cruised back down the driveway with Inez gripping the wheel. She saw me, and she opened her door.

“What did she say to you, Inez?”

“Not hardly anything. And I don’t ask anything. I just drive. This poor girl, she got lots of problems.
Diós mío
, is a real spooky place she lives at, Billy. Looks like a jail. You been there?”

“I’ve been there,” I said, “and it’s worse than a jail.”

My mom opened the front door, still wearing her blue terrycloth robe, her arms hugging her chest. “Billy, it’s cold out. Please come inside the house, darling. Things have a way of working out for the best.”

I wondered if my mom told that to her shareholders when the market went into free fall.

Chapter 21

Before he left for Manhattan, my dad marched upstairs to my room. He said, “Billy, I know Amy is in your class. I know you’ll see her there, and I can’t prevent that. But apart from school hours, you are forbidden to see her. I want you to come straight home from school every day, and I want you here on weekends, too. If you won’t accept that order out of common sense, and out of the realization that your relationship with this girl has put our entire family in harm’s way, then you’ll have to accept it simply as a parental order. Firm and final. There will be no debate.”

I saw that it would be a total waste of time to argue.

But I didn’t make any promises. To forbid me a friendship with Amy I thought was gross and unfair. I never shook his hand. I was determined to talk to Amy, but I couldn’t call her at A-1 Self-Storage, so I had to wait until Monday morning when school opened after the holiday. I biked through the cold to the middle school.

I saw Amy right away in the hallway outside Mrs. Ostrow’s classroom. Her skin, usually as white as the inside of a seashell, looked gray.

“Amy, I couldn’t stop him.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s okay?”

She sneered and said, “You wanted me to come and live with you there in your house? With your mom and dad? I can’t stand either of them. They’re phonies and rich snobs. And you’re the most stupid person I know.”

That was the only way she could defend, by attacking.

After that she kept a good distance between us, and her eyes, on the rare occasions when I could get a glimpse of them, were cold and sad.

Life became dull. It didn’t seem to have a purpose anymore. I told my mom and dad that I wanted to take the train into the city for the Super Bowl party at Uncle Bernie’s loft.

My mom said, “The game ends late, and that’s not a good neighborhood.”

“I can sleep over in the loft, Uncle Bernie said. I’ll catch the early train back on Monday morning. I’ll miss one hour of class.”

“You don’t like football, Billy.”

“I know, but the party is in my honor.”

“Let him go,” my dad said, trying to be the good guy.

He was going to a Super Bowl party at the Sag Harbor country house of his editor. My mom, not a fan — “I like their buns, but that’s it” — intended to stay home and work. Simon, invited to Uncle Bernie’s, preferred to watch the game with his pals. I was going because I didn’t know what else to do with myself these days.

On the Sunday afternoon, with Iphigenia in her traveling bag, I took the train into Penn Station, and then a taxi down to Uncle Bernie’s loft on Rivington Street north of Delancey. On the train I read
The Great Gatsby
. I tried to imagine what Long Island was like seventy years ago in the dark ages. Not easy, but I could identify with Gatsby, pining for his lost Daisy.

The loft was part of a four-story building that had once been a Lower East Side sweatshop where they manufactured children’s dresses. The building had been bought by a group of SoHo painters and then converted into bare brick studios and apartments. The painters squabbled and fought all the time and didn’t do well in the real estate business. Uncle Bernie cut a long-term deal where he rented the entire building and had permission to sublet. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Billy, with the money you fought for that night at the dinner table.”