Hostile Witness (43 page)

IT WAS BIG NEWS
the next morning. The police had been summoned by a mysterious 911 call and had found him lying in the rain, his throat slashed. The official statement was that Charles Lamb, 43, unmarried, of Northeast Philadelphia, press secretary to City Councilman Jimmy Moore, had been found murdered at Washington Square. No motive for the killing was yet known and there were no suspects. He was survived by only his mother, Connie Lamb, residing at the St. Vincent’s Home for the Aged. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday afternoon at the Galzerano Funeral Home on Torresdale Avenue. That was the official statement, but there were rumors of late-night liaisons in public places with young boys and an editorial in the
Daily News
suggested that the police kiosk in the park be manned all night to ensure that Washington Square not turn into still another location for shadowy rendezvous as had turned so many of the public parks in the city.

Chester was mute with suffering, his pain marked only in a redness about his eyes, a tightness in his lips. I told him I was sorry and he shrugged me away, but I could see the hurt. I hadn’t known before that they had been so close. Jimmy chose to vocalize his feelings, telling the press how valued a member of his team Chuckie had been. “This crime,” he said on the steps of the courthouse, the start of his speech timed with precision so as to be captured live by the television cameras, “will only increase my determination
to continue my crusade. I have experienced many tragedies in my life, and this is still one more. But whoever thinks they can deter me from my cause, whoever thinks they can halt my progress, whoever thinks they can threaten or bully or kill my good work is deeply mistaken. We go on, we keep fighting, the dealers of death will be beaten and we will be victorious, and those like Chuckie Lamb, who were martyred in the struggle, will for always be remembered as heroes.”

Jimmy Moore, I figured, had wasted no time in grabbing himself another speechwriter.

Chuckie Lamb had neither been indicted nor intended to be called as a witness for either side, so his murder had no real impact on the trial. Judge Gimbel suggested, in light of the death of someone so close to the councilman, that we adjourn until tomorrow and Eggert readily agreed, but Jimmy Moore stood up in the courtroom and stated that he was ready to testify that very day.

“You want to testify today?” asked the judge.

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmy Moore. “Mr. Lamb would have wanted the trial to continue so that I can get this shoddy affair over with as soon as possible and direct my full attention once again to the business of the people.”

“That’s fine, Councilman Moore,” said the judge.

And so the jury was brought in and Prescott stood. “The defense,” he said, “calls Councilman James Douglas Moore to the stand.”

Jimmy Moore had not spent a career riling up constituents and making impromptu political speeches without learning a thing or two about how to work a crowd, whether it be a thousand supporters on an election-eve rally or twelve jurors and two alternates with his future under their thumbs. I knew what his story would be, that he was the unwitting victim of the fiendish Chester Concannon’s
extortion plans, and such was the story he told, but the way he told it was something else again. He wasn’t the chagrined and sorry defendant, he wasn’t the humble man pleading his innocence, he wasn’t quiet and reserved, confident to leave his fate in the hands of a jury of his peers. What he was instead was an angry man who had been betrayed by his aide, victimized by his government, subjected to political vendetta, and forced to defend what needed no defending. I would have thought before his testimony that such a demeanor would inspire enemies and turn off the sympathy of the jurors, but I would have been wrong. It was clearly playing in the Peoria that was the jury box.

Under Prescott’s gentle questioning Moore spelled out his defense in clear and angry sentences. No, he did not illegally extort money from Michael Ruffing. Yes, he had helped with Ruffing’s development plan in City Council because it was a good plan, and yes, he expected campaign contributions for such help, but that was the way the world worked in politics. “It’s the American system,” said Jimmy Moore, “and God bless the American system. God bless America.” No, he had not known of the $250,000 given to Concannon in cash and had he known he would have forbidden it. No, he had not talked about money with Ruffing, that was not his style, he would have accepted whatever support Ruffing chose to give and he had thought the five fifty-thousand-dollar checks actually received by CUP to be extremely generous. Yes, he was angry when Ruffing told him he would stop payments, it smacked of betrayal. “We were fighting for something side by side,” he testified. “Ruffing knew I was counting on him to help with the agenda of healing. And then he had simply walked away.” But no, of course he had not killed Zack Bissonette. He had already raised over two million dollars for a run at higher office, why would he risk everything over a few thousand here or there? No, he had not burned down
Bissonette’s, it had been one of his favorite clubs. Yes, he lived an extravagant lifestyle, and why not? His wife had money, he had money from outside investments, why not live high if he could afford it? “If the prosecutor wants to indict me for drinking champagne and having a limousine, then fine, indict me for that and let’s try it on those grounds. But not on the fabricated charges they are leveling against me here. Not on the basis of nothing but political vendetta.”

He told them about Veronica in a quiet voice, dripping with abashment. Yes, he’d had a mistress. Her name was Veronica Ashland. She had been a college student hooked on crack. He had pulled her out of a crack house he had been closing down in West Philadelphia and had personally brought her to a drug rehabilitation center. After saving her life he felt some responsibility to her and visited her in the treatment center. She was getting healthier, learning to live without drugs, and between them a friendship blossomed that turned into something more. He was sorry for the pain it had caused his wife, his family, it had happened and he was sorry and now it was over. “But I am truly bitter,” he said, “toward my deceitful aide who has sought to use my painful relationship with this poor girl against me.”

He saved his bitterest vitriol, of course, for Chet Concannon. A lying, ungrateful cur, he called him. Chet was a nothing when Jimmy found him, a steak slinger who dreamed of getting involved in politics. He had given Chet a job as an intern and promoted him through the ranks until he had become his chief aide. He had trusted Chet Concannon, he had loved Chet Concannon, and in the end, Chet Concannon had betrayed him. Chet was a thief, a liar, he had peddled Moore’s good name for a quarter of a million dollars. For all Jimmy knew Chet was a murderer, an arsonist, he didn’t know exactly what Chet had done to keep his scam going, but he had learned the painful lesson
that Chet Concannon was capable of almost any heinousness to achieve his self-interested ends. “Just the other day, in this very courthouse,” said Jimmy, “Concannon attacked me physically. He is seeking my ruin. He is my Brutus, plotting my fall. He is my Judas.”

When his direct examination was finished, there was an emotional silence in the courtroom. Prescott stood at the podium, eyes down, letting the silence hang there and intensify. I looked at the jury and they were split. Half were looking at Jimmy with sympathy and affection and admiration. The other half were staring at Chet Concannon with a violent contempt. When the silence hung just long enough for maximum effect, Prescott smiled at Jimmy as one smiles to a friend and said, “We have no further questions.”

“Mr. Carl,” said the judge, “do you wish to cross?” He peered down at me over his half-glasses and waited for my response.

I had not yet recovered from the sight of Chuckie Lamb dying in my arms, I had not yet been able to erase the amazement of it, the sense of awe, the overwhelming rush of fear. This man who had been alive just a few moments ago was now dead, his life had flowed out the gash in his throat, past my shoes, into the sodden ground beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. The sight of it was something I would haul along with me the rest of my days. I came home from the park after driving around for hours to find Beth asleep on the couch. What I did was strip off my clothes and dump them in the washer, raincoat and sneakers included, and I washed them with three cups of detergent while I stayed under the shower until the water turned cold. And then I slept, or tried to, shaking myself awake whenever I dreamed of Chuckie with the beard that wasn’t a beard. I hadn’t yet had the time I needed to deal with my first encounter with a dead man.

But this I knew. Chuckie Lamb wasn’t killed by some young hustler out to rob his trick, like the papers made it seem, and Chuckie Lamb wasn’t killed by a drug dealer out to scare off the councilman, like Jimmy Moore made it seem. No sir. He was killed because he was going to tell me all he knew about the councilman and the missing money. He was killed by Jimmy Moore, who had killed Bissonette before him and who would kill others if need be, Jimmy Moore, who had lied to Chester, to me, who had lied under oath on the stand, Jimmy Moore, with his cheap sanctimony and elephantine prick, Jimmy Moore. He had done it, dammit, and I would make him pay, I would, I would hurt him, I would. If I achieved nothing else in this life what I would achieve was to hurt Jimmy Moore.

He sat there on the stand, his chest thrown out, his eyes hard with determination, he sat there waiting for me. Well, he would get me, all right.

“Mr. Carl,” said Judge Gimbel. “Do you or do you not want to cross-examine this witness?”

“Oh, I want to, Your Honor,” I said, rising and walking with great purpose to the podium. I stared at Jimmy Moore and he stared back and for a moment we were locked together in some violent rush of antagonism. And then I saw it, what I had been looking for, what I had been hoping to see: fear. He knew what he was facing, did Jimmy Moore. The bastard knew what I knew, knew what I felt, and he was right to be afraid.

I tapped the podium softly with my fist once, twice. And then I began.

AFTER IT WAS OVER,
after all the shouting, after all the sustained objections, after all the lies and the questions repeated with emphasis and the repeated lies, after all the pounding on the podium and the admonitions of the court and the requests for citations of contempt by Prescott and Eggert both, after all the sidebar conferences, after all the portentous questions asked and withdrawn before an answer could be given, after all the shouting, I was back in my apartment, hugging my chest as I lay curled on my couch, my shoes still on, my head in Beth’s lap as she caressed my scalp and promised me it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t as bad as all that.

“Oh, yes it was,” I said, and yes it had been.

I had charged at Jimmy Moore’s story like a bull, my horns aimed straight at its heart, but when I picked up my head I realized I had charged past him and he was still sitting in that witness chair, calm, smooth, waiting to deflect my next pass with his cape of lies. He was the matador, controlling me with his pace, with his responses, and he made a fool of me more than once in the course of the interrogation.

“You did all you could do,” said Beth.

“He ate me for lunch, and spit out the bones.”

“Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself,” she said.

“The bastard was lying, Beth. All I wanted to do was to show him up to be a liar.”

“That’s not so easy a thing to do with a practiced liar. You didn’t get everything you wanted out of him, but you got all that you needed.”

“You think?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe,” I said, and maybe I had because I never for a moment thought I could win the case on Jimmy Moore’s testimony alone. My idea was that the truth would save Chester Concannon, a quaint idea in this age where obfuscation and spin are the key to success in all realms, but there it was, and I could never have expected anything approaching the truth to come from Jimmy Moore’s lips. No, the most I could have expected from Jimmy Moore was to create a pedestal on which the truth could later stand and that was maybe what I had done.

I had asked him about his daughter and he told again how she had died. I had asked about the rush of emotions that overcame him upon her death and, practiced as he was in exposing his inner feelings when they could do him the most good, he spoke of the pain, the agony, the anger. And out of it all, I had asked, had grown a hatred for those who sold drugs to children, hadn’t it, Councilman?

“They are murderers, killers of children.”

“And you hate them all, with all the power of your powerful passion.”

“That’s right, Mr. Carl.”

“You have rededicated your life to fighting the scourge.”

“That is correct. They are murderers and they must be destroyed, each and every one.”

“No matter the means, no matter the cost?”

“They must be beaten.”

“Because they killed your daughter?”

“Yes, and thousands of others like her.”

“And you will see them all dead?”

“It is my mission.”

“Single-handedly?”

“If I must.”

“Vengeance shall be mine, sayeth the councilman, is that it?” I had asked, expecting not an answer but an objection, which was exactly what I got, sustained by the judge.

“That was a nice touch, I thought,” said Beth as she stroked my head. Whenever my mind drifted back to those moments in court I could feel my adrenals kick into action and I began to shiver. It was her soothing touch that would calm me once again, would bring me back to the ease of the evening encampment when the battle was over for the day. “Quoting the Bible was very Darrowish,” she said.

“Nothing gets them angrier than a Jew shoving the New Testament in their faces,” I said.

“It wasn’t the only time you got him angry.”

“I thought he was pretty calm throughout,” I said.

“No, Victor. He especially didn’t like when you started talking about his mistress.”

“Who would?” I said.

There was not much I could do but press his buttons and see which ones blew him up. The eruptions hadn’t come as colorfully as I had hoped, but they had come and the jury had seen the anger seething within him. Like when I had asked about his high living, his club-hopping, his taste for the finest, most expensive champagnes.

“Life is to be lived, Mr. Carl.”

“And you have a personal limousine and a driver?”

“For protection primarily.”

“And you support a mistress?”

“She supported herself, but there were certain expenses involved, yes. But that was the least of the costs to me of that tragic affair. The least.”

“And all that required money?”

“Yes. But I work.”

“A city councilman doesn’t earn enough to slosh champagne in his limousine, does he?”

“I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Carl. No, we don’t.
And I donate much of my salary to charity in any event. But I was in business before politics and sold my company for a substantial amount. And in the last few years our personal investments have flourished.”

“Who controls the money in your family?”

“My wife, Leslie.”

“And so to finance your evenings with your mistress you asked your wife for money.”

“We have joint accounts.”

“And she never asked about your expenditures?”

“She trusts me, Mr. Carl.”

“As you would have the jury trust you, is that right?”

The laughter from the jury box was answer enough and the councilman had turned bright red. “That’s something I found,” I told Beth when we were on that couch, reviewing the day, trying to find whatever victories we could dig out of the mess that was my cross-examination. “Defendants don’t like it when the jury laughs at them.”

“He didn’t like it when you asked him about the anonymous cash donations to his youth centers, either,” said Beth.

“I didn’t expect him to,” I said. “But for all the bluster, it didn’t do much good.”

Those questions came from the envelope I took off the dead Chuckie Lamb. I had hoped for revelations, a litany of answers, a solution to the puzzles that had been bedeviling me, but what I got instead were numbers. A monthly breakdown of donations to the Nadine Moore Youth Centers, showing receipt of anonymous cash donations that had been increasing steadily. But even the steady increase couldn’t account for the jump that had happened about five months or so back, an extra fifty thousand a month of cash donations flowing into his projects. Fifty thousand a month with no indication where it was coming from. So I asked him.

“From concerned citizenry,” said the councilman.

I asked him about the jump in the amount of cash donations and he grew red for a moment and calmed.

“We’ve been reaching out to the community for funds,” he said, “And those efforts have finally borne fruit.”

I asked him why the additional funding was in cash, why given anonymously.

“We don’t ask who gives or why they give, we take the money and work our healing magic and we are making a difference.”

For every question I asked him he had an answer and the judge refused to let the jury examine a piece of paper that came out of nowhere and signified nothing. And so, when there were no more questions to ask, I moved on, failing to have learned what the numbers were meant to show. Without Chuckie’s explanation they were useless and Jimmy Moore had made certain Chuckie wasn’t around to give his explanation.

“You didn’t mention to anyone that I had gone to meet Chuckie last night, did you?” I asked Beth.

“Of course not,” she said.

“No one should know,” I said.

“Why not tell Slocum what happened?”

“Chuckie was dead when I got there,” I lied, “and I ran when I saw him. I’ve watched enough bad movies to know what happens to the guy who finds the corpse.”

“Be serious, Victor. Slocum won’t think you killed him.”

“I’m not gambling my life on what he’ll think,” I said, but it wasn’t just about Slocum I was worried. I had run with a blind terror from the dead Chuckie Lamb because his mortal wound was only seconds old, which meant that whoever had killed him was right there, behind that stone wall, ready for me. I don’t know if he knew who Chuckie was planning to meet, or how much Chuckie had told before the meeting, but if he didn’t know already I didn’t want to tell him who to ask, now or ever.

“After the trial,” I said, “I’ll make sure Slocum gets the donation list. But I don’t want you to be involved.”

She thought on that a while. “Morris was there today,” she said finally, mercifully changing the subject. “For a little while at least, talking with one of the court buffs, an old man with what looked like a hole in his head.”

“Herm Finklebaum,” I said. “He sold toys on Forty-fourth Street.”

“Morris told me to tell you your friend Veronica is at the Society Hill Sheraton,” said Beth.

“She didn’t get too far, did she.” The Society Hill Sheraton was about three blocks from her apartment building.

“Is she going to give you what you need?” asked Beth.

“No,” I said. “She is incapable of giving me that. But she’ll testify, and what she has to say will bury Jimmy.”

And it would, too, I thought, if Jimmy didn’t kill her first. He had killed Bissonette and had caused the killing of Chuckie Lamb, I was sure, but I didn’t believe he could kill Veronica. He had lost one daughter, how could he kill her surrogate, what kind of monster would do that. And suddenly I grew frightened for Veronica Ashland, and rightly so, for if there was any success in that day in court it was my success in showing all of which Jimmy Moore was capable. I had asked him about his temper, asked him if he grew angry when he saw something that shouldn’t be, a wrong to be righted. I asked him if his temper ever got the best of him, whether he ever turned violent, and he denied it. But then I asked if he knew a drug dealer named Norvel Goodwin and he sat a little straighter in the witness box. The judge overruled the objection and I asked it again.

“If you step out into the community, Mr. Carl, you learn of all the snakes in the grass waiting for the children.”

“Now, Mr. Goodwin was operating his drug enterprise out of a house in West Philadelphia, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. That was two or three years ago.”

“And one night you stormed that house with a gang from the neighborhood.”

“A group of citizens alarmed about the drugs in their community.”

“And that was the night you found your mistress, Veronica Ashland?”

“That’s right. She was in that house being murdered with his drugs.”

“And that same night you also beat Mr. Goodwin to near death?”

No answer.

“With a chair, isn’t that right?”

Still no answer.

“Well, yes or no, Councilman?”

“It was self-defense.”

“Was it self-defense when you burned that crack house down?”

“I don’t know how it burned.”

“Was it self-defense that killed the two boys hiding in the attic of that house?”

“I don’t know how it burned.”

“Was it self-defense when you broke the jaw of the schoolboy who was courting your wife thirty years ago?”

The judge never let him answer that one, too much time had passed for it to remain a relevant incident, he said, but the question had done its work, all those questions had done their work, I hoped. So maybe Beth was right, maybe I had done what I needed to do. Because Jimmy Moore wasn’t my star witness and no matter how many times I asked if he had killed Bissonette only to have him deny it I had gotten from him what I really needed. He had shown himself to be a man whose passionate hatred for illegal drugs and their peddlers could cause him to fly into violent rages, a man who had beaten drug dealers with chairs, who had burned out crack houses no matter who was still
inside, who had broken the jaw of a rival suitor while still in high school, in short a man who, with the right prodding, in the right situation, for the right reason, was capable of murder. All I had needed from Jimmy Moore was to set up the testimony of Veronica Ashland. It was up to Veronica to do the rest.

“You miss her,” said Beth, her fingers gently stroking my forehead, easing the surge of fear and anger at my own impotence that arose whenever I thought about what was happening at the trial. The smooth brush of her fingertips was drowsing and I didn’t hear what she said at first, so she repeated it. “You miss her.”

“Yes,” I said, and I did. It felt like there was a gap in my life, like something marvelous and strange had just up and disappeared. I wondered if this was what a dog felt after being fixed.

“How bad does it hurt?” she asked.

“Bad,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it. How about you? Tell me about Alberto.” I rolled the “r” as I said the name.

“Alberto. Sweet Alberto. He is very handsome and very kind and his accent is wonderfully sexy. A prize, really.”

“And that is why you dumped him?”

“You’ve been listening to gossip,” she said. And then, after a pause, “I guess he was too happy, too contented. He accepted the world for what it was and accepted his place in it.”

“Suddenly I’m jealous,” I said. “That might just be the very recipe for happiness.”

“I’ve been with you too long, Victor, with your cynicism, your bitterness, your dissatisfaction. After my years with you, how could I ever bear the cheerful acceptance and bland optimism of the Albertos of the world?”

“Alone again, just the two of us,” I said, and then I joked, “It looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

She just stroked my hair and said nothing for a long
while, so long a while that if it had been anyone other than my best friend Beth it would have been awkward. But it wasn’t awkward. She stroked my brow and eased me into a state just above sleep and the two of us remained like that for quite a while.

“It’s never going to happen, is it?” she said finally.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Why not, Victor?”

“It’s just not there. No matter how much we wish it were, it just isn’t. It would be too perfect anyway, too easy.”

“I could live with easy,” she said.

“Shhh. I am so tired.”

“I could damn well live with easy.”

“Shhh.” I closed my eyes and felt the softness of her fingers through my hair. “I need to sleep. Just a little nap. Shhh. We’ll talk later, later, I promise, but just let me sleep a little first.”