Hostile Witness (45 page)

The only witness I planned to put on the stand was Veronica. With Chet’s two forgery convictions, Eggert and Prescott both would easily make him out to be a liar if he testified, so everything would depend on her, which was fine by me, except she wasn’t in the courtroom. I had expected I wouldn’t need her until tomorrow.

“Your Honor,” I said. “We will have one witness, but if the court will allow, in light of what occurred to me this morning,” I was milking it but so what, “in light of the events of this morning, and in deference to the Lamb family, we ask that the court be recessed until tomorrow.”

The judge wasn’t happy about it, I could see that, being that it was only two o’clock and he could squeeze in another hour and a half of testimony before the scheduled quitting time, but he seemed willing to go along with my request until the disturbance broke out.

“If you could be giving me just a minute,” shouted
Morris from the back of the courtroom, standing in the aisle with his hand up. He was wearing his shabby hat and a crumpled blue suit dusted heavily with dandruff and his
tzitzis
were hanging down from beneath his too tight jacket. “Just a minute is all I am needing to talk here with Victor.”

One of the marshals, blue blazered, his ear stuffed with ominous plastic, immediately rushed to Morris’s side and took hold of his arm. Prescott ducked and the judge cringed. Now that the community of our courtroom knew I was a marked man a noticeable nervousness had set in.

“What is happening here?” said a surprised Morris, trying to pull his arm away from the marshal. “What? Am I now a criminal?”

“Your Honor,” I said. “Can I have a minute?”

“You know that man?” asked the judge.

“Yes, sir. He is my investigator.”

There was a sudden laugh from the group of young lawyers behind Prescott, from Brett with two t’s and the others, a laugh at just how ludicrous it was that someone like Morris could be an investigator. People in the audience joined in, it spread gaily.

Without thinking I turned on the laughing young lawyers and said, loudly and angrily, “Is something funny, you little pissants?”

It stopped just that fast. There was a peculiar silence, like the whole court had been caught at something, and in the silence I remembered that just three weeks before, when Morris first appeared in court and there had been a snicker, I had turned away in embarrassment.

“Take your minute, Mr. Carl,” said the judge.

I motioned for Morris to come forward, and he did. I leaned over and he stood on his tiptoes and whispered in my ear, “I have for you a witness.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Your friend, Miss Beth, she gave me a paper and I showed it to the man.”

“A subpoena?”

“Because of such paper he agreed to come with me, but I fear, Victor, that if you don’t use him now he won’t be back tomorrow.”

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Gardner, a very nice man, actually, though he pretends to be not so nice. You should maybe, Victor, I’m no lawyer, but maybe you should call this man before he decides he doesn’t want to be here anymore.”

“What is this about?”

“You ask this Mr. Gardner some questions, Victor.”

He handed me four pieces of paper, a yellow original and three copies.

“Miss Beth said you would be needing more than one. I’ll be charging, of course, for the copies. A quarter they cost in this building.
Gonifs,
and our own government too.” Then he turned and went to the back of the courtroom and sat down again.

I looked over the original document briefly. Still puzzled, I said, “Your Honor, on behalf of Chester Concannon I call Mr. Leonard Gardner to the stand.”

He was a tall, middle-aged man with a fine suit and shiny black loafers. His hair was curly and very tightly trimmed. There was something hard about him, something defiant and angry. He had been put upon for too long and was not going to take it anymore, dammit. But even so he was walking up the courtroom aisle and slipping into the witness stand.

He answered the usual questions, checking his nails, letting out the arrogant sigh of a man whose time was being wasted. He was Leonard Gardner, G-A-R-D-N-E-R, he lived at 408 North 3rd Street, he was a businessman, primarily in fashion, importing certain fabrics from Pakistan.

“Now, Mr. Gardner, on the night of May ninth of this
year, did you by chance rent a limousine from the Cherry Hill Limousine Company in Cherry Hill, New Jersey?”

“I don’t know specific dates,” he said. His voice was a near sneer. “How am I supposed to know what night May ninth was?”

“It was the night Bissonette’s nightclub burned down. Does that help?”

“No.” His shoulders hiccuped in a snort and his gaze rose, as if he were required to inspect the ceiling for cracks.

“Well, maybe this will refresh your recollection.”

I marked the original document into evidence and tossed a copy each to Prescott and Eggert. Then I handed the marked document to the witness. “Do you know what that is, Mr. Gardner?”

“It looks like an invoice for the rental of a limousine.”

“On May ninth of this year, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever seen this invoice before?”

“This afternoon. The man in the back with the funny hat showed it to me.”

“You mean Mr. Kapustin.”

“That’s his name, right. Kapustin.”

“Does this document refresh your recollection as to whether or not you rented a limousine on May ninth of this year?”

“Well, my signature’s on it, so I guess I did.”

“And you signed for the limousine.”

“That’s what I said.”

“And though you live in Philadelphia, you went all the way to New Jersey for a limousine?”

“That’s where I went, yeah. What about it?”

“Where did you go that night, Mr. Gardner?”

“We went out to dinner and then drove around. I had just closed a large deal for a shipment from Karachi and we were celebrating. That against the law?”

“Where did you have dinner?”

“I don’t remember. The Garden maybe, or someplace. I do remember that the veal was overdone and the wine a little too impertinent, if that’s what you want to know. A definite two forks only, no more than that.”

“And after dinner where did you go?”

“I don’t know. I possibly celebrated a bit too hard that night. I seem to recollect I fell asleep in the car. I spilled champagne on my suit, too. A nasty stain. Ruined it. Twelve hundred dollars.”

At that moment Eggert stood up. “Your Honor, I object. There is testimony of a limousine rental on the night of the fire. I will stipulate that limousines were rented on the night of the fire. Beyond that, however, I don’t see how Mr. Gardner’s testimony is relevant.”

“Mr. Carl,” said the judge, “are you going to link this up any further?”

“I hope so,” I said.

“The law doesn’t traffic in hopes, Mr. Carl,” said the judge. “Either tell me you can link it up or the testimony will be stricken.”

I turned around and gave a shrug to Morris.

From his seat, he shook his head with sadness. Slowly he stood up and started the long walk toward me. The whole courtroom was watching him now. He had planned it this way, I thought, and I didn’t know whether to hug him or wring his neck. When he reached me I leaned over to him and he again stood on his tiptoes.

“Don’t be a
goyishe kopf,
Victor. Ask him who the person he was with that night was.”

Morris shook his head some more, shook it at all the
goyishe kopfs
in the world, turned around, and slowly walked again to the back of the courtroom.

“I’ll link up the testimony with just a few more questions, Your Honor.”

“Get to it, Mr. Carl.”

“Who were you with that night in your limousine, Mr. Gardner?”

“I had a date.”

“Who?”

“None of your business,” he said.

“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Gardner.”

He turned to the judge and in an aggrieved voice said, “Must I go into personal matters? Is that necessary?”

“Is it necessary, Mr. Carl?” asked the judge.

I turned to find Morris sitting in the back of the courtroom. His eyes rose in exasperation and with a series of flicks from his hand he urged me on.

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

“You must answer the question, Mr. Gardner,” said the judge.

“And it doesn’t matter who it hurts? It doesn’t matter if my date has been happily married to another for twenty years, that doesn’t matter, I am still required to tell it all to the tabloids?”

“Answer the question, Mr. Gardner,” said the judge.

“So tell us, Mr. Gardner,” I said as he turned back to me and dared me with his eyes to ask the question again. “Who were you with in the limousine that night?”

“This is personal,” he said. “I don’t believe in all this so-called outing going on, angry young men invading other people’s lives. I don’t care, really, but others do and it’s not right. The Constitution applies to us, too. We might as well be living in Colorado.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gardner,” I said. “But please answer the question. Who was with you in the limousine that night?”

There was a long pause and a sigh and a shake of the head. He laughed to himself and then shrugged. “All right, then.”

“Who, Mr. Gardner?”

“Michael,” he said. “I was with Michael that night.”

“Michael who?”

“Michael Ruffing.”

There was a gasp just then. It wasn’t loud, it didn’t last long, but I heard it in all its sharpness and pain. And I didn’t have to look to see who it came from. It hadn’t come from any member of the jury, or from Prescott, or from Jimmy or Chester or the judge. It had come from the long pale throat of Marshall Eggert, who had just seen his arson claims against Concannon and Moore disappear and had just seen the credibility of Michael Ruffing, his star witness, who on the night of the fire at Bissonette’s had been in a limousine much like the one seen leaving after the arson and who had used the insurance proceeds to pay his tax bill and stay out of jail, the credibility of that Michael Ruffing be crushed to scrap by the aggrieved voice of Leonard Gardner.

ON MY WAY OUT
of the courtroom Prescott stopped me by grabbing hold of my arm. I looked down at his hand reaching around my biceps, but he held it steady there with a tight grip despite the force of my gaze. I could have said something sharp and clever just then if I had thought of it as he gripped my arm, but nothing sprang to mind, so I stayed quiet.

“Nice bit of investigation, pulling out that Gardner fellow,” he said finally. “You’re a constant source of surprise.”

“I’m just shocked that with all the resources of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase you didn’t find it yourself.”

“Maybe we did.”

“But why blame Ruffing when it was so much more convenient to put the arson off on Chester?”

“You subpoenaed Veronica Ashland,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“That’s right.”

“My advice, for what it’s worth…”

“Not much anymore,” I said.

“My advice, Victor, is not to call her. You know, of course, if you do call her to testify I’ll have no option but to bring out your sordid affair with her.” I had figured they had known, but I looked away from him anyway. On the other side of the courtroom, through a watery blur, I could see Jimmy Moore talking with a small group of supporters but staring at me as hard as a hypnotist. “The jury will
think that rather strange,” Prescott continued, “calling your lover as a witness.”

“Our relationship is in the past. It ended the instant I realized she had information relevant to this case. But whatever the jury thinks, they’ll think she’s telling the truth.”

“Her testimony is not going to be all you expect.”

“I think we’ll give her a shot.”

“She doesn’t want to testify.”

“That’s why God invented the subpoena.”

“Jimmy doesn’t want her to testify.”

“I’m sure of that,” I said.

“We seem to have the damnedest time communicating, Victor. I apologize if I’m not being clear. Jimmy has told me that he is worried about the pressure of testifying on her fragile physical condition. He believes that forcing her to testify at this most difficult time in her life could be dangerous to her health.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“Don’t be silly. But Jimmy wanted you to be aware of all the possible consequences of putting that girl on the stand.”

“Because if that’s a threat,” I went on, “that would be obstruction of justice.”

“I was just voicing a concern that had been explained to me by my client.”

“Maybe I should call Eggert over here, and Special Agent Stemkowski. Maybe you could voice Jimmy’s concern to them.”

He smiled at me. “That won’t be necessary,” he said, then he turned around and walked over to his client. It would have been a small moment of triumph for me, except for that smile. It wasn’t a nervous smile, there was no tension in it, no worry. It was a chess player’s smile, as if he had opened with P-Q4, I had countered with P-Q4 and he had replied with P-QB4, offering his queenside
bishop’s pawn for capture. I had played enough chess in the geekdom of my youth to know the price of accepting that pawn. His smile was the smile that invariably accompanies a gambit and I didn’t like it one bit.

Morris was waiting for me outside the courtroom. He had agreed to drive with me to the office, my protector now that I was under attack. The thought of Morris protecting me was oddly comforting. I was going straight to the office because I had decided to skip Chuckie’s funeral, decided for the best of all possible reasons: naked fear. Together Morris and I walked down the hall to the elevator.

“You could have told me what Gardner’s testimony would be at the first,” I said

“So where would be such fun in that?”

“This isn’t fun. I’m dying here and you’re talking about fun.”

“Such
kvetching.
You drew it out of him in the end. A lawyer as grand as yourself, Victor, I knew you would be getting to the bottom of what he had for the telling.”

I looked around the hallway. “Where’s Beth? Have you seen her?”

“I sent her off on a little errand,” said Morris.

“To pick up your dry cleaning?”

“That too needs doing,” he said. “Now quiet please, I have news for you from Corpus Christi.”

“You found Stocker?” I asked.

Morris stopped walking, took out his glasses and little notebook, and searched through the notebook’s pages and the scraps stuck inside those pages for his notes. “Aaah, yes. Here it is.” He pulled out a piece of envelope with a tight scrawling over it and began walking again, squinting through his glasses all the while at the tiny print. “It seems there is a Mr. Cavanaugh at the Downtown Marina on a Bay Shore Drive in Corpus Christi that bears a striking
resemblance to our Mr. Stocker. This Mr. Cavanaugh is in a thirty-six-foot sailboat. He sailed over from the west coast of Florida. He is renting his berth at the marina by the week. He has no visitors, no friends, he drinks like a carp, and talks of sailing to South America. And this Mr. Cavanaugh makes calls from the marina’s pay phone, which just happens to be the same number that has placed calls to that Mr. Prescott whose office you burgled like a cat.”

“And you think Cavanaugh is Stocker?”

“Of course I think that, such a
dorfying
you are sometimes, Victor. Why else am I telling all this to you?” We reached the elevators and Morris pushed the down button. “But whether it is so or not, we can only know by going down and finding out.”

“So go,” I said.

“No, thank you,” said Morris. “Where would I eat in Corpus Christi? You think they got a kosher deli in Corpus Christi? You think they got pastrami in Corpus Christi?”

“You’re not going down?”

“After this trial, maybe, you and Miss Beth can make the trip.”

“Why not now?” I said. “It doesn’t do us any good if you find out that it’s him and then he sails away to Paraguay.”

“From what we know it doesn’t look like he is going anywhere too fast,” said Morris. “Besides, he can’t be sailing off to Paraguay.”

“And why not?” I asked.

“There is no seaport in Paraguay,” said Morris. “It is in the mountains.”

“So now you’re the geography wizard?”

“I had reason to be searching once for criminals in Paraguay.”

“What, Morris, you were a Nazi hunter?” I asked through my laughter. “You were searching the mountains of Paraguay for wayward German colonels?”

“Yes,” said Morris in a cold voice that shut me up quick. We stood there in an awkward silence while Morris stared at me until I began looking down at the scuffs on my shoes. The elevator came, breaking the moment, but before I could enter it Eggert grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me aside.

“Are you still interested in a deal?” he asked.

“What are you offering?”

“Plead guilty to extortion only, testify against the councilman, we’ll recommend minimum jail time. I’ll even talk to the U.S. Attorney about probation.”

“Gardner’s testimony shook you up a little, hey, Marshall?”

“Not at all,” he said, but his hand was in his pocket and his change was jingling out a very different tune. “It’s inconclusive at best.”

“Maybe. But your taxi driver witness said the limo he saw flashed his brights, like a signal, as if it were hoping to be noticed. And now we know that Ruffing, who collected the insurance on the property, was tooling around that night in a black limousine. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see the connection. Your arson just disappeared from the case, and so, probably, did the racketeering charge. Now you want my client to plead to the only real charge left.”

He sniffed twice. “It’s a good deal, Carl.”

“This trial has come down to either or. It’s either Moore or Concannon. The only way for you to get both is for one to plead and rat out the other. Sit tight, Marshall. We’ll talk after my witness tomorrow. If she is all I expect, tomorrow you’ll be offering immunity and be damn glad to give it.”

I walked away, not waiting for a response. A week before I would have jumped at his offer, leaped at it like Charles Barkley leaping for a rebound, but it wasn’t a week before anymore. I was back in the game, I was on a roll, and tomorrow I was going up for the winning score.