Hostile Witness (49 page)

“Did you take the cocaine that Mr. Bissonette offered?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why, Miss Ashland, if you had been drug-free for over two years?”

“Because I missed it, and I was lonely, and I was disgusted that I had allowed a stiff like Zack back into my bedroom. Because I am not as strong a woman as I would like, Mr. Carl.”

“Did you become addicted again?”

“Yes.”

“Did you only get cocaine from Mr. Bissonette?”

“No.”

“Where else?”

“Anywhere I could.”

“Did you have another primary source?”

“Yes.”

“Who, Ms. Ashland?”

“Norvel Goodwin,” she said.

“The same man who had been selling out of that crack house on Fifty-first Street, the same man who Jimmy Moore had beaten with a chair?”

“Yes.”

“Now, did there come a time that someone else found out about your renewed drug use?”

“Yes.”

“And who was that?”

“Chet Concannon found out,” she said.

She had made still another mistake that I had to correct. “You mean the councilman, don’t you?”

“No,” she said. “It was Chet who found out.”

“And then Chester told the councilman?”

“No,” she said. “Chet came right to me.”

I gave her another chance. “So when did the councilman come over?”

“He never did. Chet had the limousine that night, he often used it, and he came over to my apartment after he found out.”

“And you spoke?”

“Yes.”

“And then he told the councilman?”

“No, that’s not what happened. When he came over he was very upset, agitated. He demanded to know how I had started up again with drugs and when I told him that it was Bissonette he flew into a rage.”

“It was the councilman in the rage, wasn’t it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. You’re not listening. It was Chet. He was often my beard on evenings when Jimmy wanted to bring his wife to a reception and then see me afterwards, and he began to fall in love with me. We had sex once, one lonely evening, and it seemed to
be important to him. I used to tease him about it, but it was real, I could see that. So when he found out about Bissonette he was furious, as angry as if I had been cheating on him. And the drugs, that made him even angrier. I pleaded with him not to tell the councilman, because I knew how angry he would get, how violent. He promised me he wouldn’t, that he would take care of it himself. He said he would take care of it, that he had been stiffed out of another quarter of a million, that they had dropped him like a sucker and that by dealing with Bissonette he could take care of two birds with one bullet. That’s what he said. I begged him not to do anything stupid but he told me not to worry about it, that he would take care of everything. And then he left. That’s the last I saw of him that night. The next day I heard that Zack had been beaten into a coma. I was terrified.”

I stared at her, shocked into silence, shocked enough to let her talk on and on, and talk on and on she did. While her other answers were short, two or three sentences at the most, this response seemed to last forever, and I felt helpless to stop her. I was so stunned I didn’t even try. And when she had finished she sat on the stand looking straight at me, without even a breath of malice on her face.

In a weak voice I asked the judge for a moment, which he granted, and I walked unsteadily to Chester at the defense table. The doubt in his face had been replaced with anger. I leaned over him and whispered.

“Is any of this true?” I asked.

“No,” he hissed.

“You fucked her, didn’t you?”

“You did too,” said Chester viciously. “So what? The rest of that is crap. What are you doing to me? What are you letting them do to me? You’ve sold me out.”

Still leaning over Concannon, I glanced at Prescott, who was watching Chester and me with amusement on his thin lips. He looked at me and then through those thin fucking
lips there arose the hint of a smile, the merest hint, but there it was. Where before I had seen his smile and read it as “Welcome to the club,” this time I knew exactly what it meant, and what all the smiles before it had meant too. He smiled that slight smile at me and what that smile was saying, was shouting, was shrieking for the whole court to hear was, “Got you, you little small-time Jew bastard.”

The feeling I had in that instant was like falling down a pit, falling without a parachute, without hope, fall falling. My stomach collapsed, my knees buckled, my eyes teared wildly, and spots appeared before me as my consciousness dipped. All I wanted to do at that moment was to heave and if I had anything in my stomach, if I had eaten Raffaello’s damned cannoli, drunk a cup of coffee, anything, I’m sure I would have, right there in the middle of the courtroom, right there on the defense table, right there in front of the judge, the jury, right there in front of my client, Chester Concannon, my client, who had put his freedom in my hands and who now, I was certain, was going straight and irrevocably to jail.

ONCE AGAIN I WAS RIDING
the marble-lined elevator to the fifty-fourth floor of One Liberty Place, rising to the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, coming as a visitor, not a member of the caste, coming as a supplicant, as one of the unworthy. But on this ride, at least, I was no longer lugging along a deep-seated resentment. I had been resentful of my exclusion from the hallways of the rich and powerful when I believed I belonged by right of merit, of talent, by right of my innate inner quality. But that belief had fled before the reality of my failure in
United States v. Moore and Concannon.
Not only was I not going to be offered a place at the glorious head table of the law, but the only thing I had proven at that trial was that I was inadequate to take it on my own. The jury had come back after only six hours of deliberations. Jimmy Moore acquitted of all counts; Chester Concannon guilty of Hobbs Act extortion, guilty of Hobbs Act assault, guilty of racketeering. Guilty, guilty, guilty. The words from the jury foreman were like the tolling of some unwholesome melancholy bell. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Six hours of deliberations and Chester Concannon was gone.

There was nothing I could do to salvage the trial after Veronica, my star witness, buried Chester with her testimony. I finally snapped out of my self-pitying stupor and had her declared a hostile witness, so that I could cross-examine
her, and then went at her tooth and tong, attacking her credibility, attacking her story, attacking her lies. And they were lies, yes. She had told me the truth in her apartment the black night I subpoenaed her. I had no doubt but that it was Jimmy Moore who had taken that quarter of a million, cash, and handed it over to Norvel Goodwin, resurrecting with fresh capital Goodwin’s moribund grip on the crack cocaine market in Philadelphia. I had no doubt but that Jimmy Moore had killed Zack Bissonette with the Mike Schmidt autographed baseball bat, that it was Jimmy Moore who had battered him into a coma and left him sucking air through the blood oozing out of his mangled face. But with all of my hammering, all of my badgering, all of my bombast, I was not able to shake her story. My only hope was to put myself on the stand and contradict her. I was the only one who could impeach her with what she had told me that night in her apartment and so I passionately requested that Judge Gimbel let me testify.

“Mr. Carl,” he said, with all the indignation his high position allowed him, “I’m not going to let a lawyer testify in my courtroom at a trial that he is conducting. That is a clear violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct. You’re experienced enough to know you need an investigator or another third party to question a witness if you intend to impeach that witness’s testimony with the interrogation. They still teach that in law school, I believe, and I’m not about to start changing the rules now. Was there anyone else in the room when she made her statement to you?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Did she sign a written statement?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there any tape recording or video of what she said?”

“No, sir.”

“Well then, Mr. Carl, you can ask her what she said to
you that night, but you will not be able to personally contradict, do you understand?”

“I object, Your Honor.”

“Exception noted for the record,” said the judge. “Any more questions for this witness?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then go to it, Mr. Carl. You’ve got work to do.”

And go to it I did, but to no avail. There had always been something slippery about Veronica, she was soft and silky but I could never really get a hold of her, could never pin her down. Even when I had her tied to those bedposts I could never really pin her down. That was the way she was in bed and that was the way she was on the stand too, smooth, clear, but slippery when pressed. And in the end I failed. There was really no way to succeed once she blurted out her lies. If only I had forced her to sign a statement. If only I had placed Sheldon at the doorway with his stethoscope to listen to our conversation. If only I had recognized early on in her testimony the prepared evasiveness with which she answered questions about the bank account and quickly stopped my examination before the real damage was done. If only I hadn’t been such a fuckup.

Even before she was finished testifying I had asked the court for a recess and, along with Beth, ran to the clerk’s office for a fresh subpoena, filling it out on the ride down the courthouse elevator. There was one other person, I knew, who could contradict her story, the person who had been the liaison between Jimmy Moore and Norvel Goodwin, who had set up the deal for the quarter of a million and had told Goodwin where Veronica had been hiding out the day she was to testify. The same person who had been with Jimmy Moore the night of the murder, the man whose footprints had been encased in Bissonette’s vomit and Bissonette’s blood. I filled in Henry’s name hastily as I rode down to the ground floor
and Beth fished in her pocketbook for a check for the witness fee. The murder had happened on Henry’s night off and he had flashed an alibi to the cops, who had been all too willing to believe the driver so as to put the blame on Concannon, but I was sure now that Henry’s alibi was a lie. In a desperate trot I ran to the Market Street exit of the courthouse, where I was sure the councilman’s limo would be waiting with Henry sitting calmly inside. He was my last chance. I spotted that black cat of a car at the corner of the building and rushed to it, tapping on the window, thrusting the papers inside as soon as there was a gap big enough to fit my arm. But the face underneath the chauffeur’s cap was white, not black, and he looked at me uncomprehendingly as the papers waved before him.

“Where’s Henry?” I asked.

“Kingston.”

“New York?”

“Jamaica. He went back to his family. Something about it being too damn cold up here, and I don’t blame him one bit.”

Six hours of deliberations and then the solemn tolling of the bell. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Eggert proved willing to settle for a councilman’s aide if he couldn’t get a councilman. He saw that he had a sure conviction in Chester Concannon, and a now shaky chance against Jimmy, and so in his closing he went after Chester with a fury. In detail he listed his crimes, the extortion, the murder, the taking for his own purposes of the quarter of a million dollars in cash, proven incontrovertibly by the records of cash deposits into and withdrawals from the checking account with Chester Concannon’s name on it, all calmly put into evidence by Prescott when he took his turn with Veronica. In Eggert’s forty-minute closing he spent thirty minutes on Chet Concannon. He tried, of course, to link Councilman
Moore to his aide, but even that attempt only further highlighted his argument that Chester was the real culprit here.

Prescott didn’t have to say much when his turn to close arrived. He gave his public servant speech, blamed Moore’s indictment on politics. Concannon was guilty, he told them, that was no longer in doubt. The only question remaining was what vile motives led the United States Attorney to indict the councilman too. “When you acquit Jimmy Moore,” he argued, “you are not only acquitting an innocent man. You are also sending a message to the powers in this city that you will not tolerate the persecution of a man who is fighting for the poor, the downtrodden, who is fighting the scourge of drugs on our streets, who is fighting for you. Ladies and gentlemen, politics has its time and place, during campaigns, during elections, even in the legislative process, but it has no place before the grand jury. Mr. Eggert forgot exactly who he works for when he indicted Councilman Moore. Before the grand jury and before this court he was working for the councilman’s political opponents, acting for their and his political gain. Tell him that he works not for the powerful, not for himself, but for you. Tell him the clearest way you can, tell him with an acquittal. Send Jimmy Moore back to his good work.”

I closed too, of course. I stood before that jury and spoke about Chester Concannon and reasonable doubt and how Jimmy Moore had conspired to have his aide take the fall. Oh, I let it rip, I did. But it was a lost cause and I knew it and the jury knew it and when the eyes started rolling and the yawns came, first from Mr. Thompkins, who ran his own printing business and who I knew would be a tough sell, and then from the cynical Mrs. Simpson, whom I was counting on if I had any chance, it was as good as over. I kept pounding away, repeating “reasonable doubt,” “reasonable doubt,” “reasonable doubt,” as if I were a hypnotist
trying to induce some post-trial daze in the jurors. I gave it the college try for dear old Chet, yes I did, but it mattered not a whit. Six hours of deliberations and the groaning moan of the great iron bell of justice: guilty, guilty, guilty.

There was a gay tinkling ring as the elevator stopped at the fifty-fourth floor and the doors slid open. Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. That huge expanse of lobby, beautiful and sterile; that blonde receptionist, beautiful and cold. Maybe there was another reason my resentment had vanished. Maybe the brass ring had been tarnished for me. If deceit and betrayal were the price of admission, I’d just as soon sit it out. That was something I had learned about myself, something good. I had learned enough bad about myself, my incompetence, my capacity for self-delusion, my steep leanings toward venality, but I had learned good things, too. I looked around at the riches of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase and decided that maybe I just didn’t want it anymore. Well, the receptionist I wanted still, let’s be honest, she was something, sure, but the rest could all go to hell for all I cared. And maybe, just maybe, I would do my part to send it there.

“William Prescott, please,” I said to the receptionist.

“Who can I say is here?”

“You don’t remember me?”

She gave one of those patented tosses of her mousse-swept hair and said, “No. I don’t.”

“Victor Carl.”

Her eyes opened wide for just an instant, just long enough so I knew that the story had spread through the whole of the firm, from partners to associates to secretaries to the receptionist. Even the cleaning crew, I bet, had a good laugh at my expense.

“Take a seat please, Mr. Carl, and I’ll tell his secretary you’re here.”

“Don’t bother,” I said as I headed toward the stairs. “I know the way.”

She stood up. “You can’t go unescorted Mr. Carl. That’s policy.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said without stopping. “But it’s your policy and I don’t work here.”

By the time I reached the stairs on my way to Prescott’s office she was already barking about me on the phone.

Up the wide circling stairs with the burnished rail, along the lucratively noisy hallways with secretaries typing vigorously and lawyers bustling in and out of their offices as they hurried to fill up their time sheets with billable hours, around the corners and past the richly furnished conference rooms, generously outfitted with legal pads and embossed pens and soft drinks. I had just reached the custodian’s closet, where I had spent desperate hours with Sheldon waiting for the hall to empty, when a flustered Janice rushed to meet me. She wasn’t as efficiently pretty as I remembered her to be on our first meeting, though the difference might have been mine.

“Oh, Mr. Carl,” she said. “You can’t just wander around the office alone.”

I lifted my hands. “No staplers in my pockets, honest.”

“It’s policy,” she said. “Mr. Prescott is on a conference call. I’ll take you to a meeting room to wait for him if you’d like.”

“That’s all right, Janice,” I said as I started again toward Prescott’s office, brushing past her. “But I’ll just wait with Billy. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

She sort of chugged after me saying something or other, but I ignored her. Why I was being so obstreperous is clear to me now. One result of my experience at the trial was to loose some shackle from my neck. I had always felt that there was a right way to behave, a right way to dress, a right manner to affect, as if all these rights would add up to something tangible, and add up to something tangible they
did. What they added up to was a slavery of the soul. I had so wanted to be them I pretended to be like them, which only made it easier for them to kick me in the groin and step on my face whenever they liked. I was playing a losing game because I was playing on their turf, by their rules, number one of which stated that they always won and I always lost. But I guess I had lost one too many times. My long bitter period of obeisance had passed. I was reveling in my freedom to be whatever I chose, even if what I chose to be was rude.

The door to his office was open a crack. With Janice just behind, I skirted her work station, pushed open the door, walked into his office, plopped down onto one of the tapestry chairs across from his desk. Prescott was sitting straight-backed in his suit jacket, talking into the phone. When he saw me his face startled but quickly composed itself again.

Janice, in the doorway, said, “I tried to stop him, Mr. Prescott,” but Prescott waved her off and she backed out, closing the door behind her.

“Sam, Sam, Sam,” said Prescott into the phone while he smiled at me. “We will get you everything you’ve asked for, I promise, but we need that opinion letter by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. We’re going to the printer tomorrow night and it has to be ready by then.” He spun his finger in the air, indicating that this Sam on the other end was going on and on. He winked at me. “Listen, Sam. I have to go, I have someone in my office. Simon and Jack, stay on the line and talk with Sam about getting him all that he needs. We’ll satisfy you, Sam, but we need you to move on this, all right? Let me know before the end of the day of your progress.”

When he hung up he shook his head. “Some lawyers are so timid about opinion letters it’s amazing that any deal ever gets done. Valley Hunt Estates. We have the interim financing and we’re ready to go. It’s going to be a killer deal. Too bad you’re not a part of it anymore.”

I shrugged.

“But you’ll be gratified to know that we gave the business to your friend Sam Guthrie over at Blaine, Cox,” said Prescott. “He, at least, seems grateful for the opportunity. So, Victor, what brings you unbidden once again to our offices?”