Hostile Witness (5 page)

So what I did that night after Beth left me was what I did most every night. I stopped off at a storefront grill and ordered a cheese steak with ketchup and onions to go and took it home and ate it in front of the television with half a six-pack beside me. Whatever the night, there was always one show almost worth watching and I was able to stretch a whole night of mindlessness around that one show, running from
Jeopardy!
through prime time through the late news and the talk shows and finally the late late movie on UHF, until I’d fallen asleep on the couch, drugged by all I
had seen. That Friday night was like every other night of what my life had become, and for the few blessed moments that I was caught like a science fiction hero in the power of that electron beam I lost whatever sentience I held and became as connected to the now of my life as the simple but noble drosophila.

THOUGH I HAD NEVER
met Jimmy Moore, I knew his name. I knew thousands of names, actors and criminals, sports heroes and politicians, authors, rock stars, the silly little guy who sells suits on South Street. It is the names who rule the world, the Tina Browns, the Jerry Browns, the Jim Browns. They are the aristocracy of America and whatever their rank, and there is a ranking, from the national to the local to the almost obscure, it is the names who attend the best parties, screw the prettiest people, drink the finest champagne, laugh loudest and longest. Jimmy Moore was a local name, a businessman turned politician, a city councilman with a populist, anti-drug agenda that bridged the lower and middle classes. He was a name with aspirations and a loyal following. A name who would be mayor.

I spent the better part of Monday in the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase listening to Jimmy Moore on the telephone. He wasn’t on the telephone with me, of course, as I was not a name and thus not worth talking to. Instead he was on the phone with Michael Ruffing, a restaurateur whose flashy enterprises in the city had made him a local name among the city’s well-cultured and whose phone at his nightclub, Bissonette’s, named after his partner Zack Bissonette, the currently comatose former second baseman, happened to have been tapped by the FBI. I sat alone at the foot of a long marble table in a huge conference room. Fine antique prints of Old Philadelphia
lined the walls: Independence Hall, Carpenters Hall, Christ Church, the Second Bank of the United States. The carpet was thick and blue. A tray of soft drinks lay on a credenza behind me and I didn’t have to pay six bits to open one, they were just there, for me. I can’t help but admit that sitting in that room like an invited guest, sitting there like a colleague, gave me a thrill. I was in the very heart of success, someone else’s success maybe, but still the closest I had ever come to the real thing. And there was a dark joy in my heart the whole of my time there because I knew that if all went right this could be my success, too. So I couldn’t help smiling every now and then as I sat in that conference room with earphones on and a yellow pad before me, listening to a score of cassettes holding Jimmy Moore’s taped conversations with Michael Ruffing.

It was these tapes and certain subsequent events that were the basis for the government’s case against Moore and Concannon. Ruffing’s waterfront development plan was budgeted at $140 million, and Moore wanted a full 1 percent to propose and ensure passage of the enabling legislation in City Council. The government’s theory was that Moore and Concannon were shaking down Ruffing for the million point four and that when Ruffing stopped paying after the first half mil they turned violent, first beating the hell out of Bissonette, the club’s minority owner who had convinced Ruffing to stop the payments, and then burning down the club. Moore and Concannon had been indicted for violations of the Hobbs Act, RICO, the federal conspiracy laws, and there was plenty of evidence to back it all up. Ruffing would testify at the trial to an arrangement that had gone very bad, and there were reams of records, which I had not yet been able to examine, that purported to follow the trail of money from Ruffing to Concannon to Moore’s political action committee, Citizens for a United Philadelphia, or CUP, as well as physical evidence relating to the assault. But most significant of all were Moore’s own words, captured with startling clarity on the ferric oxide of the tapes.

I worked through lunch, eating a tuna salad sandwich as I listened to the tapes. I had not even touched the six boxes full of documents when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I whirled around and saw standing behind me Prescott, tall, stern faced, dressed in his severe navy blue pinstripes. I nearly jumped when I saw him. He looked like a mortician. I took off the headphones and was disoriented for a moment by the Dolby quiet of reality.

“What do you think?” asked Prescott.

“I haven’t been able to look at everything yet,” I said.

“But from what you saw. Be honest now, Victor.”

“Well, sir, to be honest, the tapes make Jimmy Moore out to be the archetypal grasping politician.”

“I knew you’d catch on,” he said as his stern features eased into merriment. “That’s exactly our defense. Come, Chester Concannon is waiting for us and Jimmy’s on his way. Chester especially is anxious to meet you.”

“Fine,” I said, grabbing hold of my pad and following Prescott out the door. He led me through a maze of hallways and up a flight of steps.

“It’s very important,” he said as I followed, “that Chester agrees to your representation and to maintain our current strategy.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said, masking my apprehension. This, I knew, was the first crucial moment of my opportunity. I had never met Chester Concannon, had no idea what he looked like, what his manner was, but somehow I had to convince this stranger with his life on the line to hire me as his lawyer and to allow me to follow Prescott blindly.

Prescott brought me through another hallway and into a different conference room, just as elegant and imposing as the one in which I had spent the day, but this one filled with a pack of lawyer types. In the middle, sporting a ragged corduroy jacket, sat a rather ugly man who didn’t fit. His brown hair fell scraggly to his shoulders and he
scrunched fat fish lips between forefinger and thumb as he watched me walk into the room. I assumed he was Chester Concannon. You can always tell the client among his lawyers because he looks like the one who’s been forced to pay for everyone else’s worsted wool.

“I’d like you all to meet Victor Carl,” said Prescott when we stood together before the table. Prescott’s arm rested like a father’s on my shoulder. “Victor is a terrific litigator and going to be a big help to us all.”

I smiled the smile I was expected to smile.

“So you’re the mannequin,” said the ugly man in corduroy, his voice loud and sharp, like the bark of a Pomeranian.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“They said they needed a mannequin with a pulse and a clean tie to take over for McCrae,” he said. “So I guess that’s you, Vic. Except I see you don’t have the clean tie. You got a pulse at least, Vic?”

I fought the impulse to check my tie and turned my head just enough so I could look at him sideways without letting him see the tears involuntarily welling. If this indeed was my client-to-be I was in deep trouble. “Last time I checked,” I said.

“Good for you,” he said. “Just take a shower in your wash-and-wear so you’ll be presentable when you pose for the judge.”

“Victor,” said Prescott. “I’d like you to meet Chester Concannon.”

I hesitantly reached out my hand toward the man in the corduroy but he remained seated, his thick lips back to being pinched by his forefinger and thumb. Next to him an African-American man in a tight fitting, expensive suit stood and took hold of my hand.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Carl,” he said in a strong voice. Chester Concannon was boyishly handsome, with thin shoulders and strong hands. While his smile was
bright, his suit was subdued and his tie striped and simple. “I appreciate you joining our team.”

“And this,” said Prescott, gesturing to the man in the corduroy who had called me a mannequin, “is Chuckie Lamb, Councilman Moore’s press secretary.”

Chuckie Lamb gave me a sort of snorting nod and then leaned back in his chair until the chair’s front legs tilted off the carpet.

“I’ve told both Chet and Jimmy all about you, Victor, and the tenacious job you did on the
Saltz
case,” said Prescott. “They were both enthusiastic about your coming on board. This is the rest of our crew,” he said and introduced me to the Talbott, Kittredge contingent seated around the table, whose names I forgot the instant they escaped from Prescott’s lips. They were finely dressed, perfectly groomed men and women, showily multicultural, as if cast by a politically correct producer for a television series about litigators. There was an Asian-American man and an African-American woman, and there was a blond guy with a perpetual smirk on his face. And then at the end of the table was Madeline Burroughs, who eyed me suspiciously, arms crossed, the fist of her face closed. It was the very picture of the sharp legal team of which I had always dreamed of being a part and on which I had always suspected, somewhere deep down, I didn’t belong.

“Now Victor has spent the day looking through Pete McCrae’s files and the materials provided us by the U.S. Attorney’s office,” said Prescott, “and he assures me that he can be ready for trial in two weeks.”

“What a stunning surprise,” barked Chuckie Lamb. “The mannequin is ready to pose.”

“That’s enough,” said Concannon softly, and Chuckie Lamb quieted immediately.

“Victor’s readiness,” said Prescott, “means we won’t require the continuance the government so desperately wants us to have.”

“I haven’t looked at everything yet,” I said, glancing at Chuckie Lamb for a moment. “But it shouldn’t take me too long to get up to speed.”

There were smiles from all the bright young successes and I smiled back. I was an actor playing the part of a competent and experienced lawyer and doing quite well, I thought. And if they all didn’t believe in what I was presenting they were acting quite well themselves, all except for Chuckie.

“Terrific,” said Prescott. “But maybe, before we proceed any further, Victor should spend a few minutes alone with Chester.” He raised his eyebrows at me, giving me my cue.

“I guess we should see if you really want to hire me,” I said to Concannon with my most ingratiating smile. Chuckie Lamb laughed in my face.

Concannon and I were escorted to an open office. On my way there, without letting anyone notice, I checked my tie. Chuckie had not been lying, a glob of tuna had crusted on the edge. I rubbed it off, leaving a dark oily patch, streaked larger by my thumb.

I closed the door behind us and gestured for Concannon to sit in one of the chairs arrayed expectantly before some Talbott partner’s desk. I sat on the tabletop. Behind the desk was a collection of swords and sabers and battle-axes, the metal edges gleaming. Another litigator’s office.

“Mr. Concannon,” I started, “I thought we should talk a bit before you agreed to hire me or I agreed to represent you.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Carl.”

“Call me Victor,” I said.

“Victor or Vic?”

“Victor. I never liked Vic. It makes me sound too disposable, like a throwaway lighter or a ballpoint pen.”

He laughed at my old joke, which was good. He seemed a charming enough man, Chet Concannon, quiet and very
polite. I told him I was sorry about what happened to Pete McCrae. I told him a little about myself, my experience, the highlights of my career, just a little about myself because there was only a little to tell. Then it was time for the defense attorney’s lecture, so I paused, took a breath, and began. I gave him the talk about lawyer-client confidentiality, about how my job was not to find the truth but to defend him, and how if I learned the truth I was duty-bound to stop him from saying anything other than the truth on the stand.