Authors: Charles McCarry
“And if you do win it?”
“It will cut five years off the schedule.”
“Oh, really?” Morgan tugged at her hand.
Jack held on for an instant. He said, “Really. When you're calmer, I'll explain.”
Accusation still smoldering in her eyes, Morgan drew a long deep breath. She said, “Okay. What do you want from me?”
“Two things,” Jack replied. “Moneyâ”
“What a surprise.”
“âand the support of your loonies.”
“My
what?
”
“Just kidding,” Jack said. “The support of the good peopleâhow's that?âfor a good cop, unjustly accused by the forces of evil, whose acquittal would do more damage to the image and power of the corrupt police than anything since Attica.”
“Come on.”
“Think about it. Yesterday, before he was framed, Gallagher was a hero cop. Save a hero, be a hero.”
Morgan was calmer nowâoddly, Jack had that effect on her when he talked political realitiesâand theoretician that she was, she suddenly saw the same possibilities he saw, and even greater possibilities beyond those. Peter was right about this guy; Peter was always right.
She said, “Okay. It's a go. How much money will you need?”
“About twenty grand for an investigation by private detectives, expert witnesses, and so forth. I'm forgoing a fee.”
“So I heard on the tube. And what kind of support do you need from my loonies?”
Her lips compressed in a sardonic quarter-smile. Jack grinned; he had won. He was relaxed now, big oxblood wingtip shoes on the desk, hands clasped behind his head. “Demonstrations, placards, pressure on the press, posters, pamphlets, speeches, phone campaigns, a woman at every meeting in the city demanding justice and an end to the link between the Mob and the cops, until the trial.”
“That's easy.”
“I don't mean zealots' meetings. I mean PTAs, missionary societies, the mainstream.”
“That can be done. I'll write a check.”
“No. It has to be raised from the people. Quarters, crumpled dollar bills, small checks from fearful widows.” Jack smiled. “I even thought of a name for the fund-raising operation.” He wrote it on a slip of paper.
Morgan smiled, shook her head. Giggled. “I love it,” she said.
“Atta girl,” Jack said. “And I've got another idea. Phil and Teresa Gallagher are all alone with their kids in the house. Who will protect them? The Mafia is out there, also fascist cops. What if you organized a round-the-clock vigil, a circle of women around the house, protecting a sister?”
Morgan's eyes widened in admiration. She said, “You are a once-in-a-lifetime motherfucker, Jack. Really you are.”
That same day an organization calling itself the Greater Ohio Oversight Defense Coalition Opposed to Police Corruption (GOOD-COP) posted four women sentinels, the first of hundreds who would keep watch day and night outside the Gallaghers' modest rented home. With more exposure in the media, GOODCOP collected about thirty thousand dollars in the first week of its appeal. This was enough to disguise the additional twenty thousand that I later passed to Morgan in cash.
“If ever there was a case that should be fought pro bono publicoâfor the public goodâthis is it,” Jack told the reporters who walked to work with him almost every morning now. “And compared to what Phil Gallagher did for the taxpayers a few years ago, forgoing a legal fee is nothing.”
5
It was months before Gallagher's trial began, but by seeding the media Jack kept the case alive in the public mind. On opening day, hundreds of the curious waited in line for the handful of available seats that had not already been allocated to journalists, including network camera crews from as far away as New York City. Jack did not disappoint them. In a courtroom filled with lambent April light, he turned the trial into a replay of the David and Goliath story.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said Jack in his opening statement, “Fats Corso is the man in the shadows who lurks outside every decent home in our community, looking for men, women, and children to corrupt and victimize with his drugs, his gambling, his prostitution, his whole portfolio of crime and evil. Fats Corso is the man in the shadows who is trying to trick his neighbors into sending a clean cop, a hero cop, a cop who is one of us, to prison because he exposed Fats Corso's connections to dirty cops.”
Jack said all this, and much more, in a tone of calm reason. As he spoke, he positioned himself in a diagonal beam of sunlight. Speaking without notes, head thrown back, perfectly at ease, he seemed to be breathing in golden words from the very sunshine and then breathing them out again for the spellbound jury. The David and Goliath image was magnified by the physical appearance of the prosecutor, a big clumsy Republican named F. Merriwether Street who was six feet six inches tall. Street introduced a parade of policemen and expert witnesses who established, item by item, the seemingly damning evidence against Gallagher. On cross-examination, Jack showed that the officers who arrested Gallagher were not responding to a call but had “happened” on the scene, which was several miles from their assigned patrol area. A witness had noticed Gallagher's thermos lying on the front seat of his cruiser, whose door was open. When Jack showed the witness, a plainclothes nun who worked in the inner city, three similar thermos bottles, she chose the correct one.
Jack's exchange with one of the arresting officers, Patrolman Randy Sebring, was the keystone of his defense:
JACK
: Officer Sebring, you have testified that Phil Gallagher was in the backseat of the cruiser when you arrived at the scene, that he had a naked young lady on his lap, and that his service revolver was on the floor of the backseat. Is all that correct?
WITNESS
: Yes.
JACK
: Was the back door or any door of the cruiser open?
WITNESS:
No.
JACK
: All four windows rolled up and locked? All four doors, too?
WITNESS
: Yes.
JACK
: The door opens from the outside but not the inside? Cannot be opened from the inside, standard police cruiser without inside door handles, designed to make sure dangerous criminals can't just open the door and escape? Got a screen between the front seat and back so the perpetrator can't get out that way?
WITNESS
: Yes.
JACK
: Officer Sebring, I find that fascinating. Let me ask you this: Why do you suppose Lieutenant Gallagher would get into the backseat of his own cruiser with a naked young lady, knowing that he couldn't get out?
WITNESS
: I don't know.
JACK
: Was Lieutenant Gallagher wearing his hat?
WITNESS
: What?
JACK:
You have testified that Lieutenant Gallagher resisted arrest and was subdued by you and your partner after a violent struggle in which he fired his revolver. Is that correct?
WITNESS
: Yes.
JACK
: I show you a photograph made by a news cameraman at the scene of this incident on the night in question. What is happening in the picture?
WITNESS
: It looks like we're putting the cuffs on the subject.
JACK
: What is that on Lieutenant Gallagher's head?
WITNESS
: A cap.
JACK
: Is it standard police procedure, after subduing a suspect in a violent struggle, to put his hat back on his head before handcuffing him?
WITNESS
: No.
JACK
: Officer Sebring, isn't it a fact that there was no struggle to get Lieutenant Gallagher out of the cruiser? And isn't it a fact that you and your partner picked an unconscious Phil Gallagher up off the ground where he had fallen after being tripped? And didn't he fall several yards away from his cruiser, near the school building? And isn't it also a fact that you or your partner, or both of you, then searched in the darkness until you found his cap, which had fallen off when he was tripped, and that you then jammed his cap back on his head and carried him, limp and unconscious, back to his cruiser, where you hastily handcuffed him as you observed the approach of the news media?
WITNESS
(glaring in anger): No!
JACK
(after a silence): Tell me, Randy, did you two fellows slip LSD into his mouth then, or was the LSD somebody put in his thermos of coffee enough to do the trick?
PROSECUTOR
: Objectionâ
JACK
: I withdraw the question.
An expert witness confirmed Gallagher's story from scientific evidence. There were traces of LSD in Gallagher's thermos bottle. Gallagher's fingerprints were not on the packets of LSD found in his pocket.
WITNESS
: There were no fingerprints of any kind on Gallagher's service revolver.
JACK
: What does that suggest to you, Dr. Garrett?
WITNESS
: The possibility that the weapon had been wiped clean of fingerprints.
The wax test on Gallagher's right hand and arm, designed to show whether he had recently fired a handgun, was negative. There was a bruise on the back of Gallagher's head that was consistent with a blow from a nightstick or blackjack. Fragments of asphalt and slag removed from scrapes on his knees, elbows, and palms matched similar material from the school yard.
Jack then called the head of the vice squad, who testified that the mother of the fifteen-year-old girl, a woman named Whisper Fisk, had been arrested twenty-three times in the past ten years for prostitution. She worked as an exotic dancer and hostess in the Blue Grotto, a bar and restaurant where Fats Corso spent most of his evenings. Although the Blue Grotto was legally owned by Corso's two sisters, it was widely believed that Fats was the real owner.
JACK
: Lieutenant Karp, I will ask you this: To your official knowledge, has the name Domenico D. Corso, also known as Fats Corso, ever been linked in any police investigation to the illegal practice of prostitution in this city?
WITNESS
: Yes, sir. Fifteen times from 1933 to 1945.
JACK
: How many times did these charges lead to trial and conviction?
WITNESS
: Never.
JACK
: Why was that, Lieutenant?
WITNESS
: Insufficient proof.
JACK
: Isn't it a fact, Lieutenant, that Mr. Corso runs prostitution in this town?
WITNESS
: I couldn't swear to that, sir.
JACK
: Will you swear now, before this jury, that Mr. Corso does
not
run prostitution in this town, and was not running it every time Whisper Fisk was arrested for soliciting for prostitution?
WITNESS
: I couldn't swear to that, either.
JACK
: Was Whisper Fisk ever released on bail after being arrested for soliciting for prostitution?
WITNESS
: Yes.
JACK
: I hand you an abstract of the records of the Municipal Court in regard to all such charges against one Eleanor R. Fisk, also known as Whisper Fisk. Will you read the name of the person who furnished bond in each and every case?
WITNESS
: It was always the same person, Domenico D. Corso.
The jury deliberated for forty-two minutes before acquitting Lieutenant Phil Gallagher on all counts. Jack immediately filed a $50 million civil lawsuit against Fats Corso on the Gallaghers' behalf.
6
Walking to work the following morning with a large retinue of reporters, Jack was asked by a writer if he was going to forgo his share of the judgment if he won.
“The money is meaningless,” Jack said. “I just want to get Fats Corso under oath.”
The writer was from New York. His profile of Jack, “Young Man with a Future,” ran the following week in a national magazine. Jack was interviewed on
Good Morning America
and on two network magazine shows. Jack was completely at his ease in a television studio. The camera liked him: It was at this point that it began to be noticed that Jack had the quality, common to stars, of looking better in pictures than in life. Jack knew that the media's attention span was fleeting, and that hot as he was, he would soon be replaced by someone hotter. But he had become part of the media's consciousness, which meant that they would revisit him in the future. In commercial breaks he made friends with the producers, who would remember him. He was unfailingly polite to the smiling, overdressed interviewers, all of whom asked him the same five questions, usually in exactly the same words, as if they were all wired to some invisible mothership that was whispering into their earpieces.
Through Gruesome contacts, Jack had already made friends with the governor of Ohio. A week after the Gallagher trial, he was appointed counsel to a new Governor's Task Force on Organized Crime. He immediately called for an all-out investigation of Corso. His position gave him access to most of the state's files on Corso. Jack leaked selected bits of this confidential data to investigative reporters. The material, like most raw investigative files, was mostly gossip and hearsay and the rancorous accusations of enemies who believed that their identities, if not their words, would remain secret, and for that reason it made excellent newspaper copy. Although Jack was never identified as a source, his name and picture popped up in the stories.
So notable was this burst of notoriety and its consequences that Peter himself attended my first post-trial meeting with Morgan, at a picnic table in a roadside park in West Virginia. We lunched on Kentucky Fried Chicken, for which Peter, epicure though he was, had a secret tasteâas did the vicious, tiny blackflies that plagued us.
“Jack,” said Morgan, “wants to change the plan.”