Silent Witness (2 page)

Donald Belfante had been a large man; like many entrepreneurs who retained absolute power over his own creation – in this case, a company that made computer disk drives – he was charming, egotistical, sensitive to slight, and a bully. If Gina was to be believed, he beat her often, and at random: he had beaten her four hours before his death, and had she not killed him when he stirred awake, he would have beaten her right then. It did not take much to anger Donald Belfante, and he enjoyed his anger; Gina lived in fear of each new beating, and of that final day – vivid in her imagination – when he would go too far and kill her. The prenuptial agreement, she insisted in tears, was not an incentive: it was the symbol of his unfathomable rage at the idea that she might leave him. Should she ever try, Donald Belfante had promised his wife, he would find and kill her; her belief that this would happen was both reasonable and heartfelt.

That was what she told the jury. That was what the defense psychologist told them. And, with all the empathy that he could muster, Tony Lord tried to make them feel what, in his best imaginings, Gina Belfante must have felt.

At forty-six, Tony retained the all-American look that seemed to invite confidence – blond hair cut to a moderate length, a youngish face that was strong but not threatening, candid blue eyes – and a jury persona to match. He was never arrogant, never overused his gift for irony, never took that obvious pleasure in his own skill that might cause some juror to dislike him.

The jury trusted Tony Lord. And, a few seconds earlier, to his profound relief, it had acquitted Gina Belfante.

The courtroom burst into sound – spectators turning to each other, reporters running for their minicams or computers, jurors embracing in sheer gratitude that this was over, and, from Donald Belfante's elderly mother, an involuntary moan of anguish. Gina Belfante collapsed in Tony's arms.

Her body was fragile, her frame slight. When a reporter called out, ‘Mr. Lord,' he did not turn.

‘Thank you,' Gina murmured again and again. ‘God, Tony, thank you.'

She was absorbing, Tony knew, the gift of freedom. She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes.

‘I think I love you,' she said.

‘A married lawyer?' Tony smiled. ‘I don't know which part's worse. You promised you'd start making better choices.'

‘Then I will.' Gina's laugh was shaky, as if the sound of it startled her. ‘God, what do I do next?'

Tony stopped smiling. ‘Just sit quietly with this, Gina. After a while, you may want help.'

‘I
do
.' Suddenly she burst into an ingenuous smile, which crinkled the corners of her eyes as it brightened them. ‘I'm rich, and I can do any damn thing I want.'

Tony shook his head. ‘You can do
almost
any damn thing you want.'

Gina looked around the stark courtroom, bleak with fluorescent light, and was pensive again. ‘All I want right now, Tony, is to leave this place and never come back.'

Over her shoulder, Tony signaled to the bodyguards.

Moments later, they stood on the steps of the Hall of Justice. There was a cool spring breeze, but the sun was bright, and the camera lenses reflected its light like chips of mica. Tony would speak for his client; as he raised his hand, and reporters thrust their microphones to hear him, Tony admitted to himself that for a defense lawyer, the next best thing to a client whose innocence seemed certain was winning a case you were supposed to lose.

The questions went quickly; in some form or another, Tony had answered them many cases ago. When CNN asked if he thought Gina Belfante had won because she could afford him, he shot back, ‘Does that make Mrs. Belfante too wealthy to be battered? Or is it that because other defendants may effectively be deprived of the presumption of innocence, she should be too. Then this country would truly be a prosecutors' paradise –'

‘Speaking of the DA,' Channel Five cut in, ‘we've just had a statement from Mr. Salinas. He told us the verdict is “emotional” and that there is “no credible evidence that Mrs. Belfante was in reasonable fear of imminent danger.”'

Drawing Gina closer, Tony gazed at the young Asian woman who asked the question. Mildly, he said, ‘That's not a very gracious response, is it? And more than a little unfair to the jury. But then – unlike the jury – Mr. Salinas has been nowhere near this courtroom these past three weeks. Any more than he was there when Mrs. Belfante's husband was beating her . . .'

Enough, Tony warned himself abruptly – he had to keep doing business with Victor Salinas. He waved away more questions, saying, ‘Mrs. Belfante needs peace now, and I hope you can give it to her.'

Quickly, he kissed Gina Belfante on the cheek. ‘Have a good life,' he said quietly. She smiled up at him, and then two bodyguards hustled her away to a waiting limousine and whatever life she would have, while Tony Lord, feeling both loss and relief from this severance of their complex bonds, reclaimed the life that was his own.

At the foot of the stairs, Tony saw his black Lincoln, but not the driver. Snaking through the last of the reporters, he opened the rear door.

Concealed by the opaque windows, Stacey sat behind the wheel. It was so unlike her that, just as she had intended, Tony laughed aloud. Closing the rear door, he slid into the front seat next to her.

Blue-green eyes looking into his, Stacey kissed him. She took her time about it and then leaned back again, pleased at his surprise.

‘Do you come here often?' she asked.

For a moment, Tony was content to look at her.

She was slim and honey blond, and the clean lines and angles of her face held several contradictions – a bright smile that did not erase a certain wariness in her eyes; an ingenue's fresh skin touched by lines at the corners of her mouth, which, when she smiled, reminded Tony that his wife was now forty-one. She wore little makeup: for a singer and actress whose face was so widely known, day-to-day indifference to how others saw her was both a luxury and an act of self-definition. But what made her presence at the Hall of Justice so surprising was that she made a practice of avoiding Tony's trials – she did not like courtrooms, and this building held bad memories for her.

Twelve years before, Stacey had given a concert to raise money for her lover, Senator James Kilcannon, a Democratic candidate for President in the California primary. As Stacey stood next to him, Kilcannon was shot and killed by a Vietnam veteran, Harry Carson, who was in the throes of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Or so had claimed Anthony Lord, who became Harry Carson's lawyer.

At the outset, Stacey had despised both men equally: even now, she could not fully account for how she had come to separate Tony from his client, and then to love him. But she had.

‘Congratulations,' she said.

Her gaze combined affection with a quiet inquiry. ‘Still,' Tony said, ‘you're wondering what I've gotten away with, aren't you?'

Stacey smiled a little, though her eyes did not: while she had learned to accept, and even understand, the reasons for Tony's sometimes ruthless devotion to protecting his clients, she could never share it. ‘Not you,' she said at last. ‘But Gina Belfante did kill him, after all. I understand battered woman's syndrome, but did
this
woman “reasonably” believe that she couldn't leave him?'

Tony shrugged. ‘With a state-of-mind defense, all the lawyer can do is let the jury decide. In this case, I hope, the jury saw Gina Belfante as she really is. Or perhaps they just concluded that her next husband is safe enough, and the last one no great loss.' This was not, Tony saw at once, the right thing to have said. ‘If it's any comfort, Stacey, I've never had a client I've walked on a murder charge go out and do it again. At least that's some comfort to me.'

Silent, Stacey considered him. ‘Well,' she said finally, ‘I'm just glad it's over. I missed you.'

Tony pulled her close, burying his face in her neck. Her hair and skin smelled fresh. ‘Not good enough,' she murmured. ‘Why don't we go home.'

Their home in Pacific Heights was on a private block with a view of the bay. Like the car and driver, the house afforded both security and privacy. It was good, Tony had dryly remarked, that Stacey could afford it. Stacey had suffered stalkers, and some of Tony's clients were deeply unpopular: even had their lives not imposed on them certain lessons, both had genuine reason to worry for their safety and that of Christopher, Tony's son.

This was but one of the prices they paid for a celebrity that was, in the main, unsought: the gazes of strangers in restaurants; the careless gossip of people who barely knew them but pretended they did; the too-quick friendships of others drawn to ‘fame' for its own sake. But at least Tony and Stacey disliked all this in common, just as they disliked the assumption that they were somehow exempted from what would be stressful for any other busy couple – doubts as to their own careers; the need to keep their marriage fresh; the knowledge that both worked too hard; lingering questions as to whether, as Stacey was unable to bear children, they should adopt; their occasional worries over some change or another in Christopher. Most of all, they shared something that many people did not and that they understood in each other very well: an awareness that happiness was fragile, good fortune a gift.

True, they did not have to worry about money and, thanks to Stacey's success, never would. But if they were happy – and more often than not they truly were – it was less because of money than because they loved Christopher and each other, yet respected one another's separateness. This perhaps helped explain why they remained so close. Stacey had never asked Tony to turn down cases out of town, he just did; just as, on her own, Stacey had become more selective about what roles she considered – the Oscar was five years behind her, and she had grown less willing to accept the total removal from reality, and from their life, that shooting on location required. Lately she had returned to writing and recording her own songs – somewhat like Bonnie Raitt and Carly Simon, she had held her popularity – but now was reading an unusually good script of the kind, she had said to Tony wryly, suited to a woman her age: no nude scenes, car chases, dinosaurs, or child actors. Some of their fleeting dinners during the Belfante trial had been spent mulling this: Tony and Christopher had given Stacey's life a center, and she was reluctant to leave it.

When they entered the living room, Christopher was there, his Nike-shod feet flopped up on the couch, the rest of him looking somewhat like a clothes pile – baggy jeans, baggy sweatshirt, baseball cap. From beneath the cap, a face remarkably like a seventeen-year-old Tony Lord's regarded them with a pleasant smile.

‘Hi, guys,' he said without moving. ‘How're things?'

He was fresh from baseball practice, Tony knew, and this air of sloth amidst affluence was his current persona: Christopher viewed his fortunate circumstances as an elaborate joke, which might end by sunset. It was, Tony knew, a reflection of his son's inherent caution; though he never spoke of this, Christopher seemed to remember the conflicts of his first six years of life – his parents' fights over money, his father's ambitions, his mother's discontent – and of the three years, after the divorce, when his mother's insistence on raising him seemed less from love than a weapon aimed at Tony, the real constant in Christopher's life. Tony adored his son: he could never understand how Marcia could cede the pleasure and responsibility of raising Christopher by moving to Los Angeles to live, in Tony's view, a shallow life with her shallow second husband. But she had, and Tony was deeply thankful.

He stood next to Stacey, hands on hips, gazing at his mock-lethargic son. ‘Things,' he informed Christopher, ‘are just dandy.'

‘Great,' his son said cheerfully. ‘So do you think I can borrow the car tonight? Aaron and I are studying for finals.'

Eyeing her stepson, Stacey cocked her head. ‘Is that all? Weren't you about to ask why your father's home so early?'

Christopher gave her a blank look, and then Tony saw the comprehension dawn. ‘Oh, yeah – the
trial
. Sorry.' He turned to Tony. ‘Did you win?'

‘Yup.'

‘Cool.' Now Christopher sat up. ‘Did she do it?'

‘Of course she
did
it,' Stacey said dryly. ‘But your dad informs me that's not the point.'

Christopher looked from one to the other, amusement in his eyes. And then he got up, took three steps across the living room, and gave his father an awkward hug. ‘Well, congratulations,
padre
.'

Tony took the opportunity to hold his son tight. Leaning back, he said with a smile, ‘Thank you for this spontaneous interest in my life.'

Christopher grinned. ‘No problem,' he said, and mussed his father's hair. ‘Anyhow, you're doing fine without me.'

With that, Christopher Lord went looking for the keys to his father's car.

Tony made a pitcher of martinis and, sitting next to Stacey, poured a drink for each of them. Together, they looked out at the sailboats dotting the bay.

‘Whatever will we do,' he remarked, ‘when Christopher heads off to college.'

Stacey checked her watch. ‘The same thing we're going to do in, I'd say, about fifteen minutes.' Smiling over at him, she added, ‘I gave Marcella the night off.'

Tony put down his drink at once. ‘You first,' he said. ‘I like watching.'

Stacey preceded him up the stairs to the master bedroom.

After five or six steps, she began taking off her clothes – sweater, then bra, then blue jeans. Watching her slim body climb the stairs, Tony saw her pause as she reached the top, not turning. With a single undulation halfway between sensual and mocking, Stacey let her panties fall to the floor.