Swindlers (13 page)

Peering over the tops of her glasses, lowered
halfway down her lengthy nose, Judge Brunelli pursed her thin,
white lips.

“This is the time to give the jury an outline
– a brief outline – of the prosecution’s case. You can argue your
point later, after all the evidence is in. Now let’s move on, shall
we?”

Franklin had been too much in court to make
the mistake of arguing anything with a trial court judge. As soon
as Brunelli finished, he turned to the jury and without any change
of expression picked up where he had left off.

“A million dollars a year, when she could
have had it all! What better motive for murder?” He cocked his head
and struck a pose, as if a question of some considerable importance
had just occurred to him. “What better motive for murder?” he
repeated in a pensive tone, the question no longer rhetorical.
“Other than that other motive, at least as old: sex. Yes, that’s
right, a double motive was involved, sex and money both. Nelson St.
James was going to divorce his wife because, as Rufus Wiley will
testify, his wife, the defendant, Danielle St. James, had been
having an affair. That was the reason she killed him, because it
was the only way she could have both her lover and the money,
too.”

Someone might as well have kicked the chair
out from under me. She had been having an affair and the
prosecution could prove it, and this was the first I had heard
about it! Franklin had not called his first witness and I was
already certain we had lost. I wanted to turn to Danielle and tell
her what I thought, dare her to try to explain why she had never
told me. And I might have done it, too, if Franklin had not chosen
that moment to end his opening statement. I watched as he sank into
his chair at the other counsel table, farthest from the jury box, a
brazen look of self-satisfaction on his face.

Judge Brunelli checked the clock and then
peered down at me.

“Mr. Morrison, do you wish to make an opening
statement at this time?”

It was the routine, formal request, the
moment when the defense attorney gets to his feet, reminds the jury
that they have not yet heard any of the witnesses whose testimony
the prosecution had just described, and, with all the false honesty
he can invent, tells them that when they do they will discover that
rather than proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence
will prove instead the necessity of an acquittal. You did not have
to believe it when you said it, but it was always good to have at
least the hope.

I got to my feet, but instead of starting
toward the jury box I looked at the judge.

“With the court’s permission, the defense
would like to reserve its opening statement to the close of the
prosecution’s case.”

“Permission granted.” Brunelli penciled a
note, reminding herself of the agreement, and then, folding her
arms, sat back and glanced toward the other counsel table. “The
prosecution will please call its first witness.”

Franklin did not hear her. A smile, cold and
vengeful, was playing at the corners of his mouth as he stared down
at the floor, lost in the recollection of his own achievement, an
opening statement that, if it had not gone perfectly, had gone well
enough.

Alice Brunelli had no patience for those who
made her wait.

“Mr. Franklin,” she said sharply. “Please
call your first witness!”

Shocked out of his daydream, Franklin looked
at the judge with a stunned, bewildered expression.

“My first witness?”

He seemed surprised to see me sitting at the
counsel table instead of on my feet, heading toward the jury box.
The color rose above his stiff shirt collar and spread like fire
along his cheek. He realized what Brunelli had asked, what he had
not heard, and that was only the beginning of his embarrassment.
Springing forward, he tore at a thick binder and started thumbing
through the pages, searching for the list of witnesses that would
remind him of the name he wanted to call first.

Alice Brunelli watched these clumsy antics
with an icy stare. She had a way of looking at you that reminded
you of the least favorite teacher you had ever had, the one who
could make you feel invisible, as if, of all the pupils she had
ever taught, you were the one great failure of her long and
otherwise distinguished career.

“Never mind, Mr. Franklin,” she said with
weary impatience. “We’ll start again in the morning.” But she could
not leave it there. She shot him a last, withering glance. “Perhaps
by then you’ll have some idea how you want to try this case!”

He stood there, straight as
a board, like a soldier facing discipline, holding his breath,
forcing himself to keep his silence, while she gathered up her
books and papers and, rising from the bench, walked briskly out of
the courtroom and into her chambers. When the door swung shut
behind her, when she was finally gone, his shoulders slumped
forward and he could breathe. He began to collect his things, but
then, with his hand on his tan briefcases, he turned his head
slightly to the side, just far enough so I could see the anger in
his eyes.

CHAPTER Eight

Robert Franklin had only himself to blame,
and I was in any event scarcely in a mood to sympathize. I had my
own reasons to be angry, and they were far more substantial than
some hurt feelings caused by a judge whose only concern was that
you do your job properly. Franklin’s problem was his own vanity; my
problem was my client.

Muttering to myself, I tossed my suit coat on
the chair behind my desk and stood at the window, peering into the
dark gray dreariness of the late November day. Thanksgiving was a
week away and the Christmas decorations were already up, the
merchants doing everything they could to create the mood, continue
the illusion, that you could still buy happiness, if only you could
afford it.

“You did not tell me,” I said in a grim,
determined voice that echoed quietly in the silence of the
room.

“It isn’t true.”

I kept looking out the window, watching the
people on the street, wondering what it would have been like to be
married with children, someone with a regular job, and not have to
spend every day sorting through all the lies I was told.

“That was the second promise, wasn’t it – or
was it the first? Give him a child and -”

“Have a child,” she said, insisting on a
distinction I did not understand. “Not give him one. Michael is
more my child than he was ever his.”

“And stay faithful,” I reminded her. I turned
just far enough to see her. “That’s the promise we need to talk
about.”

Danielle raised her chin, the way she did
whenever she was challenged, in her mind unfairly. With calculated
belligerence, I stared back.

“It isn’t true,” she insisted, now adopting a
tone of indifference, as if it did not matter if it were true or
not. It was astonishing how distant, how utterly detached, she
could become when there was something she would have preferred to
ignore.

“All those months getting ready for trial,
all the times I asked you if there were anything – anything at all!
– you hadn’t told me; and I have to hear it first in the
prosecution’s opening statement: that your husband was about to
start divorce proceedings and that you were going to lose all that
money!”

She would not respond a third time to what
she considered the same accusation. With the limitless arrogance of
a woman who has better things to do, she sat there, silent and
beautiful, staring past me.

“Does this bore you?” I asked with a cynical
indifference that quickly yielded to disgust. I picked up my jacket
and settled into the comfortable security of my chair. “Is there
some place you would rather be? It must be difficult, having to go
through all this, when you could be back in New York, going to
parties with all your wealthy, famous friends. It must be
inconvenient, being charged with murder, having to sit all day in
the drab surroundings of a courtroom with nothing to talk about
except the evidence that may very well cost you your life, forced
to listen to someone like Robert Franklin, compelled to -”

“Franklin is an ass!” she cried, all the
indifference, all the belligerence, now concentrated in her eyes.
She bolted forward. “Who is going to believe anything he says,
after what you did to him? He could barely remember what he was
supposed to do!”

My eyes full of warning, I bent closer.

“You think he isn’t any good, because he made
one or two mistakes? He’ll be up all night getting ready for
tomorrow, making sure he won’t get caught like that again. This
isn’t just another case to him; it’s the biggest case of his
career. He’s been dreaming about this since the day he got to law
school. You think he won’t learn from what happened? You think he
isn’t serious? Didn’t you see the look in his eyes just before we
left?”

“No, why would I look at him? I saw the way
he looked at me before.”

Like most of the rest of us, she only
understood what she knew, and there was one thing she understood as
well, or better, than anyone.

“I imagine that’s a look you’ve seen a lot,”
I said, drawing back. Folding my arms, I watched closely her
reaction to that basic fact of her existence. Her first response
was purely conventional.

“I try not to notice.”

“The effect you have on men?”

There was a flash of impatience in her eyes.
The answer was obvious, the question, worse than unnecessary,
almost obscene, an inquiry in which the truth could only be stated
with apparent conceit. This time, however, the question had nothing
to do with the modest good manners society required of its more
fortunate members.

“What Franklin did – that stupid gawking look
on his face, like some teenage kid who had never been out with a
girl before – couldn’t have been more effective if he had planned
it in advance.”

At this, Danielle seemed curious. Her
attitude, the reluctance bordering on open refusal to listen to
anything more I had to say, disappeared. She waited for me to
explain.

“Everyone on that jury
thinks they know why you married your husband. They’ve seen the
pictures: the gorgeous young model who marries a man ten or fifteen
years older, a man who just happens to be one of the world’s
richest men. You’ve lived too long in a cocoon of money and
privilege; you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have to settle for
whatever you can get and work at something you hate. No one thinks
it’s fair, that you should have all that: looks and money, too.
Most of the people on that jury – all of them, for all I know –
never had anyone look twice at them and have to struggle just to
get by. And now,” I went on in an ominous tone, meant to tell her
that what they felt, those twelve random jurors who were watching
every day in court, would be every bit as important as the evidence
they heard; “now they have a way to make it all even out. You
killed your husband and, as Franklin just finished telling them,
you did it for the money, something that none of them, with their
average looks and their average lives, would ever think of doing.
They want to believe you’re guilty – want to believe it in the
worst way, though they would never admit it, even to themselves –
because if you are, if you murdered your husband, it means that
instead of being better than they are, you’re not nearly as good!
They want to convict you – don’t you understand that
yet?”

She heard me, took in every word, but she did
not believe me. It is one of the failings of rich men and beautiful
women to think that everyone likes them for themselves. After all,
everyone they come in contact with is always so nice to them.

“No one feels sorry for the rich. Why should
they? The rich buy themselves out of trouble. Don’t you know what
most people – the kind who do jury duty – think of all the famous,
beautiful people like you? - That you’re all spoiled and stupid and
only worried about yourselves.”

It had no discernible effect. Nothing
disturbed those perfect mannequin eyes, and I began to wonder if
anything ever could. Philosophers and gifted artists may live
within their minds, indifferent to what the world thinks important;
Danielle, and people like her, lived at the center of the world’s
attention. Men had always wanted her; women had always wanted to be
just like her – Why would anyone ever wish her harm?

I got up and began to prowl aimlessly around
the room, glancing vaguely at the pictures and the books and the
few articles I had kept as memorabilia from other trials. Perhaps
something would remind me of some forgotten tactic or strategic
device that might make the jury begin to see her in a new and
different light, see her, not as some remote celebrity, a face in
the papers, but as someone more like themselves.

“There isn’t anyone sitting in the first row
behind us to show support. Your mother would come, if you’d ask
her.”

Danielle fairly bristled at the
suggestion.

“If she had wanted to be
here, she would have been.” She said this with a cold, implacable
expression, as if we were talking about someone she barely knew but
did not like, instead of the woman who had raised her.

“
I haven’t seen her in
years,” she added, studying her nails. “I certainly don’t want to
see her now.” She threw me a measured glance, and then stood up,
ready to go.

“There is one other thing we could do…,” I
remarked in a cautious, tentative voice. We had talked about it
before, or rather I had talked about it and she had listened, but
always to no result. Nothing, not even, it seemed, the chances of
her own survival, would change her mind. On this point, she was
adamant, and the truth was I respected her more for refusing than I
would have had she, with whatever reluctance, agreed. Ironic, in
that by refusing to do the one thing that might help to make the
jury more sympathetic, she proved the jury wrong in their
assumption that, rich and beautiful, she cared only for
herself.