There is a certain cathartic effect in graphic thoughts of revenge. I felt better than I had before. I began to walk faster and after a while even found the confidence to let go of the railing. The wind subsided, and as I neared the end of the bridge that sickening sideways motion finally came to a stop.
Once I was off the bridge, I caught a ride with an old man in a pickup truck who, because he had seldom seen anyone hitchhiking in a coat and tie, thought my car must have broken down. He insisted on taking me to the door, and I gave him directions to the house where I now sometimes spent the night.
Marissa came to the door when she heard the pickup come down the drive. She stood there, laughing with her eyes, while I stepped out of the truck.
“What happened to you?”she asked, smiling at my disheveled appearance as I waved good-bye to the old man.
We went inside and she made me a drink while I told her what had happened. It was little more than a bare recitation of events with next to nothing of the way I had felt. I did not want to admit to her that I had been terrified. Seeing myself the way I wanted her to see me, I began to think that not begging for my life had been a little on the side of bravery.
“You must have been scared out of your mind!”she exclaimed when I told her that at one point I thought they were going to kill me.
Now that it was over, now that I was safe, the fear I had tried so hard to fight no longer seemed quite so real.
“I was angry, mainly,”I replied.
She tilted her head the way she did whenever she was revolving something in her mind. Her eyes seemed to draw me closer.
“Angry at yourself because you were afraid? Or angry because you thought it was the only way you had to keep your fear under control?”
She did not want an answer; that was not why she had asked. She wanted to let me know that there was nothing I had to hide from her, and perhaps to tell me that I could not keep anything hidden from her if I tried.
“What was in the package he gave you?”asked Marissa, gesturing toward the manila envelope that lay on the dining room table in front of me.
I had not thought of it since it was handed to me. I had not looked inside; I had not even wondered what it might contain. When I opened it now, my first reaction was that I was glad I had not opened it before. It would only have fed my fear.
“Look at this,”I said as I emptied it out on the table.
There were photographs, dozens of them, and I was in every one of them. It took only an instant to recognize the chronology in which they had been taken. I spread them out, beginning with the earliest and ending with the most recent.
“They've had me under surveillance since the first day I appeared in court,”I said, nodding toward the first photograph. “From the moment I officially became the defense lawyer in the case.”
There were photographs of me in front of the building on Sutter Street where Albert Craven had his office; photographs of me at the St. Francis; more ominously, there were photographs taken on both occasions that I spoke with Andrei Bogdonovitch in the street. They even had pictures of Craven's boat, the day we went out on the bay.
“They have everything I've done, everywhere I've been,”I said, shaking my head. “They've got a picture of Bobby's house, and look at this,”I said, stabbing my finger at a black and white photograph taken less than a week before. “They have one of us standing together on the deck outside.”
There were also two photographs taken the evening I went to see Andrei Bogdonovitch at his shop: one when I entered, the other just as I was leaving.
“What do they tell you?”asked Marissa.
“That they just missed getting me, too,”I replied with a cynical shrug.
She shook her head vigorously. “No, don't you see? They knew you were there. If they were the ones who set off the bomb, why did they wait until after you left? Maybe they were telling you the truth about that—maybe someone else killed Andrei Bogdonovitch. Either way, one thing is clear, isn't it? These people don't want you dead.”She waved her hand over the photographs scattered all around the table. “What do these pictures prove, except that they could have killed you anytime they wanted? Isn't that the question—why they haven't?”
I thought I knew the answer. “If I were killed, the judge would have to declare a mistrial. Another lawyer would take the case. Everything would have to be done all over again. But it's more than that. There would be another murder, the murder of the lawyer who claimed someone else, someone powerful, was responsible for the death of Jeremy Fullerton. It would start an investigation.”
Marissa cocked her head and bit her lip. There was a worried look in her eyes.
“They don't want to kill you; they want to scare you. They want to make you think about them instead of the trial. They want you to worry more about what might happen if you win than about what will happen to that boy if you lose.”
T
he People call Ariella Goldman,”announced Clarence Haliburton, rising from his chair.
Dressed in a simple dark blue skirt and jacket, her auburn hair swept above the soft back curve of her neck, Lawrence Goldman's daughter, the last witness for the prosecution, entered the courtroom. The door shut behind her, blocking the television lights and the flashbulbs of the cameras in the corridor outside. Conscious that every eye was on her, she remained completely composed. Ariella Goldman was used to the undivided attention of people she had never met. She let herself through the gate in the wooden railing.
The district attorney did not waste a minute. He elicited the length of time Ariella Goldman had worked for Senator Fullerton and what her principal duties had been. Then he asked, “And was it in that capacity that you were with him the night he was killed?”
Sitting at an angle, her knees pressed primly together, she allowed herself an indulgent smile. “Yes, for the most part. As his speechwriter I would certainly have been with him when he spoke that evening at the dinner. I'm not sure I would have been at the gathering later on at my father's apartment.”
“Yes, I understand,”remarked Haliburton, smiling back. “You were there—at your father's apartment—until the senator left?”
“Yes.”
Haliburton dropped his eye to the list of questions he had laying open in the notebook in front of him. Though the testimony of several of his witnesses had involved technical terms not easily remembered, this was the first time I had seen him do this. The district attorney was not going to leave anything to chance, not even the order in which he asked the questions he had written out in advance, during the direct examination of Lawrence Goldman's daughter.
“And were you the person who drove Senator Fullerton to his car?”
“Yes, I was,”she answered in an even tone.
“Would you tell us, please, the reason why you did that— drove the senator to his car?”
Leaning to the side, Ariella Goldman delicately rested her elbow on the arm of the witness chair and glanced toward the jury.
“Mrs. Fullerton had left early, and the senator needed a ride to the Civic Center where he had left his car.”
While she was speaking, Haliburton checked his list.
“And why was his car there instead of at the hotel where the dinner was held or, for that matter, at the senator's own residence just a few blocks away?”
Dropping her hand, she extended her arm out across the arm of the chair. She sat perfectly straight, her back arched slightly, her chin tilted up. Each time Haliburton asked a question, she waited, smiled politely, and then, her eyes fixed on a point directly in front of her, turned and faced the jury.
“The senator had an office in the Civic Center. We were there together, going over the speech he was going to give that evening. The senator was something of a perfectionist; he always wanted everything to be just right. We went over it and over it, making one change, then another. It was time to go, and he still wasn't satisfied. I drove my car so he could keep working on it until we got there. That's why he needed a ride back.”
“Approximately what time did you drop him off at his car?”
“Right around one o'clock, I think.”
“What did you do then?”asked Haliburton, raising his eyes from the list.
“After I dropped him at the car? I went back to my father's apartment and went to bed.”
Haliburton closed his notebook. “When you dropped him off, did you actually see the senator get into his car?”
“Yes,”she said, then changed her mind. “No. I saw him open the door as I drove away,”she explained.
Her lower lip began to tremble. She pulled it taut, shaping her mouth into a grimace of self-accusation.
“I should never have done that, just driven off like that—in that fog. I should have stayed there, waited until he was safely inside with the door shut and the lights on,”she continued, her voice rising. “I should have waited until he turned on the engine; I should have waited until he pulled away from the curb; I should have waited until I knew he was safe. None of this would have happened!”she insisted, gamely trying to hold back the tears.
Haliburton had moved in front of the counsel table. He waited until the witness regained her composure. In a deep, rich voice, full of solemn sympathy and understanding, he announced that he had no more questions to ask.
There is a point in almost every trial when the routine inquiries from the bench become abbreviated and the answers to them dispensed with altogether.
“Mr. Antonelli?”was all that Judge Thompson now said by way of asking if I wished to cross-examine the prosecution's witness. My only response was to get to my feet.
Touching Jamaal Washington on the shoulder as I moved behind him, I made my way to the front of the counsel table. My arms folded across my chest, I tilted my head to the side, looking at the witness as if there were something about which I remained quite perplexed.
“The reason you drove Senator Fullerton to his car,”I said hesitantly, “was that Mrs. Fullerton had left early. Isn't that what you told Mr. Haliburton?”
My apparent confusion seemed to give her even more confidence than she had before.
“Yes, that's right,”she replied with a civil smile.
It was more than just a smile. She did something with her eyes I had not noticed before, something quite extraordinary. Without any movement of her lashes—at least none I could detect—her eyes flared open in a way that seemed almost to dissolve the physical space between us.
I furrowed my brow as if I were still confused. “And what was the reason Mrs. Fullerton left early?”
She did it again, that flash of light that came from her eyes at the precise moment the first word was formed on her soft-sloping mouth. It was like watching someone trying to take her own photograph.
“I believe she wasn't feeling well.”
Arching my eyebrows, I slowly tilted my head to the other side. “And do you have any idea just why it was she might not have been feeling well?”
Her eyes blazed again, but the word that was already on her lips never came. She lowered her eyes and for a moment stared pensively at her hands.
“No, I'm afraid I wouldn't know.”
“You're sure you 'wouldn't know'?”I said, lowering my voice as if there were some hidden secret in that otherwise conventional phrase. “The party was at your father's apartment, wasn't it?”
“Yes,”she replied, looking up.
“Your father is Lawrence Goldman, correct?”
“Yes.”
“It's fair to say that your father is a very wealthy man, is it not?”
Her eyes flashed the way they had before. “Yes,”she replied, looking directly at me. “It would be fair to say that my father is rather well off.”
“Your father was one of the principal fundraisers for Senator Fullerton's campaign for governor—isn't that correct?”I asked. I began to drag my foot back and forth as if I were keeping time to her answers.
“Yes, that's correct.”
“And that was the reason he had this gathering in his apartment after the dinner at which the senator gave the speech you helped write—is that correct?”
“Yes, it was a fundraising event, if that's what you're asking.”
I stopped swinging my foot and raised my eyes. “Yes, that's what I'm asking. People paid for the privilege of attending this gathering at your father's apartment—is that correct?”
“I think I just answered that,”she replied with a brief smile more condescending than she intended.
“Humor me,”I shot back. “Answer it again.”
“Yes, those who came made a contribution.”
I took two quick steps toward the jury box and stopped. With my hand on the back of my neck, I stared down at the floor.
“So everyone made a contribution. Good. What was the size of those contributions? Fifty dollars? A hundred dollars? How much, Ms. Goldman?”I asked, glancing up at her. “What was the price of admission to your father's apartment that night?”
“Fifty,”she answered.
“Fifty?”I asked with a blank expression.
“Fifty thousand, Mr. Antonelli.”
“Oh, I see,”I said, facing the jury. “Fifty thousand dollars to say hello to the senator.”
“Fifty thousand dollars a couple,”she added hastily.
My eyes were still on the jury.
“Yes, I see, fifty thousand dollars a couple. Well, for those of us who don't normally spend fifty thousand dollars to go to a party,”I said as I swung around to face her, “is this what is usually charged at an event of this sort, or was this perhaps at the high end of things?”
Though she tried not to show it, she was now in a state of intense annoyance.
“It was a very exclusive event,”she explained curtly.
“How many people—I'm sorry, how many couples—were there that evening?”
“Seventy-five or eighty.”
“That means you raised in the vicinity of four million dollars?”
“About that, I suppose.”
I stood next to the jury box, my hand on the railing.
“And you were at this rather expensive event, not because you were the senator's speechwriter, but because—as I believe you testified in response to a question asked by Mr. Haliburton—you are, if you don't mind my putting it this way, your father's daughter?”