Alibi (35 page)

“Well,” said Arthur, obviously trying to calm his troubled prodigy. “What’s done is done. We need to regroup, focus, fight this thing on all fronts.”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” asked David, who nodded at an obviously concerned Nora as she placed his coffee on the desk before them, and joined the now tightly knit group of four. “Katz will have every associate in his office on this case and we are—well,” he said, gesturing at his three colleagues, “this is basically it. We not only have to clear James of Jessica’s murder but we also have to tackle the even more sensitive issue of feticide, an issue that will see us branded heathens by every pro-lifer in the county. And even if the jury finds James not guilty of the premeditated murder of his own son, they have the much more palatable charge of involuntary manslaughter to fall back on.

“No, Arthur,” he said after a breath. “This is a lose/lose for us—and more importantly for James—no matter which way you come at it.”

“David,” said Arthur, “I know it sounds impossible but giving up is not an option.”

“Giving up?” said David then. “I’m not giving up, Arthur. In fact, if anything, I know the worse it gets the harder we have to fight. We cannot afford to lose this one, Arthur. We are that kid’s only hope and there is no way I am going to let him down.”

Sara looked at him then, realizing just how attached to this case David was. They had been through some difficult battles before, risked their reputations, their relationship and even their lives. But she had to agree, the seeming hopelessness of this latest effort did make the thought of victory close to unfathomable—and she was terrified what she was about to say would make matters even worse.

“David is right,” said Nora, at last getting David to take a seat. “We can do this. Call me old-fashioned but I still believe if a group of people believe in something, and work hard to . . .”

“Thanks, Nora,” said David, taking her hand and squeezing it. “But I am afraid faith will only get us so far.”

“Then we’ll clear the decks,” said Arthur, now moving behind his desk to sit as well, Sara perching herself on a corner. “We’ll make it our single priority. Sara can co-chair, I will work on precedent. Nora will keep track of discovery and assist us in the filing of motions. We can do this David. I am sure of it.”

“David,” said Sara at last. “I am so sorry that I wasn’t there with you this morning.”

“It’s okay,” he said, turning toward her, her very presence fueling him with hope. “I am sorry you had to bump the Jones kid. But in all honesty he really doesn’t need a lawyer. A shrink maybe, but not an attorney.”

“I didn’t,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

“You didn’t what?” he asked, confused.

“Bump him. In fact, I reaffirmed our representation, just a few hours ago.”

“What?”
said David, his voice rising a notch.

“What do you mean, Sara?” asked Arthur.

“Look,” she said. “I know this sounds crazy but I think the kid can help us. You said it yourself, David. He was the one who gave merit to your China theory.”

“He also gave the cops their first ironclad piece of evidence that James and Jessica were a couple,” argued David.

“Maybe,” she countered, taking a step back. “But he never suggested James was violent toward Jessica. In fact, he is a witness to their affection, not their animosity.”

David shook his head.

“Listen, David,” Sara went on. “By retaining Sawyer we keep him away from the ADA. Katz will have to subpoena him to appear and at the very least we can prepare him for what the Kat has in store. The kid is smart,” she added. “He can help us investigate the China angle, he can attest to Jessica’s high regard for James and James’ affection in return. He is willing to help us, David. In fact, he even suggested it.”

David looked to Arthur before turning back to Sara once again.

“Sara,” he said, trying to remain calm. “Did you ever think he is retaining you so that he can keep a close handle on this case? I am not suggesting he did anything wrong,” he said, reading the look of anger now rising on her face. “Just that he was in love with this girl and, given that, his views might be somewhat . . .”

“I
can
read my own clients, David,” she said.

“All right, let’s all calm down,” said Arthur at last. “Sara is right on at least one point,” he said, turning to David. “The Jones boy could be an asset. His ties to Solidarity Global will give us better access to the Nagoshis’ plant in China. And keeping him away from Katz is a priority.”

David looked at them both. He was so tired and confused and frustrated and angry—and yet in their eyes he saw a genuine desire to help, which made him consider that perhaps it was he who was jumping to conclusions.

“Okay,” he said at last. “But the kid can’t become a drain on our resources, Sara. I am going to need you here with me, 24/7.”

“An offer any lass would find hard to refuse,” said Nora, and in that moment David was thankful for Mrs. Kelly and her perfectly timed considerations.

“I’ll be here,” said Sara at last, just as the telephone rang, prompting Nora to move around Arthur’s desk and pick up the central extension. “And don’t worry, I won’t allow Sawyer to take up all my time. He’ll be an asset, David, not a problem. I promise.”

“Excuse me, Sara,” said Nora, cupping the receiver in her hand. “It’s for you. I’ll transfer it to your office if you like?”

“No. It’s okay,” said Sara, moving around the desk. “I’ll just take it here and be as quick as I can. Who is it Nora?” she asked, taking the handpiece.

Nora hesitated. “I’m sorry, lass,” she said at last. “It’s Sawyer Jones and he says he needs to see you—urgently.”

“Fuck,”
said Heath Westinghouse, fidgeting in his seat like a three-year-old who needed to use the little boys’ room. He had just signed off on a call from his father, the short but direct conversation making him even more agitated.

“Calm down, Westinghouse,” said Simpson, now sitting across from his friend in a discreet corner table of the Deane Law School café.

“How am I supposed to do that? Tomorrow, H. Edgar, they want us in front of the grand jury.
Tomorrow
.”

“We promised we’d testify,” said Simpson. “It was part of the deal.”

“Well I’m not doing it. We’ve caused enough trouble.”

“Shut up, Westinghouse,” said Simpson, who was now aware of a small group of first years staring at them from a nearby table. “Refusing won’t do any good. The ADA will just issue a subpoena.”

“Well, at least that way it will look like we were forced to testify against our friend.”

“Yeah,” said H. Edgar. “They twisted our arms to the tune of two million.”

“Fuck.” Westinghouse finished his double strength mega-mug of coffee in one gulp, slamming the cup on the table before lowering his voice and going on.

“How the hell did this happen, H. Edgar? I thought you had all bases covered.”

“I did,” said Simpson, leaning into his friend. “But there must have been a breakdown in communication—a misunderstanding.”

“Fucking A there was a misunderstanding. I misunderstood you when you said James would walk. Now he’s rotting in some filthy prison cell with a motherfucking team of butt-humping bandits. Thanks to us, the whole country thinks he killed his girlfriend—and his kid as well.”

H. Edgar knew this was coming, but was getting slightly agitated by his friend’s heightened state of anxiety. He needed to appease him, calm him down, if they were to get through this, reputations intact.

“All right, Westinghouse, you want a pound of my flesh, fine. But let me remind you that we are in this together and experience should tell you I am your only lifeline out of this mess.”

Westinghouse shook his head, his face still flush with frustration.

“I have no idea why James didn’t play to the script,” H. Edgar went on. “Maybe he got cold feet, maybe he couldn’t bring himself to hand himself in, maybe he tried to stop us but couldn’t contact us in time. Who the fuck knows? The point is, what’s done is done. James is where he is, and we have to look after ourselves.”

“Are you suggesting we rat him out?”

“Fuck, Heath, wake up to yourself. We
already
ratted him out,” said Simpson. “This was a three-way deal and he is the one who failed to deliver. Don’t forget, Westinghouse, James was the one who lied about Barbara in the first place.”

“So he didn’t fuck the French girl. Who hasn’t lied about sex at one time or another?”

“It was stupid,” said H. Edgar. “And if anyone is responsible for being in the predicament James is in, it is James. You have to stop this, Westinghouse. You start to panic and our stories fall apart, and then the cops will come after us for perverting the course of justice.”

“You said we were safe,” said Westinghouse.

“We were, until James stuffed it up.”

They sat there then, H. Edgar giving his friend time to digest the seriousness of their situation. Simpson sensed he would have to calm his friend just that notch further before setting him on the desired path and steering him in the right direction.

“So what the hell do we do?” said Westinghouse at last, opening the door just as H. Edgar knew he would.

“We stick to our original statements. We testify. We give them what we know, and maybe even . . .”

“But I don’t know anything, H. Edgar,” said Westinghouse, interrupting a new thought that had begun to rise in Simpson’s superior brain. “Only what you told me, and what James said when he was seriously loaded the other night. None of this makes sense.”

“Then count yourself lucky, Westinghouse, because ignorance, as they say, is bliss.” And then he saw it again, that look that he glimpsed briefly the other night at the Halloween Ball, that flash of anger that lingered, perhaps a little longer this time, before disappearing again.

“They’ll say we betrayed him,” said Westinghouse at last.

“No, no they won’t, Westinghouse. There is no reason why the payment of the reward should be made public. That was also part of the deal.”

“But they’ll assume . . .”

“That we struggled with our inner conscience,” interrupted Simpson, “that we spent close to two whole days wondering what the hell was the right thing to do. But in the end we decided that we could not live with ourselves if we did not speak up. A girl is dead, Westinghouse—and, as it turns out, her innocent unborn child as well.”

“Be careful, H. Edgar,” said Westinghouse, his eyes showing a spark of that now more familiar intensity. “For a moment there it sounded like you actually cared.”

“Good,” said his red-haired friend. “Because that, Westinghouse, is exactly how I intended it to sound.”

He was in the “dirty room.” At least that was what the locals here at Nashua Street Suffolk County Jail called it, the room before processing and searching, after which you became “clean.” He was wearing his “arraignment” suit. The newly dry-cleaned, conservative Italian suit that David had collected from his law school locker, still in its plastic, after a summer of interning at Westinghouse, Lloyd and Greene. It still had that lemon-ish smell of the dry-cleaning fluid. A sweet citrus scent that seemed to be leaching from him second by second only to be replaced by the strong stench of antiseptic, which, despite its eye-watering power, could not quite mask the underlying stink of vomit and urine and sweat. He was beginning to realize just how much of a favor Lieutenant Mannix had done him—allowing him to stay that one extra night in Boston PD lockup. For some reason the temporary small gray cell in Roxbury felt closer to the real world, while this whitewashed hellhole spoke of guilt and permanence—even though he knew that if convicted he would be transferred to another, even more horrifying maximum security institution where young men like him were sucked in, chewed upon, swallowed, digested and crapped out the other end until someone else came along and sucked them in all over again.

Processing was slow. The jail workers were bored and disinterested, never once making eye contact. He figured this was because they either feared catching whatever criminal germs that he carried or more likely because they just didn’t give a fuck.

They took his details, fingerprinted him. They made him strip. He was weighed and examined by a doctor. Then he was taken to the “clean room” where some robotic stick figure with sunken cheeks and soulless eyes searched every orifice of his body—slowly, mechanically, like he had followed this routine a million times before with the same senseless aim of coming up empty.

His suit was taken away. And with it the scent of freedom. He was given new clothes. A shapeless red top, matching cotton pants two sizes too big and a pair of dirty white flip-flops. Flip-flops.

“It’s cold,” he said to the pale-skinned skeleton, the first voluntary words he had spoken since he had arrived at the jail some two hours ago. “I saw other inmates wearing sneakers. Why do I have to wear these?”