Hostile Witness (19 page)

“How should I have acted?”

“Mournful, distraught, pathetically tearful. Other women would have.”

“I’m not like other women.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “You are the coldest bitch I ever met,” and, like an incantation handed down father to son from the deepest mists of prehistory, the words made me hard again immediately. I twisted my hips with a violent rush, sending her sprawling on the bed, and I pressed myself into her and held her arms over her head and bit her
throat like she had bitten mine and sucked her nipples when she told me to and bit her even after she told me to stop and I made her cry like no cat had ever made her cry and she came rivers.

It was the best sex I had ever had, better than I had ever hoped to have, and no matter the threat and whatever the price, I wanted more.

PRESCOTT STOOD BEFORE
the potential jurors, clipboard in hand, asking questions in his commanding way. There were forty of them, sitting in the courtroom’s benches like churchgoers in their pews. It was from this group, summoned from the jury room by Judge Gimbel’s clerk, that the twelve jurors and two alternates for
United States v. Moore and Concannon
would be chosen. Prescott had petitioned the court to be allowed to question the jurors himself and Judge Gimbel had grudgingly granted the petition. If you had asked him, Prescott would have told you he was examining these potential jurors in an effort to pick a fair and unbiased jury. What he was really doing, in addition to sneaking in pretrial arguments, was trying to find jurors who would be the most unfair and most biased in favor of Jimmy Moore and Chester Concannon. That’s the way a trial works: the lawyers on the two sides pack the jury with prejudices favorable to their clients with the expectation that these attempts at manipulation will balance themselves out. It is why more than a few juries break down in nervous collapse.

I was at one end of the defense table next to Chester Concannon, who sat with his back straight and hands crossed before him. Jimmy sat at the other end. Immediately behind us were three bright-eyed handsome lawyers all in a row, the Talbott, Kittredge and Chase trial team assisting Prescott. Madeline had been left at the office
to do research. The Talbott, Kittredge crowd was furiously scribbling notes and conferring in whispers with a tall, bearded man with a brutal case of dandruff who, I was told, was their jury expert, a man named Bruce Pierpont. Despite repeated promises from Prescott and numerous requests, I still hadn’t seen Pierpont’s report. Every now and then one of the Talbott, Kittredge lawyers would lean over and whisper something to Moore and he would nod, a look of supreme probity on his face. I wondered how long Prescott had worked with him to get the expression just right. The Talbott, Kittredge lawyers never leaned over to whisper something to me. Except for our proximity in the courtroom, it was impossible to tell we were on the same side. That had been Prescott’s idea. “It shouldn’t seem like we’re ganging up on Eggert,” he had said, and so Chester and I kept our distance.

Closer to the jury box was the prosecution table where Eggert and a beefy older man, with heavy hands and a neck like an ox, sat representing the government. The ox wore a blue blazer and his hair was swept rigidly into place, the very image of a man who liked his steak still bleeding. He was the FBI agent on the case, Special Agent Stemkowski. Once, in the middle of the proceedings, he cracked his knuckles and the rat-a-tat sounded like gunshots.

Judge Gimbel sat up high on the bench, bowing his hairless head as he worked on documents obviously unrelated to this trial. He was a busy man, Judge Gimbel, and you couldn’t expect him to concentrate on something as routine as Prescott’s jury voir dire.

“Now, as you may know,” said Prescott to the entire group of potential jurors, “one of the defendants in this case is a public official, a city councilman. The other defendant is the councilman’s aide. Do any of you believe that public officials, like the city councilman here, are usually corrupt?”

No response.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I need you to be honest. Don’t any of you look at a public official like my client, a city councilman on the government payroll, and say to yourselves, he is dirty somehow?”

Still no response. He smiled kindly, looked down at his clipboard, ran his finger across a list of names of the jury venire, and looked up again. “Mrs. Emily Simpson.”

An older woman raised her hand, thin frame, pale powdered skin, bouffant hair, glasses that looked like they were squinting.

“Mrs. Simpson, do you work?”

“Yes. I work the register at a discount store.”

“And you pay your taxes then, of course.”

“Of course.” Mrs. Simpson’s hands grasped the pocketbook on her lap.

“Do you think the money you send over in taxes is well spent?”

“On the whole? No,” she said, looking around at the others seated nearby for encouragement.

“Why not?”

“The politicians don’t listen to us, they listen to the rich folk, the people who have the money to help them.”

“So what you’re saying, Mrs. Simpson, is that most politicians can be bought.”

“I guess I am.”

“Anyone else? How many believe that politicians as a whole are generally unscrupulous and easily bought and paid for?”

Mrs. Simpson hesitantly raised her hand and looked around for support. The woman seated next to her, with thick features and a dignified cant to her head, smiled at Mrs. Simpson and raised her hand, and then a man in the front row, crew cut, thick neck, and then another hand, and soon the great majority of potential jurors had their hands raised.

I glanced at Eggert. He was nodding his head, as if Prescott was proving his case for him.

“And why is that?” Prescott looked back at his clipboard. “Mrs. Lanford?”

The dignified woman next to Mrs. Simpson said, “Yes, that’s me.”

“Why do you think politicians are so easily bought?” asked Prescott.

“Because they’s greedy.”

“And where do you think the money goes, Mrs. Lanford, this money that buys them?”

“In they’s pockets,” said Mrs. Lanford. “Right in they’s own wallets.”

“Those of you who said that politicians are often bought, is that what all of you think?”

“No,” said a man in the back, his gray hair neat, wearing a polo shirt on his day off from the office.

Prescott scanned the names on his clipboard. “Mr. Roberts, is it? Where do you think it goes?”

“To their campaigns,” he said. “They’re always campaigning. It seems every other year there’s a new election.”

“Do you think it’s the politicians’ fault that they need to ask for money?” asked Prescott.

“I guess not,” said Roberts. “I mean, we end up voting for the guy with the most television ads, so I guess it’s our fault as much as anyone’s.”

“Does anyone here believe that politicians should not be allowed to ask for campaign contributions?”

No hands were raised.

“I’m going to hold you all to that now. What you all are telling me is that you each believe it is proper for politicians to ask for campaign contributions, that such requests are precisely what the system demands of politicians like my client.”

Before anyone could reply Eggert stood and in his reedy voice said, “Objection, Your Honor. Mr. Prescott’s voir dire has again devolved into a lecture.”

“Civics 101,” said Judge Gimbel. “We don’t need citizenship classes, Mr. Prescott. Just get on with it.”

“I’m almost through, Your Honor,” said Prescott.

“We’re grateful,” said the judge.

“Now, how many of you have your own businesses?”

A small number of the jurors raised their hands. Prescott referred again to his clipboard. “Mr. Thompkins, what kind of business do you own?”

“A printing shop,” said a thin balding black man with extremely long fingers.

“Who’s running it now?”

“My employees. I have an assistant manager.”

“Now, Mr. Thompkins, if while you’re away your assistant manager should do something wrong, would you be responsible?”

“If he messed up a job, sure I would. I stand by all the work coming out of my shop.”

“Suppose he did something illegal while you were away. Suppose, without your knowing it, he started printing up counterfeit money. Would you still be responsible?”

“No way.”

“Does anyone believe Mr. Thompkins should be criminally responsible if his assistant manager started printing up counterfeit money in his print shop?”

Prescott scanned the jurors and nodded approvingly when he saw no hands raised. “I don’t think so either,” said Prescott. “You’re off the hook, Mr. Thompkins. Thank you very much for your time, I’m sure you all will be terrific jurors.” Prescott sat down at the defense table and formed a huddle with Moore and his trial team and the bearded, snowy jury expert.

Judge Gimbel put down his pen and looked directly at me. “Mr. Carl,” he said. “Do you have any voir dire?”

“Can I have a moment, Judge?” I asked.

With the jury venire still sitting in the courtroom I
calmly broke into the Talbott, Kittredge huddle. “Mr. Prescott,” I said. “May I speak to you, please?”

He pressed his lips together and said, “Let’s go outside for a moment, shall we.”

I followed him out of the courtroom, passing the rows of potential jurors, the press, the court buffs, old men who hang around the courthouse whiling away their retirements with free entertainment. Once outside in the long cream hallway, Prescott lifted his chin and peered down at me, looking very straight and very stern.

“That last bit, Mr. Prescott, sir,” I said. “The questions about the counterfeiter? I have to admit they caused me some concern.”

“They did?” he said, his voice rising in confusion.

“Yes, sir. It appeared as if you may have been indicating, maybe, that a subordinate, not a principal, is the responsible party here.”

Prescott looked down at me, his eyes wide with an injured innocence. “It was just voir dire, Victor.”

“But still, sir, it caused me some concern.”

“Walk with me to the men’s room,” he said. “Let’s take advantage of the break.”

The men’s room was just down the hall and I found myself in the awkward position of standing next to Prescott at the urinals. He was a stern, formal man, not the type, I would have thought, to chatter while grasping tightly to his prick, but I would have been wrong.

“I’ve tried more than fifty cases in these courtrooms, Victor,” he said as he peed. “And in the course of those trials I’ve learned a little about how to win a case. I have spent hours with our jury expert working on the voir dire, on my arguments, on the presentation of our evidence. Everything I do in this trial has been reviewed beforehand by the best minds at Talbott, Kittredge, every question to the jury was scientifically designed to have the maximum beneficial effect for our clients. Now that question about
counterfeiting sets up our entire defense. Unlike the counterfeiter, who is cheating the system, these men were not going outside the system’s demands. They were only doing what the system required. The contrast is just what I was trying to put forward.”

Through the whole of his speech I was restraining myself from checking out his equipment. There was something about Prescott that forced me to make comparisons, even though I always seemed to come out the lesser man. “I guess I see that now, sir,” I said.

He gave himself a shake, pulled up his zipper, and moved to the sinks across the other wall. I did the same. Out of the mirror he stared at me and his eyes turned cold. “I’m in the middle of a fight with Eggert here, Victor. I can’t afford to be explaining myself at every turn to you. When you gain a little more experience maybe you’ll understand what I’m doing, but right now what you need is enough faith not to get in my way. You are clear about your instructions, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, like a schoolboy being reprimanded.

He turned on the faucet and began to wash. I followed suit. “Now, I don’t want you to ask any questions of these jurors,” he said. “I have them right where I want them and you can only move them in the wrong direction. And I don’t want you to get involved in the selection process, I’ll tell you how to use your peremptory challenges and I’ll make all the challenges for cause. What I need from you, Victor, what I must have is your absolute confidence in me. Can you give me that, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep your eyes open, Victor,” he said, grimacing into the mirror. He pressed the sides of his hair back with his palms. “There is no telling how much you can learn. By the way, the Bishops are delighted with your work so far.”

“I haven’t done much yet.”

“Well, they’ve been raving. And there is more to come,
I promise. Let’s not keep the judge waiting. The old goose hates to wait.”

Side by side, like comrades at arms, we left the bathroom, marched up the corridor, swung open the courtroom doors, and strode back to the defense table.

“Well, Mr. Carl,” said Judge Gimbel. “Are we ready now?”

Something gave me pause. Maybe it was the look of injured innocence in Prescott’s eyes. He was neither an innocent nor so easily injured. But I stared down at the yellow pad in front of me on which I had scrawled a few elementary questions for the jury venire and knew I would follow his directions. Most of my voir dire questions had been asked already by the judge, they were form questions taken right out of a trial manual I had been working with over the weekend. None of them had been scientifically designed for maximum effect on our defense. Besides, Prescott was right, I had my instructions.

I leaned over and spoke with Chet Concannon, just to be sure. When we were done whispering he smiled at me reassuringly. I stood up straight again and said, “I have nothing, Your Honor.”

WE WERE IN THE PROCESS
of actually picking the jury, or I should say Prescott and his expert were in the process, when I spotted Morris Kapustin entering the courtroom. He saw me notice him and he waved. I gave him the slightest of nods. Morris was dressed particularly shabbily that day, a suit jacket that didn’t match his suit pants, his white shirt undone at the top, letting his faded silk undershirt show through. I hoped that maybe no one had seen the connection between us, but one of the bright young Talbott, Kittredge team, the blond bland-faced man with a name like Bert or Bart and a perfect little nose, had spotted him. I couldn’t help notice the smirk as he leaned forward and said something to Prescott, who spun around immediately to get a good look. I turned away in embarrassment. When I could, without being noticed, I motioned for Morris to wait for me. He sat down on the back bench and immediately began talking to one of the court buffs, an ancient man in plaid pants watching the proceedings.

Once the questioning was finished, jury selection was an almost mathematical procedure. All forty names were in order of selection on our jury sheets. The judge gave each of the defendants five peremptory challenges in which we could knock any potential juror off the jury for whatever reason we chose. The prosecution had six peremptory challenges of its own, and after the judge had taken seven jurors out of the group because he thought they were
unduly prejudiced for one side or the other, including Mrs. Lanford, who had said she believed all politicians took money and put it in their pockets, we began the selection. First Eggert, then Prescott, then I, following Prescott’s recommendations, excused jurors. One by one the excused jurors were crossed off our lists, and then we recalculated who would be in. We ended with a predominantly male jury, as Bruce Pierpont, the jury expert, had suggested, which included Mr. Thompkins, the printer, Mr. Roberts, the man who had believed the voters forced politicians to ask for money, Mrs. Simpson, who believed that buying public officials was a natural part of the political process, and a Mr. Rollings, who had been a security guard for ten years at a warehouse in North Philly. When the selection was completed Prescott looked over the jury, conferred with his jury expert, and nodded approvingly.

“Opening statements ten o’clock tomorrow,” said Judge Gimbel. “And then prosecution’s first witness. Court adjourned.”

I waited until Prescott and Eggert left the courtroom with their respective teams before I packed up my trial bag and walked over to Morris, who was still talking to the older man next to whom he had sat.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Kapustin,” I said a little sternly.

“Ah, Victor, I want that I should introduce you to Herm Finklebaum. Herm, this is mine lawyer friend Victor Carl. Herm used to sell toys over on Forty-fourth Street, now he spends his time watching in this very building.”

“Pleased to meet you, buddy boy,” said Herm. His face seemed to collapse upon itself where his front teeth had once been and there was a hole in his head, thinly covered with skin, through which I could see the faint pulsing of his blood. “You’re representing that Concannon fellow, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Watch your
baitsim,
fellah. Eggert’s a tiger.”

“What did I tell you, Herm, you’re not listening, no?” said Morris. “This Victor is no pantywaist, not like some of those other
shmendricks
staggering around. Your Mr. Egbert has his own little tiger on his hands.”

“I never seen Eggert lose,” said Herm. “I never seen him even sweat.”

“He’ll be
shvitzing
like an Hassid in Miami by the time Victor gets through with him. You tell me if it’s not so, Herm. I’ll bet you a pastrami.”

“At Ben’s?” asked Herm.

“Where else? McDonald’s?”

“With Russian dressing?”

“No, with mayonnaise on white bread. How do you think I eat pastrami?”

“You’re on, Morris.”

“You tell Ben, Herm, you tell Ben the sandwich you are buying is for me and he’ll stack it extra thick just as I like it. Now stop all this talk about food, it’s driving me
meshuggeh.
Three weeks already since Yom Kippur and still I’m hungry. Come, Victor, we have to talk.”

As I started following Morris out of the courtroom, Herm Finklebaum, the retired toy merchant of 44th Street, grabbed my arm and said, “I’ll keep my eye on you, buddy boy. Yes I will.”

When we were alone in the white linoleum hallway of the courthouse, Morris said, “The lady at your office, the one at the front desk, told me you’d be here.”

“Rita.”

“Yes. Such a
haimisheh
girl, very helpful.”

“Rita?”

“She gave to me this for you.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pink message slip folded in half.

I opened it and read it and smiled.

“Something good, I hope,” said Morris.

“For me at least,” I said.

“It’s okay, I hope, that I came to the courtroom,” said Morris. “But I had news for you. Windward Enterprises was exactly right. Exactly. Your lady friend, what was her name?”

“Beth.”

“Beth. Such a smart girl. Beth. She was exactly right. Maybe she should be helping you with this fancy trial in federal court?”

“She is.”

“See, you have
sechel
too. Good. Maybe you might just win this fancy trial after all. Now, let’s see.” He put on his glasses, pulled out his grimed notebook, and started flipping through the pages. “Frederick Stocker had a second home down the shore, Ventnor, on the bayside. Such a home, all done up with columns and glass. His wife sold it when he disappeared. She had nothing, of course, just that shore house, and a mortgage on their place in Gladwyne. She told me she didn’t know where he was, and I believe her for a very good reason.”

“You spoke to her?”

“How else do you find someone? Talk to people, Victor, you might learn things. She was a very angry lady, this Mrs. Stocker, which you can understand of course, angry, angry. She had a tight little mouth, like a
tochis,
that tight, and her fingers were twisting around each other and after talking with her I suspect I know why this Frederick Stocker he disappeared.”

“That bad?”

“You don’t want to know how bad. A real
kvetcherkeh.
This woman could pickle cucumbers without the brine. He had a boat, she said. He called it
The Debit.
Such a clever name for an accountant who is also a thief, don’t you think? A thirty-foot sloop. What’s a sloop, I couldn’t tell you if you
klopt mein kop
with an anchor, but that’s what it was, a sloop. He cared more for the boat than he did for her, she said. I hate boats, wouldn’t get on another for the
life of me, but between you and me, I agree with him. Mine guess is that this thief Stocker he sold his boat and bought another and is sailing somewhere full of joy because he is on his boat and his wife is not.”

“So that’s it, then. He’s somewhere on the high seas.”

“Yes, that’s it, but of course who can sail forever without putting in to land? October, the seas start getting colder, Stocker the thief will want to find a harbor he can dock in,
kibbitz
a bit, find a
bummerkeh
or two, spend some of the money he stole. My guess, Victor, and it’s only a guess, is that he is sucking down
schnopps
on his boat in a marina somewhere it is warm.”

“So there’s nothing to be done, right?”

“Quiet, now. You hired Morris Kapustin. Morris Kapustin will decide when there is nothing more to be done. There are ways to keep looking, registries of marinas.”

“There must be thousands. How are you going to check all the marinas in the country?”

“By computer, how else? Acch, you leave it to me, I’ll do what I can. I tried this once before looking for a boat.”

“Did it work?”

“So once it didn’t work, I shouldn’t keep trying? Mine son, the computernik. Such a
chachem,
trying to drag the business into the new world and who am I to stop him. He knows from machines, computers, cars, he was a locksmith in his summers away from school. Me, I know from people. You can learn from people things computers never dreamed about. But, of course, trying to find one boat in all of the Atlantic or Pacific, for that you need a computer. Oh, by and by, Victor,
bubeleh,
this is for you.”

He put his notebook back into his jacket and reached deep into one of his pants pockets. He pulled out the heavy gold and green chip with the boar’s head on it and flipped it to me. I dropped my briefcase as I fumbled to catch it.
The chip eluded me, spinning on the floor in a wide circle that I followed.

“I can see a basketball player you weren’t,” said Morris with a deep laugh as I stepped on the rolling chip and scooped it into my hand.

“I was all right,” I said.

“Now I insulted you, I’m sorry. You were a regular Magic Jordan, I see that now. How I could have missed it I don’t know? Seven feet four you were in college, but the years have been hard, you shrunk. I too have shrunk. It happens.”

“What did you find out about the chip?”

“A very special chip, that is. I asked around. Yitzhak Rabbinowitz, the accountant? Pearlman and Rabbinowitz, maybe you heard them? Well, it turns out that Yitzhak, and I knew his grandfather too, though he was no prince like Abe Carl the shoe man, it turns out that Yitzhak does work for certain private organizations. I showed the chip to him and he said immediately what it was. Especially made for a gentlemen’s club in South Philadelphia. I wrote out the address for you. They play poker there almost every night with these chips. But it’s not a club you can just walk into, Victor. It’s a very private club. I think maybe you should forget about that chip.”

“What kind of club?”

“How should I say it? It’s a club for
taleners, alte kockers,
and not all of them were vegetable sellers in the Italian Market, do you understand? A club for retired mobsters, for old gangsters. It’s a dangerous place with dangerous men, not a place for a nice Jewish boy like Abe Carl’s grandson.”

Before I paid a visit to South Philadelphia I took I-95 to Chester and then followed the directions I had been given to a cracking industrial road ending at a gray trailer with a
hissing neon sign set above it that read:
PETE’S YARD—TOWING, STORAGE & REPAIRS. CLASSIC CARS OUR SPECIALTY
. Stretching out from the trailer was a chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, circumscribing an expanse of more than a acre, and what was atop that acre was cars. Lots of cars. Shiny ones and smashed ones and new ones and ones without any wheels, parked in long rows spreading out from that trailer, enough to excite the fancier with the sheer number and variety. But I wasn’t excited. I never cared much for cars. I figured when I had the money I would see which BMW everyone else was driving and then drive one level better. Until then I’d drive what I could afford, which was my seven-year-old Mazda compact, registered at my father’s suburban address to keep my insurance down.

I parked in front of the trailer. Inside there was a young woman reading a magazine behind a Plexiglas guard. Above her was another sign:
TOWING
$50.
STORAGE
$10
PER DAY. NO PERSONAL CHECKS. ALL FINES MUST BE PAID AT TIME OF REDEMPTION. PLEASE HAVE REGISTRATION AND IDENTIFICATION READY
.

“I’m here about a car,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said, without looking up, “because we don’t take in dry cleaning.”

She was cute, in a trashy little car yard way, and the remark had been clever enough so I couldn’t help myself. “Do I know you?”

“License plate number,” she said flatly. I decided then and there I would have to get a better line.

“I’m here about a car seized for the Sheriff’s Office,” I said, and then read directly from the pink slip. “Number 37984.”

She went into a file and searched for the paperwork. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Carl,” she said, suddenly smiling. “Pete wanted me to get him personally when you came in. If you’ll wait just a minute.”

Pete was a big, sandy-haired man, his stomach bursting from beneath his belt. His tie was loose, it had been tied loose, and his jacket was too tight for him, bunching up around the armpits. Just the sight of it made me flex my shoulders in a claustrophobic reflex. Pete was one of those guys who had never accepted the last fifty pounds. He reached out to shake and pumped my hand like a jack handle. “Glad you made it, Mr. Carl,” he said heartily. “I wanted to show you personally what we picked up for you.”

He led me out the back of the shack into the yard and I followed. He spoke as we passed the automotive detritus that had been towed from Chester County’s streets, rows and rows and rows of it.

“The deputy sheriff, he was there already when we showed up,” said Pete. “Six in the morning. The morning’s the best, before anyone gets a mind to drive off. It was quite a house, like some castle. And a lawn that stretched forever, six football fields or something, all fenced in. There was three cars in the driveway, but not what we was looking for. And nothing in the garage, either. Happy as hell to show us the garage, so I knew before we looked it wasn’t going to be there. The deputy wanted to leave but there was all that lawn, right. Fenced in, that was the ticket. ‘You got horses?’ I asked. Sure they did, Mr. Carl. A place like that. Then when I convinced the deputy to check out the stable, they went a little batty.”

“Was there an old man there?” I asked. “Round, sallow face, long hair, slightly wrecked looking?”

“Oh yeah, he was there, mumbling something, shouting. You’d think they’d cut his nails for him, wouldn’t you? But I didn’t take no mind of him, I’d seen it before. You know this type of work is not the most pleasant. People don’t like to see you taking away their cars. Take their washing machines, their VCRs, their wives even, fine. But not their cars. We won’t do it without the sheriff there and the sheriff won’t do it unless he’s armed. But then again
we don’t get too many houses like that one. So we go to the stable, right. There are horses there, sure, hay and barrels of oats. Smells like leather and horse shit, you know. Little strips of yellow hanging down covered with flies. We walk through it slowly. Nothing, right. I look up in the rafters, you never know, right? Nothing.”