Redemption (11 page)

I was becoming increasingly disturbed as the trial date neared. The image of cold hatred that the murder evoked came into my mind again and again, and again and again I returned to the conviction that Liz was not capable of such hatred. I knew her too well, her gentleness, her innocence, her deep belief in God and God's justice. We had never argued about religion, indeed we had hardly discussed it seriously. Myself, I was an agnostic; whatever would be would be, and I was not too interested in delving into what could not be known. Yet, it was clear to me that my total belief and trust in Liz were not too widely shared. My friends at the university either offered condolences or avoided the subject. The media devoted itself to Hopper's scam with the fifteen million he had allegedly stolen and to the battered-wife thing, contrasting these with the two Olympic gold medals; and I consoled myself with the heroic vision of confessing to the murder myself if Liz were found guilty.

It was a warm, pleasant day; from the District Attorney's office, I walked to the Woolworth Building. I have always enjoyed the old skyscraper with its faded grace reminding me of a time long past, when hindsight made things rosier and better. Jerry Brown, the investigator Sarah had hired, arrived at the same time and shared the elevator with me. He was a tall, slender, brown-skinned man, dressed with careful propriety—blue blazer, white shirt, gray flannels, and a bow tie. He was very handsome, and the women in the elevator could not keep their eyes off him. I greeted him warmly. He was very personable.

The office, so kindly lent to us by Dave Friedman, was about ten by fifteen feet, already crowded with a desk and office machines, and now, five people: Sarah and J. J., almost buried in a pile of books and transcripts; Liz, sitting in a chair and looking exhausted; and Brown and me. Liz, I learned, had been at it with Sarah for the past two hours, working over her testimony. There were no chairs for Brown and myself; and rejecting the offer of the women, we sat on the edge of the desk. Brown had finished his third day of investigation, and he reported from his notes in a small notebook. There was no air-conditioning in the room. I managed to open one of the windows, and we shed our jackets.

“I think I've done as much as can be done,” Brown said. “At least I've widened the turf. There are twenty-two women working on the premises of Garson, Weeds and Anderson. Only one is in an executive position, and she's in her late fifties. Three are black, credit equal opportunity. That leaves eighteen. The black ladies caught my eye, but I don't think Hopper would have been interested, and none of these four use Autumn by Devlon. Of the eighteen, twelve are brunettes, and none of them use Autumn. Leaves six. Two of the six use no lipstick—in their forties and nothing to write home about—that leaves four possibilities, and three of them do use Autumn. Very nice, well-stacked ladies, all four of them. Names—take these down, J. J.—Lucy Dell, Nancy Carter, Josie Levine, Roselyn Craft. The last one doesn't use Autumn, and Nancy Carter lost hers. Left it in the ladies' room and it disappeared. Two of them, Nancy Carter and Roselyn Craft, admit to lunching with Hopper. None of them admit to a more intimate involvement. None of them express great dislike for Hopper, except that Lucy Dell—a very neat package—called Hopper a shit. Yes, used that word. Based it on what has floated back to her. None of the four worked directly for Hopper. The woman who acted as his secretary is a fluffy little blond in her forties and about thirty pounds overweight, and doesn't use Autumn. The cops checked out their alibis, but I can recheck if you want me to.”

“How on earth did you get all this?” I wondered.

“The partners were very cooperative. They want this cleared up as soon as possible, and they turned the place over to me. There's one large con that Hopper was already involved in, and the murder on top of it does them no good at all.”

“What about the partners?” Sarah asked him.

“I considered that, and I was very open about it. I'm not convinced that it was a woman, and I put that flatly to the partners. They showed me Hopper's account books and explained that his death made the recovery more difficult, since now there was no way of knowing which customers he had cheated and of how much. They said they desperately needed him alive. My experience with financial fraud is nil, but I can understand the advantage to them of having Hopper on the witness stand—and they can't have him now. I hate to say that being black gives you a foot in the door, but a tie and a three-piece suit helps. They're very conscious of political correctness, and anyway I don't see them in this caper. The cops established their alibis. There was a case in 1993 where a Wall Street player named Kessell hired a hit man who just happened to be a Fed. The financial crowd can be crooked as hell, but by and large they don't work it out with violence.”

“Did you talk to the cops?” I asked him.

“I'm no great shakes downtown, and precinct number one is an odd kettle of fish. Aside from a couple of dark showpieces, they're as white as the driven snow. But they got a transfer from uptown, a neat piece of—well, she's something. A big, smart-ass gal, name of Annabelle Schwartz. I took her to lunch—dutch, she insisted—and she opened up some. It was like pulling teeth.”

“You're good at pulling teeth,” Sarah said. “I know Annabelle.”

“I'm dry as a desert. You got a bottle of Coke some where?”

“I'll get you one,” J. J. said. She had listened to Brown adoringly, and she dived through the door to the main office and returned with an open bottle of cold Coke.

“I dry up when I talk,” Brown explained, riffling the pages of his notebook. “We got along. She asked me if I ever dated a white woman. I told her it's absolutely politically correct in 1996, but she'd have to put the cop crap aside and let me take the tab. Then she went into the stupidity of detectives. She was the one who decided that it was a woman and talked the detectives into Manhattan South doing the match job. She also told me that the cops went through the cans of garbage—”

“You're taking notes, J. J.,” Sarah said sharply. Then to Brown, “Where, Jerry? What cans of garbage?”

“In the basement of your building, Professor,” Brown said to me. “I don't think they're as stupid as Annabelle does. They found a sheet of paper—Hewlett-Packard Multi Purpose, eight and a half by eleven—that was folded over and over until it made a wedge that could keep the outside door from locking itself. Trouble for them is it's not watermarked, and the same mill makes paper for other companies. I say Hewlett-Packard because that's the paper the professor uses, but as I said, it could be any brand that buys from that mill.”

“They have to show it at discovery,” Sarah said.

“Maybe not. It's a lousy piece of evidence. We could accuse them of folding it themselves, and they may just put it aside. There are no fingerprints—no fingerprints anywhere in this case. You ask me, they got a little bag of circumstantial evidence and absolutely nothing else. Now that adds up to what I got. I'm beginning another case, but anytime you want me, I'll make time.”

“We'll see,” Sarah said. “But thank you. We're grateful.”

“I'll write you a check,” I told him.

“Not a hell of a lot to be grateful for,” Brown said. “Do you want my opinion?”

“Of course,” I said.

“This is a political show trial, ‘Olympic athlete, gold-medal winner foully murdered.' It puts their names in the media. They can't place this little lady in the building between nine and twelve, and without that, they got nothing.”

Elizabeth broke into tears after he had left.

“I've done an awful thing, Ike. God will never forgive me. You had a calm, decent life, then you saved my life and I repaid you by shattering yours to pieces.”

“That's nonsense,” I said, “and you know it is. You made an empty life worthwhile.” I took her in my arms and held her. “All over soon, and then we'll put it behind us forever.”

“No, we'll never put it behind us, and I'm so frightened,” she whispered. “I'll always be a woman accused of murder, even if I don't spend the rest of my life in prison.”

The discovery procedure was held before Judge Rena Nussbaum. I could only hope and pray that she might be the trial judge, but I knew that was unlikely. She was a round, motherly woman—a description she had earned with the raising of five children—and she was a good lawyer. She listened patiently and thoughtfully to my motion to drop the charges and throw the case out. Sarah had insisted that I do the plea, leaving unsaid the fact that I was Jewish and that Judge Nussbaum was also Jewish. Rudge was cold and determined. Judge Nussbaum had the motion to dismiss for a week, and while I had hoped, I was not surprised by her rejection of the motion. The trial would take place. She called me up to the bench and said that she would see me and Sarah and Rudge in chambers.

Apparently she was no stranger to Sarah. “You're very wise, Ike,” she said to me. The first name was the result of a number of social occasions we had spent together. “You have one of the best defenders in town, and I wouldn't trade her for any of the big names. Let me say too that Mr. Rudge is very experienced and very skilled. You will not mind my saying that, Mr. Rudge.” He nodded.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Sarah said.

She had both witness lists on the desk in front of her. “I see Elizabeth Hopper as a witness. I don't know what Sarah has planned, but I feel it is my constitutional duty to remind you that Elizabeth Hopper cannot be forced to take the stand. I'm sure you know that; nevertheless, I want the record to show it. It would be wholly improper for me to ask what you have in mind.”

“We have given it a lot of thought,” Sarah said, which was the truth only in the sense that Sarah knew what she was doing and that I, while giving it thought, was nervous as a hen and would have argued violently against it had I not agreed to place myself and Liz in Sarah's hands.

“You have two weeks to the trial date,” Judge Nussbaum said.

Walking back to the Woolworth Building, holding Elizabeth's hand in mine, I asked Sarah where we went from here. She replied with the story of a musician lost on Broadway who asked a bystander the way to Carnegie Hall. The answer was, “Practice, practice, practice.”

“I wanted to be an actress,” Sarah said. “My mother talked me out of it. Twenty years ago, the best chance a black actress had was welfare; and Mom, who supported us with washing and housecleaning, said she'd beg on the streets before she took welfare. She was from South Carolina—a preacher's daughter, God rest her soul—but the point I'm making, Liz, is that a criminal trial is theater. As a public defender—and I suppose I'll be one again when this is over—I had a caseload big enough for three attorneys. I managed somehow and did the best I could. But this is the first time I've had weeks to mull over the problem and to lie in bed at night planning my strategy—and I think I know what I'm doing. Nussbaum is a good woman, and she warned us about putting you on the stand. I had offers from the District Attorney to join his staff, partly because I'm black. But I'd take in washing before I'd become a prosecutor.”

That evening, Liz and I had dinner at Romer's. Sarah had subpoenaed a part of the lipstick message and had a lab test it against a number of the most popular lipsticks on the market. The bill for the testing came to almost three thousand dollars, and indeed they did find three brands that were practically identical to Autumn, so close that the lab would not verify the difference. The three lipsticks were sent to another lab, which also refused to confirm a difference, and that cost another eleven hundred dollars.

At dinner, Liz brought this up. She had barely tasted her food, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “Don't,” I said to her. “Please, I can't stand to see you cry.”

“I was thinking of those lab tests. Ike, this is costing you thousands and thousands of dollars. I have no right to impose this on you. I am pauperizing you, and I'm not worth it, Ike. From the beginning I've brought you nothing but grief. What must your family think of what I'm doing?”

“You're not pauperizing me, and if you'll wipe away those tears and eat your dinner, we'll talk about it. What my friends think, I really don't give a damn. If they're friends, they'll stay with me. Charlie Brown, my best friend, is so envious of me he'd change places in a minute. I have Social Security. I have a good pension, and I have a lifelong stack of securities and bonds. What am I supposed to do with it? Even Rockefeller couldn't figure out any way to take it with him. This is the second time today you've wept—and that hurts, believe me. If you have a bit of concern for me, you won't do it again.”

She smiled—the first time today. “Ike, does it really hurt you when I cry?”

“It sure does.”

“Then I won't cry again. At least I'll try not to, ever—except on the witness stand. Sarah said I could cry.”

“That's OK.”

“And maybe at our wedding—if you still want to marry me?”

“Absolutely. I can understand that.”

“Even if they find me guilty?”

“Liz, Liz—they will not find you guilty.”

“But your family, Ike. What does your son think of all this?”

“My son, Danny, as you know, Liz, is comfortably ensconced in Washington. He has a wife and three children—my family, finis. He works as operations manager for Bill Gates, and aside from perks and stock options, he earns two hundred and seventy-five thousand a year. When I telephoned him a few weeks ago and laid out the situation, he said, ‘Go for it, Pop; and if you need money, let me know.' So much for your concern about my family. Now please eat your dinner.”

Later, in bed with my arms around her, she whispered, “I feel safe, Ike. Here, with your arms around me, nothing in the world can touch me. Oh, I love you so; I just love you so much.”