Redemption (24 page)

“I'm not pauperized, not by a long shot.”

“Indeed? Tell me how a professor emeritus can drop a hundred grand and not feel it?”

“By buying some stock forty years ago and holding on to it. I'm not rich, Sarah, but I'm not poor either. I have a good pension, social security, and some very nice stocks and treasury bonds. I am not to be pitied. Another criminal lawyer would have been into me for at least a couple of hundred thousand and costs. I don't have many needs, Sarah. Pipe tobacco still only costs a few cents.”

“Yes, but marriage may change all that. You still intend to marry Liz, don't you?”

“I think so.”

“Ike, what the hell does that mean—you ‘think so'?”

I remained silent for a minute or so, occupying myself with stuffing and lighting my pipe. “Sarah, I never asked you this—but I have to ask you now. Did Liz kill Hopper?”

“Why ask it at all?”

“Because I have to. That's what I am. I have to ask you.”

“What makes you think I know?”

“Because you're her lawyer.”

“Which,” Sarah said, “makes whatever I know privileged.”

I rose and closed the kitchen door, and then I said, “Jesus, Sarah, this is you and me together in the kitchen.”

“I am a lawyer and you are a lawyer. Let it rest, Ike. You gave testimony that she spent the night in bed with you. How on God's earth could she have killed Hopper? Did you perjure yourself?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know whether you perjured yourself? What kind of bullshit are you giving me now—you don't know whether you perjured yourself? Where is this getting you, Ike? A jury of twelve intelligent men and women found her not guilty.”

“I count my sleeping pills. I took one that night. Another was missing. I woke up that night—I don't know exactly what time it was—and she was in bed with me. Her hands were cold and she was shivering, and I put my arms around her to warm her. For God's sake, don't get angry with me, Sarah. Put yourself in my place.”

“I don't want to put myself in your place. This is a rare and sweet woman. Do you have any idea of what it means to be tied to a man who brutalizes you, who demeans you constantly, who tries to destroy your soul as well as your body—and there is no escape for you?”

“Liz escaped. He could do her no more harm.”

“Ike, Ike, for God's sake—did you ever strike a woman?”

“No. It's unthinkable.”

“Well, it's not unthinkable for hundreds of thousands of American men, black and white. I've heard enough stories from battered wives to have no question about that. You're not a woman, and I've never met a man who has the faintest notion of what it means to be a woman in a man's world. I've never driven down Eighth Avenue and seen a line of men trying to sell their pricks for a few dollars so that they could eat or buy a snort of cocaine and make their wretched lives a little less miserable. But I've seen women doing that in every lousy city in this lousy society, and I've spoken to mothers who became whores to feed their kids or keep them in school. You goddamn men are all alike. I have spent months with Liz. She is good and pure and honest, and this is a black woman talking about a white woman. And as for William Sedgwick Hopper, he deserved to die if ever a man did, but I'm not a judge and a jury, and neither is Liz. Do you think that Liz would use your gun and leave it there? Do you think she would use her own lipstick? Do you think that Liz could be such a forsaken monster that she would incriminate you? Liz loves you so much that tears come into her eyes when she talks about you to me. Not in a thousand years could she stand behind Hopper and coldly execute him. I've met women who could, but not Liz, ever.”

Sarah finished, crushed out her cigarette, and then lit another one. She breathed in the smoke, and then sat and stared at me.

“You don't think much of me, do you?”

“You don't deserve much, do you, Ike? There are over three hundred women working in the Omnibus Building. Putting Hopper in there was like letting a wolf into a flock of lambs. The cops are neither as stupid as I painted them nor as smart as TV makes them out to be. They decided they had the perp, and that was it. I blew out their lipstick theory, and the gun was stolen. Coincidence? Life is filled with coincidences. But I haven't answered your question.”

“What question?”

“Did Liz kill Hopper?”

“You answered it,” I said bleakly.

Sarah took a deep breath and blew out the smoke. “I hate these damn things. They're killing my voice and my voice is all I have. I'm not a paper shuffler. I'm a litigator.”

“A lot more.”

“No, Ike, Liz did not kill Hopper. He's still wreaking his pain inside of her, and the only one who can kill that is you, with love and kindness. Come to think about it, I'm worth every cent you paid me.”

“Absolutely.”

“Maybe I was too hard on you.”

“Oh, no.”

“Do you know why there was a sleeping pill missing? Because the first night I stayed here, I took one.”

“You did,” I admitted. “I had forgotten that.”

“Don't eat yourself up with guilt. Your thinking was male thinking, putting yourself in place of the woman. It doesn't work. That's ‘Jerry Brown sickness.'”

“What goes on between you two?”

“He wants to marry me.”

“He also wants to go to Columbia Law School. He asked me for help.”

“More male thinking. He wants to make himself worthy of me. Oh, shit! The hell with all of this. I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.”

I got out of my clothes and crawled into bed next to Liz, kissing her very gently. I was thinking that I was an old fool and there was no fool like an old fool, but thinking no more of a deer by the roadside or World War II or the meaning of life and death and justice and injustice. Like Sarah, I was very tired, and I was twice her age.

Liz and I were married two weeks later by Judge Nuss-baum, in her chambers. Present were Sarah, and my son and daughter-in-law, who had flown in from Washington the day before. They were to occupy our apartment and see New York, while we were spending a month in Europe. Liz was radiant, and there was much kissing and congratulations.

In the cab on our way to the airport, Liz said, “What was that line you quoted from the Talmud?”

“That he who saves a life saves the whole world?”

“Yes—and you see how true it is.”

THIRTEEN

T
HE
C
ONFESSION

O
N
J
ANUARY
12, 1997, Sergeant Hull was trying to work out a report on his new computer, which, courtesy of the city, had replaced his ancient Underwood typewriter. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and Precinct One had completed an uneventful day, with nothing worse than a fight between two drunks in a tavern, a fender bender on Broadway, and an attempted suicide in a prestigious law firm. Downstairs, a woman who lived in Tribeca was wailing about the theft of her dog. Two detectives on the next shift had gone out to investigate the report of a dead homeless man on Broad Street, and Flannery had already left for home.

Lieutenant Fred Thompson opened the door of his office and beckoned Hull in.

“Can it wait? I'm trying to finish this stupid report on this stupid machine. I got to type it out and I got to print it out. What in hell they gain with these mothers I don't know.”

“It can't wait,” Thompson said shortly.

Hull sighed and joined Thompson.

“The Hopper case,” Thompson said.

“What about the Hopper case?”

“They got a dame, name of Grace Norman, does it ring a bell?”

Hull frowned and thought about it. “Yeah, she was screwing Hopper in his home in Boston while he was still married to his wife.”

“Did you or Flannery check her out?”

“The way I remember, she was in Boston. Flannery called the Boston cops.”

“That's beautiful,” Thompson said. “Did you check the airlines?”

Hull sighed and shook his head. “No, we didn't check the airlines. If we checked every dame Hopper screwed in Boston, we'd still be on the case. What about this Grace Norman?”

“She's in Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, dying of AIDS. She said she murdered Hopper.”

“Come on!”

“It's a dying woman's confession.”

“Then we can close that lousy case. Did they fax you a copy of the confession?”

“I got the fax. I want you to go to Boston and check her out. You know the case.”

“If you got the fax—”

“You can read it on the plane. It's your case, and I been on the phone with the Commissioner and the Chief of Detectives. They want the case tied up and closed. What the hell good is the confession? So she read about it in the papers. You still think the Hopper woman's the perp?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, twelve good men and women think otherwise. So you get on a plane now. You see her today. Tomorrow, maybe she's dead. I got a squad car downstairs waiting to drive you to LaGuardia, and you got a police priority. I want you to see her tonight and pin her down. Take everything we got on the case with you. The Boston cops will pick you up at the airport. Leave your gun here and when you land, show your badge. I don't want any delay.”

“Jesus, I don't have pajamas. I got to go home—”

“You'll be home before morning. I'll call your wife. So take off and don't give me no argument.”

At seven-thirty, Hull was at Logan Airport, badge in hand. He was greeted by a policeman who introduced himself as Sergeant Gillespie.

Hull had read the confession, and had come to the conclusion that Thompson was right. The confession read: “I, Grace Norman, do hereby state that I was responsible for the death of William Sedgwick Hopper on the night of May twenty-fourth, 1996. He gave me AIDS. I shot him.”

It was neither signed nor notarized; and as a confession, Hull realized, it was utterly worthless. If that damn witch, as he often thought of Sarah, had offered it during the trial, the judge would have rejected it. As Hull brooded over it during the flight to Boston, he had become more and more convinced that he was on a fool's errand. He spent the rest of the flight time making sure that his pocket tape recorder was working properly; and the first thing he said to Gillespie was, “Is she still alive?”

Sergeant Gillespie, a stout, good-natured man, grinned and replied, “Barely.”

“Breaks your heart, don't it?” Hull said.

“I ain't weeping, Inspector.”

“Sergeant.”

“She shot him in the back of the head after she made a deal,” Gillespie said, shrugging.

“Hopper didn't have AIDS. We did a thorough autopsy. No HIV—none at all.”

“You going to tell her that?”

“I don't know,” Hull said. “I'll see how it goes.”

“You got a tape?”

“I got one.”

“I got one, too,” Gillespie informed him. “I'll stick around, and after you speak to her, I'll run you back to the airport.”

“It's got to be typed out, and then she has to sign it, and we got to have it notarized.”

“You can write down the facts,” Gillespie said. “There's a notary at the precinct. You get the main facts and the tape, it ought to be enough.”

Hull followed Gillespie into the hospital, an old, tired-looking building. The policeman on duty informed them that Grace Norman was on the third floor. At the nurse's station, the woman in charge told Gillespie that Grace Norman was sleeping, that she, the nurse, was on death-watch and they should come back in the morning.

“Suppose she's dead in the morning,” Gillespie said.

“That could be, poor soul.”

“This here's Inspector Hull. He just flew in from New York. He has to talk to her.”

“Sergeant Hull,” Hull said. “Another woman was tried for the murder she confessed to.” He didn't bother to inform the nurse that Elizabeth Hopper had been acquitted.

“Oh—I see. And you have the death penalty in New York, don't you?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right. We'll try.” She led the two policemen down the hall and opened the door of a room where there were three beds. Two of them were empty. A woman lay in the third bed, breathing hoarsely, her eyes closed. Her head was bald except for a few hairs. Her face was ravaged, the skin sallow and clinging to the bones. It was hard for Hull to believe that this was once a woman desirable to a man like Hopper.

“Cancer and pneumonia,” the nurse whispered. “They go quickly when it's both.”

Grace Norman opened her eyes and stared at the three people.

“These are policemen,” the nurse said. “This is Inspector Hull, my dear. He came from New York tonight to talk about your confession.”

“Where is the priest?” Grace Norman managed. “I don't need cops, I need a priest.” Her voice was a muted croak.

“He'll be here tonight. I promise you. After vespers.”

“What do you want?” Grace Norman demanded of Hull. “Put on the light. I can't see him.”

The nurse switched on the light and whispered to Hull, “She's heavily sedated, Inspector.”

“We're grateful for the confession. But we must have the details. Another woman is accused of the crime.”

“Who?” Grace Norman asked. “That stupid Liz? She couldn't kill a mouse. I killed that bastard. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He gave me AIDS. He told me so, and that we shouldn't see each other again. He thought he'd walk away. But he murdered me. Now I'm dying, so get the fuck out of here and leave me alone.”

Hull had pulled up a chair and was making notes on his pad. He had turned on his tape when they entered the room. As gently as he could, he said, “Please, Ms. Norman, I must have the details. When did you come to New York?”