The Guilty (10 page)

As beautiful as she looked right now, Bratt could hardly believe that she was a police detective. Surely nobody else at the reception would either. Under her lambskin winter coat she wore a straight, black, sleeveless gown that showed off her well-formed arms and neck and most of her back. The slit reaching halfway up her thigh reminded him that she had legs worth showing off too.     

Bratt thought that he looked quite good when he had finished dressing earlier that evening. When Nancy greeted him at the door of her apartment he knew that he had more than met his match. At that moment his heart had begun beating like a teenager going to his graduation dance, and,
instead of coming up with anything clever to say, all he could do was stand there with a dumb grin on his face. The look in Nancy’s eyes told him that if there was ever any self-doubt in her mind, it had just disappeared. She knew he was a beaten man.

The valet approached the Jaguar and held the door open for her. He looked impressed both with Bratt’s car as well as his date. Nancy slipped her hand through Bratt’s arm as they headed for the entrance. She looked up at his satisfied face and asked him, “Which one of us are you showing off?”    

He laughed with unabashed glee.

Inside the building they found themselves in a large foyer, filled with sofas and leafy potted plants. Several guests were in line at one of two cloakrooms at the rear of the room and they joined them.

Once rid of their winter outerwear they headed for the large, circular staircase leading up to the main hall. Chandeliers glistened over their heads and the lights reflected brightly in ceiling-high mirrors lining the staircase. Bratt had ample opportunity to admire the handsome couple they made as they walked up the stairs, mentally comparing himself and Nancy to the other guests.

At the door to the main hall there was a large rectangular table with name cards spread across it in alphabetical order. Guests were slowly filing in, many of them sipping from punch glasses as they waited their turn. A tall, heavy-set man with a face like a boxer stood taking people’s names and methodically finding them their cards. Nancy looked at him for several seconds, trying to remember where she had seen him before, then followed Bratt inside the hall. Once through the door they found themselves in the hands of one of several young ushers who were efficiently weaving their way in and out of the lavishly-decorated tables, leading the wedding guests to their appointed seats.

They had arrived at the reception after the cocktails, and most guests were already seated, awaiting the arrival of the wedding party. Their table was in the middle echelon, not as far back as company employees or neighbors, but not quite up with the cousins and childhood friends. The hall itself was impressively large, easily holding over four hundred guests, with room to spare.

Nancy looked around, wide-eyed, at the well-dressed crowd. Low-cut gowns and heavy make-up were the order of the day for most of the women, some of whom were well into their golden years. Girls in their early teens wore the latest designer dresses, with hairstyles that had taken them all morning to get done and probably cost a small fortune. The older men were all in black tuxedos, the younger men in Armani and Boss suits.

Nancy leaned over to Bratt and whispered, “Somebody here must have hit a Brinks truck.”

“Now, now. Don’t go making any slanderous remarks. Besides, we’re both supposed to be off-duty tonight.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t help noticing that everybody in this place is dressed very expensively. Some of the weddings I’ve been to there were more jeans than tuxedos.”

“Not with this family. Weddings are a big thing for them. I’m sure a lot of people blew their budgets just trying to outdo each other.”

“Now I regret not having gone to the church too. They must have had a beautiful ceremony.”

Bratt looked at her with a bit of surprise. “I didn’t think you’d go for that kind of thing: the bride in white, choirs singing and all that.”

She smiled back at him. “That goes to show how little you know me, Mr. Bratt. I’m just an old-fashioned romantic at heart.”

As she spoke there was a sudden rush of movement near the entrance to the hall, and several photographers and a cameraman appeared, trying to make themselves some space in the crowd. The wedding party had arrived.

On the stage, the band stopped playing and the master of ceremonies took the microphone. He began talking effusively in Italian, and Bratt, not understanding a word that was being said, thought that he had never heard Italian spoken any other way. The crowd seemed to be enjoying whatever he said, and laughed and clapped frequently.

Nancy smiled too, clearly enjoying the extravagance of the whole production. Bratt looked at her and imagined her as a young teen, full of enthusiasm and curiosity.

I guess she hasn’t been a detective that long
, he thought, wistfully
. The cynicism still hasn’t set in.

The band began playing again, although not too loudly. Bratt didn’t recognize the tune, but it was full of dramatic flourishes offset by low drumrolls. While the music played the front doors opened wide and, two by two, the members of the wedding party entered as their names were announced.

The young ring-bearer and the flower-girl, each maybe five or six years old, were first, and they looked around the room nervously as they walked in front of the large, applauding crowd. They looked like they were ready to bolt for their families, but they managed to keep up their courage and climbed up to their places at the head table.

A half-dozen ushers then escorted in the same number of bridesmaids wearing long lavender gowns, several of them looking like they were rehearsing for the day they would be the center of attention. Everyone waved enthusiastically as they made their way to the front, then split off to sit at two tables set aside for the young singles. The best man and maid of
honor followed them, arm in arm, and joined the two younger children on the long dais.

Nancy was happily clapping along in rhythm to the music. She poked Bratt in the side and encouraged him to do the same. Reluctantly, he joined in, feeling a bit embarrassed but not wanting her to think he had no sense of fun.

The two sets of parents were announced next and Bratt wasn’t sure which ones were his former client’s. The men were both fairly tall, with thin, graying hair. The women had slightly heavier builds, hidden under sparkling dresses that seemed to have magically sprouted flowers. They strode proudly to the head table and stood behind chairs that were placed on either side of two thrones, covered with flower garlands and waiting to receive the newlyweds.

Finally, there was a long drumroll, then the M.C. shouted out his introduction of the bride and groom. The clapping and cheering got even louder as the young couple entered, and Nancy grabbed his arm to tell him how beautiful she thought the bride looked.

He turned to hear what she was saying and saw her suddenly freeze up, her eyes locked on someone or something across the hall. Bratt looked at her curiously, wondering what had caught her attention in such a dramatic fashion. He was shocked to see that all the blood had drained from her face, taking her smile with it. He tried to follow her gaze through the milling crowd, but couldn’t see whom she was staring at.

“Do you know who that man is?” she asked him, pointing at a short,
neatly-dressed man who had discreetly slipped into the hall and was heading for a seat just to the right of the head table. “That’s Nick Tortoni. I’d recognize him anywhere.”

Bratt said nothing. He had been aware the well-known crime figure might be present, but had hoped Nancy wouldn’t have recognized him so easily.

Looking confused, she asked him, “Did you know he’d be here?”    

Bratt picked up a bread roll and tried to look casual as he buttered it. As much as possible he wanted to show her that the man’s presence was not something to get worked up over.

“Well, of course he’s here. He’s the groom’s great uncle.”    

Nancy stared at Bratt, an expression of disbelief on her face. “You told me the groom’s name was Joe Capelli.”    

“Mm-hm,” Bratt managed with a mouthful of bread. “But his mom is a Tortoni. Angelina Tortoni, Nick’s niece. It’s not that big of a deal.”

The expression of disbelief on her face quickly turned to anger.

“What do you mean, not a big deal? You know who he is-”

“Look, Joe’s got nothing to do with the old man’s business. They’re not even particularly close. But he’s family, so he had to be invited, that’s all.”

“And you just had to invite me,” she stabbed a finger at him, accusingly. “I’m a cop and no matter how much you try to act like it doesn’t matter, you still brought me to a wedding in Nick Tortoni’s family. You must have known I’d never come if I had known; that’s why you never mentioned the family connection.”

“Come on, Nancy. You’re not supposed to be a cop tonight, remember? We’re just at my old friend’s wedding. I wasn’t exactly planning on introducing you to the old man.”

“Christ, I hope not,” she almost yelled, indifferent to the stares this attracted from the other couples sitting at their table. “If you brought me anywhere close to him I’d spit in his face. That man ordered the shooting of two cops last year, so you must be nuts to think that I might want to meet him.”

Bratt’s lawyer’s instincts took over and, before he’d had a chance to think about it, he found himself arguing in the old man’s
defense.

“You guys never could pin that on him, so why won’t you forget about it?”

As soon as he had spoken the words he realized that he couldn’t have chosen a worse thing to say. Nancy made that clear when she grabbed his forearm tightly and spoke through clenched teeth, tears of anger beginning to well up in her eyes.

“Are you really such a thoughtless jerk? Just because we can’t prove something in court doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, and you know it. It’s not bad enough that he’s a crime boss, but he’s a cop killer to boot, and you’re stupid enough to think that not being able to pin it on him makes the least bit of difference to me?”

For several seconds he sat there in stunned silence. He realized that her reaction should have been totally predictable. What surprised him most was how he had managed to convince himself it might be otherwise.

Earlier that day, when Nancy had agreed to attend the wedding of his former client, he had decided to not mention the Tortoni connection. He thought that once they were here, happy to finally be together, she wouldn’t care who else attended the reception. He thought that she might even find some sort of humorous irony in attending a Tortoni wedding. He had clearly thought wrong.

Nancy turned her face away from him and picked up a glass of water, bringing it to her lips with a trembling hand. She sipped from it slowly, then turned back toward him, clearly still angry, but in better control of her emotions.

“I’d like to go home now, please.”

He began to speak, to present further arguments in his defense, but the little common sense he had left told him it was pointless. It would have just made things worse, if that was at all possible. In the space of less than a minute their perfect evening had come to a sudden, crashing end.

Moving quickly to avoid looking at the amused stares of the other guests at their table, they got up and slipped out of the hall.

Kouri had managed to reach the two alibi witnesses and they were coming to the office at noon that Sunday. Bratt spent the morning reading through the preliminary inquiry transcripts, doing his best to forget the previous night’s debacle. When Kouri arrived a bit before 9 a.m. he was surprised to find Bratt already hard at work, unaware the lawyer had gotten to bed early following the abrupt end of his date with Nancy.

B
ratt jotted down notes as he read the testimony of the two main Crown witnesses, trying to get a feel for how Paris and Phillips reacted under cross-examination. To Bratt’s way of thinking, Paris, the accomplice turned stool pigeon, couldn’t help but come across as untrustworthy and the lawyer didn’t worry too much about how he was going to handle him in court.

Phillips was another story, though. By some sort of miracle he had survived two gunshots to the back of his neck, just at the base of his skull. He had no criminal record. He didn’t know nor have anything against Marlon Small, whose picture he had picked out of several dozen photos in a high school yearbook. It wasn’t even the same high school that Phillips attended. For all these reasons it would be very hard to get a jury to believe that he was lying about who shot him. He had no reason to lie, to int
entionally blame the wrong man.

But that’s what I’m going to have to show,
Bratt thought.
The jury’s going to have to think that either he’s a liar or his powers of observation are so weak as to be worthless. That kid’s the biggest obstacle to our winning this case. Too bad about him getting shot, but I’m just going to have to knock him down a peg or two.

Phillips’s testimony at the preliminary inquiry had been fairly solid, but Bratt had been able to rattle better witnesses than him before. He knew this was precisely what Jeannie was angry about, why she had suddenly turned against all criminal lawyers. But there could be no self-doubt now. Time was short and he had a client who was relying on his skill and experience to be saved from a lifetime in jail. Bratt’s personal feelings about Small and the skepticism he felt about
his innocence were irrelevant.

At the same time, Bratt knew it would be hard to predict which way a jury’s sympathy would go. Attacking a shooting victim on the stand could easily backfire if he wasn’t careful. For that reason as much as any other they would still need some solid alibi witnesses to raise the precious doubt they needed to win. And that’s what had him sitting in his
office on this Sunday morning.

Just then Kouri knocked at his office door. “Mr. Shoot to Kill is here to see you,” he announced, clearly reveling in the chance to call Bern
ard Clayton by his street name.

Bratt pushed the transcripts aside and aske
d, “What about the Parker kid?”

“Oh yeah, he’s here too,” Kouri answered, with a smile. His head disappeared from view for a few seconds, then he returned, leading two heavily muscled
young men into Bratt’s office.

The pair shuffled in nonchalantly. Their style of dress was identical to Small’s. They wore the same baggy, low-slung pants, sleeveless sports jerseys under puffy winter jackets and matchi
ng red bandanas on their heads.

Uninvited, they dropped themselves, side by side, onto Bratt’s sofa, and looked up at him with totally inexpressive faces. Bratt doubted that either one was going to be any more personable than their friend Small. He didn’t get up from his own chair to greet them, as this simple civility seemed superfluous. He just turned to a fresh page on his l
egal pad and picked up his pen.

“Which one of you guys likes to be called
Shoot to Kill?”

The two glanced at each other, then the taller
one spoke. “Who wants to know?”

“Ah, you would be Bernard Clayton then,” Bratt surmised. He felt he needed to show he was in charge of this interview right off the top. “I’ll call you Bernard because I’m old enough to be your father, and I’ll only call you Mr. Clayton in court. You’ll call me Mr. Bratt all the
time.”

The two young men continued to wear their blank expressions, as if Bratt were a boring TV show they had watched so often they knew the words by heart
. He turned his gaze to Parker.

“I guess that makes you Ashley, right? If you’d be so kind to wait outside the office, we’ll talk with Bernard here first and
then get your statement later.”

Ashley, unsurprisingly to Bratt, didn’t move from his place. He didn’t turn toward Bernard either, but just stared blankly in Bratt’s direction. Kouri shifted uncomfortably in his chair and Bratt cleared
his throat before trying again.

“Ashley, if I’m going to take your witness statements I have to speak to each one of you alone, so that you can both tell me just what you remember, without influencing each other. I’m not trying to pull any fast ones on you guys. In court you won’t be allowed to listen to each other’s testimony, so you better get used to telli
ng your stories independently.”

Parker didn’t move at first, but Clayton turned his head toward him and
whispered, “It’s OK, man, go.”

Parker slowly stood and walked out of the office. Bratt turned to Kouri and signaled with his head that he should follow the witness, resisting the temptation to warn him about making sur
e Parker didn’t steal anything.

Once they were out of the office, he turned his attention to the remaining witness. Clayton’s face wore several scars that attested to the violence of the life he lead. Under the bandana, his hair was short, except on one sid
e where he wore it dreadlocked.

“Ok, Bernard. You know I want to talk to you about the night the Phillips boys and a drug deale
r named Indian were shot, late last summer down in Little Burgundy. It was in an apartment on Carrier Street. According to the reports of gunfire by the neighbors, the shooting took place at approximately 11:25 p.m. Can you tell me where you were that night?”

Clayton’s tone of voice was flat and disinterested. He sounded like h
e was reciting a boring script.

“I was with Brando and Ash at the park in LaSalle, shooting hoops. Brando drove us home around midnight, so he was nowhere near Little Bu
rgundy when the guys got shot.”

“Fine. Now what makes you say you
left the park around midnight?”

Clayton’s expressionless face displayed t
he slightest hint of confusion.

“What you mean?”

“Well, you said that Brando, Marlon that is, drove you home around midnight. How do you know what the time was?”

Clayton shrugg
ed. “’Cause that was the time.”

Bratt took a small breath and decided to start again. He knew that for some witnesses certain facts, such as time and place, were so self-evident that questioning them made the witnesses feel defensive, as if they thought they were being tricked. Clayton’s new expression of wariness let him k
now that such was the case now.

“
I’m sure that you’re right about the time. It’s just that in court you may be asked how you knew what the time was. So, I want you to be ready to answer that question. Now, can you tell me why you think you left the park around midnight.”

“’Cause it takes me twenty minutes to get home and I got home around tw
enty after midnight.”

“Excellent. Now, why do you say you got
home at twenty past midnight?”

“I know what time I got home.”

“I’m sure you do. I just want to know why you say that it was twenty past midnight.”

“’Cause that was the fuckin
’ time, man!”

Bratt felt a growing sense of exasperation. If the most basic questions were so hard to answer in his office, how would Clayton handle the pressure cooker of a jury trial? He had no choice but to be very suggestive in his questions, almost to the point of explaining to Clayton what ki
nds of answers he should give.

“Look, Bernard, I’m really not trying to trick you or anything. When somebody knows that something happened at such and such a time, usually it’s because they either saw the time on their watch or on a clock, or maybe somebody told them the time. Sometimes, it’s just because they were watching their
favorite TV show, so they might know the time that way. OK? So, let’s try again: how do you know at what time you and Marlon left the park.”

Clayton sat up and pointed his finger angrily at Bratt. “Now you’re trying to trick me. I left the park with Marlon
and
Ashley, not just Marlon alone!”

With that he sat back in the sofa, an expression of satisfaction on his face. Bratt had no idea what his own expression was just then. He only knew that it would be anything but satisfaction. He thought that if he were in a comic strip he’d be pulling tufts of h
is hair out of his head by now.

He sat quietly for several seconds, his mind as blank as Clayton’s earlier expression, before reviving himself wit
h an idea for a fresh approach.

“I notice that you’re not wearing a watch today, Bernard. Do you remember if you wore a
watch that night in the park?”

“I don’t got no wat
ch,” Clayton answered sullenly.

“Do you remember if you saw the time
on the clock in Marlon’s car?”

“Clock in his car don’t work.”

“All right then. Did you see the time on a clock at your home after he dropped you off?”

“No. I didn’t put the lights on ’cause
I didn’t wanna wake up my mom.”

“That’s very commendable. So did somebody
, anybody, mention the time to you when the three of you left the park?”

Clayton seemed to think through this one for a couple of seconds before answering. “No. The park was empty when we left. Everybody had
gone home a long time before.”

“I see,” Bratt said, thinking that he had gotten his point across to Clayton, who would now have no reason to misunderstand his meaning. “So how do you know what time it was that you left the park?”

“Shit, man,” Clayton yelled, jumping up in frustration. “I thought we already settled that. How come you don’t believe me? I tell you over and over I know the time we left. It was
around
midnight. It wasn’t exactly midnight, so I didn’t have to check the second hand on nobody’s watch or nothing. It was just
around
midnight.”

“So it co
uld have been before midnight?”

“Well, yeah. It could have been before midnight. Maybe it was. That would still be aroun
d midnight, right?”

“Could it have been 11:30?”

“I suppose so. I wasn’t wearing a watch, like I said. An’ it’s been a long time.”

“Could it have been close
to eleven that you three left?”

“I dunno. Maybe it was. We just left when we got tired of playing, you know? We didn’t have a schedule to keep
or nothing.”

“If you left at 11 P.M. and drove to Little Burgundy, what tim
e would you have gotten there?”

“We didn’t go to Burgundy. Ash an’
me live up in
Cote des Neiges
.”

“If.
Just if.”

“OK, ‘
if
.’ I dunno. It’s not far. Maybe ten past. Maybe 11:15.”

“So, that would still have made it possible for Marlon to commit the murders at 11:25 p.m. And it might indicate that you an
d Ashley were his accomplices.”

Bratt sat back and watched as the implication of what he said sank into Clayton’s none too thin skull. Clayton looked lost at first,
then began getting angry again.

“What the fuck’re you trying to pull? You’re supposed to prove that Brando didn’t do nothing, not that
I helped him kill those guys!”

Bratt was equally angry now. He sat forward in his chair as he spoke, his hands gripping its armrests. “Yes, that is what I’m supposed to prove. And the least bit of help from you or any other so-called alibi witness would be appreciated. So far, though, you haven’t given your friend much of an alibi, have you? Your ‘around midnight’ seems to give him all the time in the world to go to
Burgundy and shoot those guys.”

He stared at Clayton who had gotten up and begun pacing around the office in obvious agitation. Finally, Clayton turned to him and said his first intelligent words s
ince he and Parker had arrived.

“
OK. Maybe I gotta talk to Brando a bit about that, see if there’s maybe something I forgot.”

“Yeah,” Bratt said, trying to keep the sarcasm down to a slow drip. “Maybe there are a couple of small d
etails that slipped your mind.”

Clayton sat back down slowly, nodding his he
ad. “Yeah, some small details.”

“Fine. There is another important question that I have to ask you, and it’s along the same lines as the last one. How do you know that the night Marlon drove you and Ashley home was the
night of the murder?”