The Guilty (25 page)

“If they’re crooked go ahead and charge them,” he said, feeling braver now. “And if you have anything on me, feel free to accuse me too. Otherwise, get out of the waitress’s way. You’re interfering with my drinking.”

St. Jean’s face reddened. He knew he’d had his bluff called.

“Oh, I’ll charge ’em all right. I’m not just sitting on my ass getting drunk till the trial, you know. I know these guys aren’t straight and I’m going to prove it. I hope you
are
involved in this little game, because you won’t be so clever sitting in a jail cell.”

Bratt jumped up, almost tripping on the chair leg as he did so, then struggled to right himself, only to find he was nose to nose with St. Jean, like an umpire and an angry manager during a baseball game.

“Hey, what’re you implying? You better watch what you go around saying in public,
mon hosti
, or I’ll sue your fat ass.”

“Go ahead and sue me. I’m going to prove everything I’ve been saying.”

“Boy, you’re really good with your little threats and innuendo, aren’t you? Maybe you’re getting worried about losing this case.”

“You’re the one who should be worried, Bratt.”

“I am worried,” he said, surprising himself by his admission. “Even drunk I’ve got enough brains to worry about a case like this. But I don’t go running around saying the first dumb thing that comes into my fat head, just to see what cards the other guy’s holding.”

“No, you keep your cards close to the vest, especially when it’s about these great witnesses you found, that look like they’ve been fed a Hollywood script for their testimony.”

Bratt’s unsteady forefinger was quickly up in St. Jean’s face, barely an inch from the detective’s nose.

“You son of a bitch, that’s…that’s slander. If you didn’t have a badge, I’d-”

“I’ll gladly take it off. Right now, outside.”

Before Bratt could reply to the challenge he felt his arm grabbed and dragged down, pulling him back into his seat. He turned, furious at being interfered with like this, only to find that it was Kalouderis, wide-awake now and grinning broadly, who was holding onto his sleeve.

“Whoa! You boys gotta learn to play nice together.”

“Let go of me, John. That prick’s trying to
fuck with my reputation and I’m the only one who gets to do that.”

Kalouderis laughed and held Bratt tighter.

“Easy there, big fella. Look,” he said and pointed out that St. Jean was also being pulled away by his own partner, and was now almost out of the bar. “It’s over, forget it.”

“Shit, I really would have liked to punch his lights out.”

“Geez, Bobby, you’re too much. Like trying to beat up a cop’s such a good idea. Forget about him and have another drink. If you can still stand there and shout it out with him, you’re not nearly as drunk as you need to be.”

Far from satisfied with the conclusion of his argument, Bratt sat down anyway, grabbed Kalouderis’s glass, and downed it.

“What is that shit you’re drinking?”

“Same shit we’ve both been drinking for two hours. Waitress calls it her kamikaze special, and that’s good enough for me.”

He waved at her and she smiled, turning back to the bar to order two more of the near-lethal drinks. Bratt tried to brood over St. Jean, but the arrival of the drink helped him quickly forget the detective.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, as the hour approached three and last call was sounded, he thought of the court hearing he was supposed to attend at nine-thirty that morning, and wondered what condition he was going to be in, if he made it there at all. It was probably a good time to hit the road.

He patted Kalouderis’s arm as a sign that it was time to go, then unsteadily got to his feet, looked around for the men’s room and stumbled as he tried to walk toward it. He righted himself, but then quickly forgot all about the next day’s court appearance as he vomited all over the barroom floor.

The next morning Bratt laid his head back in the slow-moving taxi that was carrying him to court from his home and closed his eyes against the incessant pounding caused by the blood rushing to his brain. With a trembling hand he wiped the sweat off his cold forehead and moaned. How he had managed to get out of bed that morning he didn’t know. 

When he had stepped out of his building he discovered that the winter sun was the brightest in recorded history and, of course, his sunglasses were nowhere to be found, probably lost under some piece of furniture or other. It was only to be expected, he supposed, that God should turn the screws a little tighter and try to blind him as punishment for the previous night’s drunken revelry.

The taxi speeded up with a lurch as traffic opened up, causing Bratt’s stomach to jump and sending bilious gasses up his throat. He covered his mouth with his hand and willed himself to keep everything down. Throwing up at the bar at closing time had been the ultimate humiliation. The two other times after he got home were just gut-wrenchingly painful. He only hoped he could get through the morning without wearing his insides on his robes.

Finally arrived at the courthouse, Bratt stepped carefully out of the taxi, squinting uselessly against the sun’s searing rays. He slogged his way through the snow, dragging his feet, then headed up the stairs and into the courthouse’s main lobby, where Kouri stood waiting for him. Kouri’s face showed his obvious concern for his boss’s condition. He had received an early-morning phone call from Bratt, sounding like he was at death’s door and asking Kouri to meet him at the courthouse with his robe and vest.

“Mr. Bratt, is it all right if I say you look like shit?”

Bratt could only look weakly at him, too nauseous to reply. Opening his mouth for any reason seemed to be a bit risky just then, so he kept his words to a minimum. He reached out for Kouri’s arm and shuffled like an old man toward the elevators, hoping his legs wouldn’t give out in public.

“You don’t want to take the escalator? The elevator never comes,” Kouri said,

Bratt imagined the dizziness that surely awaited him if he were to watch the courthouse lobby slide past him while he stood on the rising stairs and decided to stick to the slow-moving elevators. He shook his head no, instantly causing it to spin anyway.

Somehow they made it to the elevators and got on with several other people, a few who smiled at Bratt in greeting, while looking somewhat surprised at his haggard appearance. When they got off just one floor up, Bratt felt their eyes following him.

They got to the courtroom door and Kouri held it open. Bratt slowly made his way to the
defense bench and saw Nancy sitting across from him, with her eyes glued to a police report on the desk in front of her. This time he was glad she didn’t look up at him as he entered.

Standing off to the side was Parent, engaged in a whispered conversation with none other than Philippe St. Jean. Bratt looked away, feigning indifference to the detective’s presence.

He wasn’t in court yesterday,
he told himself.
I wonder if he showed up today on his own, or if Parent had ordered him to report on last night’s “meeting.”

Bratt remained standing, leaning on the front of the prisoner’s box, while he waited for Judge Green to take the bench. He didn’t want to sit just yet because that would only mean having to stand up again when the judge entered. If it was at all possible he wanted to limit the number of times he would have to struggle to his feet, unsure that he’d have the strength to rise when called upon to do so.

Just before Green entered, St. Jean turned to Bratt and sneered openly. Parent, on the other hand, didn’t look his way at all, but on his face Bratt could read his disapproval over whatever St. Jean had whispered to him about the night before.

“All rise,” the bailiff called out, getting Bratt’s attention.

Green made his way slowly up the dais and into his seat and Bratt thought that the judge looked the way he felt. Bratt slowly sat down as well, his shaky legs almost giving way at the last moment. His stomach gurgled loudly enough that even Nancy couldn’t stop herself from looking his way. He gave her a sickly smile and received a puzzled frown in reply. 

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Green began, ignoring Bratt’s audible intestines. “First of all, Mr. Bratt, I’d like to extend my condolences for the passing of your partner yesterday. I’m ashamed to say I was unaware he was in the hospital.”

Bratt nodded in thanks, hoping the pained expression on his face would be attributed solely to his grief.

“You’ll be glad to know that I won’t keep you here too long this morning. I’m sure there
are other places you would rather be just now.”

Like a bathroom,
Bratt thought, pulling out a kleenex to wipe his sweaty face.

“I reviewed the tape carefully,” Green continued, “and the fact is that over ninety percent of it is nothing more than a running monologue by the detective. A not too subtle and ultimately fruitless attempt to get the accused to make a statement. None of what the detective says is particularly relevant to the issues in this trial, nor do his opinions on the state of the evidence against Mr. Small actually prove anything. So the jury certainly won’t be hearing any of that.

“As for the rest, the few verbal exchanges that took place between the accused and the detective are of no probative value and may even mislead the jury into making the wrong inferences of fact. So those would have to go too.

“As a result, the few individual phrases by the accused that are left, those which I can say with confidence would not infringe on his right to a fair trial, are so disconnected as to be meaningless. I prefer limiting the jury’s exposure to meaningless phrases to what they’ll hear in the lawyers’ final arguments. Therefore, none of the tape will be admitted into evidence.”

Kouri whispered a triumphant “yes” at Bratt’s side, while Bratt himself felt only a slight sense of relief trying to make its way past his stomach cramps.

“I’ll see you gentlemen Monday morning for jury selection. My sympathies again, Mr. Bratt.”

Bratt had to quickly cover his mouth against a burp that tried to escape, earning an understanding look from Green in return.  The judge slowly got to his feet and Bratt managed to stand by pushing heavily down on the desk in front of him.

On
ce Green had left the courtroom Parent came over to where Bratt stood, extended his hand and whispered solemnly, “God rest his soul.” 

Bratt’s limp, clammy handshake caused the prosecutor to wince involuntarily in disgust and wipe his hand on his robe as he turned to walk out. Bratt let Parent and the two detectives leave first because he didn’t want them watching him wobble unsteadily out the door. Once he was sure they were far gone he grabbed Kouri’s arm again and was slowly led into the courthouse corridor.

The block and a half walk back to their offices seemed to take an eternity for Bratt, who felt that mother nature had teamed up with his own body against him. Pedestrians stared or smiled cruelly at his obvious discomfort when he had to stop to catch his breath, leaning on a storefront window as he did so. He thought he heard Kouri whisper “march or die.”

W
hat the hell does he mean by that?
he wondered, although he felt too sick to get angry. 

“It’s the title of a movie,” Kouri said, once again seeming to read his mind. “All these soldiers marching in the desert, day after day…”

Bratt interrupted the movie account by placing a trembling hand to Kouri’s mouth and giving a slight shake of his head. Right then, silence was all he could stand. Leaning against Kouri again, he continued his painful trek to his office.

By late afternoon, after a long nap on the sofa in his office and a couple of mugs of warm tea, Bratt’s body seemed ready to show him some mercy. As for Kalouderis, to whom Bratt would have liked to give a swift kick in the pants for bringing him along on his drinking binge, there was little news. Sylvie, still red-eyed and now dressed in black, told Bratt that she had received a cryptic fax from his drinking partner, stating simply, “Please don’t call.”

Once he began feeling better, Bratt noticed the unhappy faces of the lawyers in his firm. Beyond the passing of the senior partner, there was also a sense of uncertainty about their future. Leblanc, on the morning of his heart attack, had mentioned to some of them the possibility that Bratt would be named a judge. Now the associates found themselves contemplating a major shift in the structure of the firm, if not its possible dissolution.

Bratt had given little thought to the future of the firm or of his associates. The proposed seat on the bench, as far as he was concerned, was far from a lock, especially if it was in any way dependent on his handling of the Small trial. Unsure of the path he wanted to take for his own life, he was in no position to advise others on how they should plan their careers.

Kouri knocked lightly on his door at around three that afternoon, then opened the door a crack and peeked in to see if Bratt was conscious. He saw him sitting up at his desk, sipping the tea that Sylvie had made him.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah, getting there.”

“You really had me worried this morning. I don’t think your body can handle alcohol very well.”