The Judge (18 page)

"She would follow instructions well?" He makes a face, concession, and nods.

"I take that to mean yes?" "Yes."

"Had she ever used these safety procedures before, to your knowledge?" "The safety word. She needed it a couple of times with other johns.

The button, she'd never seen before. We had to tell her how to use it." "What was the signal word that night?"

"A phrase. Something. I can't remember. We change em all the time." " It's a hot night'?" says Lenore.

This was not something contained in the police report. Kline looks at Lenore, his eyes venal little slits, knowing there is only one place she could have gleaned this information: her interview with Brittany Hall that day in her office. He makes a note on the outside of his file folder as I look at him.

"Was that the safety signal for trouble that night?" says Lenore." It's a hot night'?"

"It coulda been," he says. "Sounds right."

"Did you hear those words uttered that night by the decoy, Ms. Hall? Did you hear her say, It's a hot night'?"

"No."

"But you were listening at the door, right?" "Right."

"And you heard the conversation between the defendant and Ms. Hall?

Voices in a normal tone, stating all the terms of commerce?" says Lenore. "That's right."

"But you never heard the decoy utter the words It's a hot night'?" "No."

"Isn't it a fact, Sergeant, that the decoy uttered that phrase not once, but three separate times, and you couldn't hear it, because you couldn't hear anything through that door?"

"That's not true," he says.

Lenore could only have gotten this from Hall, and Kline knows it. "Then how do you explain the fact that you responded to the signal of last resort, the electronic signal from the panic button, which Hall had been instructed not to use unless the safety word failed?" This is recorded in the police reports, an undeniable truth. Frost entered the room only after being told that the signal had sounded.

"Maybe she panicked," he says. "Made a mistake."

"Right." It is the problem with little inconsistencies. They tend to breed like flies.

"Sergeant Frost, you say you heard this conversation between the defendant and Ms. Hall from your position outside the door. What exactly did you hear?"

"I heard the defendant offer Ms. Hall money in exchange for sex." "Yes. We all heard you testify to that. But what were the defendant's words. Precisely?" she says.

"I didn't write them down," he says.

"So you can't recall the defendant's words?" This could be fatal to Kline's argument. "I didn't say that."

"Then what did he say?"

"He negotiated with her," says Frost.

"Looking for a bargain, was he?" The witness makes a face, like it happens.

"What were his words, Sergeant Frost?" He thinks for a moment. "How about two hundred two bills something like that."

"That's as precise as you can get?" Frost screws up his face, thinks for a moment.

"He said ..." Some hesitation. "He said, I'll give you two hundred dollars for sex."

" Lenore almost laughs at this, the colloquial pitch put forth. Like the John was buying milk.

"Those were his exact words. I'll give you two hundred dollars for sex'?"

"Right."

"A moment ago you said half-and-half."

"What difference does it make?" Acosta in my ear. "It is all lies." "Then we should cut it out like a cancer," I whisper back to him.

When our eyes meet, there is, for the first time, some melding of minds here, a sense in his expression that makes me believe him. It is not that I believe the Coconut is incapable of these acts. He has probably done them at one time or another. But I do not believe that he has done them this time.

"Maybe he said, I'll give you two hundred dollars for half-and-half." says Frost.

"Which is it?"

"Half-and-half," he says. "It was half-and-half." A satisfied look. a story he can live with. How big a lie can take refuge in ten words? "And you're sure about the two-hundred-dollar part?" "Absolutely." Frost gives her a judicious nod.

Acosta flinches at my side. "A fucking lie." He at least has the adjective right.

"I want to testify," he tells me. A disaster in the making. I tell him to be quiet.

Lenore turns away from the witness for a moment, shuffling some papers.

She reaches over and flips a single page onto the table in front of Kline. He picks it up and reads. Before he can finish, Lenore asks the judge if she can approach the witness. Radovich nods, and on the way she delivers another page to the judge.

"Sergeant, I'm going to show you a document and ask if you can identify it." She passes a third page to the witness. He looks at it.

"Do you know what that is?" "Inventory sheet," he says.

"And where does it come from? Who generates that particular sheet?" "The county jail," he says.

"And what's the purpose of this particular form?"

"To account for a suspect's personal belongings when he's booked." "You've seen these forms before? Maybe not this particular one, but others like it?"

"Sure." He drops the form onto the railing in front of the witness box, and turns his attention from it.

"And does this particular form have a name on it?" "Yeah." He doesn't look.

"Whose name?" says Lenore.

"The defendant. Armando Acosta." "And the charge?"

"Six forty-seven B," he says.

"Is that the personal property booking sheet for the night in question? "

"Appears to be," he says.

"Is there a box on that form. Sergeant, entitled Cash in Possession'?" Frost's expression is suddenly vacant, like the eyes of a man turned inward, searching for a soul that isn't there.

"Sergeant, I would ask you to look at the box entitled Cash in Pos session' and tell me what it says." Frost picks up the paper and looks, and suddenly it settles on him. He is a stone in the witness box, not responding to her question.

"Tell me. Sergeant, did your decoy take credit cards? Or maybe she was in the habit of taking personal checks from Johns? What does it say in that box, Sergeant?" He looks at Kline, who cannot help him.

"Tell us. Sergeant, how is it possible that the defendant could have offered your decoy a two-hundred-dollar fee for services, when he had only forty-two dollars and twenty-seven cents in his possession that night? Was she offering discount coupons? Tell me, Sergeant."

"I don't know," says Frost. "I only know what I heard."

"Isn't it common practice, Sergeant, in such an undercover arrest, to wait until after the suspect pays his money before effecting an arrest?

" This is a problem for them, since the police report makes it clear that Hall had never been paid.

By now Frost is a face filled with concessions. "In some cases," he says.

"In virtually all cases, isn't that what you are told? To wait until you see the color of their money? Isn't that, the payment of money, usually the overt act required to make an arrest?"

"Sometimes," he says.

"Not sometimes, Sergeant. Isn't that what you are told? Isn't that standard operating procedure in such an arrest?"

"Objection, counsel is arguing with the witness," says Kline.

"Sounds like a good argument to me," says Radovich. "Overruled." The judge is waiting for an answer.

"Tell us. Sergeant, why did you enter the room that night before the defendant paid any money to your decoy?"

"I don't know," he says. "The wire failed. I guess I panicked."

"But you heard everything that was going on. That's what you told us. Isn't that right?"

"Yeah."

"Isn't it a fact, Sergeant, that no money was paid over, because no offer of any money was ever made by the defendant that night? That their conversation had nothing to do with prostitution?" Pencils scratching in the background. Dense looks from the press row, wondering what they could have been talking about.

"That's not true," he says.

"Then how do you explain a two-hundred-dollar offer when the defendant didn't have two hundred dollars?"

"Maybe he was gonna have her put it on the tab," says Frost. "Move to strike. Non-responsive," says Lenore.

"Granted," says the judge. "Answer the question," he says.

"I can't," says Frost. "I don't know." It is always the problem with a lie.

HAPTEB

IT's WHAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT radovich," SAYS Harry. "He may not know the law, but he has a sixth sense for what is right." Harry likes the cow-county judge.

"Probably a Democrat," he says. Hinds would take a bleeding heart every time. When I look at Harry's clients I can understand why. This morning, however, I will say that Radovich ranks right up there, next to the Almighty, on most of our lists, Lenore's and mine included. He has granted our motion for a stay. There will be no separate trial on the solicitation charge.

"I thought the argument on joinder went right over his head," says Lenore.

"Probably did," says Harry. "But he needed some cerebral hook to hang his hat." Harry's looking at the court's minute order, the single-page document announcing Radovich's decision. Then he hands it to me. Harry's take is that the judge was not going to allow Frost to poison jury pool with obvious lies. Since the question of credibility belongs to the jury, Radovich decided the matter on the issue of joinder.

Though she won, this seems to irritate Lenore. She calls the judge result oriented."

"The right decision for all the wrong reasons," she says. "Don't knock it," says Harry'. "We won."

"Winning is not everything," she says.

"No. It's just the only thing that counts," says Harry. "Forget it. You wouldn't understand," says Lenore.

I think she wanted to take Kline down, but only on her own terms: a conquest dictated by intellect, not function. For her, the fact that the judge didn't catch the legal nuance other argument cheapens the victory.

While they squabble, I read the court's order. It informs Kline that if he wants to join the two cases, Acosta's earlier arrest for soliciting with the later murder, the court will entertain a motion at the appropriate time. Kline was last seen storming out of the courtroom, sputtering something about Lenore's lack of ethics, her pike sticking out of his ass.

What we have here is not the beginning of a trial, but the first skirmish in a brooding vendetta.

This morning we are gathered in my office to talk about recent revelations, the continuing torrent of discovery from the state.

"Does it look like they're producing from their side?" I ask Harry. I want to know if the state is hiding the ball, or coming clean with their evidence.

Harry has become the custodian of records, and is now swimming in reams of paper, some of them stacked halfway up the walls of his office.

It is the thing lawyers do. Hide the trees in the forest.

He is seated in one of the client chairs at a corner of my desk, piles of forms and reports in front of him. Lenore is drifting, a free spirit pacing behind him in the room, one arm across her middle supporting the other elbow, which props up her chin, Lenore's classic pose of meditation.

"Who knows?" says Harry. "We all play games," he says. Harry is a master of this. The fudge factor.

"What would a trial be," he says, "without some surprises." If Harry had his way every witness would be delivered to the stand in a package like a jack in the box.

He starts to brief us on what he has. "Prints from the girl's apartment apparently came up negative. They had trouble even finding her own.

Either she had a fastidious housekeeper, or the place had been wiped clean by the killer--except for one smudged thumbprint on the front door." This catches Lenore and me looking at each other wide-eyed.

She's giving me a shrug with palms up, like it can't be hers. This is all behind Harry's back, out of his view.

"Have they been able to match it to anybody?" I ask.

"They excluded the girl. Other than that, the report's vague," says Harry. "But they can do magic with that big computer at Justice," he says.

This sends a needlelike shiver up my spine.

"Should I send over a tidbit or two, to keep them happy?" says Harry. He's talking about some of the information from our own investigation, the law of reciprocal discovery.

I give him a vacant stare. My mind is on other things at the moment, the microscopic swirls and ridges on the dead girl's front door.

"What do you want to do?" he says. "We're holding the information from the optometrist on the glasses. Should I hold up, or give it over to Kline?"

"I don't know." I ask Lenore what she thinks.

"What? I'm sorry. I wasn't listening." Minds on a parallel course--at this moment, initial panic.