Time's Witness (35 page)

I asked, “Meaning what?”

“Meaning, and I quote the lady, ‘doing the shit work for that jerk-off brother-in-law of his, Bobby Pym, and his jerk-off buddy Winston Russell.’”

“This omelette's really good,” I admitted. “Could you get anything specific out of her?”

Justin grimaced at the contents of my refrigerator. “No. The former Mrs. Slidell felt strongly that having climbed out of ‘that shit pile,’ she had no desire to climb back in. But don’t worry. She and I are going to be having some more talks.” Justin made a face at the messy remains of some Hot Hat brunswick stew. “My God, what is that?”

I ignored his question. “What time is it?”

Nora Howard had stuck her head in my front door, and answered me. “Ten o’clock. Coffee?”

Justin said, “I’d love some.”

Back in her living room, Isaac Rosethorn, his white hair sticking out like a cap of spiky feathers, sat smoking away at the dining room table, his nose in a scroll of computer printouts. Mrs. Howard (as Justin kept calling her, though she was younger than he was) certainly was hospitable; she appeared to be happy to throw open her apartment to anyone who happened to pass through the hall; maybe it was her Italian background.

While I drank my third cup of coffee by the balcony window, I watched her children play outside, trying to scrape together enough of the inch-deep snow to make a small snowman. Isaac hadn’t moved, and Justin was on the Howards’ phone. Then he came to the kitchen, shaking his head. “Mitchell Bazemore wasn’t exactly charmed with our request for a warrant against Purley. He says Otis Newsome is a good friend, a good man, and a high-ranking city official, and that it wasn’t easy to tell Otis that we were accusing his brother Purley of half a dozen serious felonies. In fact, Bazemore wants us to know that he never had to do anything sadder in his life. He says Otis was shell-shocked, outraged, and doesn’t believe a word of it.…Wonderful coffee, Mrs. Howard.”

“Call me Nora.”

He gave her a short bow.

I said, “Bazemore's our D.A.”

Nora said, “I know.”

Justin said, “But he backed off a tad on the indignation when I told him Etham had found Purley's prints, as well as Winston Russell's, out at Slidell's farm.”

I asked him, “You tell our friendly D.A. about Arthur ‘Moonfoot’ Butler's deposition?”

“Yep. He said he’d prefer us to find somebody besides convicted criminals to, quote, ‘substantiate these allegations.’” Justin stood with his cup and saucer like he’d come for a tea party. “Meanwhile, the best evidence we’ve got against Purley is that he's gone. He's definitely skipped town. No leads on him or Russell either. Could be in Bangkok or Sweden by now.”

Nora turned to him. “From what I’ve heard, Winston Russell doesn’t sound like the Sweden or Bangkok type.”

I said, “Justin's parochial. He figures everybody for a cosmopolitan.”

“He's been telling me,” she said, “you’re the one who takes vacations all over the world.”

Justin smiled at her. “Oh, and I talked to Dave Schulmann; he said FBI could justify some help on the Cooper Hall homicide if we demonstrate conspiracy to deprive him of his civil rights.”

Isaac shouted from the dining room table. “If
murdering
a man doesn’t deprive him of his civil rights, I’d be intrigued to know what would qualify!”

I said, “It's the conspiracy we have to prove. We haven’t tied Purley to the Hall or Slidell shooting, except that at some point he was in Slidell's house. In fact, he was in the squad room when Coop was shot.”

I accepted more coffee from Nora, who was wearing a dress for the first time—I mean it was the first time I’d seen her not in jeans. She said, “He doesn’t need to have been there at the actual shooting in order to prove conspiracy.” She paused, and looked at me. “Would you like an outsider's opinion?”

I said, “Outsider? Last night, I thought you and Isaac announced you were now co-counsel for the defense.”

She smiled. “I am. To the police, that's usually an outsider's opinion.”

Justin said, “We’re not usual police.”

I said, “Speak for yourself.”

He said, “Look, I’m not the one who sleeps in a tuxedo.” He turned to Nora. “Have you known many police chiefs who sleep in tuxedoes?”

“Not lately,” she told him.

“What's your opinion?” I asked her.

“That Willie Slidell was driving the car Saturday when Russell shot Cooper Hall.
Somebody
had to be driving. But that Slidell hadn’t realized what he’d gotten himself into, and either broke down, or at least Russell believed he
would
break down. I think by Sunday Russell and Newsome decided they had to get rid of Slidell,
and get rid of the car. As soon as you found Slidell's body, they both took off. So Newsome had to be involved. Because nothing had been publicly released yet about Slidell. Only the police knew.”

Justin said, “Makes real sense. Cuddy, you awake? What do you think?”

I said, “I’m awake. Don’t I look alert and alive?”

Nora smiled. “You look better than you did last night.” The weird thing was, when she put her hand on mine to take the coffee cup, I felt, well, I felt aware of the flesh of her fingers, as if her touch was familiar to me. And that recognition must have been in my eyes, because I think she saw it there; I think I saw it in her eyes too. At any rate, we both looked away fast. It was the last thing I would have expected, and I thought, Jesus, what's the matter with me? Is this just a residue of arousal from last night with Lee, or just over-stimulation from no sleep, or just that once I cracked the ice of my accidental celibacy (meaning I’ve been too busy to look for somebody), I was thawing in a hurry?

Justin looked up from his appreciative inspection of Nora's copper-ware. “Captain, any plans on coming to headquarters today? Etham and I have a few more little tidbits for you. For one, we found both Purley's and Winston's prints on your ostentatious Oldsmobile, so that little stink bomb was definitely their good-bye present to you. Two, their prints are
not
at the
With Liberty and Justice
office, and the graffiti on the wall does not match either of their handwritings.”

Isaac roared from the dining area. “Find out who broke in there and took Cooper's file box. I want Pym's wallet. I’m sure that's where Cooper put it, in his file box.”

I walked to him and tapped my finger on the table top. “How ’bout letting us find Winston Russell first. If we
can.
”

His jowls twitching, Isaac peered at me over his bifocals. “You
better
find Russell. I need him for my retrial.”

“I want him too, and for more than ‘your’ retrial. Besides, you don’t even know if you’ll get a retrial.”

He stuck his nose back in his papers. “I’ll get it,” he grumbled.

Justin was pulling on his Chesterfield overcoat. “And here's another present from Etham and me,” he said. “That white Fairlane we found in the Shocco with Willie in it? Well, guess what? Seven
years ago, it was one of the many unclaimed vehicles in the HPD impoundment lot. Seven years ago, somebody with access to that lot borrowed it and didn’t bother to bring it back, and nobody even reported it missing. And guess what else? Etham and I did a little chipping away at the paint on that Fairlane. It didn’t used to be a white Ford. It used to be a
blue
Ford. I bet it used to be
the
blue Ford that Mitch Bazemore said didn’t exist at George Hall's trial.”

Well, this news perked Isaac Rosethorn up enough to think about sending out for brunch spareribs from Hot Hat Barbecue. Justin and I left then, first going across the hall to get my coat. Billy Gilchrist was still sleeping.

If Justin hadn’t stopped to give me a lecture about spraying my corn plant for mealy worms, we would have been on our way down-town before the phone rang. As it was, I was prepared for the scene I was to encounter fifteen minutes later at the municipal building. It was Zeke Caleb calling. He sounded like he was out of breath.

“Chief, shit, Chief, get down here. Whole place is gone haywire. Second floor. Got a fatality.”

“What's wrong? Is it Mayor Yarborough?” The second floor was where the mayor and the city council had their offices, and my first thought was that Carl might have had a heart attack.

“No, it's the comptroller. Otis Newsome. He's dead. His secretary couldn’t get into his office. They had to break in the door. Everybody's running around downstairs going batshit.”

“Otis Newsome's dead?! How? A stroke?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Chief. I don’t know if y’all were friendly, but it's bad. Mr. Newsome killed himself.”

“What? Jesus! Are they sure it was suicide?”

“Real sure. He hanged himself from a ceiling pipe. They got Dick Cohen in there as soon as they found him, but it wasn’t any use.”

“Did Otis leave a note? Get down there and ask about a note.”

“D.A. said there wasn’t any note. D.A. and another fellow were already on their way to see Newsome, so they’re the ones got in there first. D.A. ran for Dick Cohen. After Dick gave up working on Mr. Newsome, this other fellow fainted flat on the floor so Dick had to revive him. Name of Fanshaw, something Fanshaw. D.A. said he was a friend of Mr. Newsome's.”

Getting out of the car at the municipal building, I saw Mitchell Bazemore at the top of the steps, leaning on one of the Confederate cannons, staring hard off into space. When we came back out half an hour later, he was still there, staring. Everybody else standing around was staring hard at what was going on down on the sidewalk. It was a small group of young picketers slowly moving in a loose circle at the foot of the block-long steps. They were all carrying signs, and what they were picketing was the Hillston Police Department. I knew some of these people—I recognized the three Haver students from the vigil group, and the two teenaged Canaan blacks from the riot, Martin Hall and G.G. Walker (who—despite his somewhat inappropriately jaunty grin and bebop walk—had clearly changed his mind since his vaunt to me that “protest was N-O-T his bag”). Most of the signs the group carried said the same thing. They said, JUSTICE FOR THE HALL BROTHERS.

I nodded to the group as I hurried by, but Justin stopped beside the long-legged, young Mr. Walker and told him, “Rehearsal tonight at eight, G.G. See you.”

“I’m easy, my man,” said Walker and he kept moving with the circle of picketers.

I asked, “What was that all about?”

“G.G.'s playing your part in
Twelfth Night
,” Justin wheezed at me as we hurried to the car. “Malvolio. Thanks for suggesting him. Of course, he's
charging
me to be in it. By the line. But wait’ll you see him. He's really great.”

I turned and looked back at Walker, bouncing along with his solemn sign. “Well, he's a braver man than I am. Some are born great,” I said. “And some achieve greatness against mighty considerable odds.”

I noticed that many of the young protesters wore campaign buttons. They were light Carolina blue. They had Andy Brookside's face on them.

It was three months after the city comptroller took his own life— the official word on the suicide was that grief at a bad brother's misdoings had temporarily overwhelmed a good man—before Isaac Rosethorn slapped down his bulging briefcase on the defense table, and began “his” new trial. That's how he put it. Sometimes he said “our” new trial, referring, I assume, to himself and Nora Howard, and possibly George Hall. Of course, all George had to do was wait. Isaac had to work, an activity about which he professed some ambivalence, as it took time from his hobbies—like teaching himself Russian so he could read Dostoevsky, who he believed shared his philosophical point of view; that's the way he phrased it, not “I share Dostoevsky's view,” but “he shares mine.”

At any rate, two weeks after Nora and he submitted their written briefs, one week after they presented their oral arguments, and seventy-two hours before the governor's stay of execution expired, the justices of the State Supreme Court did in a few minutes what Cooper Hall had worked for seven years to bring about: they remanded the case of
S. vs. Hall 2179 N.C.
to the District Court to be retried, with a new defense, a new jury, and a new judge. During this time, Isaac had practically moved in across the hall from me, since for some bizarre reason, he’d decided it would be “improper” for Nora to work in his room at the Piedmont Hotel, but fine for him to soak his big carcass in her tub for hours
(he claimed to think better in the tub), smoking cigarettes and getting volumes of the
General Statutes
so soggy the pages stuck together.

Nora didn’t seem to mind his being in her house, and her children treated Isaac like an unusual old toy they’d found up in the attic—sometimes they played with him, sometimes they threw him over for the modern gadgets they’d collected at Christmas. I was often invited there for dinner, but most evenings I wasn’t free to go, either because I was downtown working, or because I was with Lee, or home waiting for Lee to call me. Besides, that “general conversation” which Edwina Sunderland had insisted on at her parties was by no means forthcoming around the bleached oak table at 2-B River Rise. Instead, what you got was in this vein:

Nora: “Isaac, look back at page three fifty-six. Following the verdict, Judge Tiggs failed to instruct jury that death penalty was
not
mandatory sentence. We can use General Statute fifteen-A-two thousand. Brian, please,
please
, eat one little piece of broccoli, just one.”

Isaac: “Absolutely the best lasagna I ever tasted. Quoting that racist yahoo Henry Tiggs now, in his charge prior to sentencing: ‘As for these people who have testified that they saw the victim Robert Pym grossly and recklessly provoke the defendant, consider that the witnesses may have come to that conclusion out of feelings of’— listen to this, Nora—‘
allegiance
with the defendant. If you so decide, you will disregard their testimony as in any way mitigating the defendant's crime.’ Well, God Above! If that's not a clear violation of fifteen A-twelve thirty-one, I don’t know what is. Believed him because they were black! Put it down. Comment to jury as to the weight of the evidence or credibility of the witnesses, et cetera, ET CETERA.…Really, delicious lasagna!…On the other hand we can’t slash so heavily at Henry Tiggs that we suffer a backlash. Extraordinarily enough, he still has a few friends in Raleigh.”