Fatal Flaw Part 16

Then one night she came home late, very late, and acted strangely when she saw me, as if she didn't know who I was or what I was doing there. She even gasped when she saw me waiting for her. It was peculiar, and a fear gripped me like a fist around my throat. I figured she was out drinking again, back with that other man again, or maybe someone new. That night she went back to her pills, even p.r.i.c.king the capsules to make them work more quickly. And the next night, when I came home, she was waiting for me.

"There is no kind way to say this," she said, "so I won't try to make it kind. It's over."

She was lying on the mattress, smoking, gla.s.ses on, staring at me as if I were a thief. I'd like to say I took it with a profound stoicism, but that would be a lie. I begged, I cried, I threatened to kill her, I threatened to kill myself, I broke down, I refused to let it be over.

"Oh, it is," she said. "Believe it. You need to make arrangements to move out as soon as you can."

No, I told her. I wouldn't. I couldn't. What about our future? What about Costa Rica? What about the money? The money, d.a.m.n it. I shouted, I pleaded, I lost control. "There's someone else, isn't there?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Tell me who?" I said.

"Someone who f.u.c.ks like a railroad engineer," she said, smiling coldly. "It's all aboard and then on to Abilene."

That's when I hit her. I leaned over and smacked her face with the back of my hand, and when I did, something snapped inside me. She just lay there and took it and curled her lips into that hard smile, but something had snapped inside me. I think maybe in that instant when my flesh smashed against hers, I saw, as if from a distance, the whole thing, the scene, the relationship, my folly, saw it all at a distance as if it were someone else hitting her, someone else who loved her, someone else who had given up the world for her.

I stood back in horror at what I had done.

With that smile still in place she rolled away from me and said simply, "Put out the light."

So I did, without saying another word. I turned out the light and went into the bathroom and filled the tub with scalding water, as if I needed to be cleansed. I put Louis Armstrong into the Walkman and rolled myself a joint. I stripped and lit up and put on the headphones and slipped into the tub, turned on the water jets and thought about what I had seen from the distance as I hit her. I had seen a fool, desperate and lost. I had seen a runner who had run from everything and was still running. I sat in the tub and closed my eyes and thought my way through into a future without Hailey, without my family, without my career, without my money. In front of me was a door I couldn't open and behind which was a life I couldn't fathom. I felt a dark desperation overwhelm me, and I thought of dying, the freedom, the peace of death. But there was something about the music, something about the jazz, the bra.s.sy trumpet, the joyous spirit marching through hard times. I sat in the tub and smoked the dope and listened to Louis Armstrong, and I thought my way through the blackness, through the blackness, toward the door I couldn't open. And I imagined myself putting my shoulder to it, pressing against it, breaking through it, crashing through the door like Pepito himself into something approaching equilibrium, and I felt strangely peaceful. And tired. Maybe it was the reefer, maybe it was that I hadn't slept the night before, maybe it was the release of all those tightly clenched expectations, but I felt strangely peaceful and tired, and with the headphones on and the heat of the water soothing my bones, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, it was into a nightmare of blood.

19.

I LISTENED to his story with horror, and when he stopped speaking I shook my head as if shaking myself back into the world. The room was the same as before, still gray, still lit by the fluorescent lights humming in the ceiling. The barred window still looked out upon another block wall. The room was the same, but the universe had shifted. to his story with horror, and when he stopped speaking I shook my head as if shaking myself back into the world. The room was the same as before, still gray, still lit by the fluorescent lights humming in the ceiling. The barred window still looked out upon another block wall. The room was the same, but the universe had shifted.

If life is lived in that normally narrow and disappointing region between expectation and actuality, then those moments that most change our lives play out in the great gaps where expectation and reality veer wildly apart. Listening to Guy Forrest tell his story was for me like falling headfirst into one of those gaps. I had expected the story to be self-serving, and it was that, though not to the degree I had thought, but I had also expected it to be a tale of Guy's depredations, of Guy's machinations, of one arrogant step after another that led, inexorably, to Guy's moral disintegration and his explosion into murder. What I saw instead were the depredations and machinations of another.

It was the b.u.mping of the knees that did it. The innocuous detail that sounded like a siren for me. They are at a bar, he is not sure what they are doing, not sure what he wants or why he is there. Betrayal is the unspoken message that swirls about them like the smoke from her cigarette. Their conversations approach and then veer away from the topic at hand, but as they drink and talk their knees touch, in a gesture both awkward and intimate, their knees touch, and the spark sends a complex wave of emotion through Guy. It is contact charged with meaning and yet maybe no meaning at all. It promises so much and yet it embarra.s.ses him all the same. It is intimate, but is it, really? Or is it instead an accident? The uncertainty raises the level of everything it conveys, l.u.s.t, confusion, desire, fear, all of it. I know, because the same accidental touching of the knees sent the same wave of emotion through me. The accidental touching that was not so accidental.

She had known about Juan Gonzalez's prior medical condition from the first. "Don't mention it," she must have told the family. "I'll take care of it," and she did. The slow seduction, the promises of a future, the whispers of Costa Rica, all of it was the buildup toward the crucial moment when Guy discovered the fatal flaw in her case. It can take years, decades waiting for a case so rich to walk into your office. Negligence without ma.s.sive damages is penny common and worth about as much. Cases with ma.s.sive damages and clear negligence usually go to the big names with the big reputations. How does a young solo pract.i.tioner get her hands on a case like that? Luck. And if luck is not with you? Then make your own luck. Take a case with a fatal flaw and find a way to make the flaw disappear.

Hailey Prouix.

But what had she wanted from me? She had laid on me the same slow seduction, the same banging of the knees that made it seem it was I doing the seducing. But it wasn't my doing, was it? She followed the script, for some unknown reason of her own devising. What was it that I could have offered her? Why was I worth using?

The questions came crashing down upon me, along with the realization.

"You didn't kill her," I said to Guy, as a statement not as a question, though he took it as the latter.

"No, I told you, no. I didn't. No."

I glanced at Beth with a nervous hesitation. I wanted to see if belief was on her face, too, and I wanted to see something else. Had she figured it out, the madness behind my method? Had she matched his chronology about Hailey's secret lover with the bare bones she knew of my failed relationship? Had she matched the dates when both started and both flamed out, filled in the gaps and taken a guess at my motives? She was staring now at Guy and I could read nothing in her expression.

"Why not?" she asked Guy. "She had stolen your money, taken another lover, left you without your family, your career, without a cent or a future. She had used you like a rented mule. Why didn't didn't you kill her?" you kill her?"

He looked at her strangely, as if it were a question he never considered before. "Because I loved her?"

"Please," I said loudly, in a voice overflowing with exasperation. "Who loved better than Oth.e.l.lo? In the history of the world love has caused more murder than ever it stopped."

"What stopped you?" said Beth softly.

He didn't answer right off. He stared off to the side, his face twisted in puzzlement. I expected him to come up with something soulful and religious, something all surface, like the answer of a beauty pageant contestant. I didn't kill her because I believe that love can make the world a better place and we should shower our fellow humans with affection, not violence. I didn't kill her because I believe that love can make the world a better place and we should shower our fellow humans with affection, not violence. But that's not what he said, what he said instead was: But that's not what he said, what he said instead was: "Because it never occurred to me."

It never occurred to him? It never occurred to him? How could it not have occurred to him in this post-Holocaust, post-9/11 violence-saturated, blood-soaked-blockbuster age of ours? It never occurred to him? He had come up with the perfect answer, because it rang so true. It never occurred to him. Isn't that what keeps us on the razor's edge of the straight and narrow more often than not, that falling off never occurs to us? With that answer the vestiges of my doubts were routed. I now believed him. I now believed his entire story.

I had been wrong, wrong from the start, dead wrong.

I had been wrong enough to leap at a false a.s.sumption, wrong enough to chase a man through the wet streets of the city, wrong enough to seek to consign a friend to a life in jail or, worse, an execution. I had violated every precept of my lawyer's oath, had tried to railroad a guilty man, to elevate justice over form, to sacrifice means to an end, and all along I had been flat-out wrong.

There's the rub with taking the law into your own hands. There may be things upon which to stake your life, at least you should hope so, but upon what can you hold absolute enough to stake the life of another?

It is not enough to suspect, to surmise, to sort of kind of believe. It is not enough. Maybe that's what due process is, a method, devised over millennia, to allow us to treat our guesses as certainties. We can put you in jail without absolute certainty after we've jumped through all the hoops and played the game as fairly as we know how. Due process is not a way toward certainty but a way to handle uncertainty, and when you forget that, you begin to forget that uncertainty is all we ever have.

To the question of how you can represent a man you are certain is guilty, I give this answer: Who the h.e.l.l can be certain of anything in this world?

So here I was in a universe different than that into which I awoke, representing a man who I now believed was innocent and whose defense I had relentlessly sabotaged from almost the very moment of the crime. Now what was I to do, now how was I to save him, to save myself? Whatever it was, I had to do it quickly, before the wheels I had set into motion fell like a hatchet, smack on Guy Forrest's head.

"I have to tell you this, Guy," I said, trying to hide the desperation in my voice. "The evidence against you is overwhelming. Your gun, your fingerprints, the bruise, which you'll have to admit to if you testify, your attempted flight. They don't know yet about the money, but if they do, it becomes even worse. I don't believe you did it, and I'm willing to defend you to the best of my ability, no holds barred, but it might be time to seriously consider their offer."

"You said we should fight it."

"Yes, but that was before I learned about Gonzalez. You might win the murder case, but you'd still be up on fraud on the Gonzalez case. You'd still end up in jail. Look. Troy Jefferson offered up man one. You'd serve eight to ten years. I might be able to shave some months off. And I'll make sure it covers what you did in the Gonzalez case, too. It's not great, but you'll be out before you're fifty, with nothing hanging over your head and a chance to start over."

"I didn't do it."

"I know that, Guy. I believe that. But you did cheat the insurance company. And if you go to trial and lose, which with the Juan Gonzalez stuff is more likely than ever, they could keep you in jail for the rest of your life, or even kill you."

"What about the other man?"

"We can argue he did it," I said, "and we will. But it cuts both ways. It could also be a reason for you to kill her, jealousy, anger. It's a dangerous game you want to play. Eight years is hard, but it's not the end of your life."

He turned to Beth. "What do you think?"

"I think it's a generous offer," said Beth. "From what I understand, your father-in-law set it up to avoid a trial and the bad publicity. And to avoid any mention of Juan Gonzalez. I think it makes sense to pursue it."

"Can I think about it?" said Guy.

"No," I said. "There isn't time. If Jefferson gets word of the Gonzalez mess, the deal will disappear. We have to decide now, this instant. Every second is dangerous. Give me authority to make a deal."

"I don't know."

"You don't have the luxury not to know. You have to decide, now. I strongly suggest you make the deal. Beth strongly suggests you make the deal. It is your decision, but if you don't decide now, it won't be there later, and that could be the end."

"I don't know. I don't know."

"I need an answer now, Guy. Now. Yes or no. What do you say? Yes or no."

20.

THE RECEPTIONIST behind the gla.s.s window made us wait in the waiting area. behind the gla.s.s window made us wait in the waiting area.

Mr. Jefferson, the receptionist said, was still in his meeting.

I had called right from the prison and had been told by that selfsame lady that Mr. Jefferson was tied up. I told her it was important, I told her it was urgent, I told her it was about the Guy Forrest murder case and that Troy Jefferson would very much want to speak to me right away.

She repeated her demurrer: "Mr. Jefferson is unavailable at the present instant."

"I'll be right over," I said. "Don't let him leave before I get there."

And now here I was.

The receptionist smiled from behind the gla.s.s like a civil servant at the end of a long day and told us to please sit and wait. So we sat and we waited.

The waiting area for the DA's office was in the elevator lobby of the fourth floor of the courthouse. It was a stark and uncomfortable s.p.a.ce. It appeared they had bought the furniture secondhand from the office of a failed dentist. You could almost hear the echoes of the screams. A single door with frosted gla.s.s, its lock controlled by the receptionist, led to the offices. I tapped my watch, tapped my foot. A heavy woman walked out of the elevator and was immediately buzzed through by the receptionist. I worked on the Jumble in the newspaper left out on the table along with a Newsweek Newsweek months old. months old. CEZAR CEZAR was craze. was craze. THICY THICY was itchy. But was itchy. But DUGAY DUGAY,DUGAY. I was stumped on DUGAY DUGAY. Where was Skink when you needed him?

"Gaudy," said Beth, looking over my shoulder.

"Enough about my d.a.m.n ties," I said even as I filled in the blocks.

The door opened, a man in a suit with a briefcase the size of a filing cabinet stepped through.

"Could you tell Mr. Jefferson again that we are here?" I asked the receptionist.

"I've told his secretary," she said.

"Could you remind her?"

She smiled at me. "She knows. She asked that I have you wait."

I picked up the Newsweek Newsweek. I read the review of a movie already out of the theaters. I read of a rising star already fallen. I read of a disaster in China already replaced in our finite capacities for horror by a disaster in Cental America.

The door opened, a small man in a suit stepped through, and I jerked to standing even as my heart sank sickeningly, like the NASDAQ on earnings fears.

"Peale," I said.

Jonah Peale wore a pained expression like a mask. Behind him, holding the door, stood a smiling Troy Jefferson.

"I'm surprised to see you here, Mr. Peale," I said.

"Priorities," said Jonah Peale, nodding brusquely as he brushed by. I was too stunned to say anything, just watched him go.

"Are you ready for me, Victor?" said Troy Jefferson.

"Yes," I said, though I suspected I was too late, too, too late.

Beth and I followed the prosecutor through the door, down a narrow hall, into his small office. He walked with a slight limp, still. In his office, exhibits and files were piled on the floor, maps were taped to the walls. Among the clutter were two flags, standing next to each another, the flag of the United States of America and the flag of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All the doc.u.ments on the desk were facedown. Leaning against a file cabinet were our detective friends, Breger and Stone.

This was not good, I knew. This was not good at all.

"How's it going there, Victor?" said Troy Jefferson after we all had situated ourselves in the proper seats. "You getting ready to rumble?"

"That's what I came here to talk to you about."

"Of course we'll cooperate to the full extent required by law, give you everything you're ent.i.tled to. But I must say, this case suddenly has my compet.i.tive juices flowing. I get the same sense of nervous antic.i.p.ation before every trial as I had when I played ball. I still play, I suppose. I just play in a different court now. With justice as my goal."

"We're not reporters," said Beth. "Save the patter for the press."

He grinned and shrugged as if he were already in the statehouse.

"We met today with our client," I said. "We discussed everything once again. He continues to profess his innocence, but, in light of the overwhelming evidence facing him, he asked I explore further the plea offer you made at the arraignment."

"Yes, well, I am sorry about that," said Troy Jefferson.

"Sorry?"

"When I made the offer, it was contingent on our finding no information that would indicate a motive other than the heat of pa.s.sion."

"That's right," I said. "But we've received no notice that you have discovered such information."

"I faxed notice to your office twenty minutes ago."

"Twenty minutes ago? We were in your waiting room twenty minutes ago."

"Were you? We didn't know." He reached for one of the overturned papers on his desk, checked it, offered it to me. "Here it is."

Without looking at it, I said, "We are accepting the offer."

"I'm sorry, Victor, but it has been withdrawn."

"You can't."

"We have."