Hostile Witness Part 54

"Because you subpoenaed me," she said.

From the start, I wanted to let the jury know where this witness stood. Here was not Chester Concannon's mother testifying to save her son, here was a potentially hostile witness, sitting up there only because she had a truth that we were insisting she tell. I had her identify the subpoena that I had served upon her and put it into evidence. I would wave it at the jury in my closing as I argued for her credibility.

"Now, Miss Ashland, do you know Councilman Moore?"

She glanced at him warily. "Yes," she said.

"How do you know him?"

"We're friends," she said.

"How did you meet him?"

She let out a deep breath and said nothing.

"How did you meet Councilman Moore, Miss Ashland?"

"He had come with a group to raid a crack house on Sixty-first Street."

She had given the wrong address. "Was that Sixty-first Street or Fifty-first Street?"

She sighed. "You're right, Fifty-first Street. I was inside when he came."

"Why were you inside?"

"I was using at the time."

"Using what?"

"Cocaine."

"Crack cocaine?"

"Yes."

"And the councilman found you inside?"

"Yes. And he took me to a drug rehabilitation center and got me off of drugs."

"Do you know the councilman's att.i.tude toward drugs?"

"He hates them with a pa.s.sion. He hates the dealers, the profiteers. He hates those who killed his daughter."

"They incense him?"

"Yes."

"Make him angry?"

"Yes."

"Violently angry?"

Prescott stood up quickly. "Objection, calls for speculation."

"Answer if you can," said the judge.

"Yes," she said. "Violently angry."

"Have you seen the violence?"

"Yes. At the raid he was swinging a chair wildly, knocking down everything he could find. He was almost crazy."

"Did you see him hit anyone with the chair?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"I saw him hit Norvel Goodwin."

"And who is Norvel Goodwin?"

Her lips quivered in hesitation and her eyes pleaded at me not to force her to say anything against Goodwin, but I looked down at my papers, waiting for her answer.

"The man who was selling in that house."

"Were you involved with Norvel Goodwin at the time?"

"Romantically, you mean?"

"Yes," I said.

"I was on drugs. Romance and drugs do not go hand in hand, Mr. Carl."

"Were you s.e.xually involved with Norvel Goodwin?"

"Yes."

"How did you feel when you saw the councilman swing the chair and hit Mr. Goodwin?"

"I was scared. But he didn't hurt me, he helped me."

"And after he helped you get off drugs, did your relationship change?"

"Yes."

"How did it change, Miss Ashland?"

She looked at me hard and then glanced at Jimmy and then cast her gaze down to her hands twisting together on her lap. "We became lovers," she said.

"You began to have an affair, is that right?"

"That's what I said, yes."

"And did the affair continue throughout this trial?"

"No, not the whole time. Jimmy told me it was over the day you mentioned my name in court."

"How did he tell you this?"

"Over the phone."

"Isn't he putting you up in a hotel room now?"

"I told him I was afraid to stay at home. He found me a room."

"Did he visit you there?"

"No," she said. "You're not listening. It's over."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Angry," she said.

"At him?"

"No," she said. "At you."

And so my foundation was laid. I had brought out her relationship with Jimmy, her drug use, Jimmy's propensity to violence when faced with drugs and their dealers, and the end of their affair, leaving her bitter toward me, not Jimmy, so she would have no reason to lie about what Jimmy had done. My difficulty, of course, was that now I had a drug user for a witness. What I had to do, in effect, was to try her in front of the jury for being a drug addict, a s.l.u.t, a homewrecker, try her and acquit her before Prescott was able to get his hands on her in cross-examination. I had to bring out everything that might be used against her, bring it out as carefully as if it were an armed pipe bomb, and then diffuse it before the jury so that when Prescott tried to impugn her on cross with it the jury would think they were being told an old story and wonder why Prescott was going over it still again.

So what I did was gently lead her through her entire life story, from Iowa to London to her trip around the world with Saffron Hyde. I had her linger as she talked about the bus accident, about how Saffron needed the drugs for his pain, and how she too became addicted. And then, in detail, I had her tell the jury about his swim in the Ganges and his death in Varanasi and the burning of his body. Both Eggert and Prescott objected to the story but the judge gave me the lat.i.tude I requested, agreeing with me that I was ent.i.tled to give evidence to mitigate any loss of credibility of the witness due to her drug use. So back we went to New York and the University of Pennsylvania and that crack house on 51st Street where Jimmy Moore found her, and the drug rehabilitation center and the apartment in Olde City that the councilman leased for her at a bargain rate in exchange for a street. It was a good story, well told, with tears and hesitations and true emotion and by the end of it there was no doubt that the jury felt for her, shared her tears. The jury had gone through her life story and come out at the other end on her side. I was ready now to get to the meat of her testimony, except for one more disclosure.

"During the time of your relationship with Jimmy Moore, did you have affairs with other men?"

"Yes."

"Why, Miss Ashland?" It was a question not strictly relevant, but I couldn't help myself from asking it.

"I don't know. I was lonely, I guess. Bored. Jimmy had a wife. I had nothing but a part-time him."

"Did you have an affair with Zack Bissonette?"

"Yes," she said and that brought a little "Aaah" from one of the jurors who had finally begun to see what she was doing in this trial in the first place.

I hesitated for a moment, looked down at my papers. I shuffled one over the other and back again as I screwed up my courage to ask the next question. "And did you also have an affair with me?" The question itself was enough to silence any murmurs in the courtroom.

"Yes," she said. "Unfortunately."

I could have stopped there, I guess. I had tossed out the worst of it with that simple question and her simple answer. I could have left it to Eggert and Prescott to pick over the carca.s.s of our dead relationship. Chester Concannon was glaring at me with a strange look of doubt that I had never seen from him before, a doubt that would only grow deeper the further I delved into what had happened between Veronica and me, and there was really no reason to delve any further. But when the judge called me to the bench and reamed me out for a good five minutes over getting involved with a witness, forcing me to explain to him that I didn't know she was a witness when I started my involvement with her, I thought I should explain that very thing to the jury, since they too may have been suffering from a misapprehension. So instead of stopping like I could have, I continued on.

"How did you meet me, Miss Ashland?"

She gaped at me, and then said, "At a restaurant. You tried to pick me up with some of Jimmy's champagne."

"For how long did we see each other?"

"For as long as it was convenient."

She was staring hard at me and I stared back at her and for a moment it was only her and me in the courtroom and I had the power to ask her anything I wanted. I was tempted to ask her about her feelings for me, did they ever exist, did I ever satisfy her, was our s.e.x as incredible for her as it was for me, did she ever love me, did she ever dream, like I did, that it could go on forever. And could she forgive me for what I was putting her through now and, if so, was there any possibility that after this was all over, after the trial was finished, after she had cleaned herself up and our lives had resumed their unbearable stasis, after everything, could she ever consider coming back to me? That was what I wanted to ask her, all that and more. But what I asked instead was, "When did you tell me you had been sleeping with Zack Bissonette?"

"When you asked."

"That was after we had become involved, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And did we continue our affair after I learned about your relationship with Bissonette?"

"Well, you kissed me after that," she said. "When you gave me the subpoena." That got a chuckle from the crowd.

"But now our relationship is over, is that right?"

"It was over before it started," she said.

"And we're not seeing each other anymore?"

"No," she said and then she let out a sly smile. "Not even if you begged."

I stepped back and winced. My reaction was noticed, there was a t.i.tter from the jury, a few slight laughs from the audience behind me. And somehow, with the laugher it all seemed all right now. It was the banter that did it, the cliched angry girlfriend bit that did it. It was as if my relationship with Veronica now fell neatly into that whole boy-girl thing, absolving me of anything dark and sinister. I glanced over to the jury and there were some admiring glances, that someone like me could have played around with someone like her. I had been raised a few notches in their esteem. It was incredible, I thought, that a woman with whom I was obsessed could mash a grapefruit in my face in the middle of a crowded courtroom and it only served to build up my standing. Sure, let it happen just like that. I had a job to do, a story to tell, and now it was time to tell it.

"All right, Miss Ashland," I said. "You have a checking account, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Is there another name on that account?"

"Chet's name is also on the account."

"Why?"

"I was getting some money from Jimmy every now and then through Chet. Putting Chet's name on it made it easier for him to give me the money."

"Did there come a time when certain large amounts were deposited in that account?"

"Yes," she said. "Chet asked me to put in certain amounts of cash."

"Chet asked?" She had made another mistake. "You mean the councilman."