Kindle County: Reversible Errors Part 38

"Would you prosecute, Muriel?"

She looked herself over, still without a st.i.tch on, and said, "I think I'd have to disqualify myself."

"Seriously," he said, "would you call that a crime?"

"I think it's wrong, Larry. Really wrong. And I'm not going to let you testify you found that cameo in Squirrel's pocket when you didn't."

As long as he'd known her, he'd never been certain how firmly Muriel stood on principle. She meant what she said. But she'd never fully remove self-interest from her calculations. If she let him fib, he'd always have something on her.

He thought through the alternatives. With Arthur's agreement, they had given the cameo back to Luisa's daughters in June, so there was no way to print it now to prove it had been in Squirrel's hands.

"What if I admit I lied before?" he asked.

"That's moral turpitude on the job, Larry. They fire your a.s.s. And you'll have to hold a farewell party for your pension. And you still wouldn't have a chain of evidence putting the cameo in Squirrel's pocket unless the copper who stole it gets up there to admit that, which won't happen unless he doesn't like his pension either. We'd be screwed anyway."

"How so?"

"You'd be admitting you lied to get a conviction, right?"

"To convict a multiple murderer."

"Then who's to say you wouldn't do it again? You're the only witness to a lot of what went on between Rommy and you at the station house in October '91. Next time around, Arthur's going to say that confession was coerced somehow. All we'll have is a perjuring police officer to say no."

"We lose the confession?"

"Good chance. And the cameo. And ruin you. I mean, worst-case here, Larry, if we admit you lied about the cameo, and somebody figures out you s.h.i.t-canned d.i.c.kerman's report, the U.S. Attorney's Office will probably prosecute you for obstruction of justice."

"The feds?"

"We're in federal court, Larry."

"s.h.i.t." They indicted cops for sport over there, part of the never-ending conflict between federal and state law enforcement.

"We can't try this case again, Larry."

He hated this stuff, the law"and Muriel when she was its mouthpiece. He squeezed his arms around his knees and asked whether they could make a deal with Gandolph for a long prison term.

"That's the best option," she said. "But what was it you called Arthur? Crusader Rabbit? Crusader thinks he has an innocent client. Crusader's probably going to hang tough and take him to trial."

"What happens then?"

She didn't answer. Larry, suddenly on all fours, gripped her arm.

"I don't want to hear about time served, Muriel, or anything like that. I don't want to have to look at this guy on the street. I'd rather take my chances in court, lose my pension, obstruction, whatever. This is me to you, Muriel. I mean it. Promise me you'll stand in there."

"Larry."

"Promise me, d.a.m.n it. What's the name of the Greek guy pushing the rock up the hill and never getting to the top? Sisyphus? I'm not Sisyphus. That was a curse, Muriel. They did that to that guy as a curse. And that's what you'd be doing to me."

"I'm trying to save you, Larry."

"Is that what you call it?" he asked as he grabbed his clothes.

But he'd suddenly lost her attention. She was far off again. It took him a second to realize that she thought she'd found the way to do that.

Chapter 40.

August 24, 2001 Heroin THE RECEPTIONISTS AT O'Grady, Steinberg, Marconi and Horgan recognized Gillian by now. She walked in with a wave and moved through the pale halls of the law firm, receiving the tepid smiles of those who either didn't know her or knew her too well. As she'd predicted, Arthur had not made a choice of companion popular among his partners. Rather than respond, Gillian kept her eye on a new serpentine-chain ankle bracelet she had bought this morning. During her lifetime, her feelings about this fashion accessory had varied. Her mother had told her ankle bracelets were trashy, which meant Gillian insisted on wearing one throughout her teens, and had eschewed it thereafter as juvenile. But in the late summer, when even she had acquired some semblance of a tan and could go without hose, the thin chain had a promising sensuality against her bare skin. Slender evidence of something. It reminded her for indeterminate reasons of Arthur. She rapped on the doorsill of his office and craned her head about the metal frame.

"Dinnertime?" she asked.

In his chair, his back was to her and his face lowered. She thought he must have been reading, but when he revolved she could see he'd been crying. Arthur had been as good as his word. He wept all the time. She felt no alarm whatsoever until he spoke a single word.

"Heroin?" he asked her.

He said it several more times, but she never found her voice to reply.

"This morning," he said, "Muriel made an emergency motion before Harlow to reopen discovery and depose you."

"Me?"

"You. The motion said you appear to have information favorable to the defense. It was so ridiculous and low, I refused to upset you by mentioning it. I came through the courtroom door firing hot ammo. 'Cheap.' 'Theatrical.' 'Unethical.' 'Sc.u.mmy.' Words I'd never used in public about another lawyer. The idea of trying to make this case personal! And finally, when I was done carrying on, Muriel asked the judge for ten minutes and handed me six affidavits, all from people who sold you heroin or saw you buying it. Even so, I wasn't going to take the word of smack wh.o.r.es. But I met two of them this afternoon, Gillian, face-to-face. Both had kicked. One's a drug counselor. I mean, they weren't happy to say it. They didn't have a beef with you"one of them had showed up in your courtroom years ago and you gave her probation, and she had a d.a.m.ned good idea why. I mean, they were just telling the truth. Telling me the truth about you. Can you imagine how that felt? I mean, Jesus f.u.c.king Christ, Gillian, heroin?"

There was probably no word for this exactly. She'd taken a seat in a tweed armchair, but she hadn't any idea how she'd made her way there. She felt as if she was on an elevator that had dropped dozens of stories and then slammed to a halt. She'd descended at high velocity and had been flattened. For a trifling instant, she'd felt an impulse to deny what he'd said, which made her despair even more over herself.

"Arthur," she said. "It makes everything so much worse, Arthur."

"It certainly does."

"For me. It makes everything so much more disgraceful. And I'd had all I could bear, Arthur. You know that. You understand that much."

"Gillian, I mean, this was the first thing I asked you. You told me you were sober at the time of Rommy's trial."

"I answered your question. I told you I hadn't been drinking to excess. I was a witness, Arthur, an educated one. I answered the question."

"And then? Some time in the last four months, you didn't think"I mean, don't you realize what a f.u.c.king problem this is legally?"

"Legally?"

"For Rommy. Legally. He was tried before a heroin addict."

"He's not the first defendant whose trial judge was impaired. The case was appealed, Arthur. Twice. There have been endless post-conviction proceedings. No court has ever found anything near reversible errors."

"And what about the Const.i.tution?"

She couldn't follow the reference. "The Const.i.tution?"

"The Const.i.tution, Gillian, promises every defendant a fair trial. Do you think that means a trial before a judge who's committing a felony on a daily basis? Not only a judge whose thinking is bound to be disturbed, but who's out on the street and, therefore, has a powerful motive not to antagonize the prosecutors and the police?"

Ah. She sat back. She had not thought of this part at all. She'd given the whole subject brief contemplation the first day she met Arthur for coffee, reasoned a bit with Duffy, and stowed it away. The only justice that had concerned her was her own. But had she reflected with just an instant of discipline, she could have recognized the implications for Gandolph, exactly as Arthur laid them out. She was as guilty as Arthur found her.

"Muriel's already called to ask what I'm going to do," he said.

"And?"

"And I told her I'm going to move to amend my complaint for habeas corpus to allege that your addiction violated Rommy's right to a fair trial."

"You're going to put me on the witness stand?"

"If I have to."

She was about to suggest he was being histrionic, or impulsive. How could he interrogate the woman he was sleeping with? But that answer, too, was plain. She really was not as fleet with all of this as she had once been, she thought sadly. Obviously, she was no longer the woman he was sleeping with.

"My G.o.d, Gillian. I can't even bear the idea. You in doorways, copping from hookers"and then going back to sit in judgment of other human beings? I can't imagine this. And you? Who in G.o.d's name are you?"

Yes, well. She'd known that sooner or later he'd have the good sense to ask that question.

"Do you expect to prevail, Arthur, with this new tack?" She was afraid it might sound as if she was asking for mercy. Then she realized she probably was.

"You mean, would I do this just to get even with you, Gillian? No. No. Pamela's started the research. A new trial is dead-bang. But my position is that retrial is barred under the double jeopardy clause. The state failed to meet the fundamental responsibility of providing a competent forum. Muriel seemed willing to listen on that point."

For a second, Gillian imagined how Muriel was taking this. Even in defeat, she'd have the last laugh. That was a rare success in litigation. To be able to break your opponent's heart.

"Let me understand," said Gillian. "I'm the scapegoat. A triple murderer is going to walk away because I was addicted to heroin. That's how it's going to be explained in the press?"

Arthur chose not to answer, but only because there was no point in denying it. She had been a wretch in the eyes of this community, and a disappointment. But now she would advance to the category of monster. Arthur, she realized, saw her that way already. Across the small distance between them, his red-eyed stare was terrifyingly objective.

"It's my fault, Gillian. You warned me. You told me just what you've done to the men in your life. You even gave me an entire case history. And I jumped in anyway."

Despite her complete muddle, she felt a new source of pain, as if muscle had severed from bone near her heart. It was certain now that Arthur and she were done. He had never before spoken to her cruelly.

She blundered out of the office, down the pale halls, to the elevator. Reaching the street, she stopped on the pavement. 'Heroin.' She heard the word from him endlessly. 'Heroin.' How could she ever have done this to herself? She truly needed to remember, and thus, for the first time in years, she experienced a clear sensation of the potent oblivion of the drug.

Chapter 41.

August 27, 2001 The Midway UNDER THE LONG green hands of the oaks and elms on the Midway, Muriel and Larry walked in search of a bench. Each had a sub bundled in wax paper tucked under an arm, and the bright red cup of a soft drink in hand. This narrow pleasance, miles long, had been leveled and planted not long after the Civil War, an urban garden amid a road where horses clip-clopped in front of carriages. Now four lanes of traffic, two on the east, two on the west, whizzed by, discouraging any effort to speak until they were side by side in front of a bench of splintering crossbeams on a cement base.

"Here?" asked Muriel.

"Whatever." He remained grumpy about taking this stroll.

"I was just thinking about us, Larry, and I realized that all our time together has been in confined s.p.a.ces. You know? You keep talking to me about gardens but we've always been within walls. Courtroom. Office. Hotel room."

A huge bus motored by at that point, roaring as it accelerated and spilling poisonous smells from its exhaust.

"Very rural," said Larry. "Why did I have the feeling as I was walking, Muriel, that I was on a death march?"

She could not quite muster a smile. She'd unwrapped her lunch but put it down. Somehow the next sentence required two hands.

"I've decided to dismiss our case against Rommy Gandolph," she said. It was not really a difficult a.n.a.lysis. Larry's treasure hunt under Erno's shed had yielded six more items with Erdai's prints, or Collins's, and not a bit of evidence against Squirrel. But she still dreaded speaking the words.

Larry had bitten off a large section of his sandwich and continued to chew, but he was otherwise rigid. His tie, dragged down six inches from his collar, rode up and stayed parallel to the ground for quite some time on the wind.

"You're the first person I've told," Muriel said. "After Ned, I mean."

He swallowed, then said, "I'm out here so n.o.body can hear me screaming. Right?"

She hadn't thought of that. But, as always, instinct had probably led her this way for a reason.

"You have to be kidding, Muriel. You're in a perfect position. You said Arthur wouldn't deal, but now he has no choice if he doesn't want to butcher his girlfriend in court."

After all this time, she still hadn't internalized the differences in their worlds. Larry was one of the smartest people she knew. He read books. He could think abstractly. But to him the law was only tactics. He'd never bothered to fool himself, as lawyers did, into accepting its lines of trivial consistency. He saw only a big picture where the pract.i.tioners thought up logical reasons for doing whatever they wanted to.

"I doubt he would do that," said Muriel. "He'd be selling out his client to save Gillian."

"It's worth a try."

"It's unethical for both of us, Larry. Him"and me to propose it."

"Who are you talking to, Muriel?"

"Larry, I'm no better than anybody else, I get caught up, but I do try. I believe that stuff about how you can't enforce the rules if you won't live by them. Besides," she said and felt her heart shiver, "I don't really believe Squirrel is guilty anymore."

Even before she spoke, she knew what she was saying, but the effect of watching him shrink from her remained heartbreaking. His spine, his face became hard as concrete. He was the one man on earth who'd loved her in the way she would have chosen and he was going to be her enemy.

"He confessed," said Larry quietly. That was the essence of it. In the end, she could say Larry fooled her. But Larry, a detective for more than twenty years now, would have to say he'd fooled himself. It might have been either a failure of integrity or a lapse in competence. Or a little of both. Yet at this stage, it would be even worse for him to attribute his mistake to his pa.s.sion to please her.

The other day she had thought he was being melodramatic when he said she couldn't do this to him. But with a frequency unmatched by anyone else, Larry often beat her to the finish line, and he'd done it then. To accept her judgment, he would have to ruin himself in his own eyes. No one's devotion went that far.

"Larry, the way it's going down, it will all be on Gillian. No d.i.c.kerman. Or Collins. No doubts about the investigation. Off the record, our story is that we couldn't risk a double jeopardy ruling when it might mean opening the prison door for everyone who appeared before Gillian over the years. If we have to fight that fight, we can't do it in a capital case, where the procedural law is so exacting."

As she explained, Larry's blue eyes never left her. Finally, he got up and walked several feet to a mesh waste bin and slammed the sandwich down in it. Then he re-crossed the ragged parkway where the gra.s.s had failed, leaving circles of mud between the bent gra.s.s and dandelions.

"You know you're full of s.h.i.t, don't you?" he said. "Laying this on Gillian"that protects you a h.e.l.l of a lot more than me."

"I understand it helps both of us."