Black Diamond (2 page)

Danny and I took different directions when we left the O'Connor nest. I went through Harvard and Harvard Law School, did a stint as prosecutor with the Boston U.S. Attorney's office, and then
went into a criminal defense practice that ultimately paired me with the only man on earth who could stand on the same pedestal with Miles O'Connor, my senior partner, Lex Devlin.

Danny, on the other hand, had two natural attributes, an abiding love and understanding of horses, and a body that could sustain a weight of just under a hundred pounds. He rode his apprentice year as a jockey at Suffolk Downs the year I entered Harvard College. He went on from there to become the leading rider at Suffolk and held that distinction for five years running.

Then Danny made the acquaintance of demon rum and a few other things that knocked him off that elite roster. It took a few rough years, but he finally managed to climb out of the pit. On the day of the accident, he was back in riding condition.

However separated we were by the demands of dissimilar careers and circumstances, I don't think in all those years, two consecutive days went by that we didn't contact each other, at least by phone. I guess what I'm saying is that, blood aside, what I told that nurse about being his brother was as close to the truth as a lie could come.

I heard the elevator door open onto our suite of offices about four o'clock. I thought it was Mr. Devlin coming back from court, but my secretary, Julie, buzzed my line with word that a gentleman wanted to see me. My curiosity was up, because I had no appointments, and we hardly ever get walk-in clients. Curiosity won out over the urge to have him wait while I checked with the hospital on Danny. I asked Julie to send him in.

I was just standing up to shake hands with whomever it was, when I had one of those moments that hangs your jaw at half-mast. I'd have sooner bet on Elvis coming through that door than Hector Vasquez, the jockey who was crowding Danny toward the rail when he fell.

I automatically held out my hand to shake hands, but the usual words of greeting just wouldn't come out.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Knight. I didn't give my name to your secretary. I didn't think you'd see me.”

I recovered enough to follow through on the handshake, and motioned toward the chair across from me. He sat on the edge of the seat as if he were riding it in a race. I'd felt perspiration in the handshake. I was glad it was his.

He read the look of complete bafflement on my face and didn't play around with niceties.

“I want to hire you to represent me, Mr. Knight.”

The bafflement deepened, and he must have noticed.

“It's a criminal case. I was indicted this afternoon.”

That pushed it to another level. I went with a noncommittal question.

“Indicted for what, Hector?”

He wiped his large jockey's hand across the tiny beads forming on his forehead and edged even closer to the front of the seat. He looked like a jack-in-the-box on a hairspring.

“I know you've got reasons not to, but—”

“Hector, indicted for what?”

“Murder. I want you to know, Mr. Knight, I'm innocent. I wouldn't be here—”

I held up a hand.

“Hector, go slow. Murder of whom?”

He took a breath.

“Danny Ryan.”

The only response I could muster was disbelief.

“Wait a minute. You mean criminal assault. I saw Danny this morning.”

He pulled back and winced.

“Damn. I'm sorry. I thought you knew. Danny died this morning.”

Everything shut off. It was like a blow that doesn't let you feel pain, just numbness, knowing the pain will follow. I couldn't hear what Hector was saying, so I held up a hand to stop the flow while
I just walked to the window. The first thought to pound its way through the log jam was that when I call Danny tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, there'll be no Danny there. I was losing count of the ways the world without Danny in it would seem more bleak.

I forced myself back to where Hector sat waiting and tried to pull it together. I had at least eighteen questions, but I had to start somewhere.

“Why murder? What makes them think it's murder?”

“It's not, Mr. Knight. I swear it. They say I jammed him in the ribs with my whip.”

I was still off balance. The main obstacle was suppressing judgment of this jockey that I saw crowding Danny dangerously close to the rail when he fell.

“They must have a reason. What do the pictures show, the stewards' videos of the race?”

“We were tight together just after the eighth pole. Danny was inside on the rail. My horse bore in. I switched the whip to my left hand, the hand between us. I wanted to haze my horse toward the outside away from Danny without breaking stride. That was when Danny tumbled. I never touched him. The films don't show I did. But they don't show I didn't either. They just show the whip in my left hand.”

I had to sit down to get some order to the thoughts that were flowing too fast to process.

Danny is gone. That's number one. Hard on that one, I had to decide if I could possibly find the commitment to represent the man who was charged with killing him.

A far third were all the more mundane points screaming for attention, like how did Danny's death that morning result in an indictment so fast? And why was the grand jury interested anyway? Rough riding, even an occasional assault between jockeys, is handled by the track stewards, or the racing commission in an extreme case.

And constantly hovering over my private mental din was the picture of Danny, with his wife, Colleen, just three years married, and the two-year-old bright light of his life, Erin, who would also have to endure that stinging absence for the rest of their lives.

I became aware that Hector was speaking, and I had to reach a decision.

“—because I can give you $10,000 right now.”

He laid an envelope on my desk. I was focused on other things.

“I was at the track yesterday, Hector. I saw Danny fall. It was—unnatural. Like he just lost control of his arms and legs. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Assuming it wasn't contact with you, what else could have caused it?”

Hector sat back in the chair, still rigid, but his silence and body language spoke of stalling.

“That's a question, Hector. I haven't taken your case yet. I want an answer. You were the closest to it. What's your explanation?”

“I don't want to say anything about Danny. This shouldn't come from me.”

“Really. Then who else? I'll be straight with you, Hector. You know Danny and I were close. Like brothers. I need a reason to take this case. It's only fair to you too. What caused Danny to lose control in the middle of a race?”

I could sense that I was going to get minimal information from this source. Hector's stalling was tipping the balance to the side of all those nerve fibers that were screaming, “Stay the hell away from this.”

He finally broke the silence.

“There was some talk around the jockeys' room, Mr. Knight. Like maybe Danny was back into some heavy stuff before the race.”

“What stuff? You mean drugs?”

Hector held up his hands.

“It was probably just talk, Mr. Knight. I didn't know Danny that well. The Latinos tend to hang together. Mind our own business.
But there was a buzz around the other part of the jockeys' room yesterday about Danny. I could just pick up traces. It was a big race for him. Coming back. You know. He seemed—”

“What?”

“Jumpy. Maybe he took something that caused a seizure. I only know it had nothing to do with me.”

“Did you ever see him take anything?”

“I didn't pay that much attention. Like I said, the Latinos were at one end of the jockeys' room. He was at the other.”

This was getting complicated. If we took the case, we might have to bring out ugly things about Danny to save a client. On the other hand, I brought my own answer to that question right out of my gut. Danny had cleaned up his act. He would not have taken even a diet pill before that race. My certainty was so deep that it pushed me into half a commitment.

“Here's where we stand, Hector, so you know. I don't buy that drug theory. That said, I'll go this far with you. I'll do the investigation and the pretrial work. I'm doing this partly for Danny anyway. If I find you're clean, I'll go all the way with you.”

He bounced up like a spring toy with his hand out to seal the deal. I stayed where I was.

“Understand the other half. If I find you had a hand in Danny's death, even remotely, you'll be looking for another attorney. Do we understand each other?”

“We do.”

The hand was still out there. On those terms, I shook it.

The lines on Mr. Devlin's Mount Rushmore features deepened the further I got into explaining the circumstances of our new maybe-client. A day of combat in the criminal session of the Suffolk Superior Court left him more depleted of energy than I liked to see. I knew it was not the best moment to broach a subject that left even me with second, third, and fourth thoughts, but the timing couldn't be helped.

“You've thought about this, Michael.”

It was a question.

“Not for any—No. There was no time. That's why I left the escape hatch open. If our investigation shows that he's guilty, we withdraw.”

He leaned back, folded his arms, and gave me that look.

“You have trouble with that, Mr. D.?”

“I'm sitting here praying to God that my junior partner has an equal amount of trouble with it.”

The eyebrows went up, and he waited.

“I know. You've always told me that you can't base a defense on the belief that your client is innocent.”

“And the reason?”

I'd often thought he was a frustrated law professor.

“They lie. Then you find yourself up the creek and paddling backward, to quote your words. I'm still not totally convinced of that theory.”

An argument always brought him up with his elbows on the desk.

“Then let's play it your way, Michael. What possible evidence, other than his word, do you have of this jockey's innocence?”

“That's why I left the escape hatch.”

That had him up and pacing.

“Let me set the scene. We take this case on. Judge whoever-it-is sets a trial date, which rapidly approaches. You turn up something down the road that suggests perhaps that our client is not altogether innocent. You make a motion to withdraw from the case.”

“I see where this is going.”

“I'm just getting warmed up. The judge asks, ‘On what grounds, Mr. Knight?' You say, ‘I want out because my client is guilty.' Ninety percent of the defendants the judge tries are guilty. The judge says, ‘If I let lawyers out on those grounds, this court would look like musical chairs. Denied.'”

“That's not exactly—”

“Oh, that's right. There's another ground. ‘Your Honor, the victim was my good friend.' ‘Oh,' says the judge. ‘That's different. I'll disrupt my trial schedule. We'll put off giving this defendant a speedy trial under the constitution while another lawyer gets up to speed. We wouldn't want you to have conflicted feelings, Mr. Knight.'”

His pacing had brought him next to me. I felt his hand on my shoulder. He said one word that carried with it a paragraph.

“Michael.”

“Doesn't play, does it?”

“Not in this lifetime. You have my sympathy, but you've got to fish or cut bait. We're in or we're out. You make the call. Either way, I'm with you. But there's no halfway.”

I knew he was right before he even started. On the other hand, Hector Vasquez didn't. And yet he accepted my representation with a trapdoor that would throw his case into turmoil if it were ever sprung. That was some indication that he was innocent and he knew I'd never have cause to use it.

Mr. D. was still waiting. On the basis of little more than instinct, I said two words.

“We're in.”

Mr. D. nodded, and we were committed to a road we could both have lived a happy lifetime without traveling.

“Where is he now?”

“I told him to wait in my office.”

“Good. If he was indicted this afternoon, there's a bench warrant out for his arrest. We'll arrange to have him turn himself in. That'll give us bargaining chips with the D.A.'s office. Which raises the question, how did he learn about the indictment in time to come to you before he was arrested?”

“That'll be my first question. My second is how did this journeyman jockey put together ten thousand dollars in cash for our retainer on short notice.”

Mr. D.'s eyebrows lifted. “The cards are not all on the table, are they, Michael?”

“Are they ever?”

He ignored this self-serving observation on his way back to a seat and a sturdy grip on the telephone. I marveled at how the challenge of a new legal set-to could start the juices flowing through a body that had been running on low fuel.

I filled him in on what little I knew about the case. When I finished, he punched in the numbers of the Suffolk County District Attorney's office and put it on speakerphone. The receptionist recognized his courtroom baritone as soon as she heard it. I could hear the smile in her voice. I always had the feeling that she favored Mr. Devlin in his verbal jousts with her employer, District Attorney Angela Lamb.

“Good morning, Susan. Let me speak to the brains of that shop of yours.”

“You want the district attorney, Mr. Devlin?”

“Susan, don't be political. I said the brains of the outfit.”

Since apparently no one was within earshot, Susan had no need
to be coy about transferring the call directly to Billy Coyne. Billy was one of the extremely rare career veterans of the office. As deputy district attorney, he was the constant rock that kept the office functioning at a professional level through the ins and outs of the political climbers who passed through the top title of district attorney. As two old war horses who had tested each other in a hundred courtroom joustings, Billy and Mr. Devlin had developed a rare mutual respect, trust, and, truth be known, affection for each other.