Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller (29 page)

Warren declared, "Your honor, based on the existence of a vital witness, I request a continuance until I finish the Boudreau trial."

"No, I can't allow that," Judge Parker said.

"I beg your pardon. What did you say?"

"You're not deaf, counselor. If you want to halt this trial to produce a new witness, you've first got to show me that his testimony is relevant, material, and necessary. You can't do that. You don't know what this man will say, or if he even exists. And you have to show me a reasonable expectation that you can find him. How are you going to do that? You don't know his name, where he lives or what he looks like. He could have left town."

With cold fury Warren said, "I know he's white and resembles Hector Quintana. He's probably a bum, so he won't leave town. I know he's got the victim's clothes and might be wearing them. I know that a man's life may depend on my finding him. And I
will
find him."

"Maybe you will, maybe you won't. I have to balance your chances against the problem of letting this jury stew for ten days or more and forgetting every damn word they've heard. I might have to pick a whole new jury. Aside from that, when I get back from vacation, my docket is full."

With a new jury, Warren realized, he would lose all that he had gained. Goodpaster would explain to Siva Singh the error of memorizing a description. He would have a new witness on the stand.

Trying to bridle his rage, Warren gripped the edge of the bench. "The jury won't forget. As for your docket, your honor, that's your problem. You'll have to rearrange things."

"No chance of that," Parker said. "I've ruled, and that's final. Let's get on with this trial."

Warren said sharply, "I want the rest of this on the record." He beckoned to the court reporter, who obediently moved forward, fingers poised on the keys of her machine. "Your honor, I'm formally asking you to recuse yourself on this case. Step down. I want a new trial with a new judge."

The judge bared her teeth. She took a few quick little breaths, like a sprinter in the blocks. "On what grounds?"

"On the grounds of prejudice from the bench."

"Because I overruled most of your damn fool objections? Because I won't let you hunt for a phantom witness? Wake up and smell the coffee, counselor. You're out of line again!"

They were no longer whispering. The entire courtroom could hear.

"Because of all that," Warren lashed back, "and a lot more. Because the first time we met to talk about my taking this case, you told me not to waste your court time. Hurry it up and plead it out, it's a whale in a barrel for the state — your exact words. You weren't supposed to know the facts of the case, but you weren't deaf or blind. And you repeated that in front of me and the prosecutor three weeks later. You thought we had our signals straight. Forty years pen time was a good deal for a man who claimed he was innocent! You threatened that if I went to trial with Quintana, I'd never get an appointment in your court again.
You
were out of line then. That's a clear violation of judicial canons. That's what you get away with, day in and day out, but not with me. I refuse to continue in this courtroom. I'm walking out."

Quietly and coldly, Judge Parker said, "I can hold you in contempt now. Your reputation stinks. A contempt citation would stand up."

"Try it. I have a witness right here." He flicked a finger at Nancy Goodpaster. "She remembers."

Confidently, Judge Parker turned to her chief prosecutor. "You don't remember any of that, do you, Nancy?"

Goodpaster took an unsteady breath, and said, "Yes, I do."

The judge's face turned a mottled pink. "I said what he says I did? You claim you heard that?"

"Yes," Goodpaster said. "You said it all, your honor."

The judge spun on the court reporter. "Get out of here! This is off the record.
All
of it was off the record."

The court reporter retreated in haste.

Warren said quietly, "If you won't recuse yourself voluntarily, I'll file a motion in another court for your recusal. Right now, this afternoon. We'll have an open hearing. I've never been disrespectful to a judge, but there's a first time for everything. I'll nail your ass to the wall."

"Fuck you, counselor," Judge Parker whispered. Her eyes were the color of smoking charcoal. She adjusted her robes. She drummed her fingers again on the court calendar. Warren glanced up at the wall clock behind the bench. It said nine minutes to three. In steady, silent jerks, the second hand worked its way around the white face. A minute passed.

Judge Parker said, "Look for your witness. The law requires you to exercise due diligence. If you can't find him before your other trial's finished, that's it. We resume. Same jury."

"Thank you, your honor," Warren said cordially.

===OO=OOO=OO===

When he left the courtroom at a quarter to four, Johnnie Faye was waiting for him in the corridor by the water fountain. She looked tired, he thought. Her lipstick was fresh but some of the makeup had faded. Her broad white hat was slightly askew.

Warren asked, "You were there?"

"I heard it all. You were real good with that Indian lady. And you've got guts — I heard you blast that judge too. I picked the right lawyer."

"Thank you," he said flatly.

"Can we go have a cup of coffee and talk?"

"Not now. I have work to do."

"When
are
we going to talk about my case, counselor?"

"Monday morning at eight o'clock in Bingham's courtroom. We'll be picking the jury and we'll want your help."

"You're going out now to hunt for this guy that Mrs. Mahatma Gandhi says was in the parking lot?"

"Yes."

"Good luck," she said. "Oh, by the way," she asked innocently, "how should I dress on Monday for court?"

Warren looked her up and down. If she wore what she was wearing now, any jury would give her sixty years without parole. "Wear what you'd wear for church," he said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

That evening, after he had changed into jeans and poured a drink, he saw in the bathroom mirror the bleary, red-eyed look of a lawyer on trial. I need time out, he decided. A little injection of good energy before I start hiking around town in search of a man who might not be there. There were five full days before jury selection began. He punched out Maria Hahn's number. Ten minutes later, with Oobie curled in the back seat gnawing on a tennis ball, he drove out to Maria's condo near River Oaks. On the way he stopped off to buy a bottle of decent zinfandel.

Maria cooked lasagna. She wore old jeans and a blue cotton cowboy shirt with nothing underneath it except flesh. When she got up from the kitchen table to bend over and check the oven, he found himself staring like an adolescent at the globes of her buttocks pressed against the worn jeans. There, or at least in the vicinity, he thought, is Nirvana and Lethe all in one package. Could life be that simple?

"How did it go for you today?" she asked while they ate.

"Good." He gave her a synopsis.

"So now you have to find this guy."

He waited until he finished chewing a mouthful of lasagna. "But not tonight."

"You have a plan?"

He knew that she loved plans. "I'll come up with one," he promised.

"You need help? Like a wheel man?"

"The last time you were my wheel man it didn't work out so well. Next time I might get killed."

"Well, now we're experienced. We learn from mistakes. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Randy's away and it's a dead week for me."

"Let me think about it. How was your day?" Warren asked.

She told him in detail; he hadn't realized a court reporter paid that much attention. "You never can predict what a jury will do — this afternoon a guy and a gal got ten years probation for seventy pounds of marijuana. That just cracked me up. Of course they'll be revoked within six months and they'll do the time. They'll skip to Ohio, where they come from, then get caught lighting up a joint on some street corner and the computer will ship them back to Texas. I never make any money on these probation cases — no one ever asks for the record. I told Judge Bingham I want a cocaine bust or a sexual assault."

"And I'll bet he let you put that in the record."

She smiled with approval. "He's a sweetheart. I'll miss him."

Warren looked at his watch. It was nearly ten o'clock. "Let's put the dishes in the machine and go to bed."

"I thought you'd never ask," Maria said. "Never mind the dishes."

In bed she was a startled animal. When Warren next looked at his watch it was midnight.

"No sophomore jinx," Maria said, looking down from where she straddled him.

"Get off me, Hahn. I need some sleep."

"You got what you need, Blackburn."

Grinning, she rolled off him and switched off the lamp. In the darkness, with her curly brown hair pressed against his neck, he traced the length of her own long neck with an unseen fingertip. He felt her heartbeat against his stomach. He was exhausted but he knew he would sleep as he had when he was a boy, before he had married the law. I could get used to this, he thought, just before his eyes closed.

On
Monday,
July
24,
five
days
after
Judge
Parker
had
granted a continuance of trial in the
Quintana
case, the two lawyers defending Johnnie Faye Boudreau met for breakfast in Rick Levine's suite of offices in the Old Cotton Exchange Building on Travis Street. They drank black coffee and ate prune Danish. An hour later, through the blue-gray shade of oak trees, they walked past the Old Market Square and the civil courthouse. The criminal courthouse was only a few blocks away.

Warren lagged behind. "Now that I see you in daylight," Rick said, turning, "I have to tell you that you look like one of my nags after they've finished last in a six-furlong race. Did you know that a horse needs four days to recover from a race? Never mind their legs, they wear their hearts out. It's a cruel sport, like lawyering. I thought you had a few days off. What the hell have you been doing?"

He had been hunting for a man who wasn't there.

For five days and nights, with and without Maria, he had prowled the streets of downtown Houston and the Third Ward, talking to every bum and homeless man he met. On that last afternoon in Judge Parker's court, Siva Singh had provided little more in the way of description. A white man of medium height and average build, poorly dressed, scruffy-looking, dark-complected or suntanned more than fair: that was all Warren had to go on, plus the possibility, courtesy of Mai Thi Trunh, that he might be wearing a gray suit or a green cotton sweater. The widow had looked through her late husband's clothes and confirmed Siva Singh's memory; those seemed to be missing. All his shirts that went to the dry cleaners were white button-down oxfords. He wore no other kind.

Warren had gone to all the missions and soup kitchens, the parks, the crummy bars in Montrose and the Heights, the ice-houses, the Greyhound and Amtrak stations where derelict men and women slept on wooden benches. He had cruised past the Wesleyan Terrace Shopping Center three times a day. He had tried the city's hospitals and the jail. Without luck.

There was nothing more he could do except do it all over again.

"Okay," Rick said, "I understand. And now, if it's not too much trouble, try to concentrate on Madame La Farge, our worried client."

"Why is she worried? We've prepped her till she's sick of it. We've got a great case."

"Because you've been neglecting her. She called
me
on Friday to chat. She must have been real desperate. I told her you were thinking about her night and day."

"I am," Warren said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

In Judge Bingham's baronial wood-paneled courtroom, the first row of public benches was set aside for the media. Outside, in the crowded hallway, the halogen lights above the TV cameras glared brightly. Reporters thrust microphones at opposing counsel, Johnnie Faye Boudreau, outfitted in the gray shantung suit that she had bought at Neiman-Marcus on the day she had murdered Dan Ho Trunh, assumed a modest position between and just behind her lawyers.

"Mr. Levine and I expect a short trial, and a verdict of not guilty for the murder of Dr. Ott," Warren said into the microphones.

"Will Ms. Boudreau testify on her own behalf?"

"When the time comes, Mr. Levine and I will confer with our client and make the proper decision. Now, if you'll excuse us…"

The reporters turned to Bob Altschuler, in a flawless black double-breasted suit that hid his growing girth. Headed for a political campaign leading to a judgeship, he was always happy to talk to reporters.

"I don't represent the state so much as
1
do the victims and the grieving families of the victims. That's a concept we tend to forget about in this day and age. Now, in this particular case…"

On the way into the courtroom, Johnnie Faye tugged at Warren's arm. "You know, you could have done that with a little more enthusiasm. You could have said
you
believed I wasn't guilty."

"That's what we hope the jury will say," Warren replied.

"Am I going to testify or not?"

"If it's necessary."

"So why have you been working my ass off and telling me what to say when I get up there?"

"Wait." Warren stopped to face her, and made sure Rick heard his words. "I never told you what to say, only how to say it. I told you, if you testify, to tell the truth. Remember that."

Voir dire began. This was not capital murder: the prospective jurors could be interrogated en bloc in a single panel of sixty.

Johnnie Faye helped the defense team make their picks. "I don't like that woman in chartreuse, the nurse. She looked at me in a kind of nasty way." And: "That guy in the black windbreaker — he's sympathetic. I can tell. Pick him."

Rick in each instance argued with her. The nurse was divorced, and nurses dealt with battered women; she would be a fine defense-oriented juror. The man in the windbreaker was a Lutheran; they believed in an eye for an eye.