Hostile Witness (15 page)

“Since I was fourteen I never met a man who didn’t.”

“Now who’s being cocky?”

“It’s not arrogance, Victor. Every man in this bar would go out with me if he could. Even the gay ones. If I came in alone I wouldn’t have had to buy a drink.”

“You didn’t buy a drink. I bought them all.”

“That’s true. I never buy drinks.”

“Convenient.”

“For an alcoholic. The only difference between men is that though they all want me, some think they deserve me. Take your friend Prescott. He thinks he deserves me. Every time he has a second alone with me his hands are all over my body.”

“I thought he was happily married.”

“He says he can’t help himself.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Or maybe I ask for it.”

She laughed and leaned close and languidly rolled the edge of her finger across my mouth and down my neck and
then leaned closer until I could smell her sweet, sharp breath.

“Do you think I ask for it?”

“Stop it.”

She gave me a fake pout. “Don’t you want to kiss me, Victor? Don’t you want to bite my lip?”

“You shouldn’t be talking like that.”

She took hold of my hand and put it on her thigh and I let her. The cool softness of her palm, the textured silkiness of her stocking. My face got hot and I looked around at the bar crowd, deep into the inanities of its conversations, oblivious to us. She rubbed my hand back and forth on her thigh and placed her mouth next to my ear.

“Don’t you want to smell the perfume on my neck,” she whispered, “and kiss my collarbone and reach into my dress and roll my right nipple between your fingers?”

I took my hand away. “Cut it out.” The phone call from Chuckie had left me nervous, too nervous to play her games.

“Anything you want, Victor.”

“Just cut out the teasing.”

“I’m not teasing.” She laughed. “Well, not completely.”

“What about Jimmy? Does he think he deserves you, too?”

“No,” she said, turning back to the bar and drinking the last of her martini. “Jimmy thinks he earned me and he’s right. Finish your drink, we should be going.”

On the way out of the bar, as we squeezed through the crowd of suits, an olive-clad arm reached out to grab my shoulder. “Don’t forget,” said Guthrie. “We have to meet.”

Veronica drapped herself around me until she was facing Guthrie and said “Bye-bye Fred.”

Guthrie said, “My name’s not…” before he realized she was playing with him.

I gave Veronica a signal to let her know I’d be out in a moment and then I grabbed hold of Guthrie’s arm. “Let me
ask you something,” I said. “Last night Lauren was wearing two gold bracelets with runes and diamonds. I was thinking of getting them for somebody.”

“The babe out there?”

“Sure. Where did she buy them?”

“You don’t get stuff like that at Sears, Vic. They’re custom jobs, from a jeweler in Switzerland.”

“Is there a catalogue or something?”

“Forget it, they were the only two made. She helped design them, she’s into design now, you know. Besides, Vic, they’re so out of your league pricewise you might as well be thinking of buying the Eagles.”

Outside the bar Veronica clutched at my arm as we walked down 20th, looking for a cab. She leaned her head on my shoulder and I pulled away as I saw an empty Yellow Cab drive toward us. I stepped out into the street and waved. The cab swerved to a violent, Hollywood stop.

“You go to the airport maybe, mister?” said the puffyfaced East Indian driver.

I opened the door before he could get away.

In the back of the cab she sat close and leaned into me. “I think I’m a martini short of where I ought to be.”

“I think you’ve had plenty,” I said, shifting away from her until I was leaning against the door. I took her hand off my knee.

“I wasn’t teasing you.”

“Yes you were.”

“But don’t you want to kiss me?”

“No.”

“Really. Just a kiss?”

“Stop it.”

She pursed her lips and leaned her face toward me.

“Just one kiss and I’ll stop.”

“You’ll stop without a kiss.”

“If you were Prescott you’d have me stretched out on the back seat already with my legs around your neck.”

I didn’t relish being compared to Prescott like that, as if he were the better man in everything. I was on the way up, in my ascendance, but still I couldn’t stop seeing myself as a second-rater compared to the likes of William Prescott III. I felt a swift flash of anger and I cupped her chin to give her a peck on the cheek, like she was a little girl, tossing her chin away from me when it was over.

She laughed. “See, that wasn’t so terrible.”

She leaned forward and kissed me quickly and lightly on the lips. And then again, longer this time, pressing her body into mine as she kissed me. Her lips parted and her tongue licked my lips before slipping itself through and rubbing my teeth and then searching like a serpent for my own. By the time the cab stopped she was almost kneeling on the bench seat, pressing her body onto mine like a wrestler struggling for a pin, and my hands were up the back of her dress and down her panties.

“If maybe you finished here now, mister, we’re at the place,” said the driver. We were in front of a corner restaurant with a brown tiled entrance and a well-lighted sign hanging off the wall that read:
DANTE’S
&
LUIGI’S.

Veronica pulled back from me and, still kneeling on the bench, said through a catlike smile, “See, just an innocent little kiss.”

Then she reached for her purse and told the driver to ride around the block, once, so she could straighten her face.

“HOW’S THAT VEAL CHOP, VICTOR?”
asked Jimmy Moore. “They make the best veal chop in all of South Philadelphia. The best.”

“It’s fine.”

“Their gravy’s not as good as Ralph’s, but Dante’s and Luigi’s veal chop is the thickest in the city. And they marinate it before they broil it. That’s the secret.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

It was just five of us in a bare and spacious private dining room, with whitewashed plaster walls and a high tin ceiling. The table was covered with crisp linen and the waiters, wearing red jackets and linen aprons, had piled it with pasta, veal, broccoli rabe sautéed in garlic, a large bowl of chopped greens swimming in oil and spiced vinegar. Prescott sat rigid in his chair, ignoring his meal so he could stare at me. Concannon worked carefully on his scaloppine, elbows off the table. Veronica sat next to Moore, who kept his arm possessively in her lap.

“We’re glad you were able to come this evening, Victor,” said Prescott. “We wanted to make clear exactly the foundation upon which our defense will rest in the upcoming trial.”

“Politics in America, Victor,” boomed Jimmy Moore. “That’s our defense. You’ve heard the tapes, we can’t deny that we were asking for contributions from that lizard Ruffing, and I wouldn’t if I could. But everything we did
was required by our fine political system. Required. Do you understand?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“What is politics in America all about, Victor?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “The will of the electorate?”

“Money,” he roared. “America is not about power being bestowed by the people, it is about power being grabbed. Grabbed. This country was built with a revolution, created again in a civil war, nothing comes easy or cheap here. American politics is the fairest in the world because the only thing that matters is the money. Hire the consultants, buy the television time, put a bumper sticker on every car, pay off the ward leaders, grab the electorate by its throat with all your money and take the oath of office. That’s the system and that’s damn fine. Any Tom, Dick, or Hanna can hand in a petition, but only the real Joe, can raise the dough. And to stay the real Joe, you better aim every day of your term at getting the contributions for the next election, you better never let down, not for a second. For those who want to support me it is not enough that they clap when I speak, they must give me money when I run. When I was demanding money from Ruffing for my political action committee, for my causes, for my future as a public servant, it was in the great tradition of American politics. All politicians do it, they just cloak it with cocktail parties or fancy dinners. But I cloak nothing. I was demanding money from a supporter because the system I love requires me to do it. And if I was asking a little more forcefully than others, it’s because I have a greater passion for what I’m doing than the others. Do you understand what I’m saying, Victor?”

“Our strategy,” said Prescott, with a pursed, mournful face, as if he were a presidential flack on
Nightline,
“is to turn this trial of these two public servants into a trial of the American political system and then to make sure the system gets acquitted.”

“You should be focusing on that strategy,” said Moore. “Preparing to build on that foundation. Isn’t that right, Chet?”

“That’s right,” said my client.

“Now we’ve hired a polling service,” said Prescott. “We’ve studied focus groups, examined the demographics. With the right jurors this strategy will prevail. We’re certain.”

“Can I get a copy of that study,” I asked.

Prescott smiled at me, but not his warm smile. “Of course. The key is to gear everything, the jury selection, the arguments, the testimony, everything to our strategy.”

“What about the murder?” I asked.

“Don’t worry yourself about it,” said Moore, reaching for a basket of toasted garlic bread.

“And the arson?”

“Forget it,” said Moore, his mouth now full.

“It’s hard to forget about murder and arson.”

“How’s your makeup doing, Ronnie?” asked Moore.

“Fine, I think,” she said.

“Why don’t you check it?”

She nodded and rose from the table, leaving the room without glancing at me. I couldn’t help but follow her out with my gaze. When I turned back, Moore was staring at me with a frightening ferocity.

“What were you doing at the DA’s office this morning?” he demanded.

I pulled back from the table. Did everyone know where I had been that day, what I had done, whom I had seen, how many times I had hit the pot? “I was looking into the murder,” I said. “Examining the physical evidence.”

“Why didn’t you clear it with Prescott?”

“I didn’t know I had to clear all my trial preparations with Prescott.”

“Tell him, Chet.”

“You have to clear everything with Prescott,” said Concannon.

Without taking his eyes off me, the councilman fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Holding it like a pencil, his lips tight and dangerous, he took a deep drag. “In war you have to pick your battlefields, son,” said Moore, breathing out smoke with his words. “That’s what Lee learned at Gettysburg.” He jabbed his cigarette at me and the syllables of his words came with the precise staccato of gunshots. “Our battlefield is not going to be Bissonette’s murder.”

“The federal indictment,” explained Prescott, with a surfeit of patience in his voice, “covers the crimes of racketeering and extortion. If the murder and the arson are not linked to the request for money, and if the request for money is legal, the federal case will fail.”

“But if Eggert ties the murder into the request for money,” I said, “any claim for legitimacy disappears.”

“He won’t,” said Moore. “Eggert’s so far down the wrong road he might as well be in Vancouver.”

“But you’ve been looking into Bissonette’s murder on your own, Victor,” said Prescott, “conducting an investigation without our knowledge or consent, acting contrary to your client’s express orders. Risking everything.” He looked at me hard so that I knew exactly what he meant, and he meant everything. “So tell us, Victor, what exactly have you uncovered so far?”

“Nothing definite,” I said. “But I have some ideas about who might have killed Bissonette, some theories.”

Moore leaned back and stared at me. “So you have some ideas, do you, Victor?” he said slowly. “Some theories.” There was a silence as he took another drag from the cigarette, all the while staring at me. He spread his arms wide. “Educate us all with your theories.”

“Yes, Victor,” said Prescott, smiling unpleasantly. “Please do.”

I was being threatened and tested at the same time, I thought. They wanted to see what I had figured out, to
determine whether I was ready for all they had to offer me. Well, I was ready. I had been so ready for so long.

“They are just theories,” I started, leaning forward as I spoke. “But I wondered why Chuckie Lamb wasn’t indicted. Chet said it was because only Bissonette had direct knowledge of his possible involvement. That would have given Chuckie a motive for getting rid of Bissonette.” I didn’t tell them about the phone call that evening, didn’t want to run to Prescott and Moore like a little boy when the schoolyard bully threatened, but the call had convinced me that I might be on the right line about Chuckie’s motive.

“So Chuckie did it, huh?” said Moore.

“Also, Bissonette was apparently a ladies’ man,” I continued. “Lots of women. Jealousy could have been a motive. I have in mind one man in particular who was being cheated on who is known to be violent.”

“Tell us who?” asked Prescott while Moore continued to stare at me.

“I’d rather not say just yet,” I said, but I, of course, was thinking of my ex-partner, Guthrie. There was no doubt now that it was Lauren Amber Guthrie in the photograph I had picked out at the DA’s office, those bracelets, and somehow Guthrie must have found out about her and Bissonette too. She had said he could become violent with jealousy, but I knew it would have been more than jealousy, it would have been desperation. Lauren was as domestic as a bobcat, but a tidy package came with her, money, status, entree into a world that kept guys like Guthrie and me out just for the pleasure of the blackball. It was one thing to never have a shot at it, that just caused a slow tightening of the stomach, tying you gradually into knots until you resented everything, hated everybody, held malice and bitterness toward all. But to have it in your grasp, in your bed, to have it all and then to see it slip away as your wife threw herself at some broken-down ballplayer
with pectorals, well, that was enough to drive a man to murder. It would have been enough to drive me to murder and Guthrie was no better.

“Any other theories?” demanded Moore.

“Not yet,” I said. “But I’d like to keep looking.”

“That’s not permissible,” said Prescott firmly, as he examined his water glass. “Besides, it would be a waste of time. We already know who killed Bissonette.”

“You do?” I said, surprised.

“What, you think we are idiots here?” said Moore angrily. “You think it just slipped our minds the part about finding out who really beat the hell out of that man?” I shriveled from his blast because that was precisely what I had thought. Suddenly I knew I had made a fool of myself. Whatever test there had been I had failed.

“You were right, Victor,” said Chester with a reassuring smile. “At least about Bissonette sleeping with the wrong woman. And the woman wasn’t discreet about it at all.”

“Mooning over him like a schoolgirl with a crush,” said Moore.

“Linda Fontelli,” said Chester. “Mrs. Councilman Fontelli.”

“Fontelli?” I said. “Councilman Fontelli killed him?”

Moore snorted. “Fontelli doesn’t have the stones for it. Besides, he’s got his own little secrets. He didn’t care.”

“No, it wasn’t her husband,” said Prescott. “It was her father.”

“Linda Marie Raffaello Fontelli,” said Chet.

“Raffaello,” I said slowly. “Jesus Christ.” Enrico Raffaello was the head of the Philadelphia mob, a shadowy, legendary figure said to stand astride the city’s underworld like a modern-day Pluto. “And the limousine at the scene, and the ID by Ruffing?”

“The wino saw a basic black limousine, that’s all,” said Prescott. “There are fleets in the city. And Ruffing is lying. With the lighting in the parking lot it was impossible for him to see what he says he saw. He identified Jimmy and
Chester to keep Marshall Eggert happy because Eggert was keeping the IRS off his back.”

“So how do we prove it was Raffaello?” I asked. “Is she in any of his photographs?”

“Yes,” said Prescott. “But getting them before the jury will be tricky. I have two lawyers working on it. Gimbel won’t let us get it in the front door, that’s for sure.”

“So how?”

“A trial like this trial,” said Prescott, leaning back now, putting on the face of a law school lecturer, “a trial like this, where the government is trying to cram a huge array of facts into a neat and tidy package, is made up of contingencies more than anything else. Every defense has to have a backup and every backup defense has to be backed up itself. Now our main defense is that we were merely working within the system, doing what the system demands of every politician. If the trial starts centering on Bissonette then we use our backup, we’ll bring in what we can about Linda Marie Raffaello Fontelli, and even if the judge upholds an objection the name will be floating out there for the jury to grasp.”

“And if that doesn’t work, are there other backups?”

“We’re building them day by day,” said Prescott. “If we need to go that route we’ll let you know.”

“Shouldn’t I know now?”

“No,” said Moore. “There are things only Prescott is to know.”

“We’re building a very complex piece of machinery to get both our clients off, Victor,” continued the professorial Prescott. “And it’s not enough to end with an acquittal. These men are politicians, they must end the trial smelling like virgins, do you understand? Jimmy Moore has to step out of that courtroom cleansed of any taint, risen in stature, ready for a run at the mayor. Now we can’t have you going out half-cocked, stirring up Eggert, getting in the way of the construction of our machine.”

“Eggert didn’t know I was there,” I said. “I went through Slocum.”

“Eggert knows,” said Moore. “The bastard knows everything. He’s got more spies in the DA’s office than I do.”

“So now we’re all on board,” said Prescott. “Each ready to do our duty. Any further questions, Victor?”

“Just one,” I said.

Prescott closed his eyes in exasperation and shook his head. Moore glared. Chet Concannon continued to avoid my gaze. What they all wanted just then, I knew, was for me to shut up and take whatever they were giving with gratitude. But something wasn’t right here. Chuckie Lamb’s slip of the tongue had got me to thinking and what I was thinking about just then, like what I thought about most often in those days, was money.

“Ruffing says he turned over half a million dollars before he backed out,” I said. “CUP’s records showed they only received two hundred and fifty thou. What I was wondering is what happened to the rest.”

“Your job here is not to wonder,” snapped Jimmy Moore. “Your job is to just follow along. I thought Chet made that clear already.”

“I told him,” said Chester.

“Well, maybe you better tell him again.”

“There’s no need,” I said.

“You are to do nothing, absolutely nothing,” said Moore, dumping his ashes on top of the ravioli, his voice rising in anger. “You’re getting paid a lot of money to do absolutely nothing and that’s all you better do. I’m not going to have some skinny-assed geek with a hard-on for my girl sending me to jail because he gets in the way of my high-priced attorney. The only reason you’re here is because Prescott told me you would stay out of his way.”

“I told Jimmy and Chester,” said Prescott, with the false conciliation of a State Department spokesman, “that I
thought you were bright enough to grasp our defense and a sharp enough trial attorney to realize the importance of letting me try the entire case.”

“Do you got it now, asshole?” said Moore.