Hostile Witness (26 page)

“More wine, Victor?”

“Yes, please.”

I drank the wine, a crisp Chablis, and ate the veal and laughed along with Simon’s jokes. The waiter brought another bottle and my glass was filled again, the two Bishops so attentive to my goblet they might almost have been trying to get me drunk, and as the wine danced on the back of my tongue my spirits rose. This wasn’t so bad, this veal, this wine, this ambience of money. I could get used to this.

PRESCOTT WAS IMPRESSIVE
on cross-examination. Even without saying a word he could be unnerving. He leaned slightly forward, his hands gripping tightly to the sides of the wooden podium, his eyes fixed like laser sights on the witness. As he stood there, tall, in a solid navy blue, pitched forward, his posture angry, the polite smile on his stern face tight and angry, as he stood before the court a tension grew and then out of that tension came questions, soft at first, full of incredulity or certainty, rising and falling in pitch and volume, questions that compelled answers.

“Now, Mr. Bissonette was a ladies’ man, wasn’t he, Mr. Ruffing?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“He went out with lots of different ladies, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Older ladies and younger ladies and single ladies and married ladies.”

“He did all right, he was a ballplayer, after all.”

“And the married ladies had husbands?”

“By definition, right?”

“And the single ladies had fathers?”

“I would guess so.”

“And Mr. Bissonette with all his lady friends was sure to have made some enemies, isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Are you married, Mr. Ruffing?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have daughters?”

“Two.”

“Would you have let your two precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette?”

“Not on your life,” said Ruffing with a broad smile at the jury.

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t, Mr. Ruffing. But plenty of men, without giving permission, had their precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And Mr. Bissonette used to talk about these girls, didn’t he?”

“Occasionally.”

“He’d tell stories.”

“Sometimes.”

“He’d entertain his friends at the bar with his stories of all these ladies.”

“Now and then.”

“Stories about these ladies he took to bed, these wives and daughters he took to bed and fucked.”

The jury leaned back as if they had been slapped. The word was all the more shocking coming from the upright and austere personage that was William Prescott III.

Eggert said, “Objection to the language and the relevance.”

The judge turned to Ruffing and said simply, “Is that what Mr. Bissonette would talk about?”

“Sometimes,” said Ruffing. “Yes, sir.”

“Watch your language, Mr. Prescott,” he said. “You can continue.”

“Now, Mr. Ruffing, did Mr. Bissonette ever tell you the names of these women?”

“Sometimes.”

“And was one of them the daughter of Enrico Raffaello?”

“Objection,” shouted Eggert, jumping to his feet before Ruffing could answer, and the judge picked his head out of his papers and stared long and hard at Prescott and then said, “The jury is excused for fifteen minutes, the bailiff will lead you out,” and everyone stayed still as the jury rose and filed out, Prescott gripping the podium, Eggert standing, his arm raised in protest, the judge staring at Prescott.

When the jury had left the courtroom the judge said in four sharp and precise syllables, “In my chambers.”

I rose as steadily as I could and followed the other lawyers into the judge’s book-lined office. I had drunk far too much wine the night before with the Bishops, graduating later in the evening to Sea Breezes. We had never gotten back to the marble-tabled conference room. Instead, Simon knew of this place on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Jersey where the women dance on your table and sit on your lap, so long as you buy them twenty-four-dollar glasses of fake champagne cocktail, which we did. One of the women in this place had the longest legs I had ever seen, bacon and eggs Jack called them, legs she could wrap twice around the pole that bisected the stage, and the Bishops bought her three champagne cocktails just to keep her on my lap. Her name was Destiny, she wore golden spikes, her breasts were like porcelain, that white, that smooth, that immobile as she danced. I liked her smile. Destiny. With real red hair and golden spikes. It was a good thing that my orders were to let Prescott do the whole of the examination because that morning my brain was so fogged and my tongue so thick I doubted a single word would have been understood by the jury.

“Mr. Prescott,” said the judge, with more than the usual tinge of anger in his voice. He was sitting behind his desk in his chambers while the rest of us stood around him in a
semicircle. The court reporter had brought his machine from the courtroom and was sitting serenely next to the desk. “What kind of question was that?”

“A probative one, Your Honor,” said Prescott.

“I won’t let you bring up all the names of the women Bissonette might have been with. I gave you more than enough latitude with your questions about his stories as it was.”

“Your Honor, we believe Mr. Bissonette was murdered by Mr. Raffaello because he was having sex with his daughter.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Eggert. “I demand an offer of proof.”

“I don’t think,” said the judge sourly in his brutish rasp of a voice, “that you should ever demand anything in my chambers, Mr. Eggert. However, I appreciate your concern. Do you have any proof, Mr. Prescott, to back up this charge?”

“I can prove Bissonette was sleeping with Raffaello’s daughter, and we all know that he’s a killer.”

“Is that so?” asked the judge. “Are you going to prove that Mr. Raffaello is a killer in this trial?”

“Every one of those jury members knows who he is. Just let me ask the question, Judge.”

“Not if you can’t prove he’s a killer. Now, Mr. Eggert, is this Mr. Raffaello under investigation by your office?”

“Under federal law, Your Honor, I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“I hereby make a formal request for all the evidence you have against Enrico Raffaello,” said Prescott.

“On what grounds?” asked a surprised Eggert.

“Based on what we know, anything you may have is
Brady,
” said Prescott.

“We don’t have anything exculpatory and you know it. We’ve found absolutely nothing linking Raffaello to Bissonette’s murder, nothing at all.”

“Mr. Eggert,” said the judge. “Do you have enough evidence to indict Mr. Raffaello?”

“No, sir. If we did, we would have already.”

“I’m going to formally deny your
Brady
request, Mr. Prescott, and I am going to forbid you, under threat of contempt, to ask any more questions about Mr. Raffaello’s daughter or anyone else whom Mr. Bissonette might have slept with. Do you understand, sir?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said Prescott.

“I’m not going to allow gossip and inadmissible innuendo to act as a defense in any trial in my court, this is the federal courthouse, not the offices of the
National Enquirer,
do you understand, Mr. Prescott?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Do you understand, Mr. Carl?”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.

“All right, then let’s go out there and try this case as if the rules of evidence were still in existence.”

“What do we do now?” I asked Prescott in the courtroom as we waited for the jury to return.

“We scramble,” he said.

And scramble he did. He asked Ruffing about the waterfront deal and why exactly it had collapsed. He asked about the phone conversations with Moore and the meetings with Concannon, the exact locations, the exact words spoken. He asked about the discrepancy between the amount Ruffing claimed to have given to Concannon and the amount actually received by CUP and whether Bissonette had deducted the full amount claimed on his tax returns, and Ruffing said he had. It took Prescott almost all of that day to ask his questions. He asked about the lighting in the back parking lot the night of Bissonette’s beating and how far away the limousine had been when he saw the men stepping out of the car and he got Ruffing to say he wasn’t totally sure who the men were but that it looked like the councilman and someone else, a black man, and to
say that though he recognized the limousine as the councilman’s he couldn’t exactly say how that limousine was different from any other long black limousine with a boomerang on the back. And he asked about the back taxes that Ruffing had owed and the deal Ruffing struck with the IRS and how part of the insurance money on the burned down club went to the IRS to keep up Ruffing’s part of the deal. In all it was a solid cross-examination by Prescott, indeed he had asked almost all of the questions I would have asked had I spent the night preparing instead of drinking. But in the end, with all his bluster, all his questions, all his intimidation and insinuation, he did nothing to make Ruffing seem like a liar in front of the jury.

The swelling in my head had subsided and what was left was a deep exhaustion as Prescott asked questions about areas traversed twice or thrice already and Ruffing answered them with the very same answers he had produced before. The rhythm was repetitive, drowsing, hypnotic. I could barely keep my eyes open as Prescott asked his last series of questions.

“All of your conversations with Councilman Moore were on the tapes, isn’t that right, Mr. Ruffing?”

“Most of them. Some were made on untapped phones.”

“Were the unrecorded conversations any different than the taped ones?”

“No, substantially the same.”

“Now I noticed something peculiar on the tapes of your conversations with Mr. Moore. What I noticed, Mr. Ruffing, is that nowhere in those conversations did Councilman Moore mention a specific amount of money.”

“I thought he had.”

“There was no mention of it in the tapes.”

“He mentioned contributions.”

“But never amounts and never how it was to be paid.”

“He might have mentioned it in the unrecorded conversations.”

“But you said those were substantially the same just a second ago, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“So we can assume if he didn’t mention specific amounts in the taped conversations, he never mentioned them at all.”

“I guess so.”

“In fact, it was only Chester Concannon who gave the specifics about money.”

“That might be right.”

“And those conversations weren’t taped.”

“No.”

“Now those checks you gave Concannon, did they come back from the bank?”

“Sure, cashed out by CUP.”

“But you didn’t get anything back from CUP for the cash? No receipts?”

“No, nothing.”

“So CUP only acknowledged payments of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that was duly reported on its books.”

“I don’t know about their books.”

“And the councilman never mentioned that he got the cash?”

“No. He didn’t want to talk specifics about that.”

“It was Chester Concannon who talked the specifics.”

“That’s right.”

“It was Chester Concannon who told you how much to pay, how to pay it, that some should be paid in cash.”

“That’s what I said.”

“And it was Chester Concannon who threatened you after you stopped paying.”

“Yes, that’s what happened.”

“And as far as you know, that cash might never have reached CUP.”

“As far as I know.”

“And it might never have reached Councilman Moore.”

“As far as I know.”

“It might have gone no further than Chester Concannon.”

“That’s possible.”

“I have no further questions,” said Prescott.

Judge Gimbel lifted up his heavy prune face and, peering hard at me over his half reading glasses, said, “Do you have any questions for this witness, Mr. Carl?”

Still sitting, I looked around the courtroom. Prescott was back at the table, conferring quietly with the councilman, ignoring me. Eggert was looking at a yellow pad, taking notes. Concannon’s eyes were closed, like he had been put to sleep by the questioning himself. I shook my head to wake myself and stood up slowly. I found it difficult to phrase the words, my mouth dry, my tongue thicker than before, my stomach turning over. Finally, after trying to squeeze them through my lips, the words fell out in a tumble. “I’d like a few moments with my client.”

Judge Gimbel smiled condescendingly at me. “Good idea, Mr. Carl. Court is recessed for twenty minutes.”

WHAT HAD STUNNED ME
by the last series of Prescott’s questions to Ruffing was not just that he had turned on Concannon, shifting blame to him, but that he had done it so blatantly. I would have expected him to do his damage subtly, a question here, a remark there, I would have expected Prescott to slip the knife into Concannon surreptitiously, silently, the razor-thin blade sliding through the vertebrae so cleanly that Concannon himself wouldn’t have known he was dead until his knees collapsed beneath him, and even then not be sure. But Prescott had discarded all subtlety. He had looked at the jury, smiled, and said it wasn’t my guy, it was his guy, and all of a sudden the strategy imposed upon me of trying to make my client seem not a part of the proceedings was revealed to be a sick joke.

My first reaction was to sit down at that counsel table and put my head in my hands and try to keep from crying. It is undignified for a lawyer to cry at a trial, unless it is in front of a jury and then only for effect. But the jury was out of the room, the spectators were milling, my client had left for the men’s room, in that situation crying was not a trenchant strategy. Even so, I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering. I heard Prescott laugh to my left, not a loud laugh, but loud enough.

I felt a hand on my arm and I turned around as quickly as my hangover would allow.

It was Herm Finklebaum. He was back on his heels, smiling thinly at me. “You feeling all right, buddy boy?” he asked.

“Not so good just now,” I said.

“I been watching you, like I said I would, but I ain’t seen much.”

“By design,” I said.

“By whose design? Eggert’s?”

“It’s a very complex strategy, Herm. You wouldn’t understand.”

“A toy company came out once with a doll that pooped in its diapers,” said Herm Finklebaum, the toy king of 44th Street. “I asked the sales rep, ‘What’s the fun in that? I’ve changed diapers. Changing diapers is not fun.’ The rep told me I didn’t understand but that the doll was hot hot hot, that it was going to sell like flapjacks. I bought fifty for the Christmas season, sold three. He was right, I didn’t understand, didn’t understand that I was being a
schmuck
for buying fifty.”

“What’s your point, Herm?”

“Point? There’s no point,” he said, turning away from me and starting to walk away in his jaunty, splayfooted walk. “It’s just a story I like to tell on myself.”

As I watched Herm walk to the rear of the courtroom I saw Beth sitting in the back row, staring at me, not triumphantly or angrily, just staring. She stood and gestured me to meet her in the hallway. I nodded and turned around again.

I didn’t have much time to figure out what I was going to do. Judge Gimbel would be asking me if I had any questions for Ruffing at the end of the twenty-minute break and then and there I would have to know for sure. But I really needed to figure it out for myself before then, before I faced my client, before I faced Beth.

After the shock of Prescott’s questions had worn off, I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Of course
Jimmy would betray Chester, he was a politician, after all, and the only difference between a politician and a viper is that a viper’s fangs retract. And how could I ever have assumed that Prescott’s offer of opportunity meant anything other than opportunity at a price? But the price was so damned high. To shuck all the principles of my profession with the ease of shucking an ear of corn and let my client suffer an unrebutted attack that would leave him imprisoned for the rest of his life was almost unthinkable. But then again there was money to be made, bonds to be forged, opportunity to be seized. Valley Hunt Estates was just the first of a myriad of projects that would be offered me as I rose to the upper echelons of my profession. Prescott would make it all happen for me, he had as much as promised it. They say behind every great fortune is a great crime and I had always been waiting to find mine to commit. Now here it was, and all I would have to commit was nothing. And even if I tried to do something, what could I do, stand on the table and holler that the mobster Raffaello had killed Bissonette? That would get me nothing more than a contempt citation. And what about the threats from Norvel Goodwin and Chuckie Lamb? And what about the exploding hatchback window and the message of the lead? And what about…

But even as I debated it all in my mind, I knew what the answer would be, never truly doubted it for a minute. And right in the middle of deliberations I shut off my thoughts like I shut off a faucet, stood, and left the courtroom.

Chuckie Lamb was waiting for me in the hallway. He grabbed my arm and pulled me aside and his fish-lipped grin was unpleasantly dark. “You going to ask Ruffing any questions, Vic?” asked Chuckie.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said. “I need to talk to my client.”

“You going to ask any questions, Vic, or are you going to be their good little boy?”

I leaned into him and stuck a finger in his chest, like my Uncle Sammy would have. “Look, Chuckie. As far as I’m concerned you don’t exist, your threats, your opinion of me, it’s like you’re on Mars. I’m going to do what I have to do.”

I turned around and walked away from him, on my way to meet Chester and Beth, but his voice chased me down the hallway. “We all do what we have to do, Vic.”

The room we found had pale green walls and a formica table with steel legs. Metal chairs were jumbled there and here. Beth gestured toward a chair and Concannon sat. She stood over him. I sat at the table across from him. Even though there were only the three of us, with a trail of ashes fallen out of the tinfoil ashtray and sprinkled over the table, with the too many chairs, with the stale air in the room, it felt crowded.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Chet said. I looked at him carefully, wondering whether he truly didn’t know there was a six-inch blade buried knuckle-guard-deep in his back.

“Are you really this stupid, Chester?” said Beth. “Or is this all an act?”

Chet didn’t get angry or start to shout. He clasped his hands together on the table and stared at them for a moment. “The councilman told me about this line of questioning last night,” he said finally. “If Prescott couldn’t get into evidence that Raffaello’s daughter was sleeping with Bissonette, then the councilman told me Prescott was going to do whatever he could to make it seem like the whole thing might not have happened the way Ruffing said it happened.”

“Well, did your friend Jimmy also tell you,” said Beth, “that if Prescott convinces the jury that you were taking money on the side and were the one making the threats, he
could walk out of here smelling like a violet while you got the jail time?”

“He told me he was taking care of me,” said Chet.

“Sure he is, Chester,” she said. “He’s going to take care of you all the way to a twenty-year racketeering sentence.”

Chet stared at her without saying anything. I turned around to look out a window, but there were none in the room. For a moment I felt I was in a coffin.

Beth said, “With your prior convictions, Chester, Victor and I had no intention of putting you on the stand, so we didn’t want you to tell us what happened. But now we need you to. How much would Ruffing give you in that envelope?”

He shrugged, but he answered her. “A hundred thousand each time, like he said, a check for fifty and fifty in cash.”

I turned away from the wall and stared at him. “And you let Prescott lie to me about the money?” I asked.

“You said you were asking the same question the jury would ask,” said Chet. “Prescott told you exactly what we were going to argue to the jury, that’s all.”

“Why not the truth?” I asked.

“Because the truth looks bad,” said Chet. He shrugged, like a boy caught at a prank, and I turned away from him again.

“Who told you to get it in cash?” asked Beth, continuing her interrogation.

“Jimmy.”

“And what did you do with it once you got it?” she asked.

“I gave it to him.”

“All of it?”

“Yes, all of it. He sometimes gave some back to me. He liked me to have cash for his expenses. And sometimes he gave me cash for Ronnie.”

“You never took any out for yourself?”

“Never.”

“Come on, Chester,” she said. “Never even a little?”

“I didn’t keep my job for five years by stealing from the councilman.”

“Were you there the night of the murder?”

“No.”

“Who did it?” she asked.

“Raffaello.”

“Who told you it was Raffaello?”

“The councilman.”

“And you believe him?”

“Absolutely.”

“Chester, listen to me,” she said slowly. “Jimmy Moore is selling you out.”

There was a pause then. Chet sat straight-backed in his chair, his hands clasped before him, clasped tightly, his fingers twisting around each other like knotted ropes, and Chet was staring at those clasped hands, saying nothing. I tapped my fingers on the formica tabletop, fatatatap, fatatatap, fatatatap.

“Chester,” she said finally. “We have to fight back. If we act now we can still mount a defense. We have to point the finger at Jimmy and let the jury choose between you and him. My guess, everything being even, they’ll go after him.”

There was another pause, and then Chet looked my way. “What do you think, Victor?” he asked. “What do you think I should do?”

Here it was. Beth was staring at me, a sad uncertainty in her gaze. Chester was looking at me and I could see that boy again, the lonely one inside of him that all his careful manners had been hiding for so long, and the little boy was scared. I had to be careful here, I knew. I had to phrase it just right.

“It appears, on the surface,” I said, looking only at Concannon as I spoke, “that the councilman’s lawyer may
be planning to make you a scapegoat. But it’s also possible that Prescott is simply trying to cast any doubt he can on Ruffing’s story to show the weakness of the prosecutor’s case. If so, he would argue in front of the jury that Eggert hadn’t proven whether Jimmy was at fault or you were at fault and therefore reasonable doubt existed. That’s exactly what defense attorneys are supposed to do, raise reasonable doubt. And, frankly, it might not be a terrible strategy. So what we should do, Chet, really depends on whether or not you trust the councilman.”

I kept looking at Concannon, only at Concannon, even after I finished speaking. I was almost disappointed to see the relief spread across his features.

“That makes it easy, then,” said Chet. “I’m going to trust Jimmy. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever known to a savior. If he says he’s going to get us both off, I’m going to trust him to do it.”

Beth banged the table with her hand. “You’re his sacrificial lamb, Chester,” she said. “He’s feeding you to the government to save himself. And it doesn’t stop here. After this trial there’s the trial in state court. You remember that, don’t you? The murder trial where ADA Slocum is going to ask for the death penalty?”

“I didn’t kill that man,” said Chet. “And Jimmy didn’t either.”

“It doesn’t matter who did what,” she said. “If you go down here, you’re going to go down there too, do you understand? Don’t throw your life away.”

When his answer came it was slow, precise, but the anger in it was clear and hard. “I was wasting away to nothing when the councilman took me from the street and gave me something to be. You don’t know what it’s like, feeling the frustration of wanting something so bad and knowing there is no way in hell you’re going to get it. And then along comes Jimmy Moore like an angel of God and he gives it all to me. We get one shot, that’s the rule for us,
one shot if we’re lucky, and the councilman’s my shot. Victor says it’s all about whether or not I trust him, well, I do. More than anything else in this world. And I will continue to trust him until you can prove to me, I mean prove it in black and white so there is no doubt, until you can prove to me that his strategy is to dump me to save himself.”

“We can’t get proof like that,” said Beth.

“Then I want Victor to keep following Prescott’s orders. Prescott doesn’t want Victor to ask any questions of Michael Ruffing.”

“Is that right?” I asked.

“That’s what he wants. The councilman’s a loyal man, all he demands is loyalty in return. I’ve seen it over and over, people doubting him and him coming through for them. Get me the proof or do what Prescott tells you.”

I slapped the table lightly. “Well, I guess that’s that,” I said. “The decision’s made.”

“Why don’t you give us a minute alone, Chester,” said Beth.

After he left we stayed there in silence for a while, Beth and I. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, afraid of what I would see in her eyes. I thought she’d start out by screaming at me, but she didn’t. Her voice when it came was soft and even, but I could still feel the emotion in it.

“You should get the hell out of this case,” she said. “Cause a mistrial, leave Prescott holding a leaking paper bag with his spoiled strategy inside.”

“The judge won’t let me go,” I said.

“Then you should get Chester back in here and convince him that he’s getting screwed.”

“He’s the client,” I said. “He made his decision.”

“You could convince him,” she said. “What you told him was absolute bullshit and you know it. He listens to you, God knows why, but he does. You could change his mind, give him a fighting chance.”

“And then do what? What evidence do I have? What can I ask Ruffing that will change anything? It would be different if I had something concrete to use.”

“Would it?”

I didn’t say anything.

“So what are you going to do now, Victor?”

“Just what my client wants me to do,” I said. “Nothing.”

“I can’t accept that,” she said.

“It’s not your case.”

“It’s my name on the letterhead.”

“Yes, but it was the retainer I got in this case that finally paid the stationery bill. The decision has been made,” I said. “Whatever happens, it’s my responsibility.”

She gave me that damn sigh again and I shuddered as if I had been hit about my shoulders with a stick. “They’ve been trying for years to get me to work down at Community Legal Services,” she said. “Perillo called me again about CLS just last week. He has an opening for me. The pay’s steady, and there’s plenty of work.”