by Larry Crane
She said: “You know Smith excoriated Selser in his book, don’t you? He said he was too soft.”
“That adds to the idea that Selser would only go so far, that he wouldn’t go over the ethical line of the conscientious defense counsel. He pressed a little bit, but not too much,” Gaudielle said. “I suppose you like that interpretation.”
“You’re a loyal member of the legal fraternity. Never criticize your colleague. I get it. Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Gaudielle. I appreciate it.”
She just laid that out there and waited. He wants to keep talking. He wants to search me with those eyes—roam over my face, my hair, my neck, my chest. She uncrossed her legs and flashed a knee.
“Would you like to go get a cup of coffee?” he asked. “Let’s duck over to the diner. What do you say?”
The diner was not far from the Hackensack River, which was not the river it used to be. On the wall hung a picture of an idyllic scene from the early 1900s showing couples lounging in rowboats on an unspoiled body of water with willow trees bowing on either side. It was a classic diner serving classic diner fare. They slid into vinyl seats across from each other and ordered coffee.
“So, you’re writing articles about the case. You’re visiting Smith. Pretty grim place. Pretty tough customer. I suppose the editor of the paper put you on this assignment,” he said.
“I got myself on the assignment. What do you think is going to happen now that Edgar has gotten the support of influential people and some money?”
“I think the people he has behind him now will begin to press harder. They will go up the judicial chain to the federal court system. They’ll ultimately go after the statement that Smith gave and question if it was given voluntarily. That very thing has been addressed in his appeals to state courts all of which have been denied. In the months ahead, we’ll see what federal court judges have to say about it. Hold on to your hat, Mrs. Armand.”
“I don’t like defense attorneys,” she said. “Forgive me, but I just want the truth, the absolute truth. I’ll live with it. The criminals should have to live with it too.”
“The problem with that is that the criminals may actually die with it, instead. And that they can’t live with.”
Gaudielle smiled and shifted his eyes to her hair again, and to her left earring, then her right earring. She was glad she dressed up for him.
“I’ve read that criminal defense lawyers systematically avoid knowing for sure that their client is factually guilty. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Gaudielle said.
“I’ve heard that over half of all defense lawyers would argue perjured testimony to a jury, and that almost half of them would go only so far as to attack the government’s case. Which camp are you in?”
“Guess,” he said.
Dear Hannah, November 6, 1971
It isn’t just the criminal who does his best to bend the truth to get off. The lawyers are right in there too. The criminals aren’t as self-righteous, though. Defense lawyers at some point reconcile themselves to the reality of the way justice comes about, and it isn’t very pretty a lot of the time. I suspect people can go through a lifetime believing that when a crime is committed, the perp is slapped on an assembly line that grinds forward in a straight path to punishment or release. Bing Bang Boom. I wouldn’t believe that if I were you, Sweetie.
Love you, Mom
* * *
1 Smith, Doubt, 196.
Chapter 35
The articles in The Bergen Record turned out to be a pretty big deal. Maybe it had something to do with casting a different light on the facts of the Edgar Smith case as they were laid out by Buckley—facts that weren’t factual—bits and pieces put together by Andrew Nicol, the defense lawyer’s investigator who never tired of poking around in the case even months after the trial was over—fragments that contradicted statements made under oath at the trial—mostly those made by Donald Hommell. Nicol was sure Edgar Smith was innocent, and said he’d stake his life on it. Buckley swallowed it whole.
This time, Sol Biedermann invited her into his office. Somewhere along the line she’d become a halfway decent writer in his estimation. Actually, reporters were beginning to write more articles about her—about how she got involved in the case. She wasn’t happy with Hannah’s disappearance being splashed around.
Sol had some ideas for more Case File background briefs, but she was feeling her oats and was not exactly bashful about pushing her own ideas. She interrupted Sol mid-sentence saying she was deeply into a nonfiction book on the case—what’s a little lie? She even offered that she was a big fan of Truman Capote. Her thought was that a couple of chapters of the book might make a decent series of articles for The Bergen Record.
“Tell me more,” Sol said.
“Well, it could be true crime but written like a novel,” she said.
What balls. Really? Me and Truman Capote?
The first chapter appeared in The Bergen Record the following Sunday.
The Last Minutes of Victoria Zielinski
Excerpts from the True Crime Novel
Part 1: 8:28-8:36 p.m., March 4, 1957
Myrna Zielinski hunched over her algebra homework assignment at the kitchen table. It was her hardest subject in school, but that just meant she’d have to study it more. She conjured the image of walking with her sister Victoria down Wyckoff Avenue almost a mile to Barbara Nixon’s house. It could be scary walking it in the dark, especially alone, and especially if you had a mind like Vickie’s that imagined danger behind every tree and bush. At least there was a streetlight at the corner with Fardale Avenue where the Nixons lived. There was no sidewalk past Crescent, so they always had to walk in the road. They would amble along on the right-hand side together, secure in each other’s company, taking their time, talking about school. They agreed to walk together again when Vickie was coming back from Barbara’s home. Each girl would start out at 8:30 sharp, and meet halfway.
Luckily, all the way down Wyckoff they hadn’t encountered any cars looming in front or behind them, which would send them scrambling off to the side to keep from being hit. When they got within sight of the Nixon house, they stopped and Myrna stood watching Vickie until she was illuminated by the streetlight in front of the house. Then she turned and headed for home. Vickie was pretty much a fraidycat about walking alone. It was dark, but it wasn’t as scary as Vickie let on. What was it then? Was she just more trusting than Vickie, more naive?
The folks were watching television when she got home. “Well, she’s safe and sound,” she called out. She hung her coat in the closet and made a beeline for the refrigerator, and doled out a small bowl of applesauce before she slid her notebook over and paged through her algebra textbook to the chapter on factors. She and Vickie were only a little more than a year apart in age, and she was going to keep up with her sister in every way. Even so, it seemed that she would never succeed in stepping out of Vickie’s shadow. If she worked at it she might be able to make the cheerleading squad like Vickie did, but she’d never be as popular with boys. She more or less watched everything Vickie did and learned from her. Part of that was telling boys that if they wanted to go out, they’d have to come in the house and meet the folks.
At eight o’clock, Daddy headed up the stairs to bed. He was a hard worker, a laborer for the Ramsey Public Works Department, and he had to be up early in the morning. Maybe working for the town was part of what made him such a strict disciplinarian. He didn’t ever want the security of his job affected by misbehavior from any of his kids. There would be hell to pay, for instance, if he ever caught her or Vickie accepting a car ride from a boy. Dad knew what high school boys were interested in. If he only knew that some of them were hardly boys. Donnie Hommell had just returned home from the Navy, Joe Gilroy was twenty-one for goodness’ sake, and Ed Smith was an ex-Marine with a wife and child.
***
Joe Gilroy rolled over and clutched his pillow. In three hours he would be back at work on the th
ird shift at Continental Can in Paterson—11:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. It was the best job he’d ever had, least ways it was steady—and all he had to do was show up. He wasn’t feeling all that well thanks to a cold that wouldn’t let go. He’d gotten some cold tablets down at Ramsey Drug while he was out goofing off with Eddie Smith and Rocky Rockefeller, bowling and such.
Eddie asked if he could borrow his Merc. He didn’t really want to let him borrow it, but he couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to say no. Smith was his best friend wasn’t he? He’d been an usher at his wedding. It was just that he shouldn’t be such a patsy around Smith. Why couldn’t he just say, “Sorry Eddie, I need it for work in a couple of hours?” But that was no good. Ed knew he could just bum a ride with one of the other guys at work, and he wasn’t shy about pressing him on the issue. That’s Smith, in your face or easing off, whatever it took to get what he wanted all the time. So, he let Eddie borrow it.
The Merc was his baby. He picked it out of the classified ads in the Bergen Evening Record. It didn’t have all the goodies that the top-of-the-line ‘50 models had like the fancy hood ornament and the floodlight. But it was a V-8 ragtop convertible in pretty good shape. There wasn’t much rust, it had whitewalls and power everything, including windows. The only thing bad about it was the automatic transmission. Stick was better. He should have waited for a ‘50 Merc with stick.
Eddie’d called around 3:00 p.m. asking if he was up for a couple of games at Paramus Lanes. He was about to log a couple of hours of shut-eye at that point, but he couldn’t turn down his friend. They wound up playing five or six games—Rocky, Eddie, and him. They’d also put away a beer or two along the way. Smith’d whacked his ankle with a ball, but he shook it off like any true athlete. Eddie’d played football. In fact, he coached the defensive backfield at Don Bosco Prep before he suddenly up and quit.
Eddie said he just wanted the car to go fetch some kerosene for the heater in his trailer. How are you going to turn down a friend with a wife and baby waiting in a freezing cold trailer? He said he’d have it back by 9:00 p.m. and then they could go out to Pelzer’s for a coupla brews. Joe bought the whole plan. At the bottom of it, he just wanted to fit in. But right now, he just wanted to catch a few winks.
***
Donald Hommell’s favorite hangout was Tony’s Amoco in Ramsey. When he came back from his nineteen-month-two-week-four-day hitch in the Navy in September he was anxious to club up with his old pals again. He found them all just where he’d left them. They were compatible, all of them feeling good about finally escaping the claustrophobic halls of Ramsey High and finding a place where they could be at ease with themselves. They were free of all the stupid high school crap, out in the real world, doing stuff the way they wanted to do it.
So what if they really just fell right back into the old high school foolishness, huddled together in a safe spot away from people judging them? So what if they spent their spare afternoons doing kid stuff like looking for a pickup game of baseball or basketball, or doing a couple of lines of bowling out on Route 17 at Paramus Lanes? They chose to while away hours perched on gas cans and boxes in the station, gabbing while Anthony Severiani went in and out pumping gas for customers. So what?
The conversation ranged over dozens of topics: which car reigns, the T-Bird or the ‘Vette—the new ‘57 T-Bird with its duals built right into the rear bumper, the cool fake scoop on the hood, portholes in the hard convertible top, and the Dagmar grill; or the Corvette with its scalloped door panels, the big, bulging, sensuous hindquarters, fuel injection chrome lettering on the side, tail lights in the fender tops and quad headlamps. They all knew it was not a true argument. The cars were not built for the same customer. The ‘Vette was a driving machine and the ‘Bird was a boulevardier. Just look in the front—bucket seats in the ‘Vette versus the soft bench in the ‘Bird. But it was fun arguing anyway.
Movies were worth a minute or two of idle conversation. The Incredible Shrinking Man, for instance, was agreed by all to be a real piece of crap and in no way comparable to the black-and-white Attack of the Crab Monsters. How about the sex scenes in the dog-eared paperback copy of Leon Uris’ novel Battle Cry making the rounds between them? The movie was a different story. The war scenes were blah, but human realism triumphed when Private Andy Hookens and Pat the New Zealand widow went at it.
Like the rest of the gang, Donald knew lots of high school kids and occasionally went out with one of them. He had gone out with Victoria Zielinski probably ten times. It wasn’t really going out. He just met up with her sometimes for a drive over to Pellington’s Milk Bar where they hung out until Vickie had to go home. He knew Vickie’s sister Myrna well enough to beep as he drove past her in his car.
He worked part time at the Wyckoff Pharmacy. His hours were 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. He did whatever they needed to be done that didn’t involve being a pharmacist. Mostly, he stocked shelves, moved supplies around, tended to the cash register as needed, and frequently drove over to Ridgewood to the Davis Pharmacy either to make deliveries or to pick up pharmaceutical supplies. It was a twenty-minute drive out and back, the same every time he made it.
Mr. Passaro, the manager on duty, called out to him: “Hey Donnie, I need you to pick up a package over to Davis Pharmacy before you’re off work. If you leave right away, you should be back by nine.”
***
Edgar Smith bent over and grasped the handle of the five-gallon kerosene can on the floor. He walked to the door of the squat, shingle sided Secors Sunoco Gas Station at the corner of Route 17 and Lake Street in Ramsey.
“Gotta be going,” he said. “Got a cold trailer and a hot mama waiting. See ya.”
He stepped out of the warmth of the station, and clutched the collar of his light-blue jacket against his throat with his free hand. A Camel cigarette protruded from the side of his mouth. He squinted against the trail of smoke that inched up his cheek and stung his left eye. He then shuffled on mismatched shoes with soles worn through, one with no tongue, toward the gas pumps and the Aqua 1950 Mercury Convertible Coupe fifteen feet away. He hadn’t bothered to tie the laces when he had switched shoes at the bowling alley.
The passenger side door creaked as he pulled it open and swung the kerosene can in and set it down on the floor. He slammed the door shut and shuffled around the front of the car, leaning on the fenders and hood to ease the tinge of pain in his left ankle. He’d whacked it with a bowling ball at Paramus Lanes, had iced it, but it was still tender. It was at the alley that he’d asked to borrow Gilroy’s car to fetch kerosene. Gilroy was everybody’s friend, the organizer of bowling and all the sports by season. The floor in the back of the Merc was piled with baseball mitts, balls, tire chains, and derelict floor mats, and on the backseat were a couple of baseball bats.
Eddie eased behind the wheel, cranked the noisy V-8, and pulled out on Route 17 going south. Having gone a tenth of a mile on Route 17, Eddie turned left on a crossover road, then another left onto the northbound lane of Route 17 heading back north toward the red light at Lake Street. He turned left onto Lake Street at the light. He powered down the window on the passenger side, shot the Camel out expertly and admired the shower of sparks it made when it hit the pole beside the road. The steel supports for the convertible top rattled from a dozen places as he picked up speed on Lake Street, slowed to make the left turn onto Franklin Turnpike and then made a quick right onto Main Street in Ramsey. He scrutinized every approaching car to see if it was one of his buddies, and every doorway.
The six-pack he’d consumed at the alley weighed on his eyelids. The bastards at Rayco didn’t know shit from Shinola; besides he wasn’t about to take orders from some stiff who didn’t know which end was up. He’d find another job, and if he didn’t, he’d mooch cash off his mother-in-law, a soft touch if there ever was one. He took a left onto Wyckoff Avenue and pushed hard on the accelerator pedal.
Twenty-three, with a wife and a kid and a cold-ass single-wide trailer—married and buried�
��in impossible promises, he thought. It was just a continuation of what he knew of family life, if you want to call it that. His birth father was pretty wild, and he hardly knew his stepfather. The road bore off to the left near Crescent Avenue. The bright headlights illuminated both sides of the road for a hundred feet. He accelerated to fifty. An occasional house, set back well off the road on the left flew by. Up ahead he saw a human figure at the side of the road. He dimmed the lights and slowed to forty. Coming his way, head down and walking purposefully, he saw a girl.
***
Victoria Zielinski closed her notebook and jammed it and a ballpoint pen into her oversized shoulder bag. She scooted to the side of her friend Barbara Nixon’s bed and slid her feet into her loafers and walked to the window to part the curtains and peer out into the night. “You’re a lifesaver, Barb. I’d have been up all night on this,” she said, referring to the bookkeeping homework assignment she’d just finished copying. The radio on the dresser was turned down low, but they both listened closely to Sam Cooke crooning “Yooooou send me.”
“What’s your favorite?” Barbara asked. She still sat in the middle of her bed surrounded by her notebook, The Elements of Bookkeeping, and a small pile of classroom notes.
“‘My Special Angel’ I guess,” Vickie said. “It’s a little sappy, but I like it.”
“It’s okay. Nothing special,” Barbara said.
“Myrna’s going to be meeting me halfway. I promised to leave at 8:30 sharp. I gotta get going,” Vickie said of her sister. Both Barbara and Vickie moved to the bedroom door. They wore almost identical knock around clothes—boy’s Levi’s pants, bulky white-knit sloppy socks, penny loafers, and a long sleeved sweater. Vickie’s was a pretty coral colored cardigan. They descended the stairs to the front door together.