by Diane Capri
I hustled over to meet Olivia at a trendy place called Bernini where the food is unusually good and patrons can smoke cigars during dinner in the upstairs dining room. With its dark wood paneling and neoclassical wood furniture, Bernini reminds me of a few places that George and I have a fondness for, like the Gotham Grill, in New York City. For some reason, Bernini’s door handle is a huge bronze bumble-bee. Adds to the mystery, I guess.
Olivia waited for me on the lower level at a corner table in the back, impatiently tapping the pointed toes of her chic four-inch-high heels. After greetings and small talk, I asked her where she’d been.
“You don’t own my time, Willa. I needed a break. You probably did, too.”
“I did need a break. But I needed to talk to you, too.”
“Well, I’m here now. What did you want?”
The hell with her. I’d defended my home from a rabid State Attorney and struggled through my workload, high on anxiety and tension. I was in no mood to put up with her attitude.
“I wanted to ask you whether you killed General Andrews.”
She held up her hand, palm facing me so that I could see the gold and platinum rings that adorned each finger and the backs of her expertly manicured nails. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. It won’t happen again. Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
She smiled, trying to cajole me into a nicer tone at least.
I was placated, a little.
After a couple of seconds, I said, “I accept your apology.”
No reason to be too obsequious just because I’d made my point, though. “But it’s a good question, anyway. Did you kill him? Like a lot of other people, I’m finding out, you certainly had good reason to.”
I was no longer belligerent, but I watched her reaction when she answered the question.
Olivia looked me right in the eye, unwavering, as she’d done hundreds of times to juries, witnesses and convicted felons, and applied the defense lawyer’s creed: deny, deny, deny.
“I did not kill General Andrews. If I was going to kill him, I would have done it a long time ago. And if I had killed him now, I would have simply kept quiet and let George take the rap for it, don’t you think?”
Was she lying? I had no better luck divining her veracity than I’d had this morning with Tremain.
“Do you have an alibi?” I asked her.
She looked at me through narrowed eyes. I heard incomprehensible shouting from the kitchen and somewhere behind me, a tray of dishes dropped onto the floor, shattering the quiet as well as the crockery. Louder shouting ensued, in Spanish, chastising the clumsy one, apparently. Another pair of late lunchers entered the front door and waited at the hostess station for a table. I simply waited.
Eventually, Olivia relented. “As it happens, I do. I was in Tallahassee. With the governor and about five hundred other lawyers. At a conference. Feel free to check.”
Olivia must have wanted to kill Andrews, though. I think I would have wanted to, in her shoes.
“Why didn’t you kill him?”
She looked away, sipped her wine and reviewed the menu. Olivia signaled the waiter, a tall, thin man wearing the smallish grey-framed glasses that are popular with the twenty-somethings these days. We both ordered salads and decided to share the excellent fried calamari.
When the server left, she spoke. “Look, Willa, this is totally non-productive. Why don’t we just bring each other up to date and get back to work? My psyche isn’t at issue here. I don’t owe you any explanations for my actions. You can believe I killed Andrews or not. You can investigate me or not. But you and I need to get George cleared before that indictment comes down. Why don’t we concentrate on that?”
So, for the remainder of our meal, we did. Since she’d been recharging, she claimed, Olivia didn’t have much to report. I told her what I wanted her to know. We noodled for a while and then went our separate ways. I had a lot of work to do tonight and I needed to get started.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Tampa, Florida
Monday 6:30 p.m.
January 31, 2000
ONCE I FINISHED MY after work routine, I got out the pending motions for the Newton trial. The parties were expecting an answer in the morning. I thought I could get it out of the way quickly and then turn to the Andrews murder.
Placing my reading glasses on my nose and with coffee for fortification, I began to review the list of club members that Tremain provided. I understood the legal arguments fairly well and I knew the decision was mostly a matter of judicial discretion. What that means is that the judge can do whatever she wants. This sounded easier than it actually was. It’s not always easy to figure out what I want.
The title of the document was simply, The Men’s Tennis Club Membership List. It consisted of four pages of names, all men. The addresses included San Francisco and Key West, but also Indianapolis, Kansas City and other Bible Belt areas.
There was an actor, several lawyers and doctors, a recently divorced state governor running for congress, and more than one law enforcement officer. A few military men were listed. Indeed, all occupational groups seemed to be represented. Many of these men, I knew, were married. Some of the older ones had been married several times.
The list wasn’t arranged in any particular order that I could discern. Not obviously alphabetical, regional, or occupational. Two single-spaced columns contained names, job titles, business and home addresses and telephone numbers. A double space between each listing, as if the list was used to print mailing labels. Plenty of ammunition here to ruin more than a few lives.
My fingers kneaded the space between my eyes, trying to rub away the dull headache that had begun there as I wondered why any group of otherwise intelligent men would create such a potentially explosive document.
I read the first two columns carefully, feeling like a voyeur. This list was a private matter. It was true that many of the men on it were public figures who, for the most part, were not as protected by libel laws as ordinary citizens, even if their names were erroneously placed there.
But the potential destruction of lives that would occur from making such sensitive information public without the knowledge or consent of the participants was overwhelming and offensive, to say the least. Did no one understand the concept of privacy anymore?
My mind wandered as the headache became increasingly severe. Merely rubbing the place where the hurt started was ineffective. I got up, walked around, and then used the last of my cold coffee to help me swallow a few Acetaminophen tablets, hoping for the best with my liver.
When I returned to the work, I tried to focus. After a while, I realized that I was reading a list of partners. A casual reader, without knowledge of the secret these men shared, might think this was a list of tennis partners. Which, of course, was the idea. But without a witness to testify that the tennis partners were all gay men, the list would be harmless and not probative of anything in the Newton trial. Without a live witness, the list was meaningless.
But, the problem of needing a witness could be easily solved. All Tremain had to do was to call Nelson Newton himself to the stand and ask the right question. Tremain could prove his defense from Newton’s own mouth. That would likely be a slam-dunk winner as far as the jury was concerned.
The problem for Newton was that, with or without the list, Tremain could simply call Newton to the stand and ask him whether he’d engaged in homosexual conduct. Now that I’d seen the list, and knew what the meaning of the list was, Newton would not get away with a lie in my courtroom. He’d be forced to admit the truth.
My years in the legal biz had confirmed something one of my law professors had taught me years ago: Any evidence the jury hears from the witness stand, they may choose to believe. But if they see the evidence in a document or a picture, they will never believe anything else.
With this list, Nelson would surely lose this case. But if I admitted the list into evidence, at least fifty other prominent men and their f
amilies would be the victims of a violation of their privacy. I would, in effect, be outing them, against their will.
It was then that I noticed the date at the top of the list. October 11, which was National Coming Out Day.
My eye continued to travel down the second page and I recognized more and more names. By the time I got to the third page, I had almost stopped registering the information.
That was when I saw it.
On the third page, near the bottom. Both names together.
A. Randall (Andy) Andrews and John (Jack) Williamson.
And then, the dots that should have connected when Dottie told me about the general and his lover, “Jack” with the prominent white widow’s peak, followed a straight line into my exhausted brain.
General Andrews was having an affair with his son-in-law, Jack Williamson.
And then maybe, or maybe not, depending on whether we believed Dottie or her equally nosey friend Eunice, Andy and Jack broke up.
Once the truth settled in, I realized not only what my decision about the list would be, but how I would resolve my personal problem as well.
Taking a full glass of gin and tonic along with a fresh Partagas onto the veranda, I stood in the light evening breeze and tried to let it cleanse away the sordid facts I’d learned when I lifted the rug of politics and looked at the rubbish underneath.
I knew what I was going to do, but I wasn’t happy about it.
The whole thing sickened me. Andrews wasn’t murdered because he was bisexual, although I believed he just narrowly missed being killed for having an affair with his daughter’s husband.
None of the Andrews clan had told Olivia what they were all fighting about that night. But now, I felt sure that the argument was about the affair.
What a despicable man Andy had grown to be in the years since we’d known him. George thought Andrews had become mentally unstable and that much was clear. But Benson and Warwick nominating such a man to the Supreme Court was morally corrupt, done primarily to hide criminal conduct. Andrews was not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice. Nor was he fit to be an army general or a father and husband, for that matter. The trouble was, at this point there was nothing to be served by bringing Andrews’s participation in the entire squalid mess into the public’s awareness. Andrews was already dead. Society couldn’t execute him again.
My mother, or George, or what Kate calls my spine, or maybe even my subconscious had already decided what I would do in this circumstance before I ever even knew the problem existed. Privacy may not actually be a Constitutional right, as many scholars insist. But I believe in the value of privacy. I believe in dignity and morality, too. There is a struggle between free speech and privacy and that struggle, when I have to resolve it, means that personal privacy wins.
What people do with their personal lives, in sexual matters between consenting adults that harmed no one, was not going to be the subject of dinner table conversation in Tampa because of any decision that I made.
Maybe if Andrews was still alive, the public would have had a right to know that he was a bisexual, guilty of sexual harassment, before he was settled on the Supreme Court for life. And, if those had been his only faults, he might have been confirmed anyway. It’s happened before.
But Andrews was already dead. No public purpose would be served by revealing his sexual privacy information now. I, for one, did not subscribe to the theory that the public had a right to know everything about everyone.
Secrets can be corrosive, but even if I do behave like Mighty Mouse sometimes, I know some secrets must also be respected. The older I get, the more I understand the benefits of just being kind.
The Tennis Club list would not be made public. I didn’t know where Tremain had gotten it, but the private lives of consenting adults were going to stay private in this trial. If Tremain chose to ask Newton about the list on the witness stand, then Newton would admit his participation in the club or face contempt sanctions. But the list would not be released. I prepared an order sealing the list and requiring Tremain to dispose of all existing copies of it. None of which would prevent someone on the list from disclosing it again in the future.
But there were bigger issues to resolve.
As Olivia had said a few days ago, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 8:30 a.m.
February 1, 2000
WHEN THE NEWTON TRIAL reconvened the next morning and I announced my ruling on the list, there was great gnashing of teeth at the defense table. Then, both parties advised they had reached a conditional settlement overnight and agreed to a voluntary dismissal.
Neither of the litigants offered me a reason for their decision and the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Newton’s sexual identity was never proved, but neither was the item about him retracted by The Review.
Although the case was over, the privacy issues it raised lingered with me for quite a while. Celebrity comes with a very high price tag. If Charles Benson hadn’t been the President’s kid, his youthful drug use and stint in rehab would have passed under everyone’s radar. General Andrews would never have been given the bargaining power to demand his Supreme Court nomination, and he might still be alive.
I crossed the Newton case off my docket, improving my statistics. I turned my attention to the rest of the asbestos cases and finished up my last status conference.
At about two o’clock, Margaret interrupted me for a call from Olivia. She had posted a young lawyer at the Hillsborough County Courthouse to keep tabs on the proceedings.
“I thought you’d like to know. Drake only has three more witnesses this afternoon. Then he’ll give George’s case to the grand jury.”
Worry gnawed at my stomach. “Are they going to finish today?”
“I’d say that’s likely,” Olivia told me. She didn’t have to say what the outcome was going to be. We both knew.
“Okay, thanks.” I stood up and shrugged off my robe, reaching at the same time for my purse and my car key. I lifted the receiver away from my ear to hang up.
“Willa?” I heard Olivia’s voice as the receiver was almost back in its cradle.
“Yes?”
“If you’ve got anything else up your sleeve, now would be a good time to get it over here,” she told me.
I replaced the receiver and jogged out to the car.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 3:30 p.m.
February 1, 2000
I’D HAD A WHILE to think about how I would handle the denouement. It seemed to make the most sense to cover the matter alone. I couldn’t do it in my office, the place I felt safest in the world. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, Federal courthouses are guarded like the Crown Jewels. It would be next to impossible to get a gun, knife or other deadly instrument into my chambers.
But I’d never get the killer to go for that, anyway. So I had to go there.
I reviewed my props and my dialogue. I thought I had worked out all the possible snags. Even the knotty little problem of proving what I was sure I’d hear had been gone over carefully.
One more thing to do first.
It took Greta and me about twenty minutes to get to Jetton Street. The house was closed up tight, just like the last time. The uninitiated might think no one was home, but I knew better. I parked down the street and waited until the Gorgeous Gargoyle left. Then, I got out and walked up to the front door.
I didn’t bother to ring the bell. I now knew it didn’t work. I just turned the knob.
Locking the door is a habit and we only think we do it most of the time. Actually, I’d sentenced many a burglar who walked into homes where people left doors and windows unlocked.
I wasn’t looking to steal anything and I wasn’t breaking any laws. Not really. Michael Drake wouldn’t see my actions this way, but after all, I was a family friend. At one time, anyway.
I heard the
sound of computer keys clicking and followed them down the hallway to the third door on the right, facing the back of the house. The door was open.
She was sitting at the keyboard. Concentrating intently on the screen, she didn’t sense me standing there for quite a while. It gave me a chance to look around the room.
The only window was closed and the drapes drawn to keep the light from reflecting off the computer screen. When I saw the couch, I wanted to laugh. Even an online psychologist has to have a couch, I guess. There were two end tables and the only light was from the two small table lamps.
The computer desk, a tall bookcase, and the very large chair Robbie sat in completed the furnishings. Not much room for a physical struggle. Not that I thought there would be one. Anyway, I could take her. Right. She outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds.
Finally, Robbie looked up, startled. “Did Juanita let you in?”
If she had, she’d be looking for a new job tomorrow.
“I knocked. No one answered and I let myself in.”
“I guess I’ll have to talk to Juanita about keeping the doors locked, then. I’m working. And I said all I’ve got to say to you already. Please show yourself out.” Robbie turned back to her screen.
I guess she intended to ignore me so I’d go away.
“I’m not leaving, Robbie, until you talk to me. You can do it now or ten years from now. But we are going to talk.”
She looked at me with such contempt that I nearly lost my resolve.
For a while, she continued to ignore me, but eventually she must have tired of staring at the screen and pretending to work.
She finally turned around and got up.
Even standing, Robbie was a good foot shorter than I am. “What do you want?”
“May I sit down?”
“No. You don’t have anything to say to me that you need to sit down for.”
“All right. I’ll say this standing up.”