The Judge

by Steve Martini

  “What about the note?”

  “It was canceled,” he says.

  The instant the words leave his lips, Tony knows he has miscued. It is the problem with lying. You tend to forget which portion of the lie you told to which audience.

  “What did you say?” I say.

  “Nothing,” he says. “I misunderstood.”

  “What was canceled?”

  “I misunderstood you.”

  “What was it you misunderstood, Sergeant? Which part of your own lie?” I ask.

  Kline does not even bother to object. He is left with the fact that the items he could not find in Acosta’s vehicle, the blanket fibers, blood, and the victim’s own hair—that all of these have turned up in Tony’s car.

  CHAPTER 31

  IF THE GUARDS WOULD COMPLY, ACOSTA WOULD ORDER champagne. He is ecstatic over Tony’s testimony. For an instant he dances on his tiptoes, more grace than I would have credited to such a large man. He does what passes for a pirouette, he is so pumped up.

  “Can you believe that he would make such an admission?” he says. “What a fool. What a glorious fool!”

  Then, in the next breath, a dark look. In sober tones: “Do you think the jury understood?”

  The fact that Arguillo did not want to repeat it, I tell him, was the clincher. I think the perceptive ones among them will get the message: that Tony was now claiming the date with Hall he’d denied having all along; he now was saying it had been canceled. The same fiction he had told Lenore.

  Armando, like every client I have ever defended in trial, is a manic-depressive. Each piece of good fortune requires his lawyer’s confirmation. Acosta no longer trusts his own judgment.

  We are in the lockup of the courthouse and the guards are telling us to hurry. It is late and they are anxious to return Acosta to his cell in the jail three blocks away before they are finished serving dinner.

  “Leave us,” says Acosta. His most imperious tone. He orders the guards out so that he can consult in privacy with his lawyer.

  One of them looks at the other, uncertain whether they should comply.

  “Did you hear me?” Acosta’s booming voice.

  They leave and close the door behind them, tails between their legs.

  “Once in command, always . . .” He allows the thought to trail off, and winks at me. If they convict him, Acosta will no doubt direct the guards at his own execution.

  “Do you think he killed her?” he asks. He pulls up a chair at the table, sits, and steeples his hands, rubbing them together as if excitement of Tony’s admission has made him cold.

  “I think he knows more than he is saying.” For some time now I have believed that Tony played a significant part in the drama at Hall’s apartment that night.

  “His presence could explain one thing,” I add.

  “What is that?” he asks.

  “Why the body was moved.”

  “You think he did that?” Acosta’s eyes light up. “We should put him back on the stand.”

  “No. No. Let’s not tempt fate.”

  We are better off to allow the imagination of the jurors to run free-form over the evidence that is now before them.

  “We have blood, hair, and fibers in his car,” I say.

  “Let them dwell on it. Besides, given a second chance, Tony may come up with a better explanation than he has thus far.”

  “Why would he move the body?” he asks. Acosta’s eyes are animated.

  “Piece together what we know,” I tell him. “The note on the calendar, their date, Tony and Hall.”

  He nods as if he is following.

  “It was for seven-thirty that night. From what we know.”

  “Correct,” he says.

  “Let’s say you come to a woman’s apartment, someone you have been dating. Her door is open, or you have a key. You let yourself in, and what do you find?”

  He looks at me, clueless.

  “Her body on the living room floor. Blood all over.”

  “That would put a crimp in your evening’s plans,” says Acosta.

  “It might do more than that, depending on the nature of your relationship. Suppose this was a very active woman. Suppose there were things, items in the apartment that could cause embarrassment. Perhaps links to the victim that you would prefer others not know about.”

  “Like what?” he says.

  “Like entries in the woman’s telephone directory. Private notes. Remember this was a woman with a penchant for notes.”

  “Ah.” He gives me a thoughtful nod.

  “Now plug in another piece to the puzzle,” I tell him. “Suppose you were busy in the bedroom, removing these little bits of embarrassment: your name, the names of some of your friends. Doing your part to tone down the postmortem gossip, tearing pages from her phone directory.”

  “You’re assuming that this was a very busy lady,” he says.

  “She entertained Vice in more ways than one.”

  There is a sparkle in his eyes, a sly smile at the double meaning.

  “And suppose you heard a sound.”

  “What sound?”

  “Like someone shouting,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Remember the testimony,” I tell him. “The neighbor upstairs said she heard a noise sometime after seven-thirty. Like someone shouting.”

  An expression of comprehension on his face.

  “The little girl Kimberly also heard a loud shout. Remember? Remember the medical examiner’s testimony?”

  “The death rattle,” he says.

  “Right.”

  “Suppose you are Tony in a back room and you hear this from the living room. You might think . . .”

  “That she’s not dead,” he says.

  “Precisely,” I tell him. “You might panic, grab a blanket for shock, wrap the head wound in whatever is handy. Try to get the victim to a hospital.”

  “And on the way, you discover your mistake.”

  This is my guess. That Tony, once in the car, driving, discovered that she was, after all, dead. He couldn’t return to the apartment with the body. There was too much risk in this. So he dumped it.

  “I see why you would not wish to call him back to the stand,” he says. “This might well be his explanation,” says Acosta. “Whether the jury would believe it. . .” he says.

  “Why take the risk?” I tell him.

  “Exactly.”

  We talk about a few other items, some last-minute business before the weekend, and Harry joins us. He has been wrapping up loose ends, some chores before we head into a week’s break in the trial.

  Lano did his own four-minute mile when Harry cut him free with less than a half hour to spare before his flight to Bali. He grabbed his bags at the clerk’s office downstairs and was last seen sprinting toward a car with one of his union minnows as driver.

  “Almost kissed me on the way out the door,” says Harry.

  “As long as he’s back in a week,” I say.

  “He’ll be back before then,” says Harry.

  I give him an inquisitive look.

  Harry can be a man of mysterious thoughts. Before I can inquire, he tells me that Lenore is waiting outside.

  I have called her and asked her to meet me here tonight. Something I had seen in court has triggered a thought, caused me to lose sleep for several nights running. I am thinking that perhaps Lenore has the answer to this puzzle.

  “I thank you, my friend.” Acosta rises from his chair and bids me good night. He takes my hand, his other on my elbow, and gives it an enthusiastic shake. “I must say, that I have had my share of dark thoughts over the past months. Let’s hope for more days like this.”

  “You bet,” I te
ll him. “If we could only resolve a few of the other issues so easily.”

  He gives me a look, his own form of question.

  “The glasses at the scene and the note with your name on her calendar,” I tell him.

  “You handled those magnificently.”

  “Perhaps. Still it would help to know how they got there.”

  He gives me a big blustery face, incredulous, what passes for surprise among those who deal in bullshit for a living. “But we already know. They were planted by the cops,” he tells me.

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely. No doubt about it.”

  “The note in her own hand?”

  “Forged,” he tells me. “You know as well as I that they have access to people who can do such things.”

  He thinks this is so, especially now with the implication of Arguillo. “I would stake my life.” His expression is stone serious.

  “Well, that’s good,” I tell him, “because that’s exactly what we’re doing, staking your life on it.”

  Outside the lockup the courtroom is already dark. The public entrance at the back is secured, and Radovich’s bailiff has to use a key to let us out. We are the last to leave.

  The evidence cart, with its collection of objects, has already been removed to the clerk’s office for the night and only a handful of photographs on poster board remain propped against the railing of the jury box.

  The bailiff bids us good night, I hear the bolt on the door lock behind us.

  Out in the public corridor, Harry and I walk toward the elevator. There are a few people milling, court attachés hustling between offices, some last-minute chores before leaving for home. It is after seven. I have made arrangements. Sarah is at a friend’s house for the night.

  “Where is she waiting?” I ask him.

  “Department Sixteen,” he says. “A friend gave her the key. She said she would leave the front door open for you.”

  “Good.”

  “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”

  “Trust me,” I tell him.

  “Sure. Keep me in the dark, feed me bullshit. Harry the mushroom.” He mutters some words under his breath, much of which I cannot hear, but one of which is a profanity.

  “Listen. If I get in trouble, I’m gonna need somebody to get me out of the bucket. Somebody who’s not involved.”

  The thought that I am doing something illegal, for some strange reason peculiar only to Harry, seems to mollify him, but only a little.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” It also inspires more interest.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I don’t know myself, not for sure,” I tell him. “A hunch. Something I have to check out.”

  “So you’re not gonna tell me?”

  “No.”

  His briefcase is loaded down with books as we saunter toward the elevator, where our paths will diverge.

  “We punched a pretty good hole in their case,” says Harry.

  “We did.”

  “Still, like you told the judge, we got a lotta questions unresolved.”

  He means Acosta’s glasses at the scene, and the note with his name on Hall’s calendar. For Harry, from the inception, these have been imponderables, a large part of the reason he has never believed that Acosta was innocent.

  I agree that refuting these in court will be difficult.

  “It’s difficult, particularly when you know what happened, and can’t put on the evidence.”

  Harry gives me a quick dark glance, stark and naked. “Something I missed?”

  It has always bothered me that Acosta had said things to the cops before his arrest, equivocal statements about the note on Hall’s calendar that had allowed Kline to get this into evidence despite its hearsay nature.

  You can say a lot of things about the judge, but he is no man’s fool. It had settled on me that his statements to the cops were not inspired by a sudden loss of judgment, but something else.

  “Didn’t it trouble you,” I say, “that Hall would agree to meet with Acosta in private when she was preparing to testify against him in the prostitution sting?”

  “The thought crossed my mind. But with Acosta, I never gave it a lotta thought.” He means that anything is possible. “You don’t buy Acosta’s theory that the cops planted the note with his name on her calendar?”

  I shake my head.

  “Maybe she wanted to shake him down?” Harry’s thinking blackmail.

  “No. If there is anything certain about this case, it is that Brittany Hall was a dyed-in-the-wool gold digger. She was not in it for a one-time strike, a quick payoff to go away. She was a lady taking the long view. If she set Acosta up, it was to get something more. My guess on this has always been career favors from Gus Lano.”

  Harry mulls this for a moment, but does not disagree.

  “So why did she schedule a meeting at home with the judge?” he says.

  “The fact is, she didn’t,” I say.

  “You just said you didn’t think it was planted. That she wrote it.”

  “She did. There are two items that run in tandem through this case: the glasses and the note,” I tell Harry. “Both had a common genesis.”

  He gives me a quizzical look.

  “Forget the note for a moment. Think about this. You have a broken pair of glasses, a missing temple screw. You’re a busy judge. Do you take them to the optician yourself?”

  Harry thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “You send your clerk, or your secretary.”

  “Or your wife,” I add.

  The look that comes over Harry’s face at this moment is its own form of illumination, like the rising sun.

  “Lili.” The two of us say her name virtually in unison.

  “My guess is that the glasses had been in her purse for weeks. Maybe she took them out when she was fishing for Kleenex. We’ll never know for sure,” I say. “But one thing is certain; they were there that afternoon when she went to meet Hall at the apartment, to plead for her husband’s career.”

  The gospel according to Armando. If I had to guess, he had told his wife the story of how he was set up. That he went to meet Hall on legitimate business and how the cops nailed him in the sting.

  “Then the note on Hall’s calendar?” says Harry.

  “It never read Armando,” I remind him. “It just said ‘Acosta.’”

  “You think he knows that she was there?”

  “As someone recently told me, I would stake my life on it.”

  Harry stands looking at me, dumbstruck, the elevator door now open behind him. In a daze he looks, then takes two steps back into the empty car. It is several seconds before he can speak.

  “The fucker lied to us,” he finally says. Harry’s last words before the steel doors close, separating us.

  Indeed he did—but to the judge, it was an honorable lie.

  Lenore has a friend, a superior court judge. Together they belong to all the distaff clubs. They lunch together periodically. This evening Lenore has prevailed on this friend to use her empty chambers, ostensibly for research, to use the stacked casebooks that line the walls.

  “So what is this all about?” she asks. “Why did you want to meet here in the courthouse?”

  Lenore has heard about what happened in court today. She is no doubt now wondering if she has been wrong about Tony. Childhood loyalties die hard.

  She is seated on the couch. I am leaning, my back to the desk, one cheek planted firmly on the corner.

  There is one piece to this whole thing that doesn’t make sense, unless it involves Tony. It is the reason I have called Lenore here tonight.

  “You remember when we went there that night, to Hall’s ap
artment?”

  She nods. Lenore’s study of me at this moment is intense.

  “You remember we saw something? Something glittering, a piece of jewelry on the floor, half-buried in the dirt from the broken pot, the house plant?” I say.

  “I remember,” she says.

  “You got the better look at it. Do you have any recollection as to what it was?”

  “You’re thinking the metal scrapings on that table?” she says.

  “I am.”

  “It was so quick. And it was dark,” she says. “I didn’t pay much attention. It was small. Maybe a ring. Part of a bracelet.” She shakes her head, uncertain.

  “The fact is the cops never found it,” I tell her.

  “They say they didn’t,” she corrects me.

  “No. I think on this one they may be straight-shooting. But there’s one other possibility.”

  She looks at me.

  “Did Tony take it?”

  There’s a deep sigh from Lenore. “You think he did it.” It is a statement of fact, not a question. Lenore now knows that Tony had lied to her, that he was there that night.

  “Have you talked to him?” I ask.

  It takes a moment, but Lenore finally nods.

  “What did he say?”

  “He admitted he was there. But he says he didn’t kill her. Says he found the body.”

  “He moved it, didn’t he?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Call it intuition,” I tell her. “Did he take anything else from the scene?”

  “Some pages from her phone book. That’s all he told me.”

  “He never mentioned the item of jewelry on the floor?”

  She shakes her head.

  I stand and start to pace the room. We are a hundred feet from Radovich’s courtroom, connected by a private corridor that rings the courthouse on each floor against the exterior windows of the building. This is used by court personnel to deliver papers and provides a controlled emergency exit in the event of fire, or violence in the courthouse.

  “The answer may lie down the hall.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Assume for a moment that Tony did not take the item on the floor under the table that night. And that the cops didn’t find it. Where did it go?”