A Picture of Guilt

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Dusk settled, cloaking everything in a mantle of purple as I wound through Skokie. The occasional shout of a child, the tinkle of music, and canned TV laughter spilled through the window. I turned onto Golf Road, feeling a twinge of regret at the loss of innocence, though whether it was Rachel’s or my own, I wasn’t sure.

  Dad was watching the news when I unlocked his door. He lives in an assisted-living retirement home, although to hear him tell it, the only thing they assist with is the steady depletion of his savings. He glanced up from his leather wing chair, the one with gold tacking that had moved from the house with him. A plate with a half-eaten hamburger sat on the hassock. The smell of grilled onions hung in the air.

  “Hi,” I said, closing the door. “How ya doin’?”

  He turned back to the tube. “That’s the problem when you get old.”

  “What?”

  “People come, people go. All day long. And everyone’s got a key. It’s a real invasion of privacy, you know?”

  The joys of the sandwich generation. I slid the key back in my bag. “Sorry. I should have knocked.”

  He turned up his cheek for a kiss. A lamp on a nearby table threw a soft glow across his head, which was as smooth and shiny as a marble. But, at eighty-one, he’s still alert and engaged. In fact, Susan says he reminds her of Ben Kingsley playing Ghandi.

  I crossed to the window and opened it. “How’s the new prescription?”

  He’d been having problems with heart palpitations, and they’d changed his medication twice in two weeks. The first prescription fatigued him so much I was ready to take him to the ER until I tracked down his cardiologist, who was at a conference in Hawaii. He phoned in a new prescription and told me not to worry; we were only on the third of twelve possible drugs. If this one didn’t work, he said cheerfully, there were still nine to go.

  Fortunately, Dad did have more color tonight. “Any side effects?”

  “Only if you call taking the boys to the cleaners today a side effect.”

  “Stud or draw?”

  “What do you think?” He grinned. “You shoulda seen Marv’s face after I bluffed the last hand. He thought he was drawing dead. He still hasn’t figured out when I’m gonna do it.”

  It’s hard to beat my father at five-card stud. I returned the grin, then gestured to his plate. “You eating enough?”

  “Ellie, would you stop? I’ll let you know when I’m about to die. Then you can worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” I lied.

  “I know,” he chuckled. “So, what brings you here on a weekday night?”

  I snapped off the TV and dropped a CD in his player. His face smoothed out as Sinatra started crooning. I felt a stab of envy. I remember intense discussions about pop music in my younger days. How it was an anesthetic, foisted upon us by the establishment to numb us to our suffering and political exploitation. Even now, I can’t listen to a Motown riff without a twinge of guilt. But, as Frank’s voice slid through the air, Dad snapped his fingers and closed his eyes, the tune clearly taking him back to happier times.

  I waited until the song ended to tell him about Johnnie Santoro.

  He was massaging his temples before I finished. “Ellie,” he said, a rise in his voice. “What are you doing? Stay out of it.”

  “I can’t. They may want me to testify at his trial.”

  “But you don’t know that he’s innocent.”

  “He was passed out on a bench near Navy Pier the night of the murder. Calumet Park’s at least seven miles away.”

  “That means nothing. How do you know he didn’t hitch a ride down there—or back up afterwards? I mean if he’s really as forgetful as this lawyer says—”

  “Dad, the guy was wiped out. He couldn’t even stand up.”

  Dad pushed himself up. “Ellie. You have no idea who this man is, or who he associates with. The man was a longshoreman.”

  “So that means I shouldn’t get involved?”

  He flipped up his hands.

  “That’s odd, because I seem to remember someone else—someone close to me—who did the same thing.”

  Dad blinked. He’d grown up in Hyde Park but spent time in Lawndale, currying favor and running errands for a gang of hustlers in that thriving Jewish community. It was only for a few months before the war, but he still talks about it sixty years later.

  “This isn’t the same thing. This man could be a career criminal. The Mob runs the docks. And their unions.”

  “But I don’t think he did it.”

  “So, who made you his savior?”

  “Well now, that is the issue, isn’t it? Where do you draw the line? When do you get involved, and when do you just step over the homeless man and pretend you didn’t see him?”

  He aimed a finger at me. “Ellie, this man is a potential killer, not a vagrant.”

  I folded my arms, and we glared at each other. Then he settled back in his chair, shaking his head. “I should know by now. Your mother was the same way—bringing home strays every Thanksgiving and Pesach. I never knew where she found them.”

  “Dad, if he’s convicted, and I could have done something to help but was too scared or busy or wrapped up in myself, I’d carry that guilt forever. That tape could make a big difference.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” He stopped talking and tapped two fingers against his chin. “You know,” he said more softly, “there comes a time that you don’t have to keep apologizing for thinking about yourself. You’re allowed to live your own life. You’re even allowed to enjoy it.”

  “I—I’m not that busy. I have time.”

  “Maybe you should spend it with your daughter or your boyfriend. Not get distracted on some crusade for a stranger. Deal with your own issues as they say…”

  I looked away.

  “How is Rachel?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Dad…”

  “She called me this afternoon after school. She wanted to ride her bike down to visit.”

  “Rachel?” I was astonished. “My daughter wanted to voluntarily expend energy on some form of exercise?”

  “She said she was bored.”

  The thing they don’t tell you about the sandwich generation is that the two pieces of bread can gang up on the stuff in the middle. “What did you say?”

  “I told her it was too far to ride all the way down to Skokie, and why didn’t she go to the pool?”

  The municipal pool, where Rachel hung out from dawn to dusk—at least last summer—was only a short bike ride from our house.

  “What did she say?”

  “‘Opa,’ she said—she sounded just like you do sometimes—‘it’s after Labor Day. The pool’s closed. But even if it wasn’t, swimming is for children.’” He got up, picked up his plate, and shuffled into the kitchen. I followed him in. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt for her to have something to do after school.” He dumped the remains of the burger in the trash and rinsed the plate in the sink. “Look. I’m not preaching. You’ve done a wonderful job. Considering. But she’s thirteen. Sylvia said she still needs you, even if she doesn’t think she does.”

  “Sylvia?”

  I’m always surprised to find that an eighty-one-year-old man still blushes—all the way to the top of his head. “She just moved in.”

  “Uh-huh. And how old is Sylvia?”

  “She’s seventy-nine.” He smiled. “But don’t worry. She’s pretty sure she can’t get pregnant.”

  I giggled.

  He smiled as he put the plate in the drainboard. “Sweetheart, I want you to stay out of this man’s life. You have your own tsuris.”

  I noticed the determined set of his chin, and how much it resembled Rachel’s. I felt like a piece of lunchmeat.

  Chapter Seven

  The phone chirped and the doorbell rang at the same time. I picked up the phone and opened the door.

  “Fouad!” I smiled at the man standing outside. “What a nice surprise.”
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br />   “This is Chuck Brashares.”

  “Sorry,” I said into the phone. “Hold on, will you?”

  I moved the phone away from my ear with one hand and shook Fouad’s hand with the other. “It’s so good to see you. How are you feeling?”

  “And when I am sick, He restores me to health.”

  It’s not unusual for Fouad Al Hamra, my friend and sometime gardener, to quote the Koran by way of greeting. He touched his fingers to his curly grizzled hair. He’d been shot a few months earlier but had recovered enough to resume work on a limited schedule.

  I nodded and motioned to the phone. “I’ll be out in a minute.” I plugged the phone back in my ear. “Sorry, Mr. Brashares. You were saying?”

  “I looked at the tape last night. Santoro is definitely on it.”

  I stifled an urge to say I told you so.

  “I screened it several times, just to be sure. But I think we should proceed. I want you to testify. In fact, I’ve already spoken to the prosecution about it.”

  “So the quality of the tape isn’t a problem?”

  “Well, there is degradation, but it’s not that bad when the camera’s on him. You say you don’t know how it was damaged?”

  “No. It happened sometime after we shot it.”

  “Has the tape been stored in one place ever since?”

  “It’s been in a locked room at the studio. Only a couple of people have access to it.”

  His silence said he was satisfied. Then, “Well, it might not prove anything, but it should cast some doubt. I gave notice that I’ll be calling you as an alibi witness. Expect a call from the other side. They will want to depose you before opening arguments.”

  I coughed. A deposition—at least the divorce kind—was not the sort of activity I looked forward to.

  “They’ll want to know where you got it, the circumstances of the shoot, where it’s been since then. Things like that.”

  “I don’t know. I—I didn’t expect—”

  He ignored my reaction. “ There is one thing I should caution you about. Anytime a new witness shows up this close to the start of a trial, there’s apt to be some skepticism on the other side.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, remembering Barry’s lawyers a few years ago. “Are they going to be hostile?”

  “Probably—er—cautious,” he replied. “But don’t worry. You’ll handle it. In the meantime, I’ll show Santoro the tape. Maybe it will jog his memory.”

  “Would it help if I met with him? Explain how we found him? He might remember more.”

  Another short silence. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It could taint your testimony.”

  “But if he could remember, wouldn’t he make a better witness?”

  “I’m not putting him on the stand.”

  “You’re not?”

  “He wouldn’t make it past go. The prosecutor’ll crucify him. Look. We’re almost finished voir dire, and the judge will probably grant the other side a motion to get up to speed on the tape. If the trial starts next Monday, and I think it will, it should only last a couple of days. We could get to you as early as Wednesday. But you and I should go over the questions before that.” He paused. “By the way, I’m going to need the original of that videotape for the trial.”

  “You can’t use a copy?”

  “The judge will never allow it, given the interference. Best evidence rule.”

  “In that case, you’ll need to rent a different player. We shot Beta SP.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A different format than VHS. More professional. Kind of like the difference between sixteen and thirty-five millimeter film.”

  “More expensive?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, it has to be done.”

  “Okay, but could you return it when the trial’s over? I would hate for it to get lost.”

  “No problem.”

  I said I’d make a new master for Mac’s files and messenger Brashares the original. In the meantime, we set up a time to meet so he could walk me through my testimony.

  “Do you think he’s got a chance?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ve got more than we had before. Thanks for coming forward.”

  “Chalk it up to civic duty.”

  After I hung up, I tried to figure out what bugged me about this guy. I couldn’t put my finger on it. He wasn’t incompetent. He was doing the job, but I didn’t have the sense he was committed to it. Then again, he was a defense lawyer. He couldn’t be emotionally involved with every client. Still, I would have appreciated at least some comment about justice being served, or the truth coming out. I stood up. Maybe I was just reacting to his narcissism.

  I threw on some sweats and joined Fouad outside. It was a brilliant, breezy day, the kind that triggers a yearning to be one with nature. Shading my eyes against the sun, I watched Foaud unload the spreader from his pickup. He’d lost weight, and the canvas pants he always wore when he worked hung low on his hips. Though he’d never had much excess flesh to begin with, now his dark eyes seemed enormous in his gaunt face.

  My ex-husband considered lawn care a competitive sport. During the four years we were married, Barry spent thousands of dollars on landscapers, tools, and lawn care products in an effort to make our lawn the greenest, thickest patch of grass on the North Shore. At the beginning of April, even if snow still covered the ground, he’d demand that Fouad tell him precisely when fertilizer would be applied, the bushes trimmed, the weeding done. He suffered from an advanced case of “greenis” envy.

  After we divorced, I didn’t have enough money to keep Fouad on. For a few years the grass languished, weeds sprouted, and grubs feasted until the lawn looked like something out of the dust bowl. Fouad came back on a limited basis last spring, and we’ve made steady progress reclaiming the land.

  “This will be the last time I fertilize before winter.” He gazed ruefully at the grass, which bristled with weeds. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come more often.”

  I bent over to pluck a blade of crabgrass, but a ladybug in speckled armor of black and orange was inching up its stem. Ladybugs are good.

  I left it alone and straightened up. “Mother Nature will just have to understand.”

  Fouad smiled and poured a bag of what looked like orange sand into the spreader. “‘Those who believe and do good deeds shall have gardens in which rivers flow.’”

  Fouad has built a flourishing landscape service and a garden supply store, but he remains, at heart, a modest, spiritual soul. He rolled the spreader in a neat, straight row. Tiny bits of orange coated the green lawn. I followed him as he worked.

  “Your visit to West Virginia went well?”

  “Upsetting.” I explained about the white-water rafting.

  He stopped with his hand on the spreader handle. “You and Rachel were not hurt?”

  “We were fine. Can’t say I’ll ever do it again, though.”

  “I understand.”

  I thought back to the hike through the woods, Draper’s Café, Abdul’s plate. Then I remembered who’d warned me I wouldn’t see much laurel. “You were right about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The only laurel I saw was in pats of butter.”

  Chapter Eight

  The fifth-floor courtroom at Twenty-sixth and California has high ceilings, marble walls, and polished mahogany railings around the witness stand. Unlike the cramped rooms on the lower floors, where a thick glass wall separates observers from participants and the ambiance is like a driver’s license facility, this courtroom looks like a place where justice is meted out.

  The trial started on Monday. As a witness, I wasn’t allowed to attend, but a producer friend of mine at Channel Eleven knew the sketch artist for one of the other TV stations and told her to fill me in. The first witness was the police detective, who, through questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Kirk Ryan, confirmed the bullets that killed the victim came from a .38 revol
ver, although they never recovered the gun. Next was the medical examiner, who explained the victim’s cause and manner of death. He had also recovered scrapings from the victim’s fingernails, which DNA tests later proved to be consistent with Santoro’s.

  Ryan then led the victim’s mother through a tearful testimony. Mary Jo was obedient, respectful, and ambitious, she said. Because her father was on long-term disability, the result of an accident at the steel mill, Mrs. Bosanick worked two minimum wage jobs. Mary Jo aspired to something better and was taking night classes, hoping to become a bookkeeper in a Loop office.

  “But now my baby is gone. And our lives are destroyed,” her mother sobbed. “By him.” She pointed dramatically at Santoro.

  Brashares didn’t tear her apart during his cross. Instead, he worked around the edges, gently eliciting the fact that she and her husband had met Santoro several times and had even invited him over for dinner.

  Next the prosecution placed both Mary Jo and Santoro at the Lakeside Inn the night she was murdered. The Lakeside was a gritty but quiet neighborhood bar not far from Calumet Park, the kind of place a single woman could occasionally drop in for a beer and not get hassled. The bartender testified that Mary Jo came in around ten, looking for Santoro. He knew Santoro was one of the dockworkers who only came in when they had cash in their pockets. On the night in question Santoro showed up around midnight. He’d obviously had a few, the bartender said, and when Mary Jo lit into him for being late, he lit back. Their argument became so loud the bartender told them to take it outside. Her body was found at the boat launch in Calumet Park a few hours later, the prosecutor reminded the jury. Lying next to Santoro’s car.

  But the star witness for the prosecution was Mary Jo’s best friend, Rhonda Disapio. They’d gone to the same school, the same Catholic church, and Mary Jo had been maid of honor at Rhonda’s wedding. A plump woman with bottle-blond hair, too much jewelry, and scarlet lipstick, Rhonda testified that Mary Jo had been complaining about Santoro’s lack of money and ambition. Not only was he abusive, she said, but Mary Jo thought he was a loser. She was sorry she ever got involved. In fact, she was planning to break up with him the night she was killed.