by D. W. Buffa
“Get it.” Caminetti started to turn. “No, tell me what it says.”
Caminetti glared with resentment at being ordered about. Quickly, he brought himself back under control.
“The statement says that Evelyn Morgan saw Jamison Scott Haviland push Anna Malreaux out the window at the Plaza Hotel December twenty-fourth, nineteen sixty-five.
It says that she did not see it clearly enough to know if he had planned to kill her or had done it in a moment of anger. It says that Thomas Browning asked her to say it was an accident because everyone had been drinking and people would think it was his fault. She said she wanted to clear her conscience before she died.”
“And it’s signed and dated?”
“That’s right.”
“When is it dated?”
“Three years ago.”
“When did she die?”
Caminetti shrugged. “A few weeks ago, a month maybe. Her lawyer started going through her papers for probate. That’s when he found it.”
“Then it isn’t a dying declaration,” mused Scarborough, stroking his chin; “but I suppose it could be argued that it is a statement against interest.” he put his hands behind his back. The expression in his eyes became more pensive. Caminetti began, not exactly to relax, but to become less hostile. He followed Scarborough’s change of attitude with a searching, catlike glance.
“It has to be against the declarant’s penal interest,” I objected in a halfhearted attempt to move Scarborough in a different direction.
He raised his eyes and smiled. “She could have been charged with lying to the police, obstruction, even conspiracy.” Scarborough slapped his forehead. “Of course! The statement is a confession of a coconspirator.
Because if the statement is true, she conspired with both Browning and the defendant to cover up the crime.” he began to pace, his head bent, his eyes busy and intense. A few moments passed. He stopped abruptly and peered intently at Caminetti.
“And the lawyer—this Whitaker—got hold of you, told you what he had found?”
“That’s right,” said Caminetti in a cautious voice.
“When? When did he first get hold of you? When did he first tell you—when did you first learn—about this statement?”
There was something forced and artificial about the way Caminetti stared back, as if he had to make a conscious effort not to let his eyes dart off somewhere else.
Was he lying, or was he trying to hold something back? “Friday.” After a slight hesitation, he added: “He apparently called once or twice before. But Friday was the first I heard.”
“Other people in your office knew about this before you did?”
With a quick toss of his head, and an even quicker tight-lipped smile, Caminetti dismissed it as a matter of no importance. “We’ve gotten hundreds of calls. It takes a while to sort them out.”
Scarborough would not be put off. “You first knew about it Friday—morning or afternoon?”
“Morning,” replied Caminetti, his voice again cautious and controlled.
Scarborough’s gray trimmed eyebrows rose in a majestic arc. “And you did not advise Mr. Antonelli until now, when you could have given him the weekend to prepare?”
“I had a lot of things to do that day.”
Scarborough’s head bolted forward, as if he had been struck a blow and was instinctively striking back.
“Listen to me, Caminetti! I’ve been on the bench a long time, and that, without question, is the worst excuse I’ve ever heard. You ‘had a lot of things to do that day’! You say anything like that to me again and I promise you contempt of court will be the least of the things you have to worry about!”
Caminetti took a step forward. Scarborough lifted his chin and with his eyes dared him to take another.
Caminetti did not move.
“I apologize, Your Honor,” he said, stepping back.
“That was a stupid thing to say, but I was busy, and I simply forgot. If Mr. Antonelli needs time, of course he should have it.”
We went back into court and solely for purposes of getting it on the record, I objected to the testimony of the witness on the ground that there had been a lack of notice and that, in any event, the statement of Evelyn Morgan was hearsay and inadmissible. The objection was duly noted and immediately overruled. I sat back and listened to Caminetti lay the groundwork for Ezra Whitaker and the bombshell he was about to explode.
“This will be the prosecution’s last witness,” said Caminetti on his way toward the witness stand.
He made it sound so normal, so routine—I did not catch the significance of it until he had already asked Ezra Whitaker to state his name. There were two names on that list of names and numbers I had been given, two witnesses Caminetti was going to call, but now he was only going to call one. A sense of panic crawled up my spine; my throat went dry. If he did not call them both, if he called only that drug-addicted witness to what Haviland had supposedly said to him in treatment, I had nothing to argue, nothing with which to raise a question about the strange and unlikely coincidence that two different witnesses, both of them crucial to the government’s case, were on a White House list of people who had for some reason apparently been paid. My neck felt damp; my legs grew weak. My heart was racing, my breathing short. They must have found out that I had the list, they must have realized that using both of those paid-for witnesses put them too much at risk. Or maybe it had been nothing but chance. Maybe they did not know anything about what I had. Maybe they had just decided that with Whitaker they had all they needed. I darted a frantic glance at Haviland, but he could not give an answer to a question I could not ask.
“And you were Mrs. Morgan’s personal attorney, and that’s how you happen to have her personal papers?”
“Yes, that’s correct. I had been her counselor and legal advisor for many years.”
It was the slow-flowing thick-smooth voice of the southerner of a certain type, the ones trained by habit and history, as well as shrewdness and cunning and excessive self-love, never to utter a word that did not ooze sincerity with every vowel. Whitaker’s silver-gray hair curled smartly at the back of his neck.
Ezra Whitaker. Why did that name sound familiar? What was there about it that reminded me of another name… ? Then I knew, or thought I knew. I leaned over and riffled through the papers thrown together in my briefcase until I found what I was looking for. Setting it on the table in front of me, I ran my finger down the edge of the first page, but his name was not there. Nor was it on the second page or the third or any of the rest; and then I was on the last page, certain it must be there, a name that started with W, the last name on that list of Byzantine transactions. But Ezra Whitaker was not on the White House list. I began to have a sickening, empty feeling in my stomach: the growing certainty that there was nothing I could do, that Jimmy Haviland was going to lose.
Caminetti was finished with the preliminaries.
Whitaker put on his glasses, held a sheet of embossed stationery in his hands, and began to read. A woman with no earthly reason to lie had sworn on her immortal soul that she had once called a death an accident when she knew it was not; lied because she was young and frightened and because it was what Thomas Browning, whom she knew and trusted, had asked her to do. The air went out of the room; everything went flat. There was no more hope, no more expectation; just the sense that it was over now, that a man they heard enough about to like had killed a girl he was supposed to have loved; that another man, one they admired and respected, a man who had just yesterday nearly been killed, a man that most of them wanted to win the next election, had lied about a murder and done it for the worst reason of all: because he was a coward, afraid of what others might think.
“Do you wish to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Antonelli?” asked Scarborough. The face he showed the jury was unchanged by what he had heard; unchanged except for what I thought, or perhaps only imagined, was a new and deeper sadness in his eyes.
The document, that signed s
tatement confessing her participation in a conspiracy of lies, could not be true.
This woman—Evelyn Morgan—could not have seen what she said she had; but I had no way to prove either that she had lied or that the document itself was false. Whether Ezra Whitaker was himself a liar or the innocent victim of an ingenious scheme, I had no way to know.
“Your Honor, I have no questions, at least not yet. Mr.
Caminetti has indicated that this will be the prosecution’s final witness. I would ask that Mr. Whitaker be kept under subpoena and that we recess until the morning, at which time I will either cross-examine the witness or begin the case for the defense.”
Scarborough looked at Caminetti. “Under the circumstances, that seems a reasonable proposal. I’m sure you won’t object.” With a cursory nod, Caminetti agreed.
As soon as the judge left the courtroom, the crowd began to rush outside, anxious to report on what appeared to be a crippling blow both to Thomas Browning and the defense. I turned to Haviland, whispering under the noise. “Do you remember anything about Evelyn Morgan, anything at all?”
There was a lost look in Haviland’s eyes. He did not answer; he just shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him, trying to revive his spirits. “You didn’t do anything. That’s the truth of it.”
It was the truth, and we both knew that it was not nearly enough.
“Tomorrow I’ll have something that will change everything. You’ll see.”
My empty promise had no effect. The look in his eyes, that anguished, ghostlike glance, had deepened, become more troubled, more at war with itself.
“Do you think I could have killed her, done what they said, and then forgotten, burned it out of my head, imagined that it never happened? Do you think I’m mad, that I’ve lost my mind?” he asked with a wretched, heartbreaking stare.
CHAPTER 23
As soon as we were in the car, Gisela started to talk about the attempt on Thomas Browning’s life and what had happened at the trial.
“Everyone thinks Browning will have to withdraw.”
Both hands on the wheel, she gave me a sympathetic glance. “The White House doesn’t want to look smug, especially after the shooting. They say they can’t comment on a trial; but they have that look in their eyes.
They know it’s over. There is talk that they’ll send up Reynolds’s name as soon as the chief justice is dead.”
I did not care what the White House thought; I did not care what anyone thought.
“Were you able to arrange it? Will he talk to me?” she darted a glance in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. When I called him, he said I had a wrong number.
A few minutes later, he called me. He would not talk on the telephone. We met at a coffee shop. He thinks he’s being followed; he thinks his telephone is tapped.”
“The White House?” I asked. “He thinks they know what he did?”
“No, they’re watching everyone.”
“Everyone who works in the White House?” I asked.
“He doesn’t work in the White House.”
“I thought this was your White House source, the one who told you about the investigation, the indictment…”
“I did not say he was someone inside the White House.” She gave me a quick, apologetic glance. “I couldn’t tell you; I can’t tell you. I promised I would not say anything about him.”
If he was not in the White House, how had he obtained access to the White House computer system— the one that Browning said was restricted to the executive office of the President? “Where does he work?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you can’t tell me?”
“All I know is that it’s secret, and that it’s important, and that he seems to know everything that is going on.”
“You said you didn’t know if he would talk to me.
That means he didn’t say no,” I remarked, clinging to the last hope I had.
“I told him I was picking you up at the airport. He said he would call tonight.”
We drove into Georgetown, but instead of turning to go to her house, Gisela pulled up in front of a restaurant. Two blocks away, on the other side of the street, was the place where in that dim private upstairs dining room I had had lunch with Joanna. I wondered what must have gone through her mind these last few days. First the attempt to assassinate her husband, then the revelation that the case against Jimmy Haviland now included the deathbed confession of a woman Thomas Browning had asked to lie. Nothing could have prepared her for this.
“Could he have?”
“What?” I asked, looking up from the dinner I had scarcely touched.
“Could he have done that—asked that woman to lie?”
“Browning? No,” I said, wondering whether I still believed it. “No,” I repeated, the doubt, minuscule at first, now a little more advanced. “I’d be surprised.”
The doubt to her seemed real. Reflected back, I became irritated, angry, as if the only doubt was hers.
“Browning is too intelligent to have done that,” I insisted. “And he was in love with Annie. He was not Thomas Browning then; he wasn’t the man everyone knows now: the famous politician, the man a lot of people think should be president. He was not the former senator, or the former head of Stern Motors; he wasn’t the former anything. He didn’t want anything to do with the company; he certainly would not have covered up a crime because of what might happen to its reputation.”
Perhaps I had only been trying to convince myself that Browning could not have done what they said, but the more I thought about it—the more I remembered about the way things had been—the more certain I was that I was right.
“Browning was in love with Annie Malreaux. That’s what they all forget. He was in love with her! He would have given up everything he had, gone off somewhere the other side of the world, if she’d been willing to go off with him. Ask someone to lie about her murder—to save Jimmy Haviland, who had just killed the girl, the only girl, he loved? It doesn’t make sense.”
But Gisela had not known Browning then; she only knew him now. What I remembered, she could not quite imagine.
“But wouldn’t he have worried that people would think it was his fault? Wouldn’t he have been concerned with what it would do to his chances later on?”
“His chances?”
“He knew he was going to be running one of the largest companies in the world. He must have thought about the things that would allow him to do. He must have thought about his reputation.”
“His reputation? Whatever he was thinking about the day Annie Malreaux died, I’m sure it wasn’t that.”
Gisela was not quite convinced. She was about to ask me something else, when the waiter interrupted to tell her that she had a call. When she came back to the table, I could tell from the look in her eyes who had called and what he had said.
“He’ll meet you tonight. Eleven o’clock at the Lincoln Memorial.”
We lingered over coffee until half past ten. When we got back in the car, I looked up and down the street, watching to see if, when we left, anyone was following behind. Half a block away, a beige colored Chevrolet pulled out at the same time, but when we turned at the corner, it kept going straight. At the Lincoln Memorial, instead of stopping, we crossed the bridge, drove another mile, then doubled back. Gisela dropped me in a secluded spot about a hundred yards away and then found a place to park the car and wait.
As I climbed the white marble steps, I caught a glimpse of someone in a tan overcoat with the collar pulled up, standing on the other side of the statue, pacing back and forth. He watched me with a kind of indifference, as if he did not care if I kept coming or not. Then, suddenly, he turned and disappeared. I began to move more quickly, each step quicker than the last, until I reached the base of the statue. I stopped and looked around. I heard a woman’s voice from somewhere in the distance below.
“Have you seen enough? It’s getting la
te. We should go.”
Then I saw him, the man in the coat, catching up with the woman whose voice I had just heard. He was a tourist, a visitor, someone who wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial the way it looked lit up at night.
I hovered near the statue, hoping that the next person who came along would be the man I was there to meet. I checked my watch. It was eleven o’clock exactly. Five minutes went by, then ten. A car pulled up below, a door opened, and someone stumbled out. There was a peal of laughter as a hand reached from inside and pulled him back. The car raced away, and I was again alone. I went down to where Gisela was waiting in the car.
“Give it a few more minutes,” she suggested.
I trudged back up the steps, gazing with curiosity at Lincoln’s wise and melancholy face. Browning had understood that after Lincoln the word, at least the spoken word, would suffer a decline. How had he known that? How had he grasped so early what so many still did not understand? That in our frenzied effort to do a dozen things at once, we had forgotten that it takes time to do one thing well. I looked at the statue and thought about Browning, and about the speech he had given that day at the edge of the park while thousands pressed forward, eager to catch every word. Browning understood the power of the word. At eleven-thirty, when there was still no sign of Gisela’s anonymous friend, I walked down the steps and told her we might as well go.
We got back to Georgetown and parked the car. I waited while Gisela, fumbling in the dark, unlocked the door. The telephone began to ring, and Gisela dashed toward the kitchen while I stood in the narrow hallway trying to find the lights.
“I think it’s him,” she said, her hand over the receiver.
“There’s someone on the line. I can hear him breathing, but he won’t speak.”
I took the telephone from her hand and held it next to my ear. There was nothing, not a sound.
“Who’s there?” I demanded.
“One hour.” That was all; just those two words, then the line went dead. “One hour?” I exclaimed, staring at Gisela, baffled.
Something caught her eye. A half page, torn from a small spiral notebook, the kind reporters use, had been left on the kitchen table.