The investigator thought about asking to see the postcard, but he figured the woman might feel that this was a little too intrusive. She might go back into her house and close the door. So he simply asked, “What island?”
Ask for the time and some people will tell you how to build a clock. She explained that their old house, the one the Ginnises owned on St. Croix, a really cute little place, stone and old timbers, right on the beach—she knew this because she and her husband had been there two years ago for a short visit—was damaged in a hurricane last year. Since their place was under repair, the neighbor told the investigator, Maggie and Art had rented a place, on the island of Curaçao.
Harry and I come to the corner where we part company. We stop for a moment to talk.
“Are you going back to the office?” I ask.
He nods grimly. Harry has yet to comb through all the items Tuchio dropped on us that first day of trial. The paralegals have prioritized them the best they can, and Harry is just now finally approaching the bottom of the pile.
It seems that lately Harry and I are doing an increasing amount of our conferencing out on the street, in the halls at the courthouse, on the run, or on the phone late at night. Harry is growing bags under his eyes. I’m afraid to look in a mirror.
The opening of our case in chief is still over the horizon. If I had to guess, I would say a week, maybe ten days off. The few witnesses we have lined up are no problem. They’re either experts who are being paid or cooperative local witnesses who’ve agreed to testify and are already under subpoena.
But even with this, what we have lined up, the evidence at hand, our case in total would have to be drawn out to last much beyond two days. You can only go so many rounds beating up Detrick before the judge rings the bell. By the time we get started, Tuchio will have gathered with his forensics wizards so that he can skate on ice around the inconsistencies in his own case. The absence of little bloody prints on the tray and tablecloth will be tucked neatly into some variation on the theme of his theory, how Carl did the deed. This, along with what we already know based on discovery—that the state’s most damaging evidence is yet to come—has me deeply concerned.
“If we’re to have any kind of a case,” I tell Harry, “we need a centerpiece.”
Harry knows what I’m talking about. Some lawyers call it “the golden idol.”
In every case you look for something to fix the attention of jurors. If they can’t actually see it or touch it, they must, at a minimum, be able to hear about it. It can be virtually anything—another possible perpetrator, a business dealing that offers the prospect of an alternative motive to the one your client had, the hint of a love tryst out on the margins along with the rumor that it went bad. It helps if you can believe in this, though it is not entirely essential. Depending on the candlepower and its mesmerizing qualities, this, the golden idol, is used to dazzle the jury, while the defense flies figure eights over the box, dusting them with the magic powder of reasonable doubt.
Harry and I stand on the corner and talk, toting heavy briefcases that hit us about the knees every few seconds like the gongs in cathedral bells. We dance all around it without actually saying the words: “the letter.”
Given what we know—the information from Bonguard and Trisha Scott, the e-mails from Scarborough to Ginnis requesting the “original,” and the rectangular shadow in leather, the item missing from the scene—you might think that the gods had reached down to give us precisely what we needed, an idol of platinum with a nuclear-powered laser light. But there is a problem.
Without hard evidence, someone who actually saw the Jefferson Letter or the copy in Scarborough’s possession and who can testify to its existence, or better yet its contents and potential value, we have nothing.
Everything—the conversations with Bonguard, the agent, and Trisha Scott, both of whom claim they never saw the letter, as well as the e-mail missives between Scarborough and Ginnis’s office—it’s all hearsay. In a word, all inadmissible. As far as the law is concerned, without a solid evidentiary foundation, the Jefferson Letter becomes the product of pure speculation. Bottom line, we cannot mention it in court, not in the presence of the jury.
“So what we do have,” says Harry, “is a pregnant question. We have a shadow in blood on a leather portfolio and a concession from one of Tuchio’s witnesses that something is missing from the crime scene. It’s a start,” says Harry. “At least we have their attention. You can bet that the jury is wondering what the item was.”
“Yes, but without more we can’t connect the dots for them, and if there’s anything worse than no play at all, it’s one that has no second act. If the jury goes in to deliberate and we haven’t told them what that item was that’s now missing, they’re going to wonder why. Of course, we know the answer: because the court wouldn’t allow us to tell them. But they don’t know that.”
“So other than sign language, how do we give them the answer?” says Harry.
“As far as we know, there are only four possible sources for information to lay a foundation for the letter.”
“Ginnis, Bonguard, Scott…and who’s the fourth?” says Harry.
“Scarborough’s editor. I can’t remember his name.”
“James Aubrey.” Harry’s magnetic brain. “Herman talked to Aubrey and got the same business you did from Bonguard and Scott. He heard about the letter, but he never saw it. Strange how everybody went blind whenever the letter came out,” says Harry.
“It’s human nature,” I tell him. “If one of the goals in life is to stay free of entanglements with the law, it is often best to be blind,” I tell him.
“So you think they’re lying?”
“I can tell you that Trisha Scott didn’t want to testify.”
“And she lied about Jefferson’s letter,” says Harry. “Remember? First she told you she knew nothing about it. Then she recanted over dinner later and told you another lie.”
Harry’s right. According to Scott, Ginnis couldn’t be involved, because he hated Scarborough. Not enough to kill him, mind you, but on a professional level. The only problem is that all this ill will did not run deep enough to prevent the two men from exchanging e-mails, even if Ginnis refrained from pushing the “send” key on the computer with his own finger.
“Maybe it’s not a question of who lied as much as who told the biggest lie. The whopper,” I tell him.
Harry puts his briefcase down on the sidewalk and looks at me, a question mark.
“Bonguard.”
You would have to be Snow White to buy into the fable that the agent had tried to run past Sarah and me in New York.
“Claimed he knew nothing about the particulars of a letter that according to his own words on Leno’s show would have been the basis of another zillion-dollar book, if only the golden author hadn’t been killed.”
“I’ve been thinking about him since we saw the tape.” Harry smiles.
“On top of that, Bonguard was superglued to his client on a book tour that rivaled Sherman’s March to the Sea. This included the burning of Atlanta in miniature, according to the newspapers,” I tell him, “with torched cars, broken windows, and flaming trash cans through…what? Six states and thirteen cities? The fact that he knew about the letter, enough to attribute its origins to Jefferson, and given what he told Leno, has to make you wonder—if he didn’t know what was in it, he must have been burning with curiosity.”
“You know, the thought has crossed my mind,” says Harry, “that Bonguard wouldn’t look bad dressed up in killer clothes.”
What Harry means is in a plastic raincoat and brandishing a hammer.
“If we can’t find the letter or some way to talk about it, to get it into evidence,” says Harry, “Bonguard gets my vote for runner-up in the ‘golden idol’ awards.”
“Except why would Bonguard kill the client who was filling his coffers?”
“Maybe the letter was worth more than his fifteen percent on book sales,” says Ha
rry.
“Even if it was a copy?”
“Okay, I’m still working it out,” says Harry, “but think about it. If the shadow on the leather portfolio means anything, it means that the Jefferson Letter was in Scarborough’s possession at the same time Bonguard was bird-dogging him out on the tour. To believe that the agent never saw it when he must have been in the same room with it on countless occasions is to believe in the tooth fairy.”
Harry has a point. Aside from Scarborough, Bonguard would have had the best access to the letter.
He reaches down, picks up his briefcase, and starts shuffling toward the garage. “What was it Scarborough called it? Then I gotta run,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“The letter. According to Scott, he had a name for it.”
“You mean the ‘infamous Jefferson Letter’?”
“Yeah. Damn,” says Harry. He’s smiling. “Forget Bonguard. Anything with a name like that, we gotta find a way to get it in. Almost begs you to fly it in front of the jury, just out of reach, keep ’em wondering what’s in it,” he says.
My partner is starting to believe in paper dragons.
“That’s a dangerous trip,” I tell him, “seeing as we don’t know what’s in it. It could be a story with no punch line.”
“You gotta have faith.” Harry is moving away from me toward the garage. “Trust me, we want to fly ‘infamous Jefferson.’ I’m betting one or more of them—Bonguard, Scott, or Aubrey—saw the copy and knows what’s in it. There’s our foundation. Of course, it’s just a guess.”
“Don’t stay in the office too late,” I tell him. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Just when he gets to the door, he stops and turns.
“One thing is certain, though,” he says. He’s no longer smiling. The look on Harry’s face is stone sober. “Scarborough’s e-mails. If we’re tracking, if those mean what we think they do, then Ginnis has the McCoy, the real item, the original letter.”
SEVENTEEN
Eight o’clock Saturday morning, and I’m planted in my favorite chair in the large den of the bungalow I call home, tucked away on Coronado Island.
For the most part, my house is now a sanctuary, safe ground from the snarling media, though occasionally one of the satellite news vans will cruise by to take a look. It doesn’t matter any longer whether your phone is unlisted or your mail is delivered to a post-office box—these people will find you. It’s the one thing you learn about the media: They possess an olfactory nerve that would shame a bloodhound. And as soon as one of them locates you, the rest of the pack is right behind.
I had to live with it for about two weeks just before the trial started. Three mobile video trucks blocking traffic on the narrow street in front of my house, my lawn littered with cigarette butts and decorated with discarded paper coffee cups. Each morning I had to wave, smile, and be polite, since they were filming as I tried to bulldoze my way out of the garage, heading for work.
This was before they met Suki. Suki Kenoko is my Japanese gardener. He drives a 1957 Dodge pickup that once belonged to the original owner, his father. This accounts for the sign on the truck’s door: KENOKO AND SON, YARD SERVICE. Hitched to the truck, he tows a trailer with all his gardening equipment—mowers, rakes, you name it, Suki’s got it. Behind the wheel he never drives faster than ten miles an hour. I can verify this, having been stuck more than once in the train of cars behind him. Regardless of speed, however, you never want to cross an intersection in front of him, because until Suki gets where he’s going, he never stops. It doesn’t matter if there is a stop sign or a traffic light or what the color is, Suki will drive right through it, and everybody on this end of the island knows it. To my knowledge, he has never been ticketed. None of the local traffic cops want the hassle. Suki owns one of the more stately houses on the island, and his brother, who is a lawyer, is on the city council.
Late one afternoon I thought I might inherit another case when Suki showed up to do the garden. He looked at the front lawn, strewn with coffee cups and crushed Coke cans, cigarette butts in the bushes. For a moment I thought there might be blood in the street. He just stood there like a stick in his tan long-sleeved shirt and pith helmet, shoulders hunched forward, and shook his head.
It’s true that you would have to know the man in order to realize that for Suki this was a display of raw emotion; think rattlesnake with the rattles removed. Nonetheless, one of the sound guys was sitting in a folding chair not ten feet from Suki’s trailer, and he was laughing—toying with death.
Suki dropped the ramp on the back of the trailer and was getting a rake and a bag to get all the trash off the lawn. That’s when he saw it. One of the cameramen had migrated with some of his equipment—a camera, a tripod, and cables—into a corner of the front yard, probably angling for a picture through one of my windows. In doing so the guy had snapped a limb off a small tree, a miniature Japanese maple. God help him. Suki wanted him out. And the fool resisted. The next thing I knew, my gardener was going at one of the legs on the camera’s tripod with a large, curved pruning saw, a thing about eighteen inches long, sprouting glinting teeth like Jaws.
Confronted by Asian fury, they not only moved the camera, they moved themselves across the street and behind one of the vans. The tripod, which like Captain Ahab was now missing the better part of one leg, Suki calmly tossed into the street. It was followed a second later by the missing appendage. Through all this the gardener never said a word.
What was more amazing was that after days resting on their haunches outside waiting for something to film, not one of the news guys got a picture, not a single frame of the helmeted, saw-wielding ninja as he drove them out of the yard. They stayed huddled behind the van while Suki picked up the trash, mowed the lawn, and pruned some bushes. They didn’t come out until the truck with the trailer, and the crazy guy driving it, left.
The day the trial started, the gypsy caravan camped in front of my house pulled up stakes and disappeared. Having missed the only pictures worth taking, they motored their movable feast back across the bridge to catch the rock-throwing Renaissance faire taking shape out in front of the courthouse.
I drink tea, Earl Grey, and scan the coroner’s report, prepping for Monday’s testimony. Across the room I have the television on, but with the sound muted. It is a much more peaceful way to catch cable news, without all the frenetic screaming. If somebody blows up a city, I can turn up the sound. Otherwise I’m not missing a thing.
This morning the screen is filled with election news, the presidential primaries, flashes of smiling faces, handshaking, and toothy grins, the political postmortems. Two Republicans and one Democrat are down and out, folding up their tents and tossing in the towel. But the real day of reckoning is just around the bend. The final state primary elections or caucuses. When that party ends, you’ll need a dump truck to pick up all the bunting, banners, buttons, and body parts left over from the fallen candidates. If it isn’t decided by then, within weeks—at most a month—the two principal party candidates, the nominees, will be the only ones left standing.
Then hostilities will begin in earnest, partisan warfare, politics as blood sport, all that matters is that our side wins, at every level, all the marbles—executive, legislative, and judicial.
When it’s over, all the eminent talking heads will wax eloquent, telling us that now, with a new president elected, America and Americans, Democrat and Republican, will once again return to the great tradition of unity, binding up their differences to work together for the common good.
It might have sounded comforting coming from a network anchor a quarter of a century ago or more, but to hear it today is to wonder what weed the speaker is smoking and where he got it. In case you haven’t noticed, the toxin of partisan politics that was once trapped inside the asylum on the Potomac and bottled up in a few other political hot spots around the country has suddenly been pumped, undiluted, into the national vein.
Cable news, mu
ch of it political and almost all of that partisan; talk radio, some of it virulent; the graceless decline of network news, until it stood undisguised, naked and seemingly unashamed in its ideological partiality; and major metropolitan newspapers, too many of which have given up the ghost of objectivity in their reporting to become obvious and open house organs for political parties—these were the forces that pushed the plunger on the syringe.
Having been flushed from our lives of political indolence, we suddenly discover that it is no longer possible to cast a vote and run for the sidelines. So we choose up sides, pin on labels—conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican—and become emotionally invested in the only thing that is important: winning.
And of course the contest, as always, is all or nothing, a tug-of-war to see if we can rip the nation down the middle.
I watch the silent happy-warrior faces on the screen and wonder. In the age of e-mail and the Internet blogger, how long can we survive before those at the polar lunatic edges drag us all to a future where differences in politics and social ideology are settled Beirut style?
The phone rings. I reach over on the side table and answer it. It’s Harry.
“I didn’t call,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet.”
“Houston, we’ve got a problem,” says Harry. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” The line goes dead. Harry must be calling from his cell phone in the car.
We huddle over my kitchen table, and Harry tells me about the state’s two witnesses, Carl’s friends from skinhead heaven, Charlie Gross and Walter Henoch. Actually, the problem pertains to only one of them, but it’s big enough to go nuclear if we play it wrong.
The bad news came in a sealed envelope from the prosecutor that was delivered to our office yesterday afternoon. If Harry hadn’t gone back there, we wouldn’t have seen it until Monday morning.
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