Turning to address the prospective jurors, he smiled, his warmth embracing them, gathering them into his confidence. “I am sure that you intend to discharge your duty with open minds, but in our society these days we are constantly assailed by pernicious influences.”
Fearing what was coming next, Max strained to make out the rolled-up daily’s masthead.
“A person of the highest respectability may be blackened,” Howe continued, slapping the newspaper rhythmically now, “smeared, mocked, held up to scorn, his reputation torn to shreds, libeled with impunity. Imagine that your name was suddenly printed in tall letters on the front page of a scandal sheet that millions relished with their coffee and hotcakes every morning? You with your hard-working spouse, your devoted children. How could you fight back against such a tremendous force? The answer is, you couldn’t. You’d be shunned by your neighbors, ostracized at work, ruffians would taunt your little boy at school every day. There would be no escape, no defense.”
With agonized care he unrolled the Herald he had been clutching and then slowly, holding it up, paraded back and forth before the jury box. Pausing, he set his massive jaw and stared furiously at Max, who did his best to remain frozen, fearing that his slightest reaction would reveal his identity to everyone.
Quoting from “POORER CLASSES STARVE CATS,” Howe’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “The reporter refers to my client’s so-called ‘ghoulish career.’ She has spent a lifetime in philanthropy, and he sniggers that she crawls around in basements. What sort of vile, bottom-feeding crab would poison the public mind like this? So I ask only one question. Have any of you prospective jurors seen this newspaper headline?”
Max’s head was spinning. Howe’s attack was so forceful he wondered if he’d committed some heinous crime without quite knowing it. Of course the attorney’s charges were ridiculous. He’d been reporting a story and had gotten his facts straight, too. Yet, wasn’t there a kernel of truth in Howe’s indictment?
Max could sense, in his own moral vertigo, William H. Howe’s genius.
Several hands shot up. Howe shook his head in deep sadness. “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”
Quickly, the judge dismissed Howe’s intended targets. Each time the jury box refilled, Howe held up the offending headlines and weeded out the Heralds faithful. Each time he glared furiously at Max, who would have been happy to slink out of the courtroom and disappear forever. By the time Howe had exhausted his challenges, he had built a jury filled with Tribune, Times, or World readers, or those who read nothing at all. Even Pulitzer’s rag had shown more sympathy for Mrs. Edwards than the Herald.
“He’s manipulated their minds nicely, don’t you think?” Biddle whispered.
“You mean the ones who are left?” Keeping an eye on Howe, Max rose from his seat, determined to cut him off before he escaped the courtroom.
“Exactly. They think you’ve crucified her, you heardess bastard.”
Max never felt entirely comfortable when crucifixion came up, especially when he was accused of pounding the nails. He managed a strained laugh.
“Well, let’s fly. Time for lunch!” Nick announced.
Max already saw Biddle scavenging the menu for the most expensive wines, the milk-fed veal, the rum-soaked cakes. How could he say no? It was impossible. Why didn’t the old operator just turn him upside-down and shake the coins out of his pocket? He could filch all of Max’s money that way and skip the preliminaries.
“Do you have a fever? Let’s go! Willy’s taking us to Pontin’s. He always pays!”
chapter twenty
In William H. Howe’s wake, the party threaded through Pontin’s crowded tables of judges, lawyers, well-connected felons, and the rest of the legal system’s upper echelons. Of course, Howe and Hummel only dined in their back-room domain. This chamber contained two tables, one always reserved for the partners. There, between courses, the two lawyers split cash receipts for which they kept no records.
A group of distinguished-looking men in high collars filled the second table. The buoyant Howe greeted them as he passed by.
“Judge, judge, judge, judge,” Howe called out gaily.
“Judge, judge, judge,” the more reserved Hummel lisped.
“How’s your back, Harry?” Howe inquired.
The Honorable Harry Thompson craned his neck, looked over at the boat-sized Howe and cackled. “As nasty as yours, Bill. But no worse.”
Howe snatched a bottle of wine from the old jurist’s table and squinted at its label. “A good grape. I’ve had it.” He patted Thompson on the back, returned the botde and sailed on.
After the four men sat down, Howe leaned over to his guests and whispered, “Remarkable. The entire Second Circuit, plus Harry. Usually a few are missing.”
“Very handy,” the poker-faced Hummel added. Seated next to Howe, his shoulders impossibly narrow, Hummel looked like a child with a middle-aged-man’s head.
How could Max fail to be impressed? He had penetrated the inner sanctum. What inside deals had been orchestrated right at this table? Tammany masters Kelly and Croker must have consulted here over hors d’oeuvres. Howe may have wined and dined Bennett or Barrymore in this very room. Both men, it was rumored, had received Howe and Hummel subpoenas in defense of chorus-girl honor, and each continued to employ the firm anyway. Nick Biddle insisted that Hummel always acted with perfect honor in these cases, never suing the same victim twice. That the firm preyed on its own clients was one thing, but the lawyers’ sense of fun in the act spoke to their genius. That the clients stayed loyal to their extortionists only added to Howe and Hummel’s glory.
Certainly, Howe had entertained Police Superintendent Byrnes regularly at Pontin’s. Think of the tips, the secretive chats, the riches of gossip, stories, and piquant details Howe might offer up if Max gained his good graces. William H. Howe wasn’t a source, he was the ultimate source: instigator, defender, and raw appetite combined. His labored breathing reminded Max of a steam engine chugging into an El station. His shrewd eyes, set in pockets of fat, recalled a faro dealer s. His gentle smiles brought to mind the settlement-house idealist. His faint Cockney accent suggested his murky past.
Max couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s endlessly shifting features. What he wouldn’t give to discover the real story of William H. Howe. Had he been a doctor in England, as rumor had it? Was he a former convict? Or were his British inflections an affectation covering low domestic origins?
A flunky in a cutaway came by offering fine cigars. Biddle snatched two. Long-toothed, his limp gray hair yellowing, the old reporter looked more unhealthy than ever.
Howe snapped his fingers and quickly ordered two bottles of Rhine wine. “Send Judge Thompson another bottle too, eh?” Without missing a beat, he went on. “Ah, Norwegian anchovies, very nice for an appetizer. Abie, they’ve got your Broiled Kingfish. I recommend the Timbal of Blackcock, comes with a chestnut puree. Ohhh, Spring Lamb with mint sauce. Hard to turn that down, eh? Keep an eye on Abie, make sure he doesn’t stuff himself.”
After their first glass, Biddle said, “You may have been too clever by half in there, Willy.”
Max, who had been surrendering to the sweet vintage, snapped to attention.
“How so?” Howe propped his bull’s head up on his fist and waited attentively.
“Well, for one thing, one or two of our faithful Herald readers might have slipped into the jury anyway, but they weren’t going to admit it. You left a mick there who’s a nice bet. Face like the map of Ireland. Now that he’s on the jury, he’s got it in for you because he thinks you’re talking down to him. He likes our headlines, and he doesn’t want some bloviating lawyer preaching him the gospel.”
“You may have a point,” Howe mused. “But I think you’re mistaken. Whoever saw my client so unjustly pilloried in your paper,” he argued, offering Max a conspiratorial smile, “will want to prove how unbiased he is, and therefore bend over backwards in favor of Mrs. Edwards.”
“We’ll turn ‘em,” Hummel added.
“Wait for Abie’s cross-examination. He’s a rat catcher if there ever was one. By the way, Mr. Greengrass, I’d like to apologize for being so inaccessible. I did get your notes. We’re just drowning in cases, and I like to go home and see my little daughter once in a blue moon. My family is my religion.”
Max hadn’t considered Howe’s sacred family life. “I know how busy you are.”
“Nick says you’re a comer.”
Was that why he’d been invited? So that the lawyers could weigh his potential? Howe’s inflated face floated before him, filling his field of vision. Max flushed. “Nick’s the authority.”
From the attorney’s perspective, he imagined, he’d already demonstrated his receptivity. He’d taken the money from Mourtone, and he’d followed Howe’s directions and found the Negro in the barrel. He probably looked like a good investment. Was he? Did he know himself?
Ashes streaked the rheumy-eyed Biddle’s lapels. Was Max gazing at his own future? A wash of bile scorched the back of his throat. At the same time, Howe mesmerized him. If he penetrated the lawyer’s secrets, wouldn’t he gain some special, almost mystical knowledge of the city’s soul? This corrupt, life-loving, murderous, charming, deceptive monster, comic and tragedian rolled into one, was New York itself.
“Willy has a cottage in the country,” Biddle put in.
“When the Metropolitan extends the line to the wilds of Yonkers, I may be able to get home at night.”
Taken aback, Max wrestled with the idea of the ruddy-faced Howe, who was built for roaring in concert saloons, being attached to a wife and child.
The lawyer continued with thick sincerity. “At any rate, I’m sorry my contact gave you such poor information. I’m sure you know the matter’s settled now.”
Max assumed that “the matter’ included Martin’s funeral. This was the way it was done. Howe could blow him off for the price of a meal. How could he interrogate the attorney in public, especially while accepting his largesse? What could he say, anyway? Martin had died somewhere or other, and been buried a plaster saint. And Max had banked Mourtone’s five hundred, however queasy it made him feel. Still, he didn’t want to surrender so easily.
“I heard the eulogy was a big hit.”
Howe shot Max an avid look. “The Reverend Weems is a talented man.”
“It’s a big town. Was it so easy to turn up the lost article?”
Howe’s eyes were shining now. He was thoroughly enjoying the interrogation. “I hear Superintendent Byrnes can find a pearl in an outhouse.”
“There was the matter of the barrel. I don’t suppose Byrnes is pursuing that, is he?”
Tacitly, Howe accepted Max’s assumption. “What can he do when he has so little to work with?”
At least they’d setded that matter. Byrnes wouldn’t investigate, which made the Negro’s murder all the more compelling. “And he’s busy with Junior Gould’s tips, too.” Byrnes had been close to the Goulds, arch stock manipulators, for years.
The lawyer was beaming openly at him now, and he couldn’t help feeling that he’d passed some obscure examination.
Howe’s Lobster Victoria arrived, and he fell to it. Cutlery flashed and for a while the lawyer forgot philosophy. Biddle ate with his face close to the plate, while Hummel demonstrated a slashing attack, putting away far more of his kingfish than Max had expected.
During a pause between courses, Biddle said, “I never saw you work both sides of the street like this, Willy.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nick means,” Hummel interjected, aiming a fork at Biddle’s throat, “that we don’t usually represent his sort of people.”
Biddle turned pale. In a placating tone, he said, “Not at all, Abe. Just making a joke.”
Could Hummel, with his slight body and immobile features, be the firm’s true power? As a nine-year-old boy, he had made his first dollar selling water to Union Army soldiers bivouacked in Tompkins Square Park. He had hawked potatoes, oranges, and neckties to stay alive before Howe took him in as an office boy. Yet in a few years he was practicing law, and in no time he had become a full partner.
“I may employ a few sharp practices,” Hummel allowed, pulling up his sleeves to display brilliant shirt cuffs. “But I’m a clean sonofabitch.”
Hummel’s white line of a mouth gave nothing away. He could be joking, he could be making a threat.
“The street has no sides, Nick,” Howe interceded. “That’s strictly an illusion. Christian love binds us all.”
They cruised through the entrees, the legumes, the rotis—Max chose a delicious roast capon—and finished off with entremets, Baba Au Rhum, Genoises Glacees, and Amandine Souvenirs. Cheese, fruit, and demitasse rounded out the fare.
By the time Howe announced their departure, even Max, with his ferocious appetite, could barely move. His host demonstrated far more stamina, however. Sprinkling water on his face, then patting his high flush down with a cloth napkin, Howe led the way down the sidewalk.
“Opening statements, gentlemen!”
chapter twenty-one
Howe began by talking about horses.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, once upon a time on the streets of our city, day after day, we witnessed cruelty in the person of helpless beasts that were whipped, beaten, overloaded, and left out all night in the elements. More often than not, their owners, brutes of the lowest order, neglected to feed and water their animals. These tormented creatures hauled thousands of pounds of our goods and carried us around without complaint, but when they died on their feet, when their corpses grew fat at our curbsides, we barely noticed. We didn’t know how to see them.” Howe paused.
“What the hell is he talking about?” Max whispered to Biddle.
“He’ll get there, don’t worry.”
During the long pause, several jurors shifted to the edges of their seats.
“We didn’t know how to see them, and we felt no shame until a single man came along to open our eyes. You’ve heard of that man, Henry Bergh, a well-off gentleman who might have spent his life clipping coupons and drinking champagne. Instead, he looked around him and saw dumb beasts in a world of pain. And from that moment on, for twenty-five years, he gave them a voice.” Howe’s voice fell to a theatrical whisper. “And what did these inarticulate creatures say?”
Pausing, the attorney scanned the jury. Immobile, eyes wide, they gaped at him.
“They said, ‘We are cold, give us shelter.'They said, ‘We are hungry, give us clean food.'They said, ‘We are sick, give us doctors.'They said, ‘We are old, let us rest.’ Henry Bergh didn’t rest. He wrote letters to the great publications. He gave speeches. He raised funds. He went up to Albany to argue with legislators. He founded a great organization we take for granted nowadays, the ASPCA.”
Though Max knew quite well that Howe was giving a performance, he was moved anyway. In fact, he could barely stand looking at the straining crosstown horsecar teams himself. Their bulging eyes, their sucking, desperate breathing transfixed him.
“In Mr. Bergh’s waning years,” Howe went on ruefully, “my client, Mrs. Edwards, worked at his side.”
Biddle nudged Max with his cane.
“And now she stands charged with committing the same acts of humanity that made Mr. Bergh so revered in our city. He is gone now, but Mrs. Edwards and her friends have taken up his tattered banner. For this, the authorities have cast this dedicated, respectable woman into the Tombs.”
Flinging his arm out in a sudden, violent gesture, Howe cast his client into that celebrated torture chamber. Her chin lifted, Mrs. Edwards didn’t move a muscle. Howe had already carved her statue. Max gazed around the courtroom. Several women—cat lovers, no doubt—were crying softly. How could a man who believed so little make his audience care so much?
Assistant District Attorney Williams, a husky young man in steel-rimmed glasses, rose to parry Howe’s remarks. His modest demeanor stood in such sta
rk contrast to the lawyer’s melodramatic performance that it acted as a silent rebuke.
“Counsel has made a brilliant beginning. No doubt he has tugged at your heartstrings, a skill for which he is highly compensated. What is fascinating about his presentation, however, is everything he left out. Conveniently, he overlooked his client’s three thousand crimes.”
Williams paused, fiddled with his glasses, stared down at the floorboards, his distaste palpable. “You look shocked, but the number is by her own admission. Relentless and unfeeling, she has waged a campaign to snuff out the lives of innocent animals all over town. Particularly the cats of citizens least able to defend them. Mrs. Edwards has the funds to hire expensive lawyers. The people have only their public servants, but I intend to show highly documented cases of this woman’s illegal actions and wanton cruelty.”
“He’s got some talent,” Biddle commented after Williams completed his opening statement.
Howe, who had shaken his head sadly several times during his adversary’s argument, rose to make a request.
“Your Honor, if the court pleases, I would like to add the Reverend Weems to my list of character witnesses.”
“Any objection, Mr. Williams?”
Evidently already apprised of Howe’s move, Williams parried. “Mrs. Edwards’s cousin? None, Your Honor. If I may introduce my first witness?”
“That Weems?” Max asked Biddle.
The old reporter’s laughter turned into a tit of coughing.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing, nothing. What do you say? These damn goo-goos are all related!”
Assistant District Attorney Williams presented a straightforward case. First, he called Officer Connolly, the arresting officer. A bluff man with hazel eyes and a golden brown moustache, he appeared in a freshly ironed uniform, shirt and tie. A courtroom veteran, he marched to the witness box and arranged himself in a military posture.
The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 19