by Alan Hruska
Alec sits next to him. “Brains?”
“I’m talking about something important.”
“Ability? Experience?”
“Christ!” Braddock says. “You people don’t get it. Reputation! You need a rep! How can you be a great trial lawyer when no one’s ever heard of you?”
“I haven’t been doing this very long,” Alec says.
Braddock makes a deprecating sound. “When I was your age, I’d already tried high-profile cases. Got lots of press. See! That’s what you need. People reading your name in the newspapers. You don’t have to be any good. You just need the ink. It makes people think you’re good. You following this?”
Alec nods.
“You nervous?” Braddock asks.
Alec’s look denies it.
“Litigation, you know, is just sublimated violence.”
Alec, laughing, says, “Violence runs in my family.”
“Then you’re suited to the work.”
“You understand,” says Alec, “with Mac in Miami, I’m the only lawyer from the firm who’s in that courtroom.”
“And what? You consider yourself understaffed?”
“No. I can handle it.”
“Then why the fuck are you wasting my time?” Braddock says, rising to his feet.
“Right,” Alec says, watching the old warrior head back toward his limo.
But then Braddock turns with a thought. “What’s the name of that wiretapper?”
“Carl Raffon,” Alec says.
“You want him in court?” Braddock asks.
“We have his affidavit.”
Braddock consults his watch, then the heavens. “Okay,” he says and heads off.
Alec, having taken the stairs two at a time to the second floor of the courthouse, realizes he’s in a sweat. He heads toward the men’s room, douses his face with water. Stares hard at his image in the mirror. Tense.
He makes for the counsel room. During lunchtime it’s deserted. He pulls the stack of documents out of his briefcase. The top three, the ones he went back for, he deals to the table and stares at without comprehension. What he sees in his mind is Richardson’s smug face. Then he focuses, and knows what to do.
Someone has left that morning’s New York Times on a chair. Alec cuts out a story at random, brings the clipping to the Ozalid copying machine set up in the room and reproduces it on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven copying paper. Now he’s ready for the two lying bastards inside.
Judge Locklear, reassuming the bench, looks downward. “Mr. Bruno?”
Alec stands. He feels a curious, euphoric sensation. No nerves—they’ve miraculously vanished. In their place, a little adrenaline, which is good, and confidence, which is splendid. “Burr-know, your Honor. And I do have some questions for Mr. Tierney.”
The judge looks surprised, then indulgent. “Do try to leave the table intact, son.”
A wave of courtroom laughter washes over Alec, reddening his face but doing no damage.
“Yes, your Honor.”
Alec crosses over to the court reporter, handing him a document.
“I ask the reporter to mark as Biogram’s Exhibit 1 for identification—and show to the witness—an affidavit sworn to by a Mr. Carl Raffon.”
Alec waits as the document is stamped and given to Tierney who glances at it briefly with disdain. Tierney’s a homely man with a pockmarked, bulldog face, but he seems to take such pleasure in his own appearance one is led to believe something pleasurable might actually be found there.
“Mr. Tierney, do you personally know Mr. Raffon?”
“Do you mean, have I met with him? I have no such recollection.”
“Really!” says Alec, removing another document from the top of his stack. He holds it up, glances through it, finds the place that he wants. “You don’t remember meeting him some years ago, and referring to him as a ‘possibly useful fellow?’”
Tierney, now wary, studies Alec anew. Does the document actually say that? Uncertainty marks the witness’s demeanor. “No,” he says finally.
Alec again swoops down on the reporter. “I ask that this document be marked as Biogram’s Exhibit 2 for identification, and be shown to the witness. The question, Mr. Tierney, is, does it refresh your recollection?”
The reporter dutifully stamps the one sheet of paper and places it before Tierney who regards it as something repellent.
Alec waits. The judge waits less patiently. Tierney finally picks up the memo. Perusing it, he finds something he likes.
“As it happens, it does refresh my recollection. It seems I did meet with Raffon. And I also recall—as it says here—that he worked on projects for a lot of major companies in addition to mine.”
“Okay. You remember there was a meeting. I want you to read paragraphs eight and nine of the affidavit where Raffon describes what was said at that meeting. And then tell us, Mr. Tierney, whether those sworn statements are untrue.”
Richardson rises to object, his manner condescending. “We’ve been over this, your Honor. Asked and answered. Mr. Tierney’s already testified he recalls no such conversation.”
“That’s not quite what he said,” says the judge. “In any event, I’m going to allow this. You may answer, Mr. Tierney.”
“Well, all right,” says Tierney, shifting into a friendlier pose. “There was a conversation with Raffon about his doing an investigation of Biogram. We were in litigation with those people. So naturally…. But if he tapped anyone’s wires…. I never authorized that. He did that on his own. He was way out ahead of himself.” Big phony smile. “Okay? Got what you wanted? Can I go back to work now?”
Alec feels a jerking on his sleeve. It’s Jed, who pulls him into a hurried whispered conference.
“Stop here! You’ve got enough, Alec. Go further, you could lose it.”
Alec nods—it’s the safe course—but when he straightens up, he sees Tierney’s look of triumph. “Had you ever used Raffon before this job?” Alec asks.
Tierney displays his disgust: “I don’t believe so.”
“Had you used other investigators with whom you were satisfied?”
Tierney glances at the judge, as if to ask to be relieved of this annoyance, but gets only a stony stare in return. With a sigh of tedium being borne, he says, “My company is… large. Large companies use investigators. Some of them do satisfactory work.”
“So before the Biogram job, you had had satisfactory experience with other investigators and no experience with Raffon, yet you hired Raffon.”
To Tierney’s discomfit, Alec picks another document from his stack and fixes his eyes on it for a moment. “Had you ever personally been informed by a memorandum that Raffon’s specialty was wiretapping? In fact,” says Alec, running his finger along the bottom of a line, “that the man was incapable of doing anything else?”
Tierney, twisting a bit in his chair, cannot resist a swift glance at his lawyer. And Richardson cannot resist giving a negative signal, a slight twitch of the head.
Now Tierney has two problems. The signal’s ambiguous. Does it mean, No, he’s bluffing, he has no such document, so you’re free to lie? Or does it mean, No, don’t lie, he has such a document. Far worse, the signal, whatever it meant, was seen by the judge.
“Mr. Richardson,” intones Judge Locklear, causing the back of the lawyer’s smooth neck to splotch purple and red. “I want to see you at the break. And let me remind you, sir,” he rasps at Tierney, “that you are under oath.” Locklear turns to the court reporter. “Read back the question.”
“I’ll repeat it, your Honor,” says Alec, waving the document warningly before him. “Had you been told, Mr. Tierney, that Raffon’s only specialty was wiretapping?”
Tierney stares at Richardson, who looks away.
“Yes,” says Tierney, with barely suppressed fury.
“So for the Biogram job,” says Alec, “you personally hired a known wiretapper?”
“Yes!” Tierney fairly spits the word in Alec’s
direction.
“I have no further questions of this witness, your Honor,” Alec says, turning the document down on its face.
Judge Locklear looks curious. “You want to offer that exhibit in evidence, son?”
“Be no point, your Honor. It has nothing to do with this lawsuit.”
TWELVE
In another, smaller courtroom on the second floor, Carrie Madigan stands waiting with dark, wondering eyes. Another judge—another tired, black-robed middle-aged man—studies her file with increasing consternation. His turning of pages is the only distinct sound. Carrie’s hands drift now and then to objects on the counsel table or to the buttons of her blue dress. An assistant district attorney, approximately the judge’s age, fidgets beside her. The room is otherwise empty except for the bailiff, standing to the judge’s right, and one large dude, sleek as a Buddha, seated on the aisle in the last row of benches. The sun lowering through the window catches his cufflink diamond, the glint making the judge raise his head.
“The People’s recommendation is a bit surprising, Miss Madigan, this being your second offense. However. If they see some hope for you….” The judge glances again at the papers with mixed weariness and disbelief. “Probation, then,” he says, looking sharply at the ADA. “Three months. Straighten it out, Miss! Get yourself into rehab! This is a courtroom, not a revolving door.”
“All rise!” says the bailiff, although only the large man in back had not already done so.
The ADA, traversing the aisle, bestows on the man a slight smile of acknowledgement and a small squeeze of the shoulder. Carrie, observing the exchange, is taken aback and not pleased by it.
Her displeasure flares when she finds the man following her ponderously into the corridor outside the courtroom. “Did you fix this?” she says, turning on him. “Is this Phil’s doing?”
“No, to the second.” His manner and voice imply the absurdity of the question.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” she says.
“A very small amount of your time,” he says. “Given the circumstances.” As she stares at him, he adds, “My name is Harvey Grand.”
Alec, at that moment, rushes out of his courtroom, trailed by a pack of reporters. “Look,” he says. “I told you guys. What was in that document is not for publication.”
“I saw it,” says a reporter with a lumpy nose. “Some article from the sports page. I’m gonna print that. I assume you’re not going to deny.”
What the hell is Harvey doing here with that young woman?
“Later, okay?” says Alec. “Someone there I’ve got to talk to.”
Alec strides across the hall. “Harvey,” he says, with his eyes now entirely on Carrie. “Careful of this guy.”
“What about you?” she says.
His smile is quick. “I’m real easy.”
Harvey says, “Carrie Madigan, Alec Brno.” Then, to Alec, as the two continue to pay him no attention, “You get to use that Raffon affidavit?”
“That was you? Getting Raffon to sign?”
“Who the hell do you think?”
“You did good. I mean it.” Alec looks at his watch. “Gotta get back to the office.” Turning once more to Carrie, “Harvey’ll have your number, right?
“I don’t even know this guy,” she says.
With a laugh, Alec gives Carrie his client routine. “This was a great first briefing, but I’ll need to see you again.” Heading off, he gives her his warmest smile.
“Okay,” she says, bemused by it.
Alec moves toward the stairs, jabbing his finger in a gesture to Harvey and silently mouthing the words, “Get her number!”
THIRTEEN
Fifteen minutes of fame. Page eight of the News, which would boost any young lawyer’s reputation. Page six of the Post, which was more a slam at Tierney for having been so easily taken in. Page three of the Times business section, which might mean more to the people who, to Alec, count. Like the firm’s partners who now seem to know who he is. Or his fellow associates, some of whom, strangely, now seem not to want to. Or maybe Carrie Madigan, whose number, it turns out, is for a phone that’s been disconnected.
Everything published on the case is read with interest by a fifty-six-year-old former union organizer on Long Island. He hasn’t just clipped the stories; he’s saving the whole papers, including the one he’s carrying with him to an interview at the Syosset shopping center. But he’s carrying that one because of the classifieds.
He parks an old Ford coupe a few yards from a storefront occupied by a firm called Syosset Security and rings the bell for admittance. He’s a tall man with a bit of a stoop, yet wiry and with a full head of sandy hair, belying an overall appearance that is older than his years. At the welcoming buzzer, he enters.
Abigail Vaccaro, a trim woman of forty-nine, stands up from her desk. “Are you Sam?”
“I am.”
“Sounds like the Dr. Seuss.”
“The who?”
“That’s another Dr. Seuss.”
He looks puzzled.
“I’m talking children’s books—Green Eggs and Ham? Horton Hears a Who!? Didn’t you read Dr. Seuss to your kids?”
“Never heard of him.”
Two people standing, which is awkward to begin with, so both try to think what to say.
She asks, “You have kids?”
“A son,” he says.
“Well,” she says, sitting, beckoning to the chair in front of her desk. “You’re here for the job. Let’s talk about that.”
He plunks down on the indicated chair, trying not to be distracted by her fine features, hazel eyes, plentiful freckles, or literary references. “Good enough,” he says, extracting a Camel, holding it up. “Mind?”
“No,” she says, passing a metal ashtray.
He takes it, lights up.
“You killed a man,” she says. “That I might mind. We should start there.”
Big puff of smoke. “Right.”
“You weren’t prosecuted.”
“No.”
“Self-defense?”
“It was a fistfight. He had a hemorrhage. It was waiting to happen. I didn’t know that. Neither, I’m sure, did he.”
She sits back, runs one hand through a mane of undyed salt-and-pepper hair. He likes trim figures and admires hers.
She says, “You wrote about this on the form you dropped off. I thought, when I put on the form ‘anything else I should know,’ I’d get a lot of self-congratulatory bullshit. ‘I killed a man’—that’s different.”
“I thought you should hear it from me.”
“Good thinking. But you’re still a risk.”
“I can see why you’d think so.”
“He was a security guard, the guy you killed?”
“Yes.”
“Does that have anything to do with your application here?”
“No.”
“Why are you applying?”
“Need the work.” He drops an ash in the tray.
“Just read the ad, called, came in?”
“That’s right.”
Her mouth scrunches up in thought. “Ever work for a security company?”
“Haven’t, no.”
“Are you a college graduate?”
“No.”
“High school?”
“No.”
“You don’t seem to be an uneducated man.”
“I read a lot. Though not children’s books.”
“Self-educated,” she says.
“You might say.”
“Can you be trusted with weapons?”
“I know my way around weapons.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Am I likely to use ’em?” he says, taking another deep puff of the Camel. “No.”
“To defend your own life?”
“Well, there, hard to say.”
“You wouldn’t fire a gun to protect yourself?”
“Possibly not.”
“Someon
e else?”
“Maybe. Depending.”
She studies him. “Do you know what the word laconic means?”
Sam smiles. “Yes.”
“You want a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” Sam says.
She gets up again. “Then let’s go out and get one.”
There’s a coffee and bagel shop a storefront away that’s been fashioned from an old-style diner. They sit at a booth in a window.
After a great deal of thought, she leans forward. “I should think that incident would render you almost unemployable.”
“It has,” he says.
“So why’d you tell me about it? I might never have found out.”
“I said.”
“I know. Still a risk. Why should I take it?”
He shrugs.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Well, I didn’t want the fight.”
“He came at you?”
“With a bat.”
“What were you doing, that he came at you?”
“Talking to the men.”
“Where?”
“In the company cafeteria.”
“You were warned off?”
“I was always warned off.”
“So this was where, some industrial plant?”
“Steel plant in Akron.”
“You always worked for the steel union?”
“Up to then.”
“After?”
“Dockworkers. New Jersey.”
She nods at that knowingly. “How long?”
“Couple of months?”
“What happened?” she asks.
“I didn’t like who was running the union.”
“The mob. You didn’t know that going in?”
“It was the job available. I thought I’d try keeping my distance.”
“Didn’t work?”
“No.”
She reflects for a moment. “You have another one of those cigarettes?”
“Sure.” He takes two out, hands her one, lights hers, then his, watches her inhale, figures she’s a regular smoker.
“What did your father do?” she asks.
“Is that relevant?”
“I’m looking for… something.”
“You probably won’t find it there.”
Her look presses the question.