Glitsky 02 - Guilt

by John Lescroart

  But Thomasino was shaking his head. 'Not during an opening statement, Mr Farrell. You control your client and let Ms Jenkins finish up, and if there are any more interruptions, I'll hold you in contempt. How's that - clear?'

  'What the hell was that? What are you trying to do, kill yourself out there?'

  Farrell, in their tiny room across the street, was himself now nearly out of control. There was spittle on his lips and he seemed almost struck with palsy - now pacing, now hovering in front of his client. Dooher, again, had hoisted himself up on to the desk. He was swinging his feet, relaxed. Christina stood at the window, arms crossed over her chest.

  Thomasino was going to allow Jenkins all the time she needed to wrap up her opening statement, but it turned out that she only made it another ten minutes before she asked for a recess. Dooher's interruption had pole-axed her, and what had begun as a reasonably compelling recital of events had degenerated into a disjointed shopping list of purported evidence whose relevance and connection seemed to elude Jenkins herself. She kept referring to her notes, stumbling over her words, until she finally gave it up.

  'Wes, relax,' Dooher said, 'it's all right. You're going to have a heart attack.'

  'You're goddamn right I'm going to have a heart attack. I deserve a heart attack. What were you doing in there? What was that all about? How could you lose your temper like that?'

  Dooher actually broke a grin. 'I didn't.'

  'This is funny? There's a joke here maybe I'm missing?'

  'I didn't lose my temper, Wes.'

  'Well, damn, Mark, that was one hell of an imitation.'

  Christina came forward, daring to speak for the first time since Wes had dressed down both Mark and herself for their incredible stupidity and duplicity and every other negativity he could think of over the kiss. She talked to Dooher. 'What do you mean, you didn't lose your temper?'

  He turned to her, palms up. The grin faded. 'It was an act. I thought it would humanize me for the jury.'

  Farrell seemed to sag and let out a chuckle without a trace of humor in it. His eyes went to Christina, back to the client. 'This is what, in the trade, we call a bad idea. What it did for the jury, Mark, was made you look like a guy with no respect for the law, some kind of hot-head...'

  'Wait wait wait! Don't you see?'

  'I don't see. Christina, do you see?'

  She didn't answer.

  Dooher included them both. 'All right. I'll spell it out. Jenkins is up there painting this picture. I'm cold. I plan things to the nth degree. And here I am, sitting at the defense table trying to keep some kind of impassive face while Jenkins just goes on and on, lie after outrageous lie. So I react. Who wouldn't react? It's natural. What's unnatural is just sitting there, cold and unfeeling, playing,right into their hands. I wanted to show them who I was.'

  'Well, you did that.'

  'You're damn straight, Wes. I looked them right in the eye and told them none of it was true. You don't think that's going to have an effect?'

  'Oh, I'm sure it is. I just don't think it's going to be the one you wanted. Here you are, supposedly a good, practicing lawyer, and you're not showing respect for the system ...'

  'Because they got it wrong! Don't you see that? I've been falsely accused of something I didn't do and it's gotten all the way to this fiasco of a trial. How can I have respect for that? How can I even pretend to?'

  'But to yell at the jury!'

  'No, I didn't yell at the jury. I very carefully avoided doing that. I looked at them as people, and that's how they are going to see me.'

  Farrell glanced at Christina as though he would ask for her help, but simply shook his head.

  There was a knock on the door and Dooher slid off the desk and opened it. The cop from the Hall said that Judge Thomasino wanted to see Mr Farrell in his chambers, right now.

  Farrell stood. 'Why don't you two try to keep your hands off each other while I'm gone,' he said, and quit the room.

  Which left the two of them alone.

  Dooher turned. 'He's mad at us.'

  'There's a good call.'

  'I suppose I should have told him before I disrupted the sacred order of the court, but the moment just came and I took it. If I'd've warned Wes, he'd have counselled me not to do it anyway. What did you think?'

  'I don't know, Mark. I haven't done any other trials. I don't know how they play out. It shocked me when it happened, but now, hearing you explain it, it might work.'

  'It won't hurt me, I'm sure of that. That's not what Wes is mad about anyway.'

  She let herself down on to one of the wooden chairs. 'I know,' she said, 'it's us. But we told him we weren't going behind his back. It wasn't about the trial.'

  'He didn't believe us.'

  'You're the master of insight today, aren't you? First Wes is mad at us, and then Wes doesn't believe us.'

  'Maybe we should mend a few fences?'

  'I don't think that's a bad idea.'

  Mark went over to the window and separated the blinds, looking out over Bryant Street and downtown beyond. 'I'm just not willing to concede,' he said, 'that there's a telescopic-sight camera set up on Nob Hill, trained on this window.'

  He crossed back over to her and took her in his arms.

  Judge Thomasino's chambers were neither large nor imposing, furnished as they were in functional Danish. Three tall teak bookshelves closed in the walls, and various diplomas, honors, and commendations in wooden frames seemed to have been stuck randomly on the green drywall. A robust ficus sprawled in the corner by a large window. One of Remington's brass cowboys graced a broad teak coffee table, but that was the extent of the decorative touches. The rug was faded brown Berber over the Hall's linoleum.

  Jenkins and Glitsky were seated in low leather chairs in front of the Judge's desk and they both turned at the bailiff's knock. It was Farrell, and Glitsky stood, ceding pride of place to the attorneys. He was here because Amanda had asked him to be.

  Farrell didn't sit, but walked to the front of Thomasino's desk. 'I'm glad you're here, Amanda,' he began. 'I wanted to apologize for my client. And to you, Judge. I'm sorry.'

  Thomasino barely acknowledged the words with an ambiguous gesture, then got right to it. 'I asked you down here, Mr Farrell, to see if you can give me any reason why I shouldn't yank your client's bail. You should know that I already told Ms Jenkins that if she asked, I'd do it. I'm thinking of doing it in any event. If you want a mis-trial, your client can do sixty days next door' - meaning in jail - 'while he waits for his new court date, to contemplate whether he wants to interrupt the proceedings again.'

  Glitsky wouldn't have thought Farrell could sag any further than he had when he walked in, but he did. Visibly.

  Jenkins took it up. 'I'll be honest with you, Wes,' she said. 'You and I know this is the first murder I've gotten to trial. My colleagues in the DA's office are starting to wonder why I'm on the payroll if I'm never actually in trial. I don't want to wait another sixty days.'

  'Minimum,' Thomasino intoned.

  'Minimum,' she repeated. 'And I think the argument can be made that the outburst was potentially as prejudicial to your client as it might have been self-serving.'

  A rueful nod. 'We were just discussing that,' Farrell said.

  'So it's a wash,' Jenkins concluded.

  Glitsky admired the way Jenkins delivered it. It sounded genuine enough, although he knew the truth was quite different. As the recess had been called, Jenkins had sent Glitsky upstairs to get Art Drysdale and tell him she was asking to get Dooher's bail revoked.

  Drysdale had made a quick phone call - cryptic enough, but it must have been to Chris Locke - and then accompanied Abe back to Department 26, where Jenkins sat, still fuming, at the prosecution table.

  From Glitsky's perspective, there was no question that Locke had some personal - political - connection to this case. The DA didn't want to see it postponed, to let it remain unresolved, much as he had asked for the unreasonably low bail. He was doing
the Archbishop a favor.

  As Drysdale had been explaining that the DA did not want to ask for bail to be revoked, Thomasino had sent word that he wanted to see Jenkins in his chambers and discuss that very thing, and Drysdale had supplied her with the reason she was to give for not wanting it.

  Farrell, for his part, was a drowning man who'd just gone down for the third time, opened his eyes underwater, and saw the lifebuoy. He reached for it. 'Your honor, I will not let this kind of thing happen again.'

  The glare. Thomasino growled once, settled into his chair. 'All right, now there's one other thing.' The two opposing attorneys looked at each other, wondering. 'I don't know how much control you have over your client's behavior, Mr Farrell - I'd gather not very much. But perhaps you could exert some influence over your second chair. I don't want to sequester this jury, but if we get too many more stories about Mr Dooher and Ms Carrera, I'm not going to have any choice. A man's accused of killing his wife, it's the better part of valor to keep his dick in his pants - excuse me, Amanda - at least until a jury's had a chance to make up its mind.

  'Now I've told the jury not to watch television or read newspapers, but we all know what will happen if the defendant keeps getting on the front page. That's not in anyone's interest. Are we in agreement here?'

  'Yes, your honor.

  'Good.' Thomasino paused for a couple of seconds. He looked at his watch. 'I'm going to adjourn for today, giving you, Mr Farrell, a lot of time to make these points to your client and your associate. I'd use as much of it as you need.'

  Farrell could only nod. Whatever the Judge wanted, that's what he wanted, too.

  33

  So Glitsky was off early.

  It wasn't yet three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon and no one expected him upstairs, so he signed out a car from the city lot and drove himself home, found a parking spot directly in front of his duplex, and let himself in.

  Rita was sleeping on the couch, which was okay. She got up with them all at 6:30, and she kept the place spotless. She also got up with Abe when any of the boys called out in the night, and if she needed to take a nap to catch up, Glitsky was all for it.

  In the kitchen, a pot of thick black sauce -mole, he now knew - simmered on the stove, steaming the windows, filling the room with its heady smell. A couple of disjointed chickens were thawing on the counter.

  He opened the kitchen window a crack and heard Isaac down in the trees. He was lucky with his backyard. Though he shared it with his downstairs neighbors, there was plenty of room. And along its border, a bicycle path traced the edge of the Presidio.

  Back when there had been money for such amenities, the city had built a small playground - a set of swings, parallel bars, a slide - thirty yards down the path.

  Glitsky let himself out the back door and down the steps, across the yard through the lengthening shadows, on to the bike path. He'd pushed pretty hard at the idea of the boys playing together, sticking together - the family - and this was one of those miraculous days when it was working.

  They were seeing who could sail farthest out of the swing set - one of the activities Glitsky felt better hearing about than actually witnessing. And today they'd added a new wrinkle, a stick that two of them held while the third one sailed, going for height and distance.

  And broken legs, he thought. Chipped teeth. Ruined knees.

  But he watched from a small distance. Life is risk, he told himself. They're enjoying the moment. Let it happen.

  And then Jacob landed sprawled in the tanbark and, rolling over, saw his father. He let out a whoop - 'Dad!' - and came running over, stopping himself a split second before what would have been an embarrassing hug. But he did let his father put his arm around him.

  'What are you doing home?'

  'Yeah, it's still light out.' Isaac, sauntering up, put in the barb. Glitsky knew he was working all the time, but didn't see a way to change it. And he was home now, wasn't he?

  'I thought we'd go get a Christmas tree.'

  O.J. stabbed a fist into the air and screamed, 'Yeah!' and was already running back toward the house while the other two tore off after him.

  Even Abe broke into a trot.

  At night, Rita put down the fold-a-bed and slept behind a screen in the living room in the front of the duplex. That fact wasn't in the front of Glitsky's mind when he bought the largest tree he could find, and now the never-spacious living room was all but impassable.

  His own overstuffed easy chair and ottoman had been relegated to the kitchen to make space for the tree, which made the kitchen tight as well. Rita had lost more than half of her precious counter space.

  The scent of the new Christmas tree permeated the house and Rita had made hot spiced apple juice. They had Lou Rawls doing Christmas out of the speakers, the lights were strung up, the old bulbs, and now the boys were hanging tinsel.

  Glitsky sat hunched on his ottoman in the open doorway between the kitchen and living room, drinking his mulled cider, taking it all in as though from a great distance. Rita was on the couch, directing the boys to any open spaces on the tree.

  He had come home early. He'd taken the boys out for the tree, and now he was home in the midst of his family, wishing he was anywhere else, wishing he could try harder not to show it.

  Flo wasn't here. Everything else was here, and not his wife. So what, exactly, was the point?

  When the telephone rang, Glitsky knew it was work - it was always work - and Isaac yelled that he shouldn't answer it, let the machine get it. But he was already up, at the wallphone in the kitchen.

  It was Amanda Jenkins. 'I'm working on motive,' she said, 'and tomorrow it's fish or cut bait.'

  No, 'Got a minute, Abe?' No, 'Hello,' even. But there was no fighting it. Like it or not, he was in trial time, and simple politeness suffered as a matter of course.

  He took a sip of his juice - the tang of cinnamon. She was breezing right on. 'I want your take on his second chair, Carrera. I know we've been trying to decide between insurance and whether his wife was a drunk, an embarrassment, but I'm just watching the tube and this picture of the two of them kissing, it's turned up the heat.'

  'I saw the picture, Amanda. We talked about it, remember? It wasn't exactly X-rated. I wouldn't even give it an "R". It's a good-night kiss.'

  'At his house. They're alone, in the dark,' she countered.

  'So what?'

  'So in spite of all the tabloid speculation, it's really the first actual proof that these two have something going, and if they do, it's a lot stronger than anything else we've got.'

  'That picture doesn't prove anything. They're not upstairs in his bedroom, half-dressed, anything like that. This is a kiss like you give your mother. Besides, even if you had major groping, how are you going to prove they had something seven, eight months ago, which is when it would have had to be?'

  'I don't have to prove it,' she said. 'We can assert it, show this picture, let the jury draw the inference.'

  Glitsky moved some dirty dishes to one side and seated himself on the crowded counter. He, of course, had wrested with this issue himself, so he decided to give Jenkins the argument that had stopped him. 'That assumes she was in on it, too.'

  'She might have helped him plan it, Abe. Now she's defending him for it. It's not that far-fetched.'

  'Then you'll have to explain why we didn't charge her, too.'

  'Because there was no proof of conspiracy. We just couldn't arrest her without...'

  Glitsky sipped the juice, giving her time to hear herself, to wind down. This was the last-minute panic to bolster a case that he'd seen dozens of times.

  'It sucks, doesn't it?' she asked.

  'Insurance,' he said. 'Juries tend to understand money.'

  'You think?'

  'It's your decision.'

  Jenkins sighed. 'Something tells me it's her, Abe.'

  'You don't need motive. Amanda. You might just want to let it go, prove the facts.'

  A long pause, then, 'Okay,'
and then a click and a dial-tone.

  No hello, no goodbye. Trial time.

  Across town in his apartment, Wes Farrell sat at his Formica kitchen table, which was littered with yellow legal pads, manila folders, three days' worth of newspapers, a manual typewriter, four coffee mugs, and a thick three-ring binder that he'd divided into sections labelled Evidence, Argument, Witnesses, and so on.

  Each of these sections was further divided into subsections, and each subsection contained color-coded tabs in a particular order. Farrell had been living with this binder for the past six months and by now felt he could wake up and put his finger on anything he wanted in pitch darkness.

  Bart was under the table and the clock radio, which had been keeping him company with old rock 'n roll, suddenly broke into Jingle Bells. Immediately, he reached over and turned the dial and thought he'd found another soft rock station when he realized it was Mary Chapin Carpenter telling her lover that everything they got, they got the hard way.

  Somehow, he couldn't find the will to turn it off. He'd been consciously avoiding country music since he and Sam split, but this song, intelligently invoking passion and spark and inspiration, was ripping him up. Sitting back, he ran his hands through his thinning hair, then reached for one of the mugs of tepid coffee. He forced down a swallow.

  His eyes roamed the empty apartment - the same blank walls, thrift-store furniture, the same space.

  He'd called Sam twice after the first big fight and they'd had a couple of bigger ones after. And now Thomasino had ruled that Diane Price was going to be allowed to testify after all, and Christina was going to take her part, and Sam would probably be in the courtroom, counselling her.

  Shaking his head to clear it - this was going nowhere - he flipped off the radio. He and Sam were finished. Pulling his typewriter through the debris, he thought he'd put this negative energy to some good use by working on some notes for his opening statement, but as he reached for his legal pad, he had to move the morning Chronicle, and The Picture hit him again.