“Cass, slow down. Button didn’t make it up about Nathan’s breakdown. That’s a fact. Look, I was there.”
“Maybe so.” I tried to stay calm. “Maybe Nathan did go through a period where he did things like that. But people can change. He was my lover.” Milt looked away again. He’d faced me when I’d started talking, but this was too blunt for him. “Milt, I appreciate what you’re saying, but I just don’t see it. Whatever Nathan did in the past, I know what his preference was when he died. Besides, I think I’m getting somewhere with this Burton Stone case.”
“Cass, I appreciate how you feel. I’d rather see any other explanation for all this too. But facts are facts. The police will arrest this Diaz kid, and all I can do is hope to God it doesn’t break in the papers. And I’m afraid your running around asking all kinds of questions isn’t helping. For God’s sake, Cass, don’t you see? It’s bad enough to think of Nathan making it with one Legal Aid client, but what makes you think this Diaz kid was the only one? Do you want to help the cops rake up more dirt than they’ve got already?”
I wanted to talk to him. Well, to be honest, I wanted to yell at him. But I could hear the hurt behind his words. He believed what Button was saying about Nathan, and he blamed Nathan. There was nothing I could say. I got up to go.
“One more thing,” he said. I turned, not sure I could handle one more thing. “The Department of Corrections is conducting an investigation into the death of a Charlie Blackwell. I understand he was Nathan’s client but that you stood up on it the last time he was in court. I told them we’d waive a subpoena. It’s tomorrow morning. Nine-thirty A.M. One hundred Centre Street, Manhattan. I’ll tell Deke and Flaherty to cover your cases.”
Deke. Now I understood what Deke had meant in the hallway outside Part D last Friday. If I knew the truth about my precious Nathan, he had said. But what was the truth—the tender, sensitive man I had known, or this stranger who picked up boys in lavatories?
Once out of Milt’s office, I let my defiant facade collapse. It was one thing to maintain a brave front; it was another to hide my doubts from myself.
I was shaken. Button’s innuendos hadn’t gotten to me because he hadn’t known Nathan. But Milt had. Longer than I. If he said Nathan had been involved with boys, then it was true. And if it was true, then maybe Button was right. Maybe he had picked up the wrong boy this time.
I went into my office, shut the door, and slumped into my chair. I felt defeated. My valiant attempt to believe in Nathan was doomed. The Stone connection was a pipe dream. Button was right. A fag killing and a prison suicide. Pure coincidence. I’d been too blind to see the truth. Blinded by the illusion that Nathan had been someone I knew.
A shocking thought struck me. Could that have been what Nathan wanted to talk to me about, that last morning? Oh, by the way, Cass, while you and I have been lovers, I’ve been humping a client. A teenage boy. I hope you don’t mind. My fists clenched. Nathan, goddamn you, my mind screamed, if that’s what you were going to tell me, it’s a damn good thing you didn’t because I’d have strangled you. Bare-handed.
There was a knock at my door. A knock so hesitant, so tentative, that I was surprised to see Flaherty come in. He looked at least as depressed as I felt. “You talked to Milt.” It was a statement, not a question.
I nodded. Flaherty sat down heavily in Bill Pomerantz’s chair. His blue eyes were dull with misery.
“Well,” I began sarcastically, “doesn’t this confirm what you thought all along? You were ready to condemn Nathan before you heard what Milt had to say, so why the long face now?” Somewhere deep inside I was aware that I was lashing out at Flaherty to stifle the hurt I was feeling, but at the time I didn’t care. All I knew was the raw bile in my throat. The taste of betrayal.
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I kept hoping I was wrong,” he said. “God knows I wanted to believe in him, Cass. I wanted to. But, God, I just couldn’t. Not after this. How could he behave one way in public and another in private? That’s what I don’t understand. I feel as though he was a total stranger. A total stranger I wouldn’t have wanted to know.”
It was a hell of a thought. There was nothing I could say to it. Flaherty shambled out of my office, and I just sat there, unable to move. I’d been denying Nathan’s gayness for so long now. It was the keystone of my whole theory that someone else killed him. And it wasn’t true.
Unless. Was it possible that he was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, changing his personality so drastically? Wouldn’t there be a leak, like light seeping unseen into an incompletely sealed darkroom? Could you lock two separate halves of yourself away from each other so completely?
Even if Nathan had had gay experiences, did that mean he was into ropes and bondage? Could Nathan’s past have been a convenient peg the murderer used?
It was wishful thinking. But I clung to it. Because the alternative was too much. It meant wiping Nathan out of my mind and replacing him with a sadistic stranger. Getting cynical about who he’d been and what he’d meant to me.
I couldn’t do that.
SEVENTEEN
It was funny, but I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the details of Charlie Blackwell’s death. For one thing, I’d been busy trying to establish the link between Nathan’s murder and the Stone trial, and for another, I just took it for granted Charlie was killed by the mob. It didn’t seem to matter exactly how.
But now, as I wandered through the gray halls of Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building Thursday morning, looking for the office of the New York City Department of Correction Investigation Department, I began to wonder. I hoped the investigation would answer some of the questions that were beginning to form in my mind.
It was old home week when I entered the drab little waiting room. It was filled with Brooklyn court officers—Tim, the bridgeman from AP4, Maria Watson, who’d worked the desk, and even the pen crew, Vinnie and Red. Maria was sitting in the only chair.
“Are we it?” I asked Tim. “I mean, are they calling anyone else?”
“They got the Iceman in there now. Pardon me, I mean the Honorable Perry Whalen.” He was grinning. Tim was the closest thing I had to a friend among the court officers, who tend as a rule to be hostile to Legal Aid attorneys.
Tim’s remark got a smile out of me, Red, and Vinnie, but Maria looked upset. She had twisted the handkerchief in her hand into a wreck. And she hadn’t had to answer a single question yet. I was a little surprised; I once saw Maria do a number on a kid who’d decided to go over the wall. Her flying tackle and one-handed cuffing job had been the talk of the Brooklyn Criminal Court. I’d never seen her scared of anything before.
“Shit,” she said, “I can’t be goin’ through this bullshit, you know? I’m only a probationer. If they decide to throw it all on me, I’m fucked. Back to the department store to watch ladies undressing. That ain’t no life. Not like this here, where we got a good union.”
“Damn right we got a good union,” Red Hennessey said. He was tall and skinny, with a huge Adam’s apple and a face full of freckles. And, naturally, red hair. “That’s why you won’t get dumped on, Maria. You got nothin’ to worry about. Not if you did things right, you don’t.”
“Shit, I don’t remember what I done. I been in so damn many places since then, AP3, weekend arraignments. How’m I gonna remember one prisoner on one day? Tell me that.”
“Maria, think back,” I said. “I was traffic cop. We’d just finished a case with three defendants—one in, two out. Vinnie took the in guy back and brought out Charlie Blackwell. He was an older guy, very nervous—”
“Yeah,” Tim cut in, “he was so scared I thought he was gonna piss in his pants.”
“I approached the bench and asked for suicide watch. It was already on the papers; all the judge had to do was continue it. Then Vinnie took the guy back into the pens.” I looked at Vinnie. He nodded curtly.
“I went into the back to talk to the guy, and when I came out—” I stopped, remembering suddenly, �
��Maria! You’re in the clear. I came out, looked at the yellow card to make sure, and it was already written. So whatever went wrong, you wrote the right stuff on the card.”
Marla heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Counselor. I been worried as hell since they told us we had to come down here. I sure as hell don’t want to go back to no department store.”
I turned to Tim. “What exactly do they think happened? I haven’t kept up.”
“I heard when the prisoner got to BHD there was no segregation order on his yellow card. So they put him in with everyone else and in the morning they found him wearing a necktie.”
“Jesus!” I shivered. I had a sudden vision of Charlie hanging in his cell. Twisting slowly, slowly in the wind. “Didn’t he say anything? He was hot to trot when I saw him; he begged me to get him suicide watch. Would he just go into a regular cell without a protest?”
“Don’t ask me, Counselor. I don’t work at the Brooklyn House.”
“My brother does,” Vinnie said. “I asked him when this thing first came down. He said sometimes if a guy acts crazy enough, they’ll put him in segregation without a court order. Or they’ll even send him to Kings County Hospital on their own. But he’s gotta act wacko. They don’t just do it ‘cause he asks nice and polite.”
“How could anybody get to a guy in his cell?” I asked Vinnie. “I mean, they must patrol the place, right?”
“Sure,” Vinnie answered. “My brother says it used to be the C.O.s that did it—punched a clock at the end of the hall every half hour to show they’d walked the corridor. Then they started using inmate patrols.”
“Inmate patrols!” My mind started racing. “You mean some other inmate had access to him?”
“They patrol in two-man crews,” Vinnie explained. “I’m sure whoever was on his cellblock will be questioned pretty closely.”
“Yeah,” I said mechanically. My thoughts were miles away. I was visualizing an inmate enemy of Charlie’s, ostensibly patrolling the cellblock to prevent suicides, reaching through the bars, strangling Charlie, and then stringing him up to look like a suicide. Which was how it would have been done at BHD, but how had Charlie been removed from suicide watch in the first place? I wasn’t the only one who wondered.
“That still don’t answer the question who changed that card,” Maria observed. “If I wrote it up the right way, how come it was wrong when it got to BHD?”
I turned to Red and Vinnie. “You took the card when you took Blackwell from AP4 to the ninth floor pens, right?” They nodded.
“You know that, Counselor,” Vinnie said. “The papers follow the body at all times. We wouldn’t take a prisoner up without a card or a card without a prisoner.”
“When did Blackwell go up?”
“About a quarter to one. With about six other prisoners,” Red answered.
“Did either of you notice what his card said?”
“Hell, Cass, how could they? You can’t read every fuckin’ card,” Tim objected.
“As I recall, Vinnie, you were bringing prisoners back and forth and Red was in the pen. Was one of you there at all times?”
“Counselor,” Vinnie’s voice was hard, “we was ordered to come here and answer their questions.” He jerked his head toward the door behind which the questioning was going on. “But ain’t nobody ordered me to answer yours.”
“Come on, Vinnie,” Tim pleaded. “What the hell. Miss Jameson isn’t looking to hurt anybody.”
“Oh, yeah.” Maria was her old self, a black lump of belligerence. “Look to me like she nailin’ me pretty good. If nobody could change the card in the back because Red was there, then it got changed while it was on my desk, and that make me responsible, don’t it?”
I started trying to convince Maria I wasn’t trying to nail her. Tim was still defending me to Vinnie, and Red was shouting that I was trying to pin the whole thing on the court personnel. The upshot was that when the door opened unexpectedly and the Iceman came out, we were all talking at once. He gave us a frosty smile and walked out of the waiting room, his overcoat on his arm.
I was called next. I guess I ranked after the judge. They would probably call the court officers in order of seniority. Poor Maria. Her handkerchief would look like Swiss cheese by then.
The interview room was tiny, painted a revolting institutional green. The window that faced the little park between the courthouse and Chinatown hadn’t been washed since La Guardia was mayor. There were three men and a female stenographer inside. I didn’t really catch names, just that they were biggies in the Correction Department and that the investigation they were conducting was just that—a fact-finding inquiry, not a hearing or a trial. If they felt disciplinary action should be taken against a member of the Department of Correction, they would so recommend. If they felt the matter should be investigated further by the district attorney, they would so recommend. If they felt the whole thing should be quietly forgotten, they would so recommend. I got the feeling their recommendation would be to forget. Quickly.
I told them as concisely as I could what my connection with Blackwell had been and what I’d done for him on his last court date. It wasn’t news. They’d had it from Judge Whalen, who, for all his faults, kept the kind of records everyone expects a fussy little man like him to keep.
When I finished my narrative, they began to ask questions. But they weren’t the same questions I’d been asking myself. They weren’t interested in the changing of the notation on the yellow card or in the motivations that might have led people to wish Charlie out of the picture. They were concerned more with Charlie himself. Had he been nervous? Had he said anything about suicide? Had he struck me as confused? Irrational? Had I known about his past 730 examinations? Had I asked Judge Whalen to order a 730? Why not?
The last question surprised me. In the first place, it had never occurred to me that Charlie was that wacked out. Sure, he was hyper, but as Nathan had rightly pointed out, a man in the business of selling out heavy friends gets hyper. I’d never thought a 730 was warranted. And even if I’d thought so, I wouldn’t have asked for it. Charlie was Nathan’s client, not mine. Unless he was flipping out pretty badly, I’d have left a decision on 730 to the attorney of record.
I said all this to the three officials. Several times and in several different ways. I didn’t like the way they took it. From the questions on Charlie’s state of mind, I got the feeling they were pushing hard to find his death a suicide. From there, the next move would be to find a scapegoat. Preferably one who didn’t wear the blue uniform of the New York City Correction Department. Maybe even one who couldn’t defend himself because he was dead. Their position would be that it was unfortunate that a disturbed person like Charlie slipped out of a suicide watch, but the fault wasn’t theirs—it was his lawyer who should have seen that Charlie was a nut job and ordered him examined by a doctor. They would regret, they would deplore. They would whitewash. No inquiry into Charlie’s enemies, or the fact that the Special Prosecutor wanted to talk to him, or that the yellow card ordering the suicide watch had been tampered with. Just a nice quiet cover-up with a posthumous slap in the face for Nathan for being so insensitive as to let his poor crazy client risk hanging himself in his cell.
EIGHTEEN
I dressed carefully for my Friday after-work meeting with Dave Chessler. A mauve wool dress with a full skirt and puffed sleeves accented by an embroidered black velvet vest. Tiny silver bell-shaped earrings and a silver pendant hanging from a black velvet ribbon. Black leather boots and matching clutch bag. It might be strictly business, but it didn’t have to look that way.
I met him in the waiting area of a fancy bar in the ground floor of the World Trade Center. I was glad I’d dressed when I saw the clothes the other women were wearing. Expensive-looking, tailored, good materials. What the well-dressed female executive will wear. I was of two minds. Part of me envied women whose jobs both permitted and required good clothes, perfect makeup. Yet there was a lurking resentment, too. What
did these well-groomed magazine-ad ladies know about the gritty realities of Brooklyn Criminal Court? On the other hand, we all live in worlds of our own choosing. What claim did I have to moral superiority because I’d chosen to work in the pits instead of the towers?
Dave sat me at a tiny table inside the bar and went for drinks. It was still Scotch weather, so I ordered mine on the rocks. He brought it to me along with a bourbon and water for himself.
“So what did you think of the transcript? Did you see what I meant about Riordan?”
“I sure did. Not only on paper, but in person, too. He’s appearing on a case in Brooklyn Supreme, so I went over to see him. Say what you will about him, the man is one hell of a cross-examiner.”
“It’s easy to be if the witness is taking orders from you instead of the prosecutor.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that was sour grapes.” He didn’t answer. I thought perhaps I’d gone too far, so I said, “Actually, you’re probably right. I got the feeling the witness in the case I saw didn’t exactly come through the way the D.A. expected him to. Riordan got a lot of mileage out of him, too. If he wins the case, it’ll be because the witness fell apart.”
“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“Not only that. When I spoke to him, Riordan warned me about getting involved. Said there were dangerous people around.” I didn’t repeat Riordan’s crack about Nancy Drew; I didn’t trust Dave to understand the seriousness of the insult.
There was a pause. Dave sipped his drink in what appeared to be meditative silence. I figured I’d said everything I wanted to say; it was time for him to speak up. Finally he did. Slowly and a little reluctantly, he said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you last time, Cassandra.”
“Cass,” I murmured.
“Cass.” He smiled, an unexpected smile that nearly diverted me. “It fits you.”
Then he sobered and returned to the topic. “In fact, I’m not sure I should be telling you this now. Parma’d have my head on a plate if he knew I was talking to anyone about it, but I feel you have a right to know.” He looked around at the people at the tables closest to us. It looked to me like the usual TGIF pickup scene, but Dave leaned over and lowered his voice.
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