Dead Man's Thoughts

by Carolyn Wheat

  He poured us each a drink. My brandy came in a huge, hand-blown bubble of a glass. I coveted it. I coveted the whole apartment. It was so together, so professional. The apartment of a person who knew what he wanted and how to get it.

  I needed another brandy like I needed a conviction on my next trial. I’d already had enough so that I kicked off my boots and ran my stockinged toes through the shag carpet like a kid testing out the first grass of spring. Still, I sipped it and let Dave join me on the loveseat, leaning into him as he put his arm around me. The lights were low. Probably a dimmer. We began to kiss. Dave was a good kisser, active and varied. When the lenses on his aviator glasses began to steam up, he took them off and put them on one of the Chinese tables. Part of me was worried they’d leave a scratch, but pretty soon I had other things on my mind.

  Soon we adjourned to the bedroom. That was his word, “adjourned.” It’s hard making love to a lawyer.

  The bedroom was huge. The oak platform bed with built-in stereo tables was dwarfed by the size of the room. There was an exercise bike in one corner. Dave hadn’t been kidding about being a physical fitness nut. And as he took his clothes off, I could see more muscle under his shirt than I’d expected. It doesn’t do to underestimate these scholarly types, I told myself with a private grin. The sight of his unobtrusive but powerful muscles excited me. I walked toward him and ran my fingers down his back. He turned and smiled a smile of sweet lechery in the shadowy light from the living room. We embraced while still half-dressed and fell on the bed together.

  Being half-dressed made it more exciting, as though we absolutely couldn’t wait to enjoy each other. We kissed and groped, panting and writhing on the Bill Blass sheets. Like a James M. Cain novel.

  It was as athletic and impersonal as a game of tennis. Thrust and parry, give and take. Match point. We came quickly, then lay exhausted, each on our own side of the bed.

  I had never felt so alone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  We dozed. I woke with a start about an hour later. There were tears on my cheeks. Had I dreamt of Nathan? I didn’t even know. I felt a huge emptiness, like an unused room.

  I had to go home. I woke Dave, as gently as I could, and asked him for a ride. “Can’t you stay?” he asked with a little-boy forlornness that might have touched me earlier that night but now only strengthened my resolve to sleep alone.

  I shook my head. “Have to get up in the morning. I’m meeting Jesse Winthrop, remember?” That did it. Dave gave me a sour look, then got up and padded to the bathroom.

  We drove in silence. He dropped me off at the door with a perfunctory kiss.

  I woke up feeling fuzzy around the edges and slightly seasick. After coffee and a hot shower, I felt better. I was beginning to look forward to meeting the journalist whose muckraking pieces in the Voice had been a part of my life ever since I moved to the city. He had a special interest in anything to do with the legal system. I’d often been surprised and pleased at how accurate he was. Usually newspaper accounts of courtroom situations are either dead wrong or totally exploitative or both. His were right on target. I was hoping his analysis of the Stone case would be the same.

  I put on designer jeans, a blue workshirt-style blouse softened by a lace-trimmed collar, and Frye boots. It was still a bit chilly, so I wore my handmade South American sweater.

  McGillicuddy’s wasn’t far, so I decided to walk. Actually, it was straight across town from where I lived, except that you can’t go straight through the winding Village streets. So I meandered, always heading east and a little north, till I came to Broadway and McGillicuddy’s. I got a table by the window, where I could watch the people passing by until Winthrop came. As usual in my chosen city, the people-watching was good. Antiquers, stopping into each of the shops along Broadway, brunch-time browsers and strollers, a few street types left over from the days when this neighborhood was a rundown extension of the Fourteenth street barrio.

  I looked at McGillicuddy’s too. I’d spent a fair amount of time here when I was in law school. Well, not here, exactly. The same place, the same building. But a whole different thing. It had been called Rocky’s. There had been no plants in the window then, no butcher block, no quiches and omelettes on the menu. In fact, the place had been downright seedy. Old fight photos of Rocky’s ring triumphs. A beer sign with three-dimensional running water. A lit-up jukebox in purple and orange. Occasional live groups. Some pretty damned live. But anyway you looked at it, the place had had an identity of its own. A raunchy individuality. Now it was fungible. Clean and well-lighted and probably terrific omelettes. But no fight photos.

  “Been waiting long?” I looked up to see Jesse Winthrop standing at the table, a smile of greeting on his face. He looked like the pictures I’d seen of him, maybe a little older, beard a little grayer, worry lines around the brown, expressive eyes. He sat down, we chatted, then turned to the menus. In spite of all the food I’d eaten the night before, I was acutely hungry. I ordered coffee and challah French toast with ham on the side. I’d have to diet for a week to make up for it, but right now I could think of nothing I’d rather have. Winthrop ordered a bloody mary and eggs benedict.

  “I understand you’re interested in Charlie Blackwell,” Winthrop began. It was as good a place to start as any.

  I nodded. “I’ve read up on the Stone trial.” I smiled. “Your account was by far the most thorough.”

  “And the most biased.” He wasn’t smiling. “But then I’ve spent a lifetime trying to expose men like Stone. It made me sick to see Parma take a good clear shot at him and miss.”

  “Some people seem to think it wasn’t Parma’s fault. That somehow Stone or someone working for him got to Charlie.”

  “Some people in Parma’s office, you mean.” I was startled, then realized he couldn’t possibly know I’d been talking to Dave.

  “Not just there,” I replied, remembering what Nathan had said. “It seems to be a fairly common assumption.”

  “Carefully fostered by Parma,” Winthrop commented acidly. “But that’s not important. What is important is that the Stone case doesn’t stand alone. It’s part of a pattern. And that pattern is what disturbs the hell out of me.”

  “What pattern? What do you mean?” I took a welcome sip of hot coffee and sat back, prepared to listen. This sounded like hot stuff.

  “I don’t know if you remember why the Special Prosecutor was appointed in the first place,” he began. I nodded, but he went on anyway. “I’m sure you recall what the media said—‘fighting corruption in the wake of the Knapp Commission,’ and all that.” I had to smile; he sounded just like a pompous television commentator. “But that wasn’t the whole story. It never is. Somebody benefits, somebody loses. In this case, the governor benefited. He got to appoint his man to a position that would control the prosecution of politicians from New York City. And, naturally, the mayor lost. He lost control of the prosecution of just those politicians and judges. It’s no secret that the prosecutors in Parma’s office tend to come from the governor’s party, and the judges, lawyers, etcetera who get nailed tend to come from the mayor’s party. It’s also no accident.”

  “How does Blackwell fit in?”

  “Don’t rush me,” Winthrop said, a smile on his face. “I’ll try not to ride my hobbyhorse too much, and I promise to get to the point sometime this morning, but I have to give you the background. In the first place, assuming for a moment that the governor really did want corruption stopped, he picked the wrong man in Parma. Parma’s a little hustler, out for himself. Thrives on publicity. In fact, on at least three occasions, his love for public announcements has actually cost him convictions. In one case, evidence was destroyed because the parties involved knew Parma was going to be looking for it. In another case, witnesses were gotten to because Parma announced to the world that they were witnesses. Appearances are more important to him than substance. So if the people who appointed him wanted results instead of posturing, they came to the wrong place. That�
��s point number one.”

  I sipped more coffee. Winthrop took a drink of his bloody mary and went on. “This publicity mania led to another major problem. How many times has Parma called a press conference, announced his intention to investigate or even prosecute someone, and then let the matter drop? There are headlines for a week, the general public gets the idea that whoever was named is a crook, and then—no action. No case. He’s done that to a couple of people who might have been guilty as hell if the truth were known, but that’s just the point. The truth isn’t known. And he’s done it to at least one man whose integrity as far as I’m concerned is beyond reproach. Judge Lacey Taylor. You remember?”

  “Judge Taylor? Sure, I remember. He’s a real hero in Legal Aid circles. Fair to defendants. Willing to stick his neck out if he has to. Willing to stand up to the D.A. and the Policemen’s Benevolent Association. What did Parma call him? A judge who was willing to sell his robe to the highest bidder?” I was getting indignant just thinking about it.

  So was Winthrop. His voice was taut with emotion. “That dirty slime told the press Taylor’s name had been mentioned in the Special Grand Jury—mentioned, for God’s sake! He implied a lot of other things, like pending indictments, but those somehow never happened. All that ever happened was that allegations were made and not proved. But that was enough for the party. Taylor, probably the best judge in the city, and certainly the best black judge, was kept off the Supreme Court ballot because the public had heard he was a crook.”

  Winthrop stopped suddenly and smiled. “Sorry to get carried away.” But the smile was on the surface; underneath, Winthrop was still mad as hell.

  “But that’s light stuff in view of the big picture,” he went on. “Do you know how many reversals Parma’s had? And how many of those were on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct? And how many cases the special judges threw out for bad Grand Jury practice? How many cases were dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and had to be started over again—or worse, thrown out on double jeopardy grounds? If you look at Parma’s record from the standpoint of cost-effectiveness—how many convictions that really stuck versus how many prosecutions that ended in the defendant beating the rap—you’d see a strong and disturbing pattern. Oh, sure, he’s made quite a few convictions stick. Mostly cops selling a little dope on the side. In fact, mostly cops. When he gets upward in the social scale, to lawyers and judges, the convictions-that-stick rate drops like a thermometer in January. Does that suggest anything to you, Ms. Jameson?”

  “You mean you think it could be deliberate? That Parma lets the biggies off somehow while nailing the small fry?” My mind boggled. It tied in with what Riordan had said, though. And even more with what could be read between the lines.

  Our food came. I mulled things over while I ate. The French toast was wonderful. Real maple syrup and the salty contrast of lean ham. I began to regret the passing of Rocky’s a little less. I said as much to Winthrop.

  He lit up. “You used to come here in the old days?”

  “Sure. When I was in law school. My friend Adele and I used to hang out here once in a while. Before it got fashionable. Then she moved to the Upper West Side. Also before it got fashionable.”

  “There used to be this great group,” Winthrop reminisced. “What were they called?”

  “The Ray Black Five. If that’s the group you mean. One guy played the flute.”

  “Yes,” he said excitedly, “God, yes. That flute would hang over lower Broadway like a red harvest moon.”

  “Jesus!” I exclaimed. “You really are a writer, aren’t you?” He laughed, a little self-consciously. I didn’t mention that I had known the group pretty well, having gotten it on with the drummer a few times. Of course, I was younger then, and a black jazz drummer seemed the height of picturesque, bohemian fantasy. In reality, he always brought his laundry over when he came to see me. He said the laundromat near my house was better and cheaper than the one near him. A true romantic.

  When we finished eating, Winthrop lit a cigarette, ordered more coffee, and continued talking about Parma. “There’s even more to the pattern than just the big shots getting off and the small fry getting nailed,” he said. “Like the number of cases where Parma indicted for perjury instead of for substantive crimes, like bribe-taking. Then the cases were tossed by the appellate courts because the perjury was induced by the prosecutor in the Grand Jury. You know the kind of thing.”

  “I read about it. Wasn’t there a case with a lawyer and a law secretary? In the Bronx?”

  He nodded. “That was the biggest, but there were others. It got to be a joke. The Special Prosecutor never indicted for substantive crimes. Just perjury—after he’d trapped the witnesses into lying in the first place. The point being that the public never knew whether or not he had any real evidence of corruption. If he did, it never saw the light of day.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “He never did prove those Bronx lawyers were actually taking bribes.”

  “Right. Then there are the bad grand jury charges—little things like forgetting to submit exculpatory evidence or to instruct the grand jurors about the defense evidence.”

  I was once again impressed by Winthrop’s grasp of legal procedures and technicalities. He must have been coached constantly by lawyers who knew the ins and outs of criminal procedure. Which may have been one reason his rivals on the big dailies hadn’t questioned Parma’s methods. They didn’t know how deviant those methods were from the way things were usually done.

  “And Blackwell wasn’t the only key witness to fall apart on the stand. Either Parma has had more than his share of bad luck or—”

  “Or he’s been sabotaging his own operation all along,” I finished. “But what would be in it for Parma? Oh, I know money, but I thought he was so ambitious. He really wants this congressional committee job—would he jeopardize that for ready cash?”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t have to,” Winthrop replied. “Not if he could cover his tracks well enough. Plus if he protected the biggies, he’d be owed quite a few favors. Which is a good thing for an ambitious man to be owed.”

  My mind was wandering. Two pieces of the puzzle were rattling around in my head. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they meant something. But what?

  Charlie in the pen, begging me to get him protection. “Better than before,” he had said. Where nobody, not nobody, could get to him. Because last time somebody had gotten to him? Somebody supposedly guarding him? Parma himself?

  But then why had Charlie told Nathan he had something for the Special Prosecutor? How could even Charlie Blackwell, Master Informer, have informed on Parma to Parma? Unless he had never intended to inform. Unless blackmail had been his game. “Get me out of this rap, or I’ll tell the world how you fixed the Stone case.” Which gave Parma a terrific motive for murder.

  “Earth calling Cassandra,” I heard an amused voice say. I looked up, blushing, to see a smile on Winthrop’s face. “My wife tells me I look like that when I’m thinking about a story,” he said.

  Story. Should I tell Winthrop my thoughts? What could it hurt, I asked myself. He got it all. Blackwell. Nathan. Paco.

  “God, this is something,” he said excitedly. “You think this Blackwell character had the guts to put it to Parma?”

  “That’s the hard part,” I admitted. “Charlie was so fucking scared. But maybe that’s why. He knew he was in over his head this time.”

  “Plus I see another problem,” Winthrop continued. “If Parma thought Blackwell was a threat to his federal appointment, why stir things up in the first place by busting him? Why not let sleeping dogs lie?”

  “There’s only one answer to that,” I said. I started talking fast, aware that I could lose Winthrop completely with this one.

  “It explains why Charlie wasn’t taken to the World Trade Center, why the yellow card was changed, why Charlie was left so vulnerable. Parma meant to kill him from the beginning.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  He was drun
k. As usual. He weaved his way down the long corridor toward Part 6, nearly knocking down a pregnant woman, who glared at his tipsy efforts at a courtly apology.

  “Not again, Mr. Puckett,” I said, resigned. “Plus you’re late. Judge Noonan just issued a bench warrant. We’ll have to go in and get it lifted.”

  He started to explain. I cut him off. It would be the same old rambling, boozy excuse. I didn’t waste time listening to it.

  We went inside. Corcoran, the clerk, looked up from his deskful of papers, a derisive smile on his face. When I asked him to recall the case, he said, “So the old rummy finally showed, eh?” His contempt for Puckett would have been more reasonable, I thought, if I hadn’t been able to smell Scotch under the heavy mouthwash odor of his own breath.

  The D.A. and I approached the bench. Same old story. Hezekiah Puckett was charged with burglary, and burglary was what he was offered. No plea down to trespass. So no deal. Date for trial, the Monday after next.

  “Try to get him here sober, Counselor,” Judge Noonan advised. “And if he’s late,” he warned, speaking loudly enough for my client to hear, “I’ll throw him in jail. That I promise.”

  Which wasn’t a bad idea, I thought, cynically, turning back to my client. He’d missed the judge’s admonition; he was bending all his efforts to standing up. He swayed rather a lot. Puckett in jail, I mused, would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with than Puckett out. He’d be on time, for one thing; he’d be reasonably sober, a thing I’d never seen, and, best of all, he couldn’t wander away from the courthouse whenever he felt like it, as he’d done the last time the case was on.