by Ed Gaffney
Zack’s direct examination of Babe had been incredible. By confronting him with the truth—and, at times, even a suggestion of the truth—Babe’s lies had become spectacularly obvious to the jury, and to everyone else in the courtroom. The only question that remained was whether the prosecutor was going to try to indict him for perjury.
But as for the robbery and the murder of Steve Hirsch, that was not Babe Gardiner.
And thanks to the great job they’d done, Vera Demopolous was doomed.
Unless Zack’s plan worked, which was a freakin’ long shot if he’d ever heard one.
Terry leaned over and began writing a note to Sean.
As soon as the judge recesses for lunch, I’ve got to run out of here. You need to go with Zack and meet with Babe.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE COURT: I understand that the defense wishes to address the court.
ATTORNEY WILSON: Yes, Your Honor. As a result of the, um, unusual nature of the defendant’s testimony yesterday and this morning, I spoke to him during the lunch break, and came to the conclusion that it would be best if we approached the court with a request.
(Commonwealth v. Gardiner, Volume VI, Pages 110–111)
LOUIS LOVELL FINISHED HIS CROSS-EXAMINATION, and Judge Park recessed for lunch. Lovell had lost the case, and with it, his job. It didn’t matter that Gardiner should be found not guilty. F.X. O’Neill was going to have his head after this catastrophe.
The only possible way he could hang on to his job was to get a plea bargain, and there was absolutely no chance of that, especially after he had rejected the defendant’s offer only a few hours ago.
And then, just as he was leaving the courthouse to walk to a deli and get some lunch, one of the court officers ran up to him and gave him a note.
Five seconds later, he was running back into the courthouse.
AS HE WENT DOWN THE ELEVATOR WITH SEAN TO meet with Babe in the courthouse lockup, Zack knew there was an easy way out.
All Babe had to do was change his plea to guilty.
After all, Babe had already confessed, during his testimony, to everything that he had been charged with. All they needed to do was to come back from lunch, go through the new, streamlined version of the guilty plea hearing, and everyone would get what they wanted.
Babe would appease the person threatening his mother, Zack and Terry would comply with the kidnapper’s demands and hopefully save Vera, and the Commonwealth would have another case closed.
The problem with that solution, of course, was that Babe was not guilty.
So either Zack was going to advise his client to plead guilty to crimes he didn’t commit, or Vera, and possibly Babe’s mother, were going to be harmed or killed.
They signed in at the guard’s desk and then joined Babe at his cell. “Babe,” Zack said, glancing first at his client and then over at Sean. “I’ve got an unusual suggestion.”
TERRY COULDN’T FIND THE PRIVATE DETECTIVES when the lunch recess was called, so he ran out of the building and down the street, praying that the store was open. He had just about enough time to get there and back on foot.
Shit. Even if it was open, he had no idea if the plan would actually work.
By the time he reached the store, he was sweating like a pig in a really nice suit. He was sure that he looked like a total freak as he charged up and down the aisles.
But five minutes later, he was running back to the courthouse, calling Zack on his cell phone, saying, “I got it.”
Zack merely responded, “Hurry.”
ELMO WOKE UP TO THE SMELL OF VOMIT. SHIT. He didn’t remember puking.
He sat up, still with a pretty good buzz going.
And then he saw the television, and focused on what they were saying.
He’d won. Goddammit, he’d won.
He clapped his hands together once, loudly. “Yeah!” he shouted at the TV.
That asshole Gardiner and his lawyer were standing there at the defense table, their backs to the camera, facing the judge, who was looking at them from the bench.
“I understand that you wish to plead guilty, sir,” the judge said.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Gardiner mumbled. His long, stringy hair looked even uglier than normal. But his prison jumpsuit looked just the same as it always looked. Better on him than on Elmo.
“I’m going to ask you a series of questions, starting with this: Are you mentally competent and do you understand the rights you are waiving by pleading guilty?”
“Yes.”
“Has your attorney explained the charges and allegations against you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The judge shifted some papers around on his desk and picked up a few stapled sheets. “Now I’m going to ask you an extremely important question, which I need you to answer after very careful thought.”
“Okay with me,” Gardiner responded. His lawyer looked over at him, cleared his throat as if he was going to say something, but then turned back to the judge without comment.
“Are you guilty of the charges and allegations made against you in this case?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then.” The judge flipped over one of the pieces of paper and began to read. “The court accepts the plea of guilty to the following two charges: armed robbery and, pursuant to a plea agreement reached with the Commonwealth, second-degree murder.”
TERRY FOUND ANTHONY AND MARIA AND WAS running out of the courthouse with them when they almost stampeded John Morrison, the detective that Zack had done a number on last week on cross-examination. “Hey, what’s the big hurry?” the cop demanded, in a blustering, good-looking asshole kind of way.
Terry had already pulled out his cell phone and was in the middle of a call. He quickly said into the phone, “Hold on,” pulled the letter and the photo of Vera out of his pocket and shoved them into Morrison’s hands. “They took Vera. I was just calling 911.”
Morrison looked at the letter and then the picture. Then his gaze seemed to sharpen as he looked closer at the photo, and he reached for Terry’s phone. “Give me that,” he said, turning away from the building and hurrying down the steps to the street.
Terry and the private detectives followed him. “Hey, that’s my phone,” Terry said.
Morrison ignored him. “This is Detective John Morrison. I’m on my way to 45 Widener Drive, and I need backup. Possible kidnapping, with injuries. Code Red. Hurry.”
He turned back to Terry and tossed him the phone. “Thanks,” he said, then he turned and ran down the street toward a parking garage.
Terry turned to Anthony. “You parked around here?”
Anthony pulled car keys out of his pocket, deactivated the alarm on a sharp little Audi parked three spaces from where they were standing, and said, “Let’s go.”
VERA HAD LOST CONTROL OF HER BLADDER when she vomited, and so her pants were wet. And her headache was so severe that she couldn’t move her feet.
Never give up, because you can’t know who’s just around the corner.
Unfortunately, Grandma Burke, this time she did know. It was a madman with a crowbar, who was now awake, and who intended to kill her.
Vera was minutes—maybe seconds—from passing out. If she didn’t get to somebody with some insulin soon, she would die.
Because the chair had been backed up against the doorway, Vera couldn’t really get a good swing at her kidnapper. She was going to have to hope that he was still sitting there, and see if she could use her trusty floor lamp like a lance. If she was lucky, she would be able to hit him hard enough with it to stun him, and then she could climb over the chair and run to safety.
That is, if she could actually move from the spot she was on.
Mustering the very last of her strength, she picked up the lamp and staggered toward the door to the other room, listening for any clue as to where her attacker might be. Then she heard him clap, and shout, “Yeah!”
He was still right there on the other side of the door.<
br />
As she got closer, she heard a voice from the television say, “Now I’m going to ask you an extremely important question, which I need you to answer after very careful thought….”
But just as she reached the door, another severe surge of dizziness and nausea overtook her. She couldn’t afford to wait. She was on the verge of slipping into a coma.
A tiny charge of energy went through her, and, holding the lamp with both hands, she hooked her foot around the edge of the door and pulled it back. Then she took a breath and, as the door swung open, charged forward.
It was as good as she could have hoped for. He was sitting forward on the chair, transfixed by the television. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything behind him at all. As she lunged forward, the lamp base connected squarely with the back side of his head, and he fell forward onto his hands and knees on the floor, screaming, “Fuck!”
Now Vera was faced with getting over the chair fast enough to get past him. She dropped the lamp, grabbed the back of the seat with both hands, and suddenly got hit with the worst abdominal cramp she’d ever experienced. It was as if she had been speared by a harpoon right in the navel. She clutched her stomach and stumbled backward, away from the doorway, into the room where she’d been held hostage.
She looked up into the other room and saw the kidnapper walking toward the recliner that stood in the doorway. He was looking at her as he approached, holding the back of his head with his left hand and a handgun in his right.
This was it. He was going to shoot her.
A tide of vertigo rushed her, and her field of vision narrowed. Then there was the sound of a door opening from behind the kidnapper. Suddenly there were two gunshots, and the sound of a window breaking, and another searing pain in her stomach.
Someone said, “Dad? Why?”
And then the world went black.
MARIA BARELY HAD A CHANCE TO ABSORB WHAT was going on before Anthony had driven her and Terry, the big lawyer, to the address that the good-looking detective had given to the 911 operator.
They were just pulling up when Terry suddenly said, “Holy shit, I forgot she’s diabetic!” As Anthony stopped the car, Terry jumped out, calling over his shoulder, “Tell 911 she might need insulin!”
Maria started to pull her phone out of her purse, but Anthony was already dialing. As Terry ran toward the house, the good-looking detective was entering the front door. Just as Maria turned to ask Anthony if he’d gotten through, the car’s windows exploded and Maria felt someone punch her in the back.
Anthony shouted something, but Maria didn’t really understand what he was saying. She felt something strange near her right breast, and she looked down. A red stain was starting to spread across the front of her shirt.
Sirens were approaching, and Anthony was still shouting. She needed to tell him something, but he wouldn’t stop shouting. Somehow he had gotten into the backseat with her, and was pulling her out of the back door on the driver’s side, into the street.
And then she was on her back, and Anthony was above her. Finally. Her chance. She motioned with her left hand for Anthony to come closer. Her right hand felt funny, and wasn’t working.
“Tell Felix that everything is going to be all right,” she said.
TERRY REACHED THE FRONT DOOR AT THE PRECISE moment that somebody started shooting a gun. A nearby window shattered into what sounded like a million pieces.
He ducked. Holy shit. How the fuck was he going to get in there with bullets flying all over the place?
And then Anthony was screaming, “She’s hit! She’s hit!” over the sound of rapidly approaching sirens.
Jesus Christ. Vera was wounded and he was standing out here with his head up his ass. He had to get in there, flying bullets or not. He put his hand on the doorknob just as a car came tearing up the driveway and a cop jumped out, pointing a gun at him, shouting, “Freeze!”
Terry put his hands up over his head. “Not me, you idiot! The guy with the gun is in there!” he shouted, pointing to the house as more cars flew up to it and a dozen policemen surrounded him and pulled him face first to the ground. “And there’s a diabetic woman in there, too!” he groaned into the lawn, as handcuffs snapped around his wrists. Fuckshit. While these morons were dicking around with him, Vera was in there bleeding to death.
Just then, the door burst open and another fifty cops yelled, “Freeze!”
And then the voice of an old man who sounded like he was crying said, “Don’t shoot.”
There was a flurry of activity at the door, and then a couple of cops hauled Terry up just in time for him to see another hundred or so fly through the door. Seconds later, two stretchers were being rushed into the house.
Detective Morrison was pulled out on the first stretcher. Blood was everywhere. He looked awful. And after an eternity, finally, Vera was brought out. And she looked worse.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE CLERK: Defendant, please rise.
Members of the jury, harken to the indictments returned against this defendant by the grand inquest by the body of the County of Hampden.
Indictment 79443, Laurence “Elmo” Morrison.
At the Superior Court begun and holden at the City of Springfield within and for the County of Hampden, on the first Monday in October in this year, the Grand Jurors for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on their oath present that Laurence Morrison on or about the fourteenth day of September at Springfield, in the County of Hampden aforesaid, did kidnap Vera Demopolous…did assault and beat with a dangerous weapon Maria Gallegos, and did assault and beat with intent to murder John Morrison, and by such assault and beating did kill and murder the said John Morrison.
Against the peace of said Commonwealth and contrary to the form of the statute.
To these indictments, members of the jury, the defendant has pleaded not guilty and for trial thereof he has placed himself upon the county, which county you are.
You are now sworn to try the issues.
(Commonwealth v. Morrison, Volume II, Pages 51–52)
October 5, 2004
ZACK WAS SUPPOSED TO BE READING A NEW CASE that had just been released by the S.J.C. on plea bargaining, but what he was really doing was thinking about the Babe Gardiner case.
“You’re thinking about the Babe Gardiner case, aren’t you?” Terry asked from the easy chair on the other side of the room. He was supposed to be reading the same case.
“No,” Zack answered. “I’m enjoying the prose of one of our most gifted jurists.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Terry put down the file on the arm of the chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “So what would you have done if the costume shop hadn’t carried shitty long-hair wigs and Sean hadn’t been able to pull off a Babe Gardiner impression?”
“I don’t know,” Zack answered. “That was the only hopeless, desperate idea I had.”
“Speaking of hopeless, I really fucked it up with that detective, Vera, you know. When we went out for dessert the night before she got grabbed, I told her that there was no way we could be a couple.”
Sometimes Terry made things harder for himself than they needed to be. “Yeah,” Zack replied. “That was dumb-ass dumb.”
“Thanks for your understanding.”
“I’m just saying.”
For some reason, Terry had decided that defense lawyers couldn’t go out with cops. It was clearly based on some ethical principle, but it was so misguided that it was comical. Except for Terry.
“So I decided that I was wrong. I made a few calls, and I hear that Vera’s going to be at that retirement party they’re throwing for Gloria down at the courthouse.”
“She’s already up and around?”
“Yeah.” Terry got up and started to pace. “The diabetic thing is weird. I talked to somebody down at the police station, and I guess as soon as your body chemistry gets back into sync, as long as there’s no permanent damage, you’re okay. And the injuries from the attack were bad—bruises and a concu
ssion—but no fracture. She should be back to normal pretty quick.”
“That’s great.”
He had found his way to the window that overlooked the side yard, and was watching Justin play with his new puppy, Kermit. “So I’m going to put in an appearance at the party, and ask her out.”
“About time, Elvis.”
“Don’t call me Elvis.”
MARIA SAT UP AND TRIED TO LOOK PRESENTABLE as the hospital door swung open.
She felt a lot better, now that some time had passed after the surgery, but without being able to fix her hair and her makeup, she still looked like an old plate of beans.
The bullet had broken her collarbone, torn some muscle, and caused some nerve damage. She’d also lost a good amount of blood, but all in all, she had been very lucky. If the gun hadn’t been fired from so far away, if the bullet hadn’t crashed through two windows before it reached her, if it had hit her just a few inches lower or to the left…Whatever. That kind of thinking was going to drive her crazy.
“Hello? Are you awake?”
It was Anthony. Carrying a huge vase of bright, beautiful flowers.
“Anthony. You already sent me too many flowers.”
He put the vase down and moved a couple of the blooms around a little. “I know. But these are from my garden. I arranged them myself.”
“You grew these? And arranged them?”
He gave her a look. “What can I tell you? I’m gay.”
She smiled. “If my arm weren’t in this sling, and I weren’t hooked up to all these tubes, I’d give you a hug.”
He nodded, and sat down in the chair next to her bed. “Listen. When you get a little better, we need to talk about work after you are out of the hospital.”
Maria knew this was coming. The doctors said that they expected her to recover from the nerve damage, but that they would only know for sure after many months of therapy. Until then, she was going to have trouble using her right arm. And although she was overjoyed to be alive, it was going to be very hard if she couldn’t get work. What a trip—no matter what she did, she always seemed to fall a little short. Enough money to move into a different neighborhood, but not quite enough money to pay the bills. Shot badly enough to lose her job, but not shot badly enough for her family to collect the life insurance that would set them up forever.