Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  The second, he says: ‘ “Beware of false prosecutors who come to you in the night in sheep’s clothing or slinky garb, for they are ravening wolves,” ’ he says. To Harry there is little that is sacred.

  I give him a smile but don’t say anything.

  ‘Sure, laugh,’ he says. ‘But it ain’t me running down the street who’s being chased by Tabloid Mary,’ he says. ‘It’s your ass that’s in the flames. Burnt offerings to the god of yellow journalism,’ says Harry.

  In the distance a half block away I can hear some asshole shouting, ‘There he is!’ The patter of feet, heels on concrete, like a stampede of hookers ahead of the paddy wagon.

  We’re making for the sanctuary of court, across the intersection between the parking lot and the courthouse, against a light that says DON’T WALK. We are nearly hit by a car. We run up the ramp to the back door.

  It takes us a couple of minutes to negotiate the metal detector. It is here that the first camera crew catches us. Harry is panting, out of breath, busy putting his belt with its metal buckle back through the loops in his pants. Pictures at five. We move away. They try to follow. The guard is pointing to the conveyor belt and telling them to unstrap for inspection.

  Harry turns around and gives them the finger. Their lights still on, film still whirring. ‘See you assholes upstairs,’ he says. ‘And leave the fucking cameras and mikes outside, in the hall,’ he tells them. Harry Hinds on public relations.

  He sees the look on my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘They gotta bleep out all the bad stuff.’ Harry’s never heard of lip-reading.

  We look like two brush salesmen toting sample cases as we finally make it to the elevator. Harry’s is filled with exhibits and pieces of evidence for our case. My own has lined-out questions for examination, in the case of today, for Jack Vega, who is due up in the state’s case – if I am not suspended from the practice before then.

  When we arrive at the clerk’s station behind the courtroom, Dana is already inside with Woodruff. The clerk knocks on the door and we are told to wait a couple of minutes. Morgan Cassidy has been summoned by the judge and is on her way. Woodruff apparently is concerned by appearances of ex parte communications. He doesn’t want one of the lawyers inside behind closed doors without opposing counsel being present.

  Two minutes later Cassidy breezes into the office, followed by Jimmy Lama. She walks past us like we are not there, nothing but an imperious look. Lama’s expression is dour, like maybe he’s not looking forward to this meeting.

  The clerk opens the door and we all press into chambers. Woodruff is seated behind a large mahogany desk. Dana has one of the two stuffed club chairs across from him. Her briefcase is in her lap.

  ‘Your honor, if I could explain.’ I don’t waste any time. ‘I take it you’ve seen the morning paper?’

  Woodruff has his hand up. ‘I’ve seen it and I’ve talked to Ms. Colby. She’s already told me what happened,’ he says. ‘An inaccurate news story,’ he says. ‘Right now I’m more concerned about how it got in the paper.’ He means whether there is some ulterior motive for this, and whether it takes its inspiration from the trial.

  Woodruff may have the bushy eyebrows and the genteel twinkle of Walter Cronkite, but this morning he is a mean face, all of it aimed at Morgan Cassidy. There has been no love lost between her and the judge.

  ‘What can you tell us about this, Ms. Cassidy?’

  ‘Not a thing, your honor. You don’t think–’

  ‘Well, it didn’t come from our shop,’ says Dana.

  Cassidy gives her a look to kill.

  Harry’s smiling. The other side of the gender conspiracy – a catfight.

  ‘How about your people?’ Dana’s looking at Jimmy Lama.

  His Adam’s apple comes halfway up, and then does a jackknife. A lot of nervous eyeing of the judge. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I thought the postal investigation was a federal affair?’

  ‘We called in the local bomb squad, and forensic support,’ says Dana.

  ‘Maybe we should get whoever headed it up over here,’ says Woodruff.

  ‘No need. They’re here already,’ says Dana. ‘Lieutenant Lama was local liaison.’

  With this Jimmy is seven shades of purple, a lot of fidgeting and nervous glances, more than a few of them in my direction. Lama on the carpet. Woodruff demanding answers. Who had access to information? The fingerprint reports?

  ‘It didn’t come from our side,’ says Jimmy. Absolute denials which he undercuts a moment later with assurances that he’ll check it out and get back to the judge.

  ‘By this afternoon,’ says Woodruff.

  ‘You got it,’ says Lama.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your honor,’ says Jimmy.

  Woodruff gives him a look that says, ‘That’s better.’

  Lama’s muttering to Cassidy. Denials sputtering like they are out of gas. ‘Our people wouldn’t do this.’

  All of them except one, and I am looking at him right now. There is no longer any mystery in my mind as to the source of this news story. Humiliation over the courthouse tape, the loss of the compact as evidence was the last straw. This is classic Lama, time-honored techniques designed to screw one’s opponent. To Jimmy life is one large board game of getting even. Something tells me there is no way Woodruff will ever prove Lama was involved. He would have more layers of insulation on this than the average Eskimo. A dozen people between himself and the reporter, his name or fingerprints on nothing. Under the circumstances the court cannot call the reporter who wrote the story onto the carpet and demand to know his sources. Ostensibly Woodruff has no jurisdiction. The information in the article does not relate to evidence in our case. It is all tangential, intended only to cripple me as counsel. In this Lama has been deft.

  Woodruff wrings his hands over the desk, making noises about a mistrial. At this moment, given the holes we have punched in their case, this would be a gift-wrapped package to Cassidy. She now knows our theory of defense. She could shore it up and try the case again.

  The judge says he will poll the jury to see how many have read the article, what effect it has had. In the meantime he will craft an instruction. He orders Lama to return after today’s session to report progress on this, his inquiries regarding the story. Jimmy is bowing and scraping. Your typical toady in the face of authority, Lama is vowing to get to the bottom of it.

  By five o’clock he’ll be back with iron-clad assurances that nobody in the department was involved, and Woodruff will be left as I am, to harbor empty suspicions without proof.

  Lama and Cassidy head out to the courtroom to prepare for the day’s session. Harry follows them. Dana and I huddle in the hallway just beyond the clerk’s station.

  ‘That bitch,’ she says. I am struck by her language. This is an anger I have not seen in Dana before. Her face is flushed, her hands shaking. She is looking at the wall behind me at this moment, not engaging my eyes. The expletive uttered as if she were talking to herself. As if I were not present.

  ‘She’s spent months trying to derail the appointment,’ she says. Dana’s talking about her judicial aspirations. Her wrath, it seems, is predicated on something more than her personal loyalty to me. Cassidy in her denials to the court has in her own inimitable way implied that if it was not the local authorities whose indiscretions led to the embarrassing news article, then there is only one other possibility – it had to be Dana or some of her people. She does not take kindly to being played the stooge.

  ‘Fine. That’s the way they want it,’ she says, ‘we’ll give it to them in spades. A little leveling of the playing field,’ she tells me. ‘When do they swear Jack?’ she asks.

  ‘This morning,’ I tell her. ‘He’s first up.’

  ‘Then he’s fair game anytime after that?’

  I nod.

  ‘You’ll have unsealed indictments and public records of conviction, certified copies by no
on,’ she says. ‘I’ll see to it that a courier delivers them.’

  I thank her for standing up for me, explaining to Woodruff.

  ‘All in a day’s work,’ she says. But now she tells me there is bad news. Things are not going well in their search for the witness who saw Jack with the man they know as Lyle Simmons in the bar across the river. The guy has completely dropped from sight.

  ‘Your people haven’t stopped looking?’ I say.

  ‘No. But I don’t want to mislead you either. The man hasn’t been seen in more than two months. He has strong inducements to stay lost. The unrelated criminal charges,’ she says. ‘If we do find him, it may not be in time.’

  ‘The man’s a linchpin in my case,’ I tell her.

  ‘You can make a case on Jack without him. He’s dirty,’ she says. ‘You know it wasn’t his child. The guy was burning with jealousy. He used the death of his wife to try and cut a deal on his sentence. There will be letters to that effect in the file,’ she says. ‘You can draw and quarter him.’

  ‘I wish you were on the jury,’ I tell her.

  ‘Their case is hemorrhaging faster than a peptic ulcer,’ she says. ‘The compact which no longer ties your client to the scene, a silencer, all the signs of a hired job. And Mr. Vega with a motive. Sounds like that’s where it’s at,’ she says.

  ‘It would be that much stronger with a triggerman.’

  ‘You want it all,’ she says. ‘We’ll try. But you shouldn’t count on it.’ The way she says this makes me think I am being told to make other arrangements, something short of the best evidence. I begin to wonder if this witness of theirs is not dead.

  ‘Are you free tonight?’ she asks.

  ‘Except for fatherhood,’ I tell her. ‘Dinner my place?’

  She tells me she will bring the wine.

  ‘Say seven,’ I say.

  She smiles. Then a warm and wet peck on the cheek in the dark corridor.

  As she turns on her heels and heads down the hall, I see Harry, sitting in a chair in the clerk’s station, taking this all in, his face an etching of paternal disapproval, like some patriarch whose eldest son has just run off with the village trollop.

  Chapter 27

  He is the centerpiece of the state’s case – the grieving widower. Jack is at the front of the courtroom, some last-minute words with Cassidy. Vega as usual is up on his toes, prancing in place like some kid about to wet his pants. He’s been escorted to the stand by Jimmy and one of the minions, who act like two cruisers pushing reporters away.

  Vega wears a suit the price of which could support a family for a year, a silk tie and a matching kerchief in the breast pocket, maroon, Jack’s standard colors.

  As he talks he cannot keep his gaze off me, darting little slits, sallow cheeks and lips stretched white with tension. I am assembling papers at the counsel table, but I refuse to divert my eyes from him. Jack and I play a game of ocular chicken.

  Vega’s is a face not so much of determination as pure meanness. I have seen him turn this on witnesses in legislative committee before unleashing his wrath, usually in defense of some protected interests which has lavished its largess to sweeten Jack’s judgment. Vega is merciless on those without influence, volunteers for consumer groups, or students with a brief for the environment. Under Jack’s rules those without money have no business living in a democracy.

  This morning I go back to meet Laurel in the holding cells, a few words of caution before she is led out into the courtroom.

  When I see her inside the cell she is putting the final touches on her hair with a brush. It seems she has taken more interest in her personal appearance now that the kids are out of the way, to her view, safe and out of the clutches of Jack.

  I tell her that he is outside ready to take the stand, that the jury will be watching her for each telltale sign of a response to everything he says.

  ‘Anything, a twitch of the nose, a pained expression, and they can read into it. It’s vital that you hold your emotions. There is no telling what he will say.’

  This is shorthand for the obvious, that of all the witnesses Jack is the one most likely to embellish on the evidence, to take liberty with the facts where he can.

  ‘You don’t think he would lie?’ She gives me a stark expression.

  For an instant, the very fact that she could ask this with a straight face catches me off guard. Then little cracks in her demeanor, wrinkles around the mouth, and the dam breaks. We both laugh.

  ‘It is a possibility,’ I tell her.

  ‘No. Rain tomorrow is a possibility,’ she says. ‘That Jack would lie when the truth will do just as well, that’s more like the law of gravity,’ she says.

  ‘Just be natural. Be yourself,’ I tell her.

  ‘If I were being natural I would knee him in the nuts and scratch his eyes out,’ she says.

  ‘I take it back. Don’t be yourself.’

  ‘Sorry to be difficult,’ she says.

  I don’t want to place Laurel in an emotional straitjacket.

  If Jack tells a whopper, the jury will expect some normal reaction of denial. What I don’t want are histrionics at the table.

  ‘High emotion,’ I tell her, ‘is the stuff of which murder is made. Show them a temper, a flash of anger, and it is easier for them to see you with a gun in your hand.’

  ‘I understand,’ she says. ‘I can call him a liar, just not a fucking liar.’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say.

  We gather ourselves. She takes my hand and squeezes it, and together we head out, Laurel, I, the sheriff’s guard, and a female matron, toward the courtroom.

  There are extra rows of press here today, the overflow from Louis Cousins’ case, as well as some of the capital press corps, all with sharpened pencils. There is an electricity in the air. It is the smell of news when crime is injected under pressure into the political class and ignited by a spark. Like the stench of ozone after lightning.

  We take a seat at the counsel table. Some guy with a notepad comes up and starts to ask questions of me over the bar railing – what I think Vega will say on the stand. I tell him to watch and see.

  Then he starts talking about the post office bombing and my fingerprints. As soon as this happens three more join him, and when I turn around there is a small crowd. I tell them I have no comment but they persist.

  Woodruff’s bailiff wanders over.

  ‘Either take your seats or we’ll be giving them to people waiting outside in the hallway.’ Suddenly there are bodies racing in a dozen directions like the last land rush.

  As the jury is led in, I can tell that the bombing story has taken its toll. The usual drifting of gazes about the room is absent. This morning all eyes are riveted on me, murmurs between a few of them like perhaps they are surprised I am here and not in shackles.

  Woodruff takes the bench. Cassidy directs Vega to a chair inside the railing, where she holds him for the moment.

  ‘Before we start today,’ says Woodruff, ‘there is some business I must get out of the way.’

  He immediately talks about the news article, the letter bomb, and my fingerprints at the scene. He polls the jury as to effect. Three of them say they have never seen the piece, nor heard any reports in the media. Some people live on Mars. The others concede that they have seen it, and to varying degrees were curious. One juror, a man in the second row, says if there is smoke there must be fire. According to this guy I should not be trying the case if there is even a hint of suspicion. He is immediately excused by Woodruff and replaced on the jury by one of the alternates. This brings a lot of sober expressions from the others. Any further polling at this point would be an idle exercise. They will not be volunteering their private thoughts.

  Then, in wooden tones the judge reads them a carefully crafted instruction that they are not to consider any of this in judging the evidence of this case. He nibbles around the edges of exoneration, that I have cooperated fully with authorities, that I am not at this time an
d have not been a suspect in the bombing, that inferences to this end in the article are inaccurate.

  I can hear the scratching of pencils in the press rows behind me. Then, as abruptly as he started, he brings it to a close. I can sense that there are a dozen hands that would go up like skyrockets if this were a press conference. Cassidy and Lama sense this too; there is a wicked grin on Jimmy’s face. Enough latitude for more speculation in tomorrow morning’s newspaper.

  ‘Call your next witness.’ Woodruff looking at Cassidy.

  ‘Mr. Jack Vega.’

  Jack takes the stand and is sworn.

  When he identifies himself for the record it is with his legislative title as a member of the Assembly. He wears this like a badge of honor, oblivious to the fact that in opinion polls on the issue of integrity it places him well beneath those who go door-to-door peddling aluminum siding, and only a half-notch above the lawyers who are about to question him.

  ‘Do you know the defendant, Laurel Vega?’ asks Cassidy.

  ‘I do. We were married for some years, until divorced,’ he says.

  ‘And do you have children by the defendant?’

  ‘Two,’ he says. ‘A boy and a girl, thirteen and fifteen, though I haven’t seen them for nearly a month.’

  ‘Who has legal custody of these children at the present time?’

  I am getting uneasy feelings about where this line is taking us.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But you have no idea where they are?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your honor. I am going to object on grounds of relevance. Where is this taking us?’

  Without hesitation Cassidy says, ‘Into the issue of motive, your honor.’

  ‘Overruled. Continue,’ he says.

  ‘When was the last time you saw your children?’

  ‘It was twenty-eight days ago,’ says Jack. ‘My daughter told me she was going to stay overnight with a friend.’

  ‘And your son?’

  ‘He’d left the house, though he hadn’t told me where he was going. I found out later that he went to see his mother at the county jail.’

  ‘The defendant, Laurel Vega?’ says Cassidy.