Secrets and Fries at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

  ‘What, because my idea of preparing for a trial is shovelling coins into a slot and drinking overpriced liquor?’ Jimmy said, the skin around his eyes creasing in disgust.

  Though I was happier than I could ever admit to Jimmy that he’d asked me to dinner, I hadn’t wanted to go down to the boardwalk where a lot of the flashier places to eat could be found. That strip was lined with casinos, including the Crystal Coast Casino. It would’ve been a more central location to stay, but the thought of being anywhere near Frankie’s lair the night before the trial was just too unsettling. Consequently, Jimmy had booked a hotel out in the Margate area, just south of the town centre. Though more isolated, it was more relaxing than being caught up in the downtown maze of seedy liquor stores, peeling gas stations and burned-out buildings. In terms of how unloved they were, Atlantic City and Detroit were a straight swap.

  ‘I hear you can stay in one of the super-suites at the Taj for a mere $10,000 a night. Tempted?’ I said with a giggle.

  ‘Doesn’t Donald Trump own that building?’ Jimmy asked with a frown.

  ‘Yeah, it just opened. Michael Jackson came to town to check it out. Went down to catch a glimpse of him but couldn’t get anywhere near for the crowds,’ I explained, still a little sore that I’d been that close to pop royalty and not managed to brush shoulders with him.

  ‘Yeah, well, Trump doesn’t need ten thousand bucks of anybody’s money. Besides, keeping our distance is the right thing to do. I don’t want you anywhere near Frankie Ray.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ I said with a shiver.

  We fell into silence then, walking side by side along the seafront while an orange sun slipped below the watery horizon. It was breezy out here – spring was still a good month away – but after the mustiness of the motel room it was refreshing to be out in it, even if the wind was messing up my hair. Wouldn’t have bothered brushing it before leaving the room if I’d known.

  We reached the Lobster Pot restaurant within a few minutes, just as I’d said we would. It was a small glass building with wooden decking out front and the smoky scent of grilled seafood floating all around it. With evening closing in, it was too cold for eating al fresco, but the set-up inside was smart enough that you could still make the most of the location even in the winter. Each table had its own little parasol illuminated with small bulbs that glowed yellow in the otherwise dim lighting of the restaurant. As the building was made of glass, you had a direct view out to the sand and sea, giving the impression of dining on the beach even though you were tucked away, warm and dry.

  Jimmy walked up the wooden steps to the glass doorway and swung it open. I followed close behind and we were greeted by a hostess wearing a white fitted shirt and a tight black skirt that came to the knee.

  ‘Table for two?’ she asked, in a voice that sounded a bit too high-pitched to be human. One that was more suited to a mouse or a hamster.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ Jimmy said, as she walked us over to a table at the front of the restaurant. Given that it was a Wednesday night in January, it was quiet, so we didn’t have to barter for the table with the best view.

  Once we’d removed our coats and sat down across from each other, we were immediately set upon by a waitress by the name of Kimberley. She handed us a menu and reeled off a list of specials, but I wasn’t really paying attention to her or anything she said. I couldn’t. My eyes were locked on Jimmy; the gentle glow of the parasol bulbs gave him a warm and approachable air. He was staring at me too. Maybe it was just the ambience in this place playing tricks on me, but those brown eyes of his seemed to be examining every inch of my face. It was intense and unexpected, which, of course, meant a blush started burning in my cheeks.

  ‘Can I get you a drink to start?’ asked the waitress.

  ‘I’ll stick with a Coke,’ Jimmy said. ‘Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘Same for me,’ I said, flattening down my hair from where the wind had blown it out of place.

  ‘Comin’ right up,’ said the waitress, sashaying off.

  A silence fell between Jimmy and me again, just as it had on the walk here. It was suddenly uncomfortable to be alone with him in a way that made my shoulders stiffen.

  ‘So… tomorrow,’ I said, latching on to the business at hand in the hopes of diluting the awkwardness.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Look, there’s going to be some stuff that comes out in the courtroom that’s probably going to shock you. Details you’re not going to want to hear about Reeves. And Rivera’s investigation…’ He trailed off and scratched above his left ear.

  ‘What about it?’ I asked. Jimmy seemed to be practising how to form words with his mouth, but no sound came out. ‘Jimmy, what is it?’

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you back in New York. Figured you were scared enough. But Rivera searched the fourth floor of the apartment block. One of the apartments belonged to a person who’d been reported missing a few weeks ago when he didn’t show up for work. Forensics found no prints at the scene but they did find small traces of gun powder,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘So the shooter used that apartment?’

  ‘It looks that way, but there’s more. The body of the guy who lived there washed up in the East River last week.’

  ‘Who was he?’ I asked, swallowing hard.

  ‘Rivera doesn’t think he was linked to this in any way. He was just a guy who lived alone opposite Jack and Esther. But Rivera thinks the shooter killed the man. Before dumping his body in the river.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said with a little shudder.

  Jimmy scrunched up his mouth and looked out the window at the darkening sky before looking back at me. ‘She said, based on the look of the body, it’d been there for about four weeks.’

  ‘But, the shooting happened less than two weeks ago,’ I said, with a frown. And then my lower lip began to tremble as I realised what Jimmy was saying. ‘The shooter… they were watching Jack’s apartment. All that time?’

  Jimmy sighed. ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘Two Cokes,’ the waitress said, appearing out of nowhere. ‘You folks know what you’re having?’

  ‘Oh… uh…’ I took a deep breath and looked at the menu. Though the last thing I was feeling right now was hungry, I reminded myself that I could soon be digging in to twenty years of prison food and would regret it later if I didn’t relish my last few meals on the outside. ‘I’ll have the lobster house special, thanks.’

  ‘That sounds good, I’ll take that too,’ Jimmy said, handing the waitress back the menus.

  ‘Ugh. I can’t believe all this time someone was watching me,’ I said. ‘I knew it. I mean, I felt it. But I just figured I was scared, you know? Rattled by everything that’d happened. The thought of being watched like that…’

  ‘I know. But Rivera is investigating the death of the guy in the apartment and what she has uncovered so far will only help us tomorrow.’

  ‘How so?’

  Jimmy’s face came over with that mean look it got from time to time. Not even the soft lighting of the Lobster Pot could make those hard lines seem any kinder. ‘Juries are just made up of people like you and me. And people love the idea of conspiracy. They’re going to hear about the shooting and the fact you were being watched and their minds are going to start to whirr. They’re going to see there is more to this case than meets the eye.’

  ‘Yeah, but the prosecution have Larry Harris’s statement. He’s a cop. Do you really think you can discredit him enough with what you have?’ I asked. Frankie had chosen his star witness with care alright. Harris had a long, clean record. Whatever Jimmy had on him, it must be good.

  ‘I do. His statement is far from watertight. Besides, on my first trip here to gather evidence I happened to see quite a lot of him. Came to understand a bit about his habits and his alliances.’

  I tilted my head and looked at Jimmy. ‘You followed Harris?’

  ‘Now I wouldn’t go around saying that, he just happened to pop up in a lot of the same places
I did,’ Jimmy said with a sly smile.

  I shook my head at him, trying not to smile and in turn condone his underhand behaviour. ‘And based on what you found out, you think you can turn the case around?’

  ‘I don’t make promises unless I know I can keep them. But I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, leaning a touch closer across the table. ‘And you’ve checked your Spidey senses? They’re on full alert for courtroom misconduct?’

  ‘That’s always on full alert. Wish to God I could switch it off sometimes,’ Jimmy said, taking a sip of his drink.

  ‘It’s so weird that you have that,’ I said with a chuckle. ‘What does it feel like?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just a feeling in my gut when I look at someone,’ he said, looking into my eyes. ‘If something’s off about them, I know right away. It’s like a squeezing feeling in the pit of my stomach.’

  ‘Must come in handy. Can you sense goodness too? Or is it only to protect you from evil?’ I said, twisting a small section of hair in my fingers as I spoke.

  ‘Oh no, I can sense goodness too. Took you in and gave you a place to stay, didn’t I?’ Jimmy said, his voice the most gentle it had been since we’d left the motel.

  ‘Yes, I hadn’t forgotten,’ I said, holding his eyes. ‘Never will.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, leaning in. ‘But sensing goodness in someone feels different.’

  ‘Like how?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t want to say.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m going to prison for twenty years, who am I going to tell?’ I teased.

  ‘Hey, you’re not going to jail. Have a little faith, will ya?’ Jimmy said with mock offence. At least, I think it was put-on. Difficult to work out with him sometimes.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. I was laughing but my smile levelled out again pretty quick. ‘Tell me, please. How does it feel different?’

  The humour in Jimmy’s expression dissolved. He looked down at the table and then back up at me. ‘Well, I don’t feel goodness in my stomach,’ he said. ‘I feel it in here.’ He patted the left side of his chest. I looked first at his hand and then let my gaze drift upward to his deep brown eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For seeing the good in me.’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult to spot at all,’ Jimmy replied, before diverting his gaze out the window once more, staring at the dreamy trail of light cast across the ocean by the rising moon.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Your Honour, the State calls Officer Larry Harris to the stand,’ said Ms Carter, standing in her deep purple pantsuit at the centre of the courtroom at Atlantic County Criminal Court.

  I looked at Jimmy, who was sitting next to me and was wearing the same deep blue suit he’d worn at my first court appearance. Framed by those gold-rimmed reading glasses I’d only ever seen him wear when acting as my attorney, his sharp brown eyes locked with my widened green ones. He took a deep breath and made an almost undetectable nod that said, ‘I got this.’

  We both turned then to see the trial’s key witness enter courtroom, marching towards us past the rows of wooden benches furnished in dark red leather. We’d been in here for hours already but this was the man I’d been waiting for that whole time. The man who had told a lie that could put me behind bars for the foreseeable future.

  Harris had a swagger in his step as he walked up to the witness box. He was a tall, trim man and wore a sky-blue police uniform. His black hair was peppered with grey and had been snipped very close to the scalp. He also had a dark moustache that was impossibly neat. Placing his hand on the bible, the guy had the audacity to look at me while he was sworn in. His eyes had a fierceness about them. They glowed like amber against the pale backdrop of the courtroom. Looking into them, I was gripped at once with terror and an odd, almost relieving, sense of finality.

  I’d gone over and over this day in my head for the last few weeks. What would it be like, I’d wondered? Meeting the jury for the first time. Watching my family shuffle into the courtroom, their heads hung low with shame. Hearing the judge read out the list of godawful things I was supposed to have done to this poor man Donald Reeves. A man who I never knew, and yet was somehow bound to by witnessing the unforgivable brutality of the final moments of his short, and, from what I could gather, hard, life.

  So yes, in a way I’d been dreading this moment, but by this stage in the proceedings my back was so tense it stung, my eyes were sore from lying awake at night and on top of that I’d been stuck in this vacuum, which smelled of nothing but pine and dyed cowhide, with people in suits standing around and saying a lot of stuff I didn’t completely understand, for hours now.

  I was dreading a guilty verdict, of course I was, but having sat through a presentation of forensic photographs, a lengthy coroner’s report, and a testimony by a blood spatter analyst, I just wanted it over with.

  ‘Mr Harris,’ Carter began, ‘could you tell the court where you were at the time of the murder on the 23rd of December 1990, please?’

  ‘I was patrolling along South Kentucky Avenue. People drink a great deal more around the holidays and we see an increase in violent incidents around the casinos at this time of year, so we try and keep that stretch covered as much as possible.’

  ‘I see. And what did you see on that patrol?’

  ‘Well, right before midnight, I heard a man cry out from an alleyway across the road. Next thing I knew, Ms Brooks darted out of the alleyway with a gun in her hand,’ said Harris.

  ‘And what did you do when you saw Ms Brooks, armed with a weapon and running down South Kentucky Avenue?’

  ‘I called out for her to freeze but she did not do that.’ Again Harris looked right at me as he spoke. The nerve of this guy. ‘She instead continued running. I chased after her. I called after her several times but she dived into the Golden Sands Casino, and in there, I lost her.’

  ‘So, Ms Brooks directly disobeyed your order to freeze?’ Carter clarified.

  ‘Yes,’ Harris said.

  ‘And what happened next?’

  When I realised I couldn’t locate the suspect from ground level in the casino, I went to the security room at the Golden Sands and asked to look at their security cameras. I looked at the footage in there for a good ten minutes but I still couldn’t locate her,’ Harris explained.

  ‘And what time was this?’ Carter asked.

  ‘Just after midnight.’ Harris looked to the ceiling, making a good show of trying to remember what time he did something that hadn’t happened. ‘Maybe a quarter after, at the latest.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour. No further questions.’

  ‘Mr Boyle, you may start your examination of Officer Harris. Your witness,’ said Judge Hamilton, the man adjudicating my case. He had the whitest crop of hair I’d ever seen; at a guess I’d say he was in his sixties. He was considered in his manner, and experienced.

  ‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ Jimmy said, walking towards the witness box. ‘Mr Harris, did you check all of the security tapes from the Golden Sands casino personally, there and then?’

  ‘As I just explained to Ms Carter, very clearly, yes.’

  ‘You checked all the cameras, covering the relevant time frame?

  ‘Yes,’ Harris said. His tone had a sting to it hadn’t had even a moment ago.

  ‘And you’ve got a good memory, have you? That moment is very clear to you. There’s no chance you were mistaken either then or now?’

  ‘I didn’t start this job yesterday, Mr Boyle. I’m experienced enough to know how to look at some security footage,’ Harris sneered.

  ‘Mr Boyle, is this line of inquiry going somewhere?’ Judge Hamilton intervened.

  ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ Jimmy walked over to the desk I was sitting at and, glancing at me for just a second, pulled a tape cassette out of a brown envelope. ‘I’d like to introduce the casino security footage into evidence. I have a statement confirming its validity from the owner of the casino.
’ Jimmy nodded across at a clerk who wheeled over a TV set and video player. Jimmy turned the screen, making sure both Harris and the jury could see it, and then shoved the video into the player.

  ‘See the time stamp in the bottom right hand corner there? All this footage was taken between seven after midnight and a quarter after midnight.’ Jimmy pointed at the screen. ‘We see my client here, and here in this camera just a few moments later. And again here. In all, Ms Brooks is picked up by no fewer than eight cameras over a period of eight minutes.’ Jimmy pressed a button on the screen, turning off the monitor and turned to Harris.

  ‘So my question to you, Mr Harris, is were you mistaken, or were you lying?’

  ‘Well obviously I’m not lying, that would be a felony,’ Harris said, his face darkening.

  ‘How could an experienced officer such as yourself miss a face you were looking for on eight separate screens?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Objection, Your Honour.’ Lucy Carter whipped up from her wooden chair. I’d seen her do this several times over the course of the morning, her tone calm but business-like. ‘Mr Boyle is badgering the witness.’

  ‘Your Honour, I don’t mean to badger,’ Jimmy said, even though this was an outright lie and both of us knew it. ‘It’s an honest question. Mr Harris has worked on the force for an impressive seventeen years now. You don’t work at a job that long and miss something like this. I’d simply like to know what caused this to happen.’

  ‘Overruled, Ms Carter,’ said Judge Hamilton. ‘Mr Boyle, it is your job to be careful of how you word questions. Proceed.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Mr Harris, do you know how you could’ve missed my client on those security screens?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Harris’s teeth were gritted now. ‘I wasn’t exactly expecting to see a young woman running out of an alleyway with a gun that evening. I’d had to change gears pretty quick.’

  ‘If you weren’t able to recognise my client’s face just a few minutes after seeing her for the first time, can you be sure it was her you saw running from the alley?’