Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  “I’m not willing to continue under the old arrangement,” I said, “not with the way you withheld crucial information from me. If we’re to go forward together it will have to be different.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There is a type of legal action that is perfectly designed to cover this situation. It is a civil proceeding and it is called wrongful death. If I’m going to continue to work on your behalf I will only do it as your partner in the prosecution of such a suit on a contingency fee basis.”

  “Ahh,” she said, crossing her arms, leaning back, taking a long inhale from her cigarette. “Now I understand,” she said and I could tell that she did. I suppose the very rich see the look I had just then more often than is seemly, the baleful gleam of want in the eyes of those they do business with. I wonder if it wearies them with its inevitability or thrills them with reassurance of their power and privilege.

  “One third for our firm if it settles before trial,” I explained. “Forty percent if I have to try it, which goes into effect once we impanel a jury. But money’s not the issue,” I lied. “Finding the truth is the issue. If you level with me, I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of your sister’s death.”

  “I’m sure you will,” she said with an edge in her voice, as if she were talking to a somewhat unpleasant servant. “You already have.”

  It was an awkward moment, but that is inevitable, really, when one’s business is tragedy. She was looking for help, I was looking for a gross profit, how could it be otherwise?

  “I have the appropriate documents right here,” I said, indicating the manila folder on my desktop. “If you’ll just read them carefully and sign, we can continue our relationship as I’ve outlined.”

  I pushed the file toward her and watched as she opened it and read the fee agreements. I had already signed where I was required to sign; all that was wanting was her signature. As she read, nodding here and there, I barely stifled a desire to get down on my knees and polish her boots. I was certain it was all taken care of when she suddenly closed the folder and dropped it back onto my desk.

  “No,” she said.

  My stomach fell like a gold bar sinking in the sea.

  “Sorry, Victor,” she said. “No.”

  “But why not? It’s a standard agreement. Why not? Why not?”

  She stood and slipped me that sly smile of hers. “Because you want it too much.”

  Out of watering eyes I stared at her with horror as she picked the wad of hundred-dollar bills off my desk and shoved it into a pocket of her leather jacket. The lottery ticket swirled round the toilet bowl to the drain.

  “All I wanted you to do,” she said, “was to prove that Jimmy Vigs killed my sister. Was that too hard?”

  “But Jimmy didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked him.”

  “Nice work, Victor,” she said as she turned to leave.

  Panic. Say something, Victor, anything.

  “But what if I’m right and it wasn’t the mob? What if it was something much closer? I’ve been asking around, Caroline. The Reddmans, I’ve been told, are a family dark with secrets.”

  She stopped, her back still to me, and said, “My family had nothing to do with it.”

  “So you’ve said. Every time I mention the possibility that your family is involved in your sister’s death you simply deny it and try to change the topic of conversation. Why is that, Caroline?”

  She turned and looked at me. “I get enough of that question from my therapist. I don’t need it from my lawyer, too.”

  Her lawyer. There was still hope. “But what if one of those dark family secrets is behind your sister’s death?”

  As she stared at me something at once both ugly and wistful slipped onto her face, a mix of emotions far beyond her range as an actress. Then she walked right up to my desk and started unbuttoning her shirt.

  I was taken aback until she reached inside her shirt and pulled out some sort of a medallion hanging on a chain from her neck. She slipped the chain over her head and threw the medallion on my blotter. It was a cross, ancient-looking, green and encrusted, disfigured by time and the elements. In the upper corners of the cross, sharp-pointed wings jutted out, as if a bird had been crucified there.

  “That is the Distinguished Service Cross,” she said. “It was awarded to my grandfather, Christian Shaw, for gallantry in World War I. He led an attack over the trenches in the first American battle of the war and routed the Germans almost single-handedly. My grandmother dredged it from the pond on our family estate after his death. She gave this medal to me one afternoon as we sat together in her garden and said she wanted me to have it.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” I said.

  “My grandmother told me that this medal symbolized more than mere heroism. Whatever crimes in our family’s past, she said, whatever hurts inflicted or sins committed, whatever, this medal was evidence, she said, that the past was dead and the future full of promise. Conciliation, she said, expiation, redemption, they were all in that medal.”

  Those were the same three words the old lady had used with Grimes. I couldn’t help but wonder: conciliation to whom, expiation for what, redemption how?

  “So all those rumors and dark secrets and gossip, I don’t care,” she continued. “They have nothing to do with Jacqueline and nothing to do with me. The past is dead.”

  “If you believe that, then why do you still wear this medal around your neck?”

  “A memento?” she said, her voice suddenly filled with uncertainty.

  I shook my head.

  She sat down and took her grandfather’s Distinguished Service Cross back from me. She stared at it for a while, examining it as if for the first time. “My therapist says my ailurophobia comes from deep-seated fears about my family. She says my family is cold and manipulative and uncaring and until I am able to face the truth I will continue to sublimate my true feelings into irrational fears.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I just hate cats.”

  “Your therapist might be on to something.”

  “Why is it that everyone wants to dig up my family’s past in order to save me? My therapist, you.”

  “The police also tried to look into any familial connection with your sister’s death but were cut off by Mr. Harrington at the bank.”

  She looked up at me when I mentioned Harrington’s name.

  “And, deep down, Caroline, you want to look into it too.”

  “You’re being ludicrous.”

  “Why else would you pay my retainer with a check drawn on the family bank? It was as clear as an advertisement.”

  Her voice slowed and softened. “Do you really think Jacqueline was murdered?”

  “It’s possible. I can’t be certain yet, but I am certain I’m the only one still willing to look into it.”

  “And you think with the answer you can save me?”

  “Do you need saving?”

  She closed her eyes and then opened them again a few seconds later. “What do you want me to do, Victor?”

  “Sign the contract.”

  “I won’t. I can’t. Not until I know everything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then I’ll have given up all control and I can’t ever do that.”

  She said it flatly, as if it were as obvious as the sun, and there was something so transparent in the way she said it that I knew it to be true and that pushing her any further would be useless.

  “How about this, Caroline?” I said. “I’ll agree to continue investigating any connection between the mob and your sister’s death so long as you agree to start telling me the truth, all the truth, and help me look at any possible family involvement too. I’ll pursue the case without a contract and without a retainer, providing you promise me that if I find a murderer, and you decide to sue, then you’ll let me handle the case on my terms.”

  She stared some m
ore at the medal and thought about what I had proposed. I didn’t like this arrangement, I liked things signed, and sealed, but it was my only hope, I figured, to keep on the trail of my fortune, so I watched oh so carefully as her hand played with the medal and her face worked over the possibilities.

  When I saw a doubt slip its way into her features I said, “Did you ever wonder, Caroline, how the medal got into the pond in the first place?”

  She looked up at me and then back at the medal, hefting it in her hand before she grasped the chain and hung her grandfather’s Distinguished Service Cross back around her neck. “You find that out, Victor, and I’ll sign your damn contract.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “There’s a dinner at the family estate, Veritas, on Thursday night,” she said. “The whole family will be there. You can be my date.”

  “They shouldn’t know we’re looking into your sister’s death.”

  “No,” she said. “You’re right, they shouldn’t.”

  “Anything I should know before I meet them all?”

  “Not really,” she said, with an uncomfortably knowing smile. “Just don’t come hungry.”

  14

  “ABOUT HOW MANY CONVERSATIONS did you have with the defendant in the course of your dealings, Detective Scarpatti?”

  “I don’t know, lots. I taped five and we had others. It took awhile for him to get it all straight. Your boy, he’s not the swiftest deal maker out there, no Monty Hall.”

  “So you were forced to lead him through the deal, is that right?”

  “Just in the details, but there was no entrapment here, Counselor, if that’s what you’re getting at. Cressi came to me looking to buy the weapons. He wanted to buy as many as I could sell. I told him one-seventy-nine was all I could come up with and he was disappointed with that number. But he brightened when I added the grenade launchers and the flamethrower. To be truthful, I was more surprised than anyone when he showed up. We were targeting a Jamaican drug outfit with the operation. But your guy could never make up his mind on the spot. He always said he had to think about it.”

  “Like there was someone he had to run the details by, is that it?”

  Scarpatti creased his brow and looked at me like he was straining to actually dredge up a thought and then said, “Yeah, just like that.”

  Detective Scarpatti was a round, red-faced man who smiled all the while he testified. Jolly was the word he brought to mind as he sat and smiled on the stand, his hands calmly clasped over his round hard belly. His was a look that inspired trust, which is why he was such an effective undercover cop, I figured, and an effective witness. All cops have an immediate advantage as they step into the witness box in front of a jury; they are, after all, men and women who devote their lives to law enforcement and competent, truthful testimony is only what is to be expected. Of course they usually get into trouble as soon as they open their mouths, but Scarpatti wasn’t getting in trouble at this preliminary hearing and I sensed he wouldn’t get into any trouble at the trial either. I had never met the guy before but one look at him on the stand and I knew he would bury Peter Cressi. What jury wouldn’t convict on the cogent testimony of Santa Claus?

  “Now in any of those myriad discussions, did Mr. Cressi ever specifically mention he had to run the details of the deal by someone else?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever mention that he had a partner?”

  “No, he didn’t. In fact I even asked once and he said he was flying strictly solo.”

  “In any of your phone conversations did you ever sense there was someone else on the line?”

  “No, not really. But come to think of it, now that you asked, there was one conversation where he stopped in the middle of a comment, as if he was listening to someone.”

  “Did you hear a voice in the background?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “All right, Detective. Now in the course of your conversations, did you ask Mr. Cressi what he planned to do with the guns?”

  “Sure. Part of my job is to draw out as much information as possible, especially in a deal of this magnitude.”

  “And how did he respond?”

  “Can I refer to my notes?”

  “Of course.”

  Preliminary hearings are dry affairs, generally, where the defense tries to find out as much as possible about the case without tipping any stratagems that might be used at trial. I was putting on no testimony, presenting no evidence, Cressi was remaining blissfully silent. What I was doing was sitting at the counsel desk, sitting because that’s the way we do it in Philadelphia, the lazy man’s bar, asking my simple little questions, learning exactly how high was the mountain of evidence the state had against my client and whatever else I could glean about his attempted purchase of the guns. I was in a tricky position, stuck between a bad place and two hard guys, defending my client while also trying to find out for my patron, Mr. Raffaello, what Cressi was planning to do with his arsenal. Tricky, hell, it was flat-out unethical, as defined by the Bar Association, but when your client is a gleeful felon buying up an armory and a mob war is brewing and lives are at stake, especially your own, I think the ethical rules of the Bar Association become somewhat quaint. I think when you are that far over the edge it is up to you to figure out your way in the world and if they decide you stepped over a line and pull your ticket then maybe in the end they’re doing you a favor.

  While Scarpatti was flipping through his little spiral-bound notebook, I turned to scan the courtroom. It was full, of course, but not to witness my scintillating cross-examination. Once I was finished there was another case set to go and then another and then another, as many hearings as defendants who needed to be held over for trial, and the defendants and lawyers and witnesses and families in the courtroom for those hearings that were to follow Cressi’s were waiting and watching, their faces slack with boredom. Except one face was not slack with boredom, one face was watching our proceedings with a keen, almost frightening interest. Thin sharp face, oily gray hair, dapper black suit, with a crimson handkerchief peeking from his suit pocket. What the hell was he doing here?

  “All right, yeah. I got it right here,” said Scarpatti.

  I turned around and faced the witness, whom I had forgotten about in the instant I noticed the mortician’s face of Earl Dante staring at me from the gallery of the courtroom. “All right, Detective, what did the defendant say to you when you asked him what he planned to do with the guns?”

  “He said, and I’m quoting now, he said, ‘None of your fucking business.’ ”

  Scarpatti laughed and the slack crowd, suddenly brought to life by the obscenity, laughed with him. Even Cressi laughed. You know you’re in trouble when your own client laughs at you.

  “Thank you for that, Detective,” I said.

  “Anytime, Counselor.”

  When I was finished handling Scarpatti, denting his story not a whit, the prosecution rested and I stood and made my motion to dismiss all charges against my client. The judge smiled solicitously as she denied my motion and scheduled Cressi’s trial. I made a motion to reduce my client’s bail. The judge smiled solicitously as she denied my motion and, instead, raised his bail by a hundred thousand dollars, ordering Cressi to be taken into custody immediately by the sheriff until the additional funds could be posted. I objected strenuously to the increase, requesting she reconsider her addition, and she smiled solicitously, reconsidered, and added another fifty thousand to the amount. I made an oral motion for discovery, the judge smiled once again as she denied my motion and told me to seek informal discovery from the prosecution before coming to her with my requests.

  “Anything else, Mr. Carl?” she said sweetly.

  “Please, in heaven’s name, do me a favor here, Vic, and just say no,” said Cressi, loud enough for the whole courtroom to laugh again at my expense. Maybe I should have given up the law right there and hit the comedy circuit.

  “I don’t think so, Your Hono
r,” I said.

  “That’s probably a wise move.” The slam of her gavel. “Next case.”

  Dante was waiting for me outside the courtroom, in one of the columnar white hallways of the new Criminal Justice Building. He leaned against a wall and held tight to his briefcase. Behind him, his head turning back and forth with an overstudied guardedness, was the weightlifter I had seen with Dante at the Roundhouse’s Municipal Court. Dante had one of those officious faces that was never out of place, a face full of condolence and efficiency. A dark face, close-shaven, with small very white teeth. His back stayed straight as he leaned and his cologne was strong. He could have been a maître d’ at the finest French restaurant in hell. Table for two? But of course. Would that be smoking or would you prefer to burn outright with your dinner? The only comforting thing about being face to face with Earl Dante was that he couldn’t then be behind my back.

  “Find out anything yet, Victor?” Dante said to me in a calm resonant voice that held a slight lisp, as if his tongue was too long for his mouth and forked.

  I felt a chill even though it was hot in that corridor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Those questions about possible partners and anything Cressi might have said about his intentions for those guns, very clever.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. You keep searching, you’ll find something.” He stared at me for a long moment, the significance of which I couldn’t gauge, and then turned his head away. “You might not have heard, Victor, but Calvi’s out.”

  “I heard.”

  “You liked Calvi, didn’t you? You were friends.”

  “We shared a few meals.”

  He turned his head to stare at me again. “You were friends.”

  “Calvi doesn’t have friends. He despises everybody equally. But there were those who could stand his cigars, and those who couldn’t. I could, that was all, so we had lunch now and then and chatted about the Eagles.”