“So what? We’re looking for an alibi witness for you, Marvin. If you were with a woman when one of these murders took place, that gets you off that murder, don’t you get it? If you’re off one, you’re off them all. This is important, Marvin. Crucial. Think! Now. A name, an address. Anything.” He was losing his temper, but he didn’t care. Something had to wake this kid up, and fast.
Marvin shook his head, his eyes on the pocked tile floor. “I can’t, Mr. Matthews. They all blur into each other.”
He stopped talking for a moment, his mind working; then he looked up, the first time he was making clear eye contact with Wyatt. “I never saw them, you know? I looked at their faces, but I didn’t see them, you understand me? I didn’t want to see them, because they didn’t exist for me as people. Like I didn’t exist for them as a person. I was something to make them feel like a woman, like they had some sex appeal left in them. They used me and I used them back. It was business. It wasn’t about what their name was or what they looked like.”
THE CASE OF PEOPLE v. Walter Malone was being tried in courtroom C, one of the regular-sized courtrooms. There were forty-eight seats for spectators, but although it was a murder trial the room was only about half-full, with most of the attendees being reporters. There wasn’t much sex appeal to this case; it was four years old, and there were no big players involved. The accused was a lowlife petty habitual criminal, the murder victim was a petty lowlife loan shark, and nobody, except for the prosecutor’s office and the accused himself, had any stake in the outcome.
The meat of Alex Pagano’s case was the confession that Walter Malone had made to Dwayne Thompson at Durban prison the previous year, when both men were briefly cellmates. In his insinuating, inimitable fashion, Dwayne had played on the con’s need for absolution and had gotten poor Walter to spill his guts. Walter, of course, had never dreamed that a fellow con would turn against him. Like all men, he had needed to tell someone about what he had done, because if no one knows, there’s no acclaim, no status; and also, it’s a hard thing to keep inside you forever, that you killed a fellow human being. In the old days the chaplain served that purpose; except criminals rarely went to see the chaplain, except in Pat O’Brien movies.
Dwayne had been outfitted in a decent sports jacket, white shirt, tie, slacks. Nothing fancy or flashy—presentable, neutral. He had a fresh haircut, square-style, combed back on the sides in a modified ducktail, held in place with Vitalis. He sat upright in the polished oak wooden captain’s chair, hands resting lightly on the arms, one leg crossed nonchalantly over the other. He was at ease—he’d been here before.
The assistant DA, a tough veteran named Neil Riordan, began taking Dwayne through the story—how, why, when, where. Dwayne answered the questions directly and simply, without embellishment.
There were two spectators seated in the back of the room, on opposite sides of the aisle as far away from each other as they could get, who were watching these proceedings with more than the idle interest of the press or the normal courtroom groupies. Wyatt was one of them. He sat in the last chair in the back row, close to the window, watching and taking notes. He wasn’t paying attention to what Dwayne was saying, the particulars—he didn’t know anything about this case and had no interest in it. His attention was on Dwayne the man, the witness. How he presented himself, how cogent and precise his responses were, how truthful they seemed to be. Most importantly, how the jurors were responding to him.
It’s hard to read a jury, he knew; they can be paying close attention to a witness, hanging on every word he says, taking notes, everything a jury is supposed to do, and afterward, when a verdict comes in, you discover they didn’t believe a word he said. Conversely, a jury can be inattentive, collectively skywriting in their heads, their notepads under their seats, even seemingly dozing off; yet later they will report that was the most convincing witness of all those they had heard.
Dwayne Thompson, in Wyatt’s opinion, was doing a slam-bang job. He had his facts down cold, and the way he talked about how Walter had spun his yarn, the two of them sitting in a lonely prison cell late at night (Walter was doing time for shylocking and pimping, and was looking at another two years maximum on this particular stretch) had the ring of truth to it. Dwayne was a storyteller, and dangerously believable.
Sitting on the other end of that aisle, in the closest seat to the door, Helena Abramowitz was also watching and taking her notes. From time to time she would glance over at Wyatt, who was studiously ignoring her. She had been wondering about him since she had come on this case. He was an unknown. He had a great reputation in the corporate law world, but he had no experience in this side of the law, none.
Why he was doing this she had no idea, but his being disturbed her. Her gut instinct told her she should try to psyche this guy out. Push him hard from the get-go, try to keep him on the defensive.
She turned her attention back to Dwayne. He was a great prosecution witness. To watch him, to listen to him, you wouldn’t know he was a savage, a mad dog sociopath. He came across as a criminal, yes; but also as a man with human values, a conscience.
If anything was disturbing to Helena it wasn’t Dwayne’s demeanor or anything about his performance on the stand. It was his actual testimony that was causing her discomfort, in a vague, undefinable, but very real way. Her concern was how Dwayne had gotten Walter Malone to confess his crime—to a total stranger. She knew that jailhouse informants had been around forever. Her problem was the way that Dwayne presented his story. It was too polished. Too many specifics, too many facts that were exactly on the money. It didn’t smell clean, totally clean. Dwayne didn’t know his story well enough; he knew it too well.
When Dwayne had finished testifying for the day she was going to get a transcript from the court reporter and go back to her office and compare it with the original facts—the police reports and depositions and so forth—in the Walter Malone case, and then compare both to Dwayne’s prior testimony to the grand jury in that case. She wanted to see how good the fit was. If it was perfect, that would be a problem for her. Like the almost too perfect fit between the confidential police reports and Dwayne’s incriminating testimony in her case, the case of the decade.
DWAYNE’S KEEPERS ESCORTED HIM, in handcuffs, waist chain, and leg-irons, back to the jail, where he changed into his prison-issue and returned to work in the infirmary. He had done well; he always did well. This one was a no-brainer—he’d be on the stand with this prosecutor another day, two max, then the defense lawyer would take a whack at him, which would take a day, maybe spill over a little. The defense attorney wouldn’t lay a glove on him. He’d seen the fear in the man’s eyes from up on the witness stand. The poor bastard looked like a deer caught in the headlights. By the end of the week this would be over and done with.
He was glad he was doing this trial. It was like a tune-up for the main event. He could feel the juices flowing, the blood rushing. You could get a hard-on doing this shit—there was a strong sexual component to it.
Having Helena the DA sitting in the back of the room catching his act didn’t hurt with the sexual energy-flow. Her eyes had been riveted on him all day long.
The infirmary closed down for the day. The male nurse locked all the cabinets and signed out. What that mincing little shit didn’t know was that Dwayne had found the duplicate keys, taped to the bottom of a desk drawer. Anybody stupid enough to hide a key that poorly deserved to get his goodies ripped off.
He wouldn’t take drugs; not yet. The drugs were counted carefully, and if his keepers found anything missing that would be the end of his ride on this gravy train. For now the grain alcohol would do the trick nicely. He’d make himself a couple of potent highballs and take a trip inside his head.
The captain of the guard, whose name tag ID’d him as Walt Michaelson, opened the door. Michaelson was a certified no-neck, a former NFL offensive guard. It was common knowledge that beating the shit out of recalcitrant inmates was his idea of a good time. There weren’t many
like him in the system anymore, but one or two were tolerated, even encouraged. He looked behind him, to someone who was standing in the corridor outside. “He’s in here, all right,” Michaelson said.
Alex Pagano walked into the infirmary. “Thank you, Captain,” he said politely. “Now if you’d leave us, please. I have things to discuss with Mr. Thompson that are private.”
“I’ll be outside the door if you need me, sir.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Captain Michaelson left, shutting the door behind him. Dwayne, who had been surprised and slightly unnerved by the sudden and unexpected intrusion—no one ever came down here after hours unless there was an emergency, and he would be forewarned in that case—eyeballed the DA carefully.
Pagano walked to Dwayne. “That’s good work you’ve done in the courtroom,” he said, offering his hand. “Congratulations.”
They shook. “Thanks,” Dwayne responded. He didn’t go any further; Pagano hadn’t come down here to tell him he’d done okay. DAs don’t jawbone with prisoners. This one was here for some other reason.
“This is your duty station?” Pagano asked, looking around. “I’ve never been in the jail infirmary. Nice setup,” he continued, strolling about.
Dwayne nodded. You know fucking aye well it’s where I work. You think you know everything about me; but you don’t.
“I understand you’re bunking here, too?” Pagano sat on the edge of a counter.
“Yes sir.”
“How did that come about? Allowing a prisoner to inhabit an unsupervised area?”
“It was the sheriff’s decision, sir.”
“Oh?”
He should have thought before he spoke. The DA might check that. On the other hand, what else could he have said? That a certain female deputy, whom he happened to be fucking, had set it up for him?
“Putting me in the general population … that could cause problems for me. Word gets around. I’m a marked man in certain quarters in here. There are people who don’t like what I do.”
Pagano looked puzzled. “I can understand that. But we have facilities for isolating inmates who need protection.” He looked around the room some more. “Leaving an inmate unsupervised in an area that has large amounts of medicines and so forth could be construed as letting the fox guard the henhouse, don’t you think?”
Dwayne threw up his hands. “I don’t mess with that stuff. I’m not going to do something stupid and jeopardize my future.”
Pagano nodded his agreement. “Yes, that would be stupid, and you’re not stupid. Still, it makes for a bad appearance. And appearances are important.”
“Absolutely, sir.” He didn’t know where this was leading exactly, but his cocktail hours were definitely about to end.
Pagano stood up. “Let me talk to the sheriff about arranging more suitable sleeping arrangements for you, Thompson. I’d hate for this Marvin White case to get befuddled in some public relations snafu. If the press or his lawyers knew about this, it could be ticklish.”
“Sure,” Dwayne said. “I understand you have to keep up appearances.”
Pagano opened the infirmary door. “It’s too late to do anything tonight. I’ll post a guard outside the door, to prevent anyone coming in here and finding you. We’ll set up a permanent solution tomorrow.”
He left, closing the door behind him. Dwayne heard the key turn in the lock. Through the small safety-glass window he saw the captain and Pagano holding a conversation. Then they were gone.
A minute later, a jail deputy took up his post in the hallway outside the infirmary. No one was coming in or out of this place without the officials knowing it.
Dwayne wasn’t all that pissed off; he’d known this would happen sooner or later. He wondered who’d ratted him out. That dipshit nurse, most likely. The little prick thought the infirmary was his own private domain.
Well, there was going to be one positive thing to come out of this. Doris Blake wouldn’t be paying him any more nocturnal visits. Her cock-scoring days were over.
JOSEPHINE FOUND THE WOMAN Marvin had spent the night with. It hadn’t taken her very long. She took Livonius’s list—which, to Wyatt’s surprise, had come through their fax machine the following morning—and started knocking on doors. She knew that trying to accomplish this delicate task over the phone would be a waste of time, and counterproductive—you had to get in your object’s face, up close and personal. Part of her training, which she had initiated herself because she wanted to do a better job, had been to ride around with some of the detectives who worked cases for the department. Face-to-face, she learned from them, worked about a hundred times better than anything else. It’s a lot harder for somebody to close a door on your face than to hang up the phone.
She called Wyatt at home, at night again. Dinner was over. Moira wasn’t in a chatty mood and his head had been somewhere else. Casual in T-shirt and sweatpants, he was sitting in his study, reading over his notes.
Moira stood in the doorway to the study, the cordless phone from the kitchen in her hand. “It’s for you,” she said curtly. As he got up to take it, she asked, “What is it with you and this woman you’re working with? Is there something going on?”
He took the phone from her. “You know better than that, Moira.”
“She seems eager to call you at all hours. Maybe she’s hoping I won’t be here.” She paused a moment as if to say something more, then turned and left the room, pointedly shutting the door behind her.
He sighed. “Hi,” he said into the phone.
“Bad time to call?” Josephine sounded concerned.
“No, we’re just … never mind. What’s up?”
She told him.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“In her house. We’re drinking sherry.”
She gave him instructions. “It’ll take you awhile to get here from where you live. I don’t want to be pushy, but don’t take your time, okay? This lady likes her sherry, if you get my drift.”
He threw on a sports shirt, khakis, an old blazer—he had to look presentable. Moira was reading in bed, propped up with pillows, the bulk of The Recognitions opened to the middle. She watched him change clothes without comment.
“I have to go out,” he told her. “There’s a potential witness I have to see.”
“Who doesn’t keep nine-to-five hours.”
“Give me a break, okay? This may take some time,” he added, to his ears sounding apologetic and not wanting to.
“Please make sure all the doors are locked,” she requested. On his nod she added, “Michaela and I will have gone to sleep, I’m sure. I’ll have the alarm on, so don’t forget to check it when you come back.”
Ever since the robbery next door, she had been religious about using the alarm, something they’d been lax about before. He wasn’t crazy about always having to turn it on and off; it bred insecurity, anxiety. But it made her feel protected, so he did it.
“Will do.” He leaned across the wide expanse of mattress to her side and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her lips were cool to the touch.
He double-checked that all the doors were locked before he left. All he needed was for Moira to come downstairs and find one unlocked.
The Jaguar hummed along the freeway. Traffic had thinned, and he kicked back and enjoyed the drive, his windows open to the night. Frank Morgan sang a ballad through his alto sax on the car’s CD, and he played along with it in his head.
Josephine was waiting for him outside the house, fidgeting by the bottom of the front steps, a small cut-crystal glass of sherry in her hand. He parked at the curb and walked over to her, the remote chirping as he locked the car.
“Dry Sack,” she informed him, sticking her tongue out. “Want a taste?”
He shook his head. She dumped the contents into a bush. “This stuff gives me a headache, I drink more than a glass,” she said. “Bad mojo.” She cocked her head toward the house. Lights were burning in all the downstairs windows. “I told
her I wanted to wait outside so you wouldn’t miss the address, but I really needed to get out of there for a while. She’s got an elbow problem and I didn’t want to play keep-up.”
This was no proletarian neighborhood. The homes were substantial dwellings on half an acre or more, with two-car garages in the back. An older neighborhood, but you needed to have good money to afford to live here. The residents were prosperous small-business owners and professionals. There was also a concentration, two blocks over, of mob-connected families who lived quietly behind curtains that were always drawn. It was considered one of the safest neighborhoods in the city because of those families.
“Her name is Agnes Carpenter,” Josephine said. “Her husband’s a doctor, ob-gyn. Has a private practice and privileges at St. Johnny’s.” St. John the Baptist was one of the better hospitals in the city. “He isn’t home tonight, she was glad for the company. I’ve got the feeling he isn’t home a lot of nights.”
She rang the doorbell, which played the first two bars of “The Sound of Music.” The door opened almost immediately, as if the woman was waiting there for them, perhaps trying to eavesdrop.
“Agnes, this is my boss, Wyatt Matthews,” Josephine said by way of introduction.
The woman extended a plump hand that had rings on three of the fingers. The other hand held her glass, which had been refreshed moments before, judging from its fullness. The diamond engagement ring on that hand was at least three carats. It looked like the sort of ring Elizabeth Taylor would wear. “How do you do?” she said pleasantly. “Please come in.”
They followed her through the foyer into the living room, which was jam-packed with furniture, a potpourri of old-fashioned overstuffed styles, mostly Queen Anne and Chippendale. “Please,” she said. “Sit down.”
He sat next to Josephine on a couch that sagged under his weight, shifting forward slightly so as not to be trapped in its mushiness. There was a feeling of decadence to the room, as if it were a well-preserved museum rather than a place in which people lived a daily life. Or a funeral home, he thought.
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