“He was not an acquaintance of yours,” said Bennett. “I believe that’s the way you put it.”
Lilla decided to back-pedal an inch or two. “Oh, I knew him … just on sight … through the horse show circles. But I’ve never had an intimate conversation or private conversation with Mr. Robinson in my life,”
“You never visited in his home?”
“Nosirree.”
Tired, angry, unsuccessful, Bennett quit for the day. DeGeurin escorted his client from the courtroom with solicitude for her health and admiration for her performance. He felt she had, to use a phrase, scored Brownie points.
That night, long after darkness had covered the courthouse, after Jerry Carpenter and the reporters had drunk his beer and left his office, after the post-mortems, after the charwomen had come and complained that they could not clean his messy office until he had the courstesy to get out of it, Bob Bennett leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. The day had been an exercise in frustration. “The American judicial system is damn near impotent,” he told himself, a little surprised that his moderately liberal nature, forged by the sun of John F. Kennedy, would permit such an archly rightist remark. But the way the trial was going, Lilla-bug was about to fly away home on the wings of acquittal. The offer from the attorney general’s office in Washington had never seemed more attractive than at this moment. He wanted to leave his shabby office, get out of Houston, forget about it all.
Then he eyed the telephone. He stared at it blankly for a while. Finally he picked it up and dialed, first a local call. Then, a few minutes later, long distance. They were to be two of the most important conversations of his career.
FORTY-ONE
Dick DeGeurin was feeling fine. He had patched the house well against the storm. The only place where the cold wind might get in still was the absence of Ash Robinson. Thus he dramatically issued a subpoena for the old man, slipped the news to a reporter, and the next morning’s Post carried a major article telling how badly the defense wanted the oilman to appear on its behalf. This was patently false. The last thing on earth that DeGeurin wanted was to face Ash Robinson in the witness box. But he had to pretend that he did, and at the same time hope that his mock disappointment at the old man’s continuing absence would seep somehow into the jury’s cognition.
The process server for Judge Price’s court was a gentle and diligent man named Frank Clauder who, in his off hours, performed magic and appeared as a circus clown under the name of “Mr. Misto.” An almost legendary figure in courthouse lore, he was reportedly able to serve summonses on the most invisible of men. He failed completely with Ash Robinson. He went to the old man’s home in River Oaks and rang the door and stood on the front porch for two hours, waiting for a response. The Robinsons’ gleaming black Lincoln was in the garage, lights burned inside the house, Clauder could feel eyes examining him through the peephole. The next morning the process server returned and leaned on the doorbell well before sunrise. Surprisingly it was promptly opened—by Mrs. Ash Robinson. Ma stood on her hearth and was cranky. No, Pa was not home. No, she did not know where he was. No, he could not come in.
“Where is Mr. Robinson?” inquired Clauder courteously.
Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he was sick. Maybe he was away. Ma Robinson just did not know.
Quickly Clauder thrust the summons into the old lady’s hands, and instantly she dropped it, letting it fall to the doormat. Clauder returned to Judge Price and informed him that obviously Mrs. Robinson had been instructed not to accept service.
The judge nodded. He was not surprised. He saw through the defense’s charade. And he was irritated by it.
DeGeurin was prepared to show the jury why he was unable to get Ash into court. He produced the old man’s personal physician, Dr. Edmund Gouldin. The doctor was a short, balding man with a little gray fringe skullcap of hair and a complexion that matched. He had long had an oar in the murky waters of the Joan Robinson Hill case and its tempestuous aftermath. Ash Robinson had used him to pressure the district attorney so long ago for exhumation of his daughter’s body. And Gouldin had from time to time counseled the oilman on medical matters arising in the case. Now he was coming to Ash’s aid one more time.
“How long have you been Ash Robinson’s physician?” asked DeGeurin.
“Since 1946.”
“When did you last see Mr. Robinson?”
The doctor seemed glad to be asked that. It just so happened that he had dropped by Ash’s home the previous Sunday—four days ago—and during that visit the old man had complained of feeling poorly. Ash said he had awakened in his sleep at 2 A.M., sweating profusely, and, when he was unable to find slumber again, wandered into the living room and tried the couch where he perspired so heavily that the cushions became soaked and had to be turned over. Dr. Gouldin, upon hearing this account, asked his patient to come in for a checkup, and this revealed that the Robinson blood pressure was 174 over 94—“rather high”—and his electrocardiogram showed a “block” from some previous heart muscle scarring.
“I advised Ash that under no circumstances was he to testify in a courtroom setting,” testified Dr. Gouldin. He suspected that the old man was suffering from cardiac insufficiency. “I would too, if Marcia McKittrick got up and told the same things on me,” mused Bob Bennett to himself. Moreover, Robinson had a hernia of the esophagus, prostate trouble, diverticulosis of the colon, and was considerably overweight.
“I told Ash to lay around a few days and do nothing,” said the doctor solemnly.
Bennett could not resist retorting, “Did you tell him to lay around and conduct his press conferences?” Nor could Bennett hold back the desire to illumine the doctor’s relationship with Ash a little. Wasn’t it true that Ash Robinson once held the mortgage on the doctor’s house? “Yes,” said Gouldin. And didn’t the doctor engage in the oil and mineral business with Ash from time to time? That was also true. But Dr. Gouldin insisted that such financial ties would not constrict his professional integrity.
Dr. Gouldin made a proposition that Ash be allowed to give testimony in “a hospital setting.” Bennett scoffed at this, knowing that the session would necessarily have to be conducted out of the jury’s earshot, and suspecting that every time he asked a reasonably tough question, the old man would clasp his hands to his breast and have a convenient attack of “cardiac insufficiency.”
Judge Price took over the questioning for the first time in the trial. It did not appear that he was content with the doctor’s testimony.
“I don’t really understand the nature of Mr. Robinson’s illness,” said the judge. “Was he hospitalized for this heart trouble?”
“No, your honor.”
“Was he hospitalized the last time he had a heart problem, which I believe you testified was in 1965?”
“No, your honor.”
“Has he ever been hospitalized for any of his heart attacks?”
“No, your honor.”
“Can he drive?”
“Yes, your honor.”
Judge Price’s face was a study in disbelief. Dr. Gouldin rushed quickly in with a bid for sympathy. “Your honor, how would you feel if Mr. Robinson had a heart attack and died—right here in your courtroom?”
“I’d feel very bad,” said the judge, “just like I would if anybody had a heart attack in my courtroom. But if Mr. Robinson can drive, and he is conducting his business affairs …” The judge’s voice trailed off, not electing to conclude his remark. He did not have to. His look of disgust did it for him.
DeGeurin announced he had completed his presentation of witnesses, but before Bob Bennett could begin his rebuttal testimony the defense lawyer threw down a passionate document requesting a mistrial. His contention was that the district attorney had prejudiced the jury and irreparably harmed his client’s opportunity for a fair verdict by dragging in inflammatory tidbits about Claude Paulus’ alleged bookmaking business and the “rent property” on Galveston’s Post Office Street.
Judge Price asked the lawyers to come into his private office and engage in a little debating contest for him. Bristling, DeGeurin professed absolute “outrage” at the district attorney’s conduct. How dare he attempt to convict a woman on a murder charge by virtue of her dead husband’s business affairs and by snide allusions to rental property? “His only reason is to prejudice this jury against Mrs. Paulus,” pleaded the defense lawyer.
And if that were not disgraceful enough, pushed DeGeurin, it was now known that the prosecution planned to lead off its rebuttal by calling two veteran vice squad cops. Presumably, Bennett wanted them to describe his client as the whore of Babylon. This is not only false, he argued, it is prejudicial and totally irrelevant to the question of whether Lilla Paulus was an accomplice to the murder of John Hill.
Bennett looked a little impish as he rose from the judge’s orange suede-cloth couch to answer the charge. “Mrs. Paulus has testified, under oath, that she was the mother of a small child, that she had that child in St. John’s School, that she was a big Brownie leader, that she is now a widow lady, that she was unaware of what Marcia McKittrick’s life style was, but that she was aware it was completely different from hers. She has gotten that image and those statements—and alleged them to be facts—all before the jury. It is my position that as a part of rebuttal we can show facts and circumstances which tend to prove those to be untruths. And therefore they are admissible before the jury, not for the purpose of anything other than to impeach her testimony and to show her lack of credibility to the jury.”
DeGeurin sputtered a new objection, but the judge shushed him. “Just exactly what will you be up to with this line of questioning?” he asked Bennett.
“Well, we want to show that if she lied in this area of her testimony, i.e., comparing her life style to Marcia’s … then she perhaps lied in the more important area, i.e., whether or not she hired these killers.”
The judge professed that he was uncomfortable with the way this trial was corkscrewing toward a conclusion, like a sidewinder slithering down a dry creek bed. Sighing, he denied DeGeurin’s motion for a mistrial. But he cautioned the prosecutor that whenever a potentially sticky area of testimony was about to be presented, then it must be dress-rehearsed with the bench before the jury could hear it.
Bennett frowned at this, but DeGeurin was moderately satisfied. He was now in an alien neighborhood. The defense has a reasonably good notion during the first act of a trial exactly what will be used against it. Under rules of discovery, the defense can obtain access to all of the state’s evidence, and by studying subpoena lists learn who will be testifying for the district attorney. But when Act Two, rebuttal testimony, begins, the state can toss surprise witnesses into the frying pan. This is the hour when a defense lawyer’s stomach heaves—each time the DA rises and announces a new name to the bailiff.
Police Lieutenant Allbright, who had spent the bulk of his eighteen years on the force in the vice squad, was not permitted by Judge Price to tell the jury his specialty, only the general information that he was a cop. The word “vice” bore too notorious a connotation.
Bennett asked if he knew Lilla Paulus, the lady sitting across the room.
Yes, answered the officer. He had heard her name for years, and he knew her to be a sometime madam, an associate of thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, pimps, and hijackers. Bennett paused dramatically, letting the new biographical data soak into the jurors’ portrait of Lilla. For the first time there were driblets of black paint splattered on her robes of white.
“Based on what you know,” wondered Bennett, “and on her reputation for truth and veracity in the community, can this defendant be believed under oath?”
Lieutenant Allbright shook his head slowly and deliberately from side to side, like a pendulum. “No.”
“Mrs. Joanie Worrell, your honor,” abruptly announced Bennett. The courtroom stirred. Here was a new name, an unknown factor. For a moment even Lilla Paulus went blank, but then a realization came to her and she bent to her attorney’s ear.
The slim, hardened woman in her early forties who entered the courtroom was chic in a well-cut black and white suit reminiscent of the riding ring, and she carried the aura of money. And power. People danced when she blew her horn. Also on her was the mark of the years, her hair dyed a not quite believable honey, her eyes set deep in the cobwebs of time and not concealed by expensive potions. In her bearing was that curious coalescence of the feminine and the masculine found so often in Texas women—like a hand soft and creamed on top, but calloused and tough if the palm were turned over to feel a raindrop.
“What is your name, please?”
“Joanie Jaworski Worrell,” she answered, giving slight emphasis to her maiden name. That was enough. The point was made. Here was the daughter of Leon Jaworski, the Watergate prosecutor, a name for years distinguished in Houston, made prominent world-wide by the tragedy of Richard Nixon. Now memories were prodded. Now associations were made. The two Joans! Robinson and Jaworski! The “gold dust twins”! Two decades fell away. These were the graceful young women who rode horses together, drove their Cadillacs across the warm nights with tops down and blonde hair streaming in the wind, danced on the patios of country clubs, stretched out beside the pool of the Shamrock Hotel when it was the Versailles of Houston. They laughed for every camera, competed for whatever desirable man turned up in town. They were the undisputed stars of a city when it was young and brash and new, the symbols of what the good life here could be. Joan Jaworski had been the maid of honor when her best friend married Dr. John Hill. She had also been the first to arrive for the rites of her death, sitting on the arm of Pa’s chair and offering herself as substitute child. But she had never believed that John Hill calculatedly murdered his wife, and she had suffered with each new shock of the years. Perhaps, in a way, the death of Joan Robinson Hill had become a symbol of her own unhappiness. For Joan Jaworski Worrell was a woman of devastation—a string of shattered marriages behind her, her only child freshly dead in a car accident, her voice raw with the groove marks of cigarettes before coffee.
After Lilla Paulus swore from the witness stand that she did not even know Ash Robinson, Bob Bennett had plowed through the papers on his desk searching for witnesses who might dispute her. He had spoken to Joan Worrell several times during the investigation, but always she had declined to aid him. “It’s not going to bring Joan back, is it?” she had said testily. Once she even slammed the phone down in his ear.
But for reasons only she knew, this time when he called, she listened. She considered his urgent plea. And she agreed to come to court and attack the core of Lilla Paulus’ defense.
“Did you know Joan Robinson Hill?” asked Bennett almost deferentially, paying respect due. He needed to keep impressing the jury that this was not a glove clerk at Foley’s department store.
“Very well,” answered Mrs. Worrell.
“Did you also know her father, Ash Robinson?”
“Too well.”
“Have you ever seen this defendant before?” asked Bennett, thrusting an erect finger at Lilla Paulus.
“Yes.” She glared at Lilla. Her eyes burned like laser rays from behind her glasses.
“Have you ever seen this defendant in the company of Ash Robinson?”
“Yes. Three times.” Her memory seemed as precise as the cut of a scalpel. The first was in 1965, at Chatsworth Farm, where Joan rode her horses. The second, in 1969, at the same place, before Joan died. And the third was in 1970, in New Orleans, in a French Quarter restaurant across the street from the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. She spit out the three dates as if they were the years of famous battles memorized for a high school history examination.
When DeGeurin rose for cross-examination, all the lawyers in the audience were glad they did not wear his shoes at this moment. The testimony itself was damaging, and so was the fact that it came from the daughter of Leon Jaworski.
“When did you decide to come forward
and make these facts known?” asked DeGeurin calmly.
“Yesterday.”
“Did you volunteer?”
“Let’s put it this way. I was not subpoenaed. I offered … when John Hill was murdered … to help in any way that I could.”
The defense lawyer begged to disagree. “… to do anything you could to get Ash Robinson charged?”
She shook her head negatively. “No, that’s not the case at all.”
DeGeurin pressed her on the New Orleans memory. Where had she stayed? At what hotel?
“The Fairmont Hotel,” answered Mrs. Worrell firmly. Bob Bennett felt his heart leap. During rehearsal of her testimony, she had not been able to remember the hotel. Bennett had urged her to reply, if that question came up, “I don’t know.” Now she was suddenly possessed of recollection. He muttered a silent prayer. Please, God, let her name be on the registration records of the Fairmont. He knew that the moment of the next recess DeGeurin would rush to a telephone and order his office to check with the hostelry.
A case could be lost on something as trivial as that.
Bob Bennett drew a deep breath and said softly, looking directly at Lilla Paulus, “Mary Wood, your honor.”
The defendant’s head shot up and she shut her eyes, as if trying to blot out what was about to offend her vision. And when Lilla opened them, her face, for a flashing moment, sagged, melting like a wax doll left out in an August sun. Then she caught herself, and with an attempt at composure that failed to hide terrible hate, Lilla watched her own daughter enter the courtroom. Unbeknownst to Lilla, an armed investigator from the DA’s office had his eyes trained on her. Bennett, knowing the old woman’s penchant for guns, had worried that in this supreme moment of tension she might pull one from a hidden place and shoot her child dead. It was that bad between them. But Lilla did nothing but move her head involuntarily from side to side, mouthing a silent “No.” She had feared that Bob Bennett would do this. She had warned her lawyer, DeGeurin, that the other side might find her daughter, pressure her, tempt her into the courtroom. Now the awful thing was on her, and Lilla Paulus was consumed with panic.
Blood and Money Page 57