VC04 - Jury Double

by Edward Stewart

  She slashed out with the pen, broad swipes across his chest.

  He slapped it from her fingers. A rat-trap of a hand caught her left wrist. “Pick that pen up.”

  He twisted her wrist behind her, hard.

  She picked up the pen.

  “Write exactly what I tell you: ‘Dear Mademoiselle: This is to inform you that Toby’s father, Catch Talbot—’”

  “No!” She tried to jerk loose. Couldn’t.

  “Write! ‘Catch Talbot has my authorization to pick up Toby after today’s school excursion and bring him home. With many thanks, Kyra Talbot.’”

  He shoved an envelope at her. “Address it. ‘Mademoiselle.’”

  She obeyed, then handed him the letter and envelope.

  He stood there, reading what she had written. She drove the pen at his left eye.

  A work-booted foot kicked her leg out from under her. She slammed down against the floor. She cried out.

  “Stop screaming.” He picked up a green velvet throw pillow from the sofa. “I’m only going to tell you once.”

  She tried to push the pillow away, but it crushed her hands, crushed her face, blotted out light and sound and air. Suffocation pressed down and the pen clattered from her hand.

  “And after Dr. Lyle became a regular visitor …” Dotson Elihu faced the witness box, hands in his pockets. “Did you notice any change in the sorts of people the Briars entertained?”

  “The people changed.” The doorman’s face was grave. “Till three years ago, the Briars invited decent people. Well-dressed. Said thank-you when you held the door. Tipped you if you called a cab in the rain.”

  “And after three years ago?”

  “The Briars began getting nonsocialites.”

  “What do you mean when you say ‘nonsocialites’?”

  “Minority people. Blacks—Hispanics—Orientals. Some dressed practically like street people.”

  Elihu stepped back, putting space between himself and the witness. “Are you saying the Briars admitted street people to their home?”

  “Objection.” DiAngeli stood. “Calls for conclusion.”

  “Sustained.”

  The witness turned to the judge. “Some tenants wouldn’t even ride in the elevator with those people.”

  “Mr. LaMontagna.” The judge’s voice was stern. “Don’t talk to me.” The gavel pointed to Elihu. “Talk to him.”

  “Mr. LaMontagna.” Elihu flashed a smile that seemed to say, It’s us guys against her, buddy. “On that Friday evening before Labor Day, when you announced Mr. Williams, can you say with absolute certainty whose voice answered the intercom? After all, it’s not a high-tech digital intercom, is it?”

  The witness gave a laugh. “It sure isn’t.”

  “So even though the voice didn’t sound exactly like John Briar’s, it still could have been him and the intercom could have distorted his voice?”

  “Objection. Hypothetical.”

  “Overruled.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s very possible.”

  Elihu allowed a moment’s silence for the point to sink in. “Did anyone go up to the apartment with Mr. Williams?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone besides Dr. Lyle arrive before or after Mr. Williams and go up to the apartment?”

  “I never saw them.”

  “Could anyone have gone up to the Briars’ apartment after midnight?”

  “Objection. Hypothetical.”

  Judge Bernheim sighed. “Mr. Elihu, the information you want could be put on the record with a different question.”

  Elihu nodded. “Mr. LaMontagna—based on your seven years’ experience as a door person at 777 Park Avenue—could a visitor have gone up to the Briars’ apartment after midnight?”

  “Not unless they had a key to the front door.”

  In a gray and pale-green drawing room on the twelfth floor of the Vista Hotel, Tess diAngeli paced with the telephone. “You were supposed to have him here at one-fifteen sharp. It’s one-twenty.”

  “He’s watching a movie.”

  “What are you two, film critics? I told you to keep a log and not let Mickey out of your sight.”

  “For Chrissake, what am I supposed to do, change his diapers? I’m in the theater with him, isn’t that enough?”

  “What theater?”

  “Adult Playtime. Forty-fourth and Eighth.”

  “Can you see him?”

  “He’s watching the film. I’m in the lobby with the Wall Street Journal.”

  Tess gritted in rage. “How long has he been in there?”

  “Two hours and seven minutes.”

  “If he’s given you the slip, it’ll mean your job.”

  “Relax. He’s there.”

  “Then get him out right now and get him down here.”

  Twenty minutes later, Tess was rehearsing Mickey Williams’s testimony. “And were you sentenced to serve time?”

  Seated on the sofa six feet from her, Mickey nodded.

  “They put me in a trade school in Texarkana.” Tension pushed his voice high into his adenoids. Coming out of the body of a former running back dressed in too-tight-polo shirt and corduroys, the effect was cartoonish.

  We’ll have to dress him better for court, Tess realized. Will off-the-rack fit?

  “It was really a kind of reformatory,” Mickey said. “I learned welding.”

  On the other side of the room, Tess diAngeli’s assistant rapped a wooden ruler on the edge of the table.

  Mickey blinked guiltily. “Did I do it wrong?”

  “You said you learned welding before Tess asked.”

  Compared to Williams, Brad Chambers was built like a pretzel, but he spoke from the chest, sonorously. Tess wished Mickey and her assistant could trade voices for the duration of the trial.

  “You’re speaking just a little too fast, Mickey.” As a courtroom lawyer, she knew that speed of speech was voluntary; pitch of voice, much less so. Yet the two were physiologically linked, and if she could get Mickey to speak slowly, the pitch of his voice would come down. If the voice came down, the jury would be far more apt to believe him. “And whatever you do, don’t ever answer a question before I’ve asked it. Because if you get away from the script, you may volunteer something that we haven’t had a chance to discuss. It may seem unimportant, but it could be just the opening the defense needs.”

  “In other words, I goofed again.” Mickey’s head drooped. “I’m sorry.”

  Tess couldn’t shake the suspicion that this dopiness was deliberate on Mickey’s part. Why’s he trying to convince me he’s an idiot? “You didn’t goof. You’re doing fine.”

  Mickey beamed.

  “Now, I’m going to ask you once again: Were you sentenced to serve time?”

  “They put me in a trade school in Texarkana.” Much better. The words were slow, the voice mid-range. “It was a kind of reformatory.”

  “What did you learn in Texarkana?”

  “I learned welding.”

  Tess glanced at her legal pad. There were still three pages of points to cover, and barely ten minutes left of her lunch hour. “How long were you in this institution?”

  “Three years—till a minister and his wife adopted me.”

  Brad Chambers’s ruler rapped again on the table.

  “You answered before I asked,” Tess said.

  “Shit.” Mickey blushed. “Sorry. It’s just that there’s so much to remember. …”

  “Mickey, would you excuse us a moment?” Bertram Bogdan, Justice Department trial consultant, rose from the easy chair, brushing the wrinkles out of his dark suit. “Have yourself a glass of soda.”

  Tess and Brad followed Bogdan into the bedroom. He shut the door. “Mickey’s voice is going to be a real turn-off for the jurors. It rises under tension, so let’s keep him from tensing up.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got that kind of control over him.”

  “It’s not him we have to control, Tess.” Bogdan’s dark eyes
nailed her. “It’s you.”

  That interested Tess, because it struck her as 180 degrees bass-ackwards. Yet the government was paying Bogdan $1,250 for one hour of consulting: as much as they paid Tess for a week’s backbreaking trial work. He must be doing something right.

  “When you’re making eye contact,” Bogdan said, “Mickey’s okay. When you break eye contact he feels he’s annoyed you and that’s when the whining, begging tone starts. Are you aware how much you’re avoiding eye contact? Do you know the reason?”

  Now that she thought of it, she realized he was right. “This is an awful thing to say about my own witness. He embarrasses me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s something physical. He’s so big and messy—and that shaved head looks like a rat’s ass.”

  “Then you’re just going to have to repeat to yourself, I am proud of this witness.”

  “I am proud of this witness,” Tess muttered. She’d been working fifteen minutes a day with Bogdan’s affirmation cards, and they struck her as government-subsidized voodoo. “He is a credit to the case.”

  “If you believe it,” Bogdan said, “the witness believes it. And if the witness believes it, the jurors believe it.”

  When they returned to the drawing room, Mickey was hunched over the coffee table, glum-faced.

  “What’s the matter?” Tess said.

  “Corey’s a good person.” A deep sigh came out of Mickey. The right vocal quality, at last. “And I’m saying shitty things about him.”

  “He’s not a good person.” Tess’s eyes locked onto Mickey’s. I’m dealing with a child, she reminded herself. And I am proud of this child. “He’s not good in any morally or legally meaningful sense of the term.”

  “He was good to me and I’m being rotten to him.” Mickey’s voice was climbing again. “He saved my life and I’m—”

  “No, Mickey,” Tess said. “Five days from now you’ll be saving your own life.”

  At 2:30 P.M., the blue government ’94 Pontiac pulled up at the curb in front of 60 Centre Street. Tess diAngeli stuffed papers into her briefcase and stepped out of the car. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “Always a pleasure, ma’am.” Mickey closed the passenger door and watched Tess race up the courthouse steps.

  “Nice legs,” his guard commented.

  “They’re all right.” Mickey burped quietly into his fist. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The guard eased back into traffic, peeled left, and headed uptown on Lafayette. Two blocks north of Canal, Mickey told him to pull over.

  “Go see a movie.” Mickey handed the guard forty dollars. “And leave the keys in the car.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  2:30 P.M.

  “THE PEOPLE CALL FELIX Logan.”

  A well-tailored, overweight man in his thirties stepped up to the witness stand and took the oath. Tess diAngeli asked him to describe his work.

  “I was John and Amalia Briar’s lawyer. At present I represent their estate.”

  Tess diAngeli handed the witness a document and asked if he had ever seen it before.

  “This is Amalia Briar’s last will and testament. I drew it up for her.”

  “Whom did Amalia Briar name as her beneficiary?”

  “John and Amalia Briar each wrote wills leaving their estates to the other.”

  “Was there any stipulation in John Briar’s will as to the length of time his wife had to survive him in order to inherit?”

  “Forty-eight hours or more. It’s a standard provision, in case both spouses die in the same plane crash, for instance, and exact times of death can’t be fixed.”

  “Since John Briar did in fact predecease his wife by a little more than forty-eight hours, his estate became hers?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Whom did Amalia Briar name as her heirs?”

  “In the event John predeceased Amalia by forty-eight hours or more, her will named Corey Lyle sole beneficiary.”

  “Was Corey Lyle aware of this fact?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.” Felix Logan’s eyes rested, silently accusatory, on the defendant. “Amalia Briar asked me to show Corey Lyle her will.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “So Corey Lyle could establish a tax-exempt foundation and avoid inheritance taxes.”

  Corey Lyle gazed at the witness with serene detachment. A sad smile touched the line of his mouth. It was as though his face was saying, I know your pain, brother. I share it.

  “Was Corey Lyle aware of the forty-eight-hour provision in John Briar’s will?”

  Felix Logan nodded. “He asked about the forty-eight-hour provision in Amalia’s will, and I explained that both wills contained it.”

  At 3:30 P.M., on Madison and 64th, a dozen women waited outside the iron gate of the ivy-covered nineteenth-century mansion that housed the École Française.

  Sitting in a double-parked blue Pontiac across the avenue, motor idling, a man watched them.

  A small blue van drew up to the entrance. A short woman in black stepped briskly down from the driver’s seat and unlocked the gates. Waif-thin, with a giant gray coiffure, she had the posture of a lamppost.

  She climbed back into the van and drove into the small cobblestoned courtyard. The doors of the van flew open and a dozen children hit the cobblestones running, screaming, pushing, jumping.

  The women surged through the gate, plucked their charges from the swarm, hurried them homeward. In sixty seconds only two people remained: the little gray-haired lady, frowning at her watch, and an eleven-year-old boy.

  The boy pulled a rubber ball from his back pocket. He spat on the ball, kneaded it in his palms, and hurled it at the limestone wall.

  The man watched: his mind registered the pattern of the boy’s leaps into the air. There was something irresistible about a boy who knew his own strengths.

  In the street, a truck backfired. The boy turned. He gazed out through the iron pickets. His eyes looked directly at the man in the Pontiac.

  The man gave a just-between-us wave.

  The boy covered his uncertainty with a smile and looked away.

  The man’s adrenaline was break-dancing in his veins.

  Now, he decided.

  The light was against him, but there was a break in traffic. He stepped out of the Pontiac. In ten quick strides he crossed the avenue and entered the courtyard. “Mademoiselle.”

  The old woman looked over at him.

  He flashed a daddy smile. “I’ve come to pick up Toby.”

  Suspicion rippled out from the old woman’s eyes. “I have no authorization,” she snapped with a hint of a French accent.

  “His mother gave me a note.” The man reached into the pocket of his raincoat and handed her the note.

  The old woman studied it. Studied the man with the shaved head and the brown eyes and the small gold ring in his left ear. “Toby, you are to go with your father.”

  “Since John Briar allegedly predeceased his wife by forty-eight hours”—Dotson Elihu’s tone was almost mocking in its skepticism—“his estate went in its entirety to her?”

  Felix Logan nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “But if Amalia Briar had predeceased her husband, her estate would have gone in its entirety to him?”

  “Again, provided he survived her by at least forty-eight hours.”

  Elihu stepped closer to the witness box. “But in the event John Briar survived his wife—to whom did he then bequeath his estate?”

  “To his son.”

  Elihu nodded slowly. “Then Corey Lyle’s alleged motive depends on John Briar dying forty-eight hours before his wife. Otherwise the combined estates pass to Jack Briar. Leaving Dr. Lyle with no motive and the state with no case.”

  “Objection. Argumentative.”

  “Sustained.”

  Elihu walked four careful steps away from the witness box. He turned. “We know a murderer cannot legally profit by his crime. So if Corey Lyle
is found guilty—who inherits the combined estates?”

  “Jack Briar inherits.”

  Elihu’s tone became accusatorial. “In other words, Jack Briar’s sole hope of getting the inheritance is for the state to win this case?”

  The witness looked toward the prosecutor. She made no move to object. “That’s correct.”

  “Have you ever been in the employ of Jack Briar?”

  “Five years ago Jack—Mr. Briar—asked me to handle the closing on his co-op.”

  “Have you ever been in the employ of the defendant?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Have you ever drawn up any legal document for the defendant?”

  The witness placed a hand on the railing. A jeweled cuff link winked. “No.”

  “Have you ever drawn up any legal document for the defendant’s signature?”

  “At the request of Amalia Briar, I—”

  “Just answer the question. Yes or no?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “What was the document?”

  “Incorporation papers for a tax-exempt foundation.”

  “And was this foundation the entity that Amalia Briar named sole heir?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, technically, she didn’t leave her fortune to the defendant—but to a legal entity devised by you.”

  “Technically, yes. But the defendant would still—”

  “But in drawing up those papers you also represented the defendant, so by testifying against him today aren’t you breaching legal ethics?”

  “The law’s clear on that point—”

  “Yes or no, please.”

  “No. He’s not my client.”

  “Your Honor.” Elihu’s voice curled with disgust. “I have no further questions of this witness.”

  Judge Bernheim asked if the People wished to redirect.

  Tess diAngeli strode to the stand. “Who controls the foundation to which Amalia Briar left her fortune and her husband’s?”

  “The defendant controls it.”

  “Did the defendant ever engage your services or pay you any salary or fee for any service?”

  “Never.”

  “So there’s no way in which he could be legally considered a client?”

  “No way at all.”

  “Are there any instances in which client-attorney privilege does not apply?”