The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "It was within constitutionally permissible limits."

  She glanced down at her wrist. "I now have twenty-four minutes but still a whole sandwich. Halfsies still O.K.?"

  "You bet," I said.

  We sat in her shared cubicle. Her office mate was out.

  "Don't superior court prosecutors usually cover bail hearings in heavy cases?" I asked.

  "Usually," she replied, neatly tamping a bit of errant tuna into a gap in the corner of her mouth. "But I've been here nine months, and I'm good." She smiled without showing her teeth. An open, Irish maiden face, with widely set, soft blue eyes and a straight slim nose. A smattering of freckles that would reach epidemic proportions with summer's sun. As a girl, she must have been cute. As a woman, she was damned attractive. I felt a little glow.

  "Good tuna," I said.

  She wiped her mouth with a patterned paper napkin from home and pitched it into a wastebasket.

  "What's on your mind, Mr. Cuddy?"

  I had no napkin so I used my handkerchief.

  "D'Amico. More precisely, brother Marco. Syndicate?"

  She shook her head. "Peripherally, at most. He's a numb-nuts, maybe some high school friends who are approaching 'management level,' but no established contacts. Why?"

  "A couple helped me out indirectly in busting Joey. I don't want Marco to pick up their scent to square things, and I wanted to know his likely troop strength."

  "What makes you think Marco would do something?"

  I reviewed his general appearance and repeated his comment to me in the courtroom.

  "Hmmm. I'd say the Coopers could be in trouble."

  I lurched forward in my seat. "I never gave their name to the investigating officer. How did you know it?"

  She rummaged through a tile and handed me a police report. "Seems the Coopers gave their name to the fire department when they called in the flames, and the fire captain mentioned it to the cop who arrived on the scene."

  I read Jesse and Emily's name, address, and telephone number from the last paragraph of the report.

  "Damn,” I said. "I assume the D'Amico lawyer has a copy of this?"

  "Got one the first night at the arresting station, as soon as he identified himself as Joey's attorney. Per office procedure."

  "Maybe I should have a talk with Marco," I said.

  She cleared her throat. "Let me be official, Mr. Cuddy. You go shaking down Marco, and it will weaken you as a witness for the prosecution. I don't want Joey's case riding on old Weeks' 'I hired him' testimony."

  "And unofficially?" I asked.

  She smiled, using her teeth this time. Nice, even teeth. "Unofficially, mightn't you be giving Marco ideas he hasn't stumbled on himself yet, since he seems to view you as enemy number one-and-only right now?"

  I considered it. "I'm not sure you're right, Ms. Meagher. But yours is the better percentage right now." I stood up. "Thanks for lunch."

  She stayed seated. "You're from Southie originally, right?"

  South Boston is an old Irish/Italian neighborhood of brick and wood three-deckers just past the South Station train terminus. Beth and I both grew up there.

  "That's right," I said.

  "Me, too," she replied. "In fact, I still live there. On Fourth Street, number 746." She smiled. "Third floor."

  I cleared my throat. "I still don't deal with this gracefully," I said, "but I was married a long time and then widowed. I'm still not . . . well . . . ready .... "

  Nancy blinked a few times and stood up. "I think that's the most graceful 'Thanks anyway' I've ever heard." She gave my right arm a quick squeeze. "But keep me in mind, O.K.?"

  "O.K." I squeezed back and left.

  THREE

  -•-

  AS I SAT OUTSIDE TRIAL COURTROOM 924, MY MIND KEPT skipping from the night of the fire to how much I was looking forward to seeing Nancy Meagher again. We had not met since the bail hearing, although she called me once a few weeks ago to review my version of what happened. Over the telephone, her voice sounded softer than I remembered, and she had advanced to the DA's Superior Court office. She was assisting the head of the homicide division in prosecuting Joey D'Amico, who so far had refused to cop a plea.

  I had not seen Joey either, not since the night at the warehouse. I did see Marco two days after the bail hearing, through the lens of my Pentax K1000 as I sat in a rental car outside the D'Amico house on Hanover Street. I brought the photos to the Coopers with the insurance company's final check for their help. I told Jesse and Emily over tea and cookies that they were to call me if they ever saw Marco anywhere around them or their house. They promised they would, but I called them several times in the intervening months just to be sure. No Marco.

  A long fingered freckled hand gave my arm a squeeze as Nancy settled in beside me on the bench.

  "What are you in for?" she asked with, I swear, a twinkle in her eye.

  "The vice squad caught me doing funny things with turtles."

  She laughed, a deep throaty laugh. "Lucky turtles."

  I shook my head and turned to business. "How does it look?"

  She glanced around to be sure no one she knew was within earshot. "Frankly, it couldn't look better for us. We've got your contact at the insurance company to lead off with the surrounding circumstances, Weeks to describe the 'contract', you to put Joey in the warehouse with his statements and Craigie alive shortly before, and a lab man who took specimens off the butt of Joey's gun that match Craigie's blood type and color hair."

  I considered her summary. "Why no plea?"

  Her turn to shake the head. "Makes no sense to me.

  Speaking professional to professional, Joey's lawyer is a hack. Very little pretrial stuff, at which Joey could have testified to try to suppress his statements to you under any number of theories. With his record, Joey doesn't dare testify at trial because we'd nail him to the cross with his prior convictions."

  "'Maybe they figure the deal from your side might be better if they push you to the verge of trial?"

  "Maybe, but we're not going to be very generous on this one."

  I became aware of people shuffling their feet a little distance away from us, and I turned to look at them. The Coopers. In their Sunday best and scared.

  I whipped my head back to Nancy. "Did you call them?"

  1

  She turned the way I had. "No, who are . . . oh, the Coopers, huh?" .

  I nodded.

  "Must have been D'Amico's lawyer, though what help they'll be . . ."

  “I'm going to calm them down. See you inside."

  "You've got some time. You're witness number three, right after Weeks."

  I went up to the Coopers and took Emily's out-stretched hand. She mustered a smile.

  "Why are you here?"

  Jesse produced a paper from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded it carefully. "We got this. Last night. It was late, so we didn't want to call you."

  It was a subpoena. The signature of the issuing notary public was illegible, but it looked to be in proper form.

  "A surly man in a porkpie hat brought it," said Emily. "Along with this." She held open an envelope with some currency in it.

  "That's your witness fee, Emily," I said. "You can keep that."

  Jesse's hands shook as he refolded the subpoena. "What do they want us for?"

  "I don't know," I said as the court officer, uniformed and side-armed, boomed, "Trial session, trial session, court coming in."

  I guided the Coopers into the courtroom. We sat on the left-hand side of the middle aisle, halfway back. On our side of the courtroom was the prosecutor's table, near the as-yet empty jury box. Nancy and a tall, fiftyish man with red-gray hair were conferring. The D'Amico family sat on the right-hand side of the aisle, several rows in front of us but still behind the defense table, at which Smolina sat scribbling on a legal pad. Friend of the Bride, Friend of the Groom.

  A clerk of court was shuffling papers in front of the bench, and a stenographer was as
sembling her miniature transcriber to his right. A side door opened, and two court officers brought in a cuffed Joey D'Amico. He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He'd had a haircut but looked pale as a ghost after his six months in jail.

  The officers led him to the defense table, unshackled him, and took up positions to his right and behind. At least his lawyer had had sense enough to move that his client not be seated in the dock. The dock is a square, isolated, and elevated box which some say gives jurors a pejorative impression of the dangerousness of the defendant whose fate they decide.

  The judge was announced and entered from a different side door. I did not recognize him, but he was about sixty, white-haired, and judgelike. D'Amico's case was called by the clerk. Nancy, her compatriot (who did not introduce himself), and Smolina approached the bench and exchanged preliminaries. The judge asked for witness lists. Nancy handed the prosecution's to the clerk. Smolina, looking perplexed, excused himself and scurried back to his table. He began flipping nervously through his file. Joey looked back at Marco, whose head was down and shaking left to right. Smolina closed his file, apologized to the judge, and said that his only witnesses would be several members of the D'Amico family and "Jessy” and "Emma" Cooper. The judge lectured Smolina on the need for full names and addresses now so they could be read to the jury during selection. Smolina said of course, of course but . . .

  At which point Marco stood up and said, "Judge, if it'll help, I can give you everybody's name and address."

  The judge was off—balance for a moment, then said, "Who are you?"

  "I'm Marco D'Amico, the defendant's brother, and I live at 767 Hanover Street, North End." Marco went on to list his other family and a priest, speaking the names and addresses slowly enough for the clerk to transcribe them. Marco concluded by saying, "And by the way, the first names of the Coopers are Jesse and Emily and they live at 230 Beech Street, Dorchester."

  I felt Emily tense and shudder beside me as we all realized Marco had their names and address memorized. When Marco finished, the judge thanked him and told Smolina he should be as prepared as his witnesses. As Marco sat back down, he turned his head toward us and smiled unpleasantly. I could sense Jesse and Emily grasping each other's hands a little harder. I was thinking of Marco's throat.

  The trial, or more accurately Smolina's attempted defense, was laughable. The jury was picked within twenty minutes, Smolina forgetting which side got to challenge prospective jurors first. Nancy's superior, whose name was McClean, made an opening statement that persuaded half the jurors without seeming to press them. Smolina waived an opening, and several jurors looked at each other with surprise. McClean presented my contact, who barely arrived in time, and Smolina asked him no questions.

  McClean then put on Harvey Weeks, a miserable, flabby man, with a bald head and horn-rimmed glasses. Weeks described his retention of Joey. Smolina objected a few times, unsuccessfully. Then Smolina cross-examined Weeks, with McClean objecting frequently and usually successfully. The judge even began to suggest questions to Smolina ("Mr. Smolina, why don't you ask him . . .") to try to move the case along. Smo1ina's thrust seemed to be toward getting Weeks to say he'd hired someone other than Joey.

  When Weeks left the stand, I was called. I told my story in response to McClean's nicely paced questions. I'd had a year of evening division law school, and I'd been in a lot of courtrooms for Empire, but McClean was the best I'd ever seen. Why he was taking something around forty thousand from the DA instead of four or five times that from a downtown civil litigation firm was beyond me.

  When Smolina began his cross-examination, the defense "strategy" began to unfold. He was trying to create the impression that I was the arsonist Weeks had hired, and that D'Amico had been in the neighborhood, seen the open window and gone in to investigate, only to be framed by me. Instead of objecting, McClean let Smolina go on, and I sensed that the jury was nearly as incredulous as I was. After Smolina finished, McClean on redirect asked me one question. "Have you ever been convicted of a crime, Mr. Cuddy?"

  I said, "No."

  "Thank you," McClean said, smiling at Smolina, "no further questi0ns."

  After I left the stand, the police lab expert testified.

  As he described the blood-and-hair evidence, I tried to sort out McClean's strategy. I guessed that McClean felt Smolina's version of the arson plot held no hope unless Joey confirmed it. If Joey testified, however, McClean would impeach him with his prior convictions and then argue "Who should you believe" to the jury.

  Smolina declined cross-examination of the lab expert and the judge called luncheon recess. The Coopers and I went across the courtyard to a stand-up place. The Coopers wanted only coffee. As I ate a sandwich, I turned the case over and over in my mind. I couldn't see any way out for Joey.

  Neither, apparently, could the jury. After lunch, the defense presented only family and priest as character witnesses, no Joey or Coopers. McClean waived cross-examination, and both attorneys made closing arguments. The case actually went to the jury that afternoon, and a guilty verdict was returned within an hour.

  After the jury went into deliberation, I offered to drive the Coopers home, but they said they wanted to stay for the verdict, that they felt they should. After the verdict, I offered again, but they resisted because of the traffic I would hit. I insisted, and they still refused. I was half glad they did, because as Emily kissed my cheek and Jesse shook my hand, I wanted to speak with Nancy Meagher.

  A courtroom when a judge has left the bench is like a bus stop at a madhouse. Joey had started crying after the verdict and was now nearly hysterical as the two officers recuffed him. Marco was calling Smolina an asshole and a third officer was telling Marco to take it outside. Joey's mother was wailing into a hanky and rocking back and forth in the embrace of her husband.

  I was almost to Nancy Meagher when Marco finished his piece and stormed out of the courtroom. I doubt he noticed me. I decided to follow him, though, to be sure the Coopers had gotten enough of a start.

  They hadn't.

  As I came out of the courtroom door, Marco was near the elevators. He had Jesse by the jacket front, pushing him against the wall and yelling "nigger”' at him and "whore" at Emily. Six or eight people were standing around. Marco looked pretty imposing, and nobody helped.

  I came up behind Marco and said, "Take your hand off his jacket or I'll take your hand off your arm."

  Marco slammed Jesse against the wall and came for me. He swung a roundhouse right at my head. I stepped under and slightly outside of it, whipping my right elbow forward and up into his right-hand rib cage. I stepped again, this time past him, slamming the edge of my right hand just above his right kidney. He gave a strangled cry and sank to his knees, both hands trying to feel all his right side, front and back, at once.

  I figured I had very little time before the authorities would arrive, so I leaned over Marco. I pulled him by his hair up to communion level on his knees, and said between my teeth, "If you so much as look cross-eyed at these folks again, your family loses its other son."

  I felt a hand on my arm. It was Nancy. A growing crowd of onlookers began to encircle us. A burly court officer bustled up behind her with his hand on the butt of his still-holstered revolver.

  I let go of Marco, and Nancy said over her shoulder, "It's all right, Frank. I saw it. Self-defense."

  Frank nodded and began gesturing calmly, dispersing the crowd.

  I thanked Nancy, who asked Jesse and Emily if they wished to press charges. They didn't. I told the Coopers I was driving them home. They offered no arguments this time.

  I saw the Coopers locked up tight at their house. Jesse assured me he had a shotgun and would use it if necessary. Emily said she would be sure to call me if they saw Marco.

  I got back into my car, a '73 Fiat 124 sport sedan, my '63 Renault Caravelle finally having blown an unobtainable part. It was only 5:45, and A1 had told me 8:30. Between testifying and Marco, my shirt was pitted out,
so I drove back to my apartment, getting the first break of the day in the form of a parking space right out front. I walked up to my third floor one-bedroom and checked my telephone tape machine. Three hang-ups, no messages. I stripped and did push-ups, sit-ups, and other exercises for an hour.

  I showered and had a hunk of Vienna bread and Gouda cheese to quell my growing appetite. I washed it down with the first of many screwdrivers that night. I listened to a side of Rachmaninoff with another drink. I finally pulled on a blue shirt, burgundy sweater, and gray tweed sports coat with dark gray slacks.

  At 8:00 I went downstairs and drove to the Midtown Motor Inn. I circled through the packed parking area and left my car on Huntington Avenue. I walked back to the Inn and spotted a college-aged kid in an ill-fitting, uniformlike orange blazer behind the front desk.

  "Good evening, sir. May I help you?"

  "Yes. Could you buzz Mr. Sachs' room and tell him Mr. Cuddy is here?"

  "Certainly." I thought the "certainly" was from a training manual and that the kid would have been more comfortable with "yeah, sure." In any case, he flipped through a View-dex card holder and picked up the telephone, dialing four digits. He waited ten seconds, then hung up and dialed again. He shook his I head, hung up, and came back to me.

  "I'm sorry, sir, but he doesn't answer."

  I checked my watch. It was 8:20.

  "Well," I said, "I'm a little early. Can I get a drink somewhere?"

  "Certain1y," again and gesturing, "Our lounge is right through there. Would you like me to leave a message for Mr. Sachs to join you?"

  "If I could have a piece of paper."

  "Certainly." He slid a message pad and Bic pen to me. I wrote, "If I had to wait for you, guess where?" I decided it sounded arch, so I crumpled it and wrote, "I'm in the bar." I folded it and gave it to the kid, who stuck it in a slot with 304 under it. I went past a bank of pay phones with swing-up directories and into the lounge.

  It was dark and nearly empty. A pianist was playing gamely in a corner. A fortyish waitress in black mesh tights brought me a screwdriver. Two half-bagged jerks were hitting on a couple of secretaries with adventures centering around the wholesale hardware game in Wichita. Just as I was thinking of buying a newspaper, the barman turned the lights down another notch.