Alex Cooper 01 - Final Jeopardy

by Linda Fairstein

  When the defense attorney sat down, Mark rose to make his closing argument. First, he marshaled all the evidence in the case, detailing every word and act that the complaining witness had described about her assailant during the course of the several hours he spent in her apartment when they had returned there after a dinner date. Mark was candid about the weak spots—how much liquor she had consumed, how much foreplay she had consented to—but firm about the fact that neither of those factors gave the defendant a license to force her to have intercourse with him. As Sarah and I had coached, he was graphic and emphatic about the defendant’s threats, and about the force with which he had restrained his prey when she had tried to resist and escape his attack.

  The victim’s outcry had been prompt, which is somewhat unusual in many date rape cases when women are conflicted about whether to report the crime, fearful of not being believed. The medical record was a useful tool in this case, and Mark took the jury through it carefully. The fingermarks on the young woman’s wrists and inner thighs corroborated her story about the defendant’s application of pressure—no, she hadn’t been beaten and bruised, but she had been held down against her will, and these marks did not support his story of tender lovemaking. The internal exam had revealed redness and swelling in the vaginal vault, with several very minor abrasions noted on the accompanying diagram, again inconsistent with the protection afforded by lubrication during consensual sex.

  I was impressed with the construction of Mark’s argument, and with the manner in which he made the jury confront the unpleasant details that established the elements of the crime. These were cases that had little to do with the business of a police investigation, but rather rose and fell based on the candor and credibility of the complaining witness. He placed that all before the panel of twelve jurors, some who nodded in agreement as he hammered home his strong points, some who sat stone-faced in their chairs, and some who appeared to be napping through all of the argument. He worked his way painstakingly toward his conclusion.

  “…and I ask you to find the defendant guilty of the crime of rape in the first degree. Thank you very much.”

  Mark had taken more than an hour for the delivery of his summation, and I smiled my approval to him as he returned to his seat at the prosecution table. The judge would now begin his charge to the jury, in which he’d explain the various laws that had to be applied to the facts in the case. I noted that it was after noon, so I slipped out of the courtroom and returned to my office, knowing that it would be hours before the jurors finished deliberations and reached a verdict in a case like this.

  “Rod called. Wants to know if you’d like to go out for lunch,” Laura greeted me when I returned to my office.

  “Please tell him I’m stretched for time—let’s do it next week. And would you order me in a salad and soda?”

  “Sure. Call Mercer at Special Victims. And Lieutenant Peterson at the Homicide Squad.”

  I was excited when I picked up the phone to dial Mercer’s number. We were overdue for a break in the serial rape pattern and I was hoping it had come.

  “Special Victims. Wallace.”

  “Any luck? Heard you went out on a call.”

  “A bullshit run. Nothing.” Mercer sounded discouraged. “Every time some pimply-faced plumber rings a doorbell on the Upper West Side, somebody calls 911. Not our guy, not even close. It’s a bad month to be a repairman—this poor slob was scared out of his wits. Took me two hours to calm him down. Then I had to call his old lady and explain the situation—make sure she understood it was all a mistake. Sorry for the false alarm. I’ll be talking to you.”

  Peterson was Mike Chapman’s boss at the Homicide Squad, a tough old-timer who had worked Homicide most of his career, and knew the business better than anybody. “Hey, Loo, how’ve you been?”

  “Pretty good for an old guy, Alex. Can’t complain.”

  “What do you need?”

  “It’s on the Lascar case. Mike’s due in at four. I just called him to let him know what’s been going on, and I thought you should know, too. Then we had an idea maybe you could help us with.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Chief Flanders just called. I don’t know the case as well as you do, but Mike says you’d understand what I’m talking about. First of all, Flanders got a hit on the photo ID of this Segal guy from the two sisters at the lunch place. That make any sense to you? Mike says it would.”

  Butterflies began floating in my stomach and my spirits sank to a new low. It made no sense at all to me. “Yeah, Loo, it makes perfect sense. Go on.”

  Now it was no longer speculation. And now it was no longer just a matter of infidelity. Mike had been right. Jed had been with Isabella less than one hour before she was killed. Despite all the indications, I had kept on hoping he had left earlier. I had refused to consider him a serious possibility as a suspect, but I had to come to grips with the reality of that fact. No wonder it was Peterson who made the call. Mike was too afraid I’d be shattered by the confirmation of that news.

  “The next thing Wally says to tell you is that Burrell—I guess he’s the ex-husband—has something to hide, too. Must’ve followed his wife from Boston to the Vineyard. Stayed at a hotel in Edgartown called the Charles Inn. Know it?”

  “The Charlotte Inn. Gorgeous. Expensive.” Son of a bitch, doesn’t anybody believe in telling the truth anymore? Burrell shows up here to pitch me his case, then he looks me in the eye and lies. Interesting approach, I got to give him credit. Admit the gun possession, admit the fight in the Boston hotel. Just leave out the part that puts you within fifteen miles of the crime scene. Mike’s right—they think we’re all stupid if we’re in law enforcement.

  “Now that suggests two things to me, Alex. One is, he didn’t go to the island planning to off his ex-wife. I think he woulda known to use an alias at the hotel. Even in the movies, cops canvass hotels and motels to check the guest lists. But it doesn’t mean something didn’t set him off once he got there—maybe he saw her with the other man, maybe they had a phone conversation that made him crazy. He’s in town, so we’ll set up the interview and sweat him. It always helps to go in with a piece of information that he obviously doesn’t think we have.”

  I was still focused somewhere back on Jed.

  “The rest is just local gossip. People who claim they saw and heard things all week. Someone in the post office says a woman was in asking directions to your place. Doesn’t exactly remember what day it was. Could that have been Isabella or did you have other company?”

  “I gave directions to Isabella a week before she went up there. But she could easily have left them behind or stopped in somewhere to check. Maybe she invited someone else over—I sure as hell didn’t even know she had Jed Segal there.”

  “Also, American Express confirmed the Chanel sale. Only thing is Segal bought the stuff in New York, on Saturday afternoon, after his European trip. Looks like he got it at a drugstore about two blocks from your place. Sorry. The good news was that he had purchased the Concorde ticket to Paris weeks ago, then he moved his departure back a day or two at the very last minute. So he hadn’t planned the trip to the Vineyard for long. Well, that’s today’s report. Next thing, that FBI agent, Luther Waldron, is in town. The feds had to make calls to get some of these guys to come to New York, which leads me to the favor we want to ask you.

  “Mike doesn’t want Waldron in on all the interviews tomorrow. Doesn’t like the guy’s style, doesn’t think he knows anything about murder investigations, says he’s no better than a Meter Maid. So Mike’s trying to get as much done as possible out of Waldron’s presence, okay?”

  “Suits me fine.”

  “Johnny Garelli—you know that name?”

  “Yeah. Johnny Gorilla, she called him. The stuntman stud Isabella romanced for a few months. I only met him once.”

  “Waldron got him to come into town for a sit-down tomorrow. He arrived on the red-eye this morning. Staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Mike thi
nks that if you called him and asked him to meet you for dinner this evening, you might be able to get more out of him than we could in a formal interview. Mike says Garelli likes broads better than he likes cops—I’m supposed to butter you up and say he likes blondes with great wheels—does that work?”

  “No butter needed. You know this is the kind of assignment I love. Do I have to tell Battaglia?”

  “Hey, you know me. If it was one of my guys did a thing like that without my permission, I’d wring his fucking neck. But in your case, don’t you go off duty at 6 P.M.? I’m not asking you to get a pass from nobody to have a dinner date. It’s nothing dangerous like Mata Hari. We have no reason to think he’s the killer, but Mike wants to look at him ’cause he’s got such a history of jealous squabbles with the deceased. We figure he’ll bite if you call, one of yous’ll pick a place, and Chapman’ll be having a drink at the bar. Maybe you’ll get some scoop, some juice he’ll give you as a friend of Isabella’s. Pick his brain—I guess I’m usin’ that term loosely. Worst that can happen to you is you have a boring evening and a bad meal. Choose the restaurant, you might even eat good.”

  “On the job, Loo. I love it. I’ll try to reach him. Tell Mike to call me when he gets in this afternoon. I’ll really feel like a wallflower if he turns me down.”

  “If he turns you down, Alex, I’ll take you to Sheehan’s for a steak.”

  Ugh, the food at Sheehan’s, a friendly bar run by the family of a retired Homicide cop. Great place to drink, but damned if I’d eat another meal there. That was incentive enough to put in a call to the Gorilla.

  I got the number of the hotel from Information and asked the desk for Johnny’s room. He answered the phone and sounded as though I had awakened him. I reminded him that we had met once at Mortimer’s, expressed my less-than-enthusiastic sympathy for Isabella with exaggerated sincerity, and suggested that we might meet for drinks or dinner to commiserate about her loss. He told me he’d been napping because of his jet lag, and that he had a date with a dancer from one of the Broadway shows who couldn’t meet him till almost midnight. Yeah, he’d be glad to do dinner with an old friend of Isabella’s.

  “Want me to suggest a restaurant, or do you know New York?”

  “You got any problem with Rao’s?”

  “Only getting in. I adore it, but you’ll never get a table for tonight.” A New York classic, but impossible to get into. The tiny place—four booths and a handful of tables—was one of the hottest tickets in New York, despite its unlikely location on the corner of Pleasant Avenue and 114th Street in the heart of East Harlem. It was one of the last remaining vestiges of the Italian neighborhood that once flourished there. Run almost like a club, regulars had their own tables for designated nights of the week and there was no room for reservations for unknowns unless every politician, actor, writer, and hotshot were marooned on the same remote island. Great food, no menus, and the most incredible jukebox in the city—light on Smokey, but lots of Sinatra and the Shirelles.

  “Not a problem. Stallone told me I could have his table if I wanted it tonight. I was just about to give it up—this girl I’m being set up with doesn’t get off till it’s too late to eat. I’ll meet you there at eight.”

  Lucky for me. I get the good meal, and the showgirl gets Johnny Garelli for dessert.

  When my lunch was delivered, I closed the door to the office and ate by myself, enjoying the solitude. It never lasted long.

  The first knock on the door was Mark Acciano. I waved him in. “What did you think?” he asked eagerly.

  “Great summation, really good job. Thoughtful, thorough, impassioned. You gave it your best shot. Now you’ve got to let the jurors go to work—you’ve given them all the tools they need to reach the right result. The rest is in their hands.” We chatted about the case and I told him I would try to be with him when the verdict came in, to beep me when he got the call.

  Then came Phil Weinfeld, aka The Whiner. He had two traits that made Sarah and me cringe every time he loomed in the doorway of my office. First was what we called the “I knew that” problem. He’d call and urgently plead for ten minutes of my time, come over and present a hypothetical, and then ask for guidance. The ten-minute presentation never took less than half an hour, and at the end, when Sarah or I made a suggestion which obviously caught Phil by surprise, he’d say, “I knew that.” Then what did you bother me for in the first place?

  The other thing he was known for, much to the aggravation of most of his colleagues, was his insistence on seeking advice from eight or ten of us on exactly the same issue, without revealing that he had already consulted the others. We used to joke that if he got hit by a bus on his way home in the middle of the trial, the case wouldn’t even need an hour’s adjournment. There’d be at least a dozen of us who knew the facts every bit as well as he did who could pick up the file and carry on to the verdict. He had worn out his welcome with Sarah, who’d begin every conversation with him by asking, “How many other assistants have you asked about this already?” If he’d been through it with half of the bureau, she’d point to the door and tell him to get lost.

  “What’s up, Phil?”

  “Have you got a few minutes for a question, Alex?”

  “A few.”

  “I’m having a problem with the witness in the case that you assigned me in September, the woman whose old boyfriend came back to her apartment to pick up his clothes, and then beat her to a pulp when she wouldn’t have sex with him? You know which one I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, she canceled three appointments with me. Kept telling me that she didn’t want to prosecute ’cause she still loved him. I was trying to work out a plea with his lawyer, figuring I’d rather take a misdemeanor assault than have him walk away with no record.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “She just called me in hysterics. Changed her mind completely. She went to a psychic this morning for a consultation. Didn’t tell the psychic any of their history, nothing about the guy, and the psychic does her reading and says, ‘There’s a man in your life who’s very dangerous.’ She flipped. She’s terrified. Now she wants to go all the way with the case.”

  “You mean the ex puts her in the hospital with two fractured ribs, a loose tooth, a broken nose and a black eye, but it took a swami to convince her the guy is dangerous? Unbelievable. I’m sure she’s sitting in front of the psychic with a huge shiner and her nose relocated next to her ear, and the genius figures out that a dangerous man hit her. Maybe we ought to put a psychic on the payroll to help with recalcitrant witnesses.”

  “What should I do about the plea offer I made?”

  “Withdraw it. If the schmuck was too stupid to take it and run, bring her in tomorrow while she’s still hot to testify and put the case in the Grand Jury. Assign the arresting officer, even if it’s his RDO”—regular day off—“and I’ll authorize the overtime. Indict him and let’s get the felony instead of the misdemeanor. Be sure her order of protection is renewed.”

  “Yeah, I know that. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Anything else today?”

  “Nope—that’s it. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  The rest of the day passed quickly with the usual array of cases and customers. Every time the phone rang I feared it would be Battaglia, and I played with the idea of asking him whether I should keep the meet with Johnny Garelli. But he didn’t look for me once, and since I knew he would have been disapproving, I simply avoided having to deal with the issue.

  Mike called me a little before four o’clock when he reached the squad. “What a wimp you are,” I chided him. “Couldn’t even call me yourself to tell me about the Quinn sisters making the hit on the photo of Jed, could you?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t want to tell you, you’re right about that. You didn’t seem to want to accept the obvious from the first time we talked about it.”

  “Have you told his lawyer about the photo ID yet?”

&nbs
p; “Nah. I just got in. I’ll call him later. Meanwhile, the lieutenant tells me you’ve accepted our mission—gonna throw some moves on Johnny Garelli tonight. Did you find him?”

  “Piece of cake. It’s all set.”

  “Where’s the meet?”

  “Rao’s. Can you do it?”

  “Way to go, blondie. We’re both in for a good evening.”

  “You can get a table at Rao’s? I can’t believe it.”

  “No way. But I can get a seat at the bar. And once I’m in, the whole joint is so small I can scope it all pretty easy. Joey’s aces, the best. He’ll let me sit there all night, and Vie will keep my glass looking full.” The restaurant was owned by Joey Palomino—a real charmer, who not only ran the business, but also acted in a number of movies and TV series, usually playing cops and detectives. He was good to the industry luminaries who frequented Rao’s, but just as nice to the guys who let him hang out at precincts and squad rooms to learn the ropes. And Vie was one of those astounding bartenders who would see a customer like me walk in—someone who wasn’t likely to get there more than twice a year—point a finger at me, raise an eyebrow, and say, “Dewar’s on the rocks, am I right?”

  “So what do I do, Mike? Johnny wants me to meet him there at eight.”

  “I’ll make sure I’m there at seven-thirty. I’ll see if I can get Maureen Forester freed up from her bodyguard detail to go with me, so it looks like I got a date.” Maureen was one of the best detectives in the city, with the added advantages of being great-looking, and having a superb sense of humor. “We’ll be at the bar. Nobody’s expecting any trouble, but this way you’ll have us at your elbow if the guy does anything jerky. Sit and have a nice dinner. See if you can find out what his relationship was like with Isabella near the end. So far, nobody we’ve talked to in L.A. has any idea where this goofball was the week of the murder. See if you can ease anything out of him.”