The Pardon js-1

by James Grippando

  “Objection,” said Manny.

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “Let’s not vouch for our witnesses, Mr. McCue.”

  “Sorry, Your Honor. But I’m just trying to elicit a very simple point.” He turned and faced the witness. “Ms. Terisi, when you and I talked in my office and you told me that little falsehood about it being Mr. Swyteck’s idea not to call the police, you were not under oath, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t”

  “Today, however, you are under oath. You are aware that you’re under oath?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. So, tell us, Miss Terisi. What about all the other things you’ve testified to today, under oath: Are those true, or are they false?”

  “They’re true,” she said resignedly. “All of them are true.”

  The prosecutor nodded slowly. “And tell us one more thing, please, if you would: Did Mr. Swyteck voice any objection when you told him that you did not want to call the police?”

  “He didn’t fight it,” she said.

  “What did he do?”

  Gina shrugged. “He left.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said shaking her head. “Sometime before three o’clock.”

  “Before three,” he repeated, as if to remind the jury that Goss was not murdered until four. The point seemed to register with most of them. “Was he drunk or sober?”

  Gina’s mouth was getting dry. She sipped some water, then answered, “He still appeared to be a little drunk.”

  “Did he take anything with him?”

  “His car keys.”

  “Anything else?”

  She nodded. “He took the flower with him-the chrysanthemum he found under Cindy’s pillow. The one he said was from Eddy Goss.”

  “And did he say anything at all before he left?”

  Gina took a deep breath. “Yes, he”-she looked into her lap-“he said, ‘This has got to stop.’ “

  McCue turned and faced the jury, looking as if he were about to take a bow. “Thank you, Miss Terisi. I have no further questions.”

  McCue buttoned his jacket over his round belly and returned to his chair. The courtroom filled with the quiet rumble of spectators conferring among themselves, each seeming to confirm to the other that the accused was most definitely guilty as charged.

  “Order,” said the judge with a bang of her gavel. The courtroom came to a hush. The judge checked the clock on the wall. It was almost five o’clock. “I see no reason to keep the jury any longer today,” she said. “We’ll resume tomorrow morning with defense counsel’s cross-examination of this witness.”

  “Your Honor,” Manny politely interrupted. He had to do something to keep the day from ending on this devastating note. “If I might just begin my cross-examination. Perhaps just twenty minutes-”

  “The defense will have all the time it needs-tomorrow. This court is in recess,” she announced as she ended the day with another sharp bang of the gavel.

  “All rise!” shouted the bailiff, but his instruction was totally unnecessary. Everyone in the courtroom immediately stood and sprung into action. Television reporters rushed to meet five o’clock deadlines. Print journalists ran for the rail, hoping to get an interview with the prosecutor, the defense-or maybe even the government’s star witness.

  Jack jumped up, too, immediately looking behind him. He needed to say something to Cindy, but she was already gone. She’d darted from her seat the instant Judge Tate’s gavel had landed on the block.

  He stood beside his chair as he scanned the buzzing courtroom. Where is she? He flinched as he felt Manny’s hand on his arm. “You and I have to talk,” his lawyer said.

  Jack sighed. He could barely speak. “Cindy and I have to talk,” he said quietly.

  Chapter 37

  Jack raced home as quickly as he could, weaving in and out of rush-hour traffic. He was relieved to see Cindy’s car in the driveway. She hadn’t left him-at least not yet. He rushed into the house, then froze as he heard the sound of dresser drawers slamming shut in the bedroom.

  “What are you doing?” asked Jack as he appeared in the bedroom doorway.

  Her half-filled suitcase was lying open across the bed. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” she said as she dumped a drawer of panty hose into her suitcase.

  He sighed. “It looks like you’re doing exactly what I would do. Looks like you’re giving me exactly what I deserve. But I’m asking you not to.”

  She wouldn’t even look at him. She just kept packing. “Why shouldn’t I leave?”

  “Because I’m sorry. You just don’t know how sorry I am. You don’t know how much I love you.”

  “Stop it,” she glared. “Just stop it.”

  “Cindy,” he pleaded, “it’s not what you think. You’ve got to remember: This all happened right after the Goss trial, when everything was so crazy. I was being stalked by some guy who had tried to run me over and who’d just killed Thursday. I’d just come from Goss’s apartment after stabbing myself in the hand. And then Gina managed to convince me that I was being naive to think you’d ever come back to me. She told me you and Chet were definitely not going to be ‘just friends’ over there.”

  “Hold it,” she said, looking at him with utter disbelief. “Are you listening to what you’re saying? Less than twelve hours after I left for Italy, you were in bed with my best friend because you were afraid that you couldn’t trust me. That makes a lot of sense, Jack,” she said with sarcasm, then resumed packing.

  “You don’t understand, I was drunk-”

  “I don’t care. Have you been drunk for the past two months, too? Is that why you didn’t tell me about it? Or maybe you just thought it was best for me to hear about it for the first time in a crowded courtroom, so I could be humiliated in front of the entire world.”

  “I was going to tell you,” he said weakly.

  “Oh, were you? Or did you just think you could sweep this problem under the rug, like you do with all the problems between you and your father? Well, that obviously hasn’t worked very well with that relationship, has it? And it won’t work with me anymore, either. What you and Gina did is bad enough. But keeping it from me is unforgivable,” she said, then closed up her suitcase and bolted out the bedroom door.

  He stepped out of the way, then followed her down the hall. “Cindy, you can’t leave.”

  “Just watch me,” she said as she opened the front door.

  “I mean, you can’t leave town. You’re still under the trial subpoena. It’s possible you could be recalled as a witness. And if you don’t appear, you’ll be in contempt of court.”

  She shook her head in anger. “Then I’ll just move into a hotel.”

  “Cindy-”

  “Good-bye, Jack.”

  He searched desperately for something to say. “I’m sorry,” he called as she headed down the front steps.

  She stopped and turned around, her eyes welling as she looked back. “I’m sorry, too,” she said bitterly. “Because you ruined it, Jack. You just ruined everything.”

  He felt completely empty inside, like a lifeless husk, as he watched her toss her suitcase into the car and pull out of the driveway. He tried to feel something, even anger at Gina. But another voice quickly took over. He could hear his father repeating that lesson Jack had never seemed to learn as a boy, probably because Harold Swyteck had tried so hard to teach it to him. It was the same lesson Jack had fired back at his father the night Fernandez was executed. “We’re all responsible for our own actions,” Jack could hear his father telling him. The memory didn’t help Jack with his sense of loss. But somewhere deep inside, he felt a little stronger because of it.

  “I’ll always love you,” he whispered over the lump in his throat as Cindy drove away. “Always.”

  Chapter 38

  Harry Swyteck received a full report on the day’s events in his Tallahassee office. Gina’s testimony was first he’d heard of Jack’
s stalker. While the rest of the world took the story as Jack’s motive to kill Eddy Goss, he saw it differently, because he also had been harassed before the murder-and he, too, had believed it was Goss.

  His first instinct was to make a public statement, but it was quite possible that going public with what had happened to him could strengthen the case against Jack. From the jury’s standpoint, evidence that both Swytecks were being threatened would only double Jack’s motive to kill Goss. And even telling Jack wouldn’t be wise because he’d have to divulge everything he knew when he testified in his own defense.

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. “This just came,” his secretary said as she entered his office, handing him a large, sealed envelope. “I didn’t want to interrupt, but the courier said it relates to your son’s trial.”

  “Thank you, Paula.” It was a brown envelope, with no return address. He was immediately suspicious. He waited for her to disappear behind the closed office door, and then he cautiously slit the seal with his letter opener and peered inside. He paused. Photographs-again. He feared it was more of the same horrible photographs his blackmailer had shown him after his carriage ride in the park. But there was only one photo this time. Slowly, he removed the large black-and-white glossy, then froze. He’d never seen the shot before, but the subject was certainly familiar. It was taken on the night of the murder. It was a photo of the governor walking away from Goss’s apartment, after he’d chickened out and decided not to go inside, toting the shoe box full of cash his blackmailer had told him to deliver to apartment 217 at four o’clock in the morning.

  His hands shook as he laid the photograph facedown on his desk. Only then did he notice the message on the back. It was a poem-brief, but to the point:

  One word to your son,

  one word to the cops,

  we double the fun,

  the other shoe drops.

  The governor went rigid in his chair, disgusted by the way he was being manipulated. But he knew exactly what “shoe” would drop. This was one last threat-a solemn promise that if he came forward in defense of his son, the police would shortly come into possession of the wing tips that could connect the governor and his extraneous footprints not only to the murder of Eddy Goss, but to that of Wilfredo Garcia as well. And there was more still: The tape recording of the bribe, the payoff for the victim’s photographs-all of it would bring into public focus that this entire tragedy was rooted in the execution of an innocent man.

  The governor held his head in his hands, agonizing. He felt compelled to act, yet at the same time paralyzed. He had to make sure he didn’t play into the hands of the enemy. He had to figure out a way to help his son-without self-destructing.

  Chapter 39

  Jack didn’t want to stay in the empty house after Cindy had left, and he’d lost all appetite for dinner. So he drove to Manny’s office to prepare for the next day of the trial.

  The first thing he mentioned to his lawyer was Gina’s glossing over that he’d had a gun that night he came to her apartment. The question was never asked, and so Gina never answered it. Perhaps she’d sensed that saying anything about the gun would be driving the last nail into Jack’s coffin? Maybe that was too much even for Gina.

  Manny was as perplexed as Jack. What she had said, though, had been devastating. He wanted a powerful cross-examination of Gina, and by ten o’clock that night, the two lawyers had mapped out an impressive assault. Jack feared, however, that it was the kind of legal warfare that could impress only a lawyer. Manny couldn’t disagree. They both knew the bottom line. Gina had told the truth. And there was only so far a criminal defense lawyer could push a truthful witness on cross-examination before the jury would start to resent the lawyer and his client.

  To say the least, Jack wasn’t feeling very optimistic when he got home-until he checked his answering machine.

  “Jack,” came the familiar voice. “It’s Gina.”

  There was a long pause. He turned up the volume, then stood frozen as he listened.

  “I think we should talk,” she said finally. “Face-to-face. Come by tonight, please. I’m sure I’ll be up.”

  He took a deep breath. He detected no gloating in her tone. No animosity. No seductiveness. Just honesty.

  He picked up the phone, then put it down. If he called her, he was afraid she might change her mind. But if he showed up at her door, he was certain she’d talk to him. He grabbed his car keys and rushed out.

  Twenty minutes later, Gina opened her front door. She was dressed in soft slippers and a white bathrobe. Her chestnut hair was wet and a little tangled, as if she’d washed it an hour ago, started combing it out, then lost the energy to finish the job. She wore no makeup, and in the same strange way that her toned-down appearance in the courtroom had made her more attractive, she was even prettier now, Jack thought-except for one thing. She looked sad. Very sad.

  “Come on in,” she said in a subdued voice.

  “Thanks.” He stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him.

  “Something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “A Jagermeister, maybe?” A smile briefly bloomed on her face, then withered. She crossed the room to a hammock-style chair, sat down, and brought her knees up to her chin. She kept her back to Jack as she enjoyed the balmy breezes that rolled in through the open sliding-glass doors.

  Jack took a seat on the couch, on the other side of the cocktail table. They said nothing until Gina turned her head and looked at him plaintively.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said. “But what happened with Cindy?”

  He hesitated. For a second he felt as if she were intruding. But this wasn’t just idle curiosity. She really seemed to care.

  “She packed up and left.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Then she rolled back her head, closed her eyes, and sniffled. “I don’t know why I do the idiotic things I do,” her voice cracked. “I really don’t.”

  Jack moved to the edge of his seat. The last thing he’d expected tonight was to be consoling Gina. But he found himself doing it. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  She shook her head and suddenly snapped out of her malaise. “Mistakes? Do you have any idea how many mistakes I’ve made? You don’t know me, Jack. Nobody knows me. Not even Cindy. Everyone thinks that a great body has gotten me anything I’ve ever wanted in life. And it did, for a while. When I was sixteen years old, I made over a hundred grand modeling for the Ford Agency. But then the next year I gained twenty pounds and was all washed up-out of work. A real wake-up call, that was. ‘Use it while you got it’ is what I learned. But then I learned something else: The more you use it, the more you get used. And believe me, there’s no shortage of users out there.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Anyway,” her voice quivered. “That’s why I called you. I’m through being used. I’m through feeling like shit even when I try to do the right thing. Like today. All I did was tell the truth on the witness stand. Yet I feel like I’ve done something wrong.”

  “You didn’t mention the gun. I wondered about that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it’s because they were licking their chops too much over everything else I told them. I didn’t feel like volunteering it, you know?”

  “But why volunteer anything? I’m confused.”

  “Welcome to the club,” she said, running her hands through her hair. “They want you to play the game, but they don’t tell you the rules.”

  Jack was confused. “What game?”

  She started to speak, then stopped. Finally she said, “The whole charade that landed me in that courtroom-that’s the game. I’ve been playing it ever since you asked me to be your alibi. Everything I did and said was designed to make you think that I didn’t want to get involved-or that if I did get involved, it would be to help you, and not to hurt you. The whole idea was to make sure you’d be totally shocked when I took the stand and testified against you. That
was part of my deal.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Your deal with who?”

  “With that cop, Stafford,” she said, then looked away in shame. “The truth,” she said with a lump in her throat, “is that right after you were indicted, he came over to question me. I let the creep use my bathroom, and he comes out saying he just saw enough amphetamines sitting out in plain view to put me away for years. I use them to lose weight. It’s not smart, but I do it. Anyway, he said he wouldn’t bring any charges if I’d help him out. And all I did was tell him the truth. It’s just the sneaky way he made me do it that has me so disgusted. I mean, how do you think the prosecutor knew every little detail about the morning Cindy left you? She told me all about it. And I told Stafford. And then Cindy got creamed on the witness stand.”

  Jack felt a rush of anger, but he kept cool-because a tremendous opportunity was within his grasp. “Gina,” he said in a calm, understanding tone, “this is important. What Stafford made you do isn’t just sleazy. It’s illegal. The prosecution has violated the law by failing to tell Manny and me that Stafford cut a deal with a government witness. This could get the whole case against me dismissed. The trial could be over tomorrow. I could go free.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked cautiously.

  “All I want you to do is to get on the witness stand tomorrow morning and say exactly what you told me. That’s it. Just tell the truth.”

  “And then what happens to me? I’ll go to jail on drug charges?”

  He thought fast. “The state will have to honor its deal with you. Stafford made the promise. You’ve already lived up to your end. You told the truth. It’s Stafford’s fault if it blows up in his face, not yours.”