I waited quietly; Tim rubbed the back of his neck, jammed his hands into his pockets, muttered a few unpleasant things to himself, then decided to let me in on things.
“Jay T. Williams has been retained to represent Kitty Keeler. The son-of-a-bitch is flying up from Atlanta this afternoon.”
“Is that what’s with the Madison Avenue hotel?”
“What the hell do you think is with the Madison Avenue hotel?” Tim turned and kicked his metal wastebasket; it was so loaded with newspapers that it just fell heavily on its side. “The minute I got into the office, Gorgeous Jerry had me on the carpet. Someone from Williams’ New York office called him. They decided the motel out near Kennedy is not a suitable place for Mrs. Keeler to be held as a material witness. Gutless Jerry should have asked how they’d like to see that little bitch in an iron-barred cell. Instead, they had a conference about it, and it was mutually agreed that a suite of rooms up on Madison would be more in keeping with the style to which Mrs. Keeler has been accustomed. You know what they charge in that place? Huh?”
I had no idea.
“Seventy-five bucks a day. A suite, for Christ’s sake.”
Walker tapped on the door and in a soft, hesitant voice said, “Captain? Detective Casey is on extension 120.”
“What does he want?” Walker went blank. Tim snatched up the receiver and said, “Captain Neary. Wadda ya want?” He listened, nodded, said okay and hung up. “The Keelers are up in her brother’s house in Yonkers, packing. Then they’re going to their apartment in Fresh Meadows to pick up clothes and things. Then her ladyship will be installed in her suite, waiting for her attorney, that son-of-a-bitch. I want you up there, Joe, in Room 406; tell Miller and Duffy to get their asses out the minute the equipment is set up; you and Vito stand by. Well, what’s your problem, Joe? What the hell’s bothering you now?”
I thought about mentioning something called privileged information, the confidentiality between lawyer and client, but I know Tim doesn’t behave very well under pressure. He has a basic lack of grace that has become more noticeable as the years go by.
“Not a thing, Captain. All you gotta do is name it and you got it.”
“Listen, don’t you break my chops, Joe, okay? Go on, go on, get the hell outa here.” Then, feeling he had to justify himself or something, Tim said, “Listen, Joe. This Williams guy uses every trick in the book; don’t have any qualms on his behalf.”
“I haven’t got a qualm in the world, Tim, not even one.”
Jay T. Williams had a national reputation as the attorney to get when you had little more to face a jury with than a clever lawyer. If you could afford him. If not, and if the circumstances of the crime were interesting enough, he might be persuaded to take on the case provided you signed over all ensuing literary rights (including Sunday-supplement and magazine articles and interviews, and book, television and film properties) in lieu of standard fee. This had apparently worked out very much to Williams’ advantage; he had two best sellers based on the real-story-behind-the-story of his more sensational cases. He was also a popular, entertaining if cynical guest on the late-night TV talk shows: a smooth, attractive performer with a quick flashy style.
The Keeler “situation” was right up Williams’ alley. It had all the elements that would appeal to him: a beautiful woman with an unsavory reputation, mob connections, murdered children, a slanted press, and a politically motivated need for a quick solution. It could develop into the kind of game Williams enjoyed.
I’d seen him in action and read a great deal about him as well as both of his books, and he did consider the law a game. The trick of the game, according to Williams, was proper selection of the jury. No matter which of his offices he operated from—Atlanta (his home town), Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston or New York—he made the same point to his staff: the key to a successful trial rested, to an incredible degree, on the ability to accurately read a prospective juror. He maintained, and I believed him, that he could interpret the meaning of and reason for every gesture, twitch, cough, facial and bodily adjustment; could interpret character as revealed by selection of color and style of clothing, hair style, makeup (women), mustache, sideburns or beard (men), type of eyeglass frame. He had a sharp ear and could pick out otherwise hidden evidence of ethnic heritage and then conclude certain ingrained prejudices and leanings. Aside from the usual standard considerations of sex, age, marital and parental status, occupation, height, weight and appearance, Jay T. Williams could read the soul of an individual as revealed by the condition of hands, fingernails, shiny or unshined shoes, eager or reticent mannerisms, broad or abrupt gestures, grudging, constrained or inappropriate laughter.
Time and again, courtroom observers had been puzzled by his approval of an apparently hostile or unlikely juror, but Williams knew exactly what he was going for. He maintained that the case was lost or won by the time the final juror had been sworn in; his summation was set in his mind before the first witness was called. It was all in the orchestration, he claimed: in knowing how and where to pitch each and every particular argument; who to intimidate; who to trust; who to flatter and court; who to challenge; when to underplay and exactly when to let out all the stops. I’d seen him on a televised law symposium; when some earnest young recently graduated attorney accused him of being cynical in his approach to law, Williams replied in his sweetest Georgia-boy accent, “Why, shucks, what you call being a cynic I call being a realist. The idea is to win, right?”
In nearly seventeen years of headline trials, Jay T. Williams had never lost a major case.
It was also well known, though not too commonly discussed, that to a large extent Williams’ successful career depended on his unerring selection of associates and staff. Once they were selected and carefully tested, he relied on them totally to research, investigate and prepare the heart of each case for him. He made a point of never questioning the sources of certain bodies of information supplied to him which were not generally available, legally, to defense attorneys.
Before I left the office, Tim, to justify either to me or to himself what we were about to do, informed me that there had been a leak somewhere in the District Attorney’s office and that Williams was in possession of Xerox copies of the Medical Examiner’s final autopsy report on the Keeler boys, as well as Xerox copies of nearly every interrogation conducted in the case to date and of the background reports prepared by the squad and forwarded to the D.A.
Not even Tim suspected Catalano; this was too big a leak, and it was Kelleher’s problem as far as Tim was concerned.
Williams and his chief New York assistant, a six-foot-five former N.Y.U. basketball star named Jeff Weinstein, got to the Madison Avenue hotel before Kitty Keeler and her escorts. Which almost seemed like good timing; by the time Keeler arrived, Williams had established himself in the large sitting room and acted as host.
The team of plainclothesmen and policewoman checked with, the squad office and were told to get themselves something to eat down in the coffee shop; no one but Tim and the technical crew knew that Vito and I were settled in the room next door to the suite.
“You jus’ call me Jaytee, like everyone does, and I’ll call you Kitty, if’n you don’t mind.”
Although he spoke softly, ole Jaytee came through nice and clear. There was some quiet, well-mannered commotion as the waiter distributed cups and saucers and plates; Jaytee urged Kitty to accept some of the cake he’d ordered especially for her. He was familiar with the hotel, and the staff was more than happy to cater to his every wish.
“Well, maybe you’ll feel more like trustin’ mah judgment—in the matter of cakes—once we’ve talked a bit, you and me, Kitty. Now, would you do me a favor and remove those dark glasses, Kitty? I do like to see into a lady’s eyes when we converse.”
He was smooth and knew just how to do it; the next thing he said was, “Well, I do thank you for that. You are a beautiful woman, Kitty Keeler, you are indeed. I haven’t seen any pictures that do you justice.”
Vito shook his head in disgust, but I thought Williams knew what he was doing.
“Now, Jeff here tells me that you and your husband, George, and he had a nice long talk last night and that Jeff explained to you the sort of arrangements that would be made if it was decided that we would represent you. Is everything Jeff explained clear to you, Kitty?”
“Oh, it’s all clear all right. There’s just one thing that isn’t clear to me. Why do I need a lawyer? Any lawyer; not just you specifically.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Kitty Keeler. Why don’t you jest get right up now and go through that door and walk over to the nearest airline ticket office and buy yourself a ticket. To anywhere. To Miami. To Mexico.” There was a long pause. “Or maybe to Phoenix, Arizona. And see how fast the District Attorney’s people grab ahold of you. And check you outa this here real nice refined hotel, and pop you into a real safe security cell without any of the amenities.” There was a deep, sorrowful sigh, then he said, “Lady, lady. Like it or not, you are the A-number-one prime suspect in the murder of your little boys. This protective custody thing, wal, they’re just bein’ a little cute with you; trying for a little psychological pressure, which we should be able to swing in your favor instead of theirs. But I think it’s best that we all be very realistic about your situation, Kitty. Don’t you?”
Kitty’s voice was tight and careful. “Exactly what is my situation?”
“Well, you’ve made and signed a statement for the Assistant District Attorney that you’d have been better off not making.”
Kitty, tough, challenging. “I just answered all their questions truthfully.”
Jaytee, calm, comfortable and comforting. “You answered all of their questions at a time when you were under the greatest emotional stress possible. Why, not twelve hours or so after the bodies of your two slain little boys were found, these professional interrogators had you answering questions as to what time, precisely, did you do this, what time did you do that, what time did you do the other thing.”
He sounded as though he was instructing. “Now, I’ll tell you for a fact that had an attorney been with you at that time, you would have given no statement, at all. Not then. Why, hell, how in God’s name could anyone be expected, under those terrible circumstances, to give an accurate, hour-by-hour accounting of herself? Do you generally walk around with a clock around your neck, Kitty, and check the time before you do anything and everything?”
“I only told them what I did and when I did it, that’s all.”
“And you’re gonna stick by what you said, first time round, come hell or high water?”
She responded to the slight baiting tone of the question with a flash of annoyance. “Because I told the truth.”
“And even if it was medically proven that your younger boy was dead and your older boy was unconscious during the time you said you tended them?”
“I know what I did that night!”
“And you’re gonna stick to the time slots you said first time out, because, goddamn, you’re not gonna change your story. It’s yours and you’re gonna stick with it, no matter what?”
“It wasn’t a story I’m stuck with. It was the truth.”
The mocking tone, challenging her, changed to a cold, sober, less Southern-boy voice. “You checked the clock at one A.M., did you, Kitty, and then again at one-thirty A.M., and said to yourself, I last saw them between one A.M. and one-thirty A.M. because I checked it on the clock. That the way it was?”
“No, but—”
“Couldn’t have been that you took the boys to the bathroom earlier?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply; his voice now went hard and tough and sarcastic. “Why, hell, no, impossible, because if Kitty said one A.M. to one-thirty A.M. first time around she’s gonna stick to that time, come hell, high water or conviction for first-degree murder!”
There was a stark silence, so total that both Vito and I leaned toward the tape recorder, afraid we had lost them. But finally there was a soft, quiet sigh, and then Kitty’s voice, small, defeated, honest.
“They got me mad,” she said.
“Why, hell, honey, that’s what they was tryin’ to do.” He was on her side again: warm; protective; tolerant; understanding. “See, that’s what an attorney does for a client: he gets between you and those who are proddin’ you to get you to say what they want you to say. I’ll give ’em this, Kitty, they found your weak point.” He laughed softly. “You sure do stick that chin up and out when you’re sore, don’t you, Kitty? Took me two minutes to find it; probably took them ten minutes, seein’ as how they’re not nearly as perceptive and sensitive as I am. Wal, now, tell you whut, Kitty. You don’t go talkin’ to anybody, not anybody at all, without either Jeff here or me’s with you.”
“What about ... the times I gave them in my statement?”
“Well, Kitty, you willing and ready to admit you was just guessin’ and under pressure, you jes’ stuck with what you said first time round, outa some kinda pride or anger?” She must have nodded, because then he said, “Well, then you jes’ let me handle that end of it. When and if the time comes. It was downright unfair of them and they damn well know it, too.”
“And what about ... you know, my staying here? Being held.”
“Wal, now, Kitty, this here is a very nice respectable place and I picked it for that very reason. Stayed here myself along with a President or two through the years.” His tone went from bantering, kidding, easing her along, to dead flat serious. “What we are going to do, Kitty, is to insist and emphasize that you are here for your own protection. Never mind the ‘custody’ part, because the real truth is, they’re not far off the mark, insistin’ you might be in danger. And that leads to a final important thing, Kitty. The newspaper people—”
“Those bastards!”
Jaytee Williams, sharp and experienced. “That they are, honey, but what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna make them our bastards. The more you growl and glare at them, the more they gonna say mean sharp things about you, and them mean sharp things are what stays in people’s minds. Why, that headline in this morning’s News—Jeff, hold that paper up high for me—‘Kitty Keels Over at Kids’ Funeral: Pink-Garbed Mom Passes Out.’ Now, if they’d been our bastards, honey, that headline woulda been somethin’ like ‘Grief-stricken Mother Collapses,’ and that story woulda brought tears to the eyes and hearts. And we want people to stop thinkin’ ’bout you the way these newspaper people been doin’ you. So you’re gonna hafta start lettin’ down a little, Kitty. Let these here photo boys and news people get a better look at you, that a deal?”
“I guess. But it’ll be hard. I just want them to leave me alone.”
“I know, I know. Now, I’m headin’ on down home to Atlanta tonight and I have to be out on the Coast for about three-four days, and I’ll be back here early next week, but don’t you worry none. Jeff here’ll be in touch with you every day, and him and me, we talk every night, so you rest easy. You got any questions at all, any time, you pick up the phone and call Jeff. Hey, and this is important, Jeff. You straighten these D.A. people out that Kitty Keeler isn’t no prisoner. Honey, nice as this place is, you don’t hafta stay here all day and all night. You oughtta take advantage of your location, nicest part of New York City, near to the theaters and good movie houses and all those nice Fifth Avenue shops not too far off, a short taxi ride away.”
“Er, Jaytee ...”
“What Jeffrey here is trying to warn me is that you really shouldn’t be seen gallivantin’ around too much, but I’ll rely on your discretion, Miz Kitty. Remember, now, any questions at all, you get in touch with Jeff. He’s tall, but he’s smart.”
The voice level changed as Jaytee moved toward the door. “Now here’s the most important thing of all, Kitty. You don’t talk on this telephone about anything at all that’s botherin’ you; you call Jeff and he’ll take you somewhere, coffee shop or a park bench, but nothing on this telephone.” There was a short, thoughtful silenc
e. “And you don’t say nothin’ private or important in this room, ya hear? Ain’t our bastards got this place bugged; it’s their bastards.” Both Vito and I pulled back from the machine and looked at each other. Vito shook his head and said a few words in Italian.
Apparently Kitty hadn’t quite gotten his message. She asked him, “Jaytee, what do you think is going to happen to me?”
“Well, I think there’s a good chance, at least it’s what the D.A.’s aimin’ at, that sooner or later, one way or another, you’ll be indicted for first-degree murder. But don’t you worry none, Kitty. You got ole Jaytee on your side now.”
We heard them exchanging good-byes at the door, then heard Jaytee step to the elevator. Vito watched him through the peephole, and when the elevator closed on him Vito said, “That son-of-a-bitch is smart as hell, Joe. You notice something, Joe? With all that nice, charmin’ sweet-talkin’ he done, he never once asked her; he never once came right out and asked her.”
“Asked her what?”
“If she done it, Joe, if she done it.”
I didn’t answer Vito. I was very busy rewinding and collecting tapes because Tim was very anxious to hear them. It really didn’t make much sense, and I didn’t want Vito to notice, but I felt that a heavy, pressing, steel-edged weight had been lifted from the pit of my stomach.
CHAPTER 15
JAY T. WILLIAMS DIDN’T waste any time; he got right to work collecting his own bastards. He gave a brief, light, friendly, concerned interview at Kennedy Airport while waiting for his flight to down-home. Listening to Jaytee, you’d think he was talking about another girl entirely: he was setting the new image of Kitty Keeler before the public and he was smart as hell and very persuasive. It would be up to Kitty to follow through; I think he’d convinced her it was necessary.
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