"And you will see them all dead?"
"It is my mission."
"Single-handedly?"
"If I must."
"Vengeance shall be mine, sayeth the councilman, is that it?" I had asked, expecting not an answer but an objection, which was exactly what I got, sustained by the judge.
"That was a nice touch, I thought," said Beth as she stroked my head. Whenever my mind drifted back to those moments in court I could feel my adrenals kick into action and I began to shiver. It was her soothing touch that would calm me once again, would bring me back to the ease of the evening encampment when the battle was over for the day. "Quoting the Bible was very Darrowish," she said.
"Nothing gets them angrier than a Jew shoving the New Testament in their faces," I said.
"It wasn"t the only time you got him angry."
"I thought he was pretty calm throughout," I said.
"No, Victor. He especially didn"t like when you started talking about his mistress."
"Who would?" I said.
There was not much I could do but press his b.u.t.tons and see which ones blew him up. The eruptions hadn"t come as colorfully as I had hoped, but they had come and the jury had seen the anger seething within him. Like when I had asked about his high living, his club-hopping, his taste for the finest, most expensive champagnes.
"Life is to be lived, Mr. Carl."
"And you have a personal limousine and a driver?"
"For protection primarily."
"And you support a mistress?"
"She supported herself, but there were certain expenses involved, yes. But that was the least of the costs to me of that tragic affair. The least."
"And all that required money?"
"Yes. But I work."
"A city councilman doesn"t earn enough to slosh champagne in his limousine, does he?"
"I"m glad you brought that up, Mr. Carl. No, we don"t. And I donate much of my salary to charity in any event. But I was in business before politics and sold my company for a substantial amount. And in the last few years our personal investments have flourished."
"Who controls the money in your family?"
"My wife, Leslie."
"And so to finance your evenings with your mistress you asked your wife for money."
"We have joint accounts."
"And she never asked about your expenditures?"
"She trusts me, Mr. Carl."
"As you would have the jury trust you, is that right?"
The laughter from the jury box was answer enough and the councilman had turned bright red. "That"s something I found," I told Beth when we were on that couch, reviewing the day, trying to find whatever victories we could dig out of the mess that was my cross-examination. "Defendants don"t like it when the jury laughs at them."
"He didn"t like it when you asked him about the anonymous cash donations to his youth centers, either," said Beth.
"I didn"t expect him to," I said. "But for all the bl.u.s.ter, it didn"t do much good."
Those questions came from the envelope I took off the dead Chuckie Lamb. I had hoped for revelations, a litany of answers, a solution to the puzzles that had been bedeviling me, but what I got instead were numbers. A monthly breakdown of donations to the Nadine Moore Youth Centers, showing receipt of anonymous cash donations that had been increasing steadily. But even the steady increase couldn"t account for the jump that had happened about five months or so back, an extra fifty thousand a month of cash donations flowing into his projects. Fifty thousand a month with no indication where it was coming from. So I asked him.
"From concerned citizenry," said the councilman.
I asked him about the jump in the amount of cash donations and he grew red for a moment and calmed.
"We"ve been reaching out to the community for funds," he said, "And those efforts have finally borne fruit."
I asked him why the additional funding was in cash, why given anonymously.
"We don"t ask who gives or why they give, we take the money and work our healing magic and we are making a difference."
For every question I asked him he had an answer and the judge refused to let the jury examine a piece of paper that came out of nowhere and signified nothing. And so, when there were no more questions to ask, I moved on, failing to have learned what the numbers were meant to show. Without Chuckie"s explanation they were useless and Jimmy Moore had made certain Chuckie wasn"t around to give his explanation.
"You didn"t mention to anyone that I had gone to meet Chuckie last night, did you?" I asked Beth.
"Of course not," she said.
"No one should know," I said.
"Why not tell Sloc.u.m what happened?"
"Chuckie was dead when I got there," I lied, "and I ran when I saw him. I"ve watched enough bad movies to know what happens to the guy who finds the corpse."
"Be serious, Victor. Sloc.u.m won"t think you killed him."
"I"m not gambling my life on what he"ll think," I said, but it wasn"t just about Sloc.u.m I was worried. I had run with a blind terror from the dead Chuckie Lamb because his mortal wound was only seconds old, which meant that whoever had killed him was right there, behind that stone wall, ready for me. I don"t know if he knew who Chuckie was planning to meet, or how much Chuckie had told before the meeting, but if he didn"t know already I didn"t want to tell him who to ask, now or ever.
"After the trial," I said, "I"ll make sure Sloc.u.m gets the donation list. But I don"t want you to be involved."
She thought on that a while. "Morris was there today," she said finally, mercifully changing the subject. "For a little while at least, talking with one of the court buffs, an old man with what looked like a hole in his head."
"Herm Finklebaum," I said. "He sold toys on Forty-fourth Street."
"Morris told me to tell you your friend Veronica is at the Society Hill Sheraton," said Beth.
"She didn"t get too far, did she." The Society Hill Sheraton was about three blocks from her apartment building.
"Is she going to give you what you need?" asked Beth.
"No," I said. "She is incapable of giving me that. But she"ll testify, and what she has to say will bury Jimmy."
And it would, too, I thought, if Jimmy didn"t kill her first. He had killed Bissonette and had caused the killing of Chuckie Lamb, I was sure, but I didn"t believe he could kill Veronica. He had lost one daughter, how could he kill her surrogate, what kind of monster would do that. And suddenly I grew frightened for Veronica Ashland, and rightly so, for if there was any success in that day in court it was my success in showing all of which Jimmy Moore was capable. I had asked him about his temper, asked him if he grew angry when he saw something that shouldn"t be, a wrong to be righted. I asked him if his temper ever got the best of him, whether he ever turned violent, and he denied it. But then I asked if he knew a drug dealer named Norvel Goodwin and he sat a little straighter in the witness box. The judge overruled the objection and I asked it again.
"If you step out into the community, Mr. Carl, you learn of all the snakes in the gra.s.s waiting for the children."
"Now, Mr. Goodwin was operating his drug enterprise out of a house in West Philadelphia, wasn"t he?"
"Yes. That was two or three years ago."
"And one night you stormed that house with a gang from the neighborhood."
"A group of citizens alarmed about the drugs in their community."
"And that was the night you found your mistress, Veronica Ashland?"
"That"s right. She was in that house being murdered with his drugs."
"And that same night you also beat Mr. Goodwin to near death?"
No answer.
"With a chair, isn"t that right?"
Still no answer.
"Well, yes or no, Councilman?"
"It was self-defense."
"Was it self-defense when you burned that crack house down?"
"I don"t know how it burned."
"Was it self-defense that killed the two boys hiding in the attic of that house?"
"I don"t know how it burned."
"Was it self-defense when you broke the jaw of the schoolboy who was courting your wife thirty years ago?"
The judge never let him answer that one, too much time had pa.s.sed for it to remain a relevant incident, he said, but the question had done its work, all those questions had done their work, I hoped. So maybe Beth was right, maybe I had done what I needed to do. Because Jimmy Moore wasn"t my star witness and no matter how many times I asked if he had killed Bissonette only to have him deny it I had gotten from him what I really needed. He had shown himself to be a man whose pa.s.sionate hatred for illegal drugs and their peddlers could cause him to fly into violent rages, a man who had beaten drug dealers with chairs, who had burned out crack houses no matter who was still inside, who had broken the jaw of a rival suitor while still in high school, in short a man who, with the right prodding, in the right situation, for the right reason, was capable of murder. All I had needed from Jimmy Moore was to set up the testimony of Veronica Ashland. It was up to Veronica to do the rest.
"You miss her," said Beth, her fingers gently stroking my forehead, easing the surge of fear and anger at my own impotence that arose whenever I thought about what was happening at the trial. The smooth brush of her fingertips was drowsing and I didn"t hear what she said at first, so she repeated it. "You miss her."
"Yes," I said, and I did. It felt like there was a gap in my life, like something marvelous and strange had just up and disappeared. I wondered if this was what a dog felt after being fixed.
"How bad does it hurt?" she asked.
"Bad," I said. "I don"t want to talk about it. How about you? Tell me about Alberto." I rolled the "r" as I said the name.
"Alberto. Sweet Alberto. He is very handsome and very kind and his accent is wonderfully s.e.xy. A prize, really."
"And that is why you dumped him?"
"You"ve been listening to gossip," she said. And then, after a pause, "I guess he was too happy, too contented. He accepted the world for what it was and accepted his place in it."
"Suddenly I"m jealous," I said. "That might just be the very recipe for happiness."
"I"ve been with you too long, Victor, with your cynicism, your bitterness, your dissatisfaction. After my years with you, how could I ever bear the cheerful acceptance and bland optimism of the Albertos of the world?"
"Alone again, just the two of us," I said, and then I joked, "It looks like we"re stuck with each other."
She just stroked my hair and said nothing for a long while, so long a while that if it had been anyone other than my best friend Beth it would have been awkward. But it wasn"t awkward. She stroked my brow and eased me into a state just above sleep and the two of us remained like that for quite a while.
"It"s never going to happen, is it?" she said finally.
"I don"t think so," I said.
"Why not, Victor?"
"It"s just not there. No matter how much we wish it were, it just isn"t. It would be too perfect anyway, too easy."
"I could live with easy," she said.
"Shhh. I am so tired."
"I could d.a.m.n well live with easy."
"Shhh." I closed my eyes and felt the softness of her fingers through my hair. "I need to sleep. Just a little nap. Shhh. We"ll talk later, later, I promise, but just let me sleep a little first."
When I woke on my couch the next morning she was gone.
51.
I ARRIVED AT THE COURTHOUSE late to find Judge Gimbel beet-red in anger at me. With the jury waiting in their stuffy little room he gave me a ten-minute lecture on the need for punctuality in the legal system, explaining in wildly mixed metaphors how any delay, like a falling domino, can upset the entire applecart of justice. He was going to hold me in contempt, he said, fine me for each minute I was late, and if it happened again, did I understand, I would land myself in jail, did I understand, as sure as I was standing there, did I understand.
I told him I understood.
And then, after p.r.o.nouncing my sentence and the terms of my probation, he demanded an explanation for my inexcusable tardiness. Well, he told me, well, Mr. Carl, well, he told me, he was waiting.
"I was shot at this morning by an unknown a.s.sailant," I told the judge.