Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

"Yes, and I knew you must have something planned. But I was afraid it wouldn't work. And I was afraid he might break my neck, just out of curiosity, just to see whether you cared or not."

"He's not going to break anybody's neck," I said. "But I've got to figure out what to do with him."

"Aren't you going to arrest him?"

"Sure. But I'm afraid he'll walk."

"Are you kidding? After all this?"

"It's a tough case to prosecute," I told her. "You're a hooker, and juries tend not to get concerned about violence toward prostitutes. Not unless the girl dies."

"He said he killed a girl."

"Maybe he was just talking. Even if it's true, and I think it might be, we don't even know who she was or when he killed her, let alone have a case against him for it. We've got resisting arrest and assault on a police officer, but a half-decent defense attorney would make our relationship questionable."

"How?"

"He'd make it look as though I was your pimp. That would pretty much guarantee an acquittal. Even with the best slant on our relationship, it's a problem. You've got a married cop who's got this friendship with a call girl. You can imagine how that'll play in the courtroom. And in the papers."

"You said he's been arrested before."

"Right, and for the same kind of thing. But the jury won't know that."

"Why? Because charges were dropped?"

"They wouldn't know even if he'd been convicted and done time for it. Prior criminal history isn't admissible in criminal proceedings."

"Why the hell not?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never understood it. It's supposed to be prejudicial, but isn't it part of the whole picture? Why shouldn't the jury know about it?" I shrugged. "Connie could testify," I said. "He hurt her and he threatened you. But would she stand up?"

"I don't know."

"I don't think she would."

"Probably not."

"I want to see something," I said, and I bent over Motley. He was still out cold. Maybe he had a glass jaw. There was a fighter like that, Bob Satterfield. He could take a punch with the best of them, but if you got his jaw just right he'd flop on his face for a ten count, so out of it he'd sleep through a Chinese fire drill.

I fumbled in his jacket pocket, straightened up, turned to show Elaine what I was holding. "This is a help," I said. "A baby automatic, looks like.25 caliber. It's sure to be unregistered, and there's no way in the world he'd have a carry permit. That's criminal possession of a deadly weapon in the second degree, that's a Class-C felony."

"Is that good?"

"It doesn't hurt. The thing is, I want to make sure his bail is too high for him to make, and I want him charged with something serious enough so that his lawyer can't plea-bargain the case down to nothing. I want him to do real time. He's a bad son of a bitch, he fucking well ought to go away." I looked at her. "Would you stand up?"

"What do you mean?"

"Would you testify?"

"Of course."

"There's more to it. Would you lie under oath?"

"What do you want me to say?"

I studied her for a moment. "I think you'll stand up," I said. "I'm going to take a chance."

"What do you mean?"

I wiped the gun clean of prints with my pocket handkerchief. I got an arm between Motley's shoulders and the wall and raised him up into a half-crouch. He was heavier than he looked, as thin as he was, and I could feel the hardness of his tissue. The muscles didn't relax fully even when he was out cold.

I fitted the gun into his right hand, got his index finger inside the trigger guard and curled it around the trigger. I found the safety, flicked it off. I wrapped my hand around his, levered his body a few degrees more erect, and saw where the gun was pointed. I was aiming right at one of the paintings, the one that later turned out to be worth fifty grand. I swung a little ways to the left and squeezed his finger against the trigger and put a hole in the wall. I placed the second shot a little higher, and angled the third almost into the ceiling. Then I let go of him and he fell back onto the floor and the wall, and the gun dropped from his hand to the floor beside him.

I said, "He was holding a gun on me. I kicked the coffee table at him. It knocked him off balance but he did get off three shots while he was falling, and then I crashed into him and took him down and out."

She was nodding, her face a study in concentration. If the gunshots had startled her, she seemed to have recovered quickly. Of course the shots hadn't been that loud, and the little bullets hadn't done much damage, just making neat little holes in the plaster.

"He fired a gun," I said. "He tried to kill a cop. That's not something he'll walk away from."

"I'll swear to it."

"I know you will," I said. "I know you'll stand up." I went over to her and held her for a minute or two. Then I went into the bedroom and got the bourbon bottle. I had a short one before I picked up the phone and called it in, and I had the rest of it while we waited for the cops to get there.

She never did have to testify, not in court. She gave a sworn statement, perjuring herself cheerfully on paper, and she was letter perfect on that, telling an essentially unvarnished version of the truth up to the point where his gun came into play, and then laying it out for them the way we'd worked it out. My story was the same, and the physical evidence supported it. His fingerprints were on the gun, right where you'd expect to find them, and the paraffin test revealed nitrate deposits on his right hand, evidence that he'd fired a gun. It was indeed unregistered, and he had no license to possess a firearm, or to carry one on his person.

He swore he'd never seen the gun before, let alone fired it. His story was that he'd come to the Fifty-first Street premises after having made prior arrangements over the telephone to engage her services as a prostitute. He said he'd never seen her before the night in question, that he'd had the opportunity to have sex with her because I had burst in and attempted to work a version of the badger game upon him, extorting him out of additional funds, and that when that failed I had launched an unprovoked attack upon him. Nobody bought any of this. If this was the first time he'd turned up in her life, why had she sworn out a complaint against him almost a week earlier? And his record might not be admissible evidence and the jurors might not be entitled to know about it, but the district attorney was damn well entitled and so was the judge who set bail at a quarter of a million dollars. His attorney protested this, arguing that his client had never been convicted of anything, but the judge looked at all those arrests for violence against women, along with a supporting statement that Connie Cooperman had been persuaded to give, and turned down a request for lower bail.

Motley stayed in a cell awaiting trial. The state brought a whole laundry list of charges against him, with attempted murder of a police officer up at the top. His lawyer took a good look at his client and the evidence against him and came around ready to cut a deal. The DA's Office was willing to play; the case was low-profile, the public didn't have a big emotional investment in it, and Elaine and I might come off looking pretty dirty after a round of intensive cross-examination, so why not plea-bargain the thing and save the state time and money? They reduced the main charge to an attempted violation of Section 120.11 of the penal code, aggravated assault upon a police officer. They dropped all the collateral charges, and in return James Leo Motley stood up in front of God and everybody and agreed that he was guilty as charged. The judge weighed his priors against the lack of convictions and came up with the Solomonic sentence of one-to-ten years in the state penitentiary, with credit for time served.