Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"I don't know, Lip. It shouldn't be that hard to find a faggot named Leon. Go interview waiters. Or interior decorators."

"Probably moved to San Francisco, you know. Or died of AIDS or some crap."

I refuse to respond to Lip's suggestion that his efforts will be futile. We are quiet a moment; the radio barks. "Can I ask a question?" he says after a while. "Is this really so important?"

"To me?"

"Yeah."

"Damn right."

"Can I ask why? I mean, you really think this jamoche's gonna give you somethin?"

I tell him what I told him before. "I want to find something, Lip. That's the most honest way I can put it."

"On Molto?"

"On Molto. Right. That's the way I've got it figured. As much as I can figure at all." We are down near the bus terminal, a bleak place at any hour, but especially at midnight with rain. I look out toward it, a sad hulk in the dark. Lip's dwindling faith in me hangs in here with a misty sadness of its own. More even than the risks, that is what bothers him. From his own perspective he's figured it out. I want to use this thing with Molto as a diversion-as Nico put it, a red herring. Lip's reluctance is obvious to both of us, and it is a dismal sign of where I am that I must lever him with our friendship to make him do what I know he would resist for almost anyone else. "Let's run a sheet at least. Berman, Sandy's P.I., says he couldn't even get a rap sheet out of the department."

"I told you, man, they closed down tight on this thing. They're gonna be in Kenneally's shit in a big way for givin you the time of day."

I take a moment.

"How did you hear about that?"

"Watch commander don't get anywhere that people don't notice." The rain beads on the window. The air is close. I understand the spy stuff on the street corner now. "What's he tell you?" Lip asks.

"Not much. He told me that Carolyn and Larren used to be an item a long time ago. What do you think of that?"

"I think she got around," says Lipranzer, "same thing I always thought."

"He said that Larren clouted her into the P.A.'s office through Raymond."

"That fits," says Lip.

"That's what I thought."

"He tell you anythin else?"

"More ancient history. You know: the North Branch used to be a dirty old place, but he thinks Motto was clean."

"And you believe him? About Molto?"

"I don't want to."

"I wouldn't take that guy's advice on clean or dirty. I'll tell you that. God only knows where he's comin from."

"What is it with you and Lionel?"

"Not my kinda cop," says Lipranzer simply. We have crossed the Nearing bridge by now and have entered the sudden dark of the suburban neighborhoods, out of the garishness of the highway's yellow sulfur lights.

"I worked out his way when I started, you know."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah," he says. "I seen him in action. Not my kinda cop."

I decide I won't ask.

Lip looks out the windshield. The shadows of the wipers move across his face.

"We're talkin twelve, fourteen years ago now," he says at last. "Things were different. I'm the first to admit that. Okay? Everybody's on the pad back then. All right? Everybody." Lip looks straight at me and I know what he means. I find it unsettling. "The pimps, the barkeeps, they just put up the dough. You didn't even talk about it. It was there. So I'm not castin stones, okay?

"But one night, I'm comin out of a place-two, three in the mornin-squad comes runnin down the street full speed and stops dead. First I think it's me he wants. So I come a little closer. But he don't even see me. It's Kenneally. You know, he's a sergeant by then, so he's ridin alone, beat supervisor. And he's lookin across the street. Right in a doorway. There's a hooker, okay? Black gal. You know, she's got the skirt on up to her chin, and leopard top or some such shit. Anyway, I hear his whistle. You know? Like for a dog or horse. Big loud number like that. And he pulls the black-and-white into the alley. Gets out and looks down the street toward this pro, and he's pointin like this." Lip shoots an index finger down toward his groin. "Big smile. And this lady, she waits and she waits. And he keeps pointin and smilin. He says somethin I don't quite hear. Don't say no. Somethin like that. Anyway, she goes slow down the street like, Oh, man, don't tell me, draggin her purse like she's got maybe an anvil inside. And Kenneally's got his big smile. Sits down right there in the squad. All I see is his legs stickin out the door, his shorts down around his ankles, and this lady on her knees while she's working. Fucker didn't even take off his hat."

Lip swings into my driveway. He takes the car out of gear and lights a cigarette. "He ain't my kinda cop," he says again.

The trial's first pitched battle over an issue of law occurs the next day and occupies the entire morning. Nico describes a six-hour item-by-item search of the police evidence room. They cannot find the glass. Both sides have prepared written memoranda addressed to whether testimony about the fingerprints on the glass may nonetheless be received. Kemp wrote our brief sometime after midnight. Molto must have started later than that, since Nico said they were in the warrens of the evidence room past one o'clock. Each man wears the hazy red-eyed look of a lawyer on trial. Larren retires to his chambers to read both briefs, then returns to hear oral argument. At the start, it is supposed to be only Nico and Stern addressing the court, but each turns so often to his second that before long all four lawyers are talking, with the judge interrupting, posing hypothetical questions and, on occasion, thinking out loud. Stern makes his points with greater vehemence than at any time during the trial. Perhaps he senses an opportunity for triumph; perhaps desperation is gathering after yesterday's sobering events. He keeps emphasizing the fundamental unfairness of forcing the defendant to confront scientific testimony whose basis we have had no chance to assess. Nico, then Molto, repeatedly state that the so-called chain of custody has been uncontested. Whether the glass can be found or not, the testimony of Greer, Lipranzer, and Dickerman, the lab supervisor, will establish, taken together, that the prints were identified from lifts obtained from the glass the day after the murder.

The back-and-forth between the lawyers is endless, and I find my spirits in a sickening spiral, escalating, then instantly descending from elation to bitter lament. It is clear that the judge is undecided. This is one of those issues, of which there are so many during a trial, where a judge is within legal boundaries no matter what he does. The authorities support a ruling for either side. The way Larren gives it to Nico and Tommy about the carelessness of the police makes me certain, at moments, that the evidence is going to be excluded. But the prosecutors are frank about the devastation that this would bring to their case, and without saying it aloud, they hint at the impropriety of disposing of a celebrated prosecution as the result of police negligence. In the end, this thought appears persuasive and Larren rules against the defense.

"I'm gonna admit this testimony," the judge says, shortly after the court clock has reached noon. Then he explains the basis of his ruling for the record, so that the court of appeals can assess his judgment, if it ever comes to that.

"I must say that I'm pretty reluctant to do so, but I am influenced by its obvious importance to the case. Naturally, that same fact, given the overall tone of some of the things that have occurred here"-the judge looks toward Molto-"leads me to understand the defense's skepticism. They are right that they have not had the opportunity to examine an object of physical evidence. On the other hand, the object itself is not gonna be presented. The absence of this exhibit is attributed to the police evidence room. I want to note for the record that the police evidence room custodians have been guilty for years of this kind of slipshod record keeping and handling of exhibits. This is probably the most dramatic, but certainly not the only example that we all know about. And I must say that it is that knowledge, derived outside the record, that influences me to allow the testimony. The fact of the matter is that the best-intentioned prosecutors-and I by no means am ruling on the intentions of Mr. Della Guardia or of Mr. Molto, who seems to have had the glass last-" Again Larren stares darkly at Tommy. Did Greer really say that? I wonder. "-but the best-intentioned prosecutors cannot seem to control what happens to exhibits once they leave their hands. It could be that there is bad faith here. I will be lookin out for further evidence of that, and if there is that kind of bad faith, then this prosecution is gonna end. Period. But overall, that thought strikes me as so unpalatable that I'm gonna assume it isn't true. So I will admit this proof, over objection, and with my own reservations noted. I am, however, gonna give the jury a strongly worded limiting instruction, which I want to take some time to craft over the lunch hour. We will resume at two o'clock."