Эд Макбейн - Beauty and the Beast

I was still reeling over the string of profanities my fourteen year-old daughter had casually dropped into the conversation.

“Dad?” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You know what I mean?”

“Sure, she—”

“Sort of shows off, you know what I mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But that doesn’t make her a slut, does it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“I mean, even if she is fooling around a little. Which nobody knows for sure.”

“What’s a little?”

“Well... with more than one boy. More than the boy you’re going steady with. Maybe two or three boys. Or maybe four.”

“Uh-huh.” I was afraid to ask what “a lot” might be.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine,” I said.

“So everybody’s giving her the cold shoulder, as if she’s some kind of... pariah? Is that a word?”

“That’s a word.”

“Yeah, pariah. Which, even if she isn’t as gorgeous as some of the other kids, and curses a lot, or whatever, that’s no reason to treat her as if she doesn’t exist, is it? Or calling her a slut behind her back, even sometimes to her face? Garland called her a slut to her face today.”

“Garland.”

“Yeah, Garland McGregor. You know Garland, she slept over once.”

“Right, Garland.”

“Who, I mean, was only fooling around when she was thirteen. Garland, I mean. With this boy from Bedloe, even if he was stunning. I almost burst into tears when it happened today, when Garland called her a slut to her face. I mean, she’s got feelings, too, hasn’t she? Heather, I mean. Hasn’t she got feelings, too?”

“Yes, darling, she has feelings, too,” I said.

“I’m going to go up to her on Monday and tell her to ignore what all those assholes are saying.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Do you think that’s the right thing to do? I mean, Dad, I don’t even like her. And suppose... well... suppose she really is a slut, like everybody’s saying she is?”

“But you don’t know that for sure, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“And neither do the others.”

“No, they don’t know it for sure, Dad.”

“Then, yes, it’s the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joanna said.

I had already decided I would try to defend George N. Harper.

Section 905.17 of the Florida Statutes , in describing who may be present during a grand jury session, unequivocally states: “No person shall be present at the sessions of the grand jury except the witness under examination, the state attorney and his assistant state attorneys, designated assistants as provided for in s. 27.18, the court reporter or stenographer, and the interpreter.”

This may seem to be loading the dice against the defendant, but such is not the case. He does not have to testify if he chooses not to, but when he is invited to testify, and assuming he accepts the invitation, he will once again be read his rights and he may at any time interrupt the questioning to consult with his attorney, who is waiting just outside the door to the sealed chamber.

On Monday morning, November 23, I was waiting in the courthouse corridor while George Harper was inside listening to the testimony of the doctor who had done the autopsy on Michelle Harper, and the garage attendant who had sold him the empty five-gallon gasoline can and subsequently filled it for him, and the laboratory technician who had lifted Harper’s prints from the can, and the police officer who swore that he had taken Michelle’s criminal complaint on the morning of November 16, and the fisherman who had positively identified Harper as the man he’d seen struggling with a white woman on Whisper Key beach that same night. Harper did not once come out to the hallway to summon me for assistance or advice; that was because I’d told him to decline any invitation to testify.

The grand jurors finished hearing the state’s attorney and his witnesses by a quarter past ten, and retired to deliberate their decision. When Harper joined me in the corridor outside, I asked, “How’d it go?”

“They gonna try’n fry me,” he said.

“Well, we’ll see. We don’t know how they’ll vote yet, do we?”

“Whut’s all this gonna coss me?” he asked.

“We’ll worry about that later.”

“I ain’t a rich man. I don’t wanna be in hock to you for the ress of my life.”

“I promise you won’t be.”

“How ’bout this other lawyer you said you’re gonna try’n find to hep you? Whut’ll he charge me?”

“First I have to find him.”

“You tell him I ain’t no rich man.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him.”

At a quarter past eleven, the jurors returned a true bill signed by the jury foreman and requesting the state’s attorney to prepare an indictment for first-degree murder. George Harper was taken back to the county jail, and I went to see James Willoughby, a criminal lawyer who had worked for the State’s Attorney’s Office before entering practice with the firm of Peterson, Pauling, and Merritt — familiarly known in Calusa as Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Willoughby was a man in his early forties, fox faced and blue-eyed, reportedly as shrewd and as clever as a murder of crows, the one attorney who — if speculation in Calusa’s legal shops proved valid — would one day replace Benny Weiss as the town’s dean of criminal lawyers. Unlike Benny, Willoughby brought to each of his defenses an intimate knowledge of the way the state’s attorney — his erstwhile employer — prepared his cases, and he coupled this inside information with an unremitting desire to humiliate his former boss (“that son of a bitch,” as Willoughby cheerfully called him) whenever the opportunity presented itself. It was the state’s attorney himself, Willoughby claimed, who had hindered his career in public service because of the fear that Willoughby would one day unseat him in a public election. Willoughby went after the State’s Attorney’s Office the way a terrier goes after a rat. Nothing pleased him more than to overthrow a case carefully prepared by whichever prosecutor “that son of a bitch” assigned to his latest murder, arson, armed robbery, burglary, or merely spitting-on-the-sidewalk case. Willoughby was just the man I needed.

“But I don’t want you fucking it up,” he said at once.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll join you in the defense if you promise me your role will be a limited one. I don’t want to lose a case to that son of a bitch because some real-estate lawyer—”

“I’m not a real-estate lawyer.”

“Your firm handles a great many real-estate transactions.”

“Our firm also handles—”

“Does it handle homicide cases?”

“No, but—”

“The defense rests,” Willoughby said, and spread his hands, and grinned at me — somewhat ghoulishly, I thought. “My point, Matthew, is that whereas I have a great deal of respect for your expertise in sundry other areas of the law, I cannot have you bumbling about underfoot where a man’s life is at stake.”

“That’s why I came to you in the first place,” I said. “I don’t need to be lectured—”

“Forgive me, no lecture was intended.”

“I’m well aware of my limitations.”

“Fine, then. Just remember that we’re in my ball park.”

“I realize that,” I said. “In fact, if you’ll take the case, and if my client agrees to it, I’ll step out entirely.”

“No, no,” Willoughby said.

“Why not?”

“Well, from what you tell me, your man is a virtual pauper who—”

“No, I didn’t say that. He’s gainfully employed, he has his own junk business.”