Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

Marovich was getting the shine powdered off his face, so he couldn’t frown properly when I said the C word: Conklin. But he got across his displeasure about the topic.

“Miss Duchamps,” he said, hardly moving his lips, “I’d like to help you, but right now it’s a question of time. I don’t have any. My family thinks I’m a stranger, and the way things are going I won’t see them again, awake, until after the first Tuesday in November. Obligations at the office, demands of a campaign-you understand, I’m sure, why I can’t help you.”

“Absolutely,” I said. He couldn’t turn his head and I didn’t like talking to the side of his face. So I pulled up a second stool next to him, leaned my elbows on my knees and talked to his image in the mirror. “I understand how a campaign can put pressure on a family. Any time a parent is away from home for an extended period there can be disastrous ramifications. Take Conklin’s son, Tyrone, as an example. Tyrone is in Central Juvenile waiting to be tried for murder.”

He laughed. “Are you suggesting that if I don’t go straight home my kids will end up in the slam?”

“Nope. I’m sure your wife is a paragon and has things well in hand. Tyrone Harkness’s mother was a junkie.”

“Might explain a lot,” he said.

“It might. The two young witnesses against Conklin grew up on the same block as Tyrone. One of them was a hooker, the other one is a librarian. The question is, what made the difference?”

Mention of the witnesses made a shadow cross his face. But he still liked my legs well enough to hang in with me.

I leaned closer to him, aiming to project befuddled sincerity. “I find the ‘what if’s’ to be absolutely compelling, don’t you? What if Tyrone’d had a father who could provide him with a safety net, some guidance? Would the boy Tyrone is accused of killing be sitting down to dinner tonight with his family? Would his own two babies now have a role model and guide to see them safely through the perils of childhood?”

“Vicious cycle.”

“Yes it is,” I said. “Charles Conklin’s conviction trails an endless wake of grief. If the man was innocent, if he was wrongfully deprived of all those years he should have been with his family, then it is truly a gross tragedy. But after `oops,’ what can be said?”

“Oops is a good start,” he said, smiling, cracking the makeup that filled in his crow’s feet. The makeup person was holding a white card behind his head so she could see in shadow, as the camera would, any stray wisps of hair. Marovich was being very patient with the fussing.

“Why do I feel I’m being interviewed?” he asked.

“Just conversation,” I said. I picked up a comb, dampened it with hairspray, and smoothed some fluff that had breached the surface of his helmet of salt-and-pepper hair. “You do see the poignancy?”

“Uh huh,” he said, dubious. “Let me first correct one misstatement. I have never suggested that Conklin was innocent. His guilt or innocence is irrelevant. What is relevant is this: Charles Conklin was convicted on tainted evidence. He has a right to a new trial. But after fourteen years, a trial would be an exercise in futility. Justice demands he be set free.”

“Do you believe he’s guilty?”

He shrugged. “Guilt is an altogether different issue.”

I pressed, gesturing with the comb. “When you go on national television with that jackass evangelist and say nothing when he gets red in the face asserting Conklin’s innocence, and you sit next to his defense attorney and nod when she lisps out her rage at the injustice of sending a poor lamb to prison, then it seems to me you express tacit agreement with them.”

“I was merely one viewpoint on a panel,” he said, defensive.

“An awfully quiet one. You looked like a fellow traveler. I heard no debate about fine points of the law, only protestations of the man’s innocence.”

He drew back to look at me directly. “Jesus,” he said. “You’re tough. In my defense I say again, guilt is not the issue.”

“Maybe not in court, but in the real world guilt is absolutely the issue. The witnesses and the investigating cops, and I suppose the jail-house snitch, are taking a heavy beating. They stand accused of doing something corrupt and cannot defend themselves. They don’t have your access to the media, and the media apparently is not interested in what they might have to say.”

“You seem to know a lot about it.” He eyed the comb in my hand, wary, maybe evaluating how much damage it was capable of inflicting.

I slipped the comb into his breast pocket. “You and I both know that Charles Conklin is a career criminal with a rap sheet about half as long as he is tall. Child molestation, pandering, dealing, theft, you name it. If he hadn’t gone down for shooting Officer Wyatt Johnson, he would have tumbled on something else. Unless he got shot on the street first. Right?”

“If Conklin held to pattern.”

“Tell me why, in all the fuss about this gross injustice, no one has mentioned Conklin’s record.”

“Because it isn’t germane.”

“What is germane, then?”

He picked up the stack of messages with my card on top, and started to rise. “The cops fucked up.”

I rose with him. “Cops that fuck up attract a lot of press.”

“Margot.” The way he said it sounded like a challenge. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

“I want to talk to the witnesses.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve tried. Hanna Rhodes was a body under a sheet before I connected with her. LaShonda DeBevis is doing a good impression of the invisible man. And I understand that when anyone tries to contact Detective Jerry Kelsey, your office puts out a tail. Exactly who does George Schwartz work for?”

“Margot,” he said again, slowly, looking hard at my card. “I guess Maggie could be short for Margot.”

“No. For maggot. My older brother and sister used to call me maggot.”

“And MacGowen?”

“My husband’s name.”

I had not read him well. Once he made the connection, he was amused by me in the way a cat is amused when he has a rat squirming under his paw. I’d never been so sympathetic with rats before.

“Now I get it,” he said. “I know what you want from me.”

“What?” I asked.

“Absolution for Mike Flint.”

“No.” I matched his slow, considered tone. “I want the truth, the whole truth, and you know the rest of it. Don’t feed me any more bullshit fine points of the law or fairy tales about dashed innocence. It is unconscionable the way you have exploited real people just to get your face on the tube as much as you possibly can before the election.”

He flushed. “That’s not what I’ve done.”

“That’s how I read it. That’s how I will present it unless I am persuaded otherwise. I can have a red-hot package ready in time for the early news broadcasts tomorrow. Network news. With photos and footage. The lead will probably be some variation on ‘Conklingate.’ The theme will be boundless ambition. Where were you at two-thirty this morning, Mr. District Attorney, when Hanna Rhodes took a couple in the chest? Where was your investigator, George Schwartz? What the hell are you up to?”

He reacted the way a seasoned courtroom attorney should. He stonewalled all expression.

Roddy O’Leary, Marovich’s campaign manager, came in just then, and I knew there would be no more discussion. Roddy was visibly unhappy to see me, but he came over and gave me a big smooch anyway.

“Working late?” he said, putting himself between me and the candidate.

“Normal hours for me,” I said. “You know, no rest for the wicked.”

He gave me a token chuckle. He said, “Studio time is expensive. You two want to debate, find a cheaper hall. Mr. D.A., they’re waiting for you on the set. At their rates, every minute wasted is the equivalent of two-hundred direct-mail fliers. So, let’s go do it.”