Erle Gardner - Beware the Curves

I took a little time debating the matter. “You have both?” I asked.

“Yes.” She shifted her position slightly.

The light behind her did its stuff.

“Brandy and Benedictine” I said. “But only a short one, Stella, I’ve got to go. I’m working on this damn case.”

“You and your case!” she blazed.

“But when it’s over,” I said, “you’re going to see more of me.”

“By that time,” she said angrily, “you may not be able to see any of me!”

She walked out into the kitchen, got the brandy and Benedictine. When she came back, she turned the kitchen lights out.

We had a brandy and Benedictine. I kissed her good night and went home.

At eight o’clock the next morning, my phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said hello.

The voice that came over the wire was almost hysterical.

“Mr. Lam?”

“Yes.”

“This is Helen, Helen Manning.”

“Oh, yes, Helen, what’s on your mind?”

“I’ve just been served with a subpoena. There’s an officer here. He says the district attorney of Orange County wants to talk with me.”

“The officer’s there now?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the other room. I told him I had to go in the bedroom to change my clothes. What shall I do?”

“What can you do?” I asked.

She thought that over. “Nothing, I guess,” she admitted.

“You could consult an attorney,” I said. “But that wouldn’t look so good. It would look as though you had something to conceal. You could refuse to talk, but that would simply center attention on you. I guess about the only thing you can do is tell the truth.”

“Oh, Mr. Lam. Donald, I wish I could talk with you.”

“You can’t,” I told her. “I’m leaving right now for Santa Ana. I have to be in court while they’re selecting a jury. You’d better tell them the truth.”

“I can’t. I simply can’t tell them the truth.”

“If you get caught in a mess of lies,” I said, “it’s going to look bad. There’s one tip I can give you.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Mortimer Irvine, the district attorney of Orange County, is tall, dark, handsome, very impressionable and a bachelor. And in case you don’t happen to know it, you’re a dish!”

Her voice perked up. “Do you think so, Donald?”

“I know it” I said. “You have that something which radiates from a good-looking woman personality, sex appeal, poise, the ability to wear clothes.”

“Oh, Donald!”

“Don’t talk with any of the deputies. Don’t discuss anything with the officers. Say that your story is for the ears of the district attorney alone.

“You get it?” I went on, “Alone.”

Her voice showed a lot more vitality.

“Donald,” she said, “you’re wonderful! You’re a tonic!”

“Be seeing you,” I told her, and hung up.

Things came to a showdown at eleven o’clock in the morning.

Judge Lawton said, “The peremptory is with the people.”

Mortimer Irvine, on his feet, bowed from the waist, smiled at the court, turned soulful eyes to the jury. “The prosecution is entirely satisfied with the jury. The people waive the peremptory.”

Judge Lawton looked at Barney Quinn.

Quinn half-swung around in his chair for a quick look at me.

I gave him a quick signal of okay.

Quinn rose to his feet and to the occasion. He smiled a tired, baggy-eyed smile at the jurors and said, “If the Court please, the defendant in this case is entirely satisfied that this jury will give him the benefit of a fair and impartial trial.”

Judge Lawton frowned a bit at the oratory, but said, “Very well. The jury will now be sworn to try the case. The other members of the venire, who are in attendance will be excused. As soon as the jury is sworn, the Court will take a ten-minute recess, following which the district attorney will make his opening statement.”

There was a considerable swirl of activity in the courtroom. Newspaper reporters pushed out of the doors, hurried to the telephones, to send in a flash that the jury had been accepted and to give the names of the jurors.

Barney Quinn came over to stand beside me. After the first hubbub had subsided, he said, “Well, pretty quick we’ll know the worst. We’ll know what we’re up against from his opening statement.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “On the other hand, if he has a surprise, he may deal in verbal detours.”

“How am I doing?” Quinn asked.

“Better,” I said. “Remember this. A jury keeps looking at the lawyers. The little things you do betray how you feel. The jurors don’t pick it up from any one little thing you do but from the thousand little things you do. The way you tilt back in your chair. The way you look at the clock. The way you run your hand over your head. The way you get up when you address the court. The way you pick up a pencil. The speed with which you make notes. Everything registers.

“You can’t sell a jury until you’ve first sold yourself. This is your big case. This is your opportunity. Make the most of it.”

Quinn said gloomily, “This is Irvine’s big case. It’s also his big opportunity. This is where he launches his campaign for attorney general. He’s smiling, urbane, persuasive — and, damn it! Lam, he’s got eight women on the jury.”

“So what?” I said. “What does he do when he gets mad? Does he blow up?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said.

“That’s a helluva way to practice criminal law,” I told him. “Find out what he does when he gets mad.”

Quinn gave me a wan smile. “I’m not usually this much of a washout, Lam, but this case has just taken the starch out of me. Tell me, did you find that gun?”

I looked him in the eyes. “No.”

“You didn’t?” he asked, his face lighting up.

“Hell, no!” I told him. “You’re the attorney for the defense. I’d tell you the truth, wouldn’t I? My God, man! We’re working for you.”

“You mean we’re not suppressing any evidence?”

“Not a bit!”

He seemed to grow inches taller. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“I was afraid to. I thought — Ansel was positive he’d thrown the gun into that hedge.”

I said, “I doubt if he ever had a gun. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think the poor fool thinks that Elizabeth Endicott shot her husband, and he’s halfway trying to take the rap for her.”

Quinn thought that over. “I’ll be a son-of-a-gun,” he said slowly.

I saw the door of the Judge’s chambers open. I gave Quinn a jab with my thumb. “Go on in there,” I said, “and make the district attorney mad.”

Judge Lawton called court to order. Mortimer Irvine started his opening statement in the well-modulated voice of a man who has taken a course in dramatics at college.

It was a statement of glittering generalities. He said he expected to prove that there had been an attachment between Elizabeth Endicott, the widow of Karl Carver Endicott, and the defendant John Dittmar Ansel. He expected to prove that, after Elizabeth Endicott consented to marry the decedent Karl Endicott, the defendant Ansel had not been content to be a good loser, but had continued to hope against hope that he would be able to break up the home, notwithstanding the fact that he was in the employ of Karl Endicott, notwithstanding the fact that Endicott had trusted him to go on his most confidential missions. Ansel, as a snake in the grass” had waited, biding his time—

Barney Quinn was on his feet interrupting. He said he didn’t want to interrupt but this was not the time for an argument. This was only an opening statement in which the district attorney was entitled to show what he expected to prove — not to engage in a lot of dramatics, not to try and impress his “soulful personality” on the jurors.