Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she says. Laurel actually manages a smile before she is led away. A fatalist at heart, it is as if she never expected a different ending.

‘Ten-to-one the fucker’s lying,’ says Harry. He’s talking, almost to himself, about Angelo, his face flushed, the only one I know who hates losing more than I do. Only in this case the stakes for me are much greater.

‘Real convenient,’ he says. ‘Eleventh hour they come up with this shit, nothing in the report, bodies all buried.’ He’s throwing papers pell-mell into the evidence box, grousing under his breath.

‘There’s something we’ve missed,’ I tell him.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Something doesn’t square.’

‘I’ll tell you what I’ve missed,’ he says. ‘That bitch with the bumper of my car.’ He’s leering at Cassidy, hissing under his breath as she loads her things into her briefcase.

Lama slides a chair out of her way, opening the passage for Morgan to get between our tables to the swinging gate in the railing.

‘Have a good weekend,’ she says.

‘Morgan. You got a minute?’

She stops and turns.

‘I may have to talk to you this weekend.’ I swallow a lot of bile as I say this. ‘After I talk to my client,’ I tell her.

She knows what I am broaching, some deal to save Laurel’s life.

‘I don’t know if my client will go for — ’

‘Don’t concern yourself about your client,’ she says. ‘Your only worry should be here. Whether I can be persuaded to budge, which at the moment does not look promising,’ she says.

She proceeds to give me a lecture in full view of several reporters taking notes, comments on Laurel’s ethics as well as my own.

‘She’s a bad actor,’ says Cassidy, ‘and we both know it. And your antics with her husband, the sealed indictments. You and the judicial wannabe over there.’ She gestures toward Dana, who is fighting the tide of bodies trying to get inside the courtroom. Cassidy makes little noises like tisk-tisk.

‘Is there a chance — ’

‘You can leave a message on my service,’ she says. ‘If I don’t go anywhere, I’ll get back to you.’ With this she turns and they start to walk away, Lama intoning in a voice that can be heard through the courtroom, ‘Can you believe the gall?’

It is clear that they intend to make me grovel.

They merge with the crowd heading for the door.

I can actually hear Harry growl. Then he utters a couple of expletives.

‘They’re lying,’ he says.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t be naive,’ he tells me. ‘They made it up out of whole cloth. They know we can’t check it.’

Harry is of that school of social thought that believes most victories in criminal courts are fashioned from the preponderance of perjury. You spin yours and they do theirs, and in the end the side that is most adept at invention wins; the thought that throughout history truth has withered and died of loneliness in most courtrooms.

It is with this deep thought that I feel the hot whisper of breath on the back of my neck. When I turn I am staring into Dana’s eyes.

‘I heard what happened,’ she says. She’s white as a sheet.

She puts one hand on the nape of my neck and comes up close with her lips, and for an instant I think she is going to kiss me on the cheek. Instead she puts her mouth close to my ear, and in the faintest tones whispers, ‘Not to worry. I can get you the witness.’

I pull away and look into her eyes. She is talking about the man who saw Jack with the killer Lyle Simmons, at the bar across the river.

She ignores the fact that this does not supply motive. Why would Jack kill his wife?

‘Where is he?’ I say.

‘That’s not something you need to worry about,’ says Dana. ‘All you have to know is that he will be here, in court, on Monday morning, ready to tell you what he saw.’

‘When did you find him? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.

As she pulls away, there is an aspect to her eyes, something that tells me not to tread there, that this is forbidden ground.

‘You’re out of your mind,’ says Harry. ‘Don’t ask questions,’ he says. ‘She’s right, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. All you know is what this guy says. Pure and simple. Real easy,’ says Harry.

‘It’s simple. I’m not so sure it’s pure,’ I tell him. I have concerns about this, the fear that this witness is suborned, perjured testimony. It is all too convenient.

It was on her tongue, as well as in her eyes. ‘I can get you the witness,’ not ‘We have found him.’

Like Detroit makes cars, I have the sick feeling that this guy, and what he has to say, are manufactured. What I can’t figure is why would Dana would do this, a woman with a judgeship looming. Why take the risk? She can’t hate Cassidy that much.

‘And besides,’ I tell Harry, ‘we have problems because the witness is not on our list. He could be excluded on those grounds alone.’

The state has an absolute right to check him out, to ensure that he’s not a ringer, someone with a criminal record, maybe a penchant for lying on the stand, to make certain that he was not on ice, doing time in some human warehouse when he claims to have seen these revelations across the river.

Harry says this is no problem. ‘They complain, we offer them time to check the guy out? In the meantime we tap-dance with a few other witnesses. Continue to beat out the theme that Jack did it.’

‘Why?’ I say.

‘Who knows? Fucker’s crazy,’ he says. ‘Not the first time some pol went ‘round the bend.’

‘You forget,’ I tell him, ‘that the witness is probably lying. That he probably never saw Jack with anybody in a bar. You don’t think Cassidy’s going to figure this out?’

‘You forget,’ says Harry, ‘who is offering this guy up to us. The fucking federal government,’ he says. The glee in Harry’s eyes as he says this is something to behold. ‘Stop and think for a minute,’ he says. ‘You don’t actually believe they’re stupid enough to produce somebody who isn’t absolutely bulletproof? If the feds do it, Lama could check the guy seven ways to Sunday and come up empty. They’ll probably make him an archbishop or something,’ says Harry.

He talks as if the government operates a referral service for such things, like a nurses’ registry; perjured testimony with references.

‘Take my word,’ says Harry. ‘There are two things the federal government does well: print money and make up false identities,’ he says.

His words freeze me in place like a naked Eskimo in an arctic blast. My eyes at this moment are two big round O’s.

‘What is it?’ he says.

‘Something we didn’t see. Something you just said.’

‘What?’

‘Identities,’ I say.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The Merlows. We’ve been asking ourselves from the beginning, what was it that George or Kathy Merlow saw that night?’

‘So they caught a glimpse,’ says Harry. ‘Somebody doing Melanie. Unless you think we can get Chuckles to let us conduct a séance in open court, they’re beyond the pale,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s concentrate on the other figment,’ says Harry, ‘the one that breathes when he lies.’ He’s talking about Dana’s witness.

‘How can we be so sure they saw something?’ I tell him. ‘What if they didn’t see anything?’

‘Then somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill them for nothing.’ Harry’s not tracking.

‘Maybe it’s not what they saw,’ I tell him, ‘but who, or more precisely, what they are.’

He’s giving me a lot of dense looks.

Before Harry can move, I’m out of my chair and down the hall, in the direction of his office, Harry like a shadow.