James Grippando - The Pardon

“We don’t have time,” said Jack.

“Well, we have a little time. Trial is two months away.”

“The trial isn’t our deadline.”

“I know, but-”

“I think you’re overbooking something,” said Jack in a polite but serious tone. “We don’t have two months. We may not even have two minutes. Whoever framed me, Manny, is a cold-blooded killer. Which means one thing: We have to find the nine-one-one caller-before he does.”

If the newspapers Jack read over lunch were any indication, the public couldn’t hear enough about the brilliant young son of the governor who’d wigged out and blown away his client. Jack was a veteran when it came to bad press, but still, it helped when he called home and picked up messages on his machine from Mike Mannon and Neil Goderich, both offering any help they could.

One newspaper story in particular had Jack concerned. After summarizing the evidence against him, it made prominent mention of the anonymous 911 call. “A little something,” the article observed, “that a lawyer of Jack Swyteck’s ability could seize upon to blow the case wide open.”

The article made Jack feel uneasy. It was bad enough that anyone who’d looked at the police file could have learned about the 911 caller. Now, anyone who read the newspaper would know about it, too.

Jack drove the five minutes to the police station and requested the recorded 911 message. He played it over and over, until the caller’s voice was one he’d recognize. The man had spoken partly in English, partly in Spanish, a hybrid that made it easier to remember.

From the station he drove to Goss’s apartment building and checked the mailboxes. There were seventeen Hispanic surnames, which he wrote down. He walked to the corner phone booth, confirmed there was a telephone book, then matched the names and addresses to numbers. He then went back to his car to make the calls. He posed as a pollster from a local radio station seeking views on U.S. immigration policy, as a salesman, as someone just getting a wrong number-anything to get the person on the other end of the line to speak long enough so that he could compare his voice to the one on the 911 recording.

A few of the people weren’t home. One line had been disconnected. Those people Jack did reach had clearly not made the call. After thirty minutes of calling, he still didn’t have a match. Damn.

Sitting there outside Goss’s apartment building, watching the last rays of the setting sun glint off the Mustang’s windshield, he wondered if it might already be too late.

The next morning, a Thursday, Jack and Manny were scheduled to meet in Manny’s offices with their first potential witness: Jack’s alibi, Gina Terisi.

From the moment he’d called Gina to arrange the meeting, Jack had been ambivalent. He considered the frame-up theory his best defense, and as the minute hand on his watch drew closer to their eleven o’clock appointment, he found himself wanting to drop the whole idea of an alibi, rather than deal with her. Manny, however, had a different point of view.

“Humor me, Jack,” said Manny, seated behind his desk. “Just for the moment, let’s put this frame-up and grand-conspiracy theory of yours aside. It may sound like a good defense. But even if my investigator makes headway on this Dressler lead, a frame-up is very hard to prove. Your best defense is always going to be an alibi. Because no human being-framed, or unframed-can be in two places at one time.”

“I understand that.”

“And I understand your reluctance about Gina. It certainly won’t sound good when the tabloids print that kinky hot sex with girlfriend’s roomie is your alibi. But it will sound a lot worse if a jury comes back and says you’re guilty of murder in the first degree. So,” he said as he reached for his desktop telephone, “let’s not keep Ms. Terisi waiting. All right, Jack?”

Jack took a deep breath. There were so many reasons he would have liked to leave Gina out of this and just forget using her as an alibi. But it was too late for that. “All right. Let’s see how cooperative she is.”

Manny hit the intercom button and spoke to his secretary. “Shelley, send in Ms. Terisi, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Cardenal.”

The office door opened, Manny’s secretary stepped aside, and Gina Terisi entered the spacious corner office. Manny politely rose from his chair to greet her, and Jack followed suit, though with considerably less enthusiasm.

“Good morning,” said Manny, his face alight with the expression most men wore when they first laid eyes on Gina Terisi. She was wearing a cobalt blue dress, not tight, but flattering in all the right places. Her long brown hair was up in a twist, tucked beneath a black, broad-brimmed hat, revealing sparkling diamond-stud earrings, two on the left ear, one on the right. At least a karat each, Jack observed, and undoubtedly “gifts” from one of her admirers.

“Nice to see you, Jack,” she said through a forced smile.

He nodded courteously as Manny flashed a chivalrous smile and stepped forward to greet her. “Please,” he said, offering her the winged arm chair in which Jack had been seated.

“Thanks,” said Gina, making a production out of taking her seat. Jack moved to the couch beneath the window, and Manny returned to the black leather chair behind his desk. Both men faced their guest. Gina crossed her long legs comfortably, as if constructing a barrier between her and her interrogators.

“Can I get you some coffee?” Manny offered.

Gina didn’t acknowledge the question. She was busy checking her makeup in the reflection of the glass-top table beside her.

Manny was completely unaware that he was staring as Gina applied her lipstick slowly and seductively to the bottom of her pouty lip. “Nothing for me,” she said finally. “This will be a short meeting. I assure you of that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Manny.

“It means that although I tentatively told Jack on the phone that I’d support his alibi, I need to have some questions answered before I commit to anything.”

“That’s fair enough,” answered Manny. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”

Gina narrowed her eyes, stressing the import of her question. “What I need to know is this: Exactly what time of the morning was Eddy Goss shot?”

“Why do you need to know that?” asked Jack.

Gina ignored him and looked only at Manny. “Never mind why. Just answer my question.”

Manny leaned back in his chair. He, too, was curious about the reason for the question. “We don’t know exactly. But some time after four A.M. is the medical examiner’s preliminary estimate, based on the fact that the blood had not yet dried by the time the police arrived on the scene.”

“Four o’clock, then, was the earliest possible time he could have been shot,” Gina pressed.

Manny shrugged. “If you accept the medical examiner’s report, yes. There’s not much doubt that death was instantaneous.”

Gina seemed satisfied. “That’s all I need to know,” she said to Jack. “I can’t testify for you. And I won’t. The time of Goss’s death changes everything.”

Jack’s gut wrenched. Manny shot him a glance, but he just looked away uncomfortably. “How does it change things?” Manny asked her.

“If Goss was shot after four A.M., then that makes me a very flimsy alibi. Granted, if I were to say that Jack and I went to bed, it might help Jack explain how he got his”-she smiled with false modesty-“scratches and bruises. But that’s as far as it goes. It’s not like I can place him somewhere else at the time of the murder.”

“But you slept together,” said Manny.