William Lashner - Hostile witness

"It was the councilman in the rage, wasn't it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "No. You're not listening. It was Chet. He was often my beard on evenings when Jimmy wanted to bring his wife to a reception and then see me afterwards, and he began to fall in love with me. We had sex once, one lonely evening, and it seemed to be important to him. I used to tease him about it, but it was real, I could see that. So when he found out about Bissonette he was furious, as angry as if I had been cheating on him. And the drugs, that made him even angrier. I pleaded with him not to tell the councilman, because I knew how angry he would get, how violent. He promised me he wouldn't, that he would take care of it himself. He said he would take care of it, that he had been stiffed out of another quarter of a million, that they had dropped him like a sucker and that by dealing with Bissonette he could take care of two birds with one bullet. That's what he said. I begged him not to do anything stupid but he told me not to worry about it, that he would take care of everything. And then he left. That's the last I saw of him that night. The next day I heard that Zack had been beaten into a coma. I was terrified."

I stared at her, shocked into silence, shocked enough to let her talk on and on, and talk on and on she did. While her other answers were short, two or three sentences at the most, this response seemed to last forever, and I felt helpless to stop her. I was so stunned I didn't even try. And when she had finished she sat on the stand looking straight at me, without even a breath of malice on her face.

In a weak voice I asked the judge for a moment, which he granted, and I walked unsteadily to Chester at the defense table. The doubt in his face had been replaced with anger. I leaned over him and whispered.

"Is any of this true?" I asked.

"No," he hissed.

"You fucked her, didn't you?"

"You did too," said Chester viciously. "So what? The rest of that is crap. What are you doing to me? What are you letting them do to me? You've sold me out."

Still leaning over Concannon, I glanced at Prescott, who was watching Chester and me with amusement on his thin lips. He looked at me and then through those thin fucking lips there arose the hint of a smile, the merest hint, but there it was. Where before I had seen his smile and read it as "Welcome to the club," this time I knew exactly what it meant, and what all the smiles before it had meant too. He smiled that slight smile at me and what that smile was saying, was shouting, was shrieking for the whole court to hear was, "Got you, you little small-time Jew bastard."

The feeling I had in that instant was like falling down a pit, falling without a parachute, without hope, fall falling. My stomach collapsed, my knees buckled, my eyes teared wildly, and spots appeared before me as my consciousness dipped. All I wanted to do at that moment was to heave and if I had anything in my stomach, if I had eaten Raffaello's damned cannoli, drunk a cup of coffee, anything, I'm sure I would have, right there in the middle of the courtroom, right there on the defense table, right there in front of the judge, the jury, right there in front of my client, Chester Concannon, my client, who had put his freedom in my hands and who now, I was certain, was going straight and irrevocably to jail.

Part V

A Peel

ONCE AGAIN I WAS RIDING the marble-lined elevator to the fifty-fourth floor of One Liberty Place, rising to the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, coming as a visitor, not a member of the caste, coming as a supplicant, as one of the unworthy. But on this ride, at least, I was no longer lugging along a deep-seated resentment. I had been resentful of my exclusion from the hallways of the rich and powerful when I believed I belonged by right of merit, of talent, by right of my innate inner quality. But that belief had fled before the reality of my failure in United States v. Moore and Concannon. Not only was I not going to be offered a place at the glorious head table of the law, but the only thing I had proven at that trial was that I was inadequate to take it on my own. The jury had come back after only six hours of deliberations. Jimmy Moore acquitted of all counts; Chester Concannon guilty of Hobbs Act extortion, guilty of Hobbs Act assault, guilty of racketeering. Guilty, guilty, guilty. The words from the jury foreman were like the tolling of some unwholesome melancholy bell. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Six hours of deliberations and Chester Concannon was gone.

There was nothing I could do to salvage the trial after Veronica, my star witness, buried Chester with her testimony. I finally snapped out of my self-pitying stupor and had her declared a hostile witness, so that I could cross-examine her, and then went at her tooth and tong, attacking her credibility, attacking her story, attacking her lies. And they were lies, yes. She had told me the truth in her apartment the black night I subpoenaed her. I had no doubt but that it was Jimmy Moore who had taken that quarter of a million, cash, and handed it over to Norvel Goodwin, resurrecting with fresh capital Goodwin's moribund grip on the crack cocaine market in Philadelphia. I had no doubt but that Jimmy Moore had killed Zack Bissonette with the Mike Schmidt autographed baseball bat, that it was Jimmy Moore who had battered him into a coma and left him sucking air through the blood oozing out of his mangled face. But with all of my hammering, all of my badgering, all of my bombast, I was not able to shake her story. My only hope was to put myself on the stand and contradict her. I was the only one who could impeach her with what she had told me that night in her apartment and so I passionately requested that Judge Gimbel let me testify.

"Mr. Carl," he said, with all the indignation his high position allowed him, "I'm not going to let a lawyer testify in my courtroom at a trial that he is conducting. That is a clear violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct. You're experienced enough to know you need an investigator or another third party to question a witness if you intend to impeach that witness's testimony with the interrogation. They still teach that in law school, I believe, and I'm not about to start changing the rules now. Was there anyone else in the room when she made her statement to you?"

"No, sir," I said.

"Did she sign a written statement?"

"No, sir."

"Is there any tape recording or video of what she said?"

"No, sir."

"Well then, Mr. Carl, you can ask her what she said to you that night, but you will not be able to personally contradict, do you understand?"

"I object, Your Honor."

"Exception noted for the record," said the judge. "Any more questions for this witness?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Then go to it, Mr. Carl. You've got work to do."

And go to it I did, but to no avail. There had always been something slippery about Veronica, she was soft and silky but I could never really get a hold of her, could never pin her down. Even when I had her tied to those bedposts I could never really pin her down. That was the way she was in bed and that was the way she was on the stand too, smooth, clear, but slippery when pressed. And in the end I failed. There was really no way to succeed once she blurted out her lies. If only I had forced her to sign a statement. If only I had placed Sheldon at the doorway with his stethoscope to listen to our conversation. If only I had recognized early on in her testimony the prepared evasiveness with which she answered questions about the bank account and quickly stopped my examination before the real damage was done. If only I hadn't been such a fuckup.

Even before she was finished testifying I had asked the court for a recess and, along with Beth, ran to the clerk's office for a fresh subpoena, filling it out on the ride down the courthouse elevator. There was one other person, I knew, who could contradict her story, the person who had been the liaison between Jimmy Moore and Norvel Goodwin, who had set up the deal for the quarter of a million and had told Goodwin where Veronica had been hiding out the day she was to testify. The same person who had been with Jimmy Moore the night of the murder, the man whose footprints had been encased in Bissonette's vomit and Bissonette's blood. I filled in Henry's name hastily as I rode down to the ground floor and Beth fished in her pocketbook for a check for the witness fee. The murder had happened on Henry's night off and he had flashed an alibi to the cops, who had been all too willing to believe the driver so as to put the blame on Concannon, but I was sure now that Henry's alibi was a lie. In a desperate trot I ran to the Market Street exit of the courthouse, where I was sure the councilman's limo would be waiting with Henry sitting calmly inside. He was my last chance. I spotted that black cat of a car at the corner of the building and rushed to it, tapping on the window, thrusting the papers inside as soon as there was a gap big enough to fit my arm. But the face underneath the chauffeur's cap was white, not black, and he looked at me uncomprehendingly as the papers waved before him.