William Lashner - Hostile witness

"You mean stop me from lying," he said, obviously amused.

"I know you might want to confess, the urge is understandable," I said. "And whatever you say remains with me, but you have to be aware that any such confession could have consequences as to our defense."

There was more to it than that, of course. I could have gone on speaking for a good ten minutes, but after talking about his undoubted need to confess and seeing him sitting there, calm, composed, his face lacking the slightest indicia of an urgency to tell me anything, I stopped.

"I guess you've heard all this before," I said.

"I guess," he replied.

"Good," I said, though I started to sweat a little. There was something about his composure that was unnerving. "Now just a few questions. Have you ever been arrested before?"

"Yes," he said without a wince. "Before I met Jimmy I was involved with drugs and drug sellers. I was arrested often."

"Were you convicted of anything?"

"Once of possession with intent to distribute a banned substance, to wit, cocaine, and twice of forgery. I supported my habit by check," he said with a smile. "Except the checks weren't always mine. None of this is a secret. I'm one of Jimmy's success stories, one of his saved souls. He likes to be able to point at us to show what is possible with drug rehabilitation."

"Still, you probably won't be testifying," I said. "Forgery is just the kind of prior conviction that a prosecutor would use to show your lack of honesty or trustworthiness."

"That's what Mr. McCrae said too."

"Did you know Zack Bissonette?"

"Sure," he said. "Nice guy, lousy ballplayer."

"Assuming you didn't do it, any idea who would have beaten that nice guy into a coma?"

"I heard it was the mob."

"Is that what you heard?"

"That's what I heard."

"Is that what he's going to say when he wakes up?"

"What I also heard, Victor," he said, his hands laying still, one atop the other on his lap, "is that he's on the edge of never waking up."

"And then you'd only be up for murder."

There was a crack in the calm facade at that moment, a lowering of the guard, and what I saw was not the confident insider but a child, scared and lonely, the kid at the edge of the playground, the kid never passed to in the basketball games, who only received two valentines while his classmates took home sacks full. The peek inside didn't last long, quick as a politician's lie the facade was back, but I had a glimpse of what he was feeling and how much he was hiding and it all touched me in a strangely personal way. And suddenly my playacting the role of a hard-boiled criminal defense attorney didn't seem quite so clever.

"Are you sure you don't want someone more experienced?" I asked.

"You'll do fine," he said. "Jimmy said you'll do fine."

I thought about it for a moment. "If we both agree that I will represent you," I said, "we also are going to have to agree on a strategy. What line of defense was Mr. McCrae going to follow?"

"He was going to follow Prescott completely," he said.

I tried to smile reassuringly. "From what I've seen, that looks like your best bet," I said. "But that decision is up to you."

"I know," he said. "And that's the way Jimmy still wants it to go."

"You know, Chester," I said, speaking very slowly, very carefully, wanting to phrase what I was required to say just right. "With co-defendants there is always a potential conflict between defenses. One defendant could always point the finger at the other and say I didn't do it, he did it."

"There is no conflict here," he said quickly, without hesitation.

"Do you trust the councilman with your life?"

"Absolutely."

"Rushing to trial like we are, I might not be able to help you if things go wrong."

"I appreciate you wanting to be in a position to help me, Victor," he said, without putting even a touch of patronization in his voice, which was pretty impressive. "I really do. But there's always been someone reaching out to help me, someone with a clipboard from the city or the state or the federal government, and all they've ever done is dig my hole a little deeper. Only one man ever reached out a hand and really, truly helped."

"And who was that?"

"Jimmy Moore," he said. "Jimmy's been called a lot of things by a lot of people and he's everything they say. But he's been the best friend I ever had. He told me to hire you, so you're hired. He told me to follow Mr. Prescott's lead, so that's what we're going to do."

"Then your explicit instructions are not to interfere with Prescott."

"Exactly."

I looked at him carefully. He was a smart man, I could see that, and he trusted Jimmy Moore completely. Who was I to get in the way? This had been easier than ever I had thought. I slapped my knee and stood up. "Good," I said. "Then that's settled."

"So you'll represent me?" he asked.

"If you want me to, I will."

"I do," he said.

"I don't have the connections old Pete McCrae had."

"You'll do fine," he said. "Don't worry, Victor. You'll make out just fine."

And that's how we left it, Chet Concannon patting my arm to help brace my courage as I faced the coming ordeal, as if I were the defendant and he were the lawyer, instead of the other way around. He opened the door and gestured for me to precede him out of the office. I had just stepped through the opening when I heard a loud voice rasp through the hushed Talbott, Kittredge hallways.

"Hell, I'm hungry. Hungry." It was a sharp, emphatic voice, the voice of an overzealous lieutenant colonel or a college basketball coach. "I'm too hungry to work just yet. We have all night." It was a voice of authority, an exuberant, demanding voice. "Let's get out of this dump and find something to eat."

I recognized the voice right off. I had been listening to it all day. It was the voice of Jimmy Moore.

"LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING," said Jimmy Moore in his insistent voice, poking his cigarette right at me. "Those fat goons in the mayor's office have no idea what is happening. No idea. They can't understand it. They see the numbers, same as I do. If the primary was right now, even with the indictment, I'd beat that bastard by a hundred thousand votes, easy. Easy. And he knows it, he knows it, but he doesn't know why. He doesn't know my secret. He doesn't know where my power lies. But I'll tell you where."

He took a drag from his cigarette, held between the tips of his thumb and first three fingers.

"It's in my passion," he said with a violent expulsion of smoke. "Just like Samson's strength was in his hair. If ever I lose the passion, well then stick a fork in me, I'm done. I might as well retire to Palm Springs and play golf every day. Too bad for the mayor I never cared for the game, right, Chet?"

"That's right, Councilman," said Chester Concannon.

We were at DiLullo Centro, a shining, famous bistro across the street from the Academy of Music, where a stylish crowd greeted each other warmly as they hopped from table to table. Everyone seemed to know at least someone there, and the one who everyone seemed to know was Jimmy Moore.

Moore was a thick-shouldered man of about fifty, short gray hair cut like Caesar's, clean-shaven, with a round, angry face. He wore a flash Italian suit, designed for men thinner and taller. It was too tight on him and, in it, he looked nothing like the draped, statuesque mannequins in magazine ads. He had transformed it from a suit of elegance to a suit of armor. Embroidered on the white cuff of his shirt were the initials JDM. He had the intense eyes of an athlete and sucked attention to himself as he spoke, grabbed it with those eyes and the vicious certainty in his voice. He moved quickly, aggressively, head turning in sudden jerks like a giant bird. When he looked at me, it was as though he was looking into me and there was a sudden and intense connection. For that instant there was no one else in the room but him and me. And then he looked away, at someone else, and the connection was broken. But, even so, his animalistic power lingered like an afterimage burned onto the cornea, leaving no doubt that here was a dangerous man.