William Bernhardt - Capitol Murder

“My sister is not here,” Shalimar whispered. Loving noticed she was inhaling in deep quick gulps. “She would not have anything to do with this… disgusting place.”

Loving put his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. He just hoped she was right. For once, he didn’t want to find Beatrice. At least not here.

Ben had adjusted over the years to the fact that he was simply not, by anyone’s definition, flashy. Not that he would mind. To the contrary, he thought being flashy sounded rather fun. It just wasn’t in him. So he’d learned to content himself with being thorough, prepared, and good. If he couldn’t gain prosperity via flamboyance, then at least he could gain notoriety by winning.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t help but notice the contrast between Padolino’s announcement of his final prosecution witness, and his own announcement of his first defense witness. The former had triggered gasping and astonishment; the latter was met by, well, nothing. An absence of reaction. Boredom. Ben consoled himself that it wasn’t a reflection on his style as a litigator; it was simply that no one in the gallery knew who Sid Bartmann was.

That was about to change.

Interest in the witness increased, at least in the jury box, when the Virginia state troopers walked Bartmann into the courtroom. They removed his handcuffs but left the leg restraints chaining his two legs together. He was wearing his prison grays, which informed all the world that he was Prisoner XK-24637. His face was pale and pocked; his hair, what little he had left, was unwashed.

“Jesus,” Glancy muttered under his breath. “That’s my lead witness? He looks like the scum of the earth.”

“Yes,” Ben replied quietly. “He does.”

“Couldn’t you have… I don’t know. Dressed him up a little bit? Loaned him a bar of soap?”

“Yes,” Ben answered. “I could have.”

Ben wasted no time establishing that Bartmann had several prior offenses but that he had most recently been incarcerated during a raid (if you could call what Loving did a raid) on a club in Georgetown called Stigmata. He was arrested for possession of an illegal designer hallucinogen derived in part from OxyContin.

“You were a habitué-” Ben checked himself; what was he thinking? “-you were at Stigmata a lot, correct?”

“Oh yeah. Almost every night. I worked for the owner, Randy Lorenz.”

“And do you know where Mr. Lorenz is at this time?”

“In lockup. Bail was denied.”

“What exactly was your position at the club?”

“What, ya mean like my job title or somethin’? I don’t think I ever had one. I just did what the man told me. Randy snapped his fingers, I come runnin’.”

“And what was your rate of payment?”

“I don’t think I had one of them, neither. Basically, whenever Randy got a wad of cash, he threw some of it my way. Fortunately, he got a wad of cash like every night.”

“And that was because he was peddling a designer drug to a select group of women who were admitted to his apartment on the second level of the club above the dance floor, correct?”

Ben could see the man blinking, trying to understand. Must use short sentences and one- or two-syllable words, he reminded himself. “Randy had some chicks up to his place, yeah. Some of them were usin’. But the club itself was rakin’ in dough. It was very popular with… you know. A certain crowd.”

“And what crowd would that be?”

Bartmann coughed, a long grotesque grinding noise that sounded as if he were peeling off the lining of his lungs. “The Goth freaks.”

“Interesting. So you and the other… freaks… were using this designer drug?”

“Hell, no. I couldn’t afford the stuff. Rather have a tall cool one, myself.”

“But you were arrested in possession-”

“Randy gave me the package and I held it for him. He was my boss. I did what I was told.”

“Even holding on to illegal drugs.”

“Hell, I woulda held on to illegal turds if he’d asked me.” Judge Herndon glared at the witness but remained silent. “He was the man, you know? He took care of me and I took care of him. He was like the brother I never had.”

The brother he never had. Ben was reminded of Aristophanes: youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered-but stupid lasts forever. He removed a photograph from his trial notebook and held it up. “Mr. Bartmann, have you ever seen this woman before?”

Bartmann looked at the photo with an expression that was positively repulsive. “Oh, hell, yeah. That’s Rapid Ronnie.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Rapid Ronnie?”

“Yeah.” He laughed so hard it became a sort of snort, a repetitive pig noise in the back of his throat. “She was fast. Fast like you’ve never seen fast.”

Ben felt the inevitable red blotches creeping up his neck. “Sir, are you talking about Veronica Cooper being fast… sexually?”

Bartmann touched his nose. “Got it in one!”

“And… how do you know this?”

“From personal experience.” He winked, and this was possibly even more grotesque than the lascivious expression that preceded it. “She was hot.”

“Are you suggesting that you had… intimate relations with Ms. Cooper?”

“Damn straight.”

“How many times?”

“More than you could count. When that girl wanted it, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“And when would that be?”

“When she was high on the drug, mostly. Affects different people different ways. Her it made horny. Major horny. Upped her desire-and her pleasure. She couldn’t control herself. It was all she could do to wait long enough to get my pants off.”

“Did you have… someplace you went for these liaisons?”

“Nope. Right there in the apartment at the club. Most times everyone else was high and doing it, so we didn’t attract much attention. They were too busy with their own action to notice us.” He paused. “’Cept Randy. He liked to watch.”

Ben tried to envision the orgy Bartmann was describing-and then decided he’d rather not. “Were you the only person with whom Ms. Cooper had sexual relations?”

“Hell no. She’d do anyone when she was high. All she cared was that you were breathing and male.” He reflected a moment. “Come to think of it, some of the time she didn’t even care if her partner was male.”

“And I gather from the nickname that Miss Cooper tended to be… fast?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. A male fantasy come true. No jawboning about foreplay. No screwin’ around waiting for her to get in the mood. She was always in the mood. Sometimes she got there before I did. She liked it fast and rough.”

“Rough?” Ben said, coughing.

“Very. Violent, almost. Kicking and slapping and spanking and biting.”

“Biting?”

“Oh yeah. That always turned her on. And not just some wimpy pecking, either-she wanted a good hard bite. The kind that mattered. I mean, when I pressed my teeth into her neck, she squealed like a pig.”

Out the corner of his eye, Ben saw the jury scrutinizing the man, trying to decide if they thought it was remotely credible that the beautiful young intern Padolino had painted as a virtual nun could have sex with this walking waste dump. Verdict: no.

“Mr. Bartmann, when was the last time you had sexual relations with Miss Cooper?”

“The night before she was killed.”

Almost as one, the jury members’ chins lowered.

“Within twenty-four hours of the time of death?”

“Less than ten, from what I hear. She was killed like around ten in the morning, right?”

“Something like that.”

He folded his arms across his chest, obviously proud of himself. “And I had her around midnight. So I’m saying it was ten hours.”