“I didn’t want lemon oil,” says Radovich. “Got anything with a little color in it?”
The cop shows both palms up, shrugs as if he hasn’t a clue, and then gets a revelation. He’s out the door and before we can speak, he’s back, with a can of brown shoe polish.
“Yeah,” says Radovich.
“Your Honor, if we could?” I say.
“Go ahead,” says Radovich, but his mind is elsewhere.
“You have broad latitude on the issue of conflict,” I tell him. I point to a case in Kline’s own brief. “A court should be loath to disqualify a lawyer.”
“Unless the attorney’s conduct ‘tends to taint the underlying trial.’” Kline finishes the quotation. “We would argue that Ms. Goya’s conduct here is just such a taint. She interviewed the prosecuting witness,” he says.
I remind the court that all of that is hearsay, that the witness being dead, she cannot testify and her words will never come into evidence.
“Still, Ms. Goya cannot purge her mind of what she already knows,” says Kline.
“What about the defendant’s right to counsel of his own choosing?” I say.
“It is a point,” says Radovich. His nose is now buried in the surface of the desk, spit, lemon oil, and shoe polish.
“You gotta admit, I’d be hobbling the defendant considerably if I were to tell him that he could not have the attorney of his choice.”
Radovich, his forefinger now brown with shoe polish, looks up at Acosta.
“How do you feel about all this?” he says. For a moment I think he’s asking our client if he has any advice on what to do with the damaged desk, perhaps some mystic secret, a potion known only to judges.
“I mean your lawyer,” he says. “What should I do here?”
“Your Honor, I object. These are private matters between client and counsel,” I tell him.
“I don’t mind,” says Acosta. He puffs himself up a little, not like a defendant in a murder trial, but one judge giving advice to another.
An ominous feeling rumbles through my gut.
“I don’t know all the details . . .” he begins. Far be it from the Coconut to know all the facts before rendering a decision. “It is a difficult matter,” he says. “I, as the client, have confidence in Ms. Goya. . . .”
“There, Your Honor, see?” Lenore tries to cut him off.
“But I suppose I would be equally well represented by Mr. Madriani and Mr. Hinds if it were to come to that. They are able attorneys capable of giving me competent representation.”
“Fine,” says Kline. “So no problem.”
I could thank him for the testimonial. Instead I turn and fix Acosta with a look that if it shot nails would pin him to his chair.
“Judge Radovich asked me,” he says. “I am only telling him the truth.”
I turn away from him, back to Radovich, and take another tack.
“In terms of our preparation for trial, removal of Ms. Goya at this stage would do major damage to our case,” I tell him. “It’s very much a team approach,” I say. “We have each carved out our areas of coverage in presenting the defense.”
“Let me guess,” says Kline, “Ms. Goya’s specialty is invasion of confidences.”
Lenore is about to get into it with him when Radovich makes this unnecessary.
“Mr. Kline. One more remark of that kind and you will pay for the privilege.” Radovich is shaking a brown finger at him at this moment. If Kline doesn’t back off, sanctions could include two days of sanding the injured surface with his nose.
The judge extracts an apology from Kline.
“It’s far too late to raise these kinds of concerns, particularly when the state has known about her role in the prior case from the beginning,” I tell Radovich.
“They are trying to sandbag us,” says Lenore.
“If there’s any sandbagging here,” says Kline, “it was done by you. We’re still investigating,” he says, “to determine if she took any files or records when she left the office, Your Honor.”
This is clearly intended as one more piece of bait for Lenore, and has the desired effect.
“Your Honor, I resent the implication,” she says. Lenore begins to stammer. “How? How is it possible? I mean how could I take files or documents when you”—she turns from Kline back to Radovich, realizing she’s addressing the wrong person—“when he and his crony pillaged my office in the night, and had a guard escort me off the premises? This is incredible,” she says. Lenore’s face is now in full blush, anger to the tips of her ears.
“We don’t need the personal invective,” says Radovich. “Both of you should calm down.” He is rubbing frantically with his finger, and has managed now to turn a three-inch area of the desk’s surface a shade two tones darker than the rest of the desk.
He looks up at us and notices that we are all watching. He puts the rag aside and slides the desk’s blotter six inches to the right to cover the mark. He will hunt for sandpaper after we leave.
“Your Honor, they handed me a box of personal belongings and threw me out of my office,” says Lenore. “There are items that belong to me that I never even got.” Taking up the gauntlet, Lenore’s tone makes it appear as if she is the one who is now on trial.
“I’m sure it was humiliating,” says Radovich. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
Acosta arches an eyebrow. His attempt to hire a former prosecutor for her possible influence with that office has backfired. Lenore is now tarred, and he must wonder about the effect this will have on his case.
Through all of this Kline is still seated coolly in his chair. Finally Lenore notices that she is the only agitated person in the room, regains composure, and rejoins the issue.
“You never answered adequately,” she says, “why you waited so long to raise this . . .” She waves the air with the back of her hand, searching for a term sufficiently abusive, “this red herring.” She comes up short.
“I thought that would have been self-evident,” says Kline. “We only joined the prostitution case to the murder charge this week,” he says. “And I would remind you that we did so at your urging,” he says. “Before that moment, before joinder, there was no conflict,” he says.
Kline’s response is like an upper-cut to the solar plexus. I can almost hear Lenore sucking air. It is why you never want to ask a question unless you have already figured out the answer.
“Gotcha on that one,” says Radovich.
Lenore has no answer.
I step in, a little tag team.
“It’s still a major disruption to the defense,” I tell Radovich. “Serious question as to whether the defendant is being denied a fair trial.”
“That is the nub,” says Radovich. “I’m troubled,” he says, “by the consequences of your motion if I were to grant it, Mr. Kline. Particularly at this late date.”
I sense a toppling judge, one that is about to fall our way.
“Your Honor, the law is very clear. . . .”
“True,” says Radovich, “but I must also balance the rights of the defendant to a fair trial. To adequate legal representation.”
You know you have won when the judge starts making your arguments for you.
“Your Honor, if you could withhold judgment for one moment while I confer.”
“Be quick,” says Radovich. He checks his watch while the two prosecutors step to the back of the room, hands cupped to ears and lips, the hissing of whispers, high intrigue. The subordinate takes out another piece of paper from his briefcase, and the two of them study this.
I look at Lenore. She gives me a shrug. Not a clue as to what they could be talking about.
Finally a consensus and they step forward.
“I had hoped not to have to do this,” says Kli
ne, “but there is another dimension to this entire matter. This was delivered to our office late yesterday afternoon,” he says. He hands the single-page document to Radovich.
“It is a report,” says the prosecutor, “from the state crime lab, specifically Criminal Information and Identification. CI and I,” he says.
“What has this to do with the issue of conflict?” I say.
“It is a report on a latent fingerprint lifted from the front door of the victim’s apartment the day after her body was discovered,” says Kline.
My blood runs cold.
Kline suddenly turns his attention on Lenore, full focus like the glaring beam of a floodlight
“We would like to know, Ms. Goya, what you were doing at the victim’s apartment on the night she was murdered?”
Suddenly Lenore is in full stammer.
“Don’t answer that,” I say.
Lenore at least has the presence of mind not to admit it. Instead she calls it a shoddy trick. More mud thrown up by the prosecution.
“How do you know that the fingerprint was left there that night?”
Kline smiles. “Well, that’s the peculiar thing about this case, Counsel. We found virtually no prints on any of the exposed surfaces in or around that apartment. Wouldn’t you say that’s strange?” He gives me a quizzical smile.
I don’t answer this.
“Wouldn’t you say that it’s a little peculiar that even the victim’s own prints are not there? On that door? On the knob? Inside the bathroom? In the kitchen.” He gives us a moment for this to settle in. “It seems that somebody went to a lot of trouble to wipe the place clean.”
“Still, even if it is Ms. Goya’s print, and I’m not stipulating that it is. . .”
“Oh, it’s her print, all right,” says Kline.
“Still you can’t prove it was left there that night.”
“That’s a question for the jury,” says Kline. He now turns his argument on Radovich. “Is it probable, is it likely, that someone would wipe that door clean and miss only one print: the thumbprint of Ms. Goya?” he says. “Is it probable?”
Kline is right. It is something he can feed to the jury, and their verdict on the question will not matter. Lenore is now compromised in a way we could never have imagined.
“You can be sure that we will be asking you that same question when we put you on the stand at trial,” Kline tells Lenore.
She stands there, speechless, her hand seemingly glued to the edge of Radovich’s desk, as though this is somehow now the boundary of her universe.
“Your Honor,” says Kline, “the question of adverse interest is perhaps now moot. But the law is ironclad as it affects witnesses. A witness may not legally, under any circumstances, represent one of the parties in a case in which they are to testify. It is the law,” he says, “without exception.”
He turns now to Lenore and faces her straight on.
“Ms. Goya, you are hereby on notice that the state intends to call you as a witness in its case against Armando Acosta.”
CHAPTER 15
BY THE TIME WE GET BACK TO THE OFFICE, THE PRESS IS all over the story, the fact that Lenore has been removed from the case. The lights on the phone are all lit up, every line, so that the receptionist has them all flashing on hold.
“The bastard couldn’t wait to deliver the news,” says Lenore. She’s talking about Kline, who no doubt held a conference in front of the cameras on the courthouse steps. “With him it is any way to cut my throat,” says Lenore.
She pushes through the door to my office, Harry and I trailing in her wake.
“It sounds like you did it to yourself,” says Harry.
“Screw you,” she says.
“You’re doing a pretty good job of that, too,” says Harry. “Me and Paul and your client.”
“Get off my back,” she tells him.
I motion to Harry to back off.
“You don’t think I feel bad enough about this already?” she says.
“Oh, well. Gee whiz,” says Harry. “Why don’t we have a group therapy session to see who feels worse? Why don’t you take the couch?” He makes a mocking gesture toward the sofa, an invitation for Lenore to recline.
“How do you feel, Paul? Tell us. You feel like you got fucked?” Harry at his sarcastic best. “Oh my! How could I be so insensitive?” he says. “Lemme rephrase that. You think you got fucked today in court?”
Harry’s paranoia running wild.
“What the hell is going on?” he says. “Did you know she was there at Hall’s apartment?” Harry is looking to me for answers. He is angry, feeling deceived.
I think he suspects, though we have not told him, that I was with Lenore at the victim’s apartment that night. This would surely send him screaming out of the office.
Before I can respond he puts a hand up. “Don’t answer that,” he says. I think Harry can read my mind. He is savvy enough to grasp that there are some things that are better left unknown—or at least not stated.
“I don’t know what to say to either of you,” says Lenore.
“That makes two of us,” says Harry.
She ignores him. The best medicine with Harry.
“I apologize,” she says. “I got you into this. Now I don’t know how to get you out.”
For the moment she has her own set of problems. Kline was emphatic that he intends to call her as a witness. He tried to assign two detectives to interview her this afternoon at police headquarters, but I convinced Radovich to intervene. The cops would have a field day probing the theory of our case. They are not saying whether they will bring charges against Lenore, breaking and entering, or obstructing justice if they can show that she tampered with evidence at the scene.
“Any ideas on what I should do?” she asks.
“Yeah. Tell ’em you lost your mind,” says Harry. “They’ll believe you,” he says.
At the moment Harry is playing this up not so much because of Lenore’s conduct, but because he suspects a cabal between the two of us, something we haven’t let him in on. Had we invited him along that night, he would have warmed to Lenore in a minute. It was just his kind of party. Harry, like most of us, is an inveterate hypocrite.
“I almost forgot,” he says, “for what it’s worth. Here.”
Harry hands me a stack of documents, printed forms with a familiar logo on the letterhead.
“Until this afternoon I thought it was a break for our side,” he says. “The victim’s telephone records for the period in question.”
One page is marked with a paper clip and a note in Harry’s hand.
“That one is for the day she was killed,” he says. “Of course maybe you were there when she placed this particular phone call.” He looks at Lenore. “In which case,” he says, “you can tell us what the two of them had to say to each other.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
He points with a finger to the record in question. “Gus Lano and Hall. She called him on the number, the one in the little black book, no more than two hours before she was killed. If the state’s estimate as to time of death is correct, it was the last phone call on record. Little good it will do us now.” Harry’s view is that we are now so compromised by Lenore’s conduct that nothing can help.
I tell him that I need a moment alone with Lenore in my office.
“Sure,” he says, “what the hell do I care? I’m outta here. God knows why I ever let you talk me into this.” Harry’s still muttering under his breath, occasional profanities and other choice words, as he marches out and closes the door behind him.
“I may have cost you a friend,” says Lenore.
“Harry likes to be angry,” I tell her. “He enjoys it. It’s what keeps him going.”
It is
true. Ire, it seems, is the only vital force left in his life. By tomorrow he will find something else to raise his hackles, and forget it just as quickly by the next day.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever looked at myself as a health tonic,” she says.
I give her a look, indicating that there is more truth to this than she knows.
“Any suggestions on what I should do?” she asks. “If they question me?”
“They gotta come over Radovich’s body,” I tell her. “I don’t think he will allow it. The risk of invading client confidences is too great,” I say.
“I could just tell them that I went to the door, touched the outside, but didn’t go in.”
“That assumes your print was found on the outside,” I tell her. Kline did not deliver over a copy of the fingerprint report so we do not, at this moment, know where they found it.
Lenore is a lawyer. In a cooler moment she would know it is a mistake to lie.
“A million ways to catch you up,” I say. “And it would raise more questions than it answers. ‘Why, Ms. Goya, did you go all that way, to the apartment of a murdered woman, merely to touch her front door?’”
She looks at me sheepishly.
“They’re certain to ask me whether I was alone,” she says.
Now it comes down to lying for me.
“They are going to want to know what you saw there, whether you touched anything. But the first question is sure to be why you went there. And then they would get to that. Whether anyone was with you.”
“They can’t honestly think that I killed her. What motive could I have? Besides, I was seen in the alley talking to Tony after the cops found her body. They can put two and two together and figure I went from there to Hall’s apartment, after the murder. That doesn’t make me a killer.”
“No, just someone who tramps around in the evidence,” I tell her. “And it still begs the question.” The one I have thus far delicately asked, and which she is dodging. “What were we doing there?”
She gives me a pained expression. “Would you believe satisfying simple curiosity?”
“In a word,” I tell her, “no.”
The Judge Page 20
