Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  ‘We found that while Mr. Vega had apparently suffered some scar tissue as a result of the vasectomy, he was able to project a sufficient number of sperm to conceive a child.’ He delivers this death blow with a smile, the coup-de-grâce.

  I stand leaden before him, the shambles of my case arrayed around me. Even the skull of Melanie Vega, skewered by its metal stake on the evidence cart, seems to mock me in its stark silence. Except for pictures of them copulating – Jack and Melanie – Angelo has slammed the door on any doubts concerning Vega’s fatherhood of the dead child. In a single sitting he has done more damage than all of their witnesses combined.

  It is why Cassidy didn’t touch this, the vasectomy or any of its tangents, in her original examination of Angelo. She wanted to wait until I was too far along the path of my defense to change course, until after I had called Jack a killer in front of the jury. It was the trap she constructed for me, and I fell into it like a lamb to the shearing. I had been warned about her, the cunning, relentless style. Her case in seeming disarray, with two judges and the referee giving the bout to the challenger, Cassidy has gone for the knock-out punch and connected.

  Chapter 29

  By the time Angelo finishes I am gutted like some bottom fish on a factory ship, filleted in front of the witness box. It is nearly noon, and Cassidy tells Woodruff that the state now rests its case.

  As Angelo steps down from the stand, there is a palpable atmosphere in the courtroom, a mood swing of dynamic proportion, that would have oddsmakers offering book that Laurel will never leave this place a free woman.

  The apprehension in her eyes as she studies me, unsteady in front of the witness box, tells me that she is not oblivious to this sea change. At one point I find it necessary to actually grip the railing at the edge of the bench in order to steady myself as I negotiate the ten feet back to our counsel table.

  It is Friday afternoon, and Woodruff tells me to be prepared to open my case for the defense first thing Monday morning. I think he is taking pity on me.

  When I answer him I hear all of this, even my own reply, through a pulsing auditory drone, like the rumbling of an engine in the bowels of a ship. It is the pounding of blood through carotid arteries, caused by the panic now coursing through my brain.

  The judge slaps the gavel and the court is adjourned, the jury led out.

  The matron is moving on Laurel, whose eyes have not left me. I arrive just in time to take her hand and exchange a few words.

  ‘We’ll have to talk,’ I tell her. ‘This afternoon.’ My voice has an ominous quality, the forbidding tones of a surgeon who has spent some time with his fingers inside of a loved one, looking for cancer, and now must deliver the news.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she says. Laurel actually manages a smile before she is led away. A fatalist at heart, it is as if she never expected a different ending.

  ‘Ten-to-one the fucker’s lying,’ says Harry. He’s talking, almost to himself, about Angelo, his face flushed, the only one I know who hates losing more than I do. Only in this case the stakes for me are much greater.

  ‘Real convenient,’ he says. ‘Eleventh hour they come up with this shit, nothing in the report, bodies all buried.’ He’s throwing papers pell-mell into the evidence box, grousing under his breath.

  ‘There’s something we’ve missed,’ I tell him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something doesn’t square.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve missed,’ he says. ‘That bitch with the bumper of my car.’ He’s leering at Cassidy, hissing under his breath as she loads her things into her briefcase.

  Lama slides a chair out of her way, opening the passage for Morgan to get between our tables to the swinging gate in the railing.

  ‘Have a good weekend,’ she says.

  ‘Morgan. You got a minute?’

  She stops and turns.

  ‘I may have to talk to you this weekend.’ I swallow a lot of bile as I say this. ‘After I talk to my client,’ I tell her.

  She knows what I am broaching, some deal to save Laurel’s life.

  ‘I don’t know if my client will go for –’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself about your client,’ she says. ‘Your only worry should be here. Whether I can be persuaded to budge, which at the moment does not look promising,’ she says.

  She proceeds to give me a lecture in full view of several reporters taking notes, comments on Laurel’s ethics as well as my own.

  ‘She’s a bad actor,’ says Cassidy, ‘and we both know it. And your antics with her husband, the sealed indictments. You and the judicial wannabe over there.’ She gestures toward Dana, who is fighting the tide of bodies trying to get inside the courtroom. Cassidy makes little noises like tisk-tisk.

  ‘Is there a chance –’

  ‘You can leave a message on my service,’ she says. ‘If I don’t go anywhere, I’ll get back to you.’ With this she turns and they start to walk away, Lama intoning in a voice that can be heard through the courtroom, ‘Can you believe the gall?’

  It is clear that they intend to make me grovel.

  They merge with the crowd heading for the door.

  I can actually hear Harry growl. Then he utters a couple of expletives.

  ‘They’re lying,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t be naive,’ he tells me. ‘They made it up out of whole cloth. They know we can’t check it.’

  Harry is of that school of social thought that believes most victories in criminal courts are fashioned from the preponderance of perjury. You spin yours and they do theirs, and in the end the side that is most adept at invention wins; the thought that throughout history truth has withered and died of loneliness in most courtrooms.

  It is with this deep thought that I feel the hot whisper of breath on the back of my neck. When I turn I am staring into Dana’s eyes.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ she says. She’s white as a sheet.

  She puts one hand on the nape of my neck and comes up close with her lips, and for an instant I think she is going to kiss me on the cheek. Instead she puts her mouth close to my ear, and in the faintest tones whispers, ‘Not to worry. I can get you the witness.’

  I pull away and look into her eyes. She is talking about the man who saw Jack with the killer Lyle Simmons, at the bar across the river.

  She ignores the fact that this does not supply motive. Why would Jack kill his wife?

  ‘Where is he?’ I say.

  ‘That’s not something you need to worry about,’ says Dana. ‘All you have to know is that he will be here, in court, on Monday morning, ready to tell you what he saw.’

  ‘When did you find him? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.

  As she pulls away, there is an aspect to her eyes, something that tells me not to tread there, that this is forbidden ground.

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ says Harry. ‘Don’t ask questions,’ he says. ‘She’s right, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. All you know is what this guy says. Pure and simple. Real easy,’ says Harry.

  ‘It’s simple. I’m not so sure it’s pure,’ I tell him. I have concerns about this, the fear that this witness is suborned, perjured testimony. It is all too convenient.

  It was on her tongue, as well as in her eyes. ‘I can get you the witness,’ not ‘We have found him.’

  Like Detroit makes cars, I have the sick feeling that this guy, and what he has to say, are manufactured. What I can’t figure is why would Dana would do this, a woman with a judgeship looming. Why take the risk? She can’t hate Cassidy that much.

  ‘And besides,’ I tell Harry, ‘we have problems because the witness is not on our list. He could be excluded on those grounds alone.’

  The state has an absolute right to check him out, to ensure that he’s not a ringer, someone with a criminal record, maybe a penchant for lying on the stand, to make certain that he was not on ice, doing time in some human warehouse when h
e claims to have seen these revelations across the river.

  Harry says this is no problem. ‘They complain, we offer them time to check the guy out? In the meantime we tap-dance with a few other witnesses. Continue to beat out the theme that Jack did it.’

  ‘Why?’ I say.

  ‘Who knows? Fucker’s crazy,’ he says. ‘Not the first time some pol went ‘round the bend.’

  ‘You forget,’ I tell him, ‘that the witness is probably lying. That he probably never saw Jack with anybody in a bar. You don’t think Cassidy’s going to figure this out?’

  ‘You forget,’ says Harry, ‘who is offering this guy up to us. The fucking federal government,’ he says. The glee in Harry’s eyes as he says this is something to behold. ‘Stop and think for a minute,’ he says. ‘You don’t actually believe they’re stupid enough to produce somebody who isn’t absolutely bulletproof? If the feds do it, Lama could check the guy seven ways to Sunday and come up empty. They’ll probably make him an archbishop or something,’ says Harry.

  He talks as if the government operates a referral service for such things, like a nurses’ registry; perjured testimony with references.

  ‘Take my word,’ says Harry. ‘There are two things the federal government does well: print money and make up false identities,’ he says.

  His words freeze me in place like a naked Eskimo in an arctic blast. My eyes at this moment are two big round O’s.

  ‘What is it?’ he says.

  ‘Something we didn’t see. Something you just said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Identities,’ I say.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Merlows. We’ve been asking ourselves from the beginning, what was it that George or Kathy Merlow saw that night?’

  ‘So they caught a glimpse,’ says Harry. ‘Somebody doing Melanie. Unless you think we can get Chuckles to let us conduct a séance in open court, they’re beyond the pale,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s concentrate on the other figment,’ says Harry, ‘the one that breathes when he lies.’ He’s talking about Dana’s witness.

  ‘How can we be so sure they saw something?’ I tell him. ‘What if they didn’t see anything?’

  ‘Then somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill them for nothing.’ Harry’s not tracking.

  ‘Maybe it’s not what they saw,’ I tell him, ‘but who, or more precisely, what they are.’

  He’s giving me a lot of dense looks.

  Before Harry can move, I’m out of my chair and down the hall, in the direction of his office, Harry like a shadow.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  As I open the door, it is clear that Harry’s office is a place waiting for a fire.

  There are piles of yellowing newsprint on the floor, clipped-up papers, and leftover scraps, mixed in with briefs and research notes for cases Harry is working on. There are snippets of news stories, articles nailed to the walls with a million pushpins. These range from cartoons to banner headlines, all the stuff that fuels Harry’s engine of political paranoia.

  I start pitching paper.

  ‘Wait a minute. What are you doing?’ Harry is incensed, as if somehow there is a chemical equilibrium to this, some order to the stew of litter that I am upsetting.

  Halfway between an ancient issue of The New Republic and a molding jelly sandwich I find what I am looking for. Saffron with age and brittle, it carries a dateline from Lexington, Kentucky. I hand it to Harry and let him read.

  He barely has time to finish the first graph when it hits him.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You don’t think … ?’

  ‘One way to find out,’ I tell him. ‘Do you want to make the call or should I?’

  Chapter 30

  My opening statement to the jury is brief, and probably obscure. It is not the blistering assault on Jack that I have honed to a bristling point for the past month.

  ‘In a few moments,’ I tell them, ‘you are going to hear testimony and see evidence that for some of you may cause considerable dismay. For others,’ I say, ‘it will merely serve to confirm your darkest suspicions about the nature of man and his institutions of justice. This evidence,’ I tell them, ‘has come into my possession only within the last thirty-six hours, and in many ways it comes as more of a shock to me than it may to all of you.’

  Thirty seconds after I call her name, Dana Colby walks through the courtroom door and up the center aisle. She is calm, almost serene, in a dark blue suit, the kind a prosecutor would wear to court, and heels that click on the marble floor.

  She walks past me as if I am not here, not a look or whisper of recognition, her stone-cold gaze straight ahead up at the bench.

  Laurel is at the table with Harry, asking him questions, why I am putting Dana up. We have not had time to bring her current, and until this evidence is in, I have no idea as to its impact on the jury or the judge.

  There is a flurry of activity at Cassidy’s counsel table. Among other things, she and Lama are checking our witness list to ensure that Dana’s name appears. What was originally intended as chaff on our own list was seen by them as just that. They had forgotten that Dana’s name was there. Now they are surprised when she actually appears and takes the stand.

  She is sworn and sits, her gaze fixed on the middle distance somewhere at the back of the courtroom. The only hint of any anxiety some mild thumping with two fingers of one hand on the arm of her chair.

  She refuses to make eye contact with me, as I have refused to take her calls or see her for two days now, since having her served with the subpoena to appear here. I think she knows, or has possibly guessed what we have.

  Dana tried to camp in my office this morning to catch me, a meeting I wished to avoid, so Harry and I stayed away, prepping for court at a coffee shop two blocks down the street until moments before we arrived here.

  ‘State your name for the record?’ says the clerk.

  ‘Danielle Elizabeth Colby.’

  I had not known her first name was Danielle until this moment. Perhaps a measure of just how little I know about this woman.

  I move dead center in front of the witness box where she can no longer ignore me, and standing here, we finally confront each other.

  ‘Ms. Colby, would you tell the court what you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a Deputy United States Attorney.’ There is a deadpan to her voice, emotionless, as if something has been drained from the woman I thought I knew. There is more than a little pain in this exercise for me.

  ‘Chief Deputy in your office for the Eastern District of this state, is that not so?’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a word, you are a federal prosecutor, aren’t you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  I am leading her shamelessly, but all of this is harmless and Cassidy is anxious to have me get to the point. I think perhaps Morgan has not picked up on the friction between us, and believes that we are working in tandem to do a number on her case.

  ‘Ms. Colby, who were George and Kathy Merlow?’

  With the mention of their names she stiffens, like someone has shot a mild jolt of electricity through her chair.

  ‘They were neighbors of the victim in this case, Melanie Vega,’ she says. ‘They lived in the house directly next door.’

  This is not what I am looking for. Dana is adroit. She manages to avoid the question, so I am left to use this to spin a little silk and crawl further out into the web.

  ‘And to your knowledge did they reside there, in that house next door, on the night that Melanie Vega was murdered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before that night, did you ever have occasion to talk with George or Kathy Merlow for any reason?’

  Dana has beautiful eyes even when they are darting in discomfort as they are now. Her tongue searches for saliva.

  ‘I might have,’ she says.

  I nod slowly. I am not enjoying this, and I think she knows it, so she embellishes a little to get me away from t
he nub of it.

  ‘We lived in the same neighborhood, you see a lot of people,’ she says. ‘I might have seen them someplace or other.’ She makes this sound like some social accident, a rubbing of shoulders that cannot be recalled with precision.

  ‘I see. Might one of these places where you met George and Kathy Merlow have been your office downtown at the justice department?’

  Finally we arrive at the point, like a prime number, an issue that cannot be divided by half-truths.

  She looks up at the judge. ‘Your honor, if we could have a moment in chambers,’ she says. ‘There are matters of critical importance, life and death,’ she says.

  Woodruff has heard a lot of things from the bench, but never a witness asking for a private conference in the middle of her testimony.

  ‘Is there something wrong with you physically?’ he says. ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘No, your honor.’

  ‘Then you should answer the question,’ he says. Dana’s moment of truth.

  ‘I might have. I can’t remember.’ Truth turns to evasion.

  ‘Surely that is something you would remember, a meeting in your office?’ I say. I try to bring her to it gently, as little pain as possible, like a cyanide capsule cracked between the molars.

  ‘I meet with a lot of people,’ she says. ‘I cannot remember them all.’ She writhes and squirms, a futile and agonizing effort to put off the inevitable.

  All the while I can see Laurel pumping Harry, a series of heated one-liners in his ear. She wants to know what I am doing. What Dana has to do with all of this.

  ‘Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Colby, that the night you met the Merlows outside in front of their house, the night Melanie Vega was murdered, that you were there not as some itinerant passerby but on business?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says.

  ‘Isn’t it a fact that you went to meet George and Kathy Merlow as a representative of the United States Department of Justice to assure them that they would be all right, that everything would be taken care of?’

  She looks at me like I’m smoking some bad weed.