When I sat down at the defense table I showed the paper with the eight sentences to Concannon. "Is this what you want me to give as an opening?"
"Is that what Prescott showed me last night?"
"Yes."
He shrugged. "Is it a problem?"
"It's a big fat zero," I said. "It does nothing."
"The way he explained it to me is that we should make my role in the deal, the arrangements, everything, seem as small as possible."
"Eggert's not going to let the jury forget you're on trial."
"If that's what Prescott wants you to give, then give it."
"You know I checked it out, about Bissonette and Raffaello's daughter," I said. "It appears to be on the up."
"Victor, Victor," he said, his voice slightly scolding. "You were supposed to stop your interfering."
"Consider it stopped," I said just as the door behind the judge's bench opened and the court clerk stood to start the trial. "From here on in I'm Chuckie Lamb's mannequin."
"All rise," said the clerk as the judge climbed the steps to the bench.
We all rose.
26
"ANY CRIME IS A betrayal of the trust we have in each other, but when it is a public official who commits the crime, an official who asked for our vote and swore an oath to serve the public, the betrayal is particularly cruel."
Eggert very slowly walked over to the defense table until he was directly opposite the defendants. He was giving his opening to the rapt jurors, his reedy voice rising in indignation. He pointed at Jimmy, his finger close enough to the councilman's face that Jimmy could have bitten it off if he wanted to, and the moment it flashed there, like a white scimitar, that's exactly what it looked like Jimmy would do. Then he recovered control and the look of deep sobriety returned. Through it all, his eyes never wavered from Eggert's; if there was to be a staredown, it would be Eggert who blinked first. In the front row of the public benches, three different artists were furiously sketching the moment, Eggert's straight back, his accusing finger, the bunched muscles in Jimmy Moore's neck.
"James Douglas Moore is a city councilman, a public official placed into office by the people of this city who looked to him to promote the interests of all of Philadelphia, not just his own. The first requirement of his office was honesty, and that was the first thing he threw out the window. The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that Jimmy Moore used his office to extort money, and when his extortion plan went awry he resorted to threats, which you will hear on tapes legally obtained by the government, he resorted to arson, and he resorted to murder. Murder, ladies and gentlemen, the murder of Zachariah Bissonette, the former ballplayer, who stood up for what was right and refused to be blackmailed. Jimmy Moore took a baseball bat and battered Bissonette so badly he was in a coma for five months, never to open his eyes, to see the beauty of the day, to look into the faces of his loving family, never to recover before he died. That is how Jimmy Moore observed the public trust. And we'll show you where the money went, how it was funneled through his political action committee, how a chunk of it never even got to the committee but was instead skimmed off for his own personal use, how Jimmy Moore used his office to grab enough money so he could ride around the city in a big black limousine and drink champagne and gamble in the casinos along the Boardwalk. That's what the evidence will show."
Eggert moved on to Concannon and again the finger of the prosecution pointed.
"Chester Concannon is Jimmy Moore's chief aide, a public servant whose duty was to help the councilman achieve his legitimate goals as a public official. But instead of looking out for the interests of the people of Philadelphia, Concannon aided the councilman in each of his extortion schemes. Concannon was the go-between, the bagman, the fellow to see if you wanted the councilman on your side. Chester Concannon took his share of the lucre ripped out of the skin of the people of this city, and Concannon was with Jimmy Moore the night Bissonette was battered with that baseball bat into complete and unwavering unconsciousness."
When he was finished accusing the defendants he detailed the elements of the crime of racketeering that he would prove, going over what each witness would say and how it would all come together to show so clear a pattern of illegal conduct that the jury would be forced to convict. Then he leaned over the defense table and stared, first at Jimmy Moore, then at Chester Concannon. "At the end of this trial, I'm going to come back to you and ask for a guilty verdict on all the counts. And instead of the money or the political power or the black limousines and champagne nights and extravagant evenings in Atlantic City, I'm going to ask you to give this corrupt councilman and his corrupt aide all that they truly deserve." With a final look at the defendants, a look filled with all the weary disgust he could muster, Eggert walked slowly to the prosecution table and sat down.
Prescott didn't jump up to follow Eggert as most lawyers would. He remained seated, his head down dramatically. Judge Gimbel, still at work on whatever opinion he was drafting for some other case, didn't seem to notice the delay and just kept writing. The crowd in the courtroom stirred, one of the jurors coughed, Prescott remained seated.
"It is at a time like this," said Prescott finally, while still seated at the defense table, "it is in a trial like this that the genius of the jury system shines through."
With a great sigh, Prescott stood, his shoulder slightly bent, his head shaking sadly. He looked down solemnly as he spoke and the whole effect was of a profound disappointment.
"My client Jimmy Moore is a politician who is gaining power in this city because he practices the politics of inclusion. His goal is to fight the scourge of drugs, a scourge that has taken the life of his daughter, his only child. The youth home he founded is a national leader in drug treatment for the young. And in pursuit of this noble goal he has brought together all the people of this city, no matter their race, no matter their religion, no matter their economic status, whether they are homeless or HIV infected or children subject to the worst abuses. His political action committee, Citizens for a United Philadelphia, or CUP, has in the last two years spent over half a million dollars informing citizens of their rights and registering the unregistered. His committee has added two hundred thousand voters to the city's polls. And as Jimmy Moore's influence grows, so does the power of his opposition."
Prescott turned to look at the jury and then slowly walked from behind the defense table to a position directly behind Eggert, who was leaning forward in his seat.
"There are powerful men in this city who feel threatened by the inclusive coalition being forged by Jimmy Moore. Fat cats and politicos who want to keep it all for themselves and are not willing to open the system to those they have been able to ignore. Men with enough power that they can use the United States Attorney's Office as a tool for their political designs.
"Now the President of the United States can sweep into town and hold a fund-raiser and leave with a million dollars in his pocket and that is politics as usual. But when Jimmy Moore goes about raising money for his program of healing, it is extortion. Politics has become money, the need to register voters, the need to put up posters, the need to buy buttons and bumper stickers and, most important, the need to produce and put on television commercials. That's why the President takes his cool million when he visits and it is why Jimmy Moore raises money from those like the businessmen who were seeking his help here. Politics is money, and it may not be pretty and it may not be right and it may not be what we would choose if we were starting over, but that's what it is. And Jimmy Moore was doing nothing more here than any politician ever does as he tries to raise the money to run for office.
"So if Jimmy Moore was doing just what every other politician does, why is he on trial? As you listen to the evidence, as you analyze the government's case, that's the question you have to ask yourselves. If Jimmy Moore was a business-as-usual politician, not ruffling the feathers of the powerful men who can control a United States Attorney's Office, would he be on trial? The answ
er, at the end of this case, will be a resounding no. You examine the evidence, you figure out what was really going on here, you decide who actually committed the crimes alleged by the government. You decide if the government is seeking justice or is seeking to pull out a political thorn in the side of the status quo. You look it all over very carefully, and in the end you'll decide to acquit Jimmy Moore and let him continue in his good work."
It was my turn now, my chance to speak to the jury on behalf of my client. In front of me was a yellow legal pad with the lengthy and impassioned opening argument Beth had drafted and I had rehearsed the night before. But as I rose, I left it on the table. In my hand was a single white sheet. On it was written the following little speech:
MY NAME IS VICTOR CARL. I AM REPRESENTING CHESTER CONCANNON IN THIS CASE. MR. CONCANNON IS JIMMY MOORE'S CHIEF AIDE. HE HAS BEEN INDICTED AS PART OF THE GOVERNMENT'S VENDETTA AGAINST JIMMY MOORE. YOU WON'T HEAR CHESTER CONCANNON ON ANY TAPES. THERE IS NO CORRESPONDENCE LINKING HIM TO ANY OF THE CRIMES ALLEGED HERE. I EXPECT YOU WON'T HEAR MUCH ABOUT HIM AT ALL. TRY TO REMEMBER, WHENEVER YOU HEAR HIS NAME, HOW LITTLE HE IS INVOLVED, AND AT THE END OF THE CASE I AM SURE YOU WILL ACQUIT HIM OF ALL CHARGES.
I glanced at Prescott, who was jotting down notes upon his legal pad, purposefully avoiding my gaze. I glanced at Concannon, who was staring at his hands clasped together on the table. I twisted to look at the audience. The courtroom was packed. Beth was frowning at me. Chuckie Lamb was pinching his lips together as he shook his head. In the aisle I saw Herm Finklebaum, the toy king of 44th Street, smiling at me with encouragement. I walked to a spot just in front of the jury box, surveyed the jurors one by one, and then read the anemic piece-of-shit opening that had been written for me by Brett with two t's.
When I sat down I was actually embarrassed.
The first witness was Special Agent Stemkowski, the WWF reject sitting with Eggert at the prosecution table. For a bruiser Stemkowski was very well spoken, calm, and deliberate, able to keep a straight face as he used phrases like "I exited the vehicle" and "I effected implementation of the interception of Mr. Ruffing's phone conversations." He wore a camel-colored jacket, a white shirt, a calm blue tie. On his thick pinky he wore one of those flashy gold class rings, undoubtedly commemorating his graduation with honors from the FBI Academy. He had played football in high school, tight end, he said, and when Eggert drew out this insignificant piece of testimony, three of the men in the jury box nodded with approval. His demeanor on the stand was evidence that the country was in good hands, the soft competent hands of a receiver with biceps like great ragged chunks of pig iron.
Stemkowski explained how the FBI had been investigating a drug operation being run out of Bissonette's by a bartender, an operation not in any way involving Bissonette or Ruffing, when it had begun wiretapping the club's phones. It was through those wiretaps that the Bureau had discovered the extortion scheme. Special Agent Stemkowski authenticated the cassette tapes, identifying the marked date and time on each cassette as being in his handwriting and accurately based on FBI logs maintained during the surveillance. Eggert then produced thick loose-leaf binders containing all the transcripts, which were first authenticated and then distributed to judge and jury.
An FBI audio man had set up a sophisticated tape playback device with microwave transmission to headphones placed at the counsel tables, on the judge's bench, beside each seat in the jury box. I would have liked to hear Bruce Springsteen pour out of those headphones, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, I would have liked to hear Jimi Hendrix's version of the national anthem strip away the wax from our ears, but that's not what we heard through those government approved high-fidelity headphones. What we heard, playing clearly, numbingly, for the whole of two full days, were the taped conversations of Michael Ruffing and City Councilman Jimmy Moore.
Moore: Don't do this, Mikey. You back out now, your project's dead. Dead.
Ruffing: My new investor don't think so.
Moore: It's that cookie baker, isn't it?
Ruffing: Shut up. You were taking too much anyway, you know? You were being greedy.
Moore: So that's it, is it, Mikey? I'm sending my man Concannon down.
Ruffing: I don't want Concannon.
Moore: You listen, you shit. You talk to Concannon, right? I ain't no hack from Hackensack, we had a deal. A deal. This isn't just politics. We're on a mission here, Mikey, and I won't let you back down from your responsibilities. You catch what I'm telling you here? You catch it, Mikey?
I had heard the tapes before, knew every line now almost by heart. I knew what had been said, but the jury didn't. When Moore threatened the hell out of Michael Ruffing on the tape the whole of the jury, headphones firmly on, reacted like I had reacted the first time I had heard it: their necks reared, their eyes fixed on both Moore and Concannon, and the squints in their eyes were like squints of a posse intent on a hanging. Not an encouraging sign after just one witness.
27
"TELL ME HOW YOU got involved with Jimmy Moore," I ordered Veronica. "Tell me how."
She was stretched beneath me, her wrists tied stiffly to the headboard with long silk scarves, her legs pinned down by my bent knees. She snapped at my belly with her teeth, at my chest. I stretched my body over hers, pressing down hard, and we clawed each other with our mouths. It wasn't kissing in any way I had known kissing to be before, there was a violence to it, a rapaciousness. We stirred each other's hunger and satisfied it at the same time. When she bucked her hips and raised her knees, opening herself for me, I sat up again and grabbed her hair and laughed at her.
"Tell me."
"After," she breathed.
"Not after. Now."
"Let me loose and I'll tell you."
"Tell me and I might let you loose."
She jerked her hands trying to get free but the scarves, long and soft and creamy maroon, were strong and the knots I had tied with boy scout accuracy and enthusiasm held. In the light of the candles we had set around the loft bed her flat stomach flickered yellow as her hips rose violently. She tried to kick me off but I rode her like a bucking mule and stayed right where I was. I stretched my weight on top of her and we clawed each other with our mouths and again she tried to open herself to me and I wouldn't let her. It was my turn on top and I had control for once and I was going to keep it.
These scarves and pseudo-violent acts, this outbreak of forced control and mock desperation, this was not my usual thing. I had liked my sex slow and soft, an easy glide, a dance of the lips and the hips, rising and falling in a series of synchronous crescendos, Fred and Ginger swaying together in black and white as he tapped out a subtle mysterious rhythm and the feathers of her boa floated about them in sensual waves. If the sex of my earlier life had been a movie, it would be Dancing in the Dark. But it had turned with Veronica. We weren't in the middle of a light romantic comedy. Sex with her was more like Marathon Man and she was the dentist. But we had tried it my way and we had tried it her way and believe me when I tell you this – her way was better.
I knew I shouldn't be there in her apartment, but the danger of it all drew me as much as the sheer addictive kineticism of our sex. That I had been warned, that a car window had shattered in front of my face, that if Jimmy found out about us everything might be lost, all that and more drew me there. Even as I banged the steering wheel of my car with my palms at my foolishness, I still drove to that Olde City building, coming at her beckon, where I would rise up in that Plexiglas windowed elevator and knock on her door, knock quietly, head bowed, as reverent as a supplicant before the Pope.
That night she had pulled the scarves out of the drawer beside her bed and floated them across her chest like a harem girl teasing her eunuch. "I don't think you're ready for these yet," she had said.
"I don't think so either."
"There are places you're not ready to go."
"You're right."
"But aren't you in the least bit curious?"
"About wh
at?"
"About what it's like to tie me up?"
"I can imagine it."
"But that's the point, Victor. With me you don't have to imagine. You can do anything you want to me. It's too bad Roberta is out of town."
"Roberta?"
"She's a friend of mine. A model. You'd like her, Victor. She's very thin, very blonde. All the boys just die for Roberta."
"You're fine enough for me."
"I'd be there too. It's about appetites. The more you get, the more you need. It grows like a marvelous cancer. A week in Cancun with me and Roberta and you'll never be satisfied with just one again."
"Cancun?"
"Roberta likes to travel."
"How about just you and me?"
"Where?"
"Someplace exotic."
"I'm not sure I trust your taste for the exotic. You're not a very adventurous boy."
"Someplace you've never been."
"Cleveland? You want to take me to Cleveland?"
"Tahiti."
"I've been to Tahiti. Too long a flight for a beach."
"Thailand."
"Too hot."
"Burma. Have you ever been to Rangoon?"
"No, take me to Rangoon. Yes, Rangoon."
"But first Cleveland. The best hotel in the city."
"Motel Six?"
"Sure, and a bottle of Bud from room service."
"When?"
"After this trial."
"Could we bring Roberta?"
"I don't need anything more than you."
"Not for you, for me."
"I'm not enough?"
"In case you tire."
That's when I tied the half hitch to the bed post, a solid sailing knot, and wrapped the scarf tightly around her wrist, so tightly that her wrist purpled when she gave it a solid yank. "Not so tight," she said with a laugh and I ignored her, as I was sure she hoped I would. There were enough scarves to bind her ankles too, but I thought it would be more acrobatic if I left her legs free to wriggle about. "Really, you should loosen them," she said, "they're too tight." But no matter what she said I did what I wanted. "Stop it, you'll leave a mark." She was taking me to a strange outer world where no meant yes and stop meant go and all that I had learned about political correctness and sexual courtesy was meant to be breached. There was something clicking in my brain stem, something primordial, something with the glorious confidence of the unself-conscious, something that had existed long before the forebrain swelled and turned sex into an intellectual exercise, something that had been pounded down in my years of politeness in bed, my years of caring if it was good for her, my years of striving for joint satisfaction. "Stop it. Please. I'm begging you, please. God stop stop no stop it now." The ultimate, I had always believed, was the simultaneous orgasm, the instantaneous joinder of passions and fulfillments, where two became one. But the part of my brain stem stimulated by Veronica, as if she were an electrode buried deep into a mass of long dormant neurons, cared nothing for simultaneity. It was selfish and violent and brutal. It was Neanderthal, prowling with a club in each hand, one wooden, one swollen flesh, searching for satisfaction, demanding it, objectifying anything that could be grabbed and placed beneath it, anything whose sole purpose was to sharpen desire at the same time it satisfied it in a painful gut-wrenching burst. It wasn't pretty what I felt gurgling inside my brain stem, it wasn't something that was pleasant to admit was within me, but there was nothing pleasant about sex with Veronica. It was closer to hell than to heaven, its power was buried in the genetic memory of the past, but once discovered, it was a place I couldn't leave. And even after I came I stayed impossibly hard inside her, my brain stem allowing for no respite. I sucked a bruise out of the base of her breast and bit her earlobe and with my knees spreading her knees and my hip bone grinding into her hip bone her voice broke into a torrent of ancient cries and while I drove on and on into the mist of my predatory history she came despite my caring not at all and I kept on despite her cries and she came again in a yelp, scraping my neck with her lower teeth, and the back of my neck burst apart in a maddening orgasm and she sucked my Adam's apple and flipped her loose legs high until her feet kicked my head and she screamed murderously.
Hostile witness vc-1 Page 22
