Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  No one thought anything about it. Plea bargains were made all the time, and if there was anything different about this one, it was only that it had been made so quickly. And far from raising any suspicion, the absence of a defense lawyer only increased the respect in which the chief deputy district attorney was held. The police knew which prosecutors they could count on and which ones always insisted on the letter of the law. Goodwin was smart and tough and, most important of all, he never blamed a cop for a case that went bad.

  Shortly after his private conversation with Quentin, Goodwin stood beside Gilliland-O'Rourke while the district attorney announced indictments returned by the grand jury against a dozen upper-middle-class citizens, not one of whom had ever before been in trouble with the law, on charges of conspiring to sell narcotics. All of them proclaimed their innocence, demanded their day in court, and then took the best deal they could get. There were no trials. There was no need for anyone to testify about anything. Travis Quentin was released from county jail at the end of his thirty-day sentence and no one gave him a second thought.

  Travis Quentin gave a more interesting account. He claimed that when he was brought to Goodwin's office, the two officers who were holding him by his arms were told they could wait outside. Their reluctance to leave Goodwin alone and unprotected was dismissed with a smile. Frowning, they pushed Quentin down onto a wooden chair in front of the desk and turned to go.

  "You can take the handcuffs off," Goodwin announced. He was sitting on the front corner of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other leg swinging idly back and forth. "Mr. Quentin and I are going to have a friendly conversation," he explained. "I'll be fine," he added as the two officers exchanged worried glances.

  As soon as the door shut behind them, Goodwin reached inside his suit coat pocket. "Cigarette?" he asked, pulling out an unopened pack.

  Rubbing his wrists, Quentin nodded and waited for Goodwin to open it and give him one. Instead, Goodwin tossed him the pack.

  "Keep the rest. I don't smoke," he said, as he got to his feet and moved to his chair behind the desk.

  Quentin had next to nothing in the way of formal education, but he knew something about lawyers and the way they worked. Most prosecutors dressed like funeral directors and talked in flat voices with a sort of grim-faced impatience. Goodwin was wearing a double-breasted blue blazer. Quentin remembered the shiny gold buttons. Lounging in his chair, an ankle crossed over his knee, he acted as if he had nothing but time and no better way to spend it than in a long, desultory conversation about how best to solve someone else's problem.

  "You have an interesting record, Mr. Quentin," Goodwin remarked, without a trace of indignation.

  Quentin had opened the pack and taken out a cigarette. Reaching inside a drawer, Goodwin found a matchbook and flipped it to him.

  "Manslaughter, burglary, armed robbery," Goodwin observed, as he glanced at the thick compilations of arrests and convictions that constituted the only biography Travis Quentin would ever have. "I'm afraid it's the kind of record that doesn't leave much room for leniency. No, I should think that with these new charges you're looking at eight to ten years, minimum."

  Pausing, he leaned his elbow on the desk. "Unless you'd just like to save everybody the time and trouble of a trial."

  Quentin was on his guard. They did not bring you to the district attorney's office to negotiate a plea bargain. Your lawyer did that, and he did not have one yet. After a long drag on the cigarette, Quentin asked the only question he cared about. "What do I get?"

  Instead of casual amusement, Goodwin's eyes now reflected a serious interest."You plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. You'll do thirty days in the county jail, with credit for the time you have to wait before you're sentenced."

  Quentin had just begun to inhale. He choked on the smoke. "Who do I have to kill?" he said, laughing.

  Standing up, Goodwin shook his head. "No one right now," he remarked. "Do we have a deal?"

  It never occurred to Quentin to say no.

  The day he was released, he was met outside the county jail by a woman who handed him a large manila envelope containing a black-and-white photograph of Nancy Goodwin, the name and location of the Corvallis motel, and the date she would be spending the night. There was also $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills and a key to a bus station locker where, according to the written instructions, he would find an additional $5,000 waiting for him when he finished the job.

  The money had long ago been spent, and the photograph and typed directions to the location of his victim destroyed. Quentin agreed to call Goodwin and threaten him with exposure unless he paid more money. With the police listening on another line and a tape recorder preserving everything that was said, Goodwin answered the phone and, as soon as he heard who was calling, said he did not know anyone by that name and hung up.

  The case against Marshall Goodwin consisted of the testimony of Travis Quentin and very little else. Quentin had been arrested, and he had spent nearly an hour alone with the chief deputy district attorney. The charges that could have been brought against him were dropped, and instead of years in prison he had served thirty days in the county jail. That was it, all of it, and it was not nearly enough.

  Drifting over to the French doors that led out to the patio, I watched the lights glittering in the distance and found myself wondering what Marshall Goodwin was doing at that moment. Most murders had something of the commonplace about them, ordinary acts of brutality by dull, dimwitted people for whom violence was the principal form of expression. But this was not an act of violence committed in a moment of rage, not if Travis Quentin was telling the truth. This was murder for hire, carried out with a clear mind and a cold heart. What possible reason could Goodwin have had? And if he had done it—hired Travis Quentin to murder his wife— had he managed somehow to put it all out of mind, the way every prosecutor and every defense attorney forgets about each case they try as soon as the verdict comes in and they start thinking about the next one? Was it really that easy?

  Turning away, I glanced at the clock on the desk. It was a few minutes after nine, not too late to call. Horace answered on the first ring. "You been expecting my call?" I said with a laugh.

  "No, I thought it was Alma. I've barely seen her this week. Every night she's got a meeting, getting ready for their fund-raiser Sunday."

  I had forgotten the fund-raiser. "Listen, Horace," I began, trying to think of the best way to get out of it.

  "Listen, Horace yourself," he growled. "You're not getting out of it. I have to go; you have to go."

  The absence of logic in this was irresistible.

  "No, Horace, you have to go because you're married to the woman who's in charge. And because you're a judge who might want to get reelected. I don't have to go anywhere."

  "I understand all that," he said placidly. "I have to go; you have to go. I have to go because I'm married to Alma, and you have to go because she wants you there. Now tell me, you get through all that stuff I gave you? What do you think?"

  "You mean, do I think he did it?" I paused, trying to draw some conclusion that made sense. "If I didn't know him, if I'd never met him, if the only thing I knew was what this guy Quentin says, I suppose I'd think there was a chance."

  For a moment, Horace was silent. Finally, he said, "You don't think there's enough there for a conviction, do you."

  I hesitated. "I'm not even convinced the case should be prosecuted. Are you?"

  "It's like I told you. I hope he didn't do it."

  "But you think he did. Why?"

  "Couple of things. The polygraph, for one. Quentin passed it. The meeting with Goodwin and the way all the charges were dropped. The way Quentin knew where Nancy Goodwin was going to be. But maybe more than any of it, there's something about Goodwin. I can't put my finger on it. I don't want to believe he did it, but when the state police told me I didn't have the kind of reaction you have when you just know something couldn't have happened that way."
>
  I knew what he meant: the certainty that someone was innocent and the awful doubt that you might not be able to prove it. If there was anything worse than defending someone who was convicted of a crime they did not commit, it had to be prosecuting the case that sent that innocent person to prison. It was the fear that every decent attorney felt, and the sense of danger that gave an edge to everything that happened in the criminal courts.

  Horace had a gift for listening to the things left unspoken. "Joe, you have all the right instincts. If Goodwin didn't do it, you'll know it."

  "What makes you think I'm going to do this?" I asked.

  "What makes you think you won't?"

  Chapter Three

  From a small city of gray stone buildings you could walk across in ten minutes, Portland had grown into a maze of misshapen skyscrapers and interlocking freeways. The federal building and the county courthouse, once two of the most prominent structures in town, were now buried in the shadows of the surrounding office towers. For nearly a hundred years Portland had been a center of the timber trade. Lumber was one of the things the world could not live without, and the men who knew how to make money from it had left behind mansions that were monuments to their own bad taste and children educated in a way that made certain they would have neither the vices nor the virtues of their fathers. The sons of pirates became gentlemen, and the daughters of whores became ladies, and if there was a certain loss of raw energy in all this, it seemed a cheap enough price to pay.

  The first generation had been driven by the desire for wealth, and the second by a sense of honor; the third generation was not driven by anything at all. Other names were now better known, more familiar: the names of new founders, men, even women, who had come from nowhere, without money or connections but with that same narrow-minded determination to make their mark. Whether they had old money or new, everyone wanted to be invited to the Convention Center, to attend what Alma Woolner had managed to turn into one of the social events of the year.

  Built on the east side of the river, where there had once been nothing but warehouses and railroad yards and corner taverns for the men who worked there, the Convention Center was a fairly recent addition to the city, a green glass tribute to post-modernism with a flat three sided spire that shot straight up toward the heavens. The Cathedral of Notre Dame had taken a hundred and forty years to build as a tribute to an eternal God; this had taken less than two years to complete as a center of commerce. It was all a question of what you prayed to.

  The lobby was jammed with men in black tie and women dressed in everything from slinky black dresses to bright floor-length gowns. Taking a glass of champagne from the first waiter I passed, I made my way through the undulating crowd, searching for Horace. With my glass above my head, I gradually reached the other side and found him against the wall, proudly watching his wife.

  Barely touching the hands that reached out to her, Alma spoke to one person and then to another. Turning away from a wizened old lady wearing a beaded jacket over her stooped shoulders, she spotted me. She smiled at a stout, square-faced woman and moved past her. "I knew you'd come," she cried, placing her hands on my shoulders. She rose up on tiptoe to bestow a kiss on the side of my face.

  "Thank you," she whispered, as if I had done her some great favor. She let go and took my hand. "Look who I found," she announced, as she led me to her husband.

  Horace was waiting, his eyes exuberant with malice. "Have you met the Chief Justice?" he asked innocently.The balding middle-aged man next to him extended his hand. His tuxedo and the ruffled white shirt that went with it were both a size too large.

  "Jason Cornelius," Horace continued with cursory formality, "Joseph Antonelli."

  For an instant, his grip weakened and then, as if to compensate, grew even more firm than before.

  "Yes, yes, of course. Mr. Antonelli. I remember," he said, with a faint smile. Eager to avoid embarrassment, he had once recommended to me that Leopold Rifkin resign from the court when he was accused of murder. I had suggested in turn that a judicial system strong enough to survive Cornelius's own incompetence could certainly endure a false accusation brought against an innocent man. Like most politicians, Cornelius might never remember a promise, but it was not likely he had forgotten that exchange. Before he could say anything more, I turned to his wife and introduced myself.

  "Your husband and I both had the good fortune of counting among our friends the late Leopold Rifkin," I explained.

  She had no idea who I was talking about. "Rifkin?" she asked, glancing at her husband.

  "Yes, dear, Judge Rifkin. He died a year or so ago," he said. "It was all very sad, very sad indeed." And he patted her on the arm as he led her away.

  Leaning against the wall, his arms across his chest, Horace chuckled under his breath. "Well, you handled that with your usual charm."

  "What did you want me to do, tell the truth?"

  He laid his hand on my shoulder and looked past me, surveying the glistening faces of the crowd. "You never want to do that with someone like Cornelius," he said, so no one else could hear, "unless you really want him to think you're lying."

  The crowd around Alma Woolner shifted first one way and then the other, gradually moving her away from where we stood, until all we could see of her was the jet black hair that swept up from the slope of her neck. Horace never lost sight of her.

  "Alma looks wonderful," I remarked admiringly.

  "Alma always looks wonderful."

  "You're a lucky man, Horace."

  He turned to me. "You have no idea."

  And in an instant he started in on me. "Why don't you wander around? Maybe you'll find a really attractive woman just dying to spend her nights with a guy who likes to spend all of his in a library." He began to move away, working through the crowd, one eye on Alma, the other darting back to me. "Lot of possibilities here," he taunted, nodding his head and raising his eyebrows every time he passed anyone in a dress.

  "They're all taken!" I yelled over the din.

  He stopped and grinned broadly. "Not all of them!"

  "You didn't!" I called back.

  "See you inside!" he shouted, as he disappeared from view.

  I stopped the first waiter I found and exchanged my empty glass for a full one. Faces vaguely familiar slid by in the distance, but I felt no urge to draw closer. A young woman with laughing eyes glanced at me, and I remembered when that might have been the first beginnings of a new romance. I stared back at her for a moment, and then, looking away, moved on.

  At the announcement that it was time to enter the great hall where dinner was to be served, I left the crowd behind me and made my way along the glass-lined lobby to the rest room. Standing on the marble floor, staring at the tiled wall in front of me, I barely noticed when someone used the urinal next to me. As I zipped my fly, however, he spoke my name. I looked back and found myself caught in the gaze of a gray-eyed stranger, looking at me over his shoulder.

  "Yes," I replied, reaching down to turn on the faucet, "I'm Joseph Antonelli."

  "We've never really met," he explained, moving to the next basin. He turned off the faucet, wiped his hands on a paper towel, and waited while I did the same. "I'm Arthur O'Rourke," he said, as he shook my hand. The name meant nothing to me, but there was something impressive about him. Tall and thin, with a high forehead, deep-set intelligent eyes, and a narrow, sensitive mouth, he had the generous look of someone always willing to help.

  "I believe you know my wife," he said. "Gwendolyn." Arthur O'Rourke, twenty years her senior, was married to the DA.

  "Yes, of course," I said, wondering what she had told him about me as I let go of his hand.

  "I was surprised when I heard you'd retired," he remarked. "I know Gwendolyn was disappointed. She's always said you were a great lawyer."

  "It was kind of her to say so," I replied, as he held the door open for me.

  Walking down the hallway together, he asked me whether there was any chance I migh
t practice law again, quickly adding that it was not something he could ever have done.