Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "Be a criminal defense attorney?" I asked.

  "Oh, no. Be an attorney of any kind. I could never imagine having to stand up in a courtroom," he said. "Gwendolyn seems to thrive on it. I really admire that about her."

  He spoke quietly, carried himself with an easy elegance, and had the sensibilities of someone who flinches at the utterance of a harsh word."Do you think you might practice law again?" he asked, as we entered the dining hall.

  "I'm thinking about it."

  He stopped and turned to me. "You should," he said, quite serious. "I always wished there was something I could do really well," he went on, a trace of regret in his voice.

  We said good-bye, but before I began the search for my own table, I watched him work his way toward his, an unhurried journey interrupted by acquaintances and well-wishers. I saw his wife in the distance, moving purposefully from table to table, fastening her glittering gaze on each person whose hand she shook, making a deliberate circuit of the room. There were six hundred people here, and I was certain that before coffee was served Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke would convince each of them that he or she was the only one she really wanted to see.

  In the center of the hall, surrounded by dozens of round tables for ten, was a long, narrow, rectangular table where I found Horace and Alma. I took the empty chair in front of my name card between Alma and a woman whose smile seemed uncertain about the difference between cynicism and disdain. Though she was at least seventy, it was not difficult to imagine that she had once been very beautiful and cruel.

  "Joseph, let me introduce Madame Natasha Krupskaya, the prima ballerina who has graciously consented to spend the season as adviser to our company."

  To my surprise, Alma spoke to her guest in Russian. Madame Krupskaya nodded and, looking up at me, said in slow, halting English, "How do you do?" Turning back to Alma, she laughed and said something in Russian, something that, from the intonation and the gesture she made with her eyes, sounded very much like a question. Alma answered briefly.

  Bending close to me, she whispered, "She asked how many ballerinas you've slept with."

  I shot a glance at the aging dancer, quite prepared to believe that her own list of lovers would make a volume of innumerable chapters. She ignored me.

  "And you said?"

  Alma looked at me, her round eyes open wide. "All of them."

  Most of the elegantly dressed men and women at the center table were members of the ballet company's board of directors, elected neither because of their capacity for sound advice nor their knowledge of the arts, but because they had money to spend and had been convinced this was a good way to spend it. Old or new, money was always welcome.

  Alma shoved her chair back and I started to get up. "No, I'll just be a minute." In a seamless motion, she was on her feet and moving toward the stage at the front of the hall.

  "And just how many ballerinas have you slept with?" I asked under my breath.

  Raising her head, Natasha Krupskaya studied me. "Do you think love should be bounded by convention, Mr. Antonelli?" she asked, in perfect English.

  When Alma reached the stage and began to speak, everyone stopped what they were doing. She spoke for less than a minute, offering words of welcome and an amused warning that after dinner no one would be allowed to leave until the speeches had been given. That was all, but the soothing effect of her voice was so pronounced that she was already off the stage, on her way back to the table, before people resumed their conversations.

  "You should have been a lawyer," I said, when she sat down next to me. "Juries would have done whatever you wanted them to do."

  "Are you accusing my wife of duplicity?" Horace laughed.

  "No. I'm accusing her of charm."

  Alma's black eyes glowed. "Is there a difference?"

  "Duplicity becomes charm when you are so attracted by the effect you don't care about the cause."

  I looked up. Russell Gray, the chairman of the board, was sitting directly across from Alma. In his early forties, twice divorced, he represented some of the oldest money in town. He had long, expressive fingers, the hands of a musician, and fine, delicate features suggesting the kind of ambiguous sexuality that can antagonize men and attract women. His voice was a tremulous whisper, like someone short of breath, and whenever he said something he thought especially interesting, he would tilt his head coquettishly to the side, his eyes still on you.

  "Lawyers are duplicitous," he went on, resting his elbows on the white tablecloth and spreading open his hands. "Artists are charming. Alma is an artist."

  When she demurred, Gray reminded her that she had been a member of the New York City Ballet.

  "Yes, but only for two years."

  "Why only two years?" someone asked.

  "She met me," Horace explained.

  "By far the best thing that could have happened to her," Gray remarked, with a languid wave of his hand.

  I was caught off guard by the generosity of the sentiment. He saw the look of surprise on my face."Don't you think so, Mr. Antonelli?" Leaning back, he crossed one arm across his chest and pressed his finger against his lip. There was a brief glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes.

  "Best thing that could have happened to both of them," I replied.

  Perhaps because he found it embarrassing, Horace changed the subject. "I just want everyone to know that Alma isn't the only one with a serious interest in the arts. When I was a kid I wanted to be an actor. That is, I wanted to be an actor until I found out that they always wanted me to play the same role. I was a little militant in those days," he added, as an aside. "I told them: Iago or nothing!"

  "But Othello is one of the greatest roles of all time," Gray protested, laughing amicably.

  "Not the way I saw it. He should have figured out what was going on."

  "That would not have been much of a tragedy," Gray replied.

  "No, but it would have been a lot closer to justice, and maybe that would have been a better lesson."

  "Maybe," Gray conceded, "but it wouldn't have been better art."

  "You mean, not as charming?"

  "Yes, in a way."

  "Then, more duplicitous?" Horace asked, pressing the point.

  Shrugging his thin shoulders, Gray replied, "I don't really know."

  Alma had barely touched her salad and had ignored her entree. Exchanging a glance, she and Gray were on their feet.

  "I'm afraid I have to borrow your wife," Gray remarked, walking around the table to take Alma by the hand.

  Horace and I watched as they moved from table to table, visiting briefly with everyone who had paid for the privilege of being there.

  "What do you think of him?" Horace asked.

  "He's all right," I replied indifferently. "Why?"

  "No reason. He treats Alma well. I just have a problem with people who never had to work for anything." He shook his head as if to clear his mind. "Doesn't matter. Tell me," he said, his arm over the back of Alma's empty chair, "what did you decide? You want to do this thing?"

  Across the dimly lit hall, I noticed Gilliland-O'Rourke, standing relaxed at a table. Draping my arm over the top of Horace's, I pulled my knee up onto the empty chair between us.

  "Did you know she was going to be here?"

  "Tell you the truth, I never really thought about it. Everybody is here. Why?"

  "I ran into her husband. In the men's room, right after I left you in the lobby."

  Horace looked out over the packed dining room. "And I ran into Marshall Goodwin."

  "It must be strange," I said, "talking to someone who doesn't know that you know things about him."

  Horace nodded. "When you're a prosecutor you get to learn all sorts of things about people. You have any idea how many people have allegations made about them? You got to see the police reports about your clients, people formally charged with doing something; I got to see the reports that were made when there wasn't enough evidence to bring charges.

  "Listen," he said, h
is eyes searching the room, "some of the best-known people here tonight, including a couple of our finer members of the judiciary, have police reports written about them that they know nothing about."

  Removing my arm, I raised my knee and wrapped both hands around it. "Without more evidence, that's exactly what could happen to the file I just read."

  His hand engulfed my knee. "This isn't just another murder case," he told me, grimly defiant. "You see Gilliland-O'Rourke working the room? She's going to run for governor. This guy is going to become the next DA. I know you have to be sure in your own mind. I want you to be sure. But remember something. This isn't one of those cases where you can just decide that maybe he didn't do it. If there is any credible evidence at all, you take it to trial. If he isn't guilty, let a jury decide. At some point, you have to trust the system."

  He looked at me for a moment. "I always did." Then, trying not to laugh, he added, "Except maybe when you were the defense attorney."

  Chapter Four

  The first time I went there, I had to force myself to climb the steps at the entrance of the state prison. When you visit a client in a county jail, you can get in and out in a matter of minutes; once you disappear inside the high stone walls of the state penitentiary, you wonder whether you will ever get out at all.

  Under the watchful eye of a young female guard dressed in regulation gabardine slacks and crisp white short-sleeved shirt, I signed the visitor's log. In the small waiting area, several women, along with a couple of children, stood listlessly biding their time. On an orange plastic sofa with seats so low her knees were nearly as high as her shoulders, a bored-looking woman in her late thirties sat reading a book and chewing gum. She looked like a regular, one of the wives or girlfriends who moved to cheap apartments in Salem so they could visit their men, twice a day during visiting hours. The moment it was one o'clock, she pushed herself up and, her eyes still on the open page, walked slowly toward the bank of lockers on the far wall. After she put both the book and her tattered leather purse inside a locker, she got into the short line that had begun to form.

  Holding my briefcase with both hands in front of me, I stood in line, gazing down at the linoleum littered with black scuff marks, waiting my turn to pass through security. The woman who had been reading passed through the metal detector and was stopped. She had to get rid of the gum. A large black woman set off the alarm and stood to the side, removing her earrings.

  I handed my briefcase to the guard. While he inspected the contents, I began to take off my shoes. Dress shoes have a thin metal plate inside the sole, and while you can wear them through any airport detector in the world, they never get through the sensitive system used in maximum security prisons. My shoes, keys, fountain pen, and pocket change were handed over. I had forgotten about my belt, and as soon as the buzzer sounded, I reached down, unfastened it, and handed it over as well. In stocking feet, I passed successfully through the narrow wooden archway and was given back my belongings. I put on my belt and shoes.

  When everyone had cleared security, a guard led us down a brown carpeted ramp, past a barred window with a view of two wooden picnic tables in a green grass enclosure surrounded by the high walls of the prison and, in the distance, the glass windows of a guard tower. At the bottom, we waited for a cell door to slide open. Far ahead of us, blue-shirted inmates were going about their business, the same way that people move about in the courtyard of a mall.

  After only a few steps we stopped again while the guard inserted a heavy metal key into a steel door and ushered us into a rectangular room buried halfway in the ground. Vending machines lined the far wall. On a raised platform next to the rest room, a uniformed officer sat at a wooden desk, his eyes roving up and down the long rows of facing plastic chairs, guarding against illegal narcotics and attempts at illicit contact. When I gave him my name, he picked up a black dialless phone and reported my arrival.

  A short distance away, the woman who had been reading a book, the one I was certain was a regular, was sitting across from an inmate with a crooked nose, sandy colored hair, and the faded look of someone who had been inside for a very long time. There was nothing romantic about the way they looked at each other; they resembled a married couple you might see sitting somewhere on a park bench, content in each other's company. But an hour from now, instead of walking home together, he would go back to his cell and she to her dumpy little apartment. They would eat their separate dinners, and then the phone would ring—the collect call she got every night—and on a recorded line they would gradually get around to the soft obscenities that were as close as they would ever get to intimacy. It might go on like this for years, until he was finally released and, after a few short weeks, passion spent, they discovered that nothing was the way they had always thought it would be.

  The air was heavy with sweat and tobacco. When I reminded the guard I was still there, he lifted the receiver and grunted something into it, his eyes moving steadily from one chair to the next.

  For a long time I stared at the clock on the wall high above the guard's desk, convinced it was broken, until, unaccountably, the long hand jolted forward and a minute had apparently passed.

  "Mr. Antonelli," the guard was saying. Swinging his legs out from behind the desk, he rested his elbows on his knees. "I'm sorry, but he isn't here."

  "What do you mean, he isn't here?" I demanded.

  He shook his head. "They should have told you out front. He's over in maximum security." It was not his fault.

  "You mean," I grumbled, "I have to go all the way back out and then in again?"

  "Yeah, afraid so." He picked up the phone again. "I'll get you out of here right away."

  I left the concrete labyrinth the same way I had come. The sound of the steel gate closing behind me still jarred on my ears as I opened the glass door in front and hustled down the cement steps to the pavement below. I drove around to the back and went through the same routine as before, but by myself this time. Only people on official business came to this entrance; no one else was allowed inside. Then the guard led me along a short wide corridor toward a series of open solid doors that led into glass-partitioned visitation booths.

  "No," I said, stopping. "Not in there. I sent word I wanted him someplace where I could talk to him face to face."

  "That's face-to-face," he objected. It was the first time he had spoken. His voice, a high-pitched whine, seemed oddly out of place.

  I was not in a mood to explain myself, and now that I was not acting as a defense attorney, I did not have to. "Put him in a room with a table and chairs."

  "You sure?" he asked, the corner of his mouth twisted down. "I wouldn't want to be alone with that guy."

  "I'll be all right," I assured him, while he searched through his key ring for the one that opened a solid door a few steps behind us.

  Removing a legal pad from my briefcase, I placed it on the table in front of me and scribbled the date in the upper left corner. Then, with nothing else to do, I tapped the pen in a slow, monotonous beat, the sound of it the only tangible proof that time had not come to a complete and final stop.

  Through a door on the other side of the room I heard the muffled sound of voices, and then a metal key twisted in the lock. Travis Quentin was shoved into the room. His wrists were handcuffed behind him, and his ankles shackled together. Wrapped twice around his waist, a bulky chain hung between his wrists and down to his ankles and back again, pulling his shoulders back and thrusting his chest forward. He was held up by two guards, one on each arm. They sat him in the chair on the other side of the table.

  He looked at me for just a moment, a scowl on his thick, puffy mouth, and then snapped his head toward one of the guards.