The Judgment

by William J. Coughlin

  That enabled me to do a bit of constructive work on the case. I had listened a number of times to the interview I had tape-recorded with Mary Margaret Tucker. Well, I listened to it a couple of times more. Then I thought about what I heard from Conroy about the safe and its positioning in his office, and then I thought about the Mouse, as well. And in no time at all, I had postulated a theory of the crime.

  In a criminal case, the lawyer for each side, prosecution and defense, has a theory of the crime that he must try to sell to the jury. What have you got? A murder? A theft? The fact of a corpse or missing money is undeniable. But how the corpse got dead or the money went missing is, to some extent, a matter of theory and sometimes even conjecture. The prosecution’s theory of the crime has been, for the most part, determined by the police investigation that preceded it. The prosecution must try the case on what they’ve been given, but the defense, in offering its theory of the crime, has far more latitude—and that’s where conjecture often comes in. I have taken juries on some pretty wild journeys into what-if land. Yet they must have liked what I showed them, for more often than not, they accepted my theory and rejected that put forward by the prosecution.

  In the case at hand, however, no great leaps were necessary, nor suspension of disbelief. It was simply a basic knowledge of office customs and folkways that was required, and almost any member of any jury had that, certainly.

  This is how I had it figured:

  Mark Conroy had made it clear that even though Mary Margaret Tucker was not officially in possession of the combination to the safe that contained the W-91 Fund, it was certain from her remarks that she had easy access to the combination and may well have had it memorized. She had the requisite knowledge.

  She broke with Conroy in the third week of September, and left her employment as his secretary at 1300 Beaubien during the first week in October, so that she might begin classes at Wayne State.

  On her last day of employment, she would almost certainly have been taken to lunch by her office mates and presented with a gift, probably one in a good-sized box. I would check on this.

  Winding up office matters with Conroy in absentia would have meant writing notes, pulling files, and leaving them on his desk. All this and other matters as well would have meant making frequent trips in and out of his office. No one would have expected otherwise.

  On one of these trips to Conroy’s office, Ms. Tucker took with her the gift box, or perhaps just another large box with which she would have been expected to take home with her anything of a personal nature—pictures, letters, notes, everything that would have carried her imprint. She would then have opened the safe and emptied it, putting its contents in either the gift box, providing it was large enough, or the one intended for her personal effects.

  Either box would have served just as well in getting the money out past the guard in the lobby. He would have been as uninterested in the contents of one box as the other. Giving her a wave, he would have wished her good luck and urged her to come back and visit them sometime soon.

  What she would have done with the money after leaving the building, I couldn’t say. I don’t think she kept it. Although she was probably following Timmerman’s orders, she couldn’t have handed the prize over to him, for as late as my meeting with her at Wayne State, she still did not know what he looked like. That, I decided, was a loose end. I would have to work on that, as well as the extent and nature of the Mouse’s participation in the master plan. It was he, over a week later, who discovered the theft.

  You may not believe it, since all this may seem fairly obvious to you, but working my way through this bit by supportable bit took me the better part of the day. Yet what I had by the time I finished was considerable. I knew that even though there were holes to be filled and details to discover, my theory of the theft was reasonable and sound. I stood a good chance of selling it to a jury, almost any jury, and I could shape my whole defense to it.

  I called up Mark Conroy and asked him to come out the next day. I told him I had something to talk about that couldn’t be discussed on the phone.

  “Be at my office tomorrow morning by ten o’clock at the latest,” I said. “Be prepared to stay through lunch and afterward, if need be. We’ve got a lot to talk about and some decisions to make.”

  Then, without waiting for him to agree, object, or otherwise extend the conversation, I hung up on him. That made me feel good. He hadn’t, after all, been the most cooperative of clients. Let him feel a little of the frustration I had felt in dealing with him.

  It didn’t take me long to decide that I was probably being a little too tough on him. After all, if I’d been infected by the virus of pessimism myself and only a day ago had managed to shake it off, Mark Conroy must be suffering a severe attack right now. And why not? He knew as well as I that as far as I was concerned, if I lost the case, I simply lost the case—he, on the other hand, would go to jail.

  Then, near the end of the day, I got a telephone call that in a way surprised me even more profoundly than my talk with Conroy.

  “It’s that man, Tolliver,” Mrs. Fenton called in to me. “He’s been trying to reach you.”

  “Put him through, Mrs. Fenton.”

  I picked up the phone on my desk, and there he was.

  “Ah, Mr. Sloan!”

  “Charley, please!”

  “Okay then, Mr. Charley. I just called to tell you that I’m still workin’ real hard to find out where Ismail Carter might be.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say to that. Hadn’t it been through LeMoyne Tolliver that Ismail had reached me yesterday? I started to tell him that all that had been taken care of: Ismail and I were in contact, and a meeting had been arranged.

  But for some reason, I withheld that. I said simply that I appreciated his efforts on my behalf, more than appreciated them, for though I hoped to talk to him soon, I could wait for a while because the important thing was to come at Carter from the right direction.

  “Oh, I agree,” said Tolliver. “I agree, totally.”

  “Yeah, I thought you would. Didn’t you say that Ismail Carter got you your job as a policeman?”

  “He did, he sure did,”

  “Then you’re the one to approach him.”

  “Right. I’ll do what I can.”

  He said his good-bye then and left me wondering at these circumstances and my reaction to them. Why had I held back? Mark Conroy said he trusted LeMoyne Tolliver and had certainly shown his trust. Shouldn’t I trust him, too? But what was his point in calling me if he had nothing to report?

  One thing was plain. Ismail Carter was far more interested in talking to me than I had realized. He had sought me out just as I was seeking him. That meant he was willing to do more than listen. He really must have something to say.

  It was well before ten when Mark Conroy arrived at my office the next morning. I hadn’t been there long myself. The phone rang.

  “This is Sloan,” I growled into the receiver. “Are you just leaving?”

  “No, I’ve arrived. I’m downstairs in the car right now. Why don’t you come down?”

  “You still don’t trust my office—even after you had it swept clean?”

  Well, why not? I wasn’t entirely comfortable myself talking to Conroy there in the office. And it was too damned cold that morning to take another walk.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I said to him. “I have to do some organizing first.”

  It took me no more than five minutes—a phone call or two, a hurried conference with Mrs. Fenton—and I was downstairs, climbing into the passenger’s seat beside Conroy. He simply nodded and twisted the key in the starter. I assume the engine started, for a moment later we were in motion—yet I heard nothing.

  We were out on 1-94 before he said a word. He surprised me by turning in the direction of Port Huron, instead of Detroit. Our last, long conversation had taken rather a philosophical turn. He had revealed a good deal more of his personal history than I
had ever expected him to do. Perhaps he had it in mind to take me on a nostalgic tour of the town where he’d grown up. Well, if that was what I expected, I got a bit of a start when at last he did speak up.

  “I’m going to miss this car,” he said. “You can drive all day in it and never notice.”

  At first I didn’t grasp what he was getting at. “Are you going to sell it? Better wait until you get my bill.”

  “No reason to keep it. By the time I get out of Jackson, it’ll be an antique. They probably won’t even let gas-burning cars on the road in twenty-five years.”

  It was his relaxed manner that had confused me, a cop’s stoicism. It disguised more of that defeatist talk I’d heard from him yesterday.

  “You really seem to have made up your mind to lose this one,” I said to him.

  “It’s not tip to me, is it?”

  “I told you I have no intention of losing, but I can’t win it if you don’t want mé to. Look, Conroy, I’ve never had a client just quit on me. I’ve lost some, I admit it, but it wasn’t because I didn’t try, and it wasn’t because the client was indifferent.”

  “I’m not indifferent.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I just think they’ve got us—I mean, you and me—in a bind, a place that’s just too damned hard to get out of. You saw what happened Saturday night. I’ve run out of options.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” I said a bit immodestly. “Now listen to me,”

  And so he listened as I narrated the scenario I had devised the day before. I was mildly surprised when, at the interchange, he took Interstate 69 toward Flint; we went: cruising at about seventy, voyaging. It had been some time since I had been out in this direction, and I found myself looking once again at the passing, snow-dusted countryside as I talked to Conroy. Just look at it out there—fields plowed under, and stands, clumps, clusters, and whole orchards of trees, trees of all kinds. Even as I talked, it occurred to me that in spite of Henry Ford and Lee Iacocca, and all the rest of those giants of industry, this state of Michigan was, in its great expanses, long acres, and country miles, dedicated to agriculture, or to just plain wild growth. The assembly plants and parts warehouses would never win, not completely.

  It was a good day to go for a long drive like this one. The sun still slanted at the morning angle. The flocks of geese flew high above, south from Canada. I found myself pausing a few times in the course of the story I told to look up at the sky and out at the flat landscape of late fall.

  Mark Conroy did his part. He listened. It’s funny but sometimes, out there on the highway with your eyes fixed on the road ahead, you can put forth a keener sense of concentration than in a more conventional setting. I don’t think he looked at me once as I told this tale, which was about equal wild hypothesis and educated supposition. Yet he took it all in, examined its implications, and tested it with his developed instincts for discerning a story that sounds right and real.

  When I finished, he said nothing for a mile or so—not much time by the clock at the rate we were traveling—and seemed to be savoring the story, tasting it, trying it.

  “I think it works,” he said, still staring at the road ahead.

  “There may be some holes in it, but—”

  “Fewer than you think,” he put in.

  “Well, for instance, were you out of the office, or off the floor for any extended period on her last day there? Would she have had time enough to manage the sort of transfer we’re talking about?”

  “Would she?” He chuckled. “Sloan, I made it a point to be away the whole day she left. I didn’t want any contact at all with her. It seemed best for both of us that way. I was naive enough to think she might be throwing me soulful looks.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll tell you something else. Mary Margaret had a key to my office. She used it. People were used to seeing her go in and out. She had a daylong opportunity.”

  “What about a farewell party—a lunch?”

  “There was one for her. They took her to Greektown. I heard all about it from the Mouse the next day.”

  “Did she get going-away presents? One big one?”

  “Well, I contributed twenty bucks to something. But I don’t know the physical size, whatever it was. I’ll have to check on that.”

  “Do you think the Mouse was in on it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Could she have delivered the take to the Mouse once she got out the door?”

  “Sure.”

  “If it happened the way I’m suggesting it did, then it would have taken a lot of nerve on her part. Is she cool enough to pull off something like this?”

  “She has the reserves of cool you and I could only envy, Sloan.”

  “But why would she have agreed to it? Why would she have done it?”

  “Two reasons. Career insurance—she’s even more obsessed by her future, by getting ahead, than I was at her age.”

  “Okay, what’s the other reason?”

  “To get back at me.”

  I let that go for the time being. I’d met her twice, talked at length with her once. I couldn’t understand the reason for the animosity she seemed to feel toward Conroy, but there was no denying that it was there. For what, though? What had he done to her to inspire such desire for revenge?

  “Where are we headed, anyway?” I asked him.

  “We’re going to hang a left at Flint and take Twenty-three down to Ann Arbor. I know a good place for lunch right outside of town. We’re going to box the compass today, Sloan.”

  I was saddened to find Ismail Carter in a convalescent home. Maybe it was temporary, a period of recovery from who knew what sort of surgery or illness. But remembering his political history, which must have begun some time in the Thirties, I realized he now had to be in his middle to late seventies, at least. I supposed that I expected him to look just as he did then. But I knew he would not.

  The nursing home in question, the Parkview, lay out beyond Parker and UAW Headquarters and turned out to be, quite reasonably, at the corner of Parkview and Jefferson. Saturday traffic was light. Parking was easy. I left my car right on Jefferson no more than a half block beyond the nursing home and walked back to the entrance. It was a good-sized building in good repair and looked like it might have begun life many decades past as a hotel, or an apartment hotel. In any case, it looked a lot better than newer buildings around it.

  I started up the steps in a purposeful march, entered the building, and continued up another short flight of stairs to the reception office. It, too, was protected by a wall of bulletproof plastic like the one in that convenience store near Mary Margaret Tucker’s place, though a nursing home did seem an unlikely target for armed robbery. I walked right up to the transparent wall and spoke through the three holes that had been drilled through it.

  “I’d like to see one of your patients.”

  The young black girl on the other side of the wall smiled prettily and said, “We call them guests.”

  “Well, all right then, one of your guests—Mr. Ismail Carter.”

  “Just a moment, please. If you’ll wait at the door, I’ll summon the superintendent of his floor.”

  I did as directed, but the promised moment was more like a full five minutes. When she came, the floor superintendent was apologetic in a no-nonsense professional way. She buzzed me in and started off rapidly down the hall. I assumed I was to follow.

  “What sort of shape is he in?” I called out to her back.

  “Not bad, considering.”

  Considering what?

  “Can he talk? Can he see visitors?”

  “Oh, he likes visitors. You’ll see.”

  I had just about caught up with her when she stopped suddenly and gestured to an open doorway from which football sounds emanated.

  “Stay as long as you like,” she said. “Dinner isn’t until five-thirty.”

  I muttered a thank-you and went into the room. He’d been there a while, I could tell. Mementos and framed photos see
med to cover every surface of the stark, institutional furniture. There were a few books piled on the night table by the bed. Ismail was sitting in the Eames chair that was somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the room but seemed right for him. He sat in it comfortably, dressed in silk pajamas and a handsome terry-cloth robe, his slippered feet propped on the Eames ottoman. I knew it had to be Ismail Carter, but age had changed him, whitened his hair completely, shrunk him, thinned him, lined his face. I had a moment to look, for as I entered, he was facing away, concentrating on the football game. It was then that I also noticed the oxygen cylinder on the far side of the chair. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

  “Ismail?”

  He looked up alertly, frowned for a moment, and then broke into a smile.

  “Maybe I ought to come a little later,” I said. “You look pretty comfortable.”

  Age had changed his voice—or maybe it was something more than age. He spoke weakly, not much above a whisper. Ismail held out the remote tuner and zapped off the football game, then reached out to shake my hand.

  “Pull over that chair and sit down,” he said.

  I did as directed and took a place next to him.

  “It’s been a while,” I said.

  “Yes it has, but my, wasn’t that an occasion! The way you ran them up there to the witness box, it was just like the Miss Bronze America Pageant right in the courtroom, wasn’t it? Now, wasn’t it?”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “Man, I could pick ’em, couldn’t I?”

  “No doubt about that, either.”

  He began laughing. His laugh ended in a cough, and he reached over to the oxygen tank, took the mask off the top, and put it over his face. After taking a couple of deep hits, he returned the mask to the cylinder and switched off the valve. The way he went about it, I could tell it was all strictly routine for him. It helped, though. He sat up a little straighter, seemed perceptibly stronger.

  “Great stuff, oxygen, good for what ails you.” His voice was stronger, too.