Death Penalty

by William J. Coughlin

  “So, how’s it feel to be back in harness, Charley?”

  He talked as if we were old friends. We weren’t. He had been chief judge of the appellate court when I had clerked for Judge O’Dowd. Mallow had ignored me then. And he hadn’t shown any great interest later when I had appeared before appellate panels he had been on.

  Our only other contact had been at St. Benedict alumni meetings. Before I had disgraced myself, I had been quite active in support of the school. We had talked a few times then, or to be more accurate, I had listened.

  In any event, we were not buddies under any construction. I wondered what he wanted from me now. I presumed he was about to work me for some kind of financial contribution to a school activity.

  I sipped the metallic-tasting coffee and waited.

  He didn’t touch his coffee but studied me, as if he were about to pass sentence.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’ve been following your career since”—be paused—“since your suspension. Apparently you’re beginning to do quite well again.”

  It was time to poor-mouth a little in case this was leading into a serious solicitation for some St. Benedict cause. It would help keep the request on a reasonable dollar level.

  “I’ve had a few front-page cases lately, but financially there’s been more smoke than fire. I do all right. I support myself, but that’s about it.”

  He smiled as if he didn’t believe a word. “That chap, Doctor Death, must be paying you a pretty penny. He could end up in prison for life. He has money. I hope you’re getting your share, Charley.”

  “A good fee. It balances out some of the stuff that doesn’t pay or that I do for free.”

  “Free?”

  “It happens.”

  “I hear you have an extremely juicy product liability case coming up on appeal,” he said, studying his coffee but still not drinking.

  I nodded. “The damages are substantial. A young man paralyzed for life. The company’s liability is the big issue.”

  “What was the jury award, something around five million?”

  “Yes.” I wondered how he knew it was my case. My name wasn’t in the newspapers, only on the amended appearance filed as cocounsel.

  “I presume the fee is at least a third of the award?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled slowly. “Well, if you win, Charley, you’ll be a millionaire. Thinking about retirement, by any chance?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not my case. I’m just arguing the appeal. I’m being paid for that.”

  “I’m curious. How much?”

  I resented the question but I answered. “A percentage of the fee, if any. Twenty percent.”

  He nodded. I could see he was doing mental arithmetic. “Perhaps not enough to retire on, but substantial nevertheless.”

  “If we win.”

  The smile got wider. “Life’s little problems. Everything else going well?”

  I presumed he was asking if I was still off the stuff. “Yes.”

  “I’m proud of you, Charley. We all are.”

  “Thanks. How about you, Judge?” It was a delicate subject. He had been in the newspapers a lot, and none of it good.

  “A minor setback here and there. I left Brookins Stanley, as you probably know. The damned newspapers have treated it like some banana republic war. My former partners are suing me, but they’ll never win.”

  He made a wry face. “And I have that other suit against me, the one brought by the widow of that chap who worked for me up on my farm, the one who fell into the reaping machine. You’d think the reporters had nothing else to write about but me. That’s another lawsuit I have no fear of losing. The woman doesn’t stand a chance. The man caused his own death. The case should have been thrown out. And I think in time it will be. I don’t even own that accursed farm anymore.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  For the first time he sipped the coffee, almost as if trying to avoid answering. He looked at the cup. “God, but this stuff is awful. They must not clean that machine very often.” He pushed the cup away from him. “I was on my own for a while,” he said quietly. “Now I share offices with Thomas Slatmore. Do you know him?”

  I nodded. I did. Thomas Slatmore had an odious reputation, a lawyer who slithered into courtrooms. He had narrowly escaped indictments in several corruption scandals. I was surprised and I supposed it showed.

  “Thomas isn’t such a bad fellow,” he said. “Charming, actually, but the kind of man who seems to attract a bad press. We’re not partners, we just share an office. It’s working out quite well.”

  I wondered if that were really true.

  “Do you come back to the school often, Charley?”

  “Not usually. But I’m doing some research on that product liability case. I’m here on Thursday afternoons lately.”

  He stood up. “I’m frequently here myself. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”

  He didn’t offer his hand, but merely smiled down at me. “We talk of you often, Frank Palmer and myself. He’s quite interested in what you do.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I understand he’ll be on the panel assigned to your case.”

  Before I could comment, Mallow turned and walked briskly from the lounge.

  I wondered if getting Judge Palmer might be good or bad. But chiefly I wondered how Judge Jeffrey Mallow knew so much about the case.

  It occurred to me that he might be trying to muscle his way into the McHugh case, maybe even try to take over the whole thing.

  My coffee was almost cold, but I finished it anyway.

  It left a bad taste in my mouth.

  Like a lot of things.

  5

  His son had asked me to represent him, although over the phone fils did not sound overly enthusiastic about père.

  I went to the jail, and after the usual two-step with the bored guards—they love to practice officiousness whenever the chance presents itself—I was finally allowed to see my new client, albeit through glass and over microphones.

  I knew him. Everyone in Pickeral Point knew him.

  Without his wearing his usual uniform I hardly recognized him. His customary mode of dress consisted of a perfectly pressed dark suit, starched white shirt, and sensible tie. It was the uniform of a banker, which suited him perfectly, since that was his occupation.

  But now, as he sat across from me in the interview room, blinking at me from the other side of the glass, he didn’t look like a banker. The wrinkled white shirt was disheveled and stained. And, if he had been wearing one, his necktie had been confiscated. Despite everything he sat ramrod straight. In his sixties, a tall, heavy man, he looked as out of place as a hamburger in a vegetarian restaurant.

  His perfectly groomed gray hair was no longer perfectly groomed. Uncombed, it sprayed out from his skull like a mop that had accidentally encountered an electric socket, making him look like a white version of Don King.

  A one-day gray stubble frosted his fleshy jaw. His banker’s expression was the same, however: dignified and just a tad suspicious. But the usually cold eyes were different. They had that same shocked look that accident victims do upon awakening in an emergency room. There was some minor swelling under one eye, and his lower lip had been cut slightly.

  Vincent Villar was the vice president and chief loan officer of the Pickeral Point Bank, a small bank that had grown large holding mortgages on most of the homes and businesses in our river community.

  I had first met Vincent Villar when I had come up to Pickeral Point after getting my law license back. I had wanted a small loan, unsecured, since I owned nothing of value after my troubles. His mouth had been sympathetic but not his eyes. He had gently but firmly turned me down. I didn’t resent it. Given the circumstances then, I would have done the same thing if our positions had been reversed.

  Now, in a way, they were.

  “Your son asked me to represent you, Mr. Villar.”

  “I don’t wan
t a lawyer.” His was a no-nonsense voice that had turned down a thousand would-be borrowers. “I’m guilty, and I intend to plead that way.”

  “Indecent exposure is a misdemeanor, but sometimes things can be worked out. I’m not promising anything, but sometimes, with treatment, an arrangement can be made so that a conviction doesn’t even become part of the record.”

  “I know.”

  “Has this happened before to you?”

  “Yes.” The word was spoken with cold finality, as if closing the subject for all times. “I appreciate your coming here, Mr. Sloan. But I won’t be needing your services. Please send me a bill for your time.”

  “You’ll be going before the judge this morning, Mr. Villar. Obviously, things at that point become public. I don’t think you want that. Let me talk to the police and the prosecutor. Maybe I can work something out.”

  “No.”

  It was a simple, one-word sentence, ending the conversation. He got up stiffly, as if in pain, and the deputy escorted him back to the holding cells.

  One of the convenient things about Pickeral Point is that everything governmental is close by. For a lawyer that’s a nice perk. I walked over to the sheriff’s office and looked up Sue Gillis.

  She was on the phone when I got there, but she nodded a greeting and pointed toward a chair at the side of her desk.

  The phone call was obviously official; she was using her ministry-of-fear voice. It sounded incongruous coming from her cheerleader lips in her cheerleader face. Even her ponytail seemed suddenly businesslike. Her words were polite, there was a hard edge to her tone. Apparently a witness was a little reluctant to come and testify. When Detective Gillis finished, I got the impression that the reluctance was a thing of the past.

  She put down the phone and grinned at me. “We’re out early this morning, Charley? What’s up?”

  “Do you have Vincent Villar as a customer?”

  Her smile grew less broad. “Yes. Indecent exposure. I was about to go over to the court and introduce him to the justice system. Is he your client?”

  “That’s problematical. His son asked me to represent him. I went over to the jail to see him, but he says he doesn’t want a lawyer and is determined to plead guilty.”

  “Isn’t that sweet of him. If only there were more criminals like that, the world would be a better place.”

  “What’s his story, Sue?”

  “He’s guilty, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She giggled. “It sounds like something out of a farce but it’s all true enough. You know the Kerry County Park?”

  I nodded. Calling it a park was stretching things a bit. It was a vast weed-filled hunk of land with a few scruffy bushes and some rusty swing sets.

  She continued. “The complaining witnesses, two young ladies, were engaged in a twilight jog around the park when a man, later identified as your client, popped out of the bushes. He wore a shirt and a ski mask and nothing much else besides his shoes. He was, as we like to say in court, fully erect. He said nothing, just stood there and let his swollen appendage do the talking.

  “Unfortunately for Mr. Villar, the two young women, cute little things both, are gym teachers at our local high school. Also, between you and me, I think they have seen one or two of those things up close before. In any event, they were not frightened, and certainly they weren’t impressed. They jumped poor Mr. Villar and gave him what we in police work like to call a sound thrashing. They used his ski mask as a kind of impromptu handcuff and led him forth, sans pants, to the street, where they flagged down a passing scout car.”

  “And I presume they were outraged.”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I think they enjoyed striking a blow for aggressive feminism. Also, they are teachers, and a lot of kids use that excuse for a park. They don’t want him waving his dingus at children.”

  “It was probably just a one-time episode.”

  Sue Gillis smiled, but there was a sadness in it. “I’m afraid not, Charley. We’ve had reports about an exposer in the park before. Mr. Villar meets the descriptions. Ski mask, too. I think your man feels the need to wave that thing every few months or so.”

  “You know the type, Sue. Almost all exposers are the same. They’re not dangerous usually, just sick.”

  “I agree, but that doesn’t lessen the shock to some little girl skipping through the park, does it?”

  “Does he have a record?”

  “Nothing shows, but I talked to him. He says he’s been caught before. In Chicago. They let him go, providing he would agree to treatment.”

  “Did he get treatment?”

  “He says he did. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Anyway, he’s been quite active for the last several months, therapy or no therapy.”

  “If treatment helps, that’s what he needs, not jail.”

  One cute little eyebrow shot up. “Jail? Charley, c’mon. You know better. Since he has no record, the most he’ll get is a fine and probation. He doesn’t have to worry about jail, at least not this time.”

  “Jail is nothing compared to what will actually happen to him. He’s the town’s banker, Sue. A conviction will ruin him. He’ll be fired for starters. This is a small community. He won’t be able to go to the grocery without seeing the looks and hearing the whispers. He’ll have to move.”

  She smirked, but pleasantly. “What would you like, counselor? Shall we give him the ski mask back and provide him with a map of the local schools?”

  “How about just holding the charge in abeyance until he gets treatment?”

  “The schoolteachers may not like that, nor the judge.”

  “I’ll talk to the teachers, and the judge. If they don’t go along, that’s it. How about it?”

  “How do you define treatment, Charley?”

  “Hospital to start, then whatever the doctors think is right after that, okay?”

  “It’s not my decision.”

  “Let’s start with the complaining witnesses.”

  She sighed. “The world would be such a better place without lawyers.”

  “No it wouldn’t. It just seems that way.”

  “Come on, Charley,” she said as she got up. “Let’s see what you can do.”

  THE SCHOOLTEACHERS WERE EASY. I think they felt a little guilty about roughing up the portly old banker, pervert or not. In any event, they seemed relieved, even enthusiastic, about the proposed compromise.

  It was the judge who turned out to be trouble. The Honorable Thomas J. Mulhern had all the signs of a hangover. Not an unusual situation for him, but this one was apparently so bad he wanted the world somehow to share the pain.

  I liked Tommy Mulhern, as he did me, but I was talking to the hangover more than him, and things got tense.

  Finally, he agreed to put the case over for six months, but only on the provision that Villar get serious, intense treatment.

  It took a while to arrange that. I called my friend and fellow recovering drunk Robert J. Williams, M.D., a board certified psychiatrist, and explained the situation. Fortunately, Bob Williams is the chief of psychiatry at one of the local hospitals, and he used his muscle to arrange for Villar’s immediate admittance.

  I was doing just great as a problem solver, but the biggest problem turned out to be my reluctant client.

  VINCENT VILLAR STILL hadn’t yet combed his hair when he was released. He got all his property back, sans ski mask, and I escorted him out to the jail’s lobby where his son awaited him.

  The son, an accountant with a Detroit firm, was a carbon copy of his father, except his hair was dark and his waist thin. But the aloof expression was the same, and the eyes. In fact, the son’s eyes sparked with something deeper. Whether it was anger or hatred I couldn’t tell.

  “Do I go to court now?” Villar asked.

  “The case has been put over for six months,” I said. “The court wants you to be seen by doctors. If they feel you can be helped, the case will be d
ismissed.”

  The elder Villar’s head jerked up as if he had been hit. “I don’t want that! I want to plead guilty and get this over with once and for all.”

  “Mr. Sloan is doing what’s best for you,” his son said. The words were spoken from between clenched teeth.

  His father glared at him and then at me. “You have no right to interfere,” he rasped.

  “Your son and I are going to take you to the hospital now so the doctors can talk to you,” I said. “Believe me, this is the best way.”

  He jerked away from me, his eyes on the wild side. “No. I need to do what must be done.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” his son exploded, “haven’t you done enough? Ma’s back home crying her eyes out. What the holy hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Get away from me,” his father said, then headed for the door.

  The deputy who manned the glass cage looked down at me, silently inquiring if I needed help.

  I shook my head.

  I followed Villar out into the parking lot. His son was somewhere behind us.

  “I can understand how you feel,” I said, trying to catch up, “but in a few days you’ll be very glad . . .”

  He started to run. At first it seemed funny, this grayhaired fat man dodging between parked cars, running awkwardly but surprisingly fast.

  I started after him and I heard his son’s disgusted shout.

  A woman pulling out in her Mazda blocked my pursuit for a moment while Villar seemed to pick up speed flying through the rows of parked cars like racelines. I felt foolish trying to catch him and I suppose I really hadn’t committed myself to an all-out run. I wasn’t exactly the picture of athletic grace myself.

  Then I saw where he was headed.

  My legs, unaccustomed to such exercise, began to feel leaden. I looked around. Villar’s son was far behind, running but not fast.

  It was like a nightmare. Suddenly I realized what Villar intended to do, and there was no way I could stop him.

  Traffic wasn’t supposed to move fast on River Street, the main artery of the town, but everyone usually ignored the twenty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit, at least during the workday. Cars and trucks were whizzing by at forty or better.