False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  There were tears sliding down Alan Greco’s drawn cheeks, spilling over from his black, long-lashed, sad eyes. I reached across the table and held his hand.

  “And you see,” he whispered thickly, “worst of all, do you see what he’s done to her? He’s made her nightmare come true: he’s publicized the ‘real Sanderalee.’ Those ... those pictures, all over the world, showing her, with her face all destroyed. My God, Lynne, he’s shown the whole world her secret image of herself. There has got to be a special place in hell for Regg Morris, for what he’s done to ...”

  Alan buried his face in his hands and tried to stifle a sob. I dug out a handful of tissues and he blew his nose and swabbed his face and took a swallow of water, then nodded. Okay. Under control.

  It was my turn to face some hard and ugly truths.

  “Alan, after you talked to her on Monday afternoon, after you convinced her to have the surgery, God knows how ... your love must be so special and strong ... then you went directly to your apartment and typed up this first statement?” I touched the first batch of papers and he nodded. My mouth went cotton dry; the words actually had a sour, ugly taste. “And then you went over it, and added to it, and retyped it? And then you took both copies of your conversation with Sanderalee and ... ?”

  Alan Greco nodded reluctantly. Now he was holding my hand; his grip was crushing but no more crushing than the reality of the situation.

  On Monday night, three days before I went to the Grand Jury and made my case against Dr. David Cohen for rape, sodomy and the variety of assault charges, Alan Greco had given Bobby Jones the full statement, the retraction, made by Sanderalee Dawson prior to the emergency surgery on her hand.

  My name, District Attorney Jameson Whitney Hale had assured me, would be forever linked in the public’s mind with the prosecution of Dr. David Cohen. Or did he say persecution?

  Now the tears were sliding down my cheeks and Alan was handing me tissues.

  CHAPTER 39

  IT DID NOT SEEM possible that one day could be so long, could include so many various events. Jhavi was at my door the moment he heard me come home. He wanted to be sure I had enough copies of the New York Post and the Daily News: front-page stuff, Lynne. I have enough. Thank you and goodnight.

  LADY D.A. BAGS SANDERA’S M.D. ATTACKER. That was the late Friday-night-edition headline of the Post. Beneath the headline, there I was, indeed a lady D.A., surrounded by all the many males of my Squad, flanked by the Chief of Detectives and by the District Attorney, both of whom were turned toward me as though I were about to speak words of the most profound wisdom. I looked very earnest and professional as I tried to make sense out of about six questions being screamed in my direction at the same time. You could catch my response on the eleven o’clock news in case you missed the six o’clock edition.

  GAL D.A. BUSTS TV GAL’S DOC. Stacks of the early Saturday-morning edition of the News were already on the stands. Some photographer had caught me in what looked like a sneer. God knows what particular word I had been saying, but my upper lip was pulled sideways and directly underneath my picture, the copy said I was “sneering at how clever Dr. Cohen thought he was.” I shared the front-page photo space with Sanderalee—an old Alan Greco photo. At her very best, at her most beautiful. Inside on page three were Regg Morris’s pictures, the ones that would haunt her all her life.

  I locked the door, dumped the newspapers on the floor. Headlines. Well, Jameson was right all right. A headline case. Lots of publicity. They’ll sure know who Lynne Jacobi is. Jameson said something about an editorial in a later edition of the News.

  I flipped the switch on my telephone answering machine. The voice of a stranger, cool, professional, midwestern and polite, informed me, “Lynne, it’s eight o’clock now. Would you please call me as soon as you get in? It’s very important that we talk.”

  Is it indeed very important that we talk, Bobby Jones? What shall we talk about? Shall we discuss Regg Morris’s connection with the Arabs? land deals? wheeling and dealing on an international level? Are these the things you want to clear up with me? Or what, Bobby dear?

  I took a long hot shower: let the water steam over me, let my hair stick to my face, let the back of my neck be drilled by the concentrated pressure of the needle setting on my shower head. I wrapped myself up in a huge thick terrycloth robe, enveloped myself, hid myself.

  I slumped on the couch and tried to coordinate my breathing with Jake Jacobi’s breathing: he had sensed I was too totally wiped out to push/shove/command/beg him to get off my stomach. I tried not to inhale when he exhaled through his slightly opened mouth because he had rotten cat breath. He settled down, a huge dead weight. Slowly, he began to happy-foot into my shoulder, gently, just the merest touch of his needle claws getting through the thick toweling into my flesh, as though to distract me from my thoughts. Finally, he dug a little too hard and I gathered my strength and shoved the obese, spoiled, one-eyed cat to the floor. He let out a pitiful cry: the sound of an abandoned infant. Then he jumped back on top of me and settled down immediately into a deep, snoring sleep.

  Absently, I began to rub and pet and scratch and caress his head, his neck. The purring was so loud and the sound on the television was so low, I could scarcely hear what they were saying on the Tonight show. I was remembering my own appearance on the TV news.

  The first conference, before noon, was when we announced the indictment and impending arrest of Dr. David Cohen. It was orderly, controlled and professional. Jameson Whitney Hale had placed me fully front and center and he deferred to me at every opportunity.

  But later, after the arraignment, after the courtroom disaster for the Cohen family, I was interviewed by a jostling, shoving, insistent mob of media people: how did I feel about Dr. Cohen’s father’s death by heart attack right in the courtroom? about the revelation that Dr. Cohen’s brother, the nuclear engineer, was an epileptic and might have blown us all to kingdom come? about his mother’s obvious target—me—of her “for all time damnation” curse for the destruction of her family.

  I ignored the first questions: for God’s sake, how does one feel when an elderly man drops dead of a heart attack at the foot of his semi-paralyzed wife’s wheelchair?

  I was at a final point of exhaustion, mixed with exhilaration and accomplishment. Had someone been with me, perhaps they would have had the wisdom to clamp a hand over my mouth and escort me from these insistent newsmen.

  I made a joke about Mrs. Cohen’s curse: her damnation for all time.

  “Hey, listen,” I told a delighted audience, “when I worked in Frauds years ago, my main function was to prosecute gypsies. You want to hear a curse to make your hair stand up straight, you get a gypsy mad at you. Somewhere out there are about fifteen Lynne dolls with pins stuck all over them. Every time I burn my tongue on hot coffee or break a nail, some gypsy curse has been reactivated. So I think I’ll survive Mrs. Cohen’s.”

  At the time, my remarks seemed funny. Even as I had watched the interview on the late news, it sounded funny. Not clever, not too smart, but yes, funny. Everyone present at the news conference laughed.

  However, this particular off-the-cuff interview ended with a close-up of Mrs. Cohen’s frozen, stricken, semi-paralyzed, anguished face as she was being quickly wheeled from the courtroom scene of her husband’s death and, as she put it, the destruction of her family. The clever television technicians had used my wise-guy reference to gypsy curses as voice-over to a freeze-frame closeup of the shattered Mrs. Cohen, mother of the family Cohen.

  Go for the laugh, Lynne. In court, when you sense the need for humor, take a chance. When you know the laugh will turn the jury toward you; infuriate the opposition; devastate a hostile witness. But for God’s sake, Lynne, don’t go for the laugh at the expense of a semi-paralyzed, newly widowed mother of two sons in desperate trouble.

  Now I knew what “final cut meant.

  I rubbed Jake Jacobi’s chin and thought of Bobby Jones. Incredible golden boy; my delay
ed fantasy, fulfilled and now finished. Destroyed. Along with me; along with everything I’ve worked for for the last fourteen years. How could you have betrayed me like this? destroyed me like this? brought my career, my world down around my head like this?

  In a way, of course, I did understand. Another of my marvelous if somewhat bizarre virtues: an ability to understand all sides of a situation. I had told him he was not very good at his job; that Lucy would have been far better. That Lucy was in fact slated for promotion when I was elected District Attorney; that he should look into a new career entirely. He had continued his own investigation. I knew from the very beginning that he doubted David Cohen’s guilt. But his reasoning had been so naive: so stereotyped, ass-backwards discriminatory. Jews don’t do that kind of thing.

  He had continued his investigation, suppressing the new information he had uncovered. He had let me go for the headline indictment. My name would indeed be forever linked to the Dr. David Cohen and family tragedy: the father’s falling dead at the paralyzed feet of the invalid mother; the publicly exposed brother; the wrongly indicted principal in the case. And my wisecrack response to the oracle-like curse whispered by the newly bereaved widow would live on as a famous example of the foot-in-the-mouth.

  Bobby had let all of that happen. He had waited. He could have stopped it, three full days before the indictment. That part I could not understand.

  The phone rang as the Tonight show was ending. I picked it up on the second ring and said “Yes, Bobby” before he even spoke.

  “Lynne, can I see you tomorrow? I have some important information to discuss with you.”

  “Really? I can’t imagine what that might be.”

  “Lynne, what I’ve got for you is the real culprit. The man who actually did attack Sanderalee Dawson. A man named Jim McDonald.”

  “Oh?”

  He went on; his voice was steady, calm, Nebraska-slow and flat. “Lynne, may I come over tomorrow evening? At around seven, would that be convenient?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Lynne, I’ll explain everything when I see you tomorrow night. Everything. We’ll work it out. You’ll see. Is seven o’clock good for you?”

  “Seven o’clock is wonderful for me, Bobby. Thank you for being so considerate.”

  I hung up. What can you say to someone who’s betrayed you? When you still love him. Damn it.

  I stared at Tom Snyder, who was waving his arms around and glaring at his guest. Whatever his problem, it had him quite agitated. I stared without seeing; I listened without hearing. Finally, the elusive thought I had been trying to catch all night solidified.

  I had been a better teacher than I had realized. Michael Bobby Jones did indeed have the ruthlessness necessary for a good prosecutor.

  CHAPTER 40

  AFTER A SLEEPLESS FRIDAY night, I took the E train out to Queens early Saturday morning to visit Lucy, who was in St. John’s Hospital.

  I followed the usual good-for-nothing advice: I rode in the car with the conductor. I deliberately looked so menacing that prospective muggers and troublemakers of all kinds steered clear of me. Even the conductor glanced at me warily from time to time.

  I was dressed like a Nazi and looked mean and vicious in my smart black leather pants and matching jacket. My hands were jammed into my slash zipper pockets as if I could produce a gun or a knife in a moment, given the slightest provocation. Beneath my dark glasses, through which I had a little trouble seeing in the dim subway light, I surveyed a hostile world backing off. Saturday mornings were getting a bad reputation underground and the last thing I needed was to get involved with some joker who wanted to wrestle my shoulder bag from my arm.

  I was as relieved as everyone else when the train pulled into my station and I headed for the street. I had a little trouble getting a taxi until I took off my hat, fluffed up my hair, tied a bright kerchief around my head, took off my dark glasses, put on a smile and waved hopefully at some lumpish-looking driver who reluctantly agreed, as though doing me a personal favor, to drive me to St. John’s.

  I am of the generation of women who were raised not to trust “girls”; not to confide in them too much, not to put too much faith in their intelligence, reliability, integrity; to remember at all times that they are always and forever potential rivals for a rare place in the man’s world. If I insisted on revealing my intelligence, it should be only to a secure and influential man in a position to realize that Lynne’s all right; she thinks like a man. This is what I will forever hold against men in general: that they have carefully selected out and inculcated intelligent women with a sense of specialness: you’re not like the other girls. Damn, for a woman, you sure are bright as hell.

  Lucy, because of her own particular background and life, had come to respect, love, trust, admire and expect a high degree of performance and ability from women per se many years before I had learned how to do so. She had become my best friend; in a way, my teacher, my confidante, my strength in moments of stress and disaster.

  I took a long look at Lucy Capella, who appeared to be enjoying a pleasant dream. Her leg was strung up inside a stiff white plaster cast; her arm rested heavily over her body in a similar cast. As soon as I realized the other bed in the room was empty, that we were alone, I burst out crying. Not softly; not in controlled, contained whimpers. I just leaned against the door I had closed behind me, looked at Lucy and cried.

  Lucy’s eyes snapped open, her head came up, her expression was startled. “Lynne. Good heavens, Lynne, come on. It’s not that bad. All this rigging and roping is just for dramatic effect, honestly.”

  I came to the side of the bed, leaned over, kissed her forehead, grabbed her good hand and confessed.

  “Oh, Lucy, I’m not crying for you. I’m crying for me. You, for God’s sake, you’ll be fine. You’re tough and strong and you have total absolute faith and confidence ... Lucy, my whole life has just gone right down the drain. My whole future has just disappeared right before my very eyes.”

  “Well, in that case, I think you’d better flop down in the other bed or pull over a chair or take a drink of water and settle down to tell me all about it.”

  We talked. I talked for nearly an hour; about my great lost future as the first woman District Attorney of New York County; of the fact that Jameson Whitney Hale had said my name would be forever linked in the public’s memory with that of Dr. David Cohen.

  Lucy’s dark eyes studied the ceiling thoughtfully. She pulled herself up a little and began asking key questions.

  “What exactly do you think Bobby Jones has? Actually?”

  “I think ... that he has the actual culprit who attacked Sanderalee. Beat her up, hacked her hand off. The sex stuff, oh God, Lucy, that damn old male cliché: ‘She asked for it.’ In this particular case, she did. Quite literally.” I told Lucy everything that Alan Greco had revealed about Sanderalee’s background. “She’s been searching for her murderer, and now she’s come as close as possible to finding him without being dead.”

  “Has Bobby told you any specifics yet? About what he’s got?”

  “No. But Lucy, he’s been in and out to see Sanderalee. I checked the hospital sign-in sheet. Whatever he’s come up with, she must have verified. She’s backed off David Cohen entirely. God, if she’d admitted the pickup and that the sex was voluntary on her part, but it was still David Cohen, we’d drop the rape and sodomy charges and still have a good case for assault, attempted murder and dismemberment. But she told Alan Greco she wasn’t sure any more about David; doubted it very much, in fact. From the sound of Bobby’s voice, from what he’s said, I feel that he’s shown her pictures of this ... McDonald. That the identification is strong enough to go with.”

  “Why, Lynne? Why did he do this? Why didn’t Bobby stop you before you went for the indictment?”

  “Because I told him ... because we discussed ... the future. He learned about Jameson’s plan to appoint me as D.A. when he announces for the Senate.” Lucy’s eyebrows sho
t up; she didn’t know about this yet. I filled her in. “Bobby got this from that Glori-TV documentarian. I told him the truth: that he didn’t have what it takes to be a top prosecutor; that you were a better investigator. That his future was somewhat limited within the service of the District Attorney’s office. That he should start exploring other areas of the law. I wounded him—his ego; his pride; his macho image—when I said he didn’t have the killer instinct. I said he lacked the instinct.”

  “Like you and I have.”

  “Like you and I have. I sure was wrong about that, wasn’t I? My jugular has just about been ripped open.”

  “Bobby’s timing, Lynne. Good grief, his timing. He actually let you go before the Grand Jury and get the indictment and all the ensuing publicity while withholding Sanderalee’s statement from you. Was he that wounded by you? Is he that vengeful?”

  For the first time, I said aloud what I had been thinking. “Not by himself; I think he’s been taking ‘getting ahead’ lessons. From some very self-interested, self-assured, manipulative little ... I don’t want to go into this just now, Lucy. I have to think about this for a while. It’s ... personal.”

  Lucy nodded. Okay.

  “Now, what I want you to tell me: could I throw him to the wolves for this? Bring him up on charges? obstruction of justice by withholding vital information? If it isn’t a criminal matter, is it a Bar Association matter?”

  Lucy studied me with her dark and serious eyes. Calmly, rationally, slowly and with great care and consideration, she said, “No, Lynne. Not at this point. Actually, Sanderalee Dawson told Alan Greco a new story about the attack. And Alan Greco told Bobby Jones and Bobby Jones didn’t tell you. Because ... let’s play defense attorney for him for the moment: because he needed time to check it out. In the meantime, you went ahead with your presentation to the Grand Jury in perfectly good faith and, based on your presentation, they indicted. So you’re covered. And actually, so is Bobby. In a way. He had no reason to either believe or disbelieve Sanderalee’s new story; so he undertook an independent investigation. Let’s look at the brightest possible side of the situation.”