VC04 - Jury Double

by Edward Stewart

  “Okay,” he said. “Prosecute Lyle for blowing up eighty-five men, women, and children. And leave him out of the Briar case.”

  “Don’t you think we would if we could? But Corey Lyle’s M.O. is to use his followers as human bombs—even the children.” She threw another folder down. FINDINGS OF THE WHITE PLAINS SELECT COMMITTEE. CONFIDENTIAL. And another, SENATE WHITE PLAINS HEARINGS: TESTIMONY. “The accomplices die with the victims, and there’s never enough evidence to prosecute. Till now.” Cardozo pushed the folders away. “It’s a lousy idea. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lousier idea. You haven’t got the evidence to tie Lyle into the Briar killings. And Mickey could wind up walking.”

  Tess sat regarding him with quiet, steady eyes. She swiveled to the P.C. Her fingers tapped faintly on the keyboard. A file came up on the monitor. “I see our friend Gregory Emmanuel Monteleone has a little drinking problem.”

  “He’s over that now.”

  “Does his wife know about his girlfriends?”

  Cardozo leapt up. “What the hell are you reading?” He squinted at the screen and recognized an Internal Affairs report from three years ago. “That’s privileged. How did you get it?”

  Tess’s face was suddenly blank, closed like a desk drawer. She lifted the phone and tapped in a number. “Pete Corigliano, please. Tess diAngeli calling.”

  Corigliano was the new district attorney for Manhattan, and Cardozo had read editorials calling him a one-man Spanish Inquisition when it came to weeding out corruption.

  “Pete? Tess. We’re in trouble. The Briar case. A cop over in the Twenty-second Precinct has been running unauthorized surveillance on Mickey Williams.” Her eyes came around to Cardozo. “His name is—”

  Cardozo chopped his hand down against the phone cradle, breaking the connection. “What are you trying to pull?”

  Tess smiled and replaced the receiver. “Just trying to save my career—and yours.”

  “Pick on me if you want to play dirty—but don’t use one of my men as a pawn.”

  “I’d never pick on you, Vince. I’ve read your record. But if you don’t stick to catching the bad guys, and leave the prosecuting to us—your friend Greg will be off the force without a pension. How are his three kids going to feel about that?”

  The phone rang. She snatched it up. “Tess diAngeli. Oh, hi, Pete, we got cut off. Look, forget that problem I mentioned. A detective in the twenty-second is taking care of it. Lieutenant Vince Cardozo. A great guy. I’ll introduce you sometime.”

  She hung up and gathered the photos of Mickey at the school playground. “We’ll have to burn these. You’d better give me the negatives.”

  “Tess—this is wrong.”

  “You’re right, Vince—and welcome to the real world.”

  FIVE

  Last year

  Monday, September 16

  7:15 P.M.

  IT WAS A RUSH job, to score a TV movie, and Anne Bingham had less than a week to finish it. Her fingertips grazed the black and white keys of her synthesizer. Electric leads ran from the keyboard and the VCR to the P.C., waiting for her to tap in instructions.

  On the twenty-four-inch TV screen, a beautiful, impossibly well-groomed woman sat in hushed discussion with an impossibly well-groomed, gray-haired man. The actors’ pink-and-tan skin tones glowed against gray walls.

  Ten seconds of rat-a-tat dialogue established that the woman was a top corporate lawyer; the man was a client who had just walked in off the street. They were already falling in love.

  If only life were like that, Anne thought.

  She replayed the scene. She listened with her mind, trying to pick up the hidden vibration. Gone were the days when love at first sight got swooning strings for background music. Her inner ear told her the right accompaniment would be an oboe—moody, faintly Byzantine, plangent, with a puckish sting of klezmer.

  The phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Something awful has happened.” It was her sister, Kyra.

  “Sweetie—what on earth’s the matter?”

  According to family legend, Anne had been born twelve minutes before her sister. Which made Anne the older sister. The take-charge sister. The here-let-me-bandage-your-broken-doll sister. They had identical genes and they’d had identical nurture, and they were identical in every way except outlook, temperament, taste, lifestyle, and just about every other human variable you could name.

  “I’m on jury duty,” Kyra groaned. She had a gift for overdramatizing.

  “Is that all? For a moment I thought someone had died. What trial?”

  “Corey Lyle. The cult leader.” Stress had pushed Kyra’s voice high and tight in her throat. “They say he blew up that post office in White Plains and murdered that ex-secretary of the Treasury.”

  Anne shuddered. “Horrible business.” No more horrible, actually, than half the TV movies she earned her bread and butter scoring. But TV movies at least were make-believe.

  “Please please please—I’ve got to talk to you. But not on the phone. Could you possibly come down and we’ll have something to eat, nothing fancy, just some deli from Balducci’s?”

  Anne surveyed a worktable laden with problems. Cue sheets of scenes still to be scored. Bills. A dunning demand from the New York City Department of Finance for twenty-six thousand dollars commercial rent tax, payable immediately. She knew the notice was a mistake, another case where some fumbling bureaucrat had asserted control over a perfectly able and customarily well-mannered computer. But it was more money than she had in the bank. It was probably more money than New York City had in the bank.

  “Annie,” the voice in the receiver begged. “Are you there?”

  Anne sighed. “I’m here. It’ll have to be late-ish.”

  “It was the stupidest thing,” Kyra Talbot was saying.

  “They sent me a jury summons a month ago, and I forgot to write in for an exemption. So when I went down last week to get excused—they told me it was too late. And now they want me for the Corey Lyle jury!”

  Anne still hadn’t the faintest idea how she was expected to help Kyra out of this fix. They were sitting at the circular oak table in Kyra’s kitchen, finishing a late, light dinner of cold stuffed veal from Balducci’s. They were five: besides Anne and her sister, there was Toby, Kyra’s eleven-year-old son; Juliana, her au pair; and Mark Wells—her lawyer.

  “That’s the trial of the year—most jurors would kill to get on it.” Mark jabbed his fork into the last stalk of asparagus on the serving plate. “Anyone else want it?”

  The others shook their heads. He lifted the asparagus from fork to fingers and downed it in two hungry chomps.

  “I know it’s my responsibility as a citizen. But I’m swamped with work.” Kyra gathered the plates and took them to the sink. They were hand-painted Provençal birds and flowers, glowing and cheerful. “It’s not as though they needed me personally. And now is the worst possible time—with Norton Stanley Publications reorganizing, and Toby’s c-u-s-t-o-d-y hearing next week. …”

  “I like it when Toby’s dad has c-u-s-t-o-d-y,” Juliana said. She spoke with a slight Dutch accent and she was wearing a Diet Slice T-shirt and chartreuse exercise leotards. They did not go well with luminescent cobalt eye shadow. “I’ve never met him, but in my book he’s a good guy—I get two weeks off.”

  “News flash.” Toby scowled with towheaded, pre-pubescent toughness. He had too many freckles to bring it off. “The kid can spell custody.”

  “That’s it for you, smartass,” Kyra said. “Time to go to bed.”

  “Come on, Mom. It’s not even ten-thirty. You’re always treating me like a baby. You make me go to bed early and Juliana has to leave me at school and pick me up—the other kids laugh at me! I’m not an eight-year-old!”

  “And you’re not a twelve-year-old—yet.” Juliana took his hand and dragged him toward the door. “Say good night to everyone.”

  “Good night,” he said sulkily. The sound of shuffling and pushing faded down
the hallway.

  “Is that true?” Mark said. “He still gets dropped off at school and picked up?”

  “It’s easier than risking a kidnapping.” Kyra passed a hand through her hair. She’d done it in a different style today. My style, Anne realized. “After all, he’s a very rich young man.”

  “Is that why you’re upset about the custody hearing?” Mark said. “You’re worried about the trust your mother left him?”

  As Anne recollected the terms of her mother’s will, Toby’s parents shared an income from his trust. The divorce court had decided that when Toby reached his twelfth birthday he would choose which parent he wanted to live with, and that parent—as sole guardian—would have the income.

  “He’ll be twelve next week,” Kyra said.

  “What’s the problem? You know Toby will choose you.”

  “Do I?”

  Mark stared at her in astonishment. “You don’t seriously think he’ll choose his father.”

  “If I’m on a jury and don’t show up at the hearing, who knows? Toby may decide to punish me. Or the court may decide I don’t care enough to deserve custody. Besides, Toby misses his father. What boy wouldn’t? Catch is capable of horrible behavior, but Toby’s never seen it—thank God. And when money’s at stake, Catch can be charming. Don’t forget, I’ve seen him in action.”

  “But you haven’t seen him in four years. He never shows up at the September custody hearing.”

  “Believe me, he’ll show up this year. And he’ll have armloads of presents for Toby—even though he can’t afford them.”

  Mark frowned. “How do you know he can’t?”

  “He’s having money troubles. A client has accused him of embezzling.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Catch told me—last week.”

  Mark groaned. “Haven’t I told you never to communicate directly with him?”

  “He phoned me. He sounded desperate. What could I do, hang up on him? Like it or not, he is the father of my son.”

  “Explain to the judge about the trust and the guardianship. That will get you excused.”

  “But it’s all so technical. I know I’ll garble it.”

  Mark looked at his wine thoughtfully. “Well—maybe I could explain.”

  “Mark—you’ve always been wonderful to me. You got me a great divorce and you listen to my complaints and you hardly ever bill me. I feel like a louse asking you to come all the way down to the courthouse just to get me out of a silly jam.”

  It seemed to Anne that her sister had just maneuvered Mark into pleading her case.

  “The courthouse is still on my way,” he said. “Some of us still work on Wall Street, remember?”

  Anne took a long look at this gentle, friendly man sitting at her twin sister’s kitchen table, this man determined to solve the whole world’s problems. This man she had once loved. The moment seemed framed in stillness.

  “Besides,” he said, “I have an ace in the hole. I’m an old friend of your prosecutor. Tess diAngeli and I graduated in the same class at Yale Law. She owes me one.”

  Anne had a fleeting mental image of two law students grappling under a quilt in a New Haven dormitory. She felt a kick of vestigial jealousy.

  Mark pushed up from the table. “See you at nine-thirty in court, okay?”

  “Leaving?” Kyra said.

  “Big day tomorrow. Thanks for feeding me. Good night, Anne. Good seeing you.”

  Kyra walked him to the front door.

  As Anne sat staring at her almost-empty wineglass, Juliana padded to the sink and rinsed out an empty Häagen-Dazs container.

  “Lucky Kyra. She has a lawyer who makes house calls. And in a weird way, he’s not bad-looking.” Juliana shook the excess water from the cardboard container and placed it upside down on a piece of paper towel. She observed recycling laws and it seemed to Anne she added a few of her own. “Kyra said you and Mark used to be lovers?”

  “We were engaged,” Anne said quietly.

  “What happened?”

  “Kyra happened. It wasn’t her fault.”

  “Really? Are they still—?”

  “They’re just friends now.”

  “Alone at last!” Kyra floated back into the kitchen.

  “Toby wants you to kiss him good night,” Juliana said.

  “Come on. We’ll both kiss him good night.” Kyra took Anne’s hand and led the way to her bedroom. With its coordinated colors and fabrics, the room looked like a fantasy from a magazine centerfold: king-size canopied bed with carved wooden headboard, heaped with silk pillows; beautiful old peachwood armoire and chest of drawers; walls decorated with signed, antique-framed photos of Kyra caught in intimate yet posed moments with the greats of the decade—the president, Liz Taylor, Mother Teresa.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Kyra shut the door. “My glorious career.”

  For three years Kyra had been photography editor at Savoir, one of a group of glossy magazines put out by the Norton Stanley Publishing empire. The tables were stacked with Stanley products: sports and celebrity weeklies, show-biz and antique and fashion and cooking monthlies.

  Kyra dropped onto the edge of the bed and began crying softly.

  Anne felt the first panicky stirrings of responsibility. “Sweetie—what’s the matter?”

  “I never told you everything about Catch—the way he used to shout and threaten—the brutal things he’d say. …”

  Anne sat on the bed beside her twin and smoothed the reddish-brown hair away from the trembling forehead. “Now, just take a deep breath and tell Annie all about it.”

  Kyra sniffled and reached for a Kleenex. “You can’t imagine what it was like, living that way.”

  “It’s over, sweetie—why dwell on it?”

  “Because he might get custody. I couldn’t bear for Toby to go through what I had to.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Anne said softly, firmly, allowing automatic pilot to guide her. She was musing on the combination of annoyance and protectiveness that her sister’s problems had inspired in her since childhood; and wondering why protectiveness always won. It was odd, considering that Kyra had had the best life could offer—the storybook career, the storybook marriage, the storybook divorce; the beautiful son, the talented lovers, the famous friends; and money—and all Anne had was a failed marriage, a stalled concert career, and a modest reputation in a more-than-modest field.

  “But what if I get stuck on this jury thing tomorrow? The judge will give Toby to his father and I’ll never see him again.”

  “Come on. You heard Mark. He’s going to get you off.”

  “Oh, Annie—Annie-Pannie—there’s a rumor that Nort’s going to fold one of the magazines. What if he folds Savoir?”

  “Now, stop catastrophizing.”

  “Our ad inches are way down. Newsstand sales have plateaued.” Kyra’s eyes came up, slow and moist. “Oh, Annie, I’m so scared—I’ve put three years into this job. I’ve done everything I could to give Toby a home and send him to a good school.”

  “You’re doing a wonderful job. He’s a great kid.”

  “But now this damned jury thing is going to wreck it all.” Kyra’s teeth pressed down into her lower lip. “Could you save my life, Annie? And Toby’s? Could you please please please take a half hour off and go down to the court and sit in for me?”

  “Sit in for you?”

  “Pretend to be me. It’s only a formality. It’ll only take a minute or two.”

  “How could I do that? It’s illegal.”

  “But Mark’s going to get me off, so what difference does it make?” Kyra’s eyes beseeched. “Please, Annie—please?”

  That tone and that look did it. They always had. Anne felt herself softening like candle wax. “But no one will think I’m you.”

  Kyra pushed Anne down in front of the dressing table glittering with silver and tortoiseshell. “All you have to do is brush your hair like this. …”

  Anne looked at
their reflections in the mirror. She saw Kyra—groomed and fashionable even in her distress, silken colors coordinated to bring out her strong points: the hazel-green eyes; the hair with its auburn highlights; the pale, milk-smooth skin with jeweled accents twinkling at her ears and throat.

  And then she saw herself—the colorless sister, too practical to bother with froufrou, simple and sensible in a gray blouse and jeans from the Gap and a necklace of amber beads from a vendor on 63rd Street who she’d felt sorry for.

  Kyra removed Anne’s barrette and jumbled the hair and patted it down loosely. “See?”

  Now they looked like an actress playing identical twins in one of Anne’s TV movies, a dual high-contrast role. “But what about our clothes?”

  “I’ve taken care of that.” A little needlepoint-and-pigskin Vuitton suitcase sat on the easy chair, as though Kyra had been preparing an overnight getaway. “I packed a few of my things.” She laid the suitcase on the bed and snapped it open. The sleek, simply cut clothes screamed style and taste and money.

  “And a little present.” Kyra pulled a Lady Seiko watch out of a pocket in the suitcase lining. “You get to keep it.”

  “Kyra, I couldn’t—”

  “And some perfume. Because Mark would know the difference. You don’t mind wearing Joy.” Kyra spritzed her with the tiny beaded atomizer.

  A perfumed dew settled. Besides scoring, I’m not doing anything tomorrow, Anne thought. Nothing that I can’t put off a few hours … It would be killing two birds with one stone. Kyra pulls out of this tailspin; and Anne gets to be queen for a day.

  “All right,” Anne said. “But just for tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” Toby called. “Somebody forgot something.”

  “His good night kiss.” Kyra pulled Anne into Toby’s half-darkened bedroom.

  Toby sat in bed with a laptop computer, tapping instructions into the keyboard. “Look, Mom, I figured out a way to access the Internet without paying.”

  “That’s not legal,” Kyra chided.

  “Sure it is. All you do is dial the eight-hundred number of your software provider, enter your user code, and—”

  “That’s enough net-surfing for today.” Kyra set the laptop on the bedside table. “Now say good night to your aunt.”