Madriani - 02 - Prime Witness

by Steve Martini

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Why didn’t you tell us about the phone call?” Claude is more than a little perturbed with me, my failure to inform him about the earlier telephone threat.

  He tells me this in muted tones, over salad and soup at the Lettuce Patch, a luncheon spot near the courthouse for secretaries and other watchers of weight. Dusalt is on a diet, though I’m at a loss to understand why.

  “I thought it was just a crank,” I tell him. “Nikki took the call, so I didn’t hear the words myself.” This is a point of some regret with me now, my initial reaction that perhaps Nikki had made more of the phone call that night than was warranted. I make a little bluster about prosecutors and threats. “More common than rain in April, and mostly idle,” I say.

  “You think this is idle?” Claude’s examining the letter and the photograph, each of which I have encased in clear Ziploc bags, and delivered to him here over lunch.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to scare the hell out of my family. Whoever did it has my full attention. In a word, even if it’s a prank, I’d like to have their ass.” I must admit that my “dago is up,” the flare of the Italian temper.

  He smiles. “You take this very personally,” he says.

  “You bet.”

  “A little advice?” He’s offering.

  I listen.

  “You are now personally involved. You should leave this to me.”

  “That’s why we’re talking,” I say. “Still, I don’t like people jerking my family around.”

  Claude passes a single hand over the table, as if to calm troubled waters.

  “You are right to take this seriously.” He reminds me that in this state threats against law enforcement officers and prosecutors are considered crimes, prosecutable even without overt moves to carry them out.

  “How does your wife feel about all this?” he says.

  Nikki is now a basket case. She will not let go of Sarah, even to have her go so far as to her room. I put a face on it, tell him simply that she is “upset.”

  He nods like he understands.

  “Where is she, and your daughter? You didn’t leave them home alone?”

  “Not today. They’re with friends, a guy who works nights, retired cop, and his wife. They live across town, in Capital City,” I say.

  “Good.” He says it like at least on this point I have thought clearly. “Give me the address and phone number,” he says.

  I write down the information on a napkin and Claude excuses himself from the table, leaves me sitting there chewing on greens. He is gone for five minutes and when he returns I’ve hardly touched lunch, a measure of how tightly strung I am after the events of last evening, and a sleepless night.

  “I’ve made a phone call, across the river. Capital City Police,” he says. “There’s an unmarked unit on its way. They’ll park outside the house and keep an eye,” he says, “until we can make more permanent arrangements.”

  “What kind of arrangements?”

  “I would suggest,” he says, “that you move your family out of town until the trial is over. To another location where they cannot be traced,” he says, “just till then. To be safe.”

  Great. Something that will only serve to heighten Nikki’s already intense level of paranoia.

  “Is that necessary?”

  He looks at me.

  “I mean my daughter has school. My wife has a job.”

  “Somebody will have to talk to the school, and with your wife’s employer, and hope they’ll understand,” says Claude.

  “How do I tell my wife?”

  “Talk to her, explain,” he says. He doesn’t know Nikki, or understand the tenuous nature of my marriage at this moment. But what is clear is that Claude sees this episode as more serious than I, something beyond a harmless and nutty asshole with scissors and glue.

  I ask him if he does this every time a deputy DA gets a threatening piece of mail. If so, he would have little time for anything else.

  He makes a face. “We take precautions. They vary with the case.” He looks at the envelope through its plastic bag.

  “This sender’s not shy,” he says.

  “You wouldn’t expect some shrinking violet to do this?” I say. “I mean take pictures of my daughter and send us thinly veiled death threats.”

  “You miss my point,” he says. “I mean, the fact that it has no stamp, that the envelope was hand-delivered to your mailbox.”

  “Oh.”

  Claude’s talking about the boldness of the act, coming nearly to our front door. I’d not considered this point of near invasion until now. It is becoming clear to me that I am rattled, no longer focusing on significant details. It’s what happens when you become personally involved. Like a lawyer representing himself, you tend to lose your edge.

  He holds up the letter. “And a nice touch,” he says.

  “Emm?”

  “The little hint of bigotry,” he says. Claude’s referring to the description of Iganovich as “Ivan.”

  He smiles at this, like he’s amused. He and I have never discussed social issues and I wonder whether this appeals to some darker side in Claude. Then I realize again I have missed his meaning.

  “Makes it sound like the writer has a thing for immigrants,” he says. “Maybe. But I think it’s a lot of smoke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You really think Joe-six-pack reads enough to care how many counts are in an indictment? I mean Iganovich is already charged with four capital murders. After all, how many times can you execute a man?”

  Claude thinks we either have the world’s most scrupulous redneck here, or whoever delivered the letter and photo is pumping sunshine up our skirts.

  “Then you think maybe this isn’t serious?” I say.

  “Oh no. I think it’s very serious.” He says this with meaning. “I think it’s possible that whoever sent this,” he’s tapping the plastic bags on the table, “perhaps has killed, twice already.” He looks directly at me, engaging eyes. “If so,” he says, “they would not hesitate to do so again.”

  The mind of the cop, always thinking motivation, studying the act for its calculated effect. Who would have a greater stake in seeing Iganovich charged with the Scofield murders than the person who actually killed them? I am beginning to think that Claude may be right. I want Nikki and Sarah out of town today.

  “My turn,” he says. Claude picks up the check and drops a tip. We wend our way through the tables, past the booths, toward the register at the front door. Halfway there Claude slows a little, leans back into my ear and whispers.

  “Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall?” he says. He’s gesturing with a hand, subtle, keeping the movement below his waist, as we walk, motioning toward one of the corner booths off in the distance. I’m in no mood for gossip. My mind is on other things, missing sleep. But I look. There at the table is Adrian Chambers, fitted out in a three-piece suit, his face illuminated under the chin by candle light, the visage of some evil genie. Next to him with his back to me is a head of silver-gray, nodding in animated conversation. As I focus, this has me doing a double take, uncertain whether my eyes have deceived. But as I look again, first impressions are confirmed. Sitting at the table with Adrian, indulging himself in boisterous conversation, is Roland Overroy, the two men laughing, in synchronous harmony, no doubt, I suspect, at my expense.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “I‘ll can him,” I say. “Fire the sonofabitch on the spot.” I’m talking about Overroy. I am back in the office, after lunch, storming around my desk, unable to sit and talk coherently, so palpable is the undirected energy driving my anger.

  In light of the subject matter, the calming voice comes from an unexpected quarter. Lenore Goya is telling me to cool down. To think before I act. She’s in one of the client chairs that I am now dancing behind.

  “After all,” she says, “they were only having lunch.”

  “If
you believe that,” I say, “I’ll leave a tooth under my pillow tonight.”

  She smiles, gives me a look.

  “So maybe they weren’t just having lunch,” she says. “How do you prove it?”

  “It answers one question,” I say.

  “What’s that?”

  “How all those little details got into the Johnson letter, Chambers’s missive to the grand jury,” I tell her. I’m talking about the tire tracks on the dirt road, near where the Scofields were found. There is only one way Chambers could have known about that. If someone with information, on the inside of our investigation, told him. On the short list of available candidates, people in positions of trust who might kick dirt on our case, leak information to the other side, Roland now has my vote.

  “You think he would do that?” she says.

  Does Howdy Doody have wooden balls? I think this, but do not say it.

  Still, she reminds me that this is not a private law firm where I can fire an associate on mere suspicion, though in Overroy’s case Lenore would clearly like to make an exception.

  “In civil service,” she says, “you get a hearing, and the burden is on the employer to produce evidence of cause to terminate. Take a shot and miss, and he will sue you on a dozen different theories of discrimination.”

  She is, of course, right.

  “So what am I supposed to do, look the other way?”

  “Seal him off from the case,” she says, “like a Chinese Wall, so that he cannot do us more harm.”

  In a small office, where everybody talks, this would be difficult.

  Lenore is of the school that believes all is possible “if you give him enough rope.” She would live with the hope that eventually Roland will do himself in, that the brass coating his balls and between his ears will in time end his career.

  I am not so patient.

  Before I can say more, Lenore drops some pages on my desk, three pieces stapled at the top.

  “I don’t want to add to your woe,” she says, “but it ain’t good.”

  I read. It’s a minute order from Judge Fisher, the results of our points and authorities on the Kellett case. This does not come as any great surprise. The court has ruled that unless we charge Iganovich with the Scofield murders before the jury retires to deliberate its verdict, that prevailing law would bar us from any further prosecution of the Russian for these crimes at a later date.

  “He doesn’t mince words,” I say.

  Lenore shakes her head. “Chambers has put us in a box,” she says, “with no way out.”

  She is right. If we have miscalculated. If Chambers has no alibi for his client on the date of the Scofield murders and if evidence later surfaces implicating the Russian in those crimes, I will be the biggest goat this county has ever seen.

  Goya’s about to open discussion on this again when the phone rings on my desk. It’s Sharon at reception.

  “Judge Ingel, line one for you,” she says.

  I punch the button on the phone.

  “Your honor.” I grit my teeth.

  It’s a feminine voice on the other end. “The judge will be with you in a minute.” Ingel’s clerk. I love the self-important people who do this, call you and leave you hanging on the phone listening to the hyperventilation of some underling.

  Lenore is making questioning eyes at me, then reads my lips as I silently form two words: “the Prussian.”

  No sooner is this done than I hear his voice on the phone.

  “Mr. Madriani,” he says. “Are you busy?” His voice is stiff. No small talk here.

  “I have time to talk,” I say.

  “I wonder if you might have a few minutes to meet with me, here at the courthouse?”

  “Certainly. No problem. When?”

  “Now.” He says it like I should have read his mind.

  “Something specific?” I ask.

  “We’ll talk when you get here,” he says and hangs up. I suspect that most telephone conversations with this man probably end this way, with the other party feeling that perhaps they are in trouble. It is how people like Derek Ingel assert their authority.

  “What did he want?”

  “Beats me,” I tell her. “Command performance in chambers now.” I grab my coat and head for the door.

  “Probably wants you to waive opening argument so he can catch an extra luau.” She’s talking about the judge’s scheduled vacation, the force now driving our entire trial schedule.

  When I arrive, Ingel’s courtroom is dark, but the door is unlocked. A single shaft of light from the clerk’s station backstage bathes the bench in an eerie glow. This place appears much larger, somehow more imposing and ominous in this half-light. The double flags hanging on their stanchions, sharp brass spear-tipped points on these poles, and state seal behind the judge’s chair, up high, take on an imperial quality in the shadows, something from the reign of Tiberius, images of Roman legions, something no doubt Ingel would spare no effort to foster.

  I introduce myself to his clerk. She remembers me from my last visit and asks me to take a seat while she calls the inner sanctum. I can hear voices behind the closed door, nothing intelligible, just the hum of human discourse. Apparently the judge has been waylaid since his call to me, some business he must first finish. The intercom buzzes inside, voices die, the clerk announces me, and then as if through a hose, “Tell him I’ll be with him in a moment.”

  I have often wondered why, with the confidences that are bared in such places, their builders construct them with the acoustical integrity of a paper-walled Nippon summer palace.

  “He’ll be with you in a moment,” she says. I nod, smile at the redundancy, and listen as the voices again accelerate to speed, though the volume is now turned down.

  I cool my heels looking at my watch. Ten minutes go by. I read a magazine, wishing I’d brought some work with me from the office. When I look at my watch again I have been here twenty-five minutes. I’m into another article when the intercom buzzes on the clerk’s desk.

  “Yes sir.” She hangs up.

  “Mr. Madriani, you can go in now.”

  I straighten my tie and open the door.

  Ingel is behind his desk, imperious and stiff, looking as ever himself, like a warmed-over cadaver. I had assumed his earlier audience was concluded, that his company had left by way of the door leading to the main hallway outside. But now I see Don Esterhauss, chairman of the supervisors, seated in one of the client chairs across from the judge. I turn to shut the door.

  Nothing can prepare me for the juvenile rush I feel as I swing it closed and see the other faces. Seated on the couch, behind the door, at opposite ends are Adrian Chambers and Roland Overroy, a reprise of their role over lunch, each of them looking at me, studying my response.

  I stand there frozen in place, until this becomes awkward. The judge motions me to take a seat, the client chair that is left. When I don’t move, he gets up and makes a charade of introductions, anything to ease the unpleasantness.

  “I think you know Don Esterhauss,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, but I don’t look at him.

  Don’s not quite sure whether he should get up to shake my hand, so he stays where he is, smiles and nods.

  “And of course you know Mr. Chambers, and Roland from your own staff.” I’m still looking at these two. He does not linger long on this. I think Ingel senses molten lava close under the surface with me.

  “Sitdown,” he says. He makes this a single word, no longer an invitation, but a command.

  I settle into the chair, turn it a little sideways to keep my back away from the couch, as a feeling of foreboding washes over me.

  Ingel engages in a little small talk, something to take the edge off, how law in a small town is more intimate, less formal than across the river. Soon he will be telling me that this excuses breaches of professional ethics. He knows he is walking on the thin edge here, that I could complain that his closed door discussions out of my presence are ex parte
, a violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct. Called to answer, he would no doubt insist that Roland represented my office in this meeting, notwithstanding Overroy’s lack of authority to do so. And he would win. My problems with Roland are an internal affair, an open office pissing contest which the courts would no doubt tell me I am solely responsible to manage.

  Ingel asks me if I would like some coffee. I decline.

  “I hope I won’t be here that long,” I say.

  He gives me a sharp look.

  “I’ve a lot of work to do,” I explain.

  “Well, then we should get to it. We’ve been talking for a few minutes,” says Ingel, like this is news.

  “Covering some ground,” he says. He’s arranging a number of things on his desk, a paperweight, some files, finally stops to toy with his coffee cup. He will not look me in the eye, but continues to talk.

  “Roland,” he says, “ran into Mr. Chambers at a county bar function a few weeks back, introduced by a mutual acquaintance,” he explains.

  My mind conjures images of Eve’s encounter with the serpent, though clearly Roland is not so innocent.

  He tells me that they had occasion to discuss what he refers to as just “some things.” The judge presents all this to me as rather fortuitous. The good luck of a chance meeting.

  “Birds of a feather,” I say.

  Adrian stiffens. Ingel gives me a look.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I tell him.

  Ingel issues a pained expression and goes on.

  “One thing led to another,” he says, “and resulted in our discussion here today.”

  “And what’s that?” I say.

  “Emm?”

  “Your discussion here today?”

  Ingel knows that I can sense the subject matter. But I will force him to say it out loud.

  “Well . . .” He looks at the couch and wonders, I think, if he shouldn’t have one of these two carry this load from here. But there are no volunteers.

  “Well, they started exploring some common ground,” he says. He gives me a quick sideways glance, then looks away before he finishes his thought. “The Putah Creek cases,” he says. There, it is out.