“The prison psychiatrist says Bobbie is mentally fit to stand trial and I don’t think he is,’ I say.
“And you have a degree in psychiatry, do you?” he asks cuttingly.
“No, but neither does Tait. He should have insisted on a second opinion – and he didn’t.”
“How dare you come here with your outrageous opinions?” Craddock says.
His voice has dropped to the kind of low, menacing hiss that my 3rd grade teacher used to use when she was intending to draw tears. But I am not in the 3rd grade now – and Craddock does not have the monopoly on anger!
“You asked me to come,” I tell him. “You wanted to be kept informed. Yeah, well, that’s what I’m doing – keeping you informed. And just because you don’t like what you hear is no reason to shoot the messenger.”
I can see my point has hit home. Sure, I need Craddock – but he also needs me. I am his lifeline to the real world, his one way of finding out what is actually going on in Harrisburg.
He takes a deep breath, and he is back in control of himself.
“You are quite right, Mr Kaleta,’ he says. “If we are ever to reach the truth, we must consider all shades of opinion, however outrageous they appear to be.”
Which, I guess, is about as close as he ever comes to apologizing.
“How would you explain the fact that Tait hasn’t insisted on a second psychiatrist’s opinion?” I ask.
Craddock’s eyes are on the chess board again, but now I feel that I truly have his full attention.
“It could signify nothing more than a lack of experience on Maxwell’s part,” he says. “The man is a financial and corporate genius, but he’s no criminal lawyer. Perhaps he’s a little out of his depth with this case.”
“That’s possible,” I admit. “But explain this away. I phoned Tait, pretending to be Pine. I told him that our little plot was coming apart at the seams. Tait rushed straight round to City Hall.”
“Maxwell could have a perfectly legitimate reason for calling on the Mayor,” he argues – but he does not sound particularly convinced. “Then again, perhaps all he is trying to do is to protect me.”
“From what?”
“From myself. I have already invested a considerable amount of money in Harrisburg, and if I pull out now, I will lose most of it. Perhaps he feels that the Hopgood boy really is guilty, and is merely helping to prepare as strong a case as possible, so that I will be satisfied that justice has been done.”
He might chew Tait’s balls off in private, I think, but he is not going to admit to me that he has made a mistake over his man – so all that I can do is plant the seeds of doubt and then keep providing Craddock with enough water to make them grow.
“Whatever his reasons for his behavior,” Craddock concedes, “it is clear to me that Maxwell should no longer be representing the boy. A lawyer who does not believe in his client’s innocence cannot fulfill the purpose I intend him to. I will have another of my people fly down from Boston in the morning.”
“Thank you, sir,” I say.
“I am not doing it for you, Lieutenant,” Craddock replies. “I am doing it for Bobbie Hopgood and Harrisburg. And for myself.”
He moves another white pawn forward, and, when he releases the piece, he flicks his hand in a gesture of dismissal. I could be difficult, and wait until he asks me to leave in words, but what would be the point? I’ve eaten a heap of shit tonight – it won’t do me any harm to swallow one more mouthful. I stand up, bite back a wise-ass exit line, and head for the door.
I’m almost there when he says: “Do you play chess yourself, Lieutenant Kaleta?”
“A little.”
“Then look at this. You might find it interesting.”
I understand you, Thurston Craddock, I think, turning and walking back towards the chess table. I understand you very well. It isn’t enough that you’ve got me acting like one of your flunkeys. I’ve questioned your judgment, and therefore, before I leave, you’ve got to do something to reassert your superiority.
Craddock is back at the Black side of the board once more.
“What should I do now?” he asks.
I study the situation. Given White’s advance, Black has no option but to take the white queen’s pawn. I tell Craddock this.
“No option,” he repeats. “So that’s what you would do, is it?”
“Yes.
Craddock takes the white pawn with a black bishop, and then, without even walking round the table, moves the white queen’s knight.
“Check …”
I examine the black king’s situation. The knight cannot be blocked, so the king has to move. But he can’t do that without going into check from the white king’s bishop.
“ … and mate,” Craddock says with satisfaction. “I will show you to the door, Lieutenant.”
We reach the front porch, and he suddenly has my right arm in a tight grip.
“You have questioned the integrity of one of my most trusted employees,” he says.
“I know.”
“I will replace Maxwell on the Hopgood case. I was going to do that anyway. But I will not – will not – make any other move until you have come up with more solid evidence. I won’t believe that Tait has betrayed me until you can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“I’ll get you your proof,” I promise.
Because proving Tait guilty and Bobbie innocent are two sides of one coin.
“And I shall feel obligated to relay this conversation to Maxwell,” Craddock continues.
That suits me too. Craddock will tell Tait, Tait will tell Pine. Once Porky realizes he doesn’t have the situation all sewn up tight, he’ll be knocked off balance. And in that state of mind, he’s likely to start making mistakes.
*
Driving back to the city, I replay the meeting in my mind. I don’t like Craddock. I don’t like the way he sits in his farmhouse playing God – looking down on the movements of us lesser mortals as if we were pieces on his chessboard.
And yet there are advantages to the situation. Both God and Craddock have set us free to make our own choices and determine our own fates, but that is not to say they are always non-partisan. And how do I know this? I know it because Craddock’s chess game has shown me something he never intended it to.
I am not the expert that he is, but even I can see that Black should never have gotten into the position he did – that, in other words, Craddock should never have allowed it to happen. As prime mover, what he had done was to set Black up – cheated him almost – so that White’s knight could strut his stuff.
And I begin to hope that, when the going gets tough, he will do the same for me.
21
On the way back to Harrisburg, I call Williams on the car phone, and when I reach the streetlight at the corner of 11th and Davies she is already waiting there for me. She’s wearing a long check skirt, a blue blouse which matches the color of her eyes, and high-heeled pumps. And she’s carrying a leather purse which looks plenty big enough to hold her .38.
“I don’t know what exactly you pulled over at City Hall this afternoon,” she says as I get out of my LeBaron, “but it must have really been something.”
“The Chief’s unhappy?” I guess.
“The Chief blew his stack. He wants to see you – and he means yesterday. Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?”
I look down Davies towards the river. The empty sky beyond the town is suddenly lit up by a sheet of lightning. I count slowly to ten and hear the distant rumble of thunder. The weather has broken at last.
“I said, are you going to tell me what it’s all about?” Williams repeats.
More lightning.
“We’re due for one hell of a storm,” I say. “Are you really sure you want to know what went down this afternoon?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because it might get you more involved than you’d be comfortable with. I’m out on a limb, and Chief Ringman is sawing away at that
limb right now. Are you ready to take the fall with me?”
A superhero would have had no hesitation in saying yes, but we’re all just plain, ordinary folks down here in Harrisburg, VA. In the light of the streetlamp I can see Williams struggle with her dilemma. She has worked hard to get where she is – fighting off red-neck prejudice, always playing by the rules. And now along comes Mike Kaleta and offers her the not-to-be-missed opportunity to throw it all away.
“If we don’t do something, then Bobbie’s going be railroaded,” she says finally. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Then I don’t really have any choice. So you’d better tell me just what I’m getting myself into.”
My stomach rumbles in sympathy with the thunder, and I realize that I haven’t had any food since breakfast.
“Do you want to eat while we talk?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“Which would you prefer – good or fancy?”
“Good,” Williams says.
I like that.
Williams moves towards my LeBaron.
“We can walk,” I say. “The place that I’ve got in mind is just a couple of blocks from here.”
“What’s its name?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything to you if I told you.”
“I’ve eaten at most of the restaurants in town.”
“You’ll never have been to this one before,” I promise.
*
Williams stops dead in front of the plate-glass window.
“Is this it?” she asks, like she thinks I’m playing a joke on her, and she doesn’t find it very funny.
“This is it,” I assure her.
I can understand her surprise. Through the window, we can see several rows of cheap Formica tables. The clientele is entirely black, and almost exclusively male. Most of them do not even have food in front of them – just bottles of beer.
This is the way things work in Harrisburg. Segregation went out with the Freedom Riders, but it is still a rare thing to see a black customer in Kelly’s Tavern or a white one in the Visconti brothers’ joint.
We enter, and Luigi Visconti, who is stirring a pot of bubbling meat sauce, looks up and greets me.
“Lutenan’ Kaleta!” he says. “I see you brought a pretty lady with you tonight. Nice change!”
Luigi and Angelo have been in the States for four years.
“Got off da boat wid a pocket full of lira,” Angelo once told me. “Woulda bought us a fine trattoria in our village. Hell, woulda bought us da whole damn village. You know what it buy in New York? Coupla hamburgers, maybe a side dish o’ fries.”
So the Viscontis abandoned their vision of a fine restaurant on Park Avenue – “How we love the sound of that back in the village, Lutenan’ Kaleta – Park Avenue” – and settled instead for running a drinking shop for the Brothers in Harrisburg. The day will eventually come when they’ll have built up a big enough stake to be able to move on, but until that day, Michael Kaleta – the ethnics’ ethnic – will always be glad to give them his custom.
We step up to the counter, and though I am not looking directly at her, I can sense Williams’ reluctance. She is not anti-Black or anti-Italian, she is just anti-garbage – and garbage is exactly what she expects to be served.
“Trust me,” I say.
We order the spaghetti Bolognese. The Visconti’s don’t sell wine, so we settle on two bottles of chilled Moosehead beer – the best thing to come out of Canada since Leonard Cohen. The food is served on plastic plates, which match perfectly with the plastic knives and forks we are handed.
“You certainly know how to treat a girl,” Williams says as we walk towards a free table. “Oh shit! I didn’t mean that. It’s not like we were out on a date or anything.”
We sit down, and Williams takes her first mouthful, closing her eyes like that will make it easier to swallow. Then the food hits her taste buds and her eyes open wide again.
“This is great,” she says. “You’re a weird guy, Lieutenant.”
Oh yes, indeed.
As we eat, I fill her in on my day – the phone call to Tait, the visit with Craddock.
“So what does it all mean?” she asks.
“The way I have it figured is that the more cases of rape there are, the more desperate Pine becomes. If Prosperity Park doesn’t get off the ground, Porky’s political future goes down the toilet. He’s negotiating some deals, but the Northern money men are getting cold feet. They don’t want their products associated with a town which has a bad image – and their executives sure as hell don’t want to move their kids to a place where there’s a sexual madman on the loose.”
“In other words, Pine needs an arrest.”
“Yeah. He throws the problem Ringman’s way. Ringman looks around for a fall-guy, and settles on Bobbie. What could be better than a mentally retarded kid who has nobody who really gives a damn about him?”
“Ringman used us,” Williams says in a low, angry voice. “He set up a false trail and we followed it like good little cops. And after the deals are signed, and they let Bobbie go, we’ll take the fall for making the false arrest in the first place.”
I shake my head.
“They’re not gonna let Bobbie go – whatever happens.”
“Why not?”
“Imagine you’re the CEO of some company that Porky’s negotiating with. You hear that the rapist has been caught, and Harrisburg is a safe town once again. You breathe a sigh of relief – because you really want the tax breaks Harrisburg is offering – and you sign the deal. Then, before the ink is even dry, the suspect is released. What would you think?”
Williams ponders for a moment.
“That Bobbie’s arrest was just a fake to sucker me in. That Mayor Pine has pulled a fast one.”
“Which is exactly what would have happened. But Porky can’t let them know they’ve been tricked. He can’t afford to make powerful enemies so close to the election. So he’ll try to get Bobbie convicted, even though he’s innocent.”
“There’ll be more attacks,” Williams says, “and then everybody will know they’ve got the wrong man.”
“Ringman will claim that any new incidents are copy-cats. And who is going to say he’s wrong? Not the real perp, even if he’s caught. Why should he go down for crimes Bobbie’s already serving time for?”
I say this, and it all makes sense – but I still can’t get it out of my mind that Ringman is absolutely convinced there won’t be any more attacks.
“What about Tait?” Williams asks. “Where does he fit in?”
“Porky misjudges Craddock. Instead of being delighted the problem’s been solved, good old Thurston wants to make sure it’s been solved correctly, and he sends in his expensive lawyer to make certain it is. So now Pine has got to get Tait on his side.”
“And how does he do that?”
“With money! Porky’s got the whole of the City Treasury to play with, and he’ll use all of it if he needs to – because once the extra taxes start to flow, there’ll be plenty to cover the shortfall with.”
“He’s taking a gamble,” Williams says.
“It should have been a certainty. Tait defends Bobbie badly, but Craddock doesn’t know that, because he’s the kind of man who delegates to people he trusts, and then leaves them to get on with it. Hell, he wasn’t even at Bobbie’s arraignment. So if Tait tells him that Bobbie got a fair trial, Craddock will believe him. Except that—”
“Except that now you’ve raised doubts in Craddock’s mind, he’s not going to believe anybody without proof.”
“Exactly.”
“So what do you think Pine and Ringman will do?”
“They’ll need solid evidence to prove that Bobbie did it, and since there isn’t any, they’re going to have to manufacture some. And that will give me the chance—”
“Give us the chance,” Williams interrupts.
“… give us the chance to blow Porky’s scam wide open. But we can’t do anythin
g until we know just what it is that he’s going to pull.”
Williams nods and shovels the last of the spaghetti into her mouth.
“I could handle another plate of that,” she says.
“Don’t do it,” I advise.
“To hell with my waistline.”
“To hell with it,” I agree. “But if you’re going to pig out, you really should try Luigi’s lasagne.”
*
We have already examined the case from every possible angle, and until Pine makes his next move, there’s nothing more to say about it. So we can sit here in silence, or we can talk about something else.
We talk – and over the lasagne, that talk keeps getting more and more personal.
“You wrote a book once, didn’t you?” Williams asks.
“While I was still in college.”
“What was it called?”
“Castaway in Brooklyn.”
“And what was it about?”
“Growing up. I suppose it was a sort of Polish-Catholic Portnoy’s Complaint, except that all the jerking off was in my head.”
I laugh disparagingly, but Williams doesn’t join in.
“Was it any good?” she asks.
“The critics thought so.”
“But did you?”
“Yeah,” I admit. “Yeah, I did.”
“So why didn’t you write another one?”
“I tried. It wouldn’t come. Maybe I’d used up all my material.”
“Is that why you joined the Force?”
She’s hitting a nerve. I know she’s not like my wife – out to hurt me – but I’m starting to feel uncomfortable anyway.
“Is that the reason?” she persists.
“It’s possible,” I say. “Or maybe I was trying to write myself a new life – live out my second novel.”
“How about your marriage? What happened to that?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Yeah … well … you know …” Williams face twists into a lop-sided embarrassed grin. “I mean … is it definitely over?”
“Yeah, it’s over. Until today I hadn’t seen Joanna for over six months. What about you? You ever been married?”
“Came close once or twice.”
“And …?”
Violation Page 13
