Hostile Witness Part 28

"It narrows it down. Our friend Mr. Stocker, I tell you with much confidence, our friend Mr. Stocker is right now, right this instant, in a boat larger than a thirty-foot sloop, living under some other name, docked in a marina somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico."

When I returned to the table, the Bishops were laughing loudly at something. The laughter died slowly when they saw me. "Who died, Victor?" asked Simon. "You look like the plague."

"It's nothing," I said. "Everything's fine."

My veal was on the table now, three delicate medallions in a light lemon sauce. I finished the wine in my gla.s.s and Jack quickly filled it again. For a moment I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I had almost believed that the strange and mystical Morris Kapustin could do anything he put his mind to, and his finding Stocker would have opened a different door for me, more difficult yes, confrontational yes, but also less reliant on the them that had always disappointed me before. It had been a nice belief, Morris as savior, warming in its way, like a Jimmy Stewart movie, but Stocker was lost somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico and that door was closed and I was here at this prime table in this exclusive restaurant with two of the richest men in the city buying me dinner. The future was shaping up with great clarity. I would settle out Saltz and follow along sheepishly in United States v. Moore and Concannon. I would avoid all bullets aimed at rear windows of imported cars. I would placate the paranoid Norvel Goodwin and the suspicious Chuckie Lamb with my inactivity. I would keep s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Veronica in secret and write my opinion letters for Valley Hunt Estates and collect my fat fees and step into my future and all would be right with the world.

But still.

"What say we do the town tonight?" said Simon.

"Find us a high-cla.s.s knocking shop," said Jack.

"Just a pleasant night out with the boys," said Simon.

"I noticed something curious in the partners.h.i.+p list," I said. That got their attention fast. "That's what was troubling me before. There were two partners.h.i.+p shares held in trust by W.P. on behalf of W.O. Any idea what that is all about?"

"A old friend of Prescott's," said Simon. "A prep school mate, being hounded by some cackhanded fool for a million dollars or so. Something to do with his divorce, I think. Seemed to be a sad story, actually, when Bill told it to me. It's always sad to see a sot being chased for his money. Prescott owed him something so he bought two shares to be held in trust, until the legal problems settle."

So that's the way it was, I thought. William Prescott and Winston Osbourne, friends from the start, prep school mates, one helping the other hide his money from me. Well, now I knew where to find a little bit more for my twenty-five percent share. But all of a sudden I wasn't hungry for the last of Winston Osbourne's dollars. I was tied up with William Prescott in a very real way, which meant I was tied up with Winston Osbourne too. And I guess that was the price for joining the club, that we all help each other out, even the dest.i.tute. I could be munificent, sure, if that was what was required of me, I could be munificent as h.e.l.l. Simon was right, it was so sad to see a sot being chased for his money. I had taken enough from him, I figured. Whatever he offered in final settlement after the car would be enough. Good. My first case as a lawyer would finally be over. It was time to move on.

"Well, what do you say, Victor?" asked Jack. "Boys night out? A few cigars, a few cheap thrills?"

"Or maybe not so cheap thrills," said Simon.

"Sure," I said with a shrug, shucking off all concern that Beth had raised about the Ruffing cross-examination, ignoring the worries about the connection between W.P. and W.O. that should have been hammering at my consciousness but were instead only tap, tap, tapping there, tapping so lightly they couldn't break through the spell of the alcohol and fine food and rich company. "Why not," I said. "I've got nothing better to do."

"More wine, Victor?"

"Yes, please."

I drank the wine, a crisp Chablis, and ate the veal and laughed along with Simon's jokes. The waiter brought another bottle and my gla.s.s was filled again, the two Bishops so attentive to my goblet they might almost have been trying to get me drunk, and as the wine danced on the back of my tongue my spirits rose. This wasn't so bad, this veal, this wine, this ambience of money. I could get used to this.

30.

PRESCOTT WAS IMPRESSIVE on cross-examination. Even without saying a word he could be unnerving. He leaned slightly forward, his hands gripping tightly to the sides of the wooden podium, his eyes fixed like laser sights on the witness. As he stood there, tall, in a solid navy blue, pitched forward, his posture angry, the polite smile on his stern face tight and angry, as he stood before the court a tension grew and then out of that tension came questions, soft at first, full of incredulity or certainty, rising and falling in pitch and volume, questions that compelled answers.

"Now, Mr. Bissonette was a ladies' man, wasn't he, Mr. Ruffing?"

"Yes, that's right."

"He went out with lots of different ladies, isn't that right?"

"That's right."

"Older ladies and younger ladies and single ladies and married ladies."

"He did all right, he was a ballplayer, after all."

"And the married ladies had husbands?"

"By definition, right?"

"And the single ladies had fathers?"

"I would guess so."

"And Mr. Bissonette with all his lady friends was sure to have made some enemies, isn't that right?"

"I don't know about that."

"Are you married, Mr. Ruffing?"

"Yes."

"Do you have daughters?"

"Two."

"Would you have let your two precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette?"

"Not on your life," said Ruffing with a broad smile at the jury.

"No, I'm sure you wouldn't, Mr. Ruffing. But plenty of men, without giving permission, had their precious daughters go out with Mr. Bissonette, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"And Mr. Bissonette used to talk about these girls, didn't he?"

"Occasionally."

"He'd tell stories."

"Sometimes."

"He'd entertain his friends at the bar with his stories of all these ladies."

"Now and then."

"Stories about these ladies he took to bed, these wives and daughters he took to bed and f.u.c.ked."

The jury leaned back as if they had been slapped. The word was all the more shocking coming from the upright and austere personage that was William Prescott III.

Eggert said, "Objection to the language and the relevance."

The judge turned to Ruffing and said simply, "Is that what Mr. Bissonette would talk about?"

"Sometimes," said Ruffing. "Yes, sir."

"Watch your language, Mr. Prescott," he said. "You can continue."

"Now, Mr. Ruffing, did Mr. Bissonette ever tell you the names of these women?"

"Sometimes."

"And was one of them the daughter of Enrico Raffaello?"

"Objection," shouted Eggert, jumping to his feet before Ruffing could answer, and the judge picked his head out of his papers and stared long and hard at Prescott and then said, "The jury is excused for fifteen minutes, the bailiff will lead you out," and everyone stayed still as the jury rose and filed out, Prescott gripping the podium, Eggert standing, his arm raised in protest, the judge staring at Prescott.

When the jury had left the courtroom the judge said in four sharp and precise syllables, "In my chambers."

I rose as steadily as I could and followed the other lawyers into the judge's book-lined office. I had drunk far too much wine the night before with the Bishops, graduating later in the evening to Sea Breezes. We had never gotten back to the marble-tabled conference room. Instead, Simon knew of this place on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Jersey where the women dance on your table and sit on your lap, so long as you buy them twenty-four-dollar gla.s.ses of fake champagne c.o.c.ktail, which we did. One of the women in this place had the longest legs I had ever seen, bacon and eggs Jack called them, legs she could wrap twice around the pole that bisected the stage, and the Bishops bought her three champagne c.o.c.ktails just to keep her on my lap. Her name was Destiny, she wore golden spikes, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were like porcelain, that white, that smooth, that immobile as she danced. I liked her smile. Destiny. With real red hair and golden spikes. It was a good thing that my orders were to let Prescott do the whole of the examination because that morning my brain was so fogged and my tongue so thick I doubted a single word would have been understood by the jury.

"Mr. Prescott," said the judge, with more than the usual tinge of anger in his voice. He was sitting behind his desk in his chambers while the rest of us stood around him in a semicircle. The court reporter had brought his machine from the courtroom and was sitting serenely next to the desk. "What kind of question was that?"

"A probative one, Your Honor," said Prescott.

"I won't let you bring up all the names of the women Bissonette might have been with. I gave you more than enough lat.i.tude with your questions about his stories as it was."

"Your Honor, we believe Mr. Bissonette was murdered by Mr. Raffaello because he was having s.e.x with his daughter."

"That's ridiculous," said Eggert. "I demand an offer of proof."

"I don't think," said the judge sourly in his brutish rasp of a voice, "that you should ever demand anything in my chambers, Mr. Eggert. However, I appreciate your concern. Do you have any proof, Mr. Prescott, to back up this charge?"

"I can prove Bissonette was sleeping with Raffaello's daughter, and we all know that he's a killer."

"Is that so?" asked the judge. "Are you going to prove that Mr. Raffaello is a killer in this trial?"

"Every one of those jury members knows who he is. Just let me ask the question, Judge."

"Not if you can't prove he's a killer. Now, Mr. Eggert, is this Mr. Raffaello under investigation by your office?"

"Under federal law, Your Honor, I can't confirm or deny that."

"I hereby make a formal request for all the evidence you have against Enrico Raffaello," said Prescott.

"On what grounds?" asked a surprised Eggert.

"Based on what we know, anything you may have is Brady," said Prescott.

"We don't have anything exculpatory and you know it. We've found absolutely nothing linking Raffaello to Bissonette's murder, nothing at all."

"Mr. Eggert," said the judge. "Do you have enough evidence to indict Mr. Raffaello?"

"No, sir. If we did, we would have already."

"I'm going to formally deny your Brady request, Mr. Prescott, and I am going to forbid you, under threat of contempt, to ask any more questions about Mr. Raffaello's daughter or anyone else whom Mr. Bissonette might have slept with. Do you understand, sir?"

"Yes, Your Honor," said Prescott.

"I'm not going to allow gossip and inadmissible innuendo to act as a defense in any trial in my court, this is the federal courthouse, not the offices of the National Enquirer, do you understand, Mr. Prescott?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Do you understand, Mr. Carl?"

"Yes, sir," I mumbled.

"All right, then let's go out there and try this case as if the rules of evidence were still in existence."

"What do we do now?" I asked Prescott in the courtroom as we waited for the jury to return.

"We scramble," he said.

And scramble he did. He asked Ruffing about the waterfront deal and why exactly it had collapsed. He asked about the phone conversations with Moore and the meetings with Concannon, the exact locations, the exact words spoken. He asked about the discrepancy between the amount Ruffing claimed to have given to Concannon and the amount actually received by CUP and whether Bissonette had deducted the full amount claimed on his tax returns, and Ruffing said he had. It took Prescott almost all of that day to ask his questions. He asked about the lighting in the back parking lot the night of Bissonette's beating and how far away the limousine had been when he saw the men stepping out of the car and he got Ruffing to say he wasn't totally sure who the men were but that it looked like the councilman and someone else, a black man, and to say that though he recognized the limousine as the councilman's he couldn't exactly say how that limousine was different from any other long black limousine with a boomerang on the back. And he asked about the back taxes that Ruffing had owed and the deal Ruffing struck with the IRS and how part of the insurance money on the burned down club went to the IRS to keep up Ruffing's part of the deal. In all it was a solid cross-examination by Prescott, indeed he had asked almost all of the questions I would have asked had I spent the night preparing instead of drinking. But in the end, with all his bl.u.s.ter, all his questions, all his intimidation and insinuation, he did nothing to make Ruffing seem like a liar in front of the jury.

The swelling in my head had subsided and what was left was a deep exhaustion as Prescott asked questions about areas traversed twice or thrice already and Ruffing answered them with the very same answers he had produced before. The rhythm was repet.i.tive, drowsing, hypnotic. I could barely keep my eyes open as Prescott asked his last series of questions.

"All of your conversations with Councilman Moore were on the tapes, isn't that right, Mr. Ruffing?"

"Most of them. Some were made on untapped phones."

"Were the unrecorded conversations any different than the taped ones?"

"No, substantially the same."

"Now I noticed something peculiar on the tapes of your conversations with Mr. Moore. What I noticed, Mr. Ruffing, is that nowhere in those conversations did Councilman Moore mention a specific amount of money."

"I thought he had."

"There was no mention of it in the tapes."

"He mentioned contributions."

"But never amounts and never how it was to be paid."

"He might have mentioned it in the unrecorded conversations."

"But you said those were substantially the same just a second ago, isn't that right?"

"Yes, I did."