“And so,” asks Stern. “Are you better satisfied?”
“About Larren?”
“What else?” He has apparently misinterpreted my moment of reflection.
“I’m hardly satisfied, Sandy. He had no business presiding over this case. He should have excused himself the minute it was assigned to him.”
“Perhaps that is so, Rusty, but let me remind you that Judge Lyttle had no idea when this case began that that file—the B file, as you call it—was going to be an element of your defense.”
“You did.”
“Me?” Stern waves at some of the smoke and passes a remark in Spanish that I do not understand. “Am I, too, the target of complaint? Certainly you do not think that I planned to focus on that file at the threshold? And even then, Rusty, was I to make a motion for Judge Lyttle to excuse himself? How would you have framed it? The defendant asks the court to recuse itself because the alleged victim was once Your Honor’s lover and partner in crime? Some matters are not for courtroom pleading. Really, Rusty. I do not mean to appear the cynic. And I share your concern for professional standards. But I suggest again that you are reacting to the shock of events. This punctiliousness, under the circumstances, is a bit surprising.”
“I don’t mean to be a prig. If I am, I apologize. But I’m not concerned about form or technicalities. I have the feeling things were bent well out of shape.”
Stern draws back, removing his cigar. It is a long, slow motion meant to show surprise. But it is no longer opening night. I have seen all of Sandy Stern’s best moves a number of times and I don’t buy this one.
“Sandy, I’ve been thinking hard about things in the last few hours. Larren Lyttle’s career was over if the circumstances of the B file were fully explored. And you used every opportunity to tell him that you intended to do just that.”
“Really, Rusty. You must know things that I do not. I saw nothing to indicate that Judge Lyttle fully understood the import of that file. You must remember that its contents were never described in testimony. The file itself was never even in the courtroom.”
“Sandy, would you be offended if I told you that I still don’t think you’re sharing everything with me?”
“Ah,” says Stern. “We have been too long together on this case. You begin, Rusty, to sound something like Clara.” He smiles, but I again refuse to be dissuaded.
“Sandy, it took a long time for this to sink in. I admit that. For a while I thought that it was just a bizarre coincidence. You know, I thought it was just lucky that your harping on that file took advantage of Larren’s vulnerability. But, I realize now, that’s not possible. You meant to catch the judge’s attention. There was no other reason for you to keep referring to that file. The last time you did it—when Lip was on the stand?—we were way past the point where you needed to raise doubts about Tommy. By then, you knew all about Kumagai. You knew you were going to blow Molto away with that. But you went out of your way again to tell the judge we were going to offer proof about the file the first chance we got. You must have told him that, one way or the other, half a dozen times. You wanted Larren to believe that we were hell-bent on turning that file inside out in public. That’s why you mentioned that whole business of a frame-up while Horgan was on cross. You wanted to create a record in which Larren would think he had no proper way to keep you from going ahead. And yet when you sat down with me to talk about a defense, you didn’t mention word one about the file. We had nothing to offer.”
Stern is silent. “You are a fine investigator, Rusty,” he says at last.
“And you’re very flattering. Actually, I’ve had the feeling lately that I was fairly dull. There are still a lot of things I haven’t figured out. Like what you mentioned a second ago. How did you know that Larren would realize that the B file concerned a case where he’d been dirty? What else is there to the story?”
Stern and I stare at each other for a moment. His look is deeper and more complex than ever. If he is disconcerted, it is well concealed.
“There is no more to tell, Rusty,” he says at last. “I made certain assumptions, particularly when I saw the judge’s reactions with Horgan on the witness stand. They are very close, of course, and as I say, it is my understanding that Raymond would have been quite sensitive to the implications of that file. It seemed likely to me that he and Larren must have communicated about it sometime in the past. But I have no special knowledge. Just a lawyer’s intuition.”
Horgan. That was what I missed. Raymond had to have told Larren about that file long ago. Stern is correct. For a moment I spin out the further calculations that follow. But that is not for now. I want to clear the books first with Stern.
“So let me see if I get it,” I tell him. “You wouldn’t dream of directly threatening the judge with exposure. That could be counterproductive, even disastrous. And it’s simply not Stern’s style. You had to find your own perfect and subtle way of doing things. You wanted Larren to worry about the file, but to believe that he alone perceived his problem. And so, at all moments you made it appear that the defense was in pursuit of Tommy Molto. You acted as if you thought he was the bad guy the file would expose. And the judge bought it. He did his best to steer us in the wrong direction. He did everything he could to make Tommy’s zeal look sinister. Larren derided Molto’s character. He held him in contempt. Accused him of manufacturing evidence, of signaling witnesses. But that was a double edge. The worse Tommy looked, the stronger your argument for going into the B file became, because it began to seem like this really was a frame-up, engineered by Molto to keep Sabich from discovering Tommy’s twisted past. And so it was more and more important for Larren to end the trial. He could never take the chance of letting you go into that file, as you kept saying you wanted to do. Larren didn’t know what would come out, but the worst thing, of course, was the truth. He could bet the ranch that whatever Tommy knew about the bad old past in the North Branch, he wouldn’t keep it to himself. Molto might hold back to protect Carolyn and her memory—but not to save Larren’s ass, at the cost of his own. And so, without so much as a motion from us, Judge Lyttle declares a TKO and sends me home. And, Sandy, there was one man in the courtroom who knew that was what had to happen. You figured it was coming all along.”
Stern’s eyes are large and clear and somberly brown.
“Do you judge me so harshly, Rusty?”
“No. I share the Stern outlook. No one is above temptation.”
Sandy smiles at that, somewhat sadly.
“Just so,” he tells me.
“But tolerance doesn’t require an absence of standards. I know I sound like a world-class ingrate, but I have to tell you I don’t approve.”
“I did not act for my own benefit, Rusty.” He looks at me in that familiar way, lowering his chin so he can observe me from beneath his drawn brow. “It was a situation in which I—in which we—found ourselves. I did not create it. My own recollection of some of the matters you refer to was refreshed as we proceeded. I dwelt on Molto initially because he was so much easier a target than Della Guardia. It was necessary to develop this theme of past rivalries, somehow. When certain other matters came to mind, it was convenient to continue in the fashion that you have described. But I did not mean to coerce the judge. It was for that reason that I made Molto our straw culprit, so that Judge Lyttle would not feel impelled to do something rash. Was I aware that this might create certain subterranean pressures on Larren as well?” Stern gestures—he nearly smiles. Again there is that mysterious Latin look, used this time as the most reluctant, if philosophical, form of acquiescence. “As you put it, I assessed a point of vulnerability. But I think overall, in your analysis, you credit me with an intricacy of mind that no human being—certainly not I—possesses. I made certain judgments, instantaneously. This was not a charted course. It remained a matter of intuition and estimation throughout.”
“I’ll always wonder, you know. About the outcome.”
“That would be inappr
opriate, Rusty. I understand your concern now. But I would hesitate before I accepted your view of the judge’s ultimate ruling. His handling of this case was, I believe, evenhanded on the whole. Certainly, if he was seeking a convenient way to terminate the proceedings, he could have prohibited the prosecution from offering their fingerprint testimony, in the absence of the glass. Even Della Guardia, disappointed as he was, conceded that Larren’s decision today was within the realm of the judge’s legitimate discretion. Do you think Nico would have made that handsome gesture of dismissing the case if he believed Larren’s assessment was unfounded? Judge Lyttle entered a proper decision, and had he not, I am confident you would have been acquitted. Isn’t that what the jurors told the press?”
That is indeed what the papers reported. Three jurors told the media on the courthouse steps that they would not have voted to convict. But Sandy and I both know that the seat-of-the-pants impression of three laymen who have learned that the judge on the case called it a loser are worth very little—and are hardly determinative of what nine other people would have done, in any event.
Stern continues.
“As I say, I made judgments. If, in retrospect, either one of us regards them as questionable, then that should be a burden on my conscience, not yours. Your role is to accept your good fortune on its face, without further reflection. This is the legal significance of an acquittal. This matter is now entirely disposed of. I urge you to move forward. You will overcome this shadow on your career. You are a gifted lawyer, Rusty. I always regarded you as one of the finest of Horgan’s prosecutors, probably the best. I was quite disappointed that Raymond did not have the sense to step aside last year and attempt to make the appropriate political arrangements so that you could have succeeded him.”
With that I smile. Now I know that the worst is really over. I have not heard that old saw in many months.
“I believe you are going to be all right, Rusty. I sense that.” For my part, I sense that Stern is about to say something regrettable; even, perhaps, that I have profited from this experience. I spare him the chance. I pick up my briefcase, which had been left here. Stern sees me to the door. We stand at the threshold, shaking hands, promising to speak, knowing that, whatever else, in the future we will have very little to say to one another.
FALL
37
Only the poets can truly write of liberty, that sweet, exhilarant thing. In my life, I have not known an ecstasy as dulcet or complete as the occasional instants of shivering delight when I again realize this peril is behind me. Over. Done. Whatever the collateral consequences, whatever the smirking, the unvoiced accusations, the contumely or scorn with which others might treat me, to my face or, more certainly, behind my back—whatever they say, the terror is over; the sleepless early-morning hours I spent trying to catapult myself ahead in time, envisioning a life of mindless toil during the day, and nights working like half the other inmates on my endless train of habeas corpus petitions and, finally, the wary fearful hours of half-sleep on some prison bunk, awaiting whatever perverse terror the night would bring—that horror is past me. And with a sense of earned relief. Every sin of my life seems truly expiated. My society has judged; no punishment is due. Every sticky cliché is right: an enormous weight has been lifted; I feel as if I could fly, like a million bucks, ten feet tall. I feel free.
And then, of course, the shadow moves, and I think what I have been through, with enormous anger and bitterness and a swooping descent into depression. As a prosecutor I lost cases, more, naturally, than I would have liked, and had my chance to observe the acquitted defendant in the instant of victory. Most wept; the guiltier they were, the harder they cried. I always thought it was relief, and guilt. But it is, I tell you, this disbelief that this ordeal, this—think of the word—trial has been endured for no apparent point but your disgrace, and your uncompensable damage.
The return to life is slow: an island on which a soft wind moves. The first two days the phone does not stop. How people who did not speak to me for the last four months can imagine that I could accept their glib congratulations astounds me. But they call. And I am calculating enough to know they may be needed again; I accept their good wishes with some aplomb. But I spend most of my time alone. I am overwhelmed by the desire to be out in the waning summer and the stirring fall. One day I hold Nat out of school and we go fishing from a canoe. The day passes and we say almost nothing; but I am content to be with my boy and I feel he knows it. Other days I walk in the forest for hours. Very slowly, I begin to see things and therefore notice what I did not see before. My life for four months has been an oblivion, a hopeless storm of feeling so wild that there was nothing outside it. Every face that presented itself to my imagination did so with cyclonic impact in my interior reaches, which now, gradually, are growing still, and which, I finally realize, will in time again require movement.
For the present, I remain at home. My neighbors say that I should write a book, but I am not ready yet for any enterprise. It becomes clear quickly that Barbara finds my presence disconcerting. Her irritation with me, held so long in check, now returns in a peculiar fashion. She clearly feels unable to speak her mind. There are no overt complaints, no instants of shrill sarcasm. As a result she seems even more confined within herself than ever. I find her staring at me with an intense look, troubled, angry, I think. “What?” I ask. Her chin dimples in disapproval. She sighs. She turns away.
“Are you ever going back to work?” she asks me one day. “I can’t get anything done with you around here.”
“I’m not bothering you.”
“You’re a distraction.”
“By sitting in the living room? By working in the garden?” I admit that I am trying to provoke her.
She lifts her eyes to heaven; she walks away. Now she never rises to the bait. This battle, such as it is, must be fought in silence.
It is true that I have made no effort to secure employment. The checks continue to arrive every two weeks from the P.A.’s office. Della Guardia, of course, has no justifiable cause to fire me. And it would turn the office on its head were I to return to work. Nico is under siege from the press. The national reports have increased the sense of local embarrassment. What might ordinarily have passed as mere incompetence in the administration of county affairs has been magnified into a major scandal through the lens of coast-to-coast attention. Nico Della Guardia has made us in Kindle County look to the world like benighted backwoods buffoons. The editorial writers and even the few local politicians of the opposing political party demand that Nico appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Tommy Molto. The local Bar Association has opened an inquiry to determine whether Tommy should be disbarred. The common belief is that Nico, in his ambition to vault himself into the mayor’s office, pressed too hard and that in response Molto manufactured evidence, in league with Painless Kumagai. Nico’s dismissal of the case is widely read as a confession. Only on occasion are other motivations suggested. I saw a Sunday piece by Stew Dubinsky which mentioned the B file and the aroma that surrounded the North Branch courthouse during those years. But nothing ever followed. Whatever the general understanding, I am not inclined to correct it. I will not exculpate Nico or Tommy or Painless. I still have no wish to tell what I know: that it was my seed taken from Carolyn; that those surely were my prints found on that glass in the apartment; that the carpet fibers detected were from my home; that all the calls the records showed were made from my phone. I will never be ready to brook the costs of these admissions. And there is a rough justice in this. Let Tommy Molto enjoy the experience of attempting to disprove what circumstance seemingly makes obvious. I accept the checks.
It is Mac’s last act as chief administrative deputy in the P.A.’s office, before taking the bench, to negotiate a date at which my stipend may end. Nico has suggested six more months. I demand an additional year as reparations. Nine months is ultimately agreed. In our final conversation on this subject, Mac honors our friendship mightily by ask
ing me to speak at her induction. This is my first public outing. Ed Mumphrey, who presides in the ceremonial courtroom, introduces me as “a man who knows a great deal about justice,” and the three or four hundred persons who have assembled to watch Mac become a judge rise to their feet to applaud me. I am now a local hero. Kindle County’s Dreyfus. People regret some of the pleasure that they felt watching me be flogged. Yet it is not possible for me to forget how out of place I feel in society. The trial is still like a shell around me. I cannot reach out.
Because I am one of the three speakers at the ceremony, Nico is not present. But Horgan could not appropriately stay away. I attempt to avoid him, but later, amid the jostling by the hors d’oeuvres tables at the hotel reception, I feel a hand upon my arm.
Raymond has that blarney smile. He does not take the risk of offering his hand.
“How’ve you been?” he asks in a hearty way.
“I’m fine.”
“We should have lunch.”
“Raymond, I’ll never do another thing in my life that you tell me I should.” I turn, but he follows me.
“I put that badly. I would really appreciate it, Rusty, if you would have lunch with me. Please.”
Old affections. Old connections. So hard to break; for what else do we have? I give him a date and walk away.
I meet Raymond at his law firm, and he suggests that if I don’t mind, we will not go out. Both of us would be better off without some clever item in the I-On-The-Town column about how Raymond H. and acquitted Chiefdep buried the hatchet in Satinay’s prime rib. Instead, Raymond has arranged a catered lunch. We eat shrimp rémoulade alone in an enormous conference room on that stone table that seems to be composed of a single quarried piece, a thirty-foot slab, polished and posted here as an auction block for the captains of industry. Raymond asks the obligatory questions about Barbara and Nat, and he talks about the law firm. He asks about me.