Muriel and he had been peers in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and Arthur valued his relationship with her, as with most of his former colleagues. It chagrined him to recognize that after today, she would regard him the way prosecutors viewed most defense lawyers: another decent mortal whose soul had been sucked out of him by the vampires he represented. Yet his duties to Rommy had left Arthur with little choice. He could not have told Muriel what was coming without risking that she would have demanded delays in order to investigate Erdai’s claims, hoping all the while that Erno would become too sick to testify, or even that he could be pressured in the institution to recant.
With a brio that had always seemed to Arthur partly inspired by her size, Muriel argued to Harlow that Gandolph had exhausted the chances the law allowed him to avoid being put to death.
“So you think, Ms. Wynn,” asked the judge, “that even if the police knew facts establishing Mr. Gandolph’s innocence, the Constitution—our Constitution, the federal Constitution,” said Harlow, archly implying that the state lived by the legal equivalent of jungle rules—“you think the time’s up for me to consider them?”
“I believe that’s the law,” said Muriel.
“Well, if you’re right,” said the judge, “then you have very little to lose by hearing what Mr. Erdai has to say.” Always the best lawyer in the courtroom, Harlow smiled benignly. He told Muriel to take her seat and instructed Arthur to put his next question.
He asked where Erno presently resided.
“I’m housed at the Medical Wing of the Rudyard State Penitentiary,” Erno said.
“And for what reason are you housed there?”
“I have stage-four squamous-cell carcinoma of the lung.” Erno turned to the judge. “I got about three months.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Erdai,” said Harlow. By habit, the judge seldom looked up from his notes and even in this moment of solicitude he did not vary from that practice. Arthur had tried several major cases in front of Harlow, and the judge had expressed continuing approval for Arthur’s unassuming style and his diligence. For his part, Arthur revered Harlow, whose casebook he’d studied in law school. The judge was a great man. He was also often a handful. Harlow could be cranky, even volcanic. He was an old-fashioned liberal, reared during the Depression, and he regarded anyone who did not share his brand of democratic communalism as an ingrate or a greedy child. For years now, Harlow had conducted a running battle with the far more conservative Court of Appeals, ruing their frequent reversals and regularly attempting to outflank them. Arthur had taken advantage of that ongoing contest for Gandolph’s benefit. Harlow made no secret of his resentment of the new legislation that gave the Court of Appeals, rather than judges at Harlow’s level, the right to cut off successive habeas corpus proceedings in death-penalty cases. As a result, the judge had been immediately taken with Arthur’s suggestion that Harlow evaluate Erno’s credibility, because, by tradition, the Court of Appeals could not ignore his findings. In effect, this returned to Harlow a large measure of the power to decide whether the case proceeded.
“Have you ever been convicted of a crime, sir?” Arthur asked Erdai.
“I have. Four years ago I got into an argument at a bar with a guy I once investigated and ended up shooting him in the back. He’d come at me with a gun to start, but I shouldn’t have shot him. He recovered, fortunately, but I pled guilty to Aggravated Battery and got ten years.” Erno had drawn the microphone, which resembled a blackened seedpod on a stalk, right next to his lips. His voice was husky, and he tended to exhaust his breath, requiring occasional lapses. But he appeared calm. Speaking slowly, more formally, Erno’s vague, gargling accent, a little bit of Dracula, was slightly more distinct than when he was talking in his preferred mode of Kewahnee tough guy.
Arthur continued exploring Erno’s background, starting with his birth in Hungary and proceeding through his employment at TN. Harlow took careful notes. Ready to launch into the big stuff, Arthur faced Pamela at counsel table to be certain he hadn’t missed any preliminaries. Radiant with anticipation, Pamela shook her head minutely. Perversely, Arthur felt a bit sorry for her. In her first year of practice, Pamela was about to enjoy a triumph she might never equal. After this, it was possible that Pamela would never be content with what satisfied other lawyers. Then again, Arthur realized, the same could well be true for him. He found himself pleased by the prospect that the next question might change his life. And so he asked it.
“Calling your attention to July Fourth of 1991, Mr. Erdai, can you tell us what you did in the early-morning hours of that day?”
Erno adjusted the piece in his nose. “I killed Luisa Remardi, Augustus Leonidis, and Paul Judson,” he said.
Arthur had envisioned a hubbub in the courtroom, but instead there was prolonged silence. Harlow, who had a computer screen on the bench where the court reporter’s transcription appeared, actually looked up to watch the words fly by. Then he put down his pen and pulled on his jaw. From beneath the bird’s nests of his untamed whitish brows, his gaze settled on Arthur. The judge allowed himself nothing else in his expression, but the intensity of his look seemed to reflect admiration. To bring this kind of evidence forward on the eve of execution—that, in Harlow’s view, was the epitome of what the legal profession stood for.
“You may ask another question,” the judge said to Arthur.
Only one was possible.
“Did Romeo Gandolph have a role of any kind in those murders?”
“No,” said Erdai evenly.
“Was he present?”
“No.”
“Did he plan or assist in these murders?”
“No.”
“Did he help you after the fact in any way to conceal the crime?”
“No.”
Arthur stopped then, for effect. there was motion, finally, in the back of the courtroom, as two of the reporters fled for the corridor where it was okay to use their cell phones. Arthur gave some thought to checking Muriel’s reactions, then decided it might be taken as gloating and avoided looking her way.
“Mr. Erdai,” Arthur said, “I would like to ask you to tell the story in your own words of what happened on July Fourth of 1991, what led up to it, and what occurred in the Paradise restaurant. Take your time. Just tell the judge as you remember it.”
Weakened, Erno placed one hand on the rail to face slightly in Harlow’s direction. His gray suit, too heavy for the weather, bagged noticeably.
“There was a gal,” he began, “who worked out at the airport. Luisa Remardi. A ticket agent. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was a little bit of a tart. And I made the mistake of getting involved with her. You know, I thought it was just for kicks, Judge, but I sort of fell into it. As soon as I did, I began seeing signs she was stepping out. And this made me into a complete head case. I admit it.” Erno touched the knot of his tie to loosen it slightly, while Harlow, in his tall leather chair, tossed his glasses down on his blotter so he could watch Erdai without distraction. Erno breathed deeply, preparing to go on.
“So I started keeping an eye on her. And naturally one night, I see what I figured. This would be July 3rd. Luisa meets up with some guy in the airport parking lot, some deep dark corner, and she, you know, she hops him right there in his car. This’ll tell you how crazy I was. I watched the whole thing. Every jiggle. Forty minutes or so.”
Erno had his momentum now and Arthur was reluctant to interrupt, but evidentiary formalities required it.
“Could you identify the man with Ms. Remardi?”
“No clue. I didn’t care much who it was. Just that she was jumping around on somebody else’s pogo stick.” There was a titter and Erno’s eyes flashed up to the bench. “Sorry, Judge.”
Harlow, who could be salty in private, waved it off.
“So finally she’s had her fill and drives away and I follow. And she ends up at Gus’s. At the restaurant there. Paradise. And I run in after her. It turns into a scene, I can tell yo
u that. I’m calling her a tramp, and she’s yelling back at me, I don’t own her, I’m a married man for Chrissake, I can’t make different rules for her than me. You can imagine.” Erno shook his sallow face and looked down at the walnut rail of the witness stand as he absorbed the sad memory.
“Naturally, this caught Gus’s attention. He gave his employees July Fourth off, I guess, so he was there by himself. He comes over and tells me to scat and I tell him to eff himself. At that point I grabbed Luisa to haul her out. She’s screaming, whaling on me, and all the sudden now here’s Gus again, this time with a gun. You know, in my time, I had some stones. And I’ve been in there, I’ve seen Gus. He’s not gonna shoot nobody. I tell him that. At which point Luisa reaches up and grabs the pistol. ‘Yeah, but I will,’ she says.
“And she would have. So I go after the revolver. I’m trying to jerk it away from her and kaboom. Just like in the freakin movies. I swear, when Gus had the pistol in his hand, I looked and the safety was on, but I guess wrestling around—Well, anyway, there’s a hole right through the center of her. Smoke coming out of it, too. She looks down there, you know, like, What the heck is this, and the smoke is still rising. Then the blood starts to spread.
“Gus starts off to call an ambulance and I tell him, ‘Wait.’
“‘Wait? What for I wait? She be dead?’ What it was, was I needed a minute to think it through, Judge. To come to grips. Because I can see just how this is going down. Twenty years I worked for that airline and as soon as he lifts that phone, I can read all the headlines. Executive poking employee. Security head involved in shooting. Adios job. Just me and my missus having many happy-type content evenings together. And that isn’t the worst of it yet. I already have another accidental shooting way back when. The wrong prosecutor looks at this, I could damn well end up doing time.
“So I just needed a minute, a minute, you know, to come to grips, to stop being so freakin scared, frankly. Just if he give me thirty seconds, maybe. But Gus, he was scorched. A shooting in his place. With his gun. When I say ‘Wait’ a second time, he walks away and goes to the phone. And I’m pretty wigged out and upset. All I want is to get a little control here. I tell him to stop. I tell him I’ll kill him. He don’t stop. He goes right there. And I shot him. Good shot. Good shot,” said Erno again, in plain lamentation. “Right through the head.
“So I go back to the booth now. Luisa is not doing too well. Gonna bleed out and die. But there isn’t a whole lot to do about it. Now at least I have a minute to think. And the only choice I got is to try to get away with this. I can’t change it. The worst that happens is I get caught. At least I’ve gotta try.
“So I figure, make it look like a robbery. I go back and take everything out of the register. I pull off Gus’s watch, his rings. I wipe down the table where Luisa was sitting so there aren’t fingerprints. And I don’t know, in a mirror I think I see something on the other side of the restaurant. I’m not real sure, but could be somebody else was in one of the booths when I ran in. I realize I better look, and lo and behold in the far corner, I see this guy hiding under the table. Just a guy. A guy like me. Suit and tie. He couldn’t have made a run for it because I was between him and the door and so he’s smart enough to hide, only it didn’t work. That’s all. It didn’t work. I found him.
“I got him out from under there. He was blubberin and carryin on by then, sayin the same as I’d say, ‘Don’t kill me, I’m never gonna tell.’ He started in showin me the pictures of his family in his wallet. He musta seen that on TV. And I told him the truth. ‘I don’t wanna kill you, fella. No way I want to kill you.’ I had him drag Gus downstairs to that freezer. By then, Luisa was gone, so I had him do the same with her. Then I tied him up there, this guy, Paul, I think I read was his name. The whole time I’m wondering how I could not kill him. I’m thinking, maybe if he just ends up blind, you know, but Christ, putting a fork in his eyes or something, that’s harder than pulling the trigger.
“I never was sure I could kill a man like that. I mean, I have a temper. I know that. I go off. Like I did with Gus. But kill somebody, cool as you please, just because it worked out as him or me?
“When I was a kid, in Hungary, they killed my father because the neighbors gave him up to the secret police, and I always kind of took my lessons from that. I never expected much from anyone but my family. You do what you have to, I figured. But I didn’t know I actually believed that. Not till then. Cause I killed him. I shot him right through the back of the head, and you could see that the life was gone from him just that very second by the way he fell straight over on the floor. Then I took Luisa’s jewelry off of her, and rearranged her clothes too, cause of her visit with that guy in the parking lot. I wasn’t sure what would show in the autopsy.”
Again, he awaited his breath. There was no sound in the huge old courtroom but the hissing from his oxygen tank. Arthur was the only person on his feet, and it seemed to him no one else could have found the wherewithal to stand anyway. On the faces in the gallery there was awe—perhaps at the momentousness of evil, or the incongruity that Erno was sitting here and using the same words we all spoke to describe actions so far beyond our capacities. Or were they? From that region of uncertainty, everyone awaited what Erno would report next.
“All the time I was in that freezer, while the whole thing was happening, I was like a zombie. But afterwards, afterwards I didn’t know what to think. Sometimes, I’d see people on the street—tramps and gangbangers, guys with half a brain, everybody you look down on—and I’d think that none of them did anything like I’d done. They all had something on me. I was waiting to get caught. I was sort of preparing myself mentally for the day the coppers knocked on my door. But I’d done a good job. The police were running in every direction and bumping into themselves.”
While Erno permitted himself another interval, Arthur surveyed the courtroom to see how he was doing. Pamela had her lips rolled into her mouth, appearing as if she didn’t dare breathe for fear of disturbing the perfect rhythms of the moment. He winked at her, then finally dared to look at the prosecution table, first to Larry Starczek, whom he hadn’t seen for years. Arthur had considered trying to exclude Larry from the courtroom because Erno was going to be testifying about him, but Arthur had ultimately decided that Erdai would make a better impression if he took on Larry face-to-face. And that judgment was correct. Larry was not behaving in a fashion likely to impress Kenton Harlow. He appeared on the verge of laughter. To him, the whole thing was so ridiculous, it qualified as humor.
Beside Larry, Muriel was far more pensive. She finished writing a note and her line of sight crossed Arthur’s. He expected her to be furious. She would recognize at once that Arthur was exploiting her vulnerability as a prospective candidate. Convicting an innocent man and executing him was not the kind of on-the-job experience the voters typically had in mind for their elected prosecutor, and Arthur’s aim was to set off a public clamor that would force Muriel to dismiss the case quickly to get it out of the headlines. But she had always loved the game, and Muriel actually tipped her head to him very slightly. Not bad, she was saying. Not that she believed it. Not for a second. But lawyer to lawyer, she had to give Arthur credit for pulling this off. Arthur nodded back in what he hoped was a respectful manner, then faced Erno once more.
“Mr. Erdai, I didn’t ask you earlier. Were you acquainted with Romeo Gandolph at this time in July of 1991?”
“Acquainted? You could say I knew him.”
“In what capacity?”
“As a complete and total pain.”
Laughter of unexpected volume rang through the courtroom. Everyone had apparently craved the relief. Even Harlow chuckled on the bench.
“Squirrel, Rommy, whatever—he was kind of a street person. He used to hang out at DuSable Field in the winter to get out of the cold, and stuff had a habit of disappearing when he was around. So my guys and I kind of encouraged him to depart, you might say, on a regular basis. That’s how I knew him.??
?
“Do you have any knowledge how Romeo Gandolph came to be charged for this crime?”
“That I do.”
“Please tell the Court in your own words what happened.”
“What happened?” asked Erno. He inhaled for a time on his oxygen. “Well, it’s like the priest at Rudyard says. It’s not as if I don’t have a conscience. And I have this nephew. Collins is his name. Collins Farwell. I’ve tried to help him. I always have. All his life I worried about him. And he gave me a lot to worry about, I’ll tell you that.
“Anyhow, he got himself cracked a few months after I killed those people. Narcotics. Triple X. Life in the can. And it worked on me quite a bit. Because here I am, a murdering bastard running free, and there’s Collins who didn’t do anything besides sell people what they wanted, and he’s going to spend his natural life behind bars. I don’t know. It bothered me.
“And then there’s a part of me that figured I would never have any peace with this unless somebody else got nailed for it. Looking back, that was stupid. It was always gonna bother me. But at that point I thought, Well, if I can put this on somebody, then I’ll be better off, and Collins’ll be better off, too, because he had to give the prosecutors something to get out from under that life sentence.”
Arthur asked the obvious—why Rommy?
“Well, Mr. Raven, the real answer is because I knew I could stick it on him. See, basically, it came down to this cameo, this locket, they found him with. That was Luisa’s. And I knew Squirrel had it.”
“Squirrel is Rommy?”
“That’s what they called him.”
“Can you explain how you happened to know he had that cameo?”
“Can, but it’s a long story. A week or two before Luisa died”—Erno straightened up to correct himself—“before I killed her, I was checking on her all the time, spying on her is what it really came down to. But I come in early one morning as she’s leaving, and she chews me up one side and down the other about all the thieves I let roam around this airfield. Bottom line, she’d taken this locket off, when it got wound up in her telephone cord, and she’d laid it on her counter. She goes away for a second and when she comes back, there’s Squirrel slipping off like a shadow and the cameo is gone. She’s cussing me out about this, and crying because it’s been in the family for a couple centuries.