Reversible Errors

  After more than an hour in the ward vestibule, Arthur was admitted at last. He was searched cursorily and escorted back along the linoleum corridors, where the light of the schoolhouse fixtures spread generously before him.

  The deputy assigned to Erno explained that the family was agitated because their visit had been interrupted to make way for Arthur. Drawing close to the room, he saw two women in the hallway. One was shorter than the other and somewhat dowdier. She proved to be Mrs. Erdai. Her nose was red and a balled-up Kleenex grew from her fist. The other, wearing a straight skirt perhaps too short for a woman of her age, was Erno’s sister, Ilona, the mother of Collins, the man whom Erno had started out to save. She was tall and sturdy, with long hands and light hair losing color, overall a better-looking version of Erno—the same thin face, and a hardness that crept through it. With little said, the two women made clear that they resented everything about Arthur, his intrusion and, worse, the humiliation he’d wrought for Erno, which would survive for them long after his passing, even as it went for naught. Ilona, who had her brother’s piercing light eyes, delivered a haunting, magisterial look of reproof. Arthur promised to be only a moment.

  On the phone, the nurse had said Erno was feverish but usually lucid. His condition was complicated by the fact that his cancer had reached his bones and was causing great pain. At this point, the principal problem in his care was balancing the opiates against a respiratory system on the verge of collapse.

  When Arthur entered, Erno was asleep and looked very much a man about to die. He’d lost more weight since his court appearance. The new round of chemo had killed off about half his hair, leaving little weedy patches here and there. Several IV’s ran into his arms, and his nosepiece had now been replaced by a plastic oxygen mask that clouded with each shallow breath. Erno was also experiencing some kind of liver involvement. His skin was virtually the same color as a legal pad. Another yellow man, Arthur thought.

  Pulling up a chair, he waited for Erno to awaken. In his mind, Arthur had tried out a hundred scenarios in the hopes that Erno would redeem his credibility, but Arthur hadn’t seen yet how both Genevieve and Erno could be telling the truth. Muriel, who had called Arthur yesterday to remind him that she would oppose any further extensions in the time to respond to her motion, had a new theory about Erno’s motive for lying.

  ‘He’s against the death penalty now,’ she said. ‘He fingered Rommy for execution and now he’s gone through this big Catholic revival and won’t die in mortal sin, so he’s trying to prevent it the only way he can.’ It was not very persuasive, but Arthur regarded it as an improvement over Muriel’s earlier approach in that it didn’t make Erno out to be a monster. In fact, as he sat here, Arthur felt quite a bit of tenderness toward Erdai. He could not fathom why at first, but as the minutes passed with the nurses’ voices and the bells and beeps resounding from the hall, he realized that Erno looked a good deal like Harvey Raven had in his final days. The thought of his father and the valor of his supposedly ordinary existence as always filled Arthur with sentiment, but the chasm seemed less deep now that Gillian was in his life.

  Returning to the present, he realized that Erno was staring at him through the horizontal bars of the bed rail. Arthur had been asked to wear a paper face mask and he pulled it down so Erdai could recognize him. Erno’s disappointment was plain.

  “Hoped you were. My nephew,” Erno said. His voice had been whittled to a husk and he had no breath. Nonetheless, Erno smiled faintly at the recollection of Collins. “Coming tonight,” he said. “Good boy. Turned out fine. Hard time. But fine. Beautiful kids.” Erno closed his eyes, content with that thought.

  Arthur gave him a second, then asked if Erno had heard about Genevieve. He nodded. Suddenly, after waiting weeks for this conversation, Arthur could not figure out the next question.

  “Well, shit,” he finally said, “is it true?”

  “Course,” whispered Erno. “Why I. Blamed Squirrel.”

  “Because you knew he’d threatened to kill Luisa?”

  “Right.” Every effort at communication seemed to require a tautening of Erno’s whole body, but he appeared to be tracking well. Erno was saying he’d pinned Luisa’s murder on Squirrel in the first place because he’d known about the threat. Erno had killed Luisa for his own reasons, but Squirrel had made himself a scapegoat in advance.

  “Told Larry. Subpoena Genevieve.” Erno wiggled his chin side to side, chagrined by Larry’s stupidity. “Should have figured this out. Ten years ago.”

  “The tickets, you mean?”

  “Not tickets. Not good for me.”

  “Because you were head of security?”

  Erno nodded and tossed his hand around. It was an involved story, apparently, but Arthur was close enough for the purposes of a man without breath to explain.

  “Genevieve.” He coughed weakly, swallowed, and closed his eyes to contend with pain that had arisen from somewhere. When he recovered, he seemed to have lost his place.

  “Genevieve,” said Arthur.

  “Didn’t think she knew. About tickets.”

  “Why?”

  “Wouldn’t have told me about Squirrel. Bad for her friend.” Bad because of the peril to Luisa of getting caught for pilfering tickets. Thinking it over, Arthur realized Enro had been close to correct. Genevieve hadn’t known about the ticket scam when she reported Rommy’s threat. She learned of it only afterwards when Luisa had upbraided her for involving Erdai.

  “Right,” said Arthur. “So what was Larry supposed to figure out?”

  “Luisa. Squirrel. Threat.” Erno wove his fingers and tied all ten together. “The rest—” He whittled his face in the air again, to indicate it wouldn’t matter. The most likely conclusion, if Genevieve had reported only Rommy’s threat to Larry, was that crazy Squirrel had been disappointed in love. It would do fine for a motive.

  “Christ, Erno. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Complicated.” Erno waited out some kind of spasm. “Bad for Squirrel.” He was right about that, too. A story that started with Squirrel threatening to kill Luisa would never have gotten much further. Yet even accepting the good intentions, Arthur could feel his heart falling, for it was clear how conniving Erno had been with the truth.

  In pain or reverie, Erno’s eyes were still. The full measure of his illness showed there—a web of veins, sallow streaks, a glassy thickening. His lashes were gone and the lids looked inflamed.

  “Me too,” he said suddenly.

  “You too what?” asked Arthur. “It would have been bad for you, too?”

  Erno reached up in time to catch a cough, but nodded as he shook.

  “Why?” Arthur asked. “Why would it be bad for you?”

  “Tickets,” said Erno. “Stole tickets, too.”

  “You did?”

  Erno nodded again.

  “Hell, why would you do that, Erno?”

  He gave his hand a disgusted little toss and looked toward the ceiling.

  “Stupid,” he said. “Needed money. Family problems. Was two years before.”

  “Before Luisa was doing it?”

  “Right. Stopped. But afraid.”

  “You were afraid?”

  “Catch her, catch me.” Erno stopped to breathe. “Why I went to restaurant. Stop her. Fought. Gus came with gun.” Erno closed his eyes. The rest did not bear repeating.

  “So there was never an affair?”

  Erno smiled thinly at the notion.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Arthur. His voice was too loud, but he was suddenly desperate. He had the feeling that often overcame him when things went disastrously wrong, that he was deeply at fault, and that as a consequence he would have liked nothing more than to escape his own skin, shirk it, even peel it off if that was necessary. “Jesus, Erno. Why didn’t you say this?”

  “Pension,” he said. “Twenty-three years. For my wife now. Better this way. All around.”

  Better for Rommy, better for him—that??
?s what Erno meant. Except that like every lie, it could disintegrate along the fault lines of the truth. Arthur calculated. His first instinct was to summon a court reporter, someone who could get this down. But he played out the steps. Muriel’s contention that Erno had shaped his tale to his own purposes would be proven. In fact, Erno had perjured himself wantonly before Judge Harlow. In the eyes of the law, therefore, he would be entirely unworthy of belief. And that was before you added in the fact that he was a thief, who’d cheated the employer that had trusted him for more than twenty years.

  “Is that all of it, Erno?”

  Erdai summoned himself to a decisive nod.

  “What about this guy, the Pharaoh?” Arthur asked. “Can we find him?”

  “Nobody. Cheap hustler. Gone for years.”

  “Did he have anything to do with the murders?”

  Erno made a little expectorant sound which was the best he could do for a laugh at the thought of yet another suspect. He slowly turned his face back and forth, a gesture he’d apparently repeated often. A bare spot had been worn by the pillow through the frazzle of hair at the rear of his head.

  “Me. Just me.” He reached between the slats of the bed rail and took Arthur’s hand with fingers hot from fever. “Your guy. Nothing. Not there. Completely innocent.” Erno went through the same brief paroxysm, the cough and then the rising and passing of pain. But he had not forgotten where he was. “Completely.” Although it required huge effort, Erno rolled himself in Arthur’s direction so that he could bring his face closer. The shade of his eyes seemed to have grown more intense, but that was probably just the contrast to his jaundiced complexion. “Larry won’t believe me,” he whispered. “Too proud.”

  “Probably.”

  “I killed all them.” The effort of this declaration and the accompanying movement had exhausted him. He fell to his back, still clinging to Arthur’s hand. He stared then so fixedly at the ceiling that Arthur was afraid Erno had passed right in front of him, but he felt some stirring yet in Erno’s palm. “Think about it,” said Erno. “All the time. All I see. All I see. Wanted it different. At the end.”

  As the conversation had progressed, Arthur could feel a vacuum forming inside him. The world Erno had portrayed—Luisa in the parking lot, the lovers’ quarrel that followed—scenes Arthur had visualized as if he’d seen them on film, had been wiped away. Once he left the hospital, what would abide would be the fact, cold as stone, that Erno was a liar, one whose motives were perhaps no better than the grandiose pleasures that came from drawing everyone in. The last version crashed and shattered? Glue together another. Yet here in Erno’s presence, Arthur could not doubt him. Perhaps that was simply a credit to Erno’s skills as a con. But against all reason, he believed Erdai, just as surely as he’d taken him as a fake before Erno had opened his eyes.

  A very long moment passed.

  “Always knew this,” Erno said then.

  “Knew what?”

  Erno gathered himself again to roll to the bed rail, and Arthur reached out to help. Erno’s shoulder was only bone.

  “Me,” Erno said and grimaced.

  “You?”

  “Bad,” he said. “Bad life. Why?”

  Arthur thought the question was philosophical or religious, but Erno had meant it as a rhetorical query to which he had the answer.

  “Always knew,” he said. “Too hard.”

  “What?”

  Erno’s eyes, rimmed red and bald of lashes, lingered.

  “Too hard,” he said, “to be good.”

  31

  AUGUST 2, 2001

  The Court Rules

  “WE WON.” Tommy Molto, with his face of vanilla pudding, grabbed Muriel’s arm as she left Ned Halsey’s office following the morning meeting. The Court of Appeals had issued its opinion: Gandolph’s habeas had been dismissed and the stay on his execution lifted. “We won,” said Tommy again.

  Tommy was a strange case. He rarely saw the forest, but he was the guy you wanted if you had to chop down a tree. A decade ago, when Squirrel had been tried, Tommy was the kahuna and Muriel the underling taking lessons. He had never griped as the years passed, as she equaled him in office standing and finally was named Chief Deputy, a job Molto had always coveted. Tommy was Tommy—humorless, dogged, and utterly dedicated to victims, to the police, to the county, and to the fact that the world was better without the company of the people he pursued and convicted. Muriel wrapped him in a huge hug.

  “Never a doubt,” said Tommy. He departed with a laugh, promising her a copy of the opinion as soon as Carol returned from the courthouse.

  Ned by now was visiting with State Senator Malvoin, so she left him a note. On the other side of the large public area that separated Halsey’s office from hers, Muriel checked her messages—four reporters had called already—then shut her door. Behind her big desk in the bay window, she closed her eyes, surprised by the magnitude of her relief. In a job like this one, you rode the big waves. There were plenty of good times when you got to shore, and lots of thrills along the way, but you always knew that if you went under for the count, the last thing you’d think as the waves smashed you down to the eternal depths would be, I was a fool, a fool, how could I have risked everything? It wasn’t just the election that had been on the line in Rommy Gandolph’s case. It was being written off as someone whose career, in the end, had been built on a false foundation.

  But the experience—the up and down—had been worthwhile. For once in her life, she was actually clear on something: she wanted to be Kindle County’s next Prosecuting Attorney. Losing her grip on the prize had allowed her to realize how much it meant to her—both the pride and the consequence that would come with the job. But she was also certain that if the Gandolph case had cratered somehow, if her judgment was publicly scorned and the Reverend Blythes of the world roadblocked her path to the adjoining office, she would have remained intact. She didn’t believe in a God who was up there giving hand signals or pushing around pieces. But if she wasn’t P.A., it might have been for the best. She’d woken twice in the last several months thinking of Divinity School. In daylight, the notion had seemed laughable at first, but she’d begun to linger with it as a serious alternative. Perhaps she could do more of what mattered from a pulpit.

  With a knock, Carol Keeney, a frail blonde with a persistent redness at the tip of her nose, brought in the opinion. Muriel glanced through it, largely for Carol’s sake. Muriel never had had much concern about the arcane reasoning that emanated from appellate courts. The conflicts in the law that interested her were writ large—guilt or innocence, the rights of individuals against the rights of the community, the proper uses of power. The scrimshaw involved in etching decisions into words was largely decorative in her mind.

  “Good job,” Muriel told her. Carol had drafted the winning papers, pulling an all-nighter after Genevieve’s deposition. Yet they both knew that Carol’s failure to suss out what Arthur had been up to when he’d moved to depose Erno would be fatal to Carol’s chances to become a trial prosecutor. In this job, Muriel handed out a lot of bad news, not just to defense lawyers and their clients, but within the office, where only a few deputies got the cases and court assignments, the titles and salary increases they desired. With the spoils around here so few, bruising battles were fought among contending egos over three square feet of office space. And Muriel, with Solomonic coolness, decided who won. Carol, who did not have the instincts for trial work, had lost.

  “The natives are restless,” said Yolanda, one of Muriel’s assistants, looking in as Carol emerged from the office. Yolanda was waving several more phone messages from reporters. Muriel called Dontel Bennett, the office’s media spokesman, who congratulated her.

  “Tell the pressroom I’ll be receiving their abject apologies at noon,” Muriel responded.

  He laughed and asked whom she wanted beside her on the podium. Molto and Carol on one side, she said. Harold Greer was now the Chief of Police and deserved to be there f
or many reasons.

  “Starczek?” asked Dontel.

  “Absolutely,” said Muriel. “I’ll call him myself.”

  Before getting off the phone, Dontel said, “No gloating now, girl. Just remember. Skepticism is part of the press’s job description.”

  “You think that comes before or after selling advertising?”

  She called several numbers before she found Larry at the desk he rarely occupied at North End Area Two.

  “Congratulations, Detective. The Court of Appeals thinks you got the right man.”

  “No shit.”

  She read him the better parts of the opinion. He laughed like a greedy child at the end of every line.

  “It’s time for Meet the Press,” she told him then. “Can you pretty yourself up by noontime?”

  “I’ll have to see if my plastic surgeon can fit me in. So does this mean I can cancel my cable to Interpol asking for information on Faro?”

  “Apparently.” The investigation that had been renewed by Erno’s testimony was over. For another year or so, the case would probably schlep on with Arthur or some other cause lawyer rolling out barricades to execution. But Larry’s job was done, his commerce with her concluded.

  When Muriel put down the phone, it struck her with a clarity that had not emerged before that she had absolutely no intention of letting him go.

  THE CHIEF CLERK of the Court of Appeals called at 9 a.m. to notify Arthur that they would release the decision in the Petition of Gandolph ex. Rel. Warden of Rudyard Penitentiary in an hour. When Arthur reached Pamela with the news, she volunteered to retrieve the written opinion so that Arthur would have time to gather himself before dealing with reporters. She stopped in his office on her way out to the courthouse.

  “We’re going to lose,” he told her.

  Before she’d met Rommy Gandolph, Pamela Towns probably would have argued the point. Today, the spirit faded from her long face and she answered simply, “I know.” Twenty minutes later, she reached Arthur from the Federal Building. He could hear the despondence even as she said hello.