More Twisted: Collected Stories - 2

  "But didn't you say you was from New York or something? Can you just do a trial here?"

  "Goodwin'll let me 'do' the trial. No problem."

  Because he's a decent fellow.

  And a spineless wimp.

  "But he don't charge me nothing. You gonna handle the case for free?"

  He really doesn't know anything about me. Amazing. "No, Jerry. I never work for free. People don't respect you when you work for free."

  "Mr. Goodwin--"

  "People don't respect Goodwin."

  "I do."

  "Your respect doesn't count, Jerry. Your uncle's picking up the tab."

  "Uncle James?"

  Lescroix nodded.

  "He's a good man. Hope he didn't hock his farm."

  He's not a good man, Jerry, Lescroix thought. He's a fool.

  Because he thinks there's still some hope for you. And I don't give a rat's ass whether he mortgaged the farm or not. "So, what do you say, Jerry?"

  "Well, I guess. Only there's something you have to know." Scooting closer, shackles rattling. The young, stubbly face leaned forward and the thin lips leveraged into a lopsided smile.

  But Lescroix held up an index finger that ended in a snappy, manicured nail. "Now, you're going to tell me a big secret, right? That you didn't kill Patricia Cabot. That you're completely innocent. That you've been framed. That this's all a terrible mistake. That you just happened to be at the crime scene."

  "I--"

  "Well, Jerry, no, it's not a mistake."

  Pilsett looked uneasily at Lescroix, which was just the way the lawyer loved to be looked at. He was a force, he was a phenomenon. No prosecutor ever beat him, no client ever upstaged him.

  "Two months ago--on June second--you were hired by Charles Arnold Cabot to mow his lawn and cart off a stack of rotten firewood near his house in Bentana, the ritziest burgh in Hamilton. He'd hired you before a few times and you didn't really like him--Cabot's a country club sort of guy--but of course you did the work and you took the fifty dollars he agreed to pay you. He didn't give you a tip. You got drunk that night and the more you drank, the madder you got 'cause you remembered that he never paid you enough--even though you never bargained with him and you kept coming back when he called you."

  "Wait--"

  "Shhhh. The next day, when Cabot and his wife were both out, you were still drunk and still mad. You broke into the house and while you were cutting the wires that connected their two-thousand-dollar stereo receiver to the speakers, Patricia Cabot came back home unexpectedly. She scared the hell out of you and you hit her with the hammer you'd used to break open the door from the garage to the kitchen. You knocked her out. But didn't kill her. You tied her up. Thinking maybe you'd rape her later. Ah, ah, ah--let me finish. Thinking maybe you'd rape her later. Don't gimme that look, Jerry. She was thirty-four, beautiful and unconscious. And look at you. You even have a girlfriend? I don't think so.

  "Then you got spooked. The woman came to and started to scream. You finished things up with the hammer and started to run out the door. The husband saw you in the doorway with the bloody hammer and the stereo and their CD collection under your arm. He called the cops and they nailed you. A fair representation of events?"

  "Wasn't all their CDs. I didn't take the Michael Bolton."

  "Don't ever try to be funny with me."

  Pilsett flicked his earlobe again. "Was pretty much what happened."

  "All right, Jerry. Listen. This's a small town and people here're plenty stupid. I consider myself the best defense lawyer in the country but this case is open and shut. You did it, everyone knows you did it, and the evidence is completely against you. They don't have the death penalty in this state but they're damn generous when it comes to handing out life terms with no chance for parole. So. That's the future you're facing."

  "Yup. And know what it tells me? Tells me you're the one can't lose on this here situation." Pilsett grinned.

  Maybe they weren't as dumb in Hamilton as he thought.

  The young man continued, "You come all the way here from New York. You do the trial and you leave. If you get me off, you're a celebrity and you get paid and on Geraldo or Oprah or some such for winning a hopeless case. And if you lose, you get paid and nobody gives a damn because I got put away like I oughta."

  Lescroix had to grin. "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. That's one thing I just love about this line of work. No charades between us."

  "What's charades?"

  "Doesn't matter."

  "Gotta question." He frowned.

  Take your time . . .

  "Say you was to get me off. Could they come after me again?"

  "Nope. That'd be double jeopardy. That's what's so great about this country. Once a jury's said you're innocent, you're free, and the prosecutor can't do diddly . . . . Come on, you gonna hire me and boot that Goodwin back to the law library, where he belongs?"

  He flicked his earlobe again. The chains clinked. "Guess I will."

  "Then let's get to work."

  Paul Lescroix's resume had been amply massaged over the years. He'd gone to a city law school at night. Which wouldn't of course play in the many new stories he fantasized would feature him, so after he graduated he signed up fast for continuing ed courses in Cambridge, which were open to any lawyer willing to pay five hundred bucks. Accordingly the claim that he was "Harvard educated" was true.

  He got a job at minimum wage transcribing and filing judicial opinions for traffic court magistrates. So he could say that he'd served his apprenticeship clerking and writing opinions for criminal court judges.

  He opened a solo practice above Great Eastern Cantonese carry-out in a sooty building off Maiden Lane in downtown Manhattan. Hence, he became "a partner in a Wall Street firm, specializing in white-collar crime."

  But these little hiccups in the history of Paul Lescroix (all right, originally Paul Vito Lacosta), these little glitches didn't detract from his one gift--the uncanny ability to decimate his opponents in court. Which is one talent no lawyer can fake. He'd unearth every fact he could about the case, the parties, the judge, the prosecutor, then he'd squeeze them hard, pinch them, mold them like Play-Doh. They were facts still, but facts mutated; in his hands they became weapons, shields, viruses, disguises.

  The night before the Pilsett trial, he spent one hour emptying poor Al Goodwin of whatever insights he might have about the case, two hours meeting with reporters and ten hours reviewing two things; the police report, and a lengthy document prepared by his own private investigator, hired three days ago when James Pilsett, Jerry's uncle, came to him with the retainer fee.

  Lescroix immediately noticed that while the circumstantial evidence against Pilsett was substantial, the biggest threat came from Charles Cabot himself. They were lucky of course that he was the only witness but unfortunate that he happened to be the husband of the woman who was killed. It's a dangerous risk to attack the credibility of a witness who's also suffered because of the crime.

  But Paul Victor Lescroix, Esq., was paid four hundred dollars an hour against five-figure retainers for the very reason that he was willing--no, eager--to take risks like that.

  Smiling to himself, he called room service for a large pot of coffee and, while murderer Jerry Pilsett and decent Al Goodwin and all the simple folk of Hamilton County dreamt their simple dreams, Lescroix planned for battle.

  He arrived at the courtroom early, as he always did, and sat primly at the defense table as the witnesses and spectators and (yes, thank you, Lord, the press) showed up. He mugged subtly for the cameras and scoped out the prosecutor (state U grad, Lescroix had learned, top 40 percent, fifteen years under his belt and numb from being mired in a dead-end career he should have left thirteen years ago).

  Lescroix then turned his eyes to a man sitting in the back of the courtroom. Charles Cabot. He sat beside a woman in her sixties--mother or mother-in-law, Lescroix reckoned, gauging by the tears. The lawyer was slightly troubled. He'd expected Cabot to be a stiff,
upper-middle-class suburbanite, someone who'd elicit little sympathy from the jury. But the man--though he was about forty--seemed boyish. He had mussed hair, dark blond, and wore a rumpled sports coat and slacks, striped tie. A friendly insurance salesman. He comforted the woman and dropped a few tears himself. He was the sort of widower a jury could easily fall in love with.

  Well, Lescroix had been in worse straits. He'd had cases where he'd had to attack grieving mothers and widowed wives and even bewildered children. He'd just have to feel his way along, like a musician sensing the audience's reaction and adjusting his playing carefully. He could--

  Lescroix realized suddenly that Cabot was staring at him. The man's eyes were like cold ball bearings. Lescroix actually shivered--that had never before happened in court--and he struggled to maintain eye contact. It was a moment. Yet Lescroix was glad for the challenge. Something in that look of Cabot's made this whole thing personal, made it far easier to do what he was about to do. Their eyes locked, the electricity sparking between them. Then a door clicked open and everyone stood as the clerk entered.

  "Oyez, oyez, oyez, criminal court for the county of Hamilton, First District, is now in session. The right honorable Jennings P. Martell presiding, all ye with business before this court come forward and be heard."

  Pilsett, wearing a goofy brown suit, was led cautiously out of the lockup. He sat down next to his lawyer. The defendant grinned stupidly until Lescroix told him to stop. He flicked his earlobe several times with an unshackled finger.

  When Lescroix looked back to Cabot the metallic eyes had shifted from the lawyer and were drilling into the back of the man who'd killed his wife with a $4.99 Sears Craftsman claw hammer.

  The prosecutor presented the forensic evidence first and Lescroix spent a half hour chipping away at the testimony of the lab technicians and the cops--though the crime-scene work had been surprisingly well handled for such a small police department. A minor victory for the prosecution, Lescroix conceded to himself.

  Then the state called Charles Cabot.

  The widower straightened his tie, hugged the woman beside him and walked to the stand.

  Guided by the prosecutor's pedestrian questions, the man gave an unemotional account of what he'd seen on June third. Monosyllables of grief. A few tears, Lescroix rated the performance uncompelling, though the man's broken words certainly held the jury's attention. But he'd expected this; we love tragedies as much as romance and nearly as much as sex.

  "No further questions, Your Honor," the prosecutor said and glanced dismissively at Lescroix.

  The lawyer rose slowly, unbuttoned his jacket, ran his hand through his hair, mussing it ever so slightly. He paced slowly in front of the witness. When he spoke he spoke to the jury. "I'm so very sorry for your misfortune, Mr. Cabot."

  The witness nodded, though his eyes were wary.

  Lescroix continued, "The death of a young woman is a terrible thing. Just terrible. Inexcusable."

  "Yes, well. Thank you."

  The jury's collective eyes scanned Lescroix's troubled face. He glanced at the witness stand. Cabot didn't know what to say. He'd been expecting an attack. He was uneasy. The eyes were no longer steely hard. They were cautious. Good. People detest wary truth-tellers far more than self-assured liars.

  Lescroix turned back to the twelve men and women in his audience.

  He smiled. No one smiled back.

  That was all right. This was just the overture.

  He walked to the table and picked up a folder. Strode back to the jury box. "Mr. Cabot, what do you do for a living?"

  The question caught him off guard. He looked around the courtroom. "Well, I own a company. It manufactures housings for computers and related equipment."

  "Do you make a lot of money at it?"

  "Objection."

  "Overruled. But you'll bring this back to earth sometime soon, Mr. Lescroix?"

  "You bet I will, Your Honor. Now, Mr. Cabot, please answer."

  "We had sales of eight million last year."

  "Your salary was what?"

  "I took home about two hundred thousand."

  "And your wife, was she employed by the company too?"

  "Part-time. As a director on the board. And she did some consulting work."

  "I see. And how much did she make?"

  "I don't know exactly."

  "Toss an estimate our way, Mr. Cabot."

  "Well, in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand."

  "Really? Interesting."

  Flipping slowly through the folder, while the jury wondered what could be interesting about this piece of news.

  Lescroix looked up. "How was your company originally financed?"

  "Objection, Your Honor," the gray-faced prosecutor said. His young assistant nodded vigorously, as if every bob of his head was a legal citation supporting his boss.

  The judge asked, "Going anywhere real, Mr. Lescroix, or're we being treated to one of your famous fishing trips?"

  Perfect. Lescroix turned to the jury, eyes upraised slightly; the judge didn't notice. See what I've got to deal with? he asked tacitly. He was rewarded with a single conspiratorial smile from a juror.

  And then, God bless me, another.

  "I'm going someplace very real, Your Honor. Even if there are people present who won't be very happy where that might be."

  This raised a few murmurs.

  The judge grunted. "We'll see. Overruled. Go ahead, Mr. Cabot."

  "If I recall, the financing was very complicated."

  "Then let's make it easy. Your wife's father is a wealthy businessman, right?"

  "I don't know what you mean by wealthy." Cabot swallowed.

  "Net worth of twelve million'd fall somewhere in that definition, wouldn't it?"

  "I suppose, somewhere."

  Several jurors joined Lescroix in chuckling.

  "Didn't your father-in-law stake you to your company?"

  "I paid back every penny--"

  "Mr. Cabot," Lescroix asked patiently, "did your father-in-law stake you to your company or did he not?"

  A pause. Then a sullen "Yes."

  "How much of the company did your wife own?"

  "If I remember, there were some complicated formulas--"

  "More complexity?" Lescroix sighed. "Let's make it simple, why don't we. Just tell us what percentage of the company your wife owned."

  Another hesitation. "Forty-nine."

  "And you?"

  "Forty-nine."

  "And who owns the other two percent?"

  "That would be her father."

  "And on her death, who gets her shares?"

  A moment's hesitation. "If we'd had any children--"

  "Do you have children?"

  "No."

  "I see. Then let's hear what will in fact happen to your wife's shares."

  "I guess I'll receive them. I hadn't thought about it."

  Play 'em right. Just like an orchestra conductor. Light hand on the baton. Don't add, "So you're the one who's profited from your wife's death." Or: "So then you'd be in control of the company." They're dim, but even the dimmest are beginning to see where we're headed.

  Cabot took a sip of water, spilled some on his jacket and brushed the drops away.

  "Mr. Cabot, let's think back to June, all right? You hired Jerry Pilsett to do some work for you on the second, the day before your wife died, correct?"

  Not before she was murdered. Always keep it neutral.

  "Yes."

  "And you'd hired him several times before, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Starting when?"

  "I don't know, maybe six months ago."

  "How long have you known that Jerry lived in Hamilton?"

  "I guess five, six years."

  "So even though you've known him for six years, you never hired him before last spring?"

  "Well, no, but--"

  "Even though you had plenty of opportunities to."

  "No. But I was going to say
--"

  "Now June second was what day of the week, Mr. Cabot?"

  After a glance at the judge, Cabot said, "I don't remember."

  "It was a Friday."

  "If you say so," the witness replied churlishly.

  "I don't say so, Mr. Cabot. My Hallmark calendar does." And he held up a pocket calendar emblazoned with a photo of fuzzy puppies.

  A wheeze of laughter from several members of the jury.

  "And what time of day was he supposed to do the work?"

  "I don't know."

  "Early?"

  "Not real early."

  " 'Not real early,' " Lescroix repeated slowly. Then snapped, "Wasn't it in fact late afternoon and evening?"

  "Maybe it was."

  Frowning, pacing. "Isn't it odd that you hired somebody to do yard work on a Friday night?"

  "It wasn't night. It was dusk and--"

  "Please answer the question."

  "It didn't occur to me there was anything odd about it."

  "I see. Could you tell us exactly what you hired him to do?"

  A surly glance from Cabot. Then: "He mowed the lawn and took away some rotten firewood."

  "Rotten?"

  "Well, termite infested."

  "Was it all termite infested?"

  Cabot looked at the prosecutor, whose milky face shone with concern, and then at the D.A.'s young assistant, who would probably have been concerned too if he hadn't been so confused at the moment. Jerry Pilsett merely flicked his earlobe and stared morosely at the floor.

  "Go ahead," the judge prompted. "Answer the question."

  "I don't know. I saw termite holes. I have a wood-framed house and I didn't want to take the chance they'd get into the house."

  "So you saw some evidence of termites but the pile of wood wasn't completely rotten, was it?"

  "I don't know. Maybe not." Cabot gave an uneasy laugh.

  "So there was some--maybe a lot--of good wood there."

  "Maybe. What difference--?"

  "But for some reason you wanted Jerry Pilsett to haul the entire pile away. And to do so on this particular Friday night."

  "Why are you asking me all these questions?"

  "To get to the truth," Lescroix spat out. "That's what we're here for, isn't it? Now, tell us, sir, was the pile of wood covered with anything?"

  A slight frown. He'd only be wondering why Lescroix was focusing on this fact but the result was a wonderfully suspicious expression.

  "Yes. By an old tarp."

  "And was the tarp stacked to the ground?"

  "Yes, it was."