Primal Fear

  She came back and sat on the edge of the couch.

  “It would change the whole working relationship.”

  “What!” He looked at her with disbelief for a moment and laughed. “You’re very strange, Naom. You are a very strange lady.” He started to reach out to her but she pulled back.

  “No, I’m almost forty years old and I’m getting practical in my old age. I just don’t want to start wondering on my way to work every morning whether I’m gonna be humping or helping.”

  “C’mon. It wouldn’t be that way.”

  “Oh yeah, sooner or later. Sure it would. We’d be sneaking upstairs for quickies between depositions. Next thing you know I’d have a couple of outfits over here—in case I decided to stay over. I like my job, Marty. I love my boss, I get paid real well and on time. I love the neighborhood. Let’s not screw it up, okay?”

  “It was awful damn good, Naom.”

  “It’s always awful damn good, Marty.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale.”

  “And I’m an old ex-wife.” She reached out and stroked his cheek. “Okay?”

  He shrugged. What could he say? Who argues at four in the morning?

  “Okay?” she repeated, somewhat ruefully.

  “Yeah, sure. Okay.”

  “ ’Course,” she said with a smile as she got up to leave, “that doesn’t mean we can’t keep an open mind on the subject.”

  So the tension was still there. Nothing had gone away, it was just put on hold.

  “You look absolutely devastating this morning, Naom,” Vail said. “I just want you to know that before we get started.”

  “Don’t you start.”

  “I’m not starting anything. I can’t give you a compliment?”

  She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and made a little growling sound. Then she said, “You must be homy. Get stood up last night?”

  “I went to the Silver Screen last night, alone. Two of my all-time favorites, Out of the Past and The Stranger. Beautiful prints. No scratches, sound track like crystal…”

  “You’ll get mugged, going down there to that old dump.”

  “Been going to that old dump since I moved to this freezing frigging city. So …”

  “So, there’s no list to run. You’re clear today. You thought you were going to be working on the appeal, remember? However, you do have Leroy penciled in with a question mark.”

  “Ahhh, Leroy. Okay, run the nitty on Leroy, short version.” He lit a cigarette, laid his head back and closed his eyes. She was great at reducing all the aggravating details of a file down into a nice, concise, chronological, detailed synopsis.

  “Leroy Nelson,” she began. “Ugly boy. White, male, twenty-six. Works at the Ames Foundry, lives with his mother on Railroad Avenue—he was divorced about six months ago. Two priors. The first, simple battery, fight in a bar, he was convicted, paid a five-hundred-dollar fine. The second was possession of stolen property. Caught with a hot TV and stereo, copped to possession of stolen goods, no jail time, did six prob. That was eighteen months ago. Been clean ever since.”

  “No big deal,” Vail said.

  “Okay. November twenty-five, the day after Thanksgiving, Leroy is having leftovers with Mommy. Seven at night, a guy wearing a ski mask holds up a filling station. This is four blocks from his mother’s place. A police cruiser comes by, the thief panics, the filling station attendant gets in a fight with him, pulls off the mask and the thief runs out the back door, dropping his gun as he flees the premises. Based on an artist’s sketch and the attendant’s description, the cops stop by Mommy’s house and Leroy is picked up. In the process, they find two ounces of marijuana in his zipper bag. Now Leroy has two problems, attempted armed robbery and possession of an illegal substance. Leroy claims mistaken identity and his sweet old mother gives him an alibi. That’s where we came in.”

  “Three weeks later, we turn over the hole card,” said Vail.

  “Right. Turns out Leroy bought the gun from a pawnshop over on Elander about a year ago. His story to the cops is that he sold it to a guy a couple months before the robbery.”

  “So now we got the gun to put up with,” Vail sighed. “Did he sell it or not?”

  “No receipt, no buyer so far,” she answered.

  “Enter Captain Video,” said Vail.

  “Ah … the infernal machine,” said Naomi.

  “Ever read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote?” Vail asked as he wheeled his chair across the hardwood floor to the bookshelf where his VCR was hooked up.

  “No.”

  As he spoke, he rustled through the tapes, looking at the labels.

  “You should,” he said. “Great book. You could almost use it as a textbook on interrogation techniques.”

  “Interrogation techniques? Truman Capote?”

  “Yeah.” He found one of the tapes he was looking for and set it aside. “Capote describes how he managed to piece together all the details of this family massacre out in Kansas. The perps were a couple of ne’er-do-wells named Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Smith had a crush on Capote, Hickock never had much to say. So Capote would talk to Smith, whom he knew was a pathological liar, then he’d take the story to Hickock and Hickock, who was honest but psychotic as hell, would say, ‘No, it didn’t happen that way, this is the way it happened.’ So by playing both off each other, Capote ultimately was able to write a very detailed book on the crime. Ah, here’s tape number two.”

  He put it with the first tape.

  “What’s that got to do with Leroy Nelson and that machine of yours?” Naomi asked.

  “The camera is my Dick Hickock. Eventually by playing Leroy and the camera off each other, we’ll get to the truth. Y’see, Naomi, people never remember exactly what they say. They may think they do, but they really don’t. I can quote from a page of notes to a witness, paraphrase the quote, and most people will swear that’s exactly what they said, word for word, because they think I have it written down and I’m reading it to them word for word.

  “So, I tape Leroy three times. Ah, here’s the other one. Three times I ask him what happened, three times he tells the story, makes a few minor errors in detail, but that’s normal. Except one. This is tape one.”

  He turned on the TV monitor and punched the play button. Leroy Nelson appeared in close-up, a tall, gaunt man who looked twice his age. His faded brown hair was wispy and uncut, and when he spoke, he usually ended his sentences with a question mark, as if apologizing for something. He had tired, beaten eyes, his Adam’s apple looked like a bobbing cork in his long, slender neck, and he had foundry skin, which was really no longer skin but more like toughened animal hide.

  VAIL: Tell me about the gun.

  NELSON: Well, I had pretty much forgot about that.

  VAIL: Why didn’t you tell me about it?

  NELSON: Well, like I say, it got stole a couple months ago so I wasn’t thinking about that gun.

  VAIL: So you haven’t seen the gun for several months?

  NELSON: Right. Since it got stole.

  VAIL: Why did you have a gun?

  NELSON: Don’t everybody?

  Vail snapped the tape off and replaced it with another.

  “So, okay, on tape one he tells me the gun was stolen a month before the robbery but he never got around to reporting it. Tape two, a week later, I don’t ask him about the gun and he doesn’t bring it up. Now here’s tape three—this is ten days later, okay? And I throw a little curve at him. You can’t see me but I’m reading off my notes.

  VAIL: Okay, let’s talk about this gun again. This is very damaging, Leroy, pegging this gun to you.

  NELSON: I told yuh, I sold it a guy I met at the health club but I don’t know him. It was just this guy looking to buy a pistol and I needed the money.

  Vail stopped the recorder and turned to Naomi.

  “See,” he said. “Leroy thinks I’m looking at my notes. He forgot he told me the gun was stolen. What he was repeating to me is the story
he told the cops.”

  “So we assume Leroy’s lying about it?”

  “He lied to somebody …”

  “Now what do we do?”

  “I’ve got to get straight with him about the gun.”

  “Do you think he did it, Marty?”

  “The jury will let us know.”

  “Are we sticking with the not guilty plea?”

  “As of so far.”

  “You’ll probably get him off.”

  “Ah. Listen to that tone of voice. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you? Guilty, right?”

  “Maybe. But you don’t even care. You’re going to defend him whether he is or not.”

  “That’s what we do here, Naomi. In case you haven’t noticed in the last seven months, we defend people who are usually presumed to be guilty.”

  “I haven’t been able to get used to that yet. I mean, I always feel like, uh, you know, seems to me you’d have some kind of … shit, Marty, you know … moral problem with that?”

  “I am a lawyer, not a fucking moralist.”

  “But isn’t that what the law’s all about?”

  “The law, dear Naomi, has nothing to do with morality. Look, let’s say you get arrested for possession of pot, okay? It’s not the business of the court to rule on whether you should smoke pot or not, or whether it’s good or bad for you. The court rules only on the question of possession because that’s what you were charged with. Morality doesn’t enter into it.”

  “In other words, it’s okay to smoke it but it’s against the law to have it.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Sounds like a stupid law to me.”

  “Very true. There are a lot of stupid laws and a lot of bad laws … not our problem. What we do, we figure out the best way to use the law—good, bad, stupid, whatever—to our client’s best advantage.”

  “So how about the pot?”

  “We’ll trash that. Illegal search. They come without a warrant, say they want to talk to Leroy downtown. They come in the house, snoop around a little, see the blue zipper bag and take a look inside. Bingo, two ounces of grass. He hadn’t been charged with anything. He was being cooperative. The bag was lying on the floor, they snooped. No reason to.”

  “Okay, so how about a summary on Nelson?” she asked.

  “Summary? We have to defuse the gun. It’s all they’ve got.”

  The phone started buzzing and Vail turned back to the tapes as she went to answer it. Perhaps, he thought, there was something in these interviews he had overlooked. Some little something that might help him at this point.

  Naomi came back into the room.

  “You’ve got a call.”

  “Take a message, I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

  “I think maybe you want to take this call. It’s Judge Shoat’s office.”

  SEVEN

  What the hell could Shoat want? Vail wondered as the cab edged cautiously along the sleet-slick street and slipped up to the curb in front of the courthouse. Was he angry at the settlement? Was he pissed that Vail had taken the city, county and state to their knees? Had Shoat remembered some insult or arrogance from the trial? Maybe he was going to try to slap Vail with another citation for contempt out of spite. The only thing Vail was sure of was that it definitely would not be a pleasant meeting.

  As he entered the building, Bobby the newsman yelled to him. “Hey, Mr. V, we sold out. Hottest issue they ever had.”

  “Great,” Vail answered as he entered the elevator.

  The courtroom was on the fourth floor. As Vail entered the almost empty room, Shoat was shaking his hand and head simultaneously.

  “No, no, no,” he snapped. “Overruled, overruled. Just get on with it, I’d like to finish this procedure today if it is at all possible, gentlemen.”

  Hangin’ Harry Shoat presided over his courtroom with dictatorial fervor. He was the lord of his domain, a Calvinistic moralist who saw the sin rather than the sinner and who dispensed justice without regard for circumstance or situation. A glowering, tense, humorless man, he had the air of a Viennese businessman: stem, formal, suspicious. His mustache was precisely trimmed and his black hair was combed straight back and tight to his skull. He was a man who seemed perpetually impatient with the process he was sworn to uphold and thus the gavel became an extension of his arm and he used it to bludgeon the court into submission.

  As the first Republican judge elected in twelve years, Shoat considered the victory over his Democratic opponent as a mandate for his ultraconservative agenda. He could barely conceal a harsh, almost prejudicial attitude toward defendants, whom he secretly believed were guilty until proven innocent—otherwise why would they be in his court in the first place? He had little time for abortionists, knee jerkers who believed capital punishment was barbaric or those who looked for cause and effect among the social ruins of the city.

  But Hangin’ Harry knew law. A former prosecutor, he had the kind of mind which instantly could recall a staggering number of legal precedents by name, date, region and subject. And although he was sometimes capable of astoundingly profound and unpredictable judgments, he was a rigid “max-out” judge, coldly disinterested in the social circumstances of crime and perpetrator. Crime was crime. Punishment was punishment. Compassion had no place in the justice system. The only time he smiled was when he passed sentence. Once, when a youthful offender had arrogantly suggested perhaps he and his probation officer might have a meeting with the judge before sentence was passed, Shoat had smiled almost gleefully, looked down at the young man and explained, “Son, your probation officer hasn’t been born yet.… Thirty years.” Vail had always suspected that Shoat constantly had to suppress a mad desire to leap up and shout, “Off with their heads!” like the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland.

  Before Vail could take a seat, the judge saw him and pointed sharply at the door to his chambers. When Vail pointed to himself and formed the question “Me?” Shoat nodded vigorously. So Vail walked quietly down the outside aisle of the room and went through the door in the comer.

  The small room was spotless and dustless and in perfect order. The desk was empty except for an ashtray, a telephone and a marble pen holder and pen. The books in the bookshelves behind the desk were lined up perfectly, as if a ruler had been used to justify each binding. The wet bar in the corner was dry of even a single drop of water. Everything in the room seemed symmetrical: the desk, with its sharp edges; the straight-backed chairs, which looked harmfully uncomfortable; the Waterford lamps, with severe six-sided shades; the magazines on the coffee table, which were stacked precisely so that the name of each was underlined by the top border of the one on top of it and were placed at precisely the right angle in the comer of the table. Would anyone possibly disturb that stack to read one of the periodicals?

  Precise. That was the word. The perfect description for Superior Court Judge Harry Madison Shoat. This was a very precise man. And a frustrated one—for Shoat was a man who demanded order in a netherworld that years ago had lost all sense of order.

  Vail opted against making a dent in the sofa cushions and instead walked over to the recessed window which concealed the heater outlet. Hot air moved soundlessly up into the room, clouding the cold window with steam. He wiped a small circle in it and looked down at the street. Near the corner, two black, official-looking cars were involved in a fender bender. People walked with their hands out at their sides to keep their balance as they crept along the glassy pavement. One hell of a day for a spur-of-the-moment command performance.

  Shoat entered the room with a kind of snobbish sense of proprietorship. It was his place, his sanctum, and his dead eyes danced from one part of the room to the other to see if anything had been disturbed or moved out of place.

  “Good to see you again, Counselor,” he said, offering a soft, fleshy hand. “It was kind of you to come on such short notice—and such shit weather.?
??

  The epithet surprised Vail. Profanity seemed out of character for Shoat. The judge pulled his robe slowly over his head, opened a closet near the wet bar, and hung the robe carefully on a padded clothes hanger, slipping it in between the other clothes on the rack, all of them an inch apart so they did not touch. He put his suit coat on, smoothing it out, shooting his cuffs and buttoning the middle button.

  Sleeps in pajamas, Vail thought. Buttons all the buttons, even the top one, slides into bed from the top so he doesn’t undo the covers, probably sleeps flat on his back with his hands across his chest like a corpse, so he doesn’t muss up the bed.

  “I’ve recessed for the day so we have plenty of time,” Shoat said. “Care for a drink? Bourbon, scotch?”

  “Got any beer?”

  “No,” Shoat said, and looked as if he had smelled something dead.

  “Bourbon’ll be fine, a little ice, maybe an inch or so of water.”

  The liquor was in pebbled bottles with small brass tags around their necks. Shoat took down two glasses, lined them up carefully beside each other on the bar. He took out two ice cubes, dropped them in one glass and ran an inch or so of water over them. He held the glass up, studied the amount of water, and added another spurt. Then he filled the rest of the glass with bourbon and handed it to Vail. He filled his own glass with scotch, no rocks, knocked down half of it in his first sip, and sighed with satisfaction.

  “One can always use a scotch at the end of the day,” he said. “Particularly in this jungle.”

  He sat down, appraised his desk for a moment, then moved the marble pen holder half an inch to the left. He smiled to himself, brushed imaginary dust from his desk, took a linen napkin from his desk drawer, carefully lined it up with the edge of the desk and put his drink on it. He looked over at Vail.

  “I have a little favor to ask,” he said.

  “Okay,” Vail said. “What is it?”

  “I have a case I want you to handle. A pro bono. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it? I understand your end of the recent taxpayers’ skinning is half a million dollars.”

  “Joe Pinero was the one who got skinned—literally—according to the jury. If that matters.”