Leonard tried again. “You was a hit man? Is that what Hap here’s trying to tell me?”
“It was a long time ago,” Veil told him. “It doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is: You want to talk to me now?”
3.
The judge looked like nothing so much as a turkey buzzard: tiny head on a long, wrinkled neck and cold, little eyes. Everybody stood up when he entered the courtroom. Lester Rommerly—the local lawyer I went and hired like Veil told me—he told the judge that Veil would be representing Leonard. The judge looked down at Veil.
“Where are you admitted to practice, sir?”
“In New York State, your honor. And in the Federal District Courts of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, California, and Massachusetts.”
“Get around a bit, do you?”
“On occasion,” Veil replied.
“Well sir, you can represent this defendant here. Nothing against the law about that, as you apparently know. I can’t help wondering, I must say, how you managed to find yourself way down here.”
Veil didn’t say anything. And it was obvious after a minute that he wasn’t going to. He and the judge just kind of watched each other.
Then the trial started.
The first few witnesses were all government. The fire department guy testified about “the presence of an accelerant” being the tip-off that this was arson, not some accidental fire. Veil got up slowly, started to walk over to the witness box, then stopped. His voice was low, but it carried right through the courtroom.
“Officer, you have any experience with alcoholics?”
“Objection!” The DA shouted.
“Sustained,” the judge said, not even looking at Veil.
“Officer,” Veil went on like nothing had happened, “you have any experience with dope fiends?”
“Objection!” The DA was on his feet, red-faced.
“Counsel, you are to desist from this line of questioning,” the judge said. “The witness is a fireman, not a psychologist.”
“Oh, excuse me, your honor,” Veil said sweetly. “I misphrased my inquiry. Let me try again: Officer,” he said, turning his attention back to the witness, “by ‘accelerant,’ you mean something like gasoline or kerosene, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes,” the witness said, cautious in spite of Veil’s mild tone.
“Hmmm,” Veil said. “Be pretty stupid to keep a can of gasoline right in the house, wouldn’t it?”
“Your honor. . . ,” the DA pleaded.
“Well, I believe he can answer that one,” the judge said.
“Yeah, it would,” the fire marshal said. “But some folks keep kerosene inside. You know, for heating and all.”
“Thank you, officer,” Veil said, like the witness had just given him this great gift. “And it’d be even stupider to smoke cigarettes in the same house where you kept gasoline . . . or kerosene, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, sure. I mean, if—”
“Objection!” The DA yelled. “There is no evidence to show that anyone was smoking cigarettes in the house!”
“Ah, my apologies,” Veil said, bowing slightly. “Please consider the question withdrawn. Officer: Be pretty stupid to smoke crack in a house with gasoline or kerosene in it, right?”
“Your honor!” The DA cut in. “This is nothing but trickery. This man is trying to tell the jury there was gasoline in the house. And this officer has clearly testified that—”
“—That there was either gasoline or kerosene in the house at the time the fire started,” Veil interrupted.
“Not in a damn can,” the DA said again.
“Your honor,” Veil said, his voice the soul of reasonableness, “the witness testified that he found a charred can of gasoline in the house. Now it was his expert opinion that someone had poured gasoline all over the floor and the walls and then dropped a match. I am merely inquiring if there couldn’t be some other way the fire had started.”
The judge, obviously irritated, said, “Then why don’t you just ask him that?”
“Well, Judge, I kind of was doing that. I mean, if one of the crackheads living there had maybe fallen asleep after he got high, you know, nodded out the way they do . . . and the crack pipe fell to the ground, and there was a can of kerosene lying around and—”
“That is enough!” the judge cut in. “You are well aware, sir, that when the fire trucks arrived, the house was empty.”
“But the trucks weren’t there when the fire started, judge. Maybe the dope fiend felt the flames and ran for his life. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. And I thought the jury—”
“The jury will disregard your entire line of questioning, sir. And unless you have another line of questioning for this witness, he is excused.”
Veil bowed.
4.
At the lunch break, I asked him, “What the hell are you doing? Leonard already told the police it was him who burned down the crack house.”
“Sure. You just said the magic word: crack house. I want to make sure the jury hears that enough times, that’s all.”
“You think they’re gonna let him off just because—?”
“We’re just getting started,” Veil told me.
5.
“Now officer, prior to placing the defendant under arrest, did you issue the appropriate Miranda warnings?” the DA asked the sheriff ’s deputy.
“Yes sir, I did.”
“And did the defendant agree to speak with you?”
“Well . . . he didn’t exactly ‘agree.’ I mean, this ain’t the first time for old Leonard there. We knowed it was him, living right across the road and all. So when we went over there to arrest him, he was just sitting on the porch.”
“But he did tell you that he was responsible for the arson, isn’t that correct, officer?”
“Oh yeah. Leonard said he burned it down. Said he’d do it again if those—well, I don’t want to use the language he used here—he’d just burn it down again.”
“No further questions,” the DA said, turning away in triumph.
“Did the defendant resist arrest?” Veil asked on cross-examination.
“Not at all,” the deputy said. “Matter of fact, you could see he was waiting on us.”
“But if he wanted to resist arrest, he could have, couldn’t he?”
“I don’t get your meaning,” the deputy said.
“The man means I could kick your ass without breaking a sweat,” Leonard volunteered from the defendant’s table.
The judge pounded his gavel a few times. Leonard shrugged, like he’d just been trying to be helpful.
“Deputy, were you familiar with the location of the fire? You had been there before? In your professional capacity, I mean.” Veil asked him.
“Sure enough,” the deputy answered.
“Fair to say the place was a crack house?” Veil asked.
“No question about that. We probably made a couple of dozen arrests there during the past year alone.”
“You made any since the house burned down?”
“You mean . . . at that same address? Of course not.”
“Thank you, officer,” Veil said.
6.
“Doctor, you were on duty on the night of the thirteenth, is that correct?”
“That is correct,” the doctor said, eyeing Veil like a man waiting for the doctor to grease up and begin his proctology exam.
“And your specialty is Emergency Medicine, is that also correct?”
“It is.”
“And when you say ‘on duty,’ you mean you’re in the ER, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“In fact, you’re in charge of the ER, aren’t you?”
“I am the physician in charge, if that is what you’re asking me, sir. I have nothing to do with administration, so . . .”
“I understand,” Veil said in a voice sweet as a preacher explaining scripture. “Now, doctor, have you ever treated patients with burn
s?”
“Of course,” the doctor snapped at him.
“And those range, don’t they? I mean, from first-degree to third-degree burns. Which are the worst?”
“Third degree.”
“Hmmm . . . I wonder if that’s where they got the term, ‘Give him the third degree’. . . ?”
“Your Honor. . . ,” the DA protested again.
“Mr. Veil, where are you going with this?” the judge asked.
“To the heart of the truth, your honor. And if you’ll permit me . . .”
The judge waved a disgusted hand in Veil’s direction. Veil kind of waved back. The big diamond glinted on his hand, catching the sun’s rays through the high courthouse windows. “Doctor, you treat anybody with third-degree burns the night of the thirteenth?”
“I did not.”
“Second-degree burns?”
“No.”
“Even first-degree burns?”
“You know quite well I did not, sir. This isn’t the first time you have asked me these questions.”
“Sure, I know the answers. But you’re telling the jury, doctor, not me. Now you’ve seen the photographs of the house that was burnt to the ground. Could anyone have been inside that house and not been burned?”
“I don’t see how,” the doctor snapped. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Let’s let the jury decide what it means,” Veil cut him off. “Am I right, Judge?”
The judge knew when he was being jerked off, but, having told Veil those exact same words a couple of dozen times during the trial already, he was smart enough to keep his lipless mouth shut.
“All right, doctor. Now we’re coming to the heart of your testimony. See, the reason we have expert testimony is that experts, well, they know stuff the average person doesn’t. And they get to explain it to us so we can understand things that happen.”
“Your honor, he’s making a speech!” the DA complained, for maybe the two-hundredth time.
But Veil rolled on like he hadn’t heard a word. “Doctor, can you explain what causes the plague?”
One of the elderly ladies on the jury gasped when Veil said “the plague,” but the doctor went right on: “Well, actually, it is caused by fleas, which are the primary carriers.”
“Fleas? And here all along I thought it was carried by rats,” Veil replied, turning to the jury as if embracing them all in his viewpoint.
“Yes, fleas,” the doctor said. “They are, in fact, fleas especially common to rodents, but wild rodents—prairie dogs, chipmunks, and the like.”
“Not squirrels?”
“Only ground squirrels,” the doctor answered.
“So, in other words, you mean varmints, right, doctor?”
“I do.”
“The kind of varmints folks go shooting just for sport?”
“Well, some do. But mostly it’s farmers who kill them. And that’s not for sport—that’s to protect their crops,” the doctor said, self-righteously, looking to the jury for support.
“Uh, isn’t it true, doctor, that if you kill enough varmints, the fleas just jump over to rats?”
“Well, that’s true. . . .”
“That’s what happened a long time ago, wasn’t it, doctor? The Black Death in Europe—that was bubonic plague, right? Caused by rats with these fleas you talked about? And it killed, what? Twenty-five million people?”
“Yes. That’s true. But today, we have certain antibiotics that can—”
“Sure. But plague is still a danger, isn’t it? I mean, if it got loose, it could still kill a whole bunch of innocent folks, right?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Doctor, just a couple of more questions and we’ll be done. Before there were these special antibiotics, how did folks deal with rat infestation? You know, to protect themselves against plague? What would they do if there was a bunch of these rats in a house?”
“Burn it down,” the doctor said. “Fire is the only—”
“Objection! Relevancy!” the DA shouted.
“Approach the bench,” the judge roared.
Veil didn’t move. “Judge, is he saying that crack isn’t a plague? Because it’s my belief—and I know others share it—that the Lord is testing us with this new plague. It’s killing our children, your honor. And it’s sweeping across the—”
“That is enough!” the judge shrieked at Veil. “One more word from you, sir, and you will be joining your client in jail tonight.”
“You want me to defend Leonard using sign language?” Veil asked.
A number of folks laughed.
The judge cracked his gavel a few times and, when he was done, they took Veil out in handcuffs.
7.
When I went to visit that night, I was able to talk to both of them. Someone had brought a chess board and pieces in and they were playing. “You’re crazy,” I told Veil.
“Like a fuckin’ fox,” Leonard said. “My man here is right on the money. I mean, he gets it. Check.”
“You moved a piece off the board,” Veil said.
“Did not.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Damn,” Leonard said, pulling the piece out from between his legs and returning it to the board. “For a man with one eye you see a lot. Still check though.”
I shook my head. “Sure. Veil gets it. You, you’re gonna get life by the time he’s done,” I said.
“Everything’ll be fine,” Veil said, studying the chess board. “We can always go to Plan B.”
“And what’s Plan B?” I asked him.
He and Leonard exchanged looks.
8.
“The defense of what?” the judge yelled at Veil the next morning.
“The defense of necessity, your honor. It’s right here, in Texas law. In fact, the case of Texas v. Whitehouse is directly on point. A man was charged with stealing water from his neighbor by constructing a siphon system. And he did it, all right. But it was during a drought, and if he hadn’t done it, his cattle would’ve starved. So he had to pay for the water he took, and that was fair, but he didn’t have to go to prison.”
“And it is your position that your client had to burn down the crack . . . I mean, the occupied dwelling across the street from his house to prevent the spread of disease?”
“Exactly, your honor. Like the bubonic plague.”
“Well, you’re not going to argue that nonsense in my court. Go ahead and take your appeal. By the time the court even hears it, your client’ll have been locked down for a good seven-eight years. That’ll hold him.”
9.
Veil faced the jury, his face grim and set. He walked back and forth in front of them for a few minutes, as if getting the feel of the ground. Then he spun around and looked them in the eyes, one by one.
“You think the police can protect you from the plague? From the invasion? No, I’m not talking about aliens, or UFOs, or AIDS, now—I’m talking crack. And it’s here, folks. Right here. You think it can’t happen in your town? You think it’s only Dallas and Houston where they grow those sort of folks? Take a look around. Even in this little town, you all lock your doors at night now, don’t you? And you’ve had shootings right at the high school, haven’t you? You see the churches as full as they used to be? No you don’t. Because things are changing, people. The plague is coming, just like the Good Book says. Only it’s not locusts, it’s that crack cocaine. It’s a plague, all right. And it’s carried by rats, just like always. And, like we learned, there isn’t but one way to turn that tide. Fire!
“Now I’m not saying my client set that fire. In fact, I’m asking you to find that he did not set that fire. I’m asking you to turn this good citizen, this man who cared about his community, loose. So he can be with you. That’s where he belongs. He stood with you . . . now it’s time for you to stand with him.”
Veil sat down, exhausted like he’d just gone ten rounds with a rough opponent. But, the way they do trials, it’s always the prosecutor who gets to
throw the last punch.
And that chubby little bastard of a DA gave it his best shot, going on and on about how two wrongs don’t make a right. But you could see him slip a few times. He’d make this snide reference to Leonard being black, or being gay, or just being . . . Leonard, I guess, and, of course that part is kind of understandable. But, exactly like Veil predicted, every time he did it, there was at least one member of the jury who didn’t like it. Sure, it’s easy to play on people’s prejudices—and we got no shortage of those down this way, I know—but if there wasn’t more good folks than bad, well, the Klan would’ve been running the state a long time ago.
The judge told the jury what the law was and told them to go out there and come back when they were done. Everybody got up to go to lunch, but Veil didn’t move. He motioned me over.
“This is going to be over with real quick, Hap,” he said. “One way or the other.”
“What if it’s the other?”
“Plan B,” he said, his face flat as a piece of slate.
10.
The jury was out about an hour. The foreman stood up and said “Not Guilty” about two dozen times—once for every crime they had charged Leonard with.
I was hugging Leonard when Veil tapped me on the shoulder. “Leonard,” he said, “you need to go over there and thank those jury people. One at a time. Sincere, you understand?”
“What for?” Leonard asked.
“Because this is going to happen again,” Veil said. “And maybe next time, one of the rats’ll get burned.”
Knowing Leonard, I couldn’t argue with that. He walked over to the jury and I turned around to say something to Veil. But he was gone.
Death by Chili
“Well, I can almost see murdering someone for a good chili recipe,” Charlie Blank said, “but not quite.”
“What if it had been barbecue?” Leonard asked.
“Now, that’s different.”
“Ah, hah!” I said. “That’s because you’re prejudiced. You think barbecue is The Texas food, when any idiot knows it’s chili.”
“Only if you can’t get barbecue,” Charlie said.
“One thing is for sure,” I said. “Goober Smith’s recipe for chili isn’t going to grace anyone’s dinner table from here on out. Other than the person killed him for it, that is.”