Entering his apartment after another night on the town, Wes Farrell was confronting another of the deadly sins, pride. The headiness of his success had not obliterated his doubts about his friend nor any moral qualms concerning his strategies at the trial, but he would be damned if he would let any of that nonsense stand in his way now.
Winning was what mattered. Winners had to learn to ignore those small voices of discontent, the traces of timidity, that hampered lesser souls – that were, indeed, the hallmark of lesser souls.
Wasn't it De Gaulle who had said that to govern was to choose? Well, Wes thought that the sentiment translated well into his own situation. He would no longer consider other paths he might have taken, could have taken, that were perhaps more righteous and less ambiguous. No, he had chosen to believe Mark Dooher, chosen to defend him. And those decisions had elevated him in his community. And that was what mattered.
After a certain point, you just didn't have to think about certain things anymore.
He had been reading about his exploits every day, hearing himself described in the various media as brilliant, dogged, ruthless, even charismatic. He wasn't about to give any of this up by worrying too much about the vehicle that had propelled him to here. It was Faustian, perhaps, but he'd often said he'd sell his soul for this chance.
It might have disappointed him when he'd been younger and more idealistic, but right now all he could think was: I'll take it, I'll take it, I'll take it – and while we're at it, give me more.
The time was 11:15. He was entering his apartment, filled with these thoughts. A dinner at John's Grill had turned into a testimonial from some of the other diners who had recognized him. He was resolving to change his residence in the next couple of months, get himself another house and a house cleaner to go with it, a new car, fix up the office as befitted his station.
The telephone was ringing and he crossed the room, petting an ecstatic Bart, and picked it up.
'Wes. This is Jim Flaherty.'
The usually husky, confident tone was missing. 'Your Excellency, how are you?'
'Well, I'm not too good, to tell you the truth.' A long breath. 'I might as well come right out with it, Wes. I'm afraid I've decided I'm not going to be able to testify for you, for Mark, about his character.'
Farrell pulled out a kitchen chair and sat heavily upon it. He had been expecting to call the Archbishop tomorrow and wrap up his defense.
'But just two nights ago…'
'I realize that. I know. But something has come up…'
'What?'
Another pause. 'I'm not at liberty to say.'
'Archbishop, Father, wait a minute. You can't just-'
'Excuse me, Wes. This is a very difficult decision, one of the hardest of my life, but I've made it, and that's all there is to say about it. I'm sorry.'
The line went dead. Farrell lifted the receiver away from his ear and looked at it as though it were alive. 'You're sorry?'
He put the phone down and stared at his wavy image, reflected in the kitchen window.
Flaherty sat, alone again, on the side of his hard bed. He'd wrestled with it for an hour or more, trying to find some other interpretation for Father Gorman's words. He grudgingly admired Gorman's decision the way he'd come to him for Confession. The strategy was, Flaherty thought, positively Jesuitical. Gorman never said Dooher's name, never even implied whether it was a male or a female who had committed the murder or, for that matter, whether it was one of his parishioners. He didn't, technically, break the seal of the Confession.
But there was small doubt about what he was saying, and none at all about whether it was true.
CHAPTER FOURTY TWO
A war had broken out in Thomasino's chambers.
The lead attorneys, the Judge, and Glitsky had originally gathered to discuss logistics. Farrell had decided that, after all, he wasn't going to call character witnesses – he didn't need them. The defense was going to rest.
And then Jenkins had dropped her bomb, saying she would like to call a rebuttal witness then, someone who wasn't on her original witness list, a man who had been at the driving range during the time Dooher claimed he was, and who hadn't seen him.
Glitsky was sitting in his chair off to the side, and Farrell, looking again more as he'd appeared earlier in the trial – the King of Insomnia – was screaming.
'She's known about this witness all along, your honor! If I'd known about this witness or his testimony, I never would have asked Mr Dooher to take the stand. And this witness is nowhere on any of her lists. This is an incredible, unbelievable, egregious breach of professional ethics.'
'Oh, get a grip, Wes,' Jenkins retorted, 'it's nothing of the sort. It's Prop One Fifteen.' She was referring to California Proposition 115, which eased the prosecution's obligations regarding discovery to the defense. The law changes every once in a while, Wes, you'll be surprised to hear. Maybe you ought to try to keep up on it.'
'I keep up on the Goddamn law as well as a Goddamn rookie homicide prosecutor on her first case that she's blown all to hell because she doesn't know…'
Thomasino, atypically wearing his robes in chambers, had heard all he would tolerate – Glitsky was surprised he'd let it go as far as it had – and now he was slapping his hand down on his desk, hard. 'All right, all right, enough! I said enough!'
Both attorneys sat, breathing hard, in front of the Judge's desk. Thomasino, not jolly on his best day, was a study in controlled rage, his eyebrows pulled together until they met, a muscle in his jaw vibrating under the pressure of holding it so tight.
Gradually, he gathered himself. The face relaxed by small degrees. 'This is a matter of law,' he said, almost whispering, 'not a matter of personality. Although, Ms Jenkins, I must admit to some discomfort about it. Surely you knew about this witness before this, and if that were the case, the name should have appeared in discovery.'
The name they were discussing was Michael Ross. In the early days of the investigation, Glitsky had gone out to the San Francisco Golf Club and reviewed the credit-card receipts for the night of June 7th. Michael Ross had paid for a bucket of golf balls by VISA card, and the transaction had been run up at 8:17 p.m. Glitsky had brought the receipt in to Jenkins and they'd had a discussion about it in her cramped and airless office.
The moment was etched clearly in Glitsky's memory. Jenkins's eyes took on a faraway look as she'd sat at her desk, fingering the receipt. He had figuratively seen the light bulb go on over her head.
'Why don't you go out and interview this fellow Ross by yourself, Abe? You don't even need to bring your tape recorder. It's probably nothing anyway. And don't write it up until we've had a chance to talk about what he's told you.'
Glitsky had been a cop long enough, he didn't need a road map. Jenkins wasn't suggesting anything illegal – it could be said that she was trying to save Abe the trouble of writing up lots of meaningless paperwork. It wasn't even procedurally suspect. He interviewed lots of people in the course of any investigation, and often these interviews were casual, limited, irrelevant to the case. There was no need to tape anything.
Of course, in this case Glitsky knew what Jenkins was really telling him – she wanted to limit what she had to give to Farrell as discovery. She knew early on that their evidence case was weak, and she was going to sandbag the defense if she got the chance, which was what she was doing in Thomasino's chambers early on this Friday morning.
Perry Mason notwithstanding, real trials were not supposed to deal in surprises. The discovery process – where the prosecution must turn over to the defense all evidence it possesses relating to the case – is supposed to guarantee that the defense sees all the cards before the game. It's how those cards are played that determines the winner.