Hardy let him perform awhile, wasting time pretending to read his notes at his desk, then went to the center of the courtroom. ‘Mr Turkel,’ he began, ‘when Mr Fowler first called you, back in February, how did he sound?’
‘Objection. Conclusion.’
‘Sustained.’
Hardy tried again. ‘Can you recall any of the conversation you had, exactly?’
Turkel still had eyes for Pullios, but she seemed to have antagonized him somewhat by pushing yesterday – the private investigator hated rinky-dink testimony – especially being forced to give it by the rules of the court. He was now giving Hardy his full attention.
‘Well, the judge said, ’Hi, Em,‘ asked if I was busy and I said ’Yeah, a little,‘ like I always do.’ He smiled at the jury. ‘Trade secret.’
Pullios spoke up. ‘Your Honor…’
Chomorro leaned over. ‘Just answer the questions.’
‘Sure, Your Honor, just like I did yesterday.’ Chomorro, not getting it, nodded. ‘That’s right.’
Hardy thought he did get it… a prosecution witness deciding he might be able to do something for the defense. Cover your ass two ways to Sunday. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘All right, then the judge said -’
Chomorro interrupted. ‘Mr Turkel, please refer to Mr Fowler either as Mr Fowler or as the defendant.’
Reasonable, Turkel agreed. ‘Sure your Honor. Sorry again.’
‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ Hardy said. ‘How long have you known the defendant?’
‘Your Honor? Relevance?’
Now Hardy looked to the jury. ‘Your Honor, I’d like to have Mr Turkel be able to get in a word of testimony at some point during this cross-examination. His relationship with the defendant is relevant if we’re to understand the context of the actual words used in their discussions together.’
This, of course, directly related to the testimony yesterday about Andy saying he’d in effect kill Nash. But Hardy was beginning to think if he could get Pullios running she might trip on her own feet. Chomorro overruled her and Turkel got to answer.
‘About four years, I’ve known Mr Fowler about four years.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘Mostly professional. Referrals, like that. But we get along okay. We played golf together a coupla times.’ Turkel looked at the jury again, explaining. ‘He saw me wear this nice green coat in court one time, figured I’d won the Masters.’
This time Chomorro said nothing. Good. Hardy turned around. Fowler was smiling, some of the jury would notice that.
‘All right, so the… defendant was rather more than a professional acquaintance but less than a friend?’
‘Objection, Your Honor, leading the witness.’
‘You’re allowed to do that on cross, Ms Pullios. Overruled.’
Hardy took a breath and held it. Here was an eccentric on the stand, clearly liked by the jury, and for some reason he was being thoroughly harassed by the D.A. ‘One moment, Your Honor.’
Hardy went back to his table and pretended to read more notes. There really wasn’t any testimony of Turkel’s he believed could help his case. The bare facts were pretty damning – Andy had hired him to find out why May had left him, then Turkel had found out and told him about Owen Nash. And you didn’t simply get information for the hell of it. Once you had it, at least the temptation was to do something with it… not, he thought, too much of a stretch for someone to believe that what Andy had done was to identify his enemy, and why would he do that if he wasn’t planning on acting against him…
Still, at this moment, Turkel on the stand somehow had made Hardy feel – and perhaps the jury as well – that Andy was a good guy and that the powers arrayed against him were nitpickers and bureaucrats and maybe worse. Leave it at that. He turned around and spoke from the defense desk.
‘I have no further questions of this witness.’
As it turned out they went for Chinese. Andy said he was buying – which he always did. Hardy, Jane and her father caught a cab outside the Hall and got to Grant Street, the center of Chinatown, in about eight minutes. All the way up, Hardy sat silently. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up. The effusive, charming Andy Fowler, his client, was wearing him down.
‘I had to see her,’ he was saying. ‘I was certain she’d see me, tell me why she would want to testify against me.’
‘What did she say?’
The answers were all there. ‘You know how they get you,’ he said in the voice of reason. ‘She lost sight of what the prosecution, the D.A.’s office – what they were doing.‘
‘What were they doing?’ Jane said.
‘They had held back a lot of her valuables from the Eloise and they put things to her so that the point seemed to be that coming down to be a witness was essentially a formality so that she could get her things back. They’ve been inundating her with paper. I just didn’t want her to be taken in, misled. She told me she did not have anything to say against me – she, of course, knew I hadn’t killed Owen Nash, so what could be the problem? But now she’d promised them…’He shook his head. ‘So I explained to her the appearance of the connection about me knowing the gun was on the boat…’
The cab arrived at the restaurant and they got into a booth with a curtain. The dim sum began to arrive – pork bao, shark’s fin soup, pot stickers. Hardy tasted none of it. Finally he had to say something. ‘You realize, Andy, that if Pullios finds out you tried to influence May’s testimony, all of this will come out, making you look even worse than you do now.’
Andy seemed unfazed. ‘May and I had a good talk. She understands now. Why should it come out?’
‘A better question is why do you think you can keep it locked up?’
Fowler spooned up some soup and said to his daughter, ‘This man is too pessimistic,’ and then to Hardy, ‘Listen, Diz, she’s a good woman, I don’t care about her background. I know her… she is not out to get me. To the contrary, she is very upset with the prosecution people.’ He continued popping morsels of food. ‘This is an eye-opener for me, you know. When I was on the bench I liked to believe that we not only had an efficient crew out there but that there were certain established rules. We differed on the propriety of what I considered entrapment, which didn’t make me a prosecutor’s favorite, but by and large there was a community of the legal system. I’m finding the generally accepted rules don’t apply, at least not in this case. They’ve misled May about the gist of her testimony, and they were pretty slipshod, too.’
Hardy asked what they had done.
‘You’d think that since they were trading it for her cooperation they would check the inventory and make sure she got everything back. But evidently someone with the police had stolen the most important thing to her. So even without my intervention she’s not inclined to help them anymore.’
‘She’s already talked, Andy. I read the transcript this morning.’
Fowler shrugged. ‘She won’t say the same thing on the stand -’
‘She’ll perjure herself to help you?’
Fowler took a sip of tea. ‘She’ll say she was coerced at the interview, which in effect she was, and that under oath she just can’t remember -’
Hardy cradled his forehead in the palm of his hand. ‘Lord help me.’
‘What did they steal?’ Jane kept to the essentials.
‘Her favorite coat,’ Fowler said. Tightening his face… ‘Nash had given it to her. She said it was like a work of art, full-length goosedown. He got it in Japan for her. Remarkable design, colors…’
Hardy had to get back to business. ‘So what’s she going to say when they call her?’
‘Diz, relax, it’s completely understandable. Think about it. They’ve got to know she’s potentially a hostile witness anyway. She’s suing the City, for God’s sake. They won’t pursue it.’