“I hope it is so,” I said.
“I believe him, I believe in him. That might be my great flaw, Mr. Carl, but what is there to be done? I don’t have the strength I used to have. But I was a good nurse once.” She smiled at me, leaned even closer, placed her lips very close to my ear. In the whisper of a conspirator she said, “Be very careful, Mr. Carl. Please. It would be horrible if something happened to you. And Chester, too. I’ve heard the voices on the wind. But tell Chester I won’t let them kill him. That he can trust I won’t let them.”
She once again reached her fingers to my bandages and this time touched them gently before walking away, back to her sister. I watched her go, all that sadness go. She deserved better, I thought, and I realized quite suddenly that she thought so too. But I couldn’t help but wonder at those voices in the wind. Time for more lithium, I figured.
Back in the courtroom, as we waited for the jury to reappear, I leaned over to Chester and whispered, “Leslie Moore said something to me over the break about you being in danger. Do you think there is anything to it?”
His head turned quickly and his eyes startled. “From who?”
I shrugged. “She didn’t say. Something about voices on the wind.”
“Probably voices from a bottle.” The way the trial had turned had brought forth from Chet a sarcasm I hadn’t seen before. It was quite becoming on him.
“I’m not taking any chances after this morning,” I said. I had packed all the clothes I would need for a week and loaded them into my car. For the rest of the trial, I decided, I would live like a terrorist on the lam, never two nights in the same place. “And after what happened to Chuckie,” I said to Chester, “you should be careful too.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded.
“Leslie also said she would protect you,” I added as the door to the back hall opened and we stood as the jury filed in.
He turned around to find her sitting directly behind Jimmy. I turned too. Her hands were on her lap, clasping tightly one the other, and her face held the deep cast of a painful concern as she stared back at Chester.
“You can’t know how relieved I am,” he said after turning around again, his face calmly looking forward, “to have her on my side.”
Early in the afternoon, when Eggert finished his cross and the whole courtroom stretched with relief, Prescott rested Jimmy Moore’s defense case.
“We have a few hours before we break for Mr. Lamb’s funeral,” said the judge. “So you can begin to call your witnesses, Mr. Carl.”
The only witness I planned to put on the stand was Veronica. With Chet’s two forgery convictions, Eggert and Prescott both would easily make him out to be a liar if he testified, so everything would depend on her, which was fine by me, except she wasn’t in the courtroom. I had expected I wouldn’t need her until tomorrow.
“Your Honor,” I said. “We will have one witness, but if the court will allow, in light of what occurred to me this morning,” I was milking it but so what, “in light of the events of this morning, and in deference to the Lamb family, we ask that the court be recessed until tomorrow.”
The judge wasn’t happy about it, I could see that, being that it was only two o’clock and he could squeeze in another hour and a half of testimony before the scheduled quitting time, but he seemed willing to go along with my request until the disturbance broke out.
“If you could be giving me just a minute,” shouted Morris from the back of the courtroom, standing in the aisle with his hand up. He was wearing his shabby hat and a crumpled blue suit dusted heavily with dandruff and his tzitzis were hanging down from beneath his too tight jacket. “Just a minute is all I am needing to talk here with Victor.”
One of the marshals, blue blazered, his ear stuffed with ominous plastic, immediately rushed to Morris’s side and took hold of his arm. Prescott ducked and the judge cringed. Now that the community of our courtroom knew I was a marked man a noticeable nervousness had set in.
“What is happening here?” said a surprised Morris, trying to pull his arm away from the marshal. “What? Am I now a criminal?”
“Your Honor,” I said. “Can I have a minute?”
“You know that man?” asked the judge.
“Yes, sir. He is my investigator.”
There was a sudden laugh from the group of young lawyers behind Prescott, from Brett with two t’s and the others, a laugh at just how ludicrous it was that someone like Morris could be an investigator. People in the audience joined in, it spread gaily.
Without thinking I turned on the laughing young lawyers and said, loudly and angrily, “Is something funny, you little pissants?”
It stopped just that fast. There was a peculiar silence, like the whole court had been caught at something, and in the silence I remembered that just three weeks before, when Morris first appeared in court and there had been a snicker, I had turned away in embarrassment.
“Take your minute, Mr. Carl,” said the judge.
I motioned for Morris to come forward, and he did. I leaned over and he stood on his tiptoes and whispered in my ear, “I have for you a witness.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Your friend, Miss Beth, she gave me a paper and I showed it to the man.”
“A subpoena?”
“Because of such paper he agreed to come with me, but I fear, Victor, that if you don’t use him now he won’t be back tomorrow.”
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Gardner, a very nice man, actually, though he pretends to be not so nice. You should maybe, Victor, I’m no lawyer, but maybe you should call this man before he decides he doesn’t want to be here anymore.”
“What is this about?”
“You ask this Mr. Gardner some questions, Victor.”
He handed me four pieces of paper, a yellow original and three copies.
“Miss Beth said you would be needing more than one. I’ll be charging, of course, for the copies. A quarter they cost in this building. Gonifs, and our own government too.” Then he turned and went to the back of the courtroom and sat down again.
I looked over the original document briefly. Still puzzled, I said, “Your Honor, on behalf of Chester Concannon I call Mr. Leonard Gardner to the stand.”
He was a tall, middle-aged man with a fine suit and shiny black loafers. His hair was curly and very tightly trimmed. There was something hard about him, something defiant and angry. He had been put upon for too long and was not going to take it anymore, dammit. But even so he was walking up the courtroom aisle and slipping into the witness stand.
He answered the usual questions, checking his nails, letting out the arrogant sigh of a man whose time was being wasted. He was Leonard Gardner, G-A-R-D-N-E-R, he lived at 408 North 3rd Street, he was a businessman, primarily in fashion, importing certain fabrics from Pakistan.
“Now, Mr. Gardner, on the night of May ninth of this year, did you by chance rent a limousine from the Cherry Hill Limousine Company in Cherry Hill, New Jersey?”
“I don’t know specific dates,” he said. His voice was a near sneer. “How am I supposed to know what night May ninth was?”
“It was the night Bissonette’s nightclub burned down. Does that help?”
“No.” His shoulders hiccuped in a snort and his gaze rose, as if he were required to inspect the ceiling for cracks.
“Well, maybe this will refresh your recollection.”
I marked the original document into evidence and tossed a copy each to Prescott and Eggert. Then I handed the marked document to the witness. “Do you know what that is, Mr. Gardner?”
“It looks like an invoice for the rental of a limousine.”
“On May ninth of this year, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever seen this invoice before?”