55
THE MOMENT WHEN a lawyer stands in court and calls the next witness is a moment fraught with expectation. As the witness walks the long distance down the aisle, the jury, the judge, the opponents, the gawkers, the entire community of that courtroom wonder what evidence will be disclosed, what devastating story will be told, in what way will this witness’s testimony be decisive. It is a glorious moment for the trial lawyer, full of drama, full of mystery. No matter how many trials, no matter how many witnesses, no matter how pedestrian the matter at issue, standing in the courtroom and calling the next witness never becomes routine. And the key to that moment is logistics. In every courtroom across this country there is a lawyer with neck craned, examining the benches and the door in the back, wondering if the next witness is waiting to respond to the call. It is not enough to prepare the questions, to practice the testimony, to hone the arguments to razor sharpness. Logistics are all. Standing in the courtroom, calling the next witness and having nothing happen, you might just as well be standing there naked.
“Do you have your witness yet, Mr. Carl?” asked Judge Gimbel, and none too kindly. The judge had a docket of 478 cases, and waiting for a witness to magically appear was doing nothing to reduce that number.
“If I can just have another minute, Your Honor,” I said.
“Sixty seconds,” said Judge Gimbel. I was hoping he would leave the bench, tell his clerk to get him when I was ready, take me off the hook, but the judge had brought his paperwork with him and as he sat up on high and scrawled in big letters across some important legal document I sweated like a thief. Like a naked thief.
From the defense table I dashed up the courtroom aisle, suffering the smirks of Jimmy and Prescott and Prescott’s coterie, and burst into the cool, cruelly empty hallway. I looked left and then right and then left again. Nothing. The plan had been that I would flee the Society Hill Sheraton with Beth, in brown wig and overcoat, drawing the chase while Morris and Veronica, in blonde wig and jacket, simply strolled out the front door past Sheldon, acting as lookout, and stay on their way straight to the courthouse. Then Morris would bring her here, to the courtroom, to await my call. It was the awaiting my call part that was causing the problem. Beth was outside the courthouse, waiting for their arrival at the main entrance on Market Street. I was rushing crazily about inside, hoping they would magically appear.
Beside the courtroom doors there was a bank of pay phones and quickly I called Morris’s office.
“Kapustin and Son, Investigations,” said Morris.
“Morris, you bastard, where are you?”
“There is no one here to take your call, but we are checking in with this machine like crazy. Just leave a message and we’ll be with you so quick your head will do a somersault, that quick.”
I cursed into the phone in loud, precise language before the machine beeped me shut.
I called my office, to see if Morris had left me a message, but Rita only sneered. “Any calls? My, here’s a shocker, Mr. Carl. No calls this morning. Maybe I’ll ring up the Inquirer about this breaking story. No calls for Mr. Carl.”
I hung up on her and spun out of the phone alcove in frustration, whirling into the frail figure of Herm Finklebaum, the toy king of 44th Street, sending him sprawling backwards on the cold white floor of the courthouse. I leaned over him. He wore his regular plaid shirt, ragged houndstooth jacket, lime-green slacks. He lay there, unconscious, the blood throbbing only faintly beneath the skin stretching over the hole in his head.
“Jesus, Herm. I’m sorry. Are you all right? Herm? Herm?”
He lay there quite still. He was a small, frail man. The skin clung tightly to his cadaverous skull. My already fraying nerves writhed into a panic.
“Herm? Oh, God, Herm? Are you all right, Herm? Herm? Jesus, Herm. Wake up.”
One eye popped opened.
“Next time, buddy boy, you watch where you’re going or it will end in a lawsuit.”
I helped him up. He turned his neck carefully from side to side.
“It feels a little stiff,” he said.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“Not really, it’s been stiff since ’seventy-two.” His laugh was an annoying, rhythmic wheeze, like an asthma attack.
“Look, I’m sorry, Herm, but I have to go. I have to find someone.”
I was already past him, hustling off in my vain search for Morris when he said, “You maybe looking for that pretty little Miss Ashland?”
I slid to a stop on the waxed floors and spun around. “You know where she is?”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.”
“Oh, come on, Herm.”
“Okay, I do. Morris has her down on the sixth floor. He told me to find you to ask when you wanted her.”
“Now,” I said. “I want her right now.”
“Morris thought it better to keep her hidden until she was really needed.”
“I need her right this instant.”
“It’s going to be interesting?”
“It’s going to be dynamite.”
“All right, buddy boy. One dishy little number coming up. Save me a seat.”
Logistics are all until they’re solved, then they disappear like a dream upon waking. I had my questions ready, I had prepared the testimony, I had my arguments honed, and now, best of all, I had my witness. I took a moment to slow myself down. I took three deep breaths and gave myself a slight oxygen buzz. When it wore off I straightened my jacket, shot my cuffs, and walked with as much confidence as I could muster into the courtroom.
All gazes were upon me as I strode down the aisle. The judge asked me if I was now ready to proceed and I said I was. The jury sat straighter in their seats. The court reporter wriggled his fingers in preparation. Prescott sat with pen poised over his pad. Much had been paid for this moment and I meant to enjoy it. I scanned the jury, I looked at Jimmy Moore, the wild expectation grew. Before the judge could break the mood with one of his admonitions to get moving, I spoke in a loud and clear voice,
“On behalf of Chester Concannon, I call to the stand Veronica Ashland.”
Right on cue she opened the courtroom door, peered in, and then pensively, awkwardly, with just the right amount of hesitation and awe, she walked down the aisle, her head held nervously forward. She was wearing a white blouse, a black pleated skirt, she looked more like a Catholic schoolgirl than a councilman’s mistress. Without glancing at either Chester or Jimmy she took the stand. With hand raised and voice low she said, “I do,” to the clerk’s swearing-in and then sat demurely in the witness chair, hands on her lap, waiting for me to draw out her story.
56
“DID YOU WANT TO come to testify today, Ms. Ashland?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you subpoenaed me,” she said.
From the start, I wanted to let the jury know where this witness stood. Here was not Chester Concannon’s mother testifying to save her son, here was a potentially hostile witness, sitting up there only because she had a truth that we were insisting she tell. I had her identify the subpoena that I had served upon her and put it into evidence. I would wave it at the jury in my closing as I argued for her credibility.
“Now, Miss Ashland, do you know Councilman Moore?”
She glanced at him warily. “Yes,” she said.
“How do you know him?”
“We’re friends,” she said.
“How did you meet him?”