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?”
She let out a deep breath and said nothing.
“How did you meet Councilman Moore, Miss Ashland?”
“He had come with a group to raid a crack house on Sixty-first Street.”
She had given the wrong address. “Was that Sixty-first Street or Fifty-first Street?”
She sighed. “You’re right, Fifty-first Street. I was inside when he came.”
“Why were you inside?”
“I was using at the time.”
“Using what?”
“Cocaine.”
“Crack cocaine?”
“Yes.”
“And the councilman found you inside?”
“Yes. And he took me to a drug rehabilitation center and got me off of drugs.”
“Do you know the councilman’s attitude toward drugs?”
“He hates them with a passion. He hates the dealers, the profiteers. He hates those who killed his daughter.”
“They incense him?”
“Yes.”
“Make him angry?”
“Yes.”
“Violently angry?”
Prescott stood up quickly. “Objection, calls for speculation.”
“Answer if you can,” said the judge.
“Yes,” she said. “Violently angry.”
“Have you seen the violence?”
“Yes. At the raid he was swinging a chair wildly, knocking down everything he could find. He was almost crazy.”
“Did you see him hit anyone with the chair?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I saw him hit Norvel Goodwin.”
“And who is Norvel Goodwin?”
Her lips quivered in hesitation and her eyes pleaded at me not to force her to say anything against Goodwin, but I looked down at my papers, waiting for her answer.
“The man who was selling in that house.”
“Were you involved with Norvel Goodwin at the time?”
“Romantically, you mean?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I was on drugs. Romance and drugs do not go hand in hand, Mr. Carl.”
“Were you sexually involved with Norvel Goodwin?”
“Yes.”
“How did you feel when you saw the councilman swing the chair and hit Mr. Goodwin?”
“I was scared. But he didn’t hurt me, he helped me.”
“And after he helped you get off drugs, did your relationship change?”
“Yes.”
“How did it change, Miss Ashland?”
She looked at me hard and then glanced at Jimmy and then cast her gaze down to her hands twisting together on her lap. “We became lovers,” she said.
“You began to have an affair, is that right?”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
“And did the affair continue throughout this trial?”
“No, not the whole time. Jimmy told me it was over the day you mentioned my name in court.”
“How did he tell you this?”
“Over the phone.”
“Isn’t he putting you up in a hotel room now?”
“I told him I was afraid to stay at home. He found me a room.”
“Did he visit you there?”
“No,” she said. “You’re not listening. It’s over.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Angry,” she said.
“At him?”
“No,” she said. “At you.”
And so my foundation was laid. I had brought out her relationship with Jimmy, her drug use, Jimmy’s propensity to violence when faced with drugs and their dealers, and the end of their affair, leaving her bitter toward me, not Jimmy, so she would have no reason to lie about what Jimmy had done. My difficulty, of course, was that now I had a drug user for a witness. What I had to do, in effect, was to try her in front of the jury for being a drug addict, a slut, a homewrecker, try her and acquit her before Prescott was able to get his hands on her in cross-examination. I had to bring out everything that might be used against her, bring it out as carefully as if it were an armed pipe bomb, and then diffuse it before the jury so that when Prescott tried to impugn her on cross with it the jury would think they were being told an old story and wonder why Prescott was going over it still again.
So what I did was gently lead her through her entire life story, from Iowa to London to her trip around the world with Saffron Hyde. I had her linger as she talked about the bus accident, about how Saffron needed the drugs for his pain, and how she too became addicted. And then, in detail, I had her tell the jury about his swim in the Ganges and his death in Varanasi and the burning of his body. Both Eggert and Prescott objected to the story but the judge gave me the latitude I requested, agreeing with me that I was entitled to give evidence to mitigate any loss of credibility of the witness due to her drug use. So back we went to New York and the University of Pennsylvania and that crack house on 51st Street where Jimmy Moore found her, and the drug rehabilitation center and the apartment in Olde City that the councilman leased for her at a bargain rate in exchange for a street. It was a good story, well told, with tears and hesitations and true emotion and by the end of it there was no doubt that the jury felt for her, shared her tears. The jury had gone through her life story and come out at the other end on her side. I was ready now to get to the meat of her testimony, except for one more disclosure.