When his direct examination was finished, there was an emotional silence in the courtroom. Prescott stood at the podium, eyes down, letting the silence hang there and intensify. I looked at the jury and they were split. Half were looking at Jimmy with sympathy and affection and admiration. The other half were staring at Chet Concannon with a violent contempt. When the silence hung just long enough for maximum effect, Prescott smiled at Jimmy as one smiles to a friend and said, “We have no further questions.”
“Mr. Carl,” said the judge, “do you wish to cross?” He peered down at me over his half-glasses and waited for my response.
I had not yet recovered from the sight of Chuckie Lamb dying in my arms, I had not yet been able to erase the amazement of it, the sense of awe, the overwhelming rush of fear. This man who had been alive just a few moments ago was now dead, his life had flowed out the gash in his throat, past my shoes, into the sodden ground beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. The sight of it was something I would haul along with me the rest of my days. I came home from the park after driving around for hours to find Beth asleep on the couch. What I did was strip off my clothes and dump them in the washer, raincoat and sneakers included, and I washed them with three cups of detergent while I stayed under the shower until the water turned cold. And then I slept, or tried to, shaking myself awake whenever I dreamed of Chuckie with the beard that wasn’t a beard. I hadn’t yet had the time I needed to deal with my first encounter with a dead man.
But this I knew. Chuckie Lamb wasn’t killed by some young hustler out to rob his trick, like the papers made it seem, and Chuckie Lamb wasn’t killed by a drug dealer out to scare off the councilman, like Jimmy Moore made it seem. No sir. He was killed because he was going to tell me all he knew about the councilman and the missing money. He was killed by Jimmy Moore, who had killed Bissonette before him and who would kill others if need be, Jimmy Moore, who had lied to Chester, to me, who had lied under oath on the stand, Jimmy Moore, with his cheap sanctimony and elephantine prick, Jimmy Moore. He had done it, dammit, and I would make him pay, I would, I would hurt him, I would. If I achieved nothing else in this life what I would achieve was to hurt Jimmy Moore.
He sat there on the stand, his chest thrown out, his eyes hard with determination, he sat there waiting for me. Well, he would get me, all right.
“Mr. Carl,” said Judge Gimbel. “Do you or do you not want to cross-examine this witness?”
“Oh, I want to, Your Honor,” I said, rising and walking with great purpose to the podium. I stared at Jimmy Moore and he stared back and for a moment we were locked together in some violent rush of antagonism. And then I saw it, what I had been looking for, what I had been hoping to see: fear. He knew what he was facing, did Jimmy Moore. The bastard knew what I knew, knew what I felt, and he was right to be afraid.
I tapped the podium softly with my fist once, twice. And then I began.
50
AFTER IT WAS OVER, after all the shouting, after all the sustained objections, after all the lies and the questions repeated with emphasis and the repeated lies, after all the pounding on the podium and the admonitions of the court and the requests for citations of contempt by Prescott and Eggert both, after all the sidebar conferences, after all the portentous questions asked and withdrawn before an answer could be given, after all the shouting, I was back in my apartment, hugging my chest as I lay curled on my couch, my shoes still on, my head in Beth’s lap as she caressed my scalp and promised me it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t as bad as all that.
“Oh, yes it was,” I said, and yes it had been.
I had charged at Jimmy Moore’s story like a bull, my horns aimed straight at its heart, but when I picked up my head I realized I had charged past him and he was still sitting in that witness chair, calm, smooth, waiting to deflect my next pass with his cape of lies. He was the matador, controlling me with his pace, with his responses, and he made a fool of me more than once in the course of the interrogation.
“You did all you could do,” said Beth.
“He ate me for lunch, and spit out the bones.”
“Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself,” she said.
“The bastard was lying, Beth. All I wanted to do was to show him up to be a liar.”
“That’s not so easy a thing to do with a practiced liar. You didn’t get everything you wanted out of him, but you got all that you needed.”
“You think?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe,” I said, and maybe I had because I never for a moment thought I could win the case on Jimmy Moore’s testimony alone. My idea was that the truth would save Chester Concannon, a quaint idea in this age where obfuscation and spin are the key to success in all realms, but there it was, and I could never have expected anything approaching the truth to come from Jimmy Moore’s lips. No, the most I could have expected from Jimmy Moore was to create a pedestal on which the truth could later stand and that was maybe what I had done.
I had asked him about his daughter and he told again how she had died. I had asked about the rush of emotions that overcame him upon her death and, practiced as he was in exposing his inner feelings when they could do him the most good, he spoke of the pain, the agony, the anger. And out of it all, I had asked, had grown a hatred for those who sold drugs to children, hadn’t it, Councilman?
“They are murderers, killers of children.”
“And you hate them all, with all the power of your powerful passion.”
“That’s right, Mr. Carl.”
“You have rededicated your life to fighting the scourge.”
“That is correct. They are murderers and they must be destroyed, each and every one.”
“No matter the means, no matter the cost?”
“They must be beaten.”
“Because they killed your daughter?”
“Yes, and thousands of others like her.”
“And you will see them all dead?”
“It is my mission.”
“Single-handedly?”
“If I must.”
“Vengeance shall be mine, sayeth the councilman, is that it?” I had asked, expecting not an answer but an objection, which was exactly what I got, sustained by the judge.
“That was a nice touch, I thought,” said Beth as she stroked my head. Whenever my mind drifted back to those moments in court I could feel my adrenals kick into action and I began to shiver. It was her soothing touch that would calm me once again, would bring me back to the ease of the evening encampment when the battle was over for the day. “Quoting the Bible was very Darrowish,” she said.
“Nothing gets them angrier than a Jew shoving the New Testament in their faces,” I said.
“It wasn’t the only time you got him angry.”
“I thought he was pretty calm throughout,” I said.
“No, Victor. He especially didn’t like when you started talking about his mistress.”
“Who would?” I said.
There was not much I could do but press his buttons and see which ones blew him up. The eruptions hadn’t come as colorfully as I had hoped, but they had come and the jury had seen the anger seething within him. Like when I had asked about his high living, his club-hopping, his taste for the finest, most expensive champagnes.
“Life is to be lived, Mr. Carl.”
“And you have a personal limousine and a driver?”
“For protection primarily.”
“And you support a mistress?”
“She supported herself, but there were certain expenses involved, yes. But that was the least of the costs to me of that tragic affair. The least.”
“And all that required money?”
“Yes. But I work.”
“A city councilman doesn’t earn enough to slosh champagne in his limousine, does he?”