"Imagine," I finally answer. Harnason is not above blackmail, and I await his threat. It will be pointless. There is not a thing I can do to change the outcome in his case. But instead, as we stand about ten feet apart, Harnason's red face darkens to a sunset shade.
"I can't stand it, Judge," he says. "Not knowing. When I got bail, I was ecstatic, but it's not like being free. It's like walking along, waiting for a trapdoor to spring open under me right here in the sidewalk."
I look at Harnason, whom I condemned once for the wrong reasons, and whose fight I've fought, out of his sight.
"The opinion won't be much longer," I say, and turn away. At once, I feel his hand on my sleeve.
"Please, Judge. What's the difference? If it's decided, what does it hurt to tell me? It's terrible, Judge. I just want to know."
It's wrong. That's the correct answer. But some faint scent of Anna's perfume pervades my skin, and I still have the drained, fucked-out stardust feeling emanating upward from my dick. Who am I today to cling to principle? Or more important, to deny him now the compassion I owed him thirty years ago?
"You should prepare yourself for bad news, John."
"Ah." It is a sound from the gut. "No hope?"
"Not really. You're at the end of the road. I'm sorry."
"Ah," he repeats. "I really didn't want to go back. I'm too old."
Standing here on the street, with the shoppers and business folk swirling around us, many electronically transported to their own universes by their cell phones or iPods, I have a hard time with my feelings. I am strangely sympathetic to Harnason but also impatient with the way he's preyed on me and wheedled information, and I know I need to draw a hard line to prevent further intimidations. Most of all, in the moment I'm a bit galled by his self-pity. As a prosecutor, I always had some respect for the guys who went off without batting an eye, who lived by the watchword 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.'
"John, let's face facts. You did it, didn't you?"
He does not take an instant to answer. "So did you, Judge. And you're here."
No, I am about to say, violating my longtime scruple against answering.
"I was acquitted," I reply. "As I deserved to be."
"I deserved it, too," he says. He has his handkerchief out and blows his nose. He is blubbering freely now, crying like a child. A few of the people brushing past us to get into the hotel turn as they go, but Harnason doesn't care. He is who he is.
"But not because you didn't do it," I say. "How was that, John? The month you knew you were killing that man?" I'm not sure what I mean to accomplish by confronting him this way. I suppose I am asking this question: Where is the line? How does one stop? Once I've fucked my clerk and betrayed my wife, once I've thrown everything I've ever accomplished to the wind, where is the point of restraint?
"Do you really need to ask, Judge?"
"I do."
"It was hard, Judge. I hated him. He was going to leave me. I was old and he wasn't. I'd been his meal ticket and he was grateful at first, but now he was tired of me. I'm too old to find somebody else, somebody like that. You understand that much, right?"
I wonder again how much he knows about Anna, as I nod.
"But I didn't actually believe I was doing it at first," says Harnason. "I'd thought about it. I admit that. I went to the library, did some research. There's an appellate court case. Did you know that? From Pennsylvania. It talks about arsenic not being screened." He laughs a little bitterly. "The prosecutors never seemed to remember I was trained as a lawyer."
"And where was the arsenic? In the drinks?"
"I baked." Harnason chuckles the same way, at his accusers' expense. Prosecutors are historians, engaged in a reconstruction of the past with all of history's perils. They never get it completely right, because the witnesses are biased, or blame shifting, or wrong, or because, as in this case, the investigators never asked the right questions or put together what they already knew. "All those people who testified I never cooked were right. When Ricky was home, the kitchen was his. But I baked. And Ricky had a sweet tooth. The first few times, I told myself it was just for fun, just to see if he would notice or how I would feel, if I could do what I'd read about. I may have done it five times and still thought it wasn't for real, that I was going to stop. You know, I've told myself that a lot," Harnason says suddenly. "That I was going to stop." His wizened eyes go off to many other places. "But I never do," he says morosely. "I didn't stop. Somewhere, day seven or eight, I realized I wasn't going to. I hated him. I hated myself. I was going to do it anyway. And you, Judge. How did it feel when you killed that prosecutor? Act of passion?"
"I didn't do it."
"I see." His look is cold. He got gulled and beaten on this deal. "You're better than me."
"I would never say that, John. Maybe I got better breaks. Nobody is good by himself. We all need help. I got more than you did."
"And who's helping you now?" he asks. He chucks his pink face toward the hotel. Here we are, sinner to sinner. I feel belittled by my own predictability.
There has been too much truth told in this conversation for me to lie. I just shake my head yet again and turn away.
CHAPTER 8
Tommy, October 17, 2008
Rory Gissling was the daughter of a copper, Shane Gissling, a detective sergeant for the long end of his career. As a girl, Rory had it all, smarts, looks, a cheerleader's personality; Shane wanted what dads wanted for daughters in those days, learn how to make a living and marry well enough that you never needed to do it. He had no thought about his daughter on the force, where shit floated. She made straight A's at the U in accounting, passed the CPA exam on the first try, and got off to a rocket start at one of the big accounting firms. All well, except she felt as if she were serving a sentence. Four years along, she chucked it and applied to the academy without a word to her parents. The storytellers said Shane had cried his eyes out in misery when he got the news.
Rory went to Financial Crimes after two years on a beat and had been a star ever since. When she walked in with Jim Brand, Tommy was a little disappointed to see she had sort of gone to seed since their last meeting a few years ago. As someone whose appearance was always against him, who struggled to keep himself looking merely out of shape, he did not quite understand how a woman like Rory, who once could turn traffic, just let it go, put on forty pounds in all the wrong places. Not fifty yet, she was still blond and pretty and nicely turned out, which maybe meant she'd battled the weight thing and lost, probably hated mirrors, and worried some what Phil, her husband, a lieutenant in Traffic, thought about it all.
"What are the happy returns?" Tommy asked. Tommy and Brand had decided Rory would be the best bet on the force to serve the documents subpoenas. She had enough rank that they could ask her without checking in with a commander and the brains to figure out whatever came back with no need for assistance. And she was one of the few cops actually proud to keep a secret.
"No se," said Rory. "I don't know what you guys had to start." She gave the PA a stiff look as she and Brand settled in the wooden armchairs in front of Tommy's desk. Tommy had instructed Brand not to explain anything about the investigation, and Rory, typical of all cops, hated working blind. Police officers always wanted to know everything, mostly because that was one of the principal delights of being a cop, feeling you sort of had the drop on everyone. From cop to cop it varied, whether the information made them feel superior or just not so bad. "This is like working with the Feebies. 'Just do what I say.'"
Nothing against Rory, but Tommy knew there was exactly one way to keep the fact that Rusty was under the microscope on murder from hitting the street, and that was to trust no one.
"You know who the subject is, right?" Tommy asked, as if the name alone were explanation enough.