The sorry fact is that I can. It is a measure of job security in the modern workplace. We discuss Lenore’s recourse, which takes all of a nanosecond. As part of management she is what is called a “pleasure appointment,” exempt from civil service protection. Hired and fired at the pleasure of the elected district attorney. Kline does not even require cause to fire her. Anything that is not grounded in discrimination will do. She tells me she has no intention of fighting it, that taking the long view, it is probably for the best. “Time to strike out on my own,” she says.
I ask her about prospects, clients or money. She has neither.
“I could give you Tony as a client,” I tell her.
“Yeah, right. Just what I need.”
I think perhaps this is a lot of booze talking, that when she considers the sum of her financial obligations around payday, she may have other thoughts.
“Did you ever figure out what Kline wanted from the Acosta file? What it was he thought was missing?” I am thinking maybe this has something to do with her firing.
“With that one, God only knows,” she says.
“You said he asked about your notes?”
She gives me a face that is a question mark. She doesn’t have a clue.
“What happened then?”
“High drama,” she says. “He has Wendy hand me a cardboard box filled with personal items they’ve taken from my office and Kline tells the deputy to escort me from the building. Like I’ve committed some crime,” she says.
Lenore is walking, pacing across my kitchen, straggly hair, drink in hand, steam seeming to rise from her body as she revisits the image in her mind.
“I never thought I’d end up pulling for some slime like Acosta,” she says.
“The enemy of my enemy,” I tell her.
“Exactly. Two days ago I wouldn’t have given him a second thought, or two cents for his chances.” She’s talking about Acosta.
“And now he’s a knight on a charging steed,” I tell her.
“I wouldn’t go so far as that. But I think he may kick some ass. At least his lawyers will.”
“You think Kline’s that bad in court?”
“That,” she says, “and the fact that his evidence has now suddenly turned to shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Right after Kline grabbed the file off my desk and announced to the world that he was going to do this thing himself, the audio techs call. The wire. The one worn by Hall that night. It didn’t work.” This brings the only smile she has exhibited since arriving at my house, something sinister that does not rest well on Lenore’s face. “They don’t know if it simply malfunctioned, or if somebody turned it off.”
“Turned it off?”
She gives me a look that says “think about it.” “Acosta. Lano and the association. If you sandbagged the judge. .” She leaves me to finish the thought; that if the cops set the Coconut up, they would not produce the audiotape that might exonerate him.
“They’d be better off going one-on-one,” says Lenore. “Hall’s word against his.”
“There was nothing on the tape?” I ask.
“Nothing beyond Acosta’s husky voice and a somewhat salacious hello from Hall. Not exactly incriminating,” says Lenore. “After that it all goes buzzy.”
I can feel my heart sag in my chest. Twenty more years of the Coconut on the bench.
“So it’s his word against hers?” I say.
She nods.
“It may be enough. She seemed as if she would come across well on the stand.” A wishful thought on my part.
Lenore waffles one hand at the wrist, like it could go either way.
“Before I was escorted from the premises I heard rumors,” she says. “Talk of a deal.”
“God. Don’t tell me.”
“Some reduced infraction,” she says, “but only on condition that he resign from the bench.”
I sigh like a man before a firing squad that’s just shot blanks.
“He rejected the offer,” she says, “out of hand. Some story that he was visiting the witness on judicial business.”
“That’s his defense?” I say. “What was this business? A major mattress inspection? I can hear him on the stand. ‘I was merely lying on top of the woman to see if we could punch a hole in a Posturepedic.’”
Lenore does not laugh. “You have to admit, it’s a little strange. The judge is pressing for information of police misconduct and gets nailed in a Vice sting. Before they can get him to trial, the evidence turns sour.”
“So what are you thinking? A shot across his bow. They want to warn him off.”
“Who knows? All we know now is that it comes down to a credibility contest. Who the jury believes,” says Lenore. “With removal from the bench as the bottom line.”
She tells me that Kline is getting pressure from the Commission on Judicial Accountability, the judge’s answer to the Congressional Ethics Committee. I won’t tell what you’re doing under your robe if you don’t tell what I’m doing under mine.
“They want Acosta off the bench,” she says.
If there’s anything more sanctimonious than a reformed hooker, it’s a lawyer turned judge.
“Judicial hari kari,” I say.
“You got it. They don’t want a messy public hearing before the State Supreme Court,” says Lenore. “As they see it, it would be better if he fell on his own sword.”
“I can imagine.”
As we talk a beeper goes off in her purse. She puts the glass down and fishes around among hairbrushes and hankies until she finds the little black beast.
“The only thing they didn’t get,” she tells me. Her way of informing me this beeper belongs to the state.
She looks at the number displayed on the LED readout.
“The interest of all your affections,” she says.
I give her a quizzical look.
“Tony’s cellular number.”
“Tell him I want to talk to him.”
As I say this, Lenore makes it, somewhat unsteadily, to the wall-mounted phone by the kitchen door. I bring her a stool in the interest of safety, and she dials. She waits several seconds, and then: “It’s me.”
It is all she says. The voice on the other end takes over. I assume this is Tony. It is a one-sided conversation, and as I watch, Lenore’s face is transformed through a dozen aspects: from abject indifference to keen interest, like the phases of the moon.
“Where are you now?” she says.
“Tell him I want to talk to him.” I’m trying to get her attention, but she is riveted by whatever is being said at the other end.
Lenore ignores me, and makes a note on a pad hanging on the wall.
“How did it happen?”
“Who else is there?” A momentary pause.
“Anyone from the D.A.’s office?” She fires staccato questions without time for much reply, like whoever is at the other end doesn’t know much.
“Any idea when it happened?” There is a long pause here. The look on Lenore’s face is unadulterated bewilderment.
“Any witnesses?” There is some lengthy explanation here, but Lenore takes no notes.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she says, and hangs up.
At this moment she is not looking at me as much as through me, to some distant point in another world.
“What’s wrong? Tony?” I ask.
She nods, but does not answer.
“What is it?”
“Brittany Hall,” she says. It is as if she were in a trance, mesmerized by whatever it is she has heard on the phone. She gazes in a blank stare at the wall and speaks.
“They found her body an hour ago in a Dumpster,” she says. “Behind the D.A.’s office.”
When we pull up to the curb there are a half dozen police cars parked in their usual fashion, which is any way they like to leave them, light bars blazing blue and red. A handful of vagrants stand outside the yellow tape that closes off the entrance to the alley behind Hamilton Street. In any other neighborhood in town, this activity, the commotion of cops, would draw a crowd of home owners and other residents. But here, across from the courthouse in the middle of the night, the only interested parties look like refugees from a soup kitchen, a few homeless bingers who have been evicted from the alley, who stand shivering in threadbare blankets and other discards from the Goodwill.