“Your Honor, if you could withhold judgment for one moment while I confer.”
“Be quick,” says Radovich. He checks his watch while the two prosecutors step to the back of the room, hands cupped to ears and lips, the hissing of whispers, high intrigue. The subordinate takes out another piece of paper from his briefcase, and the two of them study this.
I look at Lenore. She gives me a shrug. Not a clue as to what they could be talking about.
Finally a consensus and they step forward.
“I had hoped not to have to do this,” says Kline, “but there is another dimension to this entire matter. This was delivered to our office late yesterday afternoon,” he says. He hands the single-page document to Radovich.
“It is a report,” says the prosecutor, “from the state crime lab, specifically Criminal Information and Identification. CI and I,” he says.
“What has this to do with the issue of conflict?” I say.
“It is a report on a latent fingerprint lifted from the front door of the victim’s apartment the day after her body was discovered,” says Kline.
My blood runs cold.
Kline suddenly turns his attention on Lenore, full focus like the glaring beam of a floodlight
“We would like to know, Ms. Goya, what you were doing at the victim’s apartment on the night she was murdered?”
Suddenly Lenore is in full stammer.
“Don’t answer that,” I say.
Lenore at least has the presence of mind not to admit it. Instead she calls it a shoddy trick. More mud thrown up by the prosecution.
“How do you know that the fingerprint was left there that night?”
Kline smiles. “Well, that’s the peculiar thing about this case, Counsel. We found virtually no prints on any of the exposed surfaces in or around that apartment. Wouldn’t you say that’s strange?” He gives me a quizzical smile.
I don’t answer this.
“Wouldn’t you say that it’s a little peculiar that even the victim’s own prints are not there? On that door? On the knob? Inside the bathroom? In the kitchen.” He gives us a moment for this to settle in. “It seems that somebody went to a lot of trouble to wipe the place clean.”
“Still, even if it is Ms. Goya’s print, and I’m not stipulating that it is. .”
“Oh, it’s her print, all right,” says Kline.
“Still you can’t prove it was left there that night.”
“That’s a question for the jury,” says Kline. He now turns his argument on Radovich. “Is it probable, is it likely, that someone would wipe that door clean and miss only one print: the thumbprint of Ms. Goya?” he says. “Is it probable?”
Kline is right. It is something he can feed to the jury, and their verdict on the question will not matter. Lenore is now compromised in a way we could never have imagined.
“You can be sure that we will be asking you that same question when we put you on the stand at trial,” Kline tells Lenore.
She stands there, speechless, her hand seemingly glued to the edge of Radovich’s desk, as though this is somehow now the boundary of her universe.
“Your Honor,” says Kline, “the question of adverse interest is perhaps now moot. But the law is ironclad as it affects witnesses. A witness may not legally, under any circumstances, represent one of the parties in a case in which they are to testify. It is the law,” he says, “without exception.”
He turns now to Lenore and faces her straight on.
“Ms. Goya, you are hereby on notice that the state intends to call you as a witness in its case against Armando Acosta.”
CHAPTER 15
By the time we get back to the office, the press is all over the story, the fact that Lenore has been removed from the case. The lights on the phone are all lit up, every line, so that the receptionist has them all flashing on hold.
“The bastard couldn’t wait to deliver the news,” says Lenore. She’s talking about Kline, who no doubt held a conference in front of the cameras on the courthouse steps. “With him it is any way to cut my throat,” says Lenore.
She pushes through the door to my office, Harry and I trailing in her wake.
“It sounds like you did it to yourself,” says Harry.
“Screw you,” she says.
“You’re doing a pretty good job of that, too,” says Harry. “Me and Paul and your client.”
“Get off my back,” she tells him.
I motion to Harry to back off.
“You don’t think I feel bad enough about this already?” she says.
“Oh, well. Gee whiz,” says Harry. “Why don’t we have a group therapy session to see who feels worse? Why don’t you take the couch?” He makes a mocking gesture toward the sofa, an invitation for Lenore to recline.
“How do you feel, Paul? Tell us. You feel like you got fucked?” Harry at his sarcastic best. “Oh my! How could I be so insensitive?” he says. “Lemme rephrase that. You think you got fucked today in court?”
Harry’s paranoia running wild.
“What the hell is going on?” he says. “Did you know she was there at Hall’s apartment?” Harry is looking to me for answers. He is angry, feeling deceived.
I think he suspects, though we have not told him, that I was with Lenore at the victim’s apartment that night. This would surely send him screaming out of the office.
Before I can respond he puts a hand up. “Don’t answer that,” he says. I think Harry can read my mind. He is savvy enough to grasp that there are some things that are better left unknown-or at least not stated.
“I don’t know what to say to either of you,” says Lenore.
“That makes two of us,” says Harry.
She ignores him. The best medicine with Harry.
“I apologize,” she says. “I got you into this. Now I don’t know how to get you out.”
For the moment she has her own set of problems. Kline was emphatic that he intends to call her as a witness. He tried to assign two detectives to interview her this afternoon at police headquarters, but I convinced Radovich to intervene. The cops would have a field day probing the theory of our case. They are not saying whether they will bring charges against Lenore, breaking and entering, or obstructing justice if they can show that she tampered with evidence at the scene.
“Any ideas on what I should do?” she asks.
“Yeah. Tell ’em you lost your mind,” says Harry. “They’ll believe you,” he says.
At the moment Harry is playing this up not so much because of Lenore’s conduct, but because he suspects a cabal between the two of us, something we haven’t let him in on. Had we invited him along that night, he would have warmed to Lenore in a minute. It was just his kind of party. Harry, like most of us, is an inveterate hypocrite.
“I almost forgot,” he says, “for what it’s worth. Here.”
Harry hands me a stack of documents, printed forms with a familiar logo on the letterhead.
“Until this afternoon I thought it was a break for our side,” he says. “The victim’s telephone records for the period in question.”
One page is marked with a paper clip and a note in Harry’s hand.
“That one is for the day she was killed,” he says. “Of course maybe you were there when she placed this particular phone call.” He looks at Lenore. “In which case,” he says, “you can tell us what the two of them had to say to each other.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
He points with a finger to the record in question. “Gus Lano and Hall. She called him on the number, the one in the little black book, no more than two hours before she was killed. If the state’s estimate as to time of death is correct, it was the last phone call on record. Little good it will do us now.” Harry’s view is that we are now so compromised by Lenore’s conduct that nothing can help.
I tell him that I need a moment alone with Lenore in my office.
“Sure,” he says, “what the hell do I care? I’m outta here. God knows why I ever let you talk me into this.” Harry’s still muttering under his breath, occasional profanities and other choice words, as he marches out and closes the door behind him.