“Not just wanted to, he went ahead with it.”
“I remember you told me the story to make an interesting point about the importance of a jury’s emotional reaction to the defendant.”
“Exactly,” said Thorne, more warmly now.
The emotional basis of verdicts wasn’t the point Gurney cared about, but he knew Thorne did and that quoting him would make him more willing to talk.
“I was wondering,” said Gurney in the tone of an eager student, “could you tell me the story again?”
“I’m crushed for time, but . . . alright, short version. It was a major robbery-and-murder case. Prosecution had a seemingly airtight case. A precious gems courier is held up in a parking lot, gets robbed of an attaché case containing three million bucks’ worth of emeralds. He gets a punch in the face, and the lot attendant is shot dead. The heist team gets away with the emeralds. But then the courier ID’s the heist driver as a guy who’d been following him for a few days. He gives the cops a picture he says he took of the guy on the street. And he gives the cops a plate number for the getaway car. Plate number turns out to be for a car registered to a local scumbag involved in various nasty activities, the nicest of which was fencing high-end jewelry. The scumbag had no solid alibi, and the guy the courier ID’d as the driver turned out to be the scumbag’s right-hand man. The DA had a very persuasive case. At this point, I am the scumbag’s attorney. The DA offered us a reasonable plea deal, and—given the evidentiary lay of the land, the unsavoriness of my client, and the likelihood of a murder conviction for the dead parking lot attendant—I recommended that he accept it. He refused. He insisted he’d been set up by a business rival, guy by the name of Jimmy Peskin. He gave me a blank check to get to the truth. And I did.”
This was the part of the story that Thorne liked, and his pleasure in telling it enlivened his voice. “The real story began with the gem courier’s son. The kid had been hired by a top L.A. law firm. But—major but—he had problems with gambling, coke, and hookers. His gambling had gotten him into significant debt with a mob guy who was demanding immediate payment or pictures would appear on the internet that would end the kid’s career. The kid went to Dad. Dad, desperate to get his son out of trouble, approached a guy whose street rep suggested he might be open to . . . an arrangement. This guy was Jimmy Peskin, major business rival of my client. Dad proposed a jewel heist to Peskin with a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds—providing that Dad incriminate my client by giving the police a false ID of the driver, a false plate number and description of the getaway car, a bullshit story about the driver having followed him, et cetera. Bottom line? Our presentation at my guy’s trial incorporated enough of what we discovered about Peskin to create a textbook example of reasonable doubt. In fact, the court reporters found our case a hell of a lot more persuasive than the prosecutor’s. One reporter called it a steel-trap indictment of Jimmy Peskin. But, like I told you before, the jury found my guy guilty on all counts, including the murder of the attendant. Because the greatest defense in the world is worthless if the jury thinks your client is a scumbag.”
Gurney thought about it for a moment. “So, Peskin agreed to carry out the arranged heist and give the courier half the proceeds, on the condition that the courier tell the police a story that incriminated your client?”
“That’s how we explained the framing plot to the jury. But they didn’t buy it—for the simple reason that they found my client less appealing than Peskin. You win some, you lose some. Rarely for the right reasons. Fact of the criminal justice system. Fact of life, too. Have to go now, Gurney. Never keep a paying client waiting.”
Gurney sat back in the chair, gazing at the dead coals of yesterday’s fire. He was pondering what, for him, was the heart of the story—the deal Jimmy Peskin made with the desperate gem courier. Essentially, I’ll stage the robbery for you, if you give the police this phony account of what happened.
So, the courier got the money he wanted for his son—at the price of perjured testimony, an unjust murder conviction, and a dead parking lot attendant.
I’ll do what you want me to do, if you say what I want you to say.
He wondered if that basic quid pro quo could be the template underlying everything that had happened. Exactly what had been done and what had been said in return were yet to be determined, but the structure felt right.
The more he thought about it, the surer he became that there’d been some sort of deal at the root of the affair. A deal that led to six deaths: Lenny and Sonny Lerman, Ziko Slade, Bruno Lanka, Dominick Vesco, and Charlene Vesco. A tremor passed through him at the thought that Jack Hardwick might become the seventh.
The idea of losing Hardwick permanently led to another bleak issue weighing on his mind, his separation from Madeleine.
His departure felt less like a temper tantrum than the inevitable result of a fatal flaw in their marriage. But it was only a feeling. Rational thought on that subject was out of reach at that moment. He told himself there would be time enough to arrive at a clearer vision. If clarity was something he really wanted.
At the moment, he’d rather think about the beheading of Lenny Lerman or the bloody death of Charlene Vesco or just about anything other than the apparent collapse of his marriage.
67
AFTER GETTING A PAD FROM HIS SUITCASE UPSTAIRS AND a third cup of coffee from the kitchen, he took a seat at the dining room table and began making a list—partly of facts, partly of guesswork—to see if a new hypothesis might emerge.
It bothered him that he was turning again to the bogus satisfaction of list-making—a symptom of his isolation and a poor substitute for exposing his thoughts to an intelligent skeptic. But it was all he had. He put his notes in the present tense to make them feel more alive.
Lenny Lerman has a problem with his son that he believes money will fix.
He discovers he has a terminal illness.
An acquaintance tells him about a dark secret in Ziko Slade’s past.
With nothing to lose, he sees this as an opportunity for an extortion windfall.
He (like the courier in Thorne’s story) approaches a potential partner.
The potential partner agrees to help him, with a condition.
Lenny, like the courier, must make certain statements damaging to a third party.
When the extortion plan comes to a head, something goes wrong, and Lenny is killed.
Lenny’s head and fingers are removed.
Bruno Lanka brings the mutilated body to the attention of the police.
Slade is arrested, tried, and convicted, based on physical evidence and Lenny’s diary.
The list created more questions than answers.
Might the partner Lenny approached be the shadowy gangster at the edge of the Lerman family? What quid pro quo might that person have demanded in return for his help? Might it have involved Lenny claiming in his diary to have made certain threatening phone calls that he didn’t actually make? But if no extortion calls were made—or, to take it a step further, if no extortion plan existed at all—what did Lenny need a partner for?
The notion that the diary might be misleading struck Gurney as an intriguing premise for a new concept of the case. As a private record of Lerman’s thoughts and actions, including candid descriptions of his criminal intentions, its credibility had never been seriously challenged. Only the authenticity of his handwriting had been attested to. But if certain entries were lies—