Compelling Evidence

CHAPTER 11

I sit nursing a drink, the ice cubes melting slowly in the tea-colored slush at the bottom of my glass. Topper’s is filling up fast. The usual crowd of half-swacked lawyers and lobbyists exchanging war stories are working up calluses on the undersides of their bellies as they press against the bar. The din of voices builds to a climax and erupts in laughter as a group at the far end of the room competes for bragging rights.

Two women in short, tight skirts and sequined tops struggle to look sedate, propped on bar stools as they spend the early shift waiting for legislators to finish up their afternoon session at the capitol a block away.

I’d been introduced to Topper’s by Ben. It was a hangout for the capitol crowd, a few lawyers, but mostly lobbyists, heavy drinkers with much time on their hands for professional socializing. I’ve selected Topper’s instead of the more familiar Cloakroom for this meeting, in hopes that we will not be interrupted.

I watch as Leo Kerns makes his way around the tables, that red cherub’s face grinning at me as he approaches at full waddle. Leo is one of those small balls of energy who look like they’ve been poured into a wrinkled suit. The collar of his white dress shirt is open, the knot of his tie rests halfway down his chest, where the outward slope of his stomach starts.

“Leo, I’m glad you could make it.”

He sticks out a beefy hand, and I take it. Before he’s even seated, his eyes begin a frantic search for the cocktail waitress. In mid-gawk his gaze settles on one of the bimbos at the bar. “I’m in love,” he says. This is Leo Kerns, hopelessly out of date, tasteless. The only glad-handing cop I know. I’ve often mused over the idea that he missed his calling, for Leo is the best salesman I’ve ever met. In the office he’s constantly on call to perform that ritual of every jailhouse, cast in the role of good cop versus bad in interrogations. This disarming fat little man with the cherubic smile has done his part for prison overcrowding. He nourishes the natural desire of suspects to converse with a friendly face, to unburden themselves of gnawing secrets at a troubling time, on an understanding shoulder, to a sympathetic ear.

Here Leo’s in all his glory. Topper’s is a cut above the Cloakroom, the bar across from the courthouse that’s become an institution for the legal fraternity and some of the cops. Here the hookers aren’t quite so brazen about showing their wares. And what they’re showing isn’t quite so worn.

“So whadda you wanna talk about that it was so important we couldn’t discuss it on the phone?” He says it with distraction. Leo’s holding up two fingers in a loose victory sign hailing the waitress. He orders a double bourbon and water.

I dodge his question with a few pleasantries in hopes that his drink will come quickly. Some liquid distraction to match the visual diversions while I pump him for information.

Kerns drops himself, all five feet, three inches, into the chair on the other side of the table and almost disappears into the abyss. I’ve often wondered, but never lacked sufficient taste to ask, how Leo skirted the height requirement in order to be hired as an investigator with the DA. He stood out like the village elf whenever there was a gathering of the office staff. But whatever he lacked in stature he made up for with his Irish version of chutzpah and that deadly, disarming manner.

“How are they treating you, Leo?”

“I could complain, but it wouldn’t do any good.”

I’m trying to ease into it without being too obvious, the matter of Ben’s case and the turns the investigation is taking. I prepare to put on the preliminary bout first, a little distractor. Rumors are rife that the DA is closing in on a major political scandal. Hawley’s “boink book,” I think, the list of names Lama is trying to get from my client.

Leo and I reminisce; he talks about Nelson the DA. “What an asshole,” he says. Seems Nelson’s been on the warpath since one of the investigators got caught living in the backseat of a county-assigned car, parked overnight in one of the more swank parts of the city. “Guy had a little trouble with his landlord, so he moved out. Couldn’t come up with the advance rent and security deposit for a new place,” says Leo, “so he batched it in the backseat of his car. He was showering at the ‘ Y’ and using the John at a local gas station, doin’ meals on a hibachi strapped to the front bumper-can you believe it? Some citizen saw the government plates on the car and complained.” Leo laughs. “That sonofabitch Nelson’s now forcin’ us to turn the cars in to the county lot every night.”

I can imagine that this is now crimping the style of some of Leo’s friends. Guys who used to skate for home at two-thirty in the afternoon now have to return at five o’clock to park their cars. Life’s tough.

Finally I plunge in. “What do you know about this political thing?” I ask. “The big case Lama’s on?”

He wrinkles his brow and answers a question with a question.

“You wouldn’t be involved, would you? Got a piece of the defense or something?”

“Nothing like that, Leo. Just a client who may have a tangential interest.” There’s little sense in lying to Kerns.

“The hooker-Hawley?” he asks. He sits staring at me with a soulful grin. Leo’s learned the ultimate art of good interrogation-to listen a lot, endure long, pregnant pauses, and let the other guy say the next thing. Like a gridiron defense, Leo always plays for the verbal turnover.

I smile and nod, my head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle as if to say “If you wish to call her that.” I am not surprised that he already has a bead on my client. It’s an unquestioned axiom that a cop’s lot is composed of hours of tedium, punctuated by instants of terror. In those long hours of routine they talk, to one another, to the press at the scene of the latest calamity, to anyone who will listen. The fact that Lama took a personal hand in Hawley’s pretrial, I know, makes it an odds-on bet that Susan Hawley’s troubles have been chewed on over coffee and doughnuts by every person with a badge in the city.

“If you’ve read the papers, you know what there is to know,” he says.

I remind him that my client’s name wasn’t in the papers.

He makes the face of concession and shrugs his shoulders. “Lama’s squeezing her pretty hard, is he?”

“He’s tryin’.”

“Man’s on a holy crusade to save the world for truth, justice, and the American way,” says Kerns. “Sonofabitch oughta get a red cape and blue tights.” We laugh together at this mental image.

It was Leo who’d first clued me in to some of the bizarre antics of Lama and his friends, a few cops who palled around together and formed a fast fraternity. These law-and-order jocks had a curious ceremony to “earn your bones,” gain acceptance to the group. An applicant had to get laid while on duty. Charter members did the deed with a fellow officer’s wife or girlfriend. For these guys, the department’s motto, “Service First,” carried special meaning.

Leo’s drink comes. Before he can reach for his wallet I push a twenty across the table at the waitress, an investment in a little candor. The waitress scoops up the money and leaves.

“Still, if you want my opinion, your girl should roll over on the bunch of ’em.”

“Maybe they performed that number,” I say.

Leo laughs. This tickles some responsive and prurient cord deep inside him.

“No, seriously,” he says. “She’d be doin’ society a considerable service.”

“That bad?”

Leo giggles a bit, one of those dirty giggles, in the pitch of a cheap tenor. He shakes his head as if my question is a gross understatement.

“Politicians are assholes.” He says this like it is one of the axioms of nature.

I decide to probe a little further before turning to the real point of our conversation.

“What do you know about Tony Skarpellos, his firm? Do you know if they have a client who’s involved in me thing?”

Leo shrugs his shoulders.

“Know Skarpellos only from reputation,” he says. “Peddles a lot of influence with the people downtown. Kinda guy who gives dirty politics a bad name.”

He takes a gulp from his glass. “Seems to be the consensus,” he says, “that his mother must have flinched at the last minute.”

I look quizzically at Kerns.

“Opinion has it the better part of Tony Skarpellos ran down his father’s leg the night he was conceived.”

Kerns puts out a pudgy hand for a couple of stick pretzels in the bowl at the center of the table.

“Does Lama have anything solid to go on? In the investigation?” I ask.

“Bits and pieces,” he says. “But you know Lama. Give him some thumb screws, a dark room, and a little time, and he’ll produce miracles. The Inquisition lost a great talent in that one.”

A gaggle of secretaries, legislative staff, and other political groupies begin to spread out at the bar. They’re squeezing the two women in short skirts at the end. One of them takes her purse and moves to a table a few feet from ours. Kerns is all eyes. It would be an ambitious project for the little man. For starters he would need a ladder. Still, I’ve never known Leo Kerns to shrink in the face of a true challenge.

There’s a rush of commotion near the entrance as three men in worsted pinstripes waltz through the door, followed closely by an entourage of lesser lights. The man in the lead is recognizable to anyone who’s lived in the state for more than a week and watched the local television news more than once. Corey Trumble is the speaker of the state assembly.

Kerns shoots a glance over his shoulder at the group, then back to the woman at the table off to his right. She’s crossed her legs and is now showing a good deal of thigh. Her attention is riveted on the lawmakers and the coterie of lobbyists groveling in their wake.

“I think she’s interested in carving another notch in that skirt,” says Leo.

I nod and smile.

“Vice would have a field day in here.”

Perhaps, I think. But they’ll never get the chance. Topper’s is off-limits to the local cops, a sort of unwritten territorial rule. Legislators and other state officials are fair game out in the hinterlands, in the north area or the south part of the city. But here, in the shadow of the capitol dome, the only badges that move are pinned on the sergeants-at-arms, mostly old men or part-time students, people who take their orders from Corey Trumble and his ilk in the state senate.

“What do you think? You think there’s anything to Lama’s suspicions?” I struggle against mounting odds to draw Leo’s attention back to our conversation.

“I should be askin’ you that question.” He speaks slowly, his eyes glued on the hooker’s legs. “You’re the lady’s lawyer.” He chews on an ice cube and looks back at me. “One thing’s for sure. If she’s got anything, she’s in a position to deal. Lama’s sure that the case is a fast track to a promotion, and the word is that Nelson smells big headlines. The way things are going in the office these days, he could end up with enough press to go statewide. Conventional wisdom seems to be that with the political scam and the Potter killing, if Nelson can screw the lid on both cases quickly, he could end up bein’ the next state attorney general. First law of political gravity, up and onward-always up and onward.”

He winks, his tongue slithering around at the bottom of his glass for a sliver of ice. Kerns knows that he’s paid for his drink. Susan Hawley’s expectations of an outright dismissal are not built on idle fantasy.

I wave the waitress over and gesture to Leo. He holds up a hand like the guardrail at a train crossing-his look like the pope condemning abortion. He’s had enough. But before I can nod in agreement, the expression and the hand melt like slush on a hot day. “Oh, what the hell, one more,” he says. “The same.”

I take my wallet out again. The waitress clears our glasses and heads for the bar.

I’ve covered my tracks, and Kerns has opened the door with his comment on the Potter case.

“What do you guys have on Potter?” I ask.

He looks at me and smiles. “Half the world would like to have the answer to that.” He winks. “They’re gonna find out pretty soon.”

“Lotta stuff in the papers,” I say.

Nelson’s begun to leak rumors touting a short list of suspects, but no names or details; it’s the classic nonstory, but it plays well with the media, a little raw meat tossed on the press-room floor to keep the issue on the front page-the scent of a good story to come. By the time Nelson moves with an arrest or indictment, the giant web presses at the Times and Trib will already be warmed and running. The man is no fool. As usual Talia appears oblivious to all of this. In the same edition, with the story of her husband’s murder investigation, she’s pictured in the society section at a charity event dressed like the favorite concubine of some rajah.

“Yeah,” says Leo, “before they finish puttin’ type to newsprint on this one, they’ll kill half the trees in North America.”

“They’re that close?” I say.

He nods. “If you can believe ’em.”

Kerns has a secret. He’s like a man with hot embers in his pockets, and it’s killing him.

“You were pretty close to Potter, weren’t you?” He tries to tilt the burden of conversation to me.

“We were friends,” I say.

But he can’t resist.

“Let me tell you, Duane’s been a busy boy lately. In the office ‘til the wee hours burning the midnight oil with the brain trust three nights runnin’.” He leans over the table a little closer and drops several decibels in volume. “He’s callin’ a press conference for the morning. Seems they have an indictment.” He thumps the table with two fingers as if to make his point.

At this I am surprised. Grand juries in this state usually issue indictments only in cases involving prominent defendants, where prosecutors want to spread the political accountability for their actions.

I arch an eyebrow.

The coals burn hotter. He’s fidgeting in his chair.

“He’s got this theory, Nelson has. Since he got started it seems to be pointing in one direction, one suspect, like the needle on a compass with a constant north.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The merry widow-Potter’s wife.” He looks around the room to make sure nobody’s tuned in to our conversation, and then: “Grand jury handed down an indictment against Talia Potter just after two this afternoon, one count, first-degree murder.”

This statement seems to move me-propel me away from the table and Leo Kerns. I lose eye contact with him for a moment, stunned by what I’m hearing. I make a face-like “Fancy that.” It is all I can do, for if I open my mouth, it will utter only incredulity. I’m speechless, unable to move, even to inquire further. Kerns’s words have frozen me in place.

“With special circumstances,” he says. This latter means that Talia may be bound over for trial on a charge of murder-and if convicted could face the death penalty.

My mind is flooded by images of Brian Danley and his last fleeting moments of life in that little green room, my trip to San Quentin and death at the hands of the state.

“Looks like the lady’s got a lover. More to the point, it looks like she’s got a string of ’em, you know, like the polo set keep ponies, this broad collects hunks,” he says. “Nelson thinks she got bored with the old man early on, and she and one of the boyfriends popped him for the money. The old man was worth a bundle.”

“There’s easier ways to be rid of a husband than killing him.” With some difficulty, I’ve scrambled mentally out of my hole, enough to throw a little water on this theory, the thought that Talia might kill to rid herself of Ben.

“Not if there’s a prenuptial agreement,” he says.

I look at him as if to say, “Is this true?”

He nods. “Seems the hormones didn’t completely kill the old man’s sense of business.”

This is Ben, I think, ever the lawyer.

“Ironclad,” Leo says of this agreement.

He stops to look at the hooker, who’s now been joined by one of the lobbyists at her table. Kerns says nothing for several seconds. He’s studying the two with an intense scrutiny, as if he’s overheard something. Perhaps the price of commerce. They rise together and walk toward the bar and the three legislators, Trumble, and his contingent.

“Some more fringe benefits, I think,” says Kerns. He appraises the woman’s long legs with an obvious leer. It’s a special expression, I think, not the open stare of your usual lecher, but the kind reserved by short men for tall women. It has a comic side that saves it from the lascivious.

“Ironclad.” I remind him where he was.

“Humm?”

“The prenuptial agreement.”

“Oh yeah.” Kerns runs a single hand through thinning hair, then straightens his tie a little, leaving the knot halfway down his chest, as if that part doesn’t matter. He’s primping himself a little for the lady, who doesn’t know he exists.

“Yeah.” He brings himself back to me for the moment. “This agreement may not ensure marital bliss, but it’d make you think twice about divorce.” Leo stretches himself across the table a little, moving closer to me as if he’s about to impart the whereabouts of the golden fleece. “You see, the only way she takes is if they’re married when he dies. Then she gets it all. Otherwise”-he winks at me-“she’d better open a fruit stand.”

I’m dazed. Neither Talia nor Ben ever mentioned a word about a prenuptial agreement. But why should they, I think. This is something of marital intimacy, like the frequency of sex and the ways they liked it. Talia, even in her most indiscreet moments, would never discuss such things. As for Ben, it would be a matter of business, a commercial confidence to be treated like the rituals of papal succession.

“Nelson’s movin’ on the theory that the wife got a little too serious with one of the lovers. One-night stands were no longer enough. So she and the boyfriend popped the victim and tried to make it look like suicide.” Leo waffles one hand a little over the table like this may wash or not, he’ll have to wait and see.

In this moment of revelation I am struck cold. I tell myself in sobering mental tones, notwithstanding her chronic inattention to the mundane minutiae of life, the harsh reality of such a contract is not one of those obscure details that is likely to escape the Talia I know.

I remember Coop’s analysis. Whoever did Ben was an amateur. Talia never planned a thing in her life. It was her calling card. These facts begin to play upon me as I listen to the continuing ruminations of Leo Kerns, his words seeming to erupt from some hellish pit beneath the table.

He laughs, that wicked high-pitched snicker. “We’ll know more when we get the boyfriend,” he says. “Sucker’s either gonna cooperate, or take some real gas.”