The Judge

CHAPTER 13

Short and fat, stealth was never his style, though today Leo Kerns cloaks himself behind the concrete pillar of a parking structure, sneaking peeks at City Center Park across the street. The park is bordered by McGowen Center on the other side, the police department headquarters. We have come to do the devil’s deal: exchange some information. Leo is about to finger a face from the P.D. for me.

“No sign yet,” says Leo. “But he takes lunch here every day, like fucking clockwork. The guy’s in a rut,” he says.

Leo’s munching on a hot dog, mustard dribbling down his chin as he says this. I have purchased it for him from one of those vendors at a rolling cart on the corner; that and a Coke, which rests on top of a trash can next to him. I have dragged him here during the noon hour, and Leo made it clear he wasn’t coming without lunch.

“You know you owe me big time for this,” he says, his mouth bulging.

“What’s the matter? You want another hot dog, Leo?”

“Fuck you,” he says. “I mean big time. It’d be my ass if they knew I was helpin’ you. If they even saw us talking.”

Leo would like me to believe that I now owe him my life. With Kerns, the amassing of guilt in others is a business, like the church coining sin and selling dispensation to the sinners.

“You could at least tell me what’s happening,” he says. “Why you wanna see this guy?”

“That’s for me to know, Leo.”

“Yeah, right. I look like a mushroom,” he says. “Everybody wants to keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit.” Leo droning on. “After all, I’m not looking for anything privileged,” he says.

This is big of him.

“They don’t tell me a damn thing anymore. Like I don’t exist,” he says.

Leo’s ego has taken a beating in the last several months. He is finding it more difficult than he thought to regain his footing following Kline’s election.

“The man won’t let me get close,” he says. “I wanna help,” he says, “but he won’t let me.” Leo now bears the disfigurement of a permanent pucker from mentally pursing his lips in quest of his boss’s behind.

These days he is relegated to drunk driving cases, accidents in which some bodily injury has occurred. He is sent to reconstruct the scene of the crime. He hasn’t seen a homicide in over a year.

What worries Leo is the young cadre coming up, a handful of investigators in their thirties, several of whom are making gains with Kline. Kerns has visions, over-the-shoulder looks from others engaged in hand-to-mouth conversations, all eyes on him. It is the kind of thing that tends to grow a kernel of truth in one’s patch of paranoia.

For three months now Kline has had one of the other deputies in the office riding roughshod on Leo. Carl Smidt is known as “the Hatchet”-management’s quickest route to an early retirement. Leo has called Smidt a tight-ass-behind his back, of course-a corporate-set piece to Kline. Word is that Leo has been marked for oblivion. He is seen as the unsavory remnant of an earlier age: “B.P.C.,” Before Politically Correct.

He takes another peek across the street, and while he is looking away, I throw Leo a bone.

“Smidt cannot be entirely without a partying soul,” I tell him. “After all, he’s the subject of a formal complaint for harassment.”

Leo nearly loses his lunch coming back to me.

“Of the sexual variety,” I add.

“Where’d you hear this?” he says.

“I’ve seen the complaint.”

Sexual harassment is the topic of the hour in the nooks and crannies of government, what some might call high crimes and misdemeanors. It is the kind of activity that gets your dog neutered and public officials defrocked.

“You’re serious?” says Leo. His smile is something one would normally reserve for the second coming.

“I know the lady’s lawyer,” I tell him.

This is a friend Leo would like to cultivate.

“Tell me about ’em. Give me a name,” he says. “We talking mere words or touching?” Leo wants all the details.

“First count, third-degree touchy-feely with a secretary over the copying machine,” I say.

“Ohhh, God.” Leo sounds like a man in orgasm.

“His Holiness would have no choice but to sacrifice the fucker for that. Violating the holy of holies,” says Leo. He is already figuring ways to get Smidt’s body elevated onto the D.A.’s altar and to put the flint dagger in Kline’s hand. The corporate medicine man.

“Count two, gratuitous bumps and grinds in doorways while passing this same secretary.”

I can tell by the look that Leo is mentally chipping stone to a sharp edge.

“This complaint,” he says, “you can get me a copy?”

I shake my head. “It hasn’t been filed yet. And it may not be,” I tell him.

With this Leo nearly comes out of his skin. He is animated motion all over the concrete parking garage, like finger-fanned ink drawings of the whirling dervish. When he stops there are flecks of yellow mustard all over his shirt like a Jackson Pollock painting.

“Why the fuck not?” he says. “This is serious shit. You know the federal courts get into this stuff.”

I look at him like I’m questioning this.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s like fucking bank robbery. They got a federal law for destroying a broad’s good name.” Suddenly Leo wants his own chapter of NOW, a platform to uphold the honor of womanhood.

“The woman’s lawyer is hesitant,” I tell him. “Without more corroboration.”

“What’s he want, pictures? Tell the victim to lift her cheeks on the copying machine next time.”

Leo senses this opportunity vanishing as he paces in frustration in front of the pillar.

“My luck,” he says. “Wouldn’t you know. Goddamn lawyers, gotta have every t and i,” he says. “Why don’t they just get out of the way and let justice do its thing?” Like this is somehow self-executing. What Leo would like is Smidt hung by his heels in the doorway to Leo’s office, so that he could throw darts at the man’s forehead.

“There’s nothing wrong with the law that a little lawyer genocide wouldn’t solve,” he says. “Always getting in the way,” he says. “Tell him, your friend the lawyer, to grow some balls,” he tells me.

“My friend the lawyer is a woman,” I tell him.

This slows Leo only for an instant.

“Then she should borrow somebody else’s,” he says. “She oughta be indignant. Smidt is an affront to womanhood,” he tells me. This is something on which Leo is an expert.

“Tell her to get the thing filed, to hurry up and nail his ass,” he says. What Leo means is before Smidt nails his.

“You know,” he says, “you could gimme a hint where this came from and I could push it along,” he says. Visions of Leo with a pistol to my friend’s head.

“There is other information, but it has not been included in the complaint because the lawyer cannot get confirmation from witnesses,” I tell him.

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that Smidt tried to bed some of the other help, and lacked a lot of grace in the effort.”

I can almost hear him groan with the loss of this.

“Give me their names and I could interview them,” says Leo, “make a case.” A labor of love.

“Can’t do it,” I tell him.

“The other victim, the one in the doorway, without giving me a name,” says Leo. “Is it somebody I would know?”

He would like to play twenty questions.

“Can’t say.”

“How about initials?” he says.

I rebuke him with a look.

“Privileged information?” he asks.

“Good taste,” I tell him.

“So you give me this piece-of-crap information,” he says. “What am I supposed to do with it?” To Leo, dirt that cannot be turned into someone else’s misery is like a joke without a punch line.

“There is a way,” I tell him.

“What’s that?” Suddenly Leo would eat me with his eyes.

“If someone were to put out the right word in the ear of the press, with enough specifics to give it credence, and those details were to make it into print, Smidt would be forced to go public. To deny it.”

“So what? Couldn’t prove a damn thing,” he says.

“Yes. But I am told that faced with this lie, the other victims might come out of the woodwork.”

There’s a moment of deep gravity as Leo grasps the sinister nature of this proposal.

“Ohhhh.” A voice like wind leaving bellows. The glow of opportunity lights up his gaze. It is just the sort of bureaucratic coffin Kerns knows how to fashion, with all the screws for the lid, and carefully fitted for an enemy.

“Of course this would have to be done by a journalist who operates without documents, willing to go to print without a second source,” I tell him.

This slows Leo for only a nanosecond.

“No problem,” he says, like he has a dozen such people in his pocket.

“My friend the lawyer and her client will grow some corroboration,” I tell him. “Maybe a few more clients.”

“And the county will lose one more asshole,” says Leo.

I make a face. “One of those points of mutual advantage in life,” I tell him.

“Right,” he says.

“Your turn,” I tell him. “What are you hearing about Brittany Hall?”

Leo has been on a mission calling in every chit he has out, looking for information on the victim. Since she was in the fold of law enforcement, Kerns was my natural choice to get this.

“It would help if I had your parts to the puzzle,” he says. “I’ve got some stuff, but don’t know what it means.”

“You don’t need to know, Leo.”

“Humor me,” he says. Leo now has what he wants. He could make a dash for the door with his hot dog and leave me standing in dried mustard.

“Tidbits,” I tell him. “That’s all.”

He nods. Whatever he can get.

“They found the girl’s little black book,” I tell him. “Phone numbers galore. At least a dozen from the force, home numbers.”

Leo knows these would all be unlisted.

“Anybody I know?” he says.

“Mostly from one division,” I tell him. “Vice.”

“Not much in that,” he says. “It’s where she worked.”

Then something to prime Leo’s pump: “In all, there were seven phone numbers in that book for members of the force,” I say. “Some pages missing. One name was crossed out.”

He looks at me, mustard under his nose. He stops chewing for a moment, waiting for the other shoe.

“Zack Wiley,” I say.

This catches a whimsical look in Leo’s eye.

“Holy shit,” he says. “She knew Wiley?”

This was the cop shot dead in the drug raid from hell.

“And three of the others who were with him the day he died,” I tell him.

He whistles a high soft note.

What I do not tell him is that the fourth who was present that day, Tony Arguillo, I could not find in the book. The reason for this I suspect is only because the page for the letter A had been ripped out.

“Then it’s true,” he says, “the lady was a player.”

It is the thing with Leo. For his brain to work, his mouth is usually going.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” he says.

“Tell me, Leo.”

“What are you gonna give me in return?” He laughs.

“Your balls in one piece,” I tell him.

“Okay, okay. Just kidding,” he says.

“What did you hear, Leo?”

“Just that she was getting boinked regularly.”

He knows I’m wondering where this came from.

“Dirt in the office.” For this Leo has a nose like a pig searching out truffles. The stuff of his life.

“When I heard it,” he says, “I figured maybe some traffic cops scuttling by for nooners. The hike-and-bike crowd, guys who can do it on the back of their cycles without taking their foot off the starter pedal,” he says.

Unless I knew better, I might think that Leo was talking from experience.

“But you found out something else?” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “I checked with my sources. Knowledgeable people. All very reliable,” he tells me. He makes them sound like college dons.

“These are people who would not shit me,” says Leo. “What I heard was that it was either true love,” he says, “or higher ambition. She was romancing one guy, somebody important,” says Leo. “A main squeeze.”

“Who?”

“Whatta you think, I’m the fucking oracle?” he says. “If I knew that I wouldn’t be standing in some oily alley with you. I’d be converting it into a promotion. Making myself indispensable,” he says.

“Are the prosecutors checking this out? Her amorous adventures?”

“Sorry. They have their man.” Leo’s talking about the judge.

“But somebody else may have had a motive.”

“You don’t have to sell me. The problem is, all the physical evidence points to your client.”

Leo has a point.

“There was another name and a private number in that book,” I tell Leo. “Gus Lano.”

This gets a look from Leo as he fits the pieces.

“If she was bedding Lano,” says Leo, “my guess would be higher ambition,” he says. He means rather than true love.

“My thoughts exactly.”

The prosecutors have clearly looked at Hall’s telephone directory. They had to have seen Lano’s number. It is not a quantum leap for them to add the information that Leo has gathered to this number and begin to wonder. Still, most prosecutions usually take the course of least resistance, which at this moment is over my client.

“Lano’s name in her book,” says Leo, “would answer one other question.”

“What’s that?”

“His personal interest in her the night Acosta was arrested. I suppose he was just protecting his carnal claims.”

I give him a dumb look. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“He was there. You didn’t know that?” says Leo. “The night they busted Acosta on the prostitution thing, Lano was there.”

The mystery man. The so-called lieutenant that Frost could not name on the stand. It is no wonder he had a faulty memory on this. It would have raised more than a few eyebrows. Why would the head of the union be present at Acosta’s arrest, unless perhaps he had his own agenda?

“There he is,” says Leo. He snaps his head back around the other side of the pillar, back braced against the concrete, as a man strides down the steps of McGowen Center, a block away, across the park.

“The tall one. Tan slacks, white shirt?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Leo refuses to take another look.

“Relax. He’s a block away,” I tell him. “You’re in the shadow of the garage. He can’t see you.”

“That’s what you say,” he says. “He probably has fucking night goggles on underneath his shades,” says Leo. “I’m outta here.”

I think Leo’s going to wet his pants.

“Where is he?” he says.

“Heading this way. Into the park,” I tell him. “Oh, God. He’s running this way, Leo. I think he saw you.”

“Oh shit,” he says. “Where do I go?” He’s doing tight little turns in front of the pillar, like a guy in need of a frantic pee. “Fucking A. Why do I let you talk me into these things?”

“Because you’re a stand-up guy, Leo. Interested in truth and justice.”

“I gotta get outta here,” he says:

“Relax.” I’m laughing out loud by now. Pain in the midsection.

“Your pal’s on a bench on the other side of the park,” I tell him.

“You asshole,” he says. “Robbed me of five years of life,” he tells me. “Fuck you.” He’s stamping with his feet now, then stops and looks for fear that the noise might alert the guy.

Then Leo does a quick sashay, straight away from the pillar, keeping the concrete between himself and the park across the street, looking over his shoulder for alignment, little baby steps.

“See you later,” I tell him.

“Not if I see you first,” says Leo. He’s into the shadows of the parking garage, and three seconds later I can hear only the click of his heels on concrete as he disappears around a corner.

I head out into the sunlight and make my way across the intersection with the traffic light, all the while keeping a bead on the tall man in tan pants and white shirt. He is slender, well over six feet, with dark brown hair. He’s seated on a bench under a large elm a hundred feet from the fountain in the center of the park. The sun picks up the glint of metal in his hand as I draw near. He has a small container of yogurt, an apple, and a metal spoon in one hand. That Leo would recognize such as lunch is amazing.

“Jim Cousins.” I use a normal voice, and I am ten feet from the bench when I say this.

He looks up, squinting into the sunlight, his dark glasses now dangling from his shirt pocket.

“Do I know you?”

“My name is Madriani,” I tell him. I come closer. “I was given your name by a mutual acquaintance.”

“Who’s that?”

“A friend,” I tell him.

The initial smile drops from his face.

“What do you want?”

“To talk,” I tell him.

I can sense him stiffening. What I myself would do if I worked for the police department and some stranger came up knowing my name.

“I’m on my lunch hour. If it’s business it will have to wait.”

He gives me another once-over, this time with his dark glasses on.

“You look familiar,” he says. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so. I’m an attorney,” I tell him. I hand him a business card.

“You’re one of the lawyers representing that judge,” he says.

“That’s right.”

“I saw you on TV.” The ticket of fame. Apprehension seems to melt. I’m giving out business cards, not bullets.

“You mind if I take a seat?”

“Suit yourself,” he says.

“I was told that you might know something about a case that occurred a couple of years ago.”

“I think maybe you have me confused with somebody else,” he says. “I’m not a cop.”

“Right. Your name is James Cousins. You work the police property room.”

“You know a lot about me. Like I say, if you want to talk business, chain of custody on drugs or something, catch me in the office.”

He pulls a paperback book from inside his shirt, opens it, and starts to read.

“I want to talk to you about Zack Wiley’s murder,” I tell him.

With this he looks up and shakes his head. “What is this? All of a sudden everybody and his brother wants to talk about Zack Wiley. Do I look like an information booth?”

“Is somebody else trying to talk to you?”

“Listen, I’m not saying a word. Either leave, or I will.”

“The grand jury?” I say.

He looks at me but doesn’t say a word. From behind his dark glasses I cannot read his eyes. His face is stone. He picks up his spoon and yogurt, pockets the apple, gets up, and starts to walk away.

“We can do it here, or I can subpoena you and we can do it in open court,” I tell him.

“Fine. Do it in open court,” he says.

“In front of the press, where everybody you work with will know what you have to say-or at least what questions I have to pose.”

This stops him. He turns, looks at me.

“That assumes you know the right questions,” he says. The glasses come off, a smug look.

“Oh, I think I do. The gun was a setup from the start. What did they do, set it aside in case they needed to drop a convenient piece on a suspect?”

This draws nothing but pensive looks.

“When it landed in the property room they didn’t fudge on the serial number. That would be too obvious,” I tell him. “It must have been something else.”

If he could mislead me with his eyes at this moment he would, take me where it is cold, colder, coldest.

“What was it?” I ask him. I scratch my chin, turn to sun a little, gestures for effect. Suddenly I snap my fingers and look back at him. “The model number!”

With this I can actually see his jaw drop a millimeter.

“Sure. That would do it,” I say.

A little saliva going down his throat.

“They must have needed some help inside the property room. An identification tag that gave the correct serial number, the right make and caliber, but forgot to include the model number. Smith and Wesson must make what, a dozen different models in that caliber?”

He almost answers me, but at the last instant holds back.

“The manufacturer would use the same serial numbers over for each different model, so there would be no way to identify a specific weapon unless you had both the serial number and the model number. That’s smart,” I tell him.

He wants to talk, but he doesn’t dare.

“How did they mess up?” I ask. “What tipped off the grand jury that this gun had been in the property room before it was used to kill Wiley?”

“Listen. I can’t talk,” he says. “Not here. Not now.”

“They don’t know you testified, do they? Your friends?” Suddenly it hits me. I am talking to the grand jury’s star witness, and whoever killed Wiley doesn’t know it.

“Where can my process server find you?” I ask him. “In your office?”

“Gimme a break,” he says. “I didn’t know what was happening until it was over.”

“Right. You just looked the other way,” I tell him.

“They’re satisfied. They’re not after me,” he says.

“Gave you immunity, did they?”

He doesn’t answer this. He doesn’t have to. It is written in the dodging pupils of his eyes.

“How did the grand jury get onto them? How did they find you? Fingerprints? Did you leave yours on the gun when it was in Property?”

“When’s the last time you saw prints lifted off a handgun?” he says. He laughs at this. “Something from the movies. All they get in real life are smudges. Everybody grips a gun too hard. The oil, the recoil. It all leads to nothing but smudges. Test ten thousand you might get a single thumbprint,” he says.

“But you weren’t shooting it,” I tell him.

“It wasn’t fingerprints,” he says.

“Then what?”

Cousins is in a box and he knows it.

“If I tell you will you forget the subpoena?”

Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Then why should I tell you?”

“Weigh a maybe against a certainty, you have your answer,” I tell him.

A lot of saliva going down his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing in time to the tune on a boom box that some kid is packing on his shoulder near the fountain.

“How did they know the gun had been in the property room?”

“A scratch on the cylinder,” he says. “And a scribe mark inside under the handle.”

“What?”

“Whenever a revolver comes into Property, it’s unloaded, usually in the field. For safety,” he says. “Each bullet or empty cartridge is taken out and put in a separate envelope, and the cylinder is marked with a scribe, a little scratch on the metal, showing which chamber was lined up with the barrel at the time the gun was taken into custody. They also mark it inside someplace where it’s not so easy to see. It’s the procedure,” he says. “When Forensics picked up the gun after Wiley was shot they did this. What they didn’t realize is that there was already a second scribe mark on the piece,” he says, “from when it was taken the first time. Somebody at Internal Affairs, a guy who used to work ballistics, got onto this.”

All the reasons you never want to commit crime. A million things you do not know, half of them microscopic, any one of which can trip up the most canny mind.

“Who was the triggerman?” I ask.

“Hey. I’m not saying another word. You want to subpoena me, you go ahead.”

My question assumes that he knows the answer, which I doubt.

“Then tell me who took the gun out of Property.”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that what you’re telling the grand jury?”

“It’s the truth,” he says. “They just asked me to look the other way. Leave the door unlocked for a few minutes while I had coffee. I didn’t even know what they took.”

“Who asked you to look the other way?”

A stern face, like maybe he has gone too far already, more candor than he gave the jury.

“I’m not saying another word,” he says. Suddenly his gaze is lost in the distance, some floating object off in the direction of the garage. I wonder for a moment if perhaps Leo has come back for another peek, to see how long we talk.

“I gotta go,” he says. “You’ve screwed up my whole lunch hour.”

“Yeah. Well, somebody screwed up Zack Wiley’s whole life,” I tell him.

“It wasn’t me,” he says. “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t follow me.”

The last I see is his long stride making its way around the fountain and off toward the traffic light at the corner.

While we were talking the park has filled with people. It is twelve-thirty, and workers have made their way out of City Hall. Women with brown bags and dressy heels take a moment in the sun from their busy day. I see two judges strolling on the sidewalk across the way, their daily trek from the courthouse to restaurant row a few blocks away.

“Counselor!” It’s a voice from behind me, the direction of the garage.

I turn.

Staring at me with a Nicholson grin is Tony Arguillo, sporting round aviator shades over pearly white teeth, and a tan like he’s just stepped off a Caribbean beach.

“You do get around,” he says.

“Tony. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he says. “Just fine. More than I could say for some people I know.” He looks off in another direction for an instant, and I track on his line of sight. Cousins is making his way up the steps of the center, back to his office.

Tony’s looking back at me. He does the thing that little kids do to the tune of shame-shame, one finger pointed at me, with the first finger of the other hand scraping over its top. He is backing up away from me all the while as he does this, in the direction of McGowen Center.

“Dangerous liaisons,” he says. “You should watch yourself.” With this he spins on his heels like something choreographed in a dance step, snaps the fingers of both hands down to his side, and walks away.