A Killer’s Kiss

6

I was half blind and bleary with weariness when I arrived at the courthouse the next morning. There wasn’t much on my docket, a young man’s future was all. His name was Derek Moats, and Derek was in trouble.

“Where you been, bo?” he said when he spotted me outside the Criminal Justice Building. “You told me to get here a half hour ago, and here you are, stumbling up with your tie all awry.”

“I knew I’d show, Derek,” I said as I adjusted my knot. “It was you I was worried about.”

“I was here from when you said, and I’m the one looking sweet, not like I just stepped out the crapper. Late night with the ladies, bo?”

“Let’s call it a late night and leave it at that.” I gave him a quick inspection. “Nice hair.”

“Combed it out just for the judge. And I wore what you told me to.”

“You look fine. Are you ready?”

“I was born ready.”

“You were born, we know that for sure, the rest we’ll figure on the run. Remember what I said, how to play it?”

“Course I do.”

“Good. Now go on in there and sit where I told you. I have someone I have to meet first.”

Commonwealth v. Derek Moats. It wasn’t much of a case, one of a long series of short trials arising from a simple roundup at a crowded drug corner in North Philly. After a number of undercover buys, the uniforms had swarmed in from all sides, forming a ring and herding a group of suspects into the center. The undercover cops then identified the young men who had been doing the selling. It was an effective way to clean out a corner, but a scattershot form of justice. Derek was caught in the hoop and pointed out by one of the undercovers, but he claimed he wasn’t doing the selling.

“So what were you doing there?” I had asked him.

“Hanging,” was his answer.

“Hanging?”

“There’s girls on that corner you would not believe,” he had said, “and every one of them just waiting for a little bit of Derek.”

The little-bit-of-Derek argument wasn’t much of a closing, but it was about all I had, unless I could discredit the identification. Because of the ID, I had opted for a bench trial. Juries are always taken in by clear identifications – he’s the one, yes, him – but judges know that the simple identification is often the most unreliable part of a criminal case. That was the knowledge I was banking on.

Half an hour later, I was sitting at the counsel table, leaning back with a quiet little smirk on my face as A.D.A. Johnstone, a fierce young prosecutor, came to the crucial part of her direct examination.

“What time was it,” she asked, “when you made the purchase?”

“About two o’clock in the morning,” said Detective Pritzker, a burly man with a long, shaggy beard, looking quite awkward in his suit and tie. He obviously would have been more at home in the motorcycle leathers he was wearing the night of the arrest.

“Was it dark?”

“The sun wasn’t out, if that’s what you’re asking, ma’am. But at that location there are plenty of streetlamps, and with all the headlights from the traffic, it was more than bright enough for me to see who I was dealing with.”

“And so you had a clear view of the man who sold you the heroin in People’s Exhibit One.”

“Objection,” I said. “There is no testimony yet as to the actual contents within that glassine envelope.”

“Are you contesting the contents, Mr. Carl?” said the judge.

“I’m contesting everything, Your Honor.”

“I’ll sustain the objection for the time being,” said the judge. “Let’s get on with it.”

“And so, Officer Pritzker,” said A.D.A. Johnstone with annoyance now in her voice, “you had a clear view of the man who sold you the alleged heroin in People’s Exhibit One.”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

“And do you see him in the courtroom today?”

“Yes, I do,” said Officer Pritzker, staring now straight at me as if he were preparing to steal my lunch money.

“Can you point him out, please?”

He reached out his arm and pointed his finger at the man sitting next to me at the counsel table, the man in the usual defendant’s seat, and then he swiveled his arm until his finger was aimed at a different man in a suit and tie sitting in the last row of the courtroom.

“He’s right there,” said Pritzker. “Sitting in the back row, in the gray. That’s him.”

A murmur went though the courtroom. I swiveled in my seat, seemingly stunned at the revelation.

“Officer Pritzker,” said A.D.A. Johnstone, “are you sure?”

“The lawyer is trying to trick me, is all,” said the witness. “I heard that’s the way he works. He’s got a reputation. But I’m a step ahead. The guy I bought from is him in the back.”

The judge leaned forward on the bench and hissed down at me. “Mr. Carl, are you playing games in my courtroom?”

“Would I do something like that, Judge?”

“Unfortunately, yes, you would. But not without consequences. Who is the man sitting next to you at counsel table?”

I looked at the young man next to me, hands clasped before him, eyes staring down. “Your Honor,” I said, “the young man sitting next to me at counsel table is the defendant, my client, Derek Moats.”

Officer Pritzker, on the stand, snarled at me and then said to the A.D.A. in a harsh whisper loud enough for the whole courtroom to hear, “He’s lying.”

“Your Honor,” said the A.D.A., “this is highly irregular.”

“Yes it is,” said the judge. “Mr. Carl, if I may ask, who is the man in the suit whom the officer identified?”

“I believe the man in the suit,” I said, “is an intern with the public defender’s office.”

“What is he doing in my courtroom?”

“I invited him, Judge. He’s trying to learn about the criminal justice system, I told him this could be an instructive case.”

“You invited him, did you? And it’s just a coincidence, I’m sure, that the intern you invited into the courtroom and your client both look quite alike.”

“They do? I hadn’t noticed.”

“They were talking outside the courtroom,” said Officer Pritzker. “The lawyer had his arm around his shoulders, giving him orders. I saw it.”

“I was advising a young man who is seeking a career in the law,” I said.

“I bet that’s what you were doing,” said the judge. “And doing it right smack in the view of the witness. Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Ms. Johnstone, I want you to take custody of both these men right now and figure out who is who. Match fingerprints if you have to. How long will that take?”

“Give us an hour, Your Honor.”

“Fine.” He checked his watch. “Come back in an hour. If the man in the suit is the defendant, Mr. Carl, there will be hell to pay, both in the sentencing of your client and for you personally after I hold you in contempt and make my report to the bar association.”

“That sounds a little harsh, Judge.”

“Be glad it’s not the old days, Mr. Carl, where I would have pulled your ticket and had you flogged. But if it truly was, as Mr. Carl claims” – he paused, looked down at the docket on the bench before him – “Derek Moats, the defendant, sitting next to Mr. Carl this whole time, then, Ms. Johnstone, your witness blew the identification, your case is dead, and I expect it to be dismissed forthwith. Do you understand?”

“We could still make the argument that-”

“I don’t want to hear arguments. It will be dismissed, is that clear?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Any questions?”

“No, Judge.”

“And, Mr. Carl, don’t you dare leave this courtroom until Ms. Johnstone makes her report.”

“What about lunch?”

“Eat the desk, I don’t care, but you stay right here.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Okay then,” he said with a bang of his hammer, “we’re in recess. I need to take a pill.”

I signaled to Derek not to say a word to anyone and watched as A.D.A. Johnstone and two police officers escorted the two young men from the courtroom. Then I sat down and leaned back to wait.

Just at that moment, a massive weight fell onto my shoulder and almost sent me reeling backward to the floor. I angrily jerked around and spied a huge man, with broad shoulders, an expanding stomach, and a face like a boxer who had bobbed when he should have weaved. Detective McDeiss of the Homicide Division. And he was shaking his big old head at me.

“That was cute,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Which is which?”

“I am an officer of the court, Detective.”

“You’re also incapable of telling the truth.”

“Not this time.”

“So he identified the wrong one?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Then I assume that you are quite proud of yourself for tricking a servant of the people.”

“Quite. But I didn’t have to trick him, he tricked himself. You heard what he said. I have a reputation. But my client wasn’t selling anyway. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Just like you,” he said as he dropped something onto the table.

I looked down, felt my nerves fizzle.

It was the Daily News, the chronicle of high crimes and low misdemeanors of the residents of our fair town. And spread across the front page was the picture of a fine stone house and the headline mansion of death.

I hadn’t had time to check the papers that morning, so I paged through it quickly, stopping at the article. It gave a few details of the Denniston murder and mentioned that the doctor’s wife was still in police custody. A statement about the investigation was made by Detective Augustus Sims, who simply confirmed that the wife of the deceased was being held for questioning. And the paper also quoted Julia Denniston’s attorney, Clarence Swift, as forcibly denying that Julia had anything to do with the tragedy and urging the public to come forward with any information about the crime. “In my modest opinion,” he was quoted as saying, “as the investigation continues, the evidence will completely exonerate Mrs. Denniston.” My name was conspicuously absent. I must say I was a bit surprised to find that Sims had honored his word and kept me out of it. Maybe he was more trustworthy than I supposed?

Nah.

I closed the tabloid, tapped the cover. “Nice house.”

“Did you have anything to do with it?” said McDeiss.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Stop it. Of course I didn’t.”

“That’s what I thought. Guns aren’t your style.”

“Still, you sent Sims and Hanratty over to my place in the middle of the night.”

“I remembered your connection to the dead man’s wife. I brought it up to the captain, tried to use it to get assigned the case.”

“Really? To protect me?”

“To ensure justice and promote domestic tranquillity.”

“You wanted to nail me personally, huh?”

“Like a toothache. But the captain didn’t let me anywhere near the case and gave it to Sims.”

“Just my luck. What can you tell me about him? Nice guy?”

“Watch yourself.”

“Why?”

“Just be careful.”

“I’m more concerned about Hanratty.”

“Hanratty’s okay.”

“He thinks I’m somehow involved.”

“Of course he does. Any cop worth his salt would. But he’ll find out what really happened one way or the other. That’s all he cares about. With Sims you never know. He plays to his own agenda. Sims is more politician than cop.”

“And we all know how well politics mixes with truth.”

“Hey, did you really not have sex with her?”

“Word gets around, I guess.”

“We all got a laugh out of it. And it’s too bad, since she’s quite nice-looking for a killer.”

“You sure she killed him?”

“Sims seems to be sure. You still have feelings for her?”

“We have a past,” I said.

“I understand. But the reason I came over is to give you some friendly advice. Sims is a bulldog. He’ll sniff here, sniff there, take his time in figuring out who he wants to charge with the murder, but once he’s got his teeth into your leg, he’s impossible to shake off. And funny thing about his cases, when they start getting shaky, evidence starts popping up as if from nowhere.”

“You don’t say.”

“So here is my advice. Don’t let your unresolved feelings from the past betray you into doing something stupid. Stay the hell away from this case, Victor, at least until Sims decides who to charge. Right now he’s focusing on the wife. But if he starts focusing on you, then, boy, you might think you know what trouble is, but you’ll find out you were underestimating it all along.”