Cruel Justice

68

CAPTAIN PEARSON LOOKED AS if he had been knocked in the face. Ben’s announcement of his next witness seemed to come as a surprise to everyone, including, to be truthful, Ben. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had decided on Pearson. The deed was done now, though. He would have to make the best of it.

Pearson was on his feet in the gallery, but he wasn’t moving. “Do I have to do this?” he asked the judge.

Judge Hawkins appeared confused. “Didn’t counsel discuss your testimony with you in advance?”

“Hell, no.”

Hawkins gave Ben a long look. “Is this true?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“You gave him no advance warning?”

“He isn’t a friendly witness.” Ben glanced at the jury, making sure they got that. “But he possesses critical information.”

“Very well,” the judge said, scowling. “But I’ll be watching you carefully. Behave yourself. I won’t have you harassing someone who didn’t even know he was going to testify.”

“No, your honor. Of course not.” Like hell!

Judge Hawkins motioned, and Pearson strode unhappily to the witness stand.

“Good afternoon,” Ben said.

Pearson grunted in reply.

“Shall I call you Mr. Pearson or Captain Pearson?”

“Mr. Pearson will be fine.”

Ben established the essential background details: that Pearson was the self-styled captain of the country-club board of directors, that he had been for years, and that he had general supervisory authority over the country club’s affairs.

“Mr. Pearson, you held the same position ten years ago, when Maria Alvarez was killed, right?”

“What are you implying? That I killed that woman? This is outrageous!”

“Please answer the question,” Judge Hawkins said firmly.

“Yes,” Pearson spat out. “I was in charge ten years ago. But I had nothing to do with this mess.”

“Were you at the club the night the murder occurred?”

“I most certainly was not!”

“What were you doing?”

“I was at home, sound asleep, with my wife.”

“Your honor, I object,” Bullock said. “This isn’t going anywhere. This is a pure and unadulterated fishing expedition.”

Ben racked his brain for a response. It was hard to come up with a good one when Bullock was basically right.

“Are we going to sit here while Mr. Kincaid calls every member of the club to the stand and tries to get them to confess?”

Hawkins leaned over the bench. “It would help if you got to the point, Mr. Kincaid. If you have one.”

Ben nodded. Time for a bold initiative. “Mr. Pearson, isn’t it true that you’ve been supplying illegal narcotics to country-club patrons for years?”

The uproar in the courtroom astounded even Ben. People rose to their feet; reporters sent messengers running toward the back door. Judge Hawkins pounded his gavel, trying to quiet everyone. ,

“That’s a serious accusation, your honor,” Bullock shouted over the hubbub. “Mr. Kincaid better have some proof.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Hawkins said. He was mad now, no doubt about it. “Mr. Kincaid?”

“I’m waiting for the witness to answer my question.”

“No!” Pearson shouted. “It’s a lie!”

“Permission to treat the witness as hostile,” Ben said.

“Under the circumstances,” Hawkins said, “we can hardly claim that he’s your bosom buddy, can we? Granted.”

“Captain Pearson, isn’t it true that your fellow board member Dick Crenshaw has a major cocaine problem?”

Pearson’s eyes darted toward the gallery. Crenshaw was there, watching him very closely. “I don’t pry into other people’s problems. …”

“The day we all played golf together, he was on a coke high. Till it ran dry. Then he was on a coke low. Right? You were there.”

“That doesn’t mean he got the stuff at the country club!”

Ben saw heads nod in the jury box. They had picked up on the implied admission. “Where else would he get it?”

“How would I know? Look, if you have questions about Crenshaw, ask Crenshaw. I don’t know where he gets it.”

“I think you do. I think you’ve been supplying it to him for years. You put that monkey on his back.” Ben paused. “I wonder if he won’t admit it when I call him to the stand, since you’ve all but admitted he’s an addict.”

Pearson hovered over the edge of the witness box. “I will not sit here and let you call me a … a drug pusher!”

Again, Ben checked the faces in the jury box. On this issue, they appeared undecided. But they were definitely interested.

“And what you can’t distribute at the club,” Ben continued, “you distribute throughout Tulsa via paid accomplices. The same people you use to collect the junk from Peruvian smugglers and run all the other risks. The Demons.”

“The what?”

“Don’t bother acting like you don’t know who they are. I saw them in your office.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, I’m not. Captain Pearson, isn’t it true that after we finished playing golf last week, we walked back to your office?”

“Yes, but—”

“In your office I saw four black teenagers wearing jackets bearing the emblem of the largest North Side youth gang, the Demons.”

“That’s not—”

“I wasn’t the only person there that day. Should I call some of your employees to the stand?”

Pearson folded his arms across his chest. “I was interviewing those young men for jobs in the dining room. I believe I mentioned to you that I was hiring. You came in one day while I was talking to an employment agency.” He smiled thinly. ‘Those young gentlemen were part of my new affirmative-action program.”

“I don’t think so.” Ben hated this. It was more like being in the boxing ring than putting on a defense. But he had to keep it up until he got what he needed. “You would never allow those boys to work in your dining room. You’re a deeply prejudiced person.”

“Another lie!”

“You have no minority employees working in the main club building, right?”

“We had some black caddies.”

“And that was darned big of you, but I’m asking about the real employees. The full-timers. No minorities, right?”

He sank back in his chair. “Well, that’s why I started my affirmative-action program.”

“Wrong. I heard your phone conversation when you were talking to the employment agency. You told them you weren’t interested in any non-Caucasians.”

“I said no such thing.”

“Not in so many words, maybe, but you communicated the message, just the same. I was suspicious at the time, so I made notes and later consulted a friend of mine at the EEOC. Turns out code phrases like yours are commonly used to communicate illegal hiring preferences.”

Pearson’s eyes broke contact. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ben glanced at his notes. “For instance, you said, ‘Let me talk to Mary. No, not Maria. Not Rochelle.’ That meant you wanted to hire Caucasian women, no Hispanics, no blacks. Then you said, ‘Let me have suites fifteen through twenty-five.’ That meant you wanted young women, ages fifteen through twenty-five.”

“The guys in the clubhouse like to look at the pretty young things, okay? After a hard day’s work at the …”

“Nineteenth tee?” Ben suggested.

Pearson pulled himself up, jaw tightly clenched. “There’s nothing wrong with hiring attractive young women to be waitresses. Everyone does it.”

“And excluding minorities?”

“Look, it’s a private club. We can do whatever the hell we want.”

“Maybe so, but the point is, there’s not a snowball’s chance that you were going to hire a bunch of big tough black gang members as waiters. They were there to deliver or pick up drugs.”

“You’ll never prove that!” Pearson’s defiant voice echoed through the courtroom.

Maybe not, Ben thought, but the jury was listening, just the same. He decided it was time to switch subjects. “You do a lot of traveling to Peru, don’t you?”

Pearson’s head twitched, startled by the sudden switch in topics. “I suppose.”

“I understand a lot of illegal drugs come from Peru.”

“Oh, well then, I guess that proves I’m a drug lord.”

“Wasn’t Maria Alvarez also from Peru?”

“I—think I might have heard that. So what?”

So what indeed? Ben wasn’t sure, but it was a hell of a coincidence.

“Did you know her?”

“No, not at all.”

“Never?”

“I never laid eyes on her till the police brought around pictures of her corpse.”

This was getting Ben nowhere. He rethought his approach. What was it his mother had told him? Give the man something to brag about, that was it. Hmmm.

“What sort of business do you do in Peru?”

“All kinds of things.”

“You must be a very enterprising individual, to build a successful business enterprise in a third-world nation.”

Pearson seemed to relax a bit. “I’ve done all right, yeah.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’ve done extremely well. What inspired you to instigate operations in Peru? Most people would never have thought of that.”

Pearson leaned back in his chair. “Well, the advantages aren’t obvious, but after a lot of hard work and bare-knuckles research, I realized there was some serious money to be made. Labor down there is cheap, and the government tends to stay out of your way, unlike here.”

“I see. Could you briefly describe the scope of your business empire?”

Pearson turned to the jury and shrugged his shoulders. Now that he was on a subject he loved, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself. “Most of my work is energy-related. I’ve invested in oil wells. Bought some oil fields. Operated a gas processing plant for a while.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, hell. I’ve bought and sold small businesses. Bought some polo ponies. Real estate. I’ve made investments for myself, and I’ve acted as a broker for others.”

It was the word that triggered Ben’s memory. The same word Rachel Rutherford had used when she referred to the unnamed lover who had assisted her in her time of need.

“What kind of broker?”

“Oh, hell. I don’t know. Land. Leasehold interests. Stocks. Bonds.”

“What about babies?”

Pearson’s sudden silence resounded through the courtroom. The air seemed suspended, as if time had decided to stand still.

“Don’t bother lying,” Ben said, bluffing his way through. He was putting all his chips on one roll of the dice now. “She told me all about it.”

“I did that on one occasion,” Pearson said quietly.

It was him. “How did you get into the baby business?”

“I was requested to … by a close personal friend.”

“A lover?”

Pearson looked back at him blank-faced. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Ben decided to leave well enough alone. “Why were you looking for babies in Peru?”

“You probably know how hard it can be for certain people to adopt in America,” Pearson explained. “Birthrates are down. Abortion is up. No one seems to care if a kid is illegitimate anymore. For every American baby put up for adoption, there are four couples waiting in line. Obviously, a lot of those people are going to be disappointed.”

“So you looked overseas?”

“Exactly. Ten years ago the foreign market for babies was just opening up. Today, it’s a steady supply source. I’ve been told that, on average, twenty American couples adopt overseas babies every day.”

“How did you go about this … brokering?”

“I contacted an outfit in Houston called the Santa Clara International Adoption Agency. I filled out the forms, ran through all the hoops. Eventually they turned down the couple I represented for the same reason the American agencies had. The father was too old, too inexperienced. But I got friendly with one of the men who worked there, spilled a little cash, bought him a few shots of tequila, and got some information.”

“About what?”

Pearson breathed heavily, as if resigned to telling his story but not at all happy about it. “La Flavita.”

“And what is that?”

“That’s a hotel in one of the scuzziest parts of Peru. A neighborhood I would’ve never dreamed of visiting otherwise.”

“And what was at the hotel?”

“A baby farm.”

“Your honor.” Bullock rose to his feet. “This story is appropriately lurid and distracting—Mr. Kincaid’s specialties—but it has nothing to do with this case. The court has been very patient, but enough is enough.”

“Judge,” Ben said, “I promise this will connect up.”

Hawkins squinted. “I don’t see how.”

“Your honor, my client is on trial for his life. I ask for the widest possible latitude.”

Hawkins glanced at all the reporters in the gallery, then sank back into his seat. “Proceed.”

Ben stood directly before Pearson. “Did you go to this … baby farm?”

“Of course. It was a pathetic sight, believe me. Not just Peruvian kids. They had castaways and bastards from all over the world. Kids no one wanted. The dust of life.”

“Did you have to fill out forms?”

“Nope. All I had to do was open my wallet.”

“Did you obtain parental consent?”

“I was told they had done so. Of course, you have to realize this is a third-world country. Parental consent is a whole different animal there. Some poor schmo who has six kids he can’t feed might well give consent to sell his seventh, if it enables him to feed the rest of the brood for a few weeks. He might not like it, but he’ll do it.”

“Because he has no choice.”

Pearson nodded slowly. “That’s basically correct. Look, I didn’t make this world—”

Ben cut him off. “And so—you bought a baby?”

“Eventually. We did quite a bit of bickering over the price. They’re tough, and they have an advantage because they’re used to dealing with people who are desperate and emotionally involved.” Pearson leaned back on one elbow. “But I’m a pretty damn good horse trader myself. We struck a deal, and I brought home a beautiful baby boy.”

“Who were the baby’s birth parents?”

“I had no idea. I didn’t want to know.”

“Did you ever hear from … La Flavita again?”

“Yes. About six months later. There was some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“With the mother. Claimed she hadn’t given her consent, or had done so while under anesthetic, or some such sorry thing. I don’t recall the details. Anyway, they were trying to track the kid down.”

“So how did you respond?”

“I asked my client what she wanted me to do.”

“And what did you do?”

Pearson hedged. “What she told me to do.”

“And what was that?”

“I—” Pearson gazed out into the gallery. “I threw the telegram away. I contacted the sender and informed them that the persons in question had moved to another state and I didn’t know how to contact them. Didn’t even know their names. Couldn’t be traced.”

“Did you ever hear from La Flavita again?”

Pearson looked down at his shoes. “No.”

Ben took a deep breath. “Mr. Pearson, who was your client?”

Pearson gazed out into the gallery.

“Mr. Pearson? I’d appreciate an answer.”

“I really don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Unfortunately, sir, you are not the judge. Please answer.”

Pearson gazed up at the judge. Ben had a sneaking suspicion that if Hawkins renewed his application for country-club membership at that moment, it might be accepted. “The witness will answer the question,” the judge said solemnly.

“It’s confidential,” Pearson said. “I made a professional promise I can’t violate.”

“Yes you can,” Ben said. “Answer the question.”

“I object,” Bullock said. “We can’t ask the man to violate a confidential relationship.”

“Why not?” Ben asked.

“Well … it’s a privileged matter. It’s like the attorney-client privilege, only—”

“Only for baby brokers?” Ben said. “I don’t think so.”

“Overruled,” Hawkins said unhappily. He turned to face Pearson. “Now answer the question!”

Pearson’s shoulders rose and fell heavily. “Rachel Rutherford.”