Presumed innocent

Chapter 21

One week after my arraignment, Sandy and I stand together in the reception area of the law firm in which Raymond Horgan has been a partner since May. A very classy affair. The floor is parquet, covered by one of the largest Persian rugs I have ever seen, rose hues on a vibrant navy field. Lots of expensive-looking abstract art is on the walls, and glass-and-chrome end each corner of the room, with copies of Forbes and The Wall Street Journal laid out in ranks. A sweet blonde who probably gets an extra couple grand a year for being so good-looking is behind a fancy rosewood desk, taking names.

Sandy has hold of my lapel in the lightest way, instructing me in a murmur. The young lawyers who hustle by in their shirt-sleeves probably cannot even see his lips move. I am not to hold a discussion, Sandy says. He will ask the questions. My presence is intended, as he puts it, merely as a stimulant. Above all, he says, I am to remain collected, whatever the climate of our reception.

"Do you know something?" I ask.

"One hears things," Sandy says. "Speculation is pointless when we will so soon know answers firsthand." Sandy, in fact, hears many things. A good defense lawyer has an intricate network. Clients bring information. Reporters. Sometimes there are cops who are friends. Not to mention other defense lawyers. When I was a prosecutor, the defense bar seemed to be a kind of tribe, always on their tom-toms whenever there was any piece of news that they could properly communicate. Sandy has told me that Della Guardia subpoenaed Horgan to the grand jury right after Nico took office and that Raymond tried to resist on grounds of executive privilege. Sandy knows this, he has said, from an excellent source. Given this skirmishing, I would expect continuing hostility between Raymond and Nico, but Sandy's reaction when he saw Raymond's name on the witness list implies other knowledge. Sandy, of course, would never betray the confidence of whoever it is who gave, him a notion of Raymond's intentions.

Horgan's secretary comes out to retrieve us, and halfway to his office, Raymond himself is there. He is in his shirt-sleeves, without his coat. "Sandy. Rusty." He claps me once briefly on the shoulder as he shakes my hand. He has put on more weight, and his gut is straining against the lower buttons on his shirt. "Have you fellas ever been up here?"

Raymond takes us on a tour. With the incentives of the tax code, the law firms and corporations have become the new Versailles. Raymond tells us about the artwork, names I know he has learned only from magazines. Stella. Johns. Rauschenberg. "I especially like this piece," he says. Squiggles and squares. In a conference room, there is a thirty-foot table milled from a single piece of green malachite. Sandy asks about Raymond's practice. Mostly federal work so far, Raymond says, which he thinks is a good thing. He has a grand jury going great guns in Cleveland. His client sold parachutes to the Defense Department; they contain defective rope. "A purely inadvertent oversight," Raymond tells us, with a knavish smile. "One hundred ten thousand pieces."

Finally, we arrive at Raymond's office. They have given him a corner and he has the fancy views, west and south. The Wall of Respect has been reinstalled here with a few additions. A panoramic shot of the dais at Raymond's last inauguration is at the center now. With forty others, I am there, way off on the right.

I had not noticed a young man until Raymond introduces him. Peter something. An associate. Peter has a pad and pen. Peter is the prover. He will cover Raymond in the event there is later controversy about what he said.

"So what can I do you for?" Raymond asks, after he has called out for coffee.

"First," says Sandy, "Rusty and I both want to thank you for taking the time to meet. You are very gracious."

Raymond waves this off. "What can I say?" A non sequitur of sorts. I think he means to suggest he wants to help without saying that.

"I think it best, I am sure you understand," says Stern, "that Rusty not take part in our conversation. I hope you do not mind if he simply listens." As he says this, Sandy glances toward Peter, who has raised his pad and is already relentlessly making notes.

"Sure, it's your ball game." Raymond starts fussing on his desk, brushing at dust neither I-nor he-can see. "I'm surprised you wanted him to come. But that's up to you guys."

Sandy flexes his brow characteristically, one of those Latin gestures reflecting something too delicate or imprecise to say.

"So what do you want me to tell you?" Raymond again asks.

"We find your name on Della Guardia's witness list. That, of course, motivates our visit."

"Sure," says Raymond, and throws up his hands. "You know how it is, Alejandro. The guy. sends you a party invitation, you gotta go to the ball." I have seen this bluff, hearty manner from Raymond a thousand times before. He gestures too much; his broad features are always tending toward a smile. His eyes seldom meet those of the person to whom he is speaking. This was how he negotiated with defense lawyers. I'm a great guy, but I just can't help. When his visitors left, Raymond would often call them names.

"So you will be appearing by subpoena?"

"You bet."

"I see. We received no statement. Do I take it that you have not spoken to the prosecutors?"

"No, I've talked to them a little bit. You know, I talk to you, I talk to them. We had some troubles at first. Mike Duke had to work some things out. I've sat down with Tom Molto a few times now. Shit, more than a few times. But you know, it's one on one. I haven't signed a statement or anything like that." A bad sign. Very bad. Panic and anger both are rising in me, but I try to stave them off. Raymond is getting star-witness treatment. No formal statements to minimize the inconsistencies that would endanger him on cross-examination. Multiple sessions with the prosecutor because he is so important to the case.

"You mention troubles," says Sandy. "There is no question of immunity, I take it?"

"Shit no. Nothing like that. It's just that some of these guys around here, my new partners. This whole thing makes them nervous. It could be a little embarrassing for me, too." He laughs. "That's a hell of a way to start out. I'm here three days and I get a grand-jury subpoena. I bet Solly Weiss loved that," he says, referring to the firm's managing partner.

Sandy is silent. He has his hat and briefcase positioned decorously in the center of his lap. He studies Horgan, without apology, searching him. The man is volunteering nothing. Stern becomes like this at moments, suddenly abandons all his comfortable civility and seems to sink beneath the surface of things.

"And what have you told them?" Sandy finally asks quietly. He is very still.

"My partners?"

"Certainly not. I was wondering what we might expect in terms of your testimony. You've been on this side of things before." Sandy subsides into his more familiar tone, gentle and indirect. When he asked what Raymond told them, a second ago, it was like a flash of light suddenly reflected. His mettle was at once obvious and fully summoned.

"Well, you know, I don't want to get into a word-for-word." He nods in the direction of the young man taking notes.

"Of course not," Sandy says. "Topics. Areas. Whatever you feel you can comfortably tell. It is very difficult from the outside even to guess sometimes what a witness might be called to discuss. You know this yourself, so well."

Sandy is probing for something that I do not completely understand. We could get up now and leave if we were merely here to accomplish the previously announced purpose of our visit. We know where Raymond Horgan stands. He is not a friend.

"I'm going to testify about Rusty's conduct of the investigation. How he told me he'd be interested in handling it. And a later conversation we had, about aspects of my personal life."

"Just a second." I can take no more. "How I was interested in handling the investigation? Raymond, you asked me to take the case."

"There was a conversation between us."

From the corner of my eye, I note Stern raising a hand, but I fix on Horgan.

"Raymond, you asked me. You told me that you were busy with the campaign, it had to be in the best hands, you couldn't worry about somebody else lousing this up."

"That's possible."

"That's what happened."

I look to Stern, seeking support. He is sitting back in his chair, staring at me. He is simply furious.

"I'm sorry," I say quietly.

Raymond goes on, oblivious to my exchange with my lawyer.

"I don't remember that, Rusty. Maybe that's what happened-as you said, I was busy with the campaign. But the way I remember it, we had a conversation, a day, two days before the funeral, and at the end of that conversation we had agreed that you'd be handling the case, and the idea that you handle it, it's my feeling that that was more your idea than mine; I was receptive, I admit that, but I remember some surprise about the way things ended up."

"Raymond-What are you trying to do to me, Raymond?" I look at Sandy, who has his eyes closed. "Can't I just ask him that?"

But I have finally pushed things beyond the crest; Raymond is traveling full speed downhill on his own momentum. He leans as far as he can across his desk.

"What am I trying to do to you?" He repeats the question twice, growing Bushed. "What were you trying to do to me, Rusty? What the hell are your fingerprints doing all over that goddamn glass? What's all this bullshit of sitting in my office asking about who I'm fucking, and never then, when it would have been friendly, or two weeks before, when I assigned you to that investigation which, as I remember, I bawled you out a couple times for not pushing-" He turns abruptly to Sandy and points. "That's something else I'm going to testify to," he tells Sandy, then looks back at me. "Never, two weeks before, when it was the professional thing to have done, never at any time do you tell me you were dicking the same gal. I've spent a whole long time on that conversation, Rusty, asking myself what the hell you were doing there? What were you doing?"

This scene is more than Peter the associate can handle. He, has stopped writing entirely and is just watching us. Stern points at Peter.

"Under the circumstances, I am advising my client to make no response. Clearly he would like to."

"So that's what I'm going to testify to," Raymond tells Sandy. He stands up and ticks the points off on his fingers. "That he wanted the case. That I had to chew his ass repeatedly to move it. That he was more interested in finding out who else was fucking Carolyn than who had murdered her. And that when push finally came to shove, he sat in my office and gave us all a bunch of happy horseshit that he'd been nowhere near Carolyn's apartment that night. That's what I'll testify to. And I'll be goddamned pleased to do it."

"Very well, Raymond," says Sandy. He picks up his hat, a gray felt homburg, off the chair on which he laid it in the midst of his efforts to quiet me. I stare directly at Horgan. He looks back.

"Nico Della Guardia was honest about the fact that he was out to screw me," Horgan says.

Sandy steps between us. He hauls me to my feet, both hands on my arm.

"Enough," he declares.

"Son of a bitch," I say as we are moving briskly ahead of Peter, on our way out. "Son of a bitch."

"We know where we stand," Stern says quietly. As we enter the reception area, he tells me in the barest sibilance to please hush. This enforced silence sits in my mouth like a bit. As the elevator sinks, I find myself with a bursting desperation to speak, and I grab Sandy's arm as we reach the ground floor.

"What is it with him?"

"He is a very angry man." Stern walks determinedly through the marble lobby.

"I see, that. Has Nico convinced him that I'm guilty?"

"Probably. Certainly he thinks you could have been a good deal more cautious, particularly on his behalf."

"I wasn't a faithful servant?"

Sandy makes another of his Latin movements: hands, eyes, brow. He has other matters on his mind. As he walks, he cocks a grave eye in my direction.

"I had no idea that Horgan had an affair with Carolyn. Or that you had conversed with him on that subject."

"I didn't remember the conversation."

"No doubt," says Stern in a tone which implies that he doubts me a good deal. "Well, I think Della Guardia will be able to use that to his advantage. When was it that this relationship took place between Raymond and Carolyn?"

"Right after she stopped seeing me."

Sandy stops. He makes no effort to mask his pain. He talks to himself an instant in his native tongue.

"Well, Nico is certainly coming closer to a motive.

"But he's still some distance," I say hopefully. He still cannot prove the principal relationship between Carolyn and me.

"Some," Sandy tells me. There is a deliberate flatness in his expression. He is clearly quite put out with me, both for my performance upstairs and for keeping so significant a detail from him. We will have to speak at length, he says. Right now he has a court call. He puts his homburg on and ventures. into the blazing heat without glancing back at me.

In the lobby I feel instantly bereft. So many emotions are surging that there is a kind of dizziness. Most of all, there is caustic shame for my own stupidity. After all these years, I still failed to recognize how these events would impact on Raymond Horgan, although now the trajectory of his emotions seems as predictable as a hyperbolic curve. Raymond Horgan is a public man. He has lived to make a reputation. He said he was not a pol, but he has a pol's affliction: he thrives on acclamation, he yearns for the good opinion of everyone. He does not care about my guilt or innocence. He is devastated by his own disgrace. His own chief deputy indicted for murder. The investigation, which he let me run, sabotaged right before his face. And he will have to sit upon the witness stand and broadcast his own indiscretions. There will be tavern jokes for years about being a deputy P.A. under Raymond Horgan. Between his conduct and mine, the office will sound more active than a Roman bath. Worst of all is the fact that the murder took Raymond from the life he really loved; it changed the course of the election; it sent him here to his glass-and-steel cage. What infuriates Raymond, inspires his rage, is not really that I committed this crime. It is that he believes he was intended to be another victim. He said as much when he finally let things loose. I screwed him. I killed Carolyn to bring him down. And I succeeded. Horgan thinks he has the whole thing figured out. And he has clearly planned his vengeance.

I finally leave the building. The heat is intense; the sun is blinding. I feel instantly unsteady on my feet. Compulsively, I try to calculate the one thousand subtle impacts on the trial of Raymond's testimony and his evident hostility to me, but that soon gives way. Ideas come and go erratically. I see my father's face. I cannot make things connect. After all these weeks, after all of this, I feel that I am finally going to go to pieces, and I find, stunningly, that as I turn about in the street, I am praying, a habit of my childhood, when I would try to cover my bets with a God in whom I knew I did not much believe.

And now, dear God, I think, dear God in whom I do not believe, I pray to you to stop this, for I am deathly frightened. Dear God, I smell my fear, with an odor as distinct as ozone on the air after a lightning Bash. I feel fear so palpably it has a color, an oozing fiery red, and I feel it pitifully in my bones, which ache. My pain is so extreme that I can barely move down this hot avenue, and for a moment cannot, as my backbone bows with fear, as if a smelted rod, red-hot and livid, had been laid there. Dear God, dear God, I am in agony and fear, and whatever I may have done to make you bring this down upon me, release me, please, I pray, release me. Release me. Dear God in whom I do not believe, dear God, let me go free.