Prime Witness

Chapter Eight

Three days after the raid on the Russian’s apartment, I am working my way through the in-basket on the desk, sorting the stuff that cannot wait.

Claude is still busy checking passenger manifests at Air Canada, any lead on where Iganovich may have gone. On reflection Claude says this makes sense. A Russian would not go south, to the warm climes of the Mexican Riviera. Canada makes eminent good sense according to Dusalt, easier to get back to the northern reaches of his homeland.

Suddenly there’s a shadow, like some dark cloud on a summer’s day. I look up. It’s Lenore Goya, in the doorway.

She’s tapping her wristwatch with her forefinger. “Our meeting,” she says. “Remember?” I can tell by her tone that she’s a little miffed, a woman who likes to be punctual.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m running a little late. Some administrative chores,” I tell her.

In fact I’ve been going over disposition sheets for the office, monthly statistics on caseloads for the various deputies. It is not a happy picture. It is becoming increasingly clear that I cannot afford to lose Goya. Without her the office would be up a creek without the proverbial paddle.

I trail her down the hall to her office. It is where we had agreed to meet.

The place has the ambience of a coat closet, ten-by-ten with case files in folders stacked halfway up the walls.

“I hope this won’t take too long,” she says. “I’ve got a court call in forty minutes.”

“I thought it would be good if we broke the ice,” I tell her. “General discussion about the office, ideas for improvement. Things you would change if you could.”

Her eyes open wide, a little mock amazement. She looks like the late Gilda Radner playing Emily Litella. “You want to know what I think about the office?” she says. Like, come on.

I nod a little encouragement.

She laughs. “In two words-it sucks.” She is grinning at me across the desk now, pearl white, even teeth, a dentist’s dream.

I smile back. “That’s constructive,” I say. “But maybe you could give me a little more detail.”

“Fine,” she says. She starts ticking off points on the fingers of one hand. “We’re understaffed. We’re overworked. This year the felony caseload went up twenty-six percent. We haven’t had a salary increase in three years, they’re talking layoffs and a cut in health benefits.”

She tells me that every defense lawyer in the northern part of the state knows we can’t try the cases we have.

“And on a personal note, I’d like a new office with a view, preferably something that looks out on the courthouse.” She thinks for a moment. “I could do with an hour for lunch maybe once a week, that’s optional,” she says. “And of course, I’d like your job.”

I look at her across the table. She looks back, still smiling, her idea of a cerebral Mexican stand-off.

“You asked,” she says.

Mario Feretti was right. The woman is direct.

“Are you a candidate?” I ask.

“Get real,” she says. “You’ve seen the people who run this county. Can you see them appointing a Hispanic woman as their DA?” She laughs at the image of this.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she says. “As long as you’re asking, you will either have to get rid of Roland, or immunize me for murder. Because if you don’t dump him, I intend to kill the sonofabitch. He’s running through secretaries like some snotty kid uses up Kleenex.”

It is true. In the last year three seasoned stenos have left the office, something already brought to my attention by the other deputies.

I try to give Goya a few positive strokes. “You hold the office together,” I tell her. “Mario, Mr. Feretti, spoke very highly of you.”

She smiles a little at this. “Mario was a prince. I will miss him,” she says. “We will all miss him.” It seems that her bitterness toward her situation did not extend to Feretti. There is something in her expression that tells me there was genuine affection here, that Mario’s death has suddenly left some vast professional void in her life.

“He had a great deal of confidence in your abilities.” I am shameless. I play upon this.

She smiles. “He had so much confidence that he asked you to take his place when he got sick.”

“He knew that you couldn’t handle his job and the felony calendar, too,” I tell her. “Mario trusted you to get the job done.”

“Mario had no choice,” she says. “He had a full plate and the county gave him nothing but kids out of law school for help-because they work cheap,” she says.

I remind her that Overroy is no kid out of law school. That he has been here for almost thirty years. But that even with his seniority it is she who is assigned the heavier cases.

“Spare me,” she says. “Come back in thirty more and he’ll still be here. You know as well as I do that around here ‘relief’ is not spelled R-O-L-A-N-D.”

On the issue of Roland Overroy I have hit a raw nerve.

“I’ve been here seven years. I’ve been passed over for promotion twice. They say it’s because they have no money.”

More likely it’s because Roland won’t retire. But I cannot say this to Goya. If word got out that this subject passed the lips of management, or if any move is made to seek his retirement, he could sue the county in the flash of an eye for age discrimination. For Roland this would be departing county service on a high note, something to augment his six-figure retirement check each year. It is little wonder that this state is going broke.

I encourage Goya to hang in there a little longer, to stick it out, that I will do what I can.

“Sure,” she says. “But when a big case comes along, something making headlines across the state. Well. .” Her voice trails off. Her facial expression tells me how this sentence will end.

The notoriety surrounding this case is eating on her. A few quiet conversations with neighbors in the building, and reporters had their story, and Iganovich’s name. His picture was spread all over the front page of this morning’s Times. She knows that success in a high-profile prosecution like this is the stuff of which legendary legal careers are made.

“What hurts,” she says, “is that they didn’t even talk to me.”

I look at her, questioning this comment.

“When they filled behind Mario, the county supervisors didn’t even come and talk to me. They just went to somebody on the outside.” She thumps the desk as if to make the point, steel in her eyes. “I suppose that should tell me something.” She’s shaking her head now. “You know, I tried to leave last year. Gave Mario my resignation. He talked me out of it. I made a mistake,” she says. “A big mistake.”

I had not heard this. Like a lot of things Mario never told me.

Then quickly she pulls herself together. She turns an agreeable smile my way, fighting back the bile. “Then again,” she says, “maybe it’s just been a bad week.”

“It’s only Monday,” I say.

“See what I mean?”

We both laugh a little, put a face on it. I see a lot of frustration here, masked by a quick wit. I sense no personal enmity, and I wonder if I would be so generous if the shoe were on the other foot.

“I will see what I can do,” I say.

She looks at her watch. “I’ve got to go now. Court,” she says. She’s gathering papers and a stack of files from off the desk.

“Lenore.”

She looks up at me.

“I will do whatever I can,” I say.

“Sure.”