The Pardon

Chapter 27

Two hours after Jack had requested his file at the police station and turned up the information about Richard Dressler, he met Manny in his offices for a brainstorming session. Manny knew nothing about Dressler. He’d reviewed the police file before that name had been entered into the registry. He knew about as much as could be expected of someone who’d been retained just forty-eight hours earlier, having picked up bits and pieces from the file and a brief talk with Jack after the arraignment. Jack had a lot to tell him, and he was eager to hear Manny’s assessment of the case. But after a brief overview of the salient facts, and at the risk of sounding like so many of his guilty clients at the Institute who were so quick to assert their innocence, Jack couldn’t help but get to the bottom line.

“I’ve been framed,” he said.

“Whoa,” Manny half kidded. “Turning paranoid on me already, are you?”

“It’s not paranoia. It’s a fact, Manny. Somebody wanted me to think Goss was stalking me. Why else would they have given me a map to Goss’s apartment? Why else would they have left the chrysanthemum under Cindy’s pillow the night I stayed at Gina Terisi’s townhouse? That was when I, of all people, should have known it wasn’t really Goss who was harassing me. Goss never left flowers anywhere. His signature was seeds. He had this perverse connection between chrysanthemum seeds and his own semen. He was a nut case, but he was consistent about his signature.”

“So, somebody wanted you to think Goss was after you,” said Manny, moving the theory along. “Why?”

“I don’t know exactly why. I guess because they planned to kill him. And they planned to make it look like I did it. That’s why the silencer showed up in my car at the repair shop. Somebody planted it there.”

Manny stroked his chin, thinking. “And why would someone want to pin you with the murder of Eddy Goss?”

“Again,” Jack said with a shrug, “I don’t know. Maybe to retaliate against me for getting Goss acquitted. Friend of the victim, or somebody like that. Maybe even a cop. All the lawyers from the Freedom Institute have lots of enemies on the force. And we already have that nine-one-one call about a cop being on the scene right after Goss was killed.”

That much was true. They did know about the cop. The prosecutor had disclosed that information under rules established by the Supreme Court, which required the government to disclose helpful information to the defense. “We have a recorded phone message,” said Manny, putting the evidence on the cop in perspective, “but we don’t have a witness, because we don’t have a name and we don’t know who the caller is.” Then he sighed, swiveled in his leather chair, and looked out the window.

Jack studied his lawyer’s face, trying to discern his thoughts. It was important to Jack that Manny believe him, not just because Manny was his attorney, but because he was the only person other than Cindy to whom Jack had proclaimed his innocence-and he was a man whose judgment people valued. That was obvious, Jack thought as he admired the way income from praiseworthy clients had helped Manny furnish his oversized office. Primitive but priceless pre-Colombian art adorned his walls and bookshelves. Sculptured Mayan warriors lined the wall of windows overlooking the glistening bay, as if worshiping the bright morning sun. A touch of sentimentality rested atop his sleek marble-top desk: a glass vase with a white ribbon around it, containing the black soil of a homeland the Cardenal family had left more than three decades ago, fleeing a Cuban revolutionary turned despot.

“Let me say this, Jack,” Manny said as he turned to face his client. “I do believe you’re innocent. Not that guilt or innocence is relevant to whether I would defend you. I want you to know it, though, because it’s important you continue to tell me everything.

“That said,” he continued, “I hope you’ll understand if I don’t appear overly enthusiastic about your frame-up theory. I’ve been doing this for twenty years. Every client I’ve ever represented claimed he was framed. Juries are skeptical of these kind of claims, as I’m sure you’re aware. That makes it a tough defense to prove.”

“Tough-but not impossible.”

“No,” Manny agreed. “Not impossible. And I think we already have a couple of very important leads to follow, which may prove key to your theory. One is this Richard Dressler. Who is he, and why is he snooping in your file? And second, we need to find out who made that nine-one-one call and reported they saw a police officer leaving the scene of the crime. Obviously, we need to get on both these leads immediately. It could take some time, especially tracking down the nine-one-one caller.”

“We don’t have time,” said Jack.

“Well, we have a little time. Trial is two months away.”

“The trial isn’t our deadline.”

“I know, but-”

“I think you’re overbooking something,” said Jack in a polite but serious tone. “We don’t have two months. We may not even have two minutes. Whoever framed me, Manny, is a cold-blooded killer. Which means one thing: We have to find the nine-one-one caller-before he does.”

If the newspapers Jack read over lunch were any indication, the public couldn’t hear enough about the brilliant young son of the governor who’d wigged out and blown away his client. Jack was a veteran when it came to bad press, but still, it helped when he called home and picked up messages on his machine from Mike Mannon and Neil Goderich, both offering any help they could.

One newspaper story in particular had Jack concerned. After summarizing the evidence against him, it made prominent mention of the anonymous 911 call. “A little something,” the article observed, “that a lawyer of Jack Swyteck’s ability could seize upon to blow the case wide open.”

The article made Jack feel uneasy. It was bad enough that anyone who’d looked at the police file could have learned about the 911 caller. Now, anyone who read the newspaper would know about it, too.

Jack drove the five minutes to the police station and requested the recorded 911 message. He played it over and over, until the caller’s voice was one he’d recognize. The man had spoken partly in English, partly in Spanish, a hybrid that made it easier to remember.

From the station he drove to Goss’s apartment building and checked the mailboxes. There were seventeen Hispanic surnames, which he wrote down. He walked to the corner phone booth, confirmed there was a telephone book, then matched the names and addresses to numbers. He then went back to his car to make the calls. He posed as a pollster from a local radio station seeking views on U.S. immigration policy, as a salesman, as someone just getting a wrong number-anything to get the person on the other end of the line to speak long enough so that he could compare his voice to the one on the 911 recording.

A few of the people weren’t home. One line had been disconnected. Those people Jack did reach had clearly not made the call. After thirty minutes of calling, he still didn’t have a match. Damn.

Sitting there outside Goss’s apartment building, watching the last rays of the setting sun glint off the Mustang’s windshield, he wondered if it might already be too late.