Breach of Promise (23 page)

“Sustained.”
Alex looked ready to jump up and literally hit the ceiling. “Your Honor, I take exception to that. I have numerous reports from news sources that point to Antonio Troncatti’s own anger problems, and thus call into question his fitness to be around a young child and—”
“I have ruled, Ms. Bedrosian.” The judge looked at Hallard. “Sir, do you think there is any danger, any at all, in the girl’s living where she is, with her mother and the mother’s boyfriend?”
Hallard didn’t hesitate. “Not at all. In fact, the home and amenities provided are quite good. I did not witness anything to indicate any risks.”
“Thank you,” Judge Winger said. “That covers that, as far as I’m concerned. Do you have any other areas to go over, Ms. Bedrosian?”
“Your Honor, you are cutting off a relevant line of inquiry.”
“I take it then your answer is no. We will take a recess.”

The press was all over us outside the courtroom. Funny, now we were the stars. Alex’s cross-examination and the fireworks over that word—
adulteress—
had met all the requirements of drama for the evening news.

Alex did the talking, and she was like an actor that handles the big moment in a play with a Tony award-winning performance.
“The report in this case is a bogus piece of psychobabble that is biased and unprofessional. When the best interests of a child are at stake, this simply cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The attacks on Mr. Gillen’s character are without foundation. I believe that was shown through the testimony of the other side’s own witness.”
“Will your client be testifying?” a reporter shouted.
“We’ll see,” Alex said.
“How has this affected him?”
“How do you think? His life is being trashed for no other reason than vindictiveness. But that’s how some people practice law in this city.”
As if on cue, Bryce Jennings walked out of the courthouse doors, Troncatti and Paula next to him. As soon as a couple of reporters saw them and scampered over, the rest followed suit.
Like hogs at feeding time.
Troncatti was livid. He was doing that same wild stuff with his hands. I hoped they got a good dose of that and would report it again.
“Let’s get out of here,” Alex said.
We drove a few miles away to a Quiznos. My stomach wasn’t accepting food, so I sipped a Sprite while Alex munched a sandwich.
“You want to go on the stand?” she asked.
“Want to or need to?”
“I think Jennings is going to put on more witnesses. How they do will answer your question. Regardless, I don’t want to do it if you think you’ll . . .”
“I’ll what?”
“Not be able to handle it.” She looked me square in the eye. “I’m sorry to say it, but Jennings will do whatever he can to get you to lose your temper.”
“So if I kick him until he’s dead, that’s a bad thing?”
“I mean it.”
“I know. I can do it. I want to do it.”
“Think long and hard,” Alex warned.
“For Maddie,” I said. “I can do this for Maddie.”

Alex was right. Jennings called Ron Reid to the stand. It was a surreal experience, seeing my biological father step up to testify for the other side. The big question was what possible relevance he was to Paula’s case. It didn’t take long to find out.
After a few preliminaries, Jennings asked Ron about his reasons for making contact with me after all these years.
“I just thought it was time,” Ron explained. “And I found out I had a granddaughter.”
When he said that I looked over at Paula. I wondered what she thought about that aspect of this whole thing. Ron Reid was not the sort of person she’d want seeing Maddie.
“How did you find that out, sir?”
“I saw something in a news story. About the divorce and custody thing and all.”
“Which prompted you to contact Mr. Gillen?”
“Yes.”
“And was that contact successful?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean,
sort of?
”
“I mean it wasn’t exactly a warm family reunion.” “Can you explain that?”
Ron shrugged. “I can understand. Father comes to you, after all this time, you’re not exactly gonna take it like Christmas. But we talked it out, and he let me stay in his place.”
“He invited you in?”
“Yeah.”
“And what can you tell us about that experience?”
With a little twitch of the lip, Ron said, “It wasn’t the greatest. We had a fight.”
“What was the fight about?” Jennings asked.
I leaned forward.
“Do I have to say?” Ron Reid asked.
“You are under oath, sir,” Jennings snapped.
“Well, I came in one night and he was doing something I thought wasn’t a good idea, for him or for his daughter, if she ever came back to live with him.”
Now I was coiled tight, like I might snap. What was he talking about?
Jennings knew already and asked with a calm voice, “What was this something you didn’t think a good idea?”
Reid swallowed. “Smoking dope.”
My voice exploded. Words came out by themselves, like horses from a flaming barn. “No way! That’s a lie!”
It was one of those TV moments, where the innocent accused screams out just before the commercial break. Up to that point I always thought those moments a bit contrived. No more.
“Mr. Gillen!” The judge said. “You are not to talk in open court, is that understood?”
“He’s a liar!”
Alex put her hand on my arm, trying to calm me. I jerked it away.
“That’s all, Mr. Gillen.” The judge’s face was getting red.
“Do something!” I shouted at Alex.
Judge Winger pounded his fist on the bench. “Last warning, Mr. Gillen. Sit down and be quiet.”
Alex took my arm again and pulled me down, generating laughter from some in the courtroom. “Be quiet,” she whispered sternly.
“But Alex—”
“Be
quiet.
”
Finally, a modicum of sanity prevailed in my mind. I clammed up and let my hatred of Ron Reid warm my body.
Bryce Jennings, who had been smiling at the podium, continued as if nothing had happened.
“Mr. Reid, how did you know that Mr. Gillen was smoking a narcotic?”
“I’m not proud about it, but I know what grass—marijuana— smells like, because I used to do a lot of it.”
“You have drugs in your background?”
“Like I said, I’m not proud about it. But I’m clean now.”
“No longer use drugs?”
“No, sir.”
“What did you tell Mr. Gillen, if anything, about the use of drugs?”
Ron Reid swallowed once, the liar. “I told him he shouldn’t be doing that around his kid, my granddaughter. I told him that was about the worst thing he could do.”
“And what was his reaction, if any?”
“Nothing. He told me to mind my own business if I wanted to stay around.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told him I was going to move out. And the next day, I did. I didn’t need to be around that stuff.”
With a nod, Bryce Jennings smiled at Alex. “No more questions.”
I don’t know what Alex was thinking when she got up to question my lying father. I did see the back of her neck, though. It was fire-engine red.
“Mr. Reid,” she said, “you have a criminal record, isn’t that right?”
“Objection,” Bryce Jennings said. “Improper impeachment.”
Judge Winger looked at Alex. “Only felony convictions can be considered for impeachment, Ms. Bedrosian. Do you have a foundation for this?”
“I do,” Alex said.
“Then I’ll allow it.”
Alex turned back to Reid. “Sir, do you have a criminal record?”
“I’m not proud of that.”
“Apparently you’re not proud of a lot of things, are you?”
Bryce Jennings mouthed an objection, more for show, I think, than anything. It was like a halfhearted attempt to give his witness a few moments to think about things. But the judge sustained it, calling the question argumentative.
Big deal,
I thought.
Alex didn’t pause. “You served time for dealing drugs, right?”
“Yeah.” The slightest bit of fear snuck into Ron Reid’s eyes. He glanced over at Bryce Jennings. I got the feeling he wanted to say something like
Hey, I didn’t sign up for this.
“And you served how long for that?”
“Six years, give or take.”
“What comes next on your menu of crime?”
Jennings objected again, calling the question argumentative again.
Of course,
I thought.
This is court, you jerk.

Alex sighed. “Your Honor, I’m sorry that Mr. Jennings is so sensitive to the English language. But he is the one who put this witness on the stand, he is the one who brings Ron Reid’s criminal record into this proceeding. If he does not care for the way I ask questions, tell him he is free to step outside. But allow me to crossexamine.”

The judge said, “All right. The question is colorfully phrased, but there is nothing objectionable in it. Overruled.”
“Tell us,” Alex practically spat at Ron Reid.
Reid said something I couldn’t hear. Neither could the court reporter, who said, “Please repeat that.”
“A little louder, please, Mr. Reid,” said Judge Winger.
“Battery,” Reid said.
“Whom did you batter?”
“A guy who provoked me.”
“Oh? Are you easily provoked?”
“I don’t think so. I try to get along with everybody.”
“But not this man you battered, is that right?”
“He was drunk. We were in a bar. He was coming at me.”
“What did you use as a weapon?”
Ron Reid’s chest went up and down in a cautious heave. “A glass.”
“What kind of glass?”
“Beer glass.”
“One of those heavy kind?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess while you’re under oath, Mr. Reid.”
“It was pretty heavy.”
“Did you draw blood?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Reid, isn’t it true that the police took a statement from you at the scene?”
As I watched Ron squirm I could see, out of the corner of my eye, Bryce Jennings lean forward. I leaned a little, too. How had Alex gotten all this information?
“Yeah,” Ron Reid said. “Of course.”
“And isn’t it true that this report was admitted into evidence during your trial?”
Ron’s eyes got a little wider. “Yeah.”
I half expected Alex to whip out the police report right then and there, but she couldn’t have. We hadn’t known Ron was going to be put on the stand.
“And isn’t it also true that the statement you gave to the police was contradicted by witnesses at the scene? Isn’t that true, Mr. Reid?”
A flash of anger shot out from the mellow follower of the Wheel, which was crushing his toes at the moment. “So what? They were friends of this guy.”
“The jury did not believe you, did they?”
“I didn’t take the stand.”
“They didn’t believe your story in the report, did they, Mr. Reid?”
Bryce Jennings almost cried out in pain. “Objection to this line of questioning. How long are we going to have to go down memory lane here?”
As long as your witness, my loving dad, is bleeding in the corner.
“I think the point has been made,” Judge Winger said. “Let’s move on.”
Alex did not even pause for a breath. “Mr. Reid, you have also lied in this proceeding, haven’t you?”
“What?”
“Am I speaking too fast for you, Mr. Reid? I’ll slow it down. You. Lied. Under. Oath. Right?”
“No!”
“You claim you found my client smoking dope?”
“That’s what I said.”
“It’s a lie.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Anyone else see this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyone else report this?”
“Not that I know of, I only know—”
“So all we have is what you, a perjurer, tell us.”
No surprise that Jennings objected and the judge sustained it. I didn’t care. Alex was doing with words what I wanted to do with a sharp weapon. The sense of outrage and betrayal in me was almost more than I could stand. I’d taken this guy in, given him money . . .
Money.
I scribbled the word on a piece of yellow legal paper and slid it toward Alex. She saw the motion, came over and read it. Nodded, then returned to the podium.
“Mr. Reid, how much money are you getting for your testimony?”
That’s when the place went crazy. Jennings started shouting, Alex started shouting, and Troncatti, his Italian hands waving in the air, shouted too. Just to join in the fun, some reporters started shouting questions, at who I don’t know.
The judge started pounding on the bench with his gavel and when he finally got a word in he ordered a recess. And the lawyers to get their behinds into his chambers
now.

“Some of them are afraid,” I explain. “Some of them are ungrateful.”
We’re watching
High Noon
on TV. I’m trying to share some of my favorite movies with Maddie, but she’s not old enough for a lot of them yet. She gets squirmy.
But for some reason she likes this one. There’s something about Gary Cooper’s face, I guess. It’s etched with a devotion to duty, but also a deepening sorrow. The killers are coming into town soon, and no one will sign on to help the marshal, played by Cooper.
Maddie’s always had a soft spot in her heart for injustice. When she sees something that’s unfair—like a big kid at preschool snatching a toy from someone—she gets very upset.
“What’s‘ ungrateful’?” she asks.
“Well, when somebody does something nice for you, you say thank you, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s being grateful. When you don’t say thank you, that’s being ungrateful. And in this town, see, the marshal did a lot of good things for the people. He helped make the town safe. But now that he needs help, nobody will help him.”
“That’s not fair!”
I am about to tell Maddie that life is not fair. But she is only five and that lesson can wait. Hopefully, for a long time.
“What is he gonna do?” Maddie says.
“Let’s watch and find out.”
“I’m scared for him. He’s all alone.”

I was alone on the corner, pacing behind a bus stop bench, when Alex found me.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Calming down. What happened with the judge?”
“He is plenty ticked off. Mostly at me.”
“Why?”
“He thought my question about money was improper. He’s probably right. There’s no basis for it.”
“It just makes sense,” I said. “Why else would he lie like that?”
“Point is, the judge does not want this thing turning into a hockey game. My sense is that he wants to get it over as soon as possible. Which leaves us with a decision to make.”
It sounded serious. “What is it?”
“Jennings said he has no more witnesses to present. He’s made his case, in my opinion, even though we’ve tried our best to blow some holes in it. We went into this thing with the weight of evidence against us. So we have to decide whether to put you on the stand.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Not so fast. You’re very emotional right now. That can blow up in our face if it continues.”
“No,” I said. “Put me on. I won’t blow it.”
“You understand Jennings is going to hit you with everything he’s got. He may well have held back some things he knows just to use them when you testify. It’s called sandbagging.”
“What else can he know? Everything’s out there.”
“You didn’t know he’d call your father.”
True. But that was his big weapon, it had to be. I could handle anything after that.
“I want to tell my side,” I said. “I’ll be good. I promise.”
What an easy word to say,
promise.
What an easy thing to break into a million pieces.